Up in a narrow lane, at the side window of a blind-looking little house,
sits Mrs. Rosenwinkle. She is German and badly paralyzed and she
believes that the earth is flat and that if you walked far enough out
beyond Petersen's pasture you would most certainly fall off. She also
believes that only Lutherans like herself can go to heaven. But to-day,
beside the open window, with a soft, wooing, eiderdown little breeze
caressing her face, she is happy and unworried, her eyes busy with the
tender world and the two chubby grandchildren tumbling gleefully about in
the still lane.
In his little square shoe shop built out from his house Joe Baldwin is
arranging his spring stock in his two modest show windows. Joe is a
widower with two boys, a gentle voice, a gentle, wondering mind, and a
remarkable wart in the very center of his left palm. His shop is a
sunny, cheerful room with plenty of benches and chairs. The little shop
has a soft gray awning for the hot days and a wide-eyed competent stove
for cold ones. Nobody but Grandma Wentworth and such other folks like
Roger Allan ever suspect the real reason for all those comfortable
sitting-down places in Joe's shop. And Joe never tells a soul that it is
just an idea of his for keeping his own two boys and the boys of other
men under his eye.
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