Mrs. Gentrie paused to make a mental survey of the house. The breakfast things had been cleared away. Arthur and Junior had gone to the store. The children were off at school. Hester was running small table napkins through the electric mangle, and Rebecca, at her perennial crossword puzzle, was struggling with the daily offering from the newspaper, a pencil in her hand, her dark, deep-set eyes staring in frowning concentration. Mephisto, the black cat to which she was so attached, was curled up in the chair, where a shaft of windowed sunlight furnished a spot of welcome warmth.
The morning fire was still going in the wood stove. The big tea kettle was singing away reassuringly. There was a pile of mending to be done in the basket and... Mrs. Gentrie thought of the preserved fruit in the cellar. It simply had to be gone over. Hester was always inclined to reach for the most accessible tin, and Mrs. Gentrie strongly suspected that over in the dark corner of the cellar there were some cans which went back to 1939.
She paused for a moment, trying to remember the location of a flashlight. The children were always picking them up. There was a candle in the pantry, but... She remembered there was a flashlight in Junior’s bedroom that had a clip which enabled it to be fastened to the belt She’d borrow it for a few moments.
The flashlight in her hand, she descended the cellar stairs. The big gas furnace with its automatic controls had been on earlier in the morning, heating the house. Mrs. Gentrie had cut it off as soon as the family had got out of the way, but the cellar was still slightly warm from the heat which had been given off. She noticed cobwebs on the pipes in the back. Hester would have to get down here for a little cleaning. There was a neat array of canned goods and glass jars on the long shelves which stretched across the full length of the cellar. Mrs. Gentrie gave only a casual glance to the section near the window which marked this year’s canning. She passed up the first part of last year’s canning, and back in the dark corner used Junior’s flashlight to inspect the remnants.
She knew at once Hester had been neglecting this corner. There were cobwebs which showed as much, and the beam of Junior’s flashlight picked up two cans of 1939 pears almost at once. There were some jars of strawberry jam, cans of homemade apple butter — 1939...
Mrs. Gentrie stood perfectly still in puzzled perplexity. The white circle of illumination thrown by the flashlight was centered upon the glistening sides of an unlabeled tin which certainly looked as though it was fresh from the store.
Mrs. Gentrie couldn’t understand how an unlabeled tin could possibly have intruded itself upon her systematic classification of preserves. She used adhesive tape for labels so there would be no trouble with them dropping off. There was, moreover, something about the appearance of the tin itself which made it seem an intruder. The sides were so new and shiny. Not even a cobweb or a smudge on it.
Mrs. Gentrie reached out with her left hand. Unconsciously she measured the muscular effort in terms of a full quart, and, as a result, the light tin seemed to fairly jump off the shelf before she realized that it weighed no more than an empty can.
She looked at it with the frowning displeasure of a systematic individual finding something definitely at variance with an established system.
Holding the tin in her hand, she turned it around, looking at it from all angles. The top was crimped on, sealed carefully in place as though it had been filled with fruit and syrup. But the smooth glistening, somewhat oily surface of the tin indicated that it was just as it had come from the store — except that it had been so carefully sealed.