I’m genuinely glad you enjoyed it.

Dumb phone! I wish it was my turn to use the computer, but it is my 4 year old’s.

I have really enjoyed this series. I always find it interesting to look at the similarities & differencdaily daily life in different eras. Thanks for posting it!

I wasn’t expecting the deus ex machina of the patent money, either. I was expecting something more like happened in this Christmas story I posted, A Manger and A Barn, where the family successfully made do under circumstances that you and I would never consider. I’m happy for Anne, though — now let’s see how long she can keep Peter from gambling the home and store on the next visionary plan! (Well, I’d like to see that, but this is the end.)

Glad you enjoyed it, Alison. It really had the flavor of its day, didn’t it?

Mina, I’ve been thinking about Quint and the differing assumptions we would have about a boy that age. You wouldn’t expect a judge today to set up some kind of program to use young boys to guard a woman’s garden; you wouldn’t expect a boy that age to be treated as responsible and safe out at night, even if it weren’t so late as the night that gave Anne’s worries in the beginning of the story; most of all, I don’t think we expect our young kids to have a responsibility to answer to the school community the way the principal was who wanted Quint’s friends to apologize before the student body and pledge their good behavior. I realize that Quint refused, but the school board supported that principal — there was nothing to suggest that anybody thought that demand was improper, only that Quint didn’t think it was fair.

Except for the twins, who weren’t really present in the story, I’ll bet every reader could take a different character and note ways in which the character represents differences in expectations between 1933 and 2011.

This has been fun. Not all of the serials are this good, but this one was fun.

I don’t have a problem with Mr McGregor. Peter had borrowed money and agreed to consequences for not returning the money in a specified time frame. If anything, it is unfair of Peter to expect the conditions of the agreement to be changed.

Sandy McGregor, from whom he had borrowed the money

Stereotype, Ardis? He might as well have been called Hamish McScotsman! Tut.

But seriously, thanks for publishing this story, it’s been an insight into a bygone era and culture.

I have to say, I really appreciate the story’s assumption that higher education for women is as important as it is for men. And that education still signified a valued development of mind and self and wasn’t, as is sadly the case now, only seen as job training.

In fact, the story’s melodramatic excesses aside, it does suggest a range of different assumptions between the 30′s and now which would be useful to tease out. I hope others here chime in on this theme.