"This is John Shadrack's house?" I said.

"Yes," said she, "and I'm his widder."

[Illustration: "And I'm his widder."]

She came to my side and stood looking down at me very hard. I saw a
woman in the indefinable seasons past fifty. In my vague mental
condition, the impression of her came slowly. First it was as though I
saw three cubes, one above the other, the largest in the middle. Then
these took on clothing, blue calico with large polka dots, and the
topmost one crowned itself with thin wisps of hair, parted in the
middle and plastered down at the side. So, little by little, John
Shadrack's widow grew on me, till I saw her a square little old woman,
with a wrinkled, brown face, a perpetual smile and a pipe that snuffled
in a homely, comfortable way.

I smiled. You couldn't help smiling when Mrs. John Shadrack looked
down at you.

"It's been such a treat to have you," she cried. "I've been enjoyin'
every minute of your visit."

This was puzzling. How long Mrs. John Shadrack had been entertaining
me, or I had been entertaining her, I had not the remotest idea. A
very long while ago I had seen a spire of smoke curling through the
trees in Happy Valley, and I had been told that it was from her hearth.
Then we had gone plunging madly down the hill to it, Tip, the gray colt
and I. We had turned a sharp bend, we had heard the swish of a