open fireplace, using paper towels and three logs from a beautifully geometrical pile that lay in a white basket against the wall. She was sitting in front of the fire having her cup of tea when the door opened and Mrs. Conroy shuffled in. Mrs. Conroy’s face was immensely lined, but whether the lines had been put there by a life of goodness or by a life of badness it would have been hard to say. She simply looked very old. Her manner would have been called obsequious in a younger person, and her hands were gathered nervously around a large white handkerchief, which from time to time she pressed against her mouth, perhaps to hide a tremor—of age, or of amusement, or of malice.
Betty regarded the intruder bleakly. I could buy you and sell you, she thought as she got up.
“I’m Mrs. Conroy,” the old woman said beseechingly, “Mrs. Frye’s mother you know. I see you have the fire going. I dearly love a fire, but Mrs. Frye won’t permit them in the house, although she won’t object to you having one, I’m sure. She doesn’t approve of open fires. She tries to keep me in my room. I dislike my room. I hate the furniture. I expect you do, too, coming from England. My room is exactly like yours, except that I have that unwholesome view of the river. I like to watch a street and see what the people are up to. I thought, being English, you might be having a cup of tea, and I thought perhaps you might permit me to join you here. Mrs. Frye won’t permit me to have tea.”
“I’m sorry, m’lady, but I don’t permit ladies in my kitchen,” Betty said.
“Only for a minute, to get the heat of the fire on my legs.”
“It’s out of the question, m’lady. I must ask you to leave my kitchen at once.”
“I’m not let have tea, and I’m not let have a fire,” Mrs. Conroy said. “I notice you give yourself tea and a fire, though. I notice you have a fire and a nice cup of tea there beside you.”
“What I do for myself and what I do for other people are two entirely different things, m’lady,” Betty said.
“I only wanted to get the heat of the fire on my legs a minute,” Mrs. Conroy beseeched. “Radiators aren’t the same thing at all. Don’t you think I’m right? Radiators are no good, are they? . . . Well, you might at least answer me.” In the doorway, she paused and said, without looking back, “You’re just the same sort she is! Just the same!”
When the door closed, Betty sat down by the fire to finish her tea. As she brought the cup to her lips, she raised her eyes and saw Mrs. Conroy’s handkerchief lying crumpled on the floor. She rose, picked up the handkerchief, and, boots still loose and flapping, went up the stairs and knocked on the door next to her own. A voice answered faintly. When Betty opened the door, Mrs. Conroy was sitting in her wing chair, which she had turned so that her back was to the window. One of her account books lay open on her lap. “Oh,” she said. “I was hoping it was my daughter. She hates me to turn this chair around, but I’d rather look at a dry door than at that wet view any day of the week. She hates to have anything in the house changed, you know. You’d better remember that. She’s very set in her ways.”
“I’m returning your handkerchief, m’lady,” Betty said rudely, and dropped it on the bed.
She was about to leave when she saw the shabby books on their shelves. The word “Accounts,” inked on the back of each volume, sprang out at her. “Excuse me, m’lady,” she said. “May I ask you a question?”
“Of course you may ask me a question, Betty.”
“What sort of books are they you have, m’lady?”
“They belonged to my poor husband, Mr. Conroy. That’s all he left me in the world, what you see there. He kept them himself; every stroke is in his own handwriting. He ran a little stationery shop in Brooklyn the last nineteen years of his life. We lived behind the shop. We didn’t make a fortune out of it, but we got along. He had no head for business, but he enjoyed keeping his books. I look into them when I’m in the dumps. They remind me of so much; it’s like as if I was reading his diary. He put down everything pertaining to the shop. Ah, it brings it all back, reading these old books.”
“Might I see one of them, m’lady? I enjoy sums.”
“Indeed you may, indeed you may!” Mrs. Conroy cried. Betty made a step toward the case, but the old lady was there before her, and lifted out a volume, dated Nov. 1899–May 1900, and handed it to her.
“The first year we were in the shop,” she said. “Liza wasn’t born then. She appeared in 1913, the only one we had.”
Betty turned the pages of the book. “I always had a fancy for a little shop of my own somewhere,” she said. “If I ever got enough money saved. Ah, I suppose I’ll never have it, but it does no harm to think of it. I’d like to look at these, Mrs. Conroy. It’s not hard, he has it all down nice and easy.”
“Oh, it wasn’t mathematics that interested my poor Alfred,” Mrs. Conroy said. “Only, he liked to feel he was being businesslike. He loved marking things down. ‘My simple arithmetic,’ he used to call it. ‘I’m doing my simple arithmetic,’ he’d say when I asked him what he was up to.”
“I do like working sums, m’lady,” Betty said. “I was always a great hand at addition and subtraction. I often thought I’d have been good in a bank, only I never got the chance. Would you let me borrow this for a day or two? I’ll bring you up a cup of tea, if you like.”
Mrs. Conroy regarded her for a moment. “Of course I’ll let you borrow it,” she said at last. “But I’ll come down for the tea, if you don’t mind.”
Betty touched the bookcase. “Maybe I’d better take the first two or three, m’lady,” she said. “That way I wouldn’t have to be disturbing you so often.”
A strong old arm came up and knocked her hand away. “One at a time, Betty. This room isn’t going to feel the same with even that one missing. Mr. Conroy spent six months of his life on every one of these books. There’s two to a year. It’s going to take you a month anyway to get through that one. Now we’ll go down and have our tea, nice and cozy by the fire. I won’t bother you. I’ll just enjoy the tea and you can enjoy your book, but mind you make no marks on it. And maybe you’d better make a fresh pot of tea. It’ll have got cold, standing there all this time.”
They had been sitting in the kitchen for some time when Betty looked up from her book. “You opened the shop November 15th, m’lady. That’s the day Mr. Conroy starts here. And on December 22nd, m’lady, you went into the shop, went through all the Christmas numbers of the magazines, and left blue marks all over them.”
“Indeed, I remember the day,” Mrs. Conroy said cheerfully. “I had just finished making a blueberry pie for his dinner, and I didn’t take the time to wash my hands. Oh, he was angry when he came to sell one of those magazines and had to mark down the price!”
“With good reason he was angry, m’lady,” Betty said grimly. “And the place just started and not making money yet. Do you know how much money he lost with your blueberries?”
“Oh, I know, I know,” Mrs. Conroy said, laughing. “Don’t reproach me about it, Betty. He never let me forget about it. Turn over the page and never mind about it.”
Betty bent to the book. A few minutes later she raised her head again. “Who was Miss Rorke, m’lady?” she asked.
“A poor old retired schoolteacher, Miss Rorke was. She lived up the street from us. Never had a penny, but she loved to read. Mr. Conroy let her take what she liked. He had a soft spot for her. She died then, and we never got a cent of it back. She ended owing us thirty-two dollars and seventeen cents.”
“So far, she owes us two dollars and three cents,” Betty said.
“Poor old Miss Rorke,” Mrs. Conroy said contentedly. “Betty, I’ve been thinking. I’d like a cup of tea in my room first thing in the morning. As soon as you make your own. Say eight-thirty. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
Betty