1.

        He was a mysterious fellow, because no matter how much anyone knew about him, they still wondered who he was. The title ‘Professor of Urban History’, though tailored to match his perfect pinstripe suit and not-too-polished brown shoes, still felt out-of-stitch. Now, no one doubted that he was a Professor of Urban History, nor did anyone suspect him of being anything more. To the minds of the Chesterton neighborhood, his existence was puzzling because it had no puzzle, and intriguing for, to all appearances, there was no intrigue. He didn’t seem to belong anywhere, but made everywhere he went belong to him. There was an air of ‘I tarry for but a little while’ about his manner in everything from over-the-fence chatting, to dinner, to the way he parked his car. And that is, for all purposes, the general impression Christopher B. Ashton’s neighbors had of him.

        It is little surprise that the quaint, quiet Chesterton neighborhood should make an oddity of such a mild, agreeable young man. Most of its families had moved in twenty years ago, shortly after the neighborhood’s construction, and had remained, faithfully raising their children, mowing their lawns, and minding their neighbors’ business. There had been a few people who moved in much later, whether young couples, old spinsters, or mixed-up families that couldn’t tell whose child was which grandmother’s aunt, but they had all inevitably moved out again. Some middle-aged couples with children settled in as the other middle-aged couples slowly became not-so-middle-aged anymore. These maintained the youth of the neighborhood, freshly supplying it at intervals of every eight years.

        Yet never before had the Chesterton neighborhood been invaded by a young bachelor, and certainly never in such an agreeable manner. The very first day of Christopher B. Ashton’s appearance was characterized by the moment Mrs. Prattle lost her spectacles in his mailbox. This was, sadly, a very bad habit of Mrs. Prattle’s which her more informed neighbors safe-guarded themselves against by always having one person in the front yard ready to receive the mail directly from the mailman’s hands. No one had informed Mr. Ashton, but that was probably by design. The results were, as all later agreed, both surprising and satisfactory.