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“Where?”

“Miss Bidwell’s”

“Yes?” Mr Wid

“Yes She phoned an hour ago Wants me to build a new set of steps onto her front porch Wants it done today”

Mr Wid at the carpenter’s hands, at the haood fresh clean luher every ht

“Here,” said Mr Wid up some of the wood “Let me help”

They walked across the brick street and over the lawn of Miss Bidwell’s house together, carrying the planks and the saw and the nails

THE PUMPERNICKEL

MR AND MRS Welles walked away froht and went into the quiet little store, a combination restaurant and delicatessen They settled in a booth, and Mrs Welles said, “Baked halanced toward the counter and there lay a loaf of pumpernickel

“Why,” he murmured, “pumpernickelDruce’s Lake”

The night, the late hour, the e could set him off on a tide of reht winds blowing, could stir him from himself, and memories would pour around him Now in the unreal hour after the theater, in this lonely store, he saw a loaf of puhts, he found himself moved into the past

“Druce’s Lake,” he said again

“What?” His wife glanced up

“Sootten,” said Mr Welles “In 1910, when I enty, I nailed a loaf of pumpernickel to the top of my bureau mirror”

In the hard, shiny crust of the bread, the boys at Druce’s Lake had cut their names: Tom, Nick, Bill, Alec, Paul, Jack The finest picnic in history! Their faces tanned as they rattled down the dusty roads Those were the days when roads were really dusty; a fine brown talcum floured up after your car And the lake was always twice as good to reach as it would be later in life when you arrived immaculate, clean and unrumpled