The Unworthy Coopers

I

PERHAPS the one thing which, more than any other, branded Annie Cooper as belonging to the unworthy poor was that impish, short laugh, which so strongly suggested a freckle-faced, unruly boy. It was not so much that she would heed none of the sound advice the good Kansans heaped upon her, but that she would go into nervous fits of laughter about it at the very moment when she was expected to be solemn and ashamed. People like to be charitable,— there is solid pleasure in helping others, — but it is irritating when the object of one’s charity is plainly amused.

Annie and Jake, with their children, — Daisy, a big-eyed little thing of six, Jimmie, a fat, bumptious boy of two, and a wizened baby of eight or nine months, — were supported by the town, by the county, by the inter-church committee, and by various warm-hearted individuals. All Fallon agreed that they were hopelessly unworthy.

Annie’s strength lay in her non-resistance. She would simply throw herself, figuratively, on the community’s doorstep, and when sympathetic souls came to her rescue, she would laugh about it, as if to say, ‘I knew you’d come.’ If some housewife gave her washing to do, she would demand twice as much soap and starch as could possibly be needed, and then openly complain that the money was n’t half enough. Annie, to be liked, should have given the good people a dollar’s worth of satisfaction for each dime of charity; instead, she made them uncomfortable.

When Fallon felt that it had reached its limit, and the inter-church committee, Janet Graham, and the Reverend Whitaker had all come to the end of their combined patience and resources, they induced the County Commissioners to allot Annie eight dollars a week for food. This stipend, with much grumbling, and, later, with a sweeping gesture of liberality, they paid into the hands of Miss Elizabeth Nelson. To Miss Elizabeth, whose forties were beginning to hang a little heavily about her slender, close-drawn shoulders, Christianity meant a rare degree of selflessness. She spent the money meticulously, getting fully three times as much out of it as the careless Annie could have bought for herself. No mother ever regulated the diet of her most cherished children with more care and thought. She studied the subject in books, and consulted the home-economics teacher in the high school, with a resulting schedule of balanced rations that was impeccable. Moreover, it was tasty. The only trouble with it was that Annie and Jake did n’t like it. Therefore, Annie let Miss Elizabeth’s compound get rancid, while she cheerfully spent Janet Graham’s wash-money for lard of the best and purest brand. Likewise, Nutola, which frequently graced Miss Elizabeth’s own table, grew stale while Annie bought butter at sixty cents a pound. Fortune-wrecking eggs and precious flour, which should have gone into wholesome bread, were sketchily beaten up into indigestible pancakes and flapjacks.

In vain did Miss Elizabeth expostulate. Annie always agreeably promised to reform, only to break her word without a qualm. In vain did Miss Elizabeth and Mrs. Graham explain that it was no more than fair that Annie should take her wash-money to purchase some of the essentials for a home in which the whole equipment consisted of two beds, a stove, table, and rocker. Why not get, for instance, a bureau at the second-hand store, since she had n’t a drawer in the house? Or some muchneeded dishes, a couple of chairs, or even a mirror? The answer was very simple, and Miss Elizabeth understood it only too well. ‘Never buy,’ had become Annie’s motto, ‘what may possibly be given to you.’

‘And Annie is right,’ said Robert Graham.

It would not have been so bad if he had said this to Janet when they were alone; but he actually said it before Annie herself. He and Janet, the children tucked away safely in bed, were at dinner. It was one of the hours they most enjoyed. They liked to compare notes after the full days spent by Janet in her bank and her well-run home, and by Robert with his large farms and with his writing. The writing he took very seriously, the farming lightly. His favorite joke was to the effect that there were three kinds of farmers —tired, retired, and rubber-tired. With a genial smile, he would readily admit that he himself belonged in the third class.

As they lingered over coffee, and Robert smoked his cigar, the conversation ranged wide and free. It often came to Janet with a little thrill that, although they had been married five years and had two children, she would rather talk with him than anyone she knew. There was a quality to Robert’s mind that made him, as a conversationalist, irresistible.

He had never ceased to be amused by the harmless foibles of the small town in which he lived. Though on cordial terms with bis neighbors, he was always a little aloof, never quite of them.

To-night, hearing Annie’s voice in the kitchen, Robert exclaimed, ‘Have her in, Janet. That woman is a joy. She is wholly genuine; so close to life, so elemental, with such unconscious humor. She is too good to be true.’

Janet failed to rise to his enthusiasm. ’She is n’t a joy to me,’ she returned, wearily. ‘And if Annie wants to keep her children, she would better not be so high-handed. If Elizabeth Nelson were n’t a saint and had n’t stood by me this morning, and the Reverend Whitaker, too, I’d have had a rough time of it before the Commissioners. They want to send Jake again to the county farm, the children to a state institution, and then let Annie take care of herself.’

Robert chuckled. ‘Don’t worry,’ he advised. ‘They’ll never do it. Fallon would n’t stand for it. What! Take children from a hard-working woman? Never! And Annie knows it.’

‘But she is n’t hard-working. That’s just the point. She does n’t work and she does n’t want to. Why should she? She has found that everything comes to her without it. They’re such an unworthy lot. What did she do yesterday ? Bought four cans of Prince Albert for Jake, and chicken at the top price. That’s what she’s here for now. It has caused a riot.’

‘Go on, have her in,’ urged Robert. And without waiting for Janet’s consent, he called, ‘Annie! O Annie; come here.’

Annie shambled in. She liked Robert. He understood her, she felt. Mrs. Graham was all right, but she was always lecturing her, like Miss Elizabeth.

‘So you’ve got ’em all mad at you again, have you, Annie?’ jibed Robert.

Annie displayed the gaps where teeth properly belonged. She had probably six sound ones in her head. Her eyes were a dull gray, and puzzled one with their lack of expression, except when she laughed. Then they would squint, seeming to darken. Her skin was like sandpaper, and of the same dull color as her hair, on which the dust seemed to rest in little grains. She was as thin as a rail, and yet it was said that she could eat half a ham at a sitting. She was goblin-like, tiny — a veritable gnome of a woman. Whatever she wore refused to fit, seeming to lay snugly on her round back and hang downward in front of her, because of that everlasting stoop. She usually wore a red woolen cap, round, and, like Annie’s own nose, journeying to a distant peak. And Annie was always dirty. It seemed that she had been born dirty. Now, as she stood grinning sheepishly, but unrepentantly, up at Robert, she reminded Janet of a little street gamin.

‘Well, you’re right, Annie,’ encouraged Robert. ‘Absolutely. You have the right technique. Instead of letting the givers of charity kick you, you kick the givers. And incidentally, that is the way to get a great deal more out of them. You make them mad, you drive them to threats of all sorts; but they always come back with a full basket. If you don’t like Nutola, rest assured you will get butter. They won’t dare refuse. You have the whole town buncoed.’

‘Aw, it ain’t that, Mr. Graham,’ she laughed. ‘That grease just don’t set right on my stomach. It makes me deathly sick, it does, Mr. Graham. And just because I’m poor is no reason why I should be made sick, is it, Mr. Graham?’

As she looked at him for an answer, she laughed again — that pigwidgeon laugh.

‘Of course it is n’t. Tell me the truth, Annie. How much do you get a week, all told?’

‘I never figured it up,’ she sniggered.

‘Let’s figure it up right now.’

‘Well, Miss Elizabeth always sends over the eight dollars’ worth she spends for the county. And Mrs. Graham pays my rent, and has the milkman leave two quarts of milk every morning. The lumber yard gives me all the wood I can use, and the McMahons let me have ice when I want it, and the Colburns give me a ton of coal whenever I say I need it, and that stingy Gregory lets me go into his mill and fill my sack with fifty pounds of flour whenever it’s empty, and the doctor comes now whenever I send for him, and the city gives me my lights and water, and —’

‘Stop, Annie. That’s plenty. You could get away with murder. It’s unbelievable.’

‘I’ve always been used to plenty. I can’t stint myself, even if I am poor.’

‘Lovely!’ exclaimed Robert, crowing with her.

‘They don’t have to give if they don’t want to.’

‘That’s why they will always give you just as much as you wish. It’s characteristic of the human animal, my dear Annie, that it ’ll give far more to those who neither need nor deserve help than to those who do. Instinctively the world hates the thrifty poor and the thrifty rich.’

Janet refused to be amused. Annie knew well enough how near she had come to losing her children, and here she was the very next day making light of her whole situation, joking about it with Robert. Besides, there was something so annoying about her way of just sitting down and saying, ‘I need this and this and this, and if you don’t want to give it to me, you can just keep it.’ Like last Sunday, for instance, when Daisy had arrived with a note, which read, —

‘Deer Mrs. Gram Dasey needs a bath she got her underclose with her butt she needs a noo pare of stockins Annie p s she cant wash herself.’

And as Janet ruefully tubbed the little mudlark and dressed her, putting on a pair of stockings, she wondered why on earth she did it.

‘ Why did n’t your mother wash you?’ she asked.

‘’Cause I like this pretty white tub better,’ was the succinct answer. ‘My mamma says I can come over here every Sunday and let you bath me.’

‘A true Cooper,’ Janet reflected.

For two years Jake had insisted that he was not able to work; but the county doctor had told him sternly that there was nothing wrong—not a thing but ingrown laziness. The Commissioners had said it, and the ladies of the interchurch committee had said it, too.

‘I think I can give Jake a job,’ Janet had suggested.

‘Well, maybe you could give it to him,’ Annie had smirked in that provoking way of hers, ‘but that ain’t saying he can do it, because he can’t. There ain’t no two ways about that, and I know it. He always worked hard when he could. There was all them years when you was gone from Fallon, and then later, when we lived away from here. He was always a good provider, Jake was, and now that he can’t work, I don’t blame him none.’

Recalling various stages in their adventurous hand-to-mouth life, Janet found it hard to conjure the vision of a providing Jake. But Annie was now fully launched. There had been the time when he had been on the bridgegang, and had been getting good pay,— she could have anything she wanted then, — and by spells he had mined and had made good money.

It was too aggravating to industrious folk to see an apparently able-bodied man doing nothing. Annie was urged to leave him. It would be simply too much, thought Fallon, if there should be another little Cooper. The town discussed it openly. Decidedly, it was Jake who particularly exasperated them — Jake and his talk of being sick, when anyone could see with half an eye that it was only an excuse to get himself supported. But at last his frequent announcement that he was not long for this earth impressed Miss Elizabeth. She spoke to one of the doctors, asking if he would examine him.

‘ Examine that good-for-nothing lazybones !' he fairly blazed. ‘ What he needs is a good dose of hard work.’

Miss Elizabeth’s bump of moral obligation was too pronounced, however, to let the matter rest. She took the problem to the Reverend Whitaker. Hs care being for the bodies as well as the souls of his flock, he did not stop until he had found a doctor kind-hearted enough to give Jake a thorough going-over.

‘He has n’t long to live,’ was the doctor’s verdict. ‘A sort of creeping paralysis. What he needs is perfect rest and a careful diet.’

The Commissioners snorted. Ever since they had been dealing with Jake Cooper, he had been like this. He had managed to take in the doctor. Anybody could see for himself.

Yet there he sat, leaning back in the old rocker, black, malevolent eyes looking out of an ashen, gaunt, shaggily whiskered face. He was about to die, and no one would believe him. No one but Annie. How he hated them with their superior chatter, scolding her when she brought a dying man a little tobacco. And at last he took to his bed. For a while he could keep the baby occupied, with her playthings beside him, while Annie went on sly foraging expeditions; but soon he was sickeningly ill. Annie did her slovenly best, and during several months they lived with a grewsome cheerfulness, until Fallon, its self-respect once more lashed to the limit, moved Jake to its little hospital, with the promise that he should stay there until he died.

II

One morning in the following week, the Grahams’ telephone jangled. Into Janet’s ear came placidly the hospital nurse’s voice: ‘Mrs. Graham, will you tell Annie Cooper that Jake’s dead?’

‘When did he go?’

‘Between one and two this morning. I thought late last evening there was a change and suggested we send for Annie; but the doctor said it was such a bad night, we’d better not call her out.’

‘We’ll come right around.’

‘Well, you see, we ’ve already sent the body to Shane’s.’

‘All right, then. I’ll let her know.’

When Annie arrived, she was crying. ‘Daisy come home from school and told me her papa was dead,’ she mourned.

Janet put her arms around her comfortingly. He had been a poor reed to lean upon, always, and at the end an unconscionable burden; but after all, she reflected, they had shared each other’s ups and downs; together they had made their forays, put over their little tricks on Fallon. For years they had been as open to each other as two books. Undoubtedly he had been the one person with whom Annie had been able to be utterly herself, whose shiftless slant of mind and gypsy point of view had been her own; the one human being who had been irrevocably ranged on her side against the whole hostile world. In short, as Annie would have put it, he had been her man. Now there would be no one with whom she could talk — unless it was Robert, who took such delight in her unworthiness and, Janet admitted, aided and abetted her in it.

In the present crisis, Annie, the eternally inept, was waiting for Providence, in the form of the world-at-large, to rise to the emergency. Janet took charge capably. Two telephone calls, and the chief details were arranged. Annie’s pastor was, as always, to be depended upon. Yes, he said in low sympathetic tones, he would conduct the services. Mrs. Graham was to tell Annie she should have anything she wished. He would look after the pall-bearers, and the music, too — was there any special hymn? Would they have the funeral in the church?

Through Janet’s mind flashed the thought that a pitiful sense of loneliness must arise if the few who would attend were sprinkled in the commodious building. Annie’s empty, uncurtained front room was equally out of the question. The undertaking parlor was clearly the only place.

Her tears now quite dry, Annie agreed serenely, and as Janet hung up the receiver, she remarked carelessly, —

‘Of course, if my parlor set’d have come, it would’ve been nice to have it at home.’

‘Your what?’

‘ My parlor set. I ’m a-getting it from a mail-order house. Sixty-five dollars. I’ve paid down three.’

Janet smothered the words on her lips, since clearly this was no time for rebuke. Later, she and Mr. Shane, the undertaker, held practical conversation, while Annie pressed Jake’s suit. And for the time being, Janet dismissed from her mind the whole Cooper family.

Not until late in the afternoon did she realize with a start that she had forgotten quite the most important detail of all. The grave! How perfectly terrible if she had not happened to remember. And for a moment she was harrowed by visions of the Cooper funeral cortège arriving at the cemetery, only to find no place to deposit poor Jake. Just why, she wondered irritably, had this particular funeral become her funeral, anyway? She would, she decided, get Miss Elizabeth, and they would attend to this matter together. For of course it must be attended to, and at once. If a dead man is to be buried, he must, forsooth, have a grave in which to lie.

She hunted out a black hat and mourning veil, and thus armed, went to collect Annie and her brood. She found her messy and cheerful, trying to give the pastor some sort of data as to Jake’s life, but unable to tell where he was born or what was his mother’s name.

Perhaps it was Annie’s own suddenly renewed faith in family ties that took Janet to Jake’s sister, to whom it had been so useless to apply during the dead man’s life.

Mrs. Litchfield was a handsome, matronly woman, with white hands that contrasted oddly with Annie’s dirty, chapped ones.

‘Sit down, Annie,’ she said, kindly. ‘Sit down, Mrs. Graham. I’ve been so wrought up all day. I don’t want Jake buried in a charity grave. I’d rather pay for it myself.’ There was a break in her voice. Memories were crowding. ‘I’d like to have done for him,’ she hurried on. ‘But you know how it is, Mrs. Graham. You know yourself. There’d have been no end to it. No end at all. And my husband was n’t willing. You can’t have trouble in your own home.’

‘No, you can’t,’ agreed Janet simply; for there was something in the woman’s face that was convincing.

Together, they went to the cemetery. Under Annie’s black veil, her little face and squinting eyes had their goblin look. In the wind-tossed, twilit rain, she seemed more than ever like a troll creature, who lived in a cave or a mound. They hunted up a sexton and selected the spot — one lying near charming woods, on a smooth grassy slope. Mrs. Litchfield reëntered the car and gathered Annie’s baby to her.

‘Mrs. Graham,’ she murmured in her warm, throaty voice, her expanding heart pouring forth gifts, ‘would n’t my grand-baby’s things just fit her? We ’ve got lots of little clothes she could wear, Annie.’

At the undertaking establishment, Mr. Shane met them half-way down the aisle of kitchen cabinets and baby buggies. He led them upstairs, between the lounges and davenports, mattresses and stiff rockers, to a door. Opened, it revealed a tiny room, with bright linoleum on the floor. He turned on the electric light directly above Jake. The little group huddled awkwardly in the door, looking down at the head, which now seemed almost majestic.

Presently, moved by real interest, Janet stepped into the room. Annie followed, and gazing at the face that had domineered over her so long, burst into quiet weeping. Janet herself was surprised at its still strength. For the first time, the malevolent eyes, so full of bitter contempt and rebellion, were veiled.

‘Come, Annie,’ said Mrs. Litchfield, ‘don’t take on. We’d better go.’

The selection of the casket, which the county was to supply, was plainly on her mind. Evidently the same stigma did not apply to this as to a grave at Fallon’s expense.

Shane snapped off the light and shut the door, leading the way to a larger white room where footfalls were deadened by a soft gray rug. The mirrored panels let down, and behind each was a coffin. He solemnly displayed a gray and a black.

‘Which do you want, Annie?’ asked Mrs. Litchfield, solicitously; ‘you ’re the one to be suited. I like the gray one. Which do you like, Mrs. Graham?’

Annie’s eye was drawn to the filmy interiors. ‘It’s hard to choose,’ she murmured. ‘They ’re both awful pretty.’

‘To my mind,’ announced the undertaker, ‘the gray one’s the best.’

‘She’s the one to be suited,’ reiterated Mrs. Litchfield.

‘I’ll take the gray,’ decided Annie, her eyes bright with pleasure in the color and pretty fluffiness. She sighed. For once she could enjoy luxury without remonstrances.

Janet had not been at home an hour when telephone messages from Fallon’s leading citizens began to pour in, offering their cars. Even Gordon Hamilton put his beautiful Cadillac sedan at Annie’s service. Mrs. Litchfield called to ask Annie’s shoe number. Did n’t Mrs. Graham think her shoes were awfully shabby? And could she use a nice brown coat? Miss Elizabeth telephoned to say that she was sending butter and a chicken — she knew how much Annie liked them. Janet wondered what Miss Elizabeth, dear, kind Miss Elizabeth, would say if she were to tell her that Annie, instead of offering to pay three dollars a month on the fifty dollars that the county was expending for Jake’s casket, was buying a five-piece parlor set.

It took Janet an hour to get Annie and Daisy dressed. Her own best black suit was pressed into service. She spent fifteen minutes draping the new mourning veil over the neat borrowed hat, and she superintended personally the washing of Annie’s face and neck. Gloves hid the uncleansable hands. Mrs. Litchfield had purchased the shoes, and for once Annie’s heels were not run over. She looked nice, reflected Janet. Many a woman might well have envied her that slim, hipless figure.

The impossible achieved, Janet suddenly felt enormously proud of her. Annie, the grotesque, actually looked like a thoroughly respectable human being. True, there was still that stoop to her shoulders, that elfish point to her nose; but the smart lines of the suit were not to be completely thwarted, even by Annie. She was clean and she was trim.

As they went up the stairs, Janet could see the Reverend Whitaker, in from a long drive, brushing his coat in the back of the store. Annie went straight, with impressive baldness, to the gray casket. She began to cry quietly as she took her seat.

Members of the inter-church committee, Miss Elizabeth, and the Grahams had all sent flowers, so the casket was laden with wreaths and sprays. Carnations in Janet’s own baskets nodded on the window-sills, and a great vase of white chrysanthemums flowered beautifully on a stand. The twenty-odd chairs were all occupied, filling the little room. The atmosphere left nothing to be desired in the way of correctness, as the Reverend Whitaker took his place. The music was perfect, and his talk was excellent. As the last hymn was being sung, Janet reflected, with her usual quiet satisfaction in anything well done, that it really had been a faultless funeral.

She was quite as startled as anyone when, the hymn finished, the Reverend Whitaker said quietly, ‘At the request of Mr. Cooper, Mr. Graham has a few words to say to you.’

Janet’s heart jumped. Now what was Robert going to do? Why had n’t he told her of this? It must have been because he knew that she, hating any jarring note, would not have approved of it. Of course, she was confident that, whatever it might be, Robert would dispose of it with graciousness; but nevertheless she was gripped by a disturbing sense of uneasiness. The others were simply curious. It was quite out of the ordinary; but they had implicit faith in the pastor, and Robert’s tone was in keeping with the dignity and form of the occasion.

’Some days before Jake — Mr. Cooper— was taken to the hospital,’he began, ’I was called to the Cooper home, and a certain document was entrusted to my hands. I promised Mr. Cooper that its contents should be faithfully placed before the people assembled at his funeral. I think it might be better,’he continued quietly,

’if I were to tell you what is in the paper, rather than read the very words he used, for the language is a little involved. The meaning however is clear. Mr. Cooper has left a will.’

There was not the slightest demonstration, but Janet felt that the word ’will’ had shocked them. She was beginning to show her distress by the dark crimson mantling her face. It rushed over her suddenly that Robert was capable of anything. Yes, he was. There was in him the same kobold-like quality that there was in Annie. For a fact. Oh, why did n’t he sit down? What had Jake to bequeath to anyone? It was absurd. Preposterous.

‘This will,’ went on Robert, ‘is very simple, and it was Mr. Cooper’s hope that it would be carried out to the letter. He told me he was worried about his wife and children, and that he had given much thought to their welfare after his death.’

The men and women were now plainly embarrassed. Never had they heard such nonsense at a funeral; and so far it had been such a satisfactory one. What could Mr. Graham be driving at, they wondered.

‘He disposed of the whole matter in a manner that left his mind at rest,’ said Robert evenly —far too evenly, thought Janet, suddenly suspicious. She knew that quiet tone of her husband’s, that mischievous delight in pricking the equanimity of people whom he considered a shade too self-satisfied, the glee with which he upset conceptions of the fitness of things. She had loved that whimsicality of his — as much a part of his very self as the clear gray of his eyes, so kind and with such a warming laughter bubbling up through their dreamy depths. But never before had it prompted him to poor taste. If Jake really had left this extraordinary document, which she began to doubt, why had n’t she heard of it from Annie? Yet the charming, mellifluous voice was certainly very convincing.

‘Mr. Cooper — Jake — has willed a four-room house to Annie.’

The situation was becoming painful, with Janet not the only one who was suffering. Everyone felt ill at ease — all but Annie, who looked at Robert with a childlike trust, not knowing at what he was aiming, but feeling sure that it was all for her happiness.

‘This four-room house is to be built of substantial material. The labor of erecting it is to be supplied by a committee of the labor-unions of Fallon. The material may be paid for, however. Jake asks that the house cost at least twelve hundred dollars. The three banks, he writes in his will, shall give one hundred dollars each. The four grocers shall each give twenty-five dollars. The other business men around the Square are to stand their share.’

There was no nodding or shaking of heads. There was no wagging of jaws in protest or approval. There was only an immovability among his listeners, as if they were in a deep, breathless slumber.

’As spokesman for one of the banks,’ said Robert, with a slight nod toward Janet, ’let me say that the first hundred dollars are at the disposal of the building committee. The will goes on further to say that in the rear of the fourroom affair is to be a little hogand chicken-house. The hog and chickens are to be supplied by a committee of the Farmers’ Coöperative Association. This committee is also to provide at least two hundred bushels of corn and other suitable feed. As for furnishing the house, there will be no need for a parlor set as Annie has already secured one that will please the most fastidious. However, there will be need for all sorts of things — chairs, tables, bedding, rugs, linoleum, cupboards, tablelinen, cooking utensils, and the like. These are to be contributed by the people. Each is to do his or her best. He states definitely that the things are not to be too old, nor are they to require any expenditure in the way of repairs.’

Annie was bobbing her head quickly, as if in indorsement.

‘Jake hopes that no one will try to break his will,’ continued Robert, with the same disarming matter-of-factness. ‘He told me he could imagine no greater sin than to fail to carry out the will of a dead man. He provides further that the county is to levy no taxes on this home, nor is the city to charge for the lights or the water. There are further articles — clothes, curtains, pictures, and a reasonable amount of money to purchase necessaries. He states very specifically that the county is to improve on its eight dollars a week. This, says the will, is quite insufficient. The inter-church committee is to have this matter in hand. Furthermore, Jake wills that, in view of the fact that the doctors would not help him as they should, they shall chip in to meet the cost of a simple, dignified stone on his grave. He says that the cashier of any one of the banks can be given the duty of attending to this provision. I have already had the legality of this document passed upon. Judge Murdock, a jurist for whom I have the profoundest respect, — a man who, as you all know, is thoroughly versed in the law, — says there is no questioning the fact that Jake had both a moral and a legal right to draw this up.’

Handing the will to the pastor, Robert added quietly, ’I know Jake’s heart was in this matter, and I, for one, shall do my part, in carrying out his wishes. I hope the community will respond with the same simplicity with which he showed his faith in us.’

There was no discussion, of course. A wave of the undertaker’s hand invited the people to view the body and pass out. But once the solemnity of the funeral itself had been passed over, and the people could talk as they pleased, Jake’s demands were pronounced outrageous. It was sheer impudence. Jake — a beggar, a taker of favors for many years — Jake to leave such a will. Bosh! The thing was not worth talking about.

Annie merely laughed and said, ’Let anybody dare stand out against a dead man’s will. They’ll do as Jake said. You ’ll see.’

‘Don’t you think,’ Janet asked her husband dryly, ‘it was rather strange that Jake, the short-sighted, should suddenly have become so far-seeing at the very end ? ’

To which thrust Robert replied with unruffled tranquillity, ‘If you mean to imply, my dear, that I suggested the idea of the will, you are quite right. But I can assure you that Jake accepted it wholeheartedly. He dictated it all.’

III

When the First State Bank of Fallon, of which Janet was vice-president, entered a hundred dollars to the credit of the Jacob Cooper Building Fund, the others grumbled, but paid their share. Each wanted equal justification for a place in the orchestra of patronizing complaint. The money was raised in less than ten days, and then the committee called the labor-unions together for a decision. The members argued that it was n’t the right season. There was so much building going on. Better wait until things got a little duller. They said all that; but when the material had been dumped on a lot presented by Gordon Hamilton, Fallon’s foremost business man, the workers appeared and put up the house.

On a certain Saturday afternoon, two months after Jake’s funeral, a considerable portion of Fallon’s population seemed headed toward the Coopers’. In one farmer’s wagon were a sow and nine squealing pigs. Annie looked them over as they were pushed into the pen, and remarked that it was a shame they did n’t send some already weaned instead of these tiny creatures. As for the house, had n’t the people with their own ears heard Jake’s will giving her four rooms? and here she had to put up with three. It was a disgrace, that’s what it was, for a town to be so stingy. As Annie was to have butter, the committee from the farmers’ coöperative sent a fine little Holstein cow. Annie’s look spoke her disgust. ‘I hate the milk from them things. It’s too thin. Why did n’t you bring me a Jersey?’ she demanded flatly.

When the furniture began piling in, she called attention to the fact that most of the pieces would never respond to polish. She hoped people would realize once for all that a worn-out thing was just as worn out for her as for anybody else. Folks seemed to think she could take any useless old relic and make it serve.

The givers were properly apologetic. They were pleased when her criticisms were slight, and showed her how several matters could be remedied with a little labor and money. Annie saw to it that they left the money.

Before evening, there was a cuckoo clock on the wall, a number of pictures, — including one of Roosevelt surrounded by all the little Roosevelts, and another of Custer’s Last Charge, — a plush album, and a ‘Home, Sweet Home’ thing of beads strung on silk framed in strips made of the sweetest little clam-shells.

Annie took it all very casually. Had n’t her Jake laid down the conditions in the will? What else was there for Fallon to do? And how right she was, too; for had not Fallon taken exactly the same view, albeit with much grumbling about these exasperating, unworthy Coopers — Jake, the dead, leaving the impress of the Cooper characteristic and Annie, with her nervous laugh, seeing to it that Fallon did what was expected of it?

It was late in the evening, when the last things had been brought and everyone had gone, that Robert Graham strolled in.

‘Well, Annie,’ he smiled, ‘you seem to have had some house-warming.’

‘Aw, it has n’t been so bad,’ admitted Annie, with the inevitable grin; ‘but then, it’s just like I told Mrs. Graham time and again. Jake always was a good provider.’