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One Basket by Edna Ferber
page 8 of 196 (04%)

"Thanks!" said the Very Young Husband dryly.

In the early spring, before Blanche Devine moved in, there came
stone- masons, who began to build something. It was a great
stone fireplace that rose in massive incongruity at the side of
the little white cottage. Blanche Devine was trying to make a
home for herself.

Blanche Devine used to come and watch them now and then as the
work progressed. She had a way of walking round and round the
house, looking up at it and poking at plaster and paint with her
umbrella or finger tip. One day she brought with her a man with
a spade. He spaded up a neat square of ground at the side of the
cottage and a long ridge near the fence that separated her yard
from that of the Very Young Couple next door. The ridge spelled
sweet peas and nasturtiums to our small-town eyes.

On the day that Blanche Devine moved in there was wild agitation
among the white-ruffed bedroom curtains of the neighborhood.
Later on certain odors, as of burning dinners, pervaded the
atmosphere. Blanche Devine, flushed and excited, her hair
slightly askew, her diamond eardrops flashing, directed the
moving, wrapped in her great fur coat; but on the third morning
we gasped when she appeared out-of-doors, carrying a little
household ladder, a pail of steaming water, and sundry voluminous
white cloths. She reared the little ladder against the side of
the house, mounted it cautiously, and began to wash windows with
housewifely thoroughness. Her stout figure was swathed in a gray
sweater and on her head was a battered felt hat--the sort of
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