“Old Tom said it was fine with him if the hermit didn’t want anyone to know about him. He’s not keeping it a secret exactly; he’s just not announcing his presence. Old Tom figured that the hermit had done his time in the service of his country. And it had clearly taken something from him and we owed it to him to let him build a safe haven for himself. So Old Tom bought him a pile of clothes and brought him pots and pans and blankets and things to make him more comfortable, a little at a time so as not to overwhelm him. And he made him a deal that he would give him vegetable plants to start his own garden, and vegetables until it was ready, along with milk, butter, and eggs and periodically a little flour and sugar and such and leave it all in a box in the creamery every week. And in return the hermit would have to do something for him. Something Old Tom said he couldn’t do himself. And he agreed.”

“What did he want the hermit to do?” asked Zebediah.

“Weed the night garden,” I said.

And then the dinner bell rang.

THE FIRST LETTER

We were all sitting around the dining room table. We had had to make the move to these swankier quarters because with Gladys there were definitely too many people to fit around our small kitchen table. Sina had put huge candelabras on the heavy old wood table, saving the coal oil for lighting later. It felt very regal. We never sat there, Sina and Old Tom and I. Usually the table just got used if Sina and Old Tom wanted to spread out the egg and milk records and figure out what the heck was going on with the paperwork. But now we were sitting around it like royalty, and with the candelabras burning bright, I thought my potential friend’s comment of “strangely medieval” to be suddenly apropos. It was such a large table that in order to pass things to each other, we had to get up and take a few steps, that or send the bowls flying along the boards like china luges and hope for the best. In front of us was burnt fish, burnt potatoes, and burnt green beans. There were burnt cookies for dessert.

“The trouble is,” said Gladys, when she noticed us staring forlornly at this burnt bacchanalia, not knowing where to begin, “apart from that stupid stove—and I might add that nobody where I come from, in a civilized town like Nanaimo, would still be cooking on a wood-burning stove—apart from that, the trouble is that I’ve nothing to distract me while I cook.”

“I would hate to see what would happen if you were distracted,” said Sina.

“No, no, you see that’s exactly what you do want. Because the part of my brain that works best is not the concentrating part.”

“Evidently,” said Old Tom, still trying to make a go of his burnt potatoes. Old Tom loved potatoes. He looked as if he couldn’t believe someone had finally stumbled on a way to make potatoes inedible.