Queer Judson by Joseph C. Lincoln — Read

Mrs. Samantha Bangs--widow of the late Captain Erastus, irreverently called "Ratty"--lived in a small, story and a half, white- clapboarded and green-shuttered house of the usual Cape Cod type which was situated on the Lookout Hill Road, but at the other side of the slope, a full half mile beyond the aristocratic section. She and her husband had bought that house five years after their marriage, and "keeping the place up"--that is, seeing that it was freshly whitewashed each spring, that no pickets should be missing from the fence, nor weeds permitted to flourish amid the grass of the tiny front lawn--had been their care and pride during Erastus' life. Since his death his widow had continued to live there alone, because, as she said, there was nowhere else to go and she should not feel "to home anywheres else" if there were. It was quite obvious, however, to her acquaintances in town, that the upkeep, even of as small an establishment as this, was a burden which her scanty financial resources could not carry many years. Captain Erastus had managed to save a few hundred dollars from the wage paid him by J. C. Judson & Co., and his life had been insured for a thousand dollars. The thousand Samantha had intrusted to Osborne and Judson for investment. From that investment she had been notified that she would probably get back one hundred and fifty. Each day, Sundays excepted, she trudged down to the two rooms over the post office where Miss Anne Smalley carried on a dressmaking business, and there she did plain sewing from eight in the morning to five at night. Miss Smalley's temper was a variable quantity, according to the state of custom, and as midsummer was a slack season her employee earned every cent paid for her services and was made to feel that she did.

On this particular Tuesday evening Samantha had come home late and more than usually weary. Her supper was a perfunctory affair, hot tea, and baked beans warmed over from Saturday night and Sunday morning. She warmed over the beans for the second time, not because they appealed to the taste, but purely from motives of economy. "I've got to get rid of them everlastin' beans, somehow," soliloquized Samantha, who, like most individuals in solitary confinement, talked to herself. "I can't afford to heave 'em away. Somebody's got to eat 'em, and the last time I set 'em in front of the cat he turned up his nose and hollered to be let out door."