You just leave it to her." Captain Sam rose to his feet.
"I've a dum good mind to," he declared "'Twould serve you right if she paid you ten cents a year." Then, with a glance of disgust at the mountain of old letters and papers piled upon the top of the desk where his friend was at work, he added: "What do you clean that desk of yours with--a shovel ?" The slow smile drifted across the Winslow face.

"I cal'late that's what I should have to use, Sam," he drawled, "if I ever cleaned it." The captain and the widow agreed upon thirty-five dollars a month.
It developed that she owned their former house in Middleford and that the latter had been rented for a very much higher rent.

"My furniture," she added, "that which I did not sell when we gave up housekeeping, is stored with a friend there.

I know it is extravagant, my hiring a furnished house, but I'm sure Mr.Winslow wouldn't let this one unfurnished and, besides, it would be a crime to disturb furniture and rooms which fit each other as these do.
And, after all, at the end of a year I may wish to leave Orham.

Of course I hope I shall not, but I may." Captain Sam would have asked questions concerning her life in Middleford, in fact he did ask a few, but the answers he received were unsatisfactory.