"I'm a widow, too," she reminded poor little Mrs. Peevy, one day, "I
understand." "Do let me send you the port wine I used to take after
Ellen was born," she begged one little sickly mother, and when she
loaned George Manning four hundred dollars to finish his new house,
and get his wife and babies up from San Francisco, the transaction
was made palatable to George by her encouraging: "Everyone borrows
money for building, I assure you. I know my father did repeatedly."

When more subtle means were required, she was still equal to the
occasion. It was while Viola Peet was in the hospital for a burned
wrist that Mrs. Burgoyne made a final and effective attempt to move
poor little Mrs. Peet out of the bedroom where she had lain
complaining, ever since the accident that had crippled her and
killed her husband five years before. Mrs. Burgoyne put it as a
"surprise for Viola," and Mrs. Peet, whose one surviving spark of
interest in life centred in her three children, finally permitted
carpenters to come and build a porch outside her dining-room, and
was actually transferred, one warm June afternoon, to the wide,
delicious hammock-bed that Mrs. Burgoyne had hung there. Her eyes,
dulled with staring at a chocolate wall-paper, and a closet door,
for five years, roved almost angrily over the stretch of village
street visible from the porch; the perspective of tree-smothered
roofs and feathery elm and locust trees.

"'Tisn't a bit more than I'd do for you if I was rich and you poor,"
said Mrs. Peet, rebelliously.

"Oh, I know that!" said Mrs. Burgoyne, busily punching pillows.

"An', as you say, Viola deserves all I c'n do for her," pursued the