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heard the approaching siren. “Look, will you, the candle’s still burning.”

5
    “Want to turn on the local news while I do something about our dinner?” Gussie called from the kitchen.
    Mrs. Potter struggled to her feet from the depths of a soft old leather sofa in the library, where she and her old friend had, for the past hour, continued their catching up on family news.
    Earlier she had unpacked her bags with Gussie’s assistance, in the casual intimacy of former roommates. As they moved together putting things away for what was to be a stay of several weeks, Gussie came to the bottom of one bag and let out a shout. “Yellow pads! Does
this
take me back! Are you still making lists and notes and settling all the problems of the world with these things?”
    Not bothering to reply, Mrs. Potter took the small stack of lined yellow legal pads and set them on a small desk before a window. She looked down happily at the small part of the garden at the side of the house, admiring the now rusty brown clusters of hydrangea on a bush she had long loved in its blue-violet summers.
    “I remember all the nutty things you used to write down,” Gussie continued. “Dates, of course, and notes about examschedules, and even things no one in her right mind would
have
to write down, like
wash hair, write home, study library
. I always thought you were going to write
get up
or
go to bed
. As far as I could see, you never looked at the lists again and they were all things you’d have remembered just as well without them.”
    “I did too look at them,” Mrs. Potter replied with dignity. “I crossed those things off when they were done. Besides, I always find I can think better, about lots of things, if I write them down.”
    “I know—they weren’t all just reminder lists, even then,” Gussie said. “Who was that beau of yours from MIT—you know, the one you fell in love with our sophomore year?”
    Mrs. Potter resented the fact that her face was suddenly warm, and she turned again to the window to look at the hydrangea. “Well, yes,” she admitted. “I think I fell in love with his Boston accent, actually, on our first date. It sounded so elegant, so
classy.”
    “What I remember is your deciding how you felt about him by writing down a whole list of his good points and his not-so-good ones,” Gussie persisted.
    “I cannot believe you read my private notes,” Mrs. Potter retorted. “That’s disgusting. Anyway, even if you did, or if I showed them to you, I’m certain neither of us can remember what went in which column, except for that wonderful accent. I would simply
melt
when he’d say things like ‘pa’k the ca’ behind the apa’tment.’”
    Suddenly she, too, was laughing. “How many years since I’ve seen him, I wonder?” she said, although something told her she could add that number rather quickly if she chose to do so. “He’s probably a cranky, arthritic old scientist somewhere, married to a proper Vincent Club Boston woman who takes that absolutely swoon-making accent of his quite for granted.”
    The unpacking accomplished, at Gussie’s insistence Mrs. Potter had gratefully agreed to a nap in the big four-poster bed, suddenly too sleepy to accord more than a brief glimpse of admiration at the handworked crewel of the canopy overher head. Later, further refreshed by a bath in the huge, claw-footed tub, and comfortable in a long jade-green wool caftan, she had joined her hostess in the library.
    They had not spoken of the day’s lunch party. Mrs. Potter had once voiced her concern about the secretary’s bout of choking, but Gussie, with her usual practical common sense, had quickly reassured her. “Someone would have called us if she weren’t quite all right,” she had said. “Now tell me, is Benjie still in San Francisco? And what’s new with the girls?” She named and inquired for each of them and for each of Mrs, Potter’s precocious and beautiful grandchildren. She reported on her