The Widened Hearth

by Fannie H. Kilborne

Sometimes our hearts require a simple story, well told.  And it's a special treat when we find one that has been around for a while.  This is one of those stories.  It is from a compilation of historical short stories entitled Great Stories Remembered, edited by Dr. Joe Wheeler.  We hope you enjoy this Thanksgiving gift of "The Widened Hearth."

 

“Wouldn’t you think they would be invited somewhere?” Kathleen demanded. “Wouldn’t you think even boarders would like to go out to dinner on Thanksgiving?”

“Couldn’t we tell them that we don’t serve meals on holidays?” Lois suggested.

Their mother shook her head. “It’s never done. All boardinghouses have a big dinner on holidays.”

“Oh, Mother,” Lois protested, “please don’t call this a boardinghouse!  Having four paying guests doesn’t make a place a boardinghouse.”

“That which we call a rose—” Kathleen quoted lightly.

“Whatever you call it,” their practical mother said, “it seems to bring its responsibilities.”

“It isn’t fair that being poor should keep us from having a home,” said Lois. “It’s bad enough having all the extra work, but it’s having boarders around all the time that I mind.  Home isn’t home when it’s full of strangers.”

“It’s bad enough to have boarders any time,” Kathleen said, taking up the plaint, “but it does seem as if they might go away on holidays!”

Their four “paying guests” had been with the Martins for three months.  Taking them had seemed the inevitable sequel to the Consolidated failure.  During the long years of Mrs. Martin’s widowhood, the check from the Consolidated had been one of the rocks of assurance on which her life was built.

Then the Consolidated failed, and the checks stopped coming.  It all happened with a suddenness and unexpectedness that stunned the Martins.  For days Mrs. Martin was more bewildered and incredulous than she was frightened.  But the fright followed soon enough.  Never could she forget the terror of the hot July evening when she had finally accepted the fact that the Consolidated check would come no more and had taken account of her resources.

There was “home,” an attractive 10-room stone house.  Chestnut Avenue had been on the outskirts of town when Mrs. Martin had gone to the stone house as a bride 20 years ago.  During the 20 years, the city had slowly crept up.  Electric cars thundered up and down the next block, hotels and bakeries appeared on the cross streets; the neighborhood was only a few minutes’ walk from the busiest part of the city—yet Chestnut Avenue stood alone, a shady, restful island of homes in the restless sea of traffic.

Besides home, the assets were few; the tiny income that was still coming would scarcely pay the coal bill and the taxes.  Then there were the girls, Lois aged 17, Kathleen aged 15, still in high school, two lovable liabilities.  Home was in a desirable part of the town, near business yet quiet.  “Paying guests” offered the only solution to the problem.

“Well, if we’ve sunk to where we have to take boarders, we’ll take them,” Lois had said grimly. “We’ll give them comfortable rooms and good food, but we won’t—”

“Won’t be clubby with them,” Kathleen suggested.

“No, we won’t,” Lois had agreed. “They’ll have their own lives, and we’ll have ours.  We won’t let their being here spoil our home life.”

The four boarders had been able to pay good prices for their large sunny rooms and appetizing meals; they knew nothing of the planning and penny-pinching behind the fruit salad.  The Martins kept to themselves as much as possible, striving to maintain their means of livelihood on a formal, businesslike basis.

“We could fool ourselves all right before,” Lois went on almost tearfully, “pretending keeping boarders didn’t make any difference.  But on holidays it shows up.  We can’t have people we’d like here for dinner with four strangers, and we can’t go anywhere ourselves because we have to stay and get dinner for them.”

“I thought surely Miss Dunn would be invited somewhere,” Kathleen said. “Didn’t you, Mother?”

“She expected to go home,” Mrs. Martin explained, “and then, just last week, the schools decided to stay open Friday, so she can’t go.”

“I heard her refuse an invitation over the telephone just before she found out,” said Lois.

“I suppose we ought to have a turkey,” mused Mrs. Martin. “And turkey is 55 cents a pound.  I wonder if we’ll have to have soup?”

“We had five courses last year,” Lois reminded them wistfully. “We won’t have to bother with cheese, crackers, and candied orange peel and things like that this year, anyway.  Isn’t it funny how much more work it seems to be to get up a dinner for people you don’t want than for people you do?  I never think of the trouble of clearing up after a party, but the idea of washing the dishes after this dinner—well, I just wish Thanksgiving were over!”

“Girls!” cried Kathleen, suddenly straightening up and looking from one to the other with bright eyes.  Kathleen always addressed her mother and sister in that collective way, which secretly delighted her quiet, practical mother. “Girls, let’s make it a party.  As long as we’ve lost our home anyway, let’s get some fun out of it.  Let’s pretend we’re giving a dinner party and have place cards and flowers and—well, maybe not flowers, but everything that is spiffy and cheap and—”

She paused enthusiastically, but her enthusiasm was not reflected in the faces of the other two.

“Getting up a big dinner is about all the work I want,” sighed her mother. 

“Oh, we’ll do all the party part of it, won’t we Lois?” said Kathleen. “Oh, come on; it would be lots of fun.  We haven’t had a party since the Consolidated failed.  Come on, please!  It would be great fun!”

“I suppose I could paint the place cards myself,” said Lois.

“We could send them invitations,” Kathleen went on eagerly. “Of course, they’d come anyhow, but it would let them know that it was a party.  We—”

“We’ll use the gorgeous stationery Aunt Kate gave me for my birthday,” said Lois.

“We can have alligator-pear salad,” said Mrs. Martin, “if Uncle Will’s box from Florida gets here in time.  That is always considered as quite a delicacy.”

“We’ll have a fire in the grate,” said Lois.

“And serve coffee in front of it!” said Kathleen, suddenly inspired.

Enthusiasm had begun its leavening; already Thanksgiving dinner had begun to be a “party.”

Tuesday evening a large square envelope lay at each border’s place. 

“Mrs. Anne Upland Martin and her daughters, Miss Lois and Miss Kathleen Martin, would be pleased to have you take dinner with them at 2:00 Thanksgiving Day and spend the afternoon, if there is nothing else that you want to do.”

The message was of Kathleen’s composing and was written in Lois’s pretty hand.  The four boarders read the missives through and then looked up.

“Well, I’ll be tickled to death,” said pretty little Miss Dunn. “I was so disappointed about not being able to go home that I had decided to stay in my room and cry all day.”

“You can count on me,” said Mr. Willis.  He worked on the Tribune and had planned to hurry away after dinner and attend the football game with two or three other young newspapermen.  But for the last month or so it had been growing upon Mr. Willis just how pretty and sweet little Miss Dunn was, and this seemed a splendid chance to get acquainted with her.

“Well, I haven’t anywhere else to go, so I guess I’ll be here all right,” said Miss Dempsey.  Plain, blunt, middle-aged Miss Dempsey was a secretary in one of the flour mills.

“It’s most kind of you to ask me,” said the fourth boarder with the slow, gentle courtesy that fitted so well with his while hair and frock coat, “but I am afraid that unless. . .” He hesitated. “My nephew is to be in town for Thanksgiving Day.  I just received word this morning, and I wondered if it would be a great imposition—”

“We’d be glad to have him come, too,” Mrs. Martin said cordially.

Mr. Thompson beamed.

“He would be happy to come,” he said.

“Kathleen,” her mother protested when the three Martins were in the kitchen, washing the dinner dishes, “I wish you had let me see those invitations first.  What on earth did you ask them all to spend the afternoon for? It was all right to make the dinner a party, but an ill-assorted group like that will be as restless as witches before the day is over.”

“Why, Mother!” Kathleen’s dish towel paused reproachfully in mid-air.  “Who ever heard of people’s leaving a party the minute dinner is over! They’re not a bit more ill-assorted than most of our family parties.”

“Besides,” said Lois, coming to her sister’s support, “we said ‘if there is nothing else that you want to do.’ If they think they’re going to be bored they needn’t stay.”

“Well, there’s no helping it now, anyway,” said Mrs. Martin philosophically.  She paused a moment. “I wonder what Mr. Thompson’s nephew is like?”

“I’ll bet he’s a fashionable young bachelor,” said Lois.  “Mr. Thompson has quite a lot of money and—”

“I’ll bet he wears spats,” was Kathleen’s contribution.  “I’m glad we thought of having coffee in front of the fire.  He’ll see that we’re not so slow ourselves.”


hanksgiving breakfast was a light, hasty meal.

“We wouldn’t eat anything, anyhow,” said Mr. Willis. “We don’t want to cramp our style for dinner.”

The party was bringing an element of personality into the pleasant formality that had been the atmosphere of the house.

“Oh, I hope it will snow!” said Kathleen, scanning the cloudy sky. “It would seem so much more Thanksgiving-y.”

We nearly always had sleighing for Thanksgiving at home in New Hampshire,” said Miss Dempsey.

After breakfast Mr. Willis departed for the office. Mr. Thompson left for the station to meet his nephew, and the two women went upstairs to their rooms.  Then the folding doors between the dining room and the living room were closed, and from that time on in the back part of the house preparation ruled supreme.

Mrs. Martin moved briskly from table to refrigerator, from sink to stove. At 10:00 she put the turkey into the oven.  Lois deftly made butter balls, washed lettuce, and chopped nuts.  But it was Kathleen who kept up the spirit of the party.

“Oh, girls! Look!” she called, watching with rapt eyes the few feathery flakes that were sifting down upon the hard brown ground. “There!” she said. “Now just come and see if this table doesn’t look lovely.”

At either end, hollowed pumpkins were filled with shining apples and oranges, grapes, and bananas.  The place cards, yellow chrysanthemums painted by Lois, waved from the tops of the tall slender glasses.  And scattered about the table in holders of cardboard and gilded walnut shells were dozens of little candles waiting to be lighted.

“Why, Kathie, it’s lovely!”

“And cheap!” Kathleen said eagerly. “It didn’t cost a penny except for the candles.  The walnut shells came from the nuts in the mincemeat; the pumpkins the boarders will eat later in pies that Mother will make of them.”

“Mother,” she protested later in the day, “you’re not going to wear that dress!  Why, don’t you know, Mother, this is a party!”

Just at noon the doorbell rang, causing great excitement.  It proved to be a box of flowers from one of Miss Dunn’s admirers.

“Girls, look at these!” said Kathleen, coming back to the kitchen with her arms full of American Beauties. “Miss Dunn says we can have them for the dining room.” She placed the two tall vases on the buffet. “There! That gives the whole thing tone. The nephew with the spats will give one glance at those, and he’ll know this is no husking bee.”

A little before 2:00, the nephew arrived. Lois was the first to see him. She clutched Kathleen, and the two peered through the crack in the double door. He was a tall, awkward, freckle-faced boy of 16 or so. The girls stared for a moment, then retreated to the kitchen for a hysterical outburst.

“A fashionable bachelor!” gasped Lois.

“Did you notice any sp-spats?” said Kathleen.

At quarter past two the dining-room curtains were drawn, the three dozen little yellow candles lighted, and the doors flung open. There was a delighted gasp from the five guests.

It was a most successful party. The boarders had put on their holiday moods with their holiday clothes. In a soft blue silk dress, Miss Dempsey did not seem half so much the brusque, reserved business woman.  And little Miss Dunn, in her straight black velvet dress with its lace collar, with her wide blue eyes and her yellow hair, curling softly against her creamy neck, made a picture from which Mr. Willis could hardly take his eyes.  He told funny stories of newspaper life and bandied jokes with Mr. Thompson with a geniality that would have made any party “go.” Mr. Thompson watched Bobby Smith at first, eager for his sister’s boy to have a good time and appear to advantage.  He soon dropped all responsibility there, however, when he found him stealing almonds from Kathleen’s cup and telling Lois about a football game.

With one exception, they were the same people that gathered at the same table twice a day.  Now instead of a businesslike boardinghouse dinner prepared for pay, was the gracious atmosphere of a feast prepared for love.  It showed in Mrs. Martin’s “best” dress, that gracious spirit, in the alligator-pear salad and in the candied orange peel; it twinkled in the tiny yellow candles and chuckled in the silly little conundrums written on the backs of the place cards.  It was the spirit of hospitality that brings forth its best for guests.

When they had eaten the last bit of mince pie and the last little candle had flickered out, it was after 4:00.  According to plan, they all went into the living room to drink their coffee round the snapping wood fire.

“I’m glad we saved all these berry boxes from canning time,” said Kathleen, putting on another armful. “They burn up in a minute, but don’t they make the most thrilling fire!”

The feathery snowflakes had changed to a cold autumn rain that blew against the windows.  Twilight fell early; the firelight flickered, leaving shadowy corners in the living room. After a bit, words came fitfully; there were little periods of silence.

Kathleen, in her place on the floor beside the fire, ceased poking idly at the wood.  Sensitive, responsive, she had caught the strange, wistful solemnity that so often steals down on holiday evenings.  She leaned back against her mother’s knee.

“It seems sort of—sort of ghostly, doesn’t it?” she said in a hushed tone.

Then the ghosts stole in, the ghosts of other and different Thanksgivings. 

“How well I remember the first Thanksgiving after we came west,” said Mr. Thompson. “It was the year after the Indian trouble. Minneapolis was St. Anthony Falls then.”

It was a story of pioneer days that he told, of raw country, of hardships and successes.  Then Miss Dunn told of the first year that she had taught school in the New Hampshire hills and of their having been snowed in the day before Thanksgiving and having to stay until Friday morning with nothing to eat but what was left in the children’s luncheon baskets.  Mrs. Martin told of a Thanksgiving when, as a bride and a fledgling housekeeper, she had had to entertain wealthy friends of her husband’s.

When the clock struck eight, it was like a signal summoning them from the past.  Miss Dunn straightened up suddenly.

“Please, Mrs. Martin,” she said, “we’ve recovered from our feasting.  Please let us help do the dishes.”

“Oh, no, we’ll do them after—” Mrs. Martin began.

“After we’ve gone home, you were going to say,” Miss Dunn accused her. “But we’re already at home, you see; so there’s no chance of our going. Please!”

Mr. Willis was already on his way to the dining room.

“This is a heaven-sent opportunity,” he said. “I’ve always wondered whether all this newfangled domestic science amounts to anything.  We have a domestic science teacher at our mercy, and we’ll see if she really knows how to wash dishes.”

The Martin kitchen that night was a hilarious place.  At the sink, Mr. Willis, with a gingham apron tied about his neck, washed dishes. Kathleen presided over another pan on the table; Lois and Bobby Smith raced to see who should wipe each plate and cup as it came from the hot rinsing water. Miss Dunn wiped the dishes that Mr. Willis washed, and, judging from her occasional laughter and blushes, acquaintance was progressing quite as fast as well. There was much rivalry between the two teams, much good-natured bandying back and forth that ended with Mr. Willis’ seizing Lois and depositing her high and dry upon the top of the refrigerator, where he left her until he and Miss Dunn had caught up with the rival team.

At last they all went back to the living room for a little music.  Miss Dunn played, and Lois and Kathleen went out to the cabinet in the hall in search of some old books of music. They stole a moment for congratulations. Kathleen seized her sister about the waist.

“Honestly, hasn’t this been the nicest holiday party we’ve ever had!”

“Everybody has been so nice,” said Lois. “Wasn’t it dandy of Mr. Thompson to invite us all to the theater tomorrow night in honor of his nephew? I haven’t been to the theater in a decent seat since the Consolidated failed.”

“They were all so nice,” said Kathleen. “The idea of Miss Dunn’s saying she’d just love to help me make over my pink dress! I like even Miss Dempsey. Do you know,” she went on eagerly, “I believe it was because we were pretending we really wanted them here that they seemed so nice. We didn’t keep kind of—kind of resenting them all the time.”

“But the funny part is,” Lois admitted in a whisper, “it wasn't pretending at all after the first. Why, when we were all fooling in the kitchen, I suddenly thought how glad I was that it wasn’t going to end like most parties—everybody go home, and it’s over with a bang—that they’d all be here for breakfast in the morning and for dinner tomorrow night and right on.”

“I know it,” said Kathleen eagerly. “Of course, it’s a lot more work, and home isn’t the same, but I think it’s going to be real fun having them here.”

“They probably won’t always seem quite so nice as they do tonight,” said Lois sagely. “They’re at their best today.  But then—”

There was a little pause in the music; then from the living room came soft, familiar notes:

Mid pleasure and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

One voice after another took up the old tune, Mr. Thompson’s a bit quavery, Miss Dempsey’s a bit off key.

In the shadowy hall, Kathleen’s arm tightened round her sister.  Where the light from the living room fell, she could see the rug over which they had all walked so many happy days, the corner of the case where their favorite books were kept; she knew what was in the shadowy corner—the hat rack with their mother’s coat and umbrella, the clock that ticked so loud in the stillness the night their father died, the window seat where their mother stopped to wave good-bye to them when they started off for school.  It all seemed, suddenly, poignantly sweet.  Perhaps some Thanksgiving—

The plaintive melody went on.  Kathleen’s eyes suddenly filled with impulsive tears.

“Think of their singing that anywhere but home!” she said, with her voice choking a little.

“I know it,” said Lois. “I was just thinking that, too. I’m—oh, I don’t care if the Consolidated did fail—I’m so glad we’ve got the house and each other!”

“And honestly,” said Kathleen, laughing shakily, “I’m thankful that we’ve got the boarders. If we can somehow manage to make it seem like home to them, too—”

The last flicker had died out in the fireplace; the little, old-fashioned grate with its narrow hearthstone was black and dead.  But the spirit that kindles all home fires was burning bright.  And in the magic of that Thanksgiving night, the hearth where only three had gathered had suddenly grown wide.

Reproduced by permission of Joe L. Wheeler (P.O. Box 1246, Confer, CO  80433), editor/compiler of Great Stories Remembered I, Focus on the Family, and Tyndale House.  This story may not be further reproduced without written permission of the editor/compiler.