Emeline ran into Mr. Perkin’s office. She didn’t knock. In a high, tight voice she reported what happened, then burst into tears and begged him not to fire her. She turned and showed him the evidence—a wad of taffy stuck fast in a mass of hair and net. Mr. Perkin told Emeline to calm herself and offered her a piece of peppermint-flavored taffy—a defensive gesture he used when he wanted someone to stop talking. He suggested, quietly, that Emeline take the rest of the day off to recover from the incident. Then he told her to send Michael to his office and bent over to resume work on the knots his wife had tied that morning.

Mrs. Perkin was looking for Romeo. Impatient with the gardener’s progress, she had called on Mary to bring her “the shawl”—a long and heavy crocheted piece Mrs. Perkin’s grandmother had brought from Ireland. She wore it like an armor—doubled over her breast and thrown across her shoulder. She marched down the sidewalk into town, stopped passersby, pulled on knockers, and shouted over hedges.

She was just about to cross Main Street when she heard a squawk. A deep, cackling tone that seized her heart with joy. She held her breath and listened for it again. The sound came and Mrs. Perkin ran in its direction. When she stopped she was standing in front of a large wooden monocle. She squinted her eyes and deciphered the words written across it: DEWEY OPTOMETRY.

Mrs. Perkin knew in passing who Thomas Dewey was and had often strolled by the oversize monocle that served as the sign to his business. But before that day she had never given any thought to what an optometry shop was or what Thomas Dewey did there.

She did not know that Thomas Dewey lived in two small rooms behind his shop, or that he enjoyed reading and rereading James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking series while consuming large amounts of cheese. She did not know that Thomas Dewey’s father had owned and operated the shop before him, or that Thomas Dewey’s grandfather had operated the shop before that. She did not know that Thomas Dewey’s grandfather was originally a blacksmith and had inherited the building when his uncle was trampled by the horses of a passing carriage, or that his large black, assuming anvil was now used by Thomas as a bedside table.

The bell on the door jingled as Mrs. Perkin entered. Thomas Dewey was in the back room, deeply ensconced in a copy of The Deerslayer and a piece of Gorgonzola. At the sound of the bell, he reluctantly laid down his book, brushed a few crumbs of cheese off his white coat, and opened the door that separated his living quarters.