He said it was a-- a--oh, yes, humdinger." She trotted off after her mother.

Captain Hunniwell, after a chuckle of appreciation over the "humdinger," began to tell his friend what little he had learned concerning the Armstrongs.

This was, of course, merely what Mrs.Armstrong herself had told him and amounted to this: She was a widow whose husband had been a physician in Middleford, Connecticut.

His name was Seymour Armstrong and he had now been dead four years.

Mrs.Armstrong and Barbara, the latter an only child, had continued to occupy the house at Middleford, but recently the lady had come to feel that she could not afford to live there longer, but must find some less expensive quarters.
"She didn't say so," volunteered Captain Sam, "but I judge she lost a good deal of her money, bad investments or somethin' like that.
If there's any bad investment anywheres in the neighborhood you can 'most generally trust a widow to hunt it up and put her insurance money into it.