Pandora replied without hesitation: "Best is working so that the next person has less trouble than you did."
Melanie added, after a beat, with the unromantic care of someone who balances the books: "And making sure someone who can do it better gets the tools to do it."
Students who came for one thing left with both. An electrician learned to keep a gratitude ledger. A retired schoolteacher learned to preserve plums and, in the process, to tell stories of the classroom that made the principal laugh and cry at once. A teenager took a notebook home and started a list of small acts: "call Grandma," "plant beans," "fix neighbor's fence." The list grew longer, then more inventive.