Meade Mystery @page { margin-bottom: 5.000000pt; margin-top: 5.000000pt; } The Parting Glass And all I’ve done for want of wit To memory now I can’t recall… “The Parting Glass” (traditional) It was afternoon, and the upper floor of the Colonial Hotel was still. Mrs. Meade sat in a rocking-chair in the square of sunlight that fell through her bedroom window, reading and rocking gently back and forth. Mrs. Meade’s migration to the Colonial was temporary, and had occurred on short notice. Two weeks before, her landlady, Mrs. Henney, had received word that her sister in Boulder was ill and required her presence. Mrs. Henney had no time to find someone who could run her little boarding-house satisfactorily in her absence, so she had decided to close it up, her ladies and gentleman consenting to be thrown on the hospitality of other establishments or friends for a week or two. Several of them had seen Mrs. Henney off at the station, even more flustered and near-hysterical than usual, laden with shawls, bonnet, carpetbag, parcels, umbrella—everything, in fact, but a pair of snowshoes—and finally, in a burst of tearful magnanimity as the train was about to pull out, offering to refund their rent for the days they would be in exile.
