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asking price, Mr. Cassevetes. It doesn’t seem to be moving. We’d not had so much as an offer.”
    He grunted and it sounded as though he might have swallowed. The pause on the other end became so long that Glenn was tempted to ask if he was still there. She waited patiently.
    “I’ll think about that. We’re not in the charity business, Mrs. Darnley,” was his patient answer. He agreed to a handyman for one day.
     
    Glenn met the handyman at the house in the morning, using a fellow she had used at her own home, Mr. Gretner. She pointed out the pillar-cum-cairn at the foot of the sidewalk and asked that it be removed and the hole covered as well as possible. She explained about the tap in the upper bath and added that she believed a washer was all it would need. She asked him to measure the Murphy bed frame in the small room off the kitchen downstairs.
    “I’d like to be able to tell people what they need,” she explained. “I’m not going to buy a mattress.” There was the problem of the back screen door opening and swinging in the wind. “I can imagine the damage to the spring,” she said, by way of explanation. She also asked that he install a lock and latch on the attic hatch, lock it and give her the key.
    “How long do you suppose, Mr. Gretner?”
    Tom Gretner walked around the pillar in the front and Glenn followed him around to the back of the house where he took a look at the screen door, well latched and firmly closed at the moment. He glanced at her questioningly. “Well, it’s latched now, but it seems to be at its own whim. I arrived here yesterday and found it banging against the side of the house.”
    Tom opened and closed it cleanly a couple of times, peered meaningfully into its workings and closed it again. “Can’t see what the problem would be,” he said.
    Glenn popped two Tums into her mouth from her pocket. “Look over there, Mr. Gretner,” she said, pointing to the wall on the outside of the house where the screen door had already left a mark. “It’s banging against the paint,” she said defensively. “Just tighten something on it. The wind may be catching it.” Tom opened and closed the door again, and the two of them ran their eyes around the edges of the door. It fitted smoothly, no place for wind to catch.
    “Okay, Mrs. Darnley, will do,” he said.
    “And you suppose it will take how long?”
    “Lock and that’s going to take an hour—I’ll have to run to the hardware for that. Pick up a washer while I’m there…wouldn’t mind a look at the tap before I go. Washer won’t take long if that’s the need of it, and then the pillar out front—” He licked his lips, staring off into space. He checked his watch. It was after nine.
    “Could be packed up and out of here by two or three. Does that suit you?”
    Glenn smiled. “That will be lovely,” she said. And left him to it.
     
    After leaving the Belisle Headache, as she had come to think of it, Glenn showed a little two-bedroom on a pricey street to a young nurse straight from the country. The nurse loved it and put in a respectable offer on the $75,000 place right away.
    Now why couldn’t that happen with the Belisle place?
    Around one-thirty Glenn dropped by the Belisle house. Mr. Gretner’s patchwork truck was still parked outside. The pillar was gone. She walked up the stone path, hardly glancing to see the earth filled in, and went inside. She could hear the terrible whine of a power tool. She waited for it to stop or subside. When it did she called up. “Mr. Gretner! How goes the lonely battle?”
    Tom came to the top of the stairs and walked down two or three steps to see her better. He looked odd without his cap. He was quite bald-headed and looked chubby and babylike with the sun streaming down on the top of his pink skull from the window on the stairwell. “Just putting your lock on for you, now,” he said. “That post outside took a little longer than I thought it would. She was dug in deep.