Roger Allan and Grandma Wentworth began to call him John. But Nanny Ainslee always spoke of him and addressed him as Mr. Knight. And he discovered after a time that for some strange reason he did not like this.

One day he mentioned the matter. He was walking home from church with her. Mr. Ainslee had invited him up for Sunday dinner and the party of them were chatting pleasantly as they walked along together.

In asking him a question Nan addressed him as Mr. Knight. Then it was that he stopped and made his startling request. He addressed them all but he meant only Nan.

"I wish," he said suddenly, "you would not call me Mr. Knight."

Mr. Ainslee and Billy hid a smile, said nothing and walked on. But Nan stopped in amazement.

"Why not?" she asked a little breathlessly.

"Nobody else does. I was never called that in India. It makes me feel lonely, and a stranger here."

"But," Nanny's voice was colorless and almost dreary, even though a wicked little gleam shot into her eyes, "what in the world shall I call you? I can't call you—John. And 'parson' always did seem to me rather coarse and disrespectful."

He had stopped when she did and now was looking straight down into her eyes. Before the hurt and surprise and bewilderment in his face the wicked little gleam retreated and a deep pink began to flush Nanny's cheeks. The suspicion crossed her mind that this tall young man from India with the unconquered eyes and the directness of a child might be a rather difficult person to deal with.

He just stood there and looked at her and said never a word. Then he quietly turned and walked on up the road with her.

For the first time in her life Nanny felt queer in the company of a man, queer and puzzled and almost uncomfortable. She was not a flirt and her remark was commonplace and trivial. Yet this new chap was taking it seriously and making her feel insincere and trifling. She told herself that she was not going to like him and kept her eyes studiously on the road and wayside flowers.

They mounted the front steps in silence but before he opened the door to let her pass in he paused and waited for her to raise her eyes to his. She did it much against her will. He spoke then as if they two were all alone in the world together.

"It is true that you have not known me long. But I have known you for some time. I saw you leave Green Valley one summer night last year and I came from the West two months before I should have just to see if you got safely back at lilac time."

At that Nanny's eyes lost all their careful pride and he saw them lovely with surprise. So he explained.

"I was standing on the back platform of the Los Angeles Limited the night you went East with your father."

Then a smile that the Lord gives only now and then, to a man that He is sure He can trust, flitted over the tall boy's face as he added:

"And the very first evening I came back to Green Valley I held you in my arms—rescued you."

He laughed boyishly, plaguing her. But she stood motionless with amazement,—too angry to say a word. When that smile came her anger faded. Through her heart there flashed the mad conviction, through her mind the certain knowledge, that for her in the time to come the height of bliss would be to cry in this strange man's arms.

Then she recollected herself and flamed with shame so bitter that her lower lip quivered and she hoped he would ask her again to call him John so that she could make him pay for her momentary madness.

But he never asked again. It seemed he was not that kind of a man.



CHAPTER VI

GOSSIP

The last and surest sign of spring's arrival in Green Valley is gossip. The mornings may be ever so full of meadow larks, the woods moistly sweet and carpeted with spring's frail and dainty blossoms, but no one dreams of letting the furnace go out or their base burner get cold until they see Fanny Foster flitting about town at all hours of the day and behold the array of shiny armchairs standing so invitingly in front of Uncle Tony's hardware store.

When these two great news agencies open up for business Green Valley laughs and goes to Martin's drug store to buy moth balls and talks about how it's going to paint its kitchen woodwork and paper its upstairs hall and where it's buying its special garden seed.

Then the whole town wakes up and comes outdoors to work and talk. There are fences to be mended and gardens to be planted and houses to be cleaned and all the winter happenings to be gone over. All the doctor cases have to be discussed critically and the winter invalids, strong once again, come out to visit one another and compare notes. Letters from special relatives and former Green Valley souls are passed around and read and all new photographs and the winter's crop of fancy work exhibited and carefully examined.

Everybody talks so much that nobody listens very carefully, only half hearing things. And when the spring madness and gladness begin to settle and people start to repeat the things they only half heard strange and weird tales are at times the result. And from these spring still more fantastic rumors and versions that ripple over Green Valley like waves of sunshine or cloud shadows, sometimes causing much joy and merriment and sometimes considerable worry and uneasiness.

And all these rumors come eventually to Uncle Tony's where they are solemnly examined, edited and frequently so enhanced and touched up in color and form as to sound almost new. Then they are sent out again to begin life all over. Many of them die but some live on and on, and after a sufficient test of time become a part of the town chronicles.

Everybody, of course, takes a hand at helping a yarn get from house to house but nobody makes such a specialty of this sort of social work as Fanny Foster. There are some Green Valley folks who attribute Fanny's up and down thinness to this wearing industry yet both men and women are always glad to see her and her reports always drive blue cares away and provoke ripples of sunny laughter.

Everybody in town has tried their hand at hating Fanny and despising her and ignoring her and putting her in her place. But everybody has long ago given it up. Stylish and convention-loving newcomers are always disgusted and keep her at arm's length. But sooner or later such people break an arm or a leg right in the midst of strawberry canning maybe and it so happens that nobody sees them do this but Fanny. And when this does happen they don't even have to mortify themselves by calling her. She just comes of her own accord, forgetting the cruel snubbings. She fixes that stand-offish person as comfortable as can be, makes them laugh even, and telephones to the doctor. Then she rolls up her sleeves and without so much as an apron has those strawberries scientifically canned and that messy kitchen beautifully clean.

And the curious, the pitifully, laughably incomprehensible part of it is that in her own house Fanny absolutely never can seem to take the least interest. Her own dishes are always standing about unwashed. Her kitchen is spoken of in horrified whispers; her children, buttonless, garterless, mealless, stray about in all sorts of improper places and weather. The whole town is home to them but they generally feel happiest at Grandma Wentworth's. She sets them down in her kitchen to a hot meal and then makes them sew on their buttons under her watchful eye. Sooner or later, usually later, Fanny comes as instinctively as her children to Grandma's door to report Green Valley doings.

This particular spring things promised to be unusually lively. But the rains, though gentle, had been persistent and Fanny was a full two weeks behind with her news schedule. But if late, her report was thorough. She dropped wearily into Grandma's soft cushioned kitchen rocker, slipped her cold feet without ceremony into the warm stove oven and began:

"Good land! I never see such a town and such people and such weather! Jim Tumley's drunk again and as sick as death and Mary's crying over him as usual and blaming the hotel crowd. She says he's a good man and don't care for liquor at all and that their liking to hear him sing ain't no reason for getting him drunk and a poor way of showing their thanks and appreciation, and that they all know that he can't stand it, him being weak in the stomach that way, like all the Tumleys. Mary's just about ready to give up everything and everybody, she's that discouraged.

"Well—that's one mess and now there's Uncle Tony in another. It seems Uncle Tony sold Seth Curtis a hand axe for a dollar and ten cents. Of course Seth paid for it like he always does—right away. But you know how forgetful Uncle Tony is getting. Well, it seems he clean forgot about Seth paying and sent in a bill for a dollar. And now Seth's hanging around, wanting his ten cents back and saying mean, smart things.

"And that lazy, gossiping crowd of worthless men folks was just killing themselves laughing and making fun of poor Uncle Tony, sitting right in his very own chairs and warming their lazy feet at his comfortable fire. Uncle Tony happened to be out and those loafers just started in and what they said about that kind old man made my blood boil. They were all mean enough, with Seth egging them on every now and then about that dime that he was cheated out of. But Mert Hagley was the worst. Of course, everybody knows Mert's just dying to hog Uncle Tony's business along with his shop, as if the stingy thing wasn't rich enough already. Well, when Mert heard about that ten-cent mistake he said it was about time there were a few business changes in Green Valley, that a few business funerals would help a lot and freshen up things; that Uncle Tony was no business man, and a lot of that sort of stuff. And of course Hughey Mason, being a smart Aleck, pipes up and says, 'That's so, Uncle Tony is no business man. Why, Tom Hall says that when you find Uncle Tony's emporium locked at eleven o'clock of a winter morning you can bet your bottom dollar Uncle Tony's home shaking down the furnace, and if it's closed at four of a summer afternoon Uncle Tony's sneaked off home to mow the lawn.'

"Well, those idiots and old hypocrites were talking just like that, goodness knows how long. They never took the trouble to see if Uncle Tony was really around or not. But all of a sudden I looked around the corner of the middle row of shelves and there was that poor old man sitting as still as death in his cashier's cage and looking sick to death. You know he wouldn't cheat a soul, and as for that store, he'd die without it. It's all the family he has. Well I had stepped in there to buy a couple of flat-irons. The children mislaid mine. But I walked right out for I didn't want to call him out to wait on me.

"I was so mad I just walked around the block till I met Mrs. Jerry Dustin right at Simpson's corner and I told her the whole thing. She was as hurt about it as Uncle Tony and kept holding on to Simpson's garden fence and saying, 'Dear me, Fanny, we must do something. I have a message for Tony, anyway, and this is just the time to deliver it.'

"So back we went and we met Uncle Tony stepping in at the front door too. He must have sneaked out the back way and come around the front so's not to let on he'd heard anything. He was kind of white and miserable about the mouth and his eyes looked out kind of blind. But he smiled when Mrs. Jerry Dustin said, 'Good morning, Tony.' I wonder," Fanny digressed, "if it's true that Uncle Tony wanted to marry Mrs. Dustin once. Sadie Dundry says so but you know how unreliable Sadie is about what she knows.

"Well, anyhow, those miserable men things around that stove just smiled at Uncle Tony like so many Judases and all commenced talking at once. But Mrs. Dustin didn't give them much chance. She just took up all Uncle Tony's attention and time. She bought and bought, being real careful of course to ask only for the things she knew he had; and to top it all she bought four quarts of robin's-egg blue paint. You know that's Uncle Tony's favor-ite woodwork paint and nobody goes in there for paint but what he's trying to get them to buy robin's-egg blue. Seems his mother's kitchen on the old farm was done that way and Uncle Tony's never been able to see any other color.

"Well, I thought those four cans of paint was about the highest kind of good luck but when Mrs. Dustin give her message I nearly fell dead, and as for them old he-gossips they were about paralyzed, I guess. Why even you, Grandma, couldn't hardly guess what that message was;" here Fanny pulled up a sagging stocking and hurried on lest she should be interrupted.

"It was nothing more nor less than that Bernard Rollins, the artist, wants to paint Uncle Tony's portraiture. 'And, of course, Tony,' said Mrs. Dustin in that sweet way of hers, 'you won't refuse, will you?' And I declare the lovely way she looked at him and he at her I come near believing Sadie might be right by accident. But, land—in this town everybody has growed up with everybody else and somebody is always saying that somebody is sweet on somebody else or was when he or she were young.

"So there's that portraiture to look forward to. And now there's that yarn that some careless busybody started about Nanny Turner being left a fortune of eighteen thousand dollars. Everybody's been crazy, praising her luck to her face and envying her behind her back. Everybody most but Dell Parsons. Dell felt sick when she heard it because she and Nanny have been such friends and Dell just knew that no matter how they'd both try to keep things the same there'd always be that eighteen-thousand-dollar difference between them when now there's nothing dividing them but a little low honeysuckle fence with a gate cut through it. And there would, of course. Nanny'd be on one side, cutting aprons out of nice new gingham, and Dell'd be on the other, cutting her aprons out of Jim's old shirt backs.

"But as soon as Nanny heard it she up and told everybody it wasn't so, that she and Will wouldn't thank anybody for a fortune now that they've paid for their home and garden.

"I met Jessie Williams in the drug store. She was buying dye to do over her last year's silk and she says Nanny was a fool to contradict a fine story like that. That she should have said nothing and used the rumor to her social advantage. Jessie says that story alone would have brought that uppish Mrs. Brownlee that's moved into that stylish new bungalow next to Will Turner's to time and sociability. Though the daughter isn't uppish a bit, so Nanny and Dell says, and visits right over the fence and just loves the children. But she don't know anything seemingly—the daughter don't. Wears fancy caps and high-heeled shoes to work in mornings and was caught planting onion sets root up and doing dishes without an apron and drying them without scalding them first. But they say she's awful sweet and pretty, in spite of her terrible ignorance.

"Old Mr. Dunn told me this Mrs. Brownlee was a bankrupt's widow, that when the husband died there was nothing left but this Green Valley lot, which he bought absent-mindedly one day, and his life insurance which though was a good one. And the widow having no money didn't want to stay amongst her rich city friends and so she's come here. They say she hates Green Valley like poison but that the girl Jocelyn thinks it's fun living here, even though her hands are blistered and there's no place to go evenings. I heard that David Allan's been plowing up the Brownlee garden lot and helping the girl set things out.

"And now, Grandma, what of all things do you suppose has happened? Old man Mullin's back. Nobody can hardly believe it. He's been gone these ten years and nobody blamed him a mite when he left that miserly, nagging wife of his and went off to California. Why, they say she nearly died giving him a ten-cent piece every week for spending money and that he used to work on the sly unbeknownst to her to get money for his tobacco and then didn't dare smoke it where she could see him. And he's come back. Some say he's got so much money of his own that she can't worry him and that he's got to be so deaf besides that he's safe more or less.

"And as if that wasn't enough, there's talk of Sam Ellis's selling the hotel and going out of business. It seems since the two boys and the girl came back from college they've talked nothing but temperance and prohibition. Not that they are a mite ashamed of Sam. But not one of them will step into the hotel for love or money. And Sam's beginning to think as they do, seems like. For they say he was awful mad when he heard about Jim Tumley getting so full he was sick. Sam was out that afternoon and he says Curley Watson, his barkeeper, is a danged chucklehead. And that ain't all. They're saying that Sam told George Hoskins to let up on the drinks the other night, that maybe he could stand it but other men couldn't. And Sam the hotel keeper, mind you! Of course Sam is well off but still the men haven't got over it yet. They say you could have heard a pin drop and that George stood with his mouth open for five full minutes.

"Somebody told John Gans that there was going to be another barber shop in town and so he's excited. And Mr. Pelly and Mrs. Dudley had their first fight this year over their chickens. Mr. Pelly swears she lets them out a-purpose before he's awake in the morning and Mrs. Dudley says that if he don't mend his fence and hurts a feather of a single one of her animals she'll have him before Judge Hewitt.

"Of course, Marion Travers is spending every cent of her husband's salary on new clothes, trying to get in with the South End crowd. And Sam Bobbins has given up trying to raise violets to make a sudden fortune. He's changed his mind and gone to raising mushrooms down in his cellar. Simpson's gray horse is dead, the lame one, and one of the White twins cut his head pretty bad on a toy engine and Benny Smith's wife is giving strawberry sets away. Jessups are all out of tomato plants and onion sets and won't get any more, but Dick has them, besides a real tasty looking lot of garden seed. Ella Higgins actually found that Dick had two kinds of flower seed that she'd never grown or heard of.

"Mrs. Rosenwinkle's full of rheumatism with all joints swelled and says the world is coming to a terrible end. I guess she figures though that she and those two grandchildren of hern will be about all that's left after the thing blows over. My land, ain't some folks ignorant! And—what was I going to say—oh, yes, of course Robinson ain't expected to live—and well—what was it I was going to say—something that begins with a c—good land, there's the 6:10 and I bet John's on it. He never misses his train twice in a year's time. Get out of here, children. You know your father wants to see you all at home when he gets there."

There was a scramble for the door and Grandma Wentworth's heart ached for John Foster, the big, silent, steady man who brushes his girls' hair every Sunday morning and brings them fresh hair ribbons and who somehow manages to get them to Sunday School looking half respectable. John never says a word scarcely to any one, from one week's end to the other. He never spends a free hour away from home, he never invites a man to his house, and he seldom smiles except at the children or when visiting with Grandma Wentworth or Roger Allan, his two friends and nearest neighbors. Sometimes he goes for long walks with his girls and little Bobby. Most people think him a fool and he knows it.

Grandma Wentworth sighed a little as she thought of John Foster. Then she put fresh wood on her fire and poked at the stove grate till it glowed. She smiled as she remembered Fanny's report.

"Well, spring is here for certain. Now we'll have a wedding and some new babies. They always come next."

Then sitting there beside her glowing stove Grandma fell to dreaming of Green Valley and the Green Valley folks of other days, Green Valley as it used to be in the springs of long ago. Of the days when Roger Allan was a young, strength-mad fellow and Richard Wentworth was his chum and her lover. And she remembered too how right Sadie Dundry was. For Uncle Tony, in the springs of long ago, had loved the girl who was now Mrs. Jerry Dustin.

They were such wander-mad dreamers, Tony and Rosalie, and exactly alike in those days. They used to go together to watch an occasional picnic train or election special go through the station, and they thought because they were so exactly alike they would most surely marry. But life, that wisely and for posterity's sake mates not the like but the unlike, brought Jerry Dustin on the scene,—good, practical, stay-at-home Jerry Dustin. And the girl who used to sit with Tony on the station bench and watch the trains pull out into the wide big world left her childhood friend sitting alone and went to Jerry, answered his smile and call.

So Tony sits alone, for he still visits the station on sunny afternoons. But now he doesn't sit on the bench but perches on the top rail of the fence and curls his toes about the lower one.

Bernard Rollins caught him sitting so once, day-dreaming over the past. It was Tony's face as Rollins saw it then,—full of a young, boyish wistfulness and sweet pain, unmarred dreams and unstained, unbroken illusions,—that Rollins wanted to paint. Rollins knew that Mrs. Dustin was a great friend of Tony's and that she would be the best person to coax a consent from the shy, gentle old man.

Life, mused Grandma, was a matter full of sweet and incomprehensible things,—things that now, after long years when the stories were almost finished, seemed right and just enough but that at the time were cruel and hard to bear. There was Roger Allan and that lonely stone in the peaceful cemetery. It still seemed a cruel tragedy. Like Mrs. Jerry Dustin she wondered often about it.

The soft spring night was full of memories and the wood fire sang of them sadly, sweetly and softly. Grandma rose and mentally shook herself.

"I declare, I believe I'm lonely or getting old or something," Grandma chided herself; "here I am poking at the bygone years like an old maid with the heartache and here's the whole world terribly alive and needing attention. And here's Cynthia's boy back from India, and a real Green Valley kind of minister, I do believe; a straightforward chap to tell us of life, its miracles and mysteries; of God and eternity as he honestly thinks, but mostly of love and the little happy ways of earthly living. A man who won't be always dividing us into sheep and goats but will show us the sheep and the goat in ourselves. This is a queer old town and it almost seems as if a minister wouldn't hardly have to know so much about heaven as about fighting neighbors and chickens, gossiping folks like Fanny and drunken ones like Jim Tumley. Well, maybe,—"

But just then she looked up and found David Allan laughing at her from the doorway.

"Stop dreaming and scolding yourself, Grandma," laughed David. "There's a little city girl living up on the hill back of Will Turner's who needs you most awful bad. I offered to bring her down here but she thinks it wouldn't be proper. She says you haven't called and she wants to do things right and that maybe you wouldn't want to know her. She's mighty lonely and strange about Green Valley ways of doing things. I most wished to-day that I was a woman so I could help her. Her mother's been sick more or less since they come here and she's looking after things herself. I'd like to help her but there's things a man just can't tell a girl or do for her. Uncle Roger sent me over here to tell you to come across and talk about some church matters with him. But I think this little girl business ought to be tended to right away."

"Rains and gossip and new girls and first violets. I declare, it is spring, David. And Nanny Ainslee is back. Of course, I'll see about that little girl. You tell her I'm coming to call on her the day after tomorrow. Tell her I'll come up the woodsy side of her garden and I'll be wearing my pink sunbonnet and third best gingham apron."

Grandma took up a pan of fresh light biscuit, rolled them up in a crisp linen cloth and started out with David.

Outdoors she stopped and breathed deeply.

"I declare, David, I was almost lonesome before you stepped in but now I feel—well, spring mad or something. I do believe we'll have a wedding soon and a real old-fashioned springtime."



CHAPTER VII

THE WEDDING

Grandma Wentworth got her wedding but not just the kind of a wedding she had expected.

"Though, when you stop to think of it, an elopement is about as proper a spring happening as I know of. It's due mostly to this weather. We had too much rain in April and nothing but sweet sunshine and mad moonlight ever since."

Most Green Valley courtships and weddings are conducted in a more or less public and leisurely fashion and elopements are rare. Green Valley was at first inclined to be a little shocked and resentful about this performance. Weddings do not happen every day and Green Valley was so accustomed to knowing weeks beforehand what the bride was going to wear, and how many of the two sets of relatives were to be there, and who was giving presents and what, and what the refreshments were going to cost, and just how much more this was than what the bride's mother could afford to spend, that there was a little murmur of astonishment, resentment even, when it was found that just a bare, bald marriage had been perpetrated in the old town. Green Valley did not resent the scandal of the occurrence. It was the absence of details that was so maddening. But gradually these began to trickle from doorstep to doorstep and by nightfall Green Valley was crowding out of its front gates with little wedding gifts under its arms.

It seems that little, meek, eighteen-year-old Alice Sears had eloped with twenty-one-year-old Tommy Winston. She explained her foolishness in a little letter which she left on the kitchen table for her mother. The letter ran something like this:

Dear Mother:—

It's no use waiting any longer for any of the good times or new dresses you said I'd have by and by. We never have any good times and I'm tired waiting for a real new hat. Tommy's going to buy me one with bunches of violets on it and he don't drink, so it's alright and you don't need to worry. I'll live near and be handy and don't you let father swear too much at you because I did this.

Your loving child, ALICE.

When Mrs. Sears found the letter she read it six times, over and over till she knew it by heart. It wasn't the first such letter she had ever had. When Johnny went off to Alaska or somewhere away off, because his father took the twenty-five dollars that the nineteen-year-old boy had saved so prayerfully for a bicycle, Johnny had left just such a letter. When Jimmy went away he left a letter that sounded very much like it on the top of his mother's sewing machine.

It wasn't a bicycle with Jimmy. It was chickens. Jimmy was wild over chickens. He was a great favorite with Frank Burton. He helped Frank about the coops and was so handy that Frank paid him regular wages and gave him several settings of eggs. And in no time the boy had a thriving little chicken business that might have grown into bigger things. But Sears sold the whole thing out one day when he wanted money worse than usual. And Jimmy, white to the very roots of his reddish-brown hair, cursed his father and left home. He wandered about, the Lord knows where, but eventually joined the army. He wrote home once to tell his mother what he had done and to say that he intended to save all his pay for the three years and start a chicken farm with it somewhere.

And now gentle, little, eighteen-year-old Alice was gone too.

Mrs. Sears sat down and cried in that patient, helpless, miserable way of hers. She didn't know just what she was crying for, herself or the children. Life was a hopeless, unmanageable tangle that seemed to give her nothing and take her all. So Mrs. Sears sat and cried. It was a habit she had.

Fanny Foster came along just then. She had run over to see if she couldn't borrow a cake of yeast. She was going to town in an hour, she said, but she wanted to set her bread before she went and she'd bring yeast back with her and—

"Why, for pity's sake alive, Mrs. Sears, what's the matter?"

That was just Fanny's luck or perhaps her misfortune, her happening on events first-hand that way. She read the letter of course, sympathized with Mrs. Sears, patted her check and told her not to worry, that everything would be all right and to set right still, that she'd be right back to do the dishes and stay with her.

And Fanny hurried to town, talking all the way. She came back in record time but by the time she had her hands in Mrs. Sears' dishpan Green Valley was already buzzing with astonishment. Some were shaking their heads in utter unbelief, some were smiling and one or two who had slept badly were saying something like this:

"Well, did you ever! And you never can tell. Those meek, quiet little things are usually deep. And the dear Lord only knows what the true state of things is. And poor Mrs. Sears! Of course, she's done her best, but isn't it too bad to have a batch of children turn out so kind of disappointing and her so meek and patient and hard-working!"

In three hours the news had gotten out to the out-lying homes and Sears, the little bride's father, heard it as he was nailing siding on one of the two new bungalows that were being built in that part of Green Valley.

When Sears heard the rumor he put down his hammer and quit work. He was a man who made a practice of quitting work at the least provocation. He said what a man needed most was self-respect and he, Will Sears, would have it at any cost. He had it. In fact, he was so respectful and thoughtful of himself that he never had time to respect the rights of any one else.

Green Valley saw him going home and because Green Valley knew him well and respected him not at all it took no pains to hush its chatter, and so he heard a good deal that it may have done him good to hear. At any rate, it sort of prepared him for what came later.

He stamped into the house and wanted to know why in this and that he hadn't been told about all this before he went to work, and what in this and that she meant by such doings and goings on.

And Mrs. Sears, whose greatest daily trial was getting her husband off to work on such mornings as he felt so inclined, said tearfully:

"Why, father, you know that when I'm getting you off of a morning I wouldn't see a twenty-dollar gold piece if it was right before my eyes on the table. I never found the piece of paper with Alice's letter on it till you'd gone and I'd set down for a cup of coffee."

For thirty years Milly Sears had called her husband "father" and now that he had fathered all his children away from home she still called him "father." Poor Mrs. Sears had no sense of humor.

After her pitiful little explanation Mrs. Sears sank down into her rocker and went back to weeping. It was her way of taking life's sudden turns.

Sears tore through the house and every once in a while he'd walk back to the kitchen and swear. Sears was not in any way a likeable man. Though so self-respecting, he had all his life been careless about his language and his breath. That was probably the reason why his children never got the habit of running out to meet him or bringing their thorns and splinters for him to pull out with his jackknife. He was a man who never stopped in the front yard to see how the clover was coming up, who never hoed around his currant bushes or ever found time to prune his fruit trees. He was in short a mean, selfish man who was yet decent enough to know himself for what he was but not decent enough to admit it and mend his ways. It may be that he did not know how to go about this.

At any rate, here he was, pacing back and forth in his still, empty house, swearing and threatening all manner of terrible things. That was his way of showing his helplessness.

And all about this helpless, incompetent father and patiently sobbing mother the Green Valley world buzzed and the prettiest kind of a May day smiled. All their life was a muddle with this dreary ending but the world outside was as young, as bright, as promising as ever. Something of this must have come to these two for Mrs. Sears' sobs quieted and out in the front room Sears sank into a chair and grew still.

And then it was that Fanny Poster, who had been flitting about like a very spirit of help and curiosity, flitted down the road to Grandma Wentworth's. For Fanny felt that somebody had to do something and Fanny knew that nobody could do it so efficiently as the strong, sweet, gray-eyed Grandma Wentworth who, for all her sweetness, could yet rebuke most sternly and fearlessly even while she helped and advised wisely.

Green Valley had its generous share of philosophers and helpful spirits but Grandma Wentworth towered above them all. And every soul in the village, when in trouble, turned to her as naturally as flowers turn their faces to the sun.

Her little vine-clad cottage sat just beyond the curve where the three roads met at Old Roads Corners. Her back garden was full of the choicest vegetables and sweetest-smelling herbs and there was a heavenly array of flowers all about the front windows. The neighbors said that Grandma Wentworth's house and garden looked just like her and ministers usually sent their spiritually hopeless cases to her because she dared and knew how to say the soul-necessary things that no bread-and-butter-cautious minister can find the courage to say.

The path to Grandma's house was worn smooth by the feet of the many who came for advice, encouragement and for sheer love of the woman who lived in that little garden.

And so Fanny went flying to Grandma now, perfectly, childishly confident that Grandma would and could fix up everything. She began to talk as soon as she opened the door. But what she saw in Grandma's kitchen sent the words tumbling down her throat.

For there sat little Alice, eating a late breakfast with Grandma. She looked a little scared around the eyes but smiley round the mouth and there was a gold ring on her left hand.

When Grandma caught sight of Fanny she smiled.

"Come right in, Fanny. I've been expecting you. But first let me make you acquainted with Mrs. Tommy Winston. That rascal of a boy run away with her last night as far as Spring Road, where Judge Edwards married them. And then Tommy brought her here to me to spend the night while he went and rented that funny little box of a house just back of that stylish Mrs. Brownlee. And that's where the wedding supper's going to be to-night. Of course you're invited. I'm going right now to see Milly Sears about what we must cook up and bake. I was going over to get you too to help out. The little house'll need overhauling but I know I can depend on you, Fanny. Do your very best and there'll be—"

But by this time Fanny found her voice and began to tell about how Sears was going on. But Grandma only smiled and said, "Yes, of course, I know. But don't worry about that. I'll attend to Will Sears. You two just skip along now to the house and start the wedding."

Grandma walked over to the Sears cottage without any show of worry or hurry. But she wasn't smiling. Those gray eyes of hers were sparkling with something very different. And when Will Sears saw her coming in the gate he was both relieved and uncomfortably uneasy.

She came right in and just looked at that desolate couple for a few seconds. Then:

"Will Sears," she asked briefly, "what are you aiming to do about this?"

Sears, who couldn't do anything, didn't know how to do anything about it but swear, said pompously:

"What any decent, respectable, hard-working man would do,—bring back the girl and horsewhip that whippersnapper."

Then Grandma, who knew just how much this sort of bluster was worth, let herself go.

"Will Sears, if you honestly have an idea that you are a decent, respectable, hard-working man, hold on to it for the love of heaven, for you're the only human in this town that has any such notion."

"I work," Sears began defiantly.

"Oh, yes, Will, you work in a sort of a way; though I can remember the time when Green Valley folks thought you were going to be a big contractor. You promised well but somehow you never worked hard enough. You work at things now to keep your own miserable self alive, I guess, because when you get through using your week's wages there's hardly enough left to keep bare life and decency in your family."

"I'm not a drunkard," Sears muttered, "and you know it."

"No, you're not a drunkard, Will Sears, more's the pity. When it comes to choosing between a man who gets openly drunk and staggers down Main Street in drunken penitence to his wife and children and the man who drinks just enough to be a surly, selfish brute and yet look half-way respectable on the outside, why, give me the drunk every time.

"You don't get drunk, only just full enough to have your family afraid and ashamed of you. You have made life a hateful, shameful, miserable existence for your wife and children. You've robbed them of every right and what pitiful little possessions, hopes and plans they'd been able to find for themselves. That's why John's in Alaska, Jimmy in the army and Alice an eighteen-year-old wife. A precious father you've been to make your children choose the bitter snows, the jungle and a doubtful future with a stranger to life with you, their father."

"I've fed my children and clothed them," again muttered Sears.

"Yes, Will, you have. But—man, man—it takes more than just blood, three begrudged meals a day and a skimpy calico dress to prove real fatherhood. But I'm not blaming you any more than I'm blaming this wife of yours.

"For thirty years, Milly Sears, you've been so busy trying to be a doormat saint that you had no time to be a strong, useful mother. When you married Will he was no worse than the average fellow. He had faults aplenty but he had goodnesses too, and hopes and dreams. And you, you Milly, let all the hopes and dreams die and the faults grow and multiply. Just by letting Will backslide, forget and grow careless.

"Somebody told you that patience was a pretty ornament. It is if it's the genuine article and properly used. But letting a man spend his wages hoggishly on himself and robbing his children and driving them from their lawful home and cheating you out of every right and even your self-respect is nothing to be patient about. As for tears, they have their uses, but they never mended wrongs that I know of. It's fool, weeping, patient women that make selfish, mean men. It's plain, honest, righteous anger that brings about the reforms in this world.

"If the first time that Will got ugly drunk or swearing cross about nothing you had stood up for yourself and the children and reminded him sharply of the decencies instead of crying softly and praying for patience, you wouldn't be sitting here, the two of you, in an empty house with your children God knows where.

"I've known you since before you were married and I'm sorry for you because I know—"

Then it was that Grandma Wentworth began to talk as only she knew how. She forgot nothing. She recalled to that man and woman all the beauty and the wonder of the beginning; the new furniture, the summer moonlight when their home was young and they were waiting for their first baby; his coming; his blue eyes and Jimmy's brown ones and little Alice's gentle ways. All the past sweetness that had been theirs and was not wholly forgotten she brought back, and in the end when they sobbed aloud she cried a bit with them, for they were of her generation. And then she rose to go.

"Well, now that I've had my say I'll tell you that I really came to invite you to your daughter's wedding supper to-night. Tommy Winston's married your Alice sure enough, but he's a good boy even if he is motherless and fatherless and has sort of shifted for himself in odd ways. He brought Alice to me last night all properly married and she's been with me ever since, so everything is all right and respectable, for which you may thank the dear Lord on bended knees. Tommy's been and rented the little Bently place over on the hill and is getting it into shape with a few pieces of furniture. It's such a doll house it won't take much to furnish it. I've found half a dozen things up attic and, Milly, if you look around, you'll find plenty here to help start the little new home in fair shape. Thank heavens, life in Green Valley is still simple enough so's people can every now and then marry for love and not much of anything else. Though Tommy's got a little besides his horse and wagon. He's already bought Alice a new hat and fixings and he's going down to Tony's hardware store this afternoon to order up a good cook stove. So you see—"

But at this point Sears woke up and hoarsely, defiantly and a little tremulously announced:

"He'll do no such thing. I'm going down right now to buy that there cook stove."

So that was settled and a new home peaceably, respectably started as every home should be. And it would have been hard to say who was the busiest and happiest of all the people who helped make a wedding that day.

By three o'clock, however, everything was about done and there were only the final touches to be put on. Grandma engineered everything over the telephone and Green Valley responded whole-heartedly, as it always did to all her work.

Fanny Foster had found time to run down to Jessup's and buy the bride a first-class tablecloth and some towels. Fanny was always buying the most appropriate, tasty and serviceable things for other people and the most outlandish, cheap and second-hand stuff for herself. The tablecloth was extravagantly good, as Grandma sternly told her.

But, "La—what of it! I was saving the money to buy myself a silk petticoat," Fanny defended herself. "I wanted to know just once before I died what and how it felt like to rustle up the church aisle instead of slinking down it on a Sunday morning. But I just think a silk petticoat isn't worth thinking about when a thing like this happens."

So Grandma smiled and as she laid out her best black silk she made a mental note of the fact that Fanny Foster was to have, sometime or other, a silk petticoat, made up to her for this day's work and self-sacrifice. For Grandma was one of those rare practical people who yet believed in respecting the foolish dreams of impractical humans.

So it came about that everybody who could walk was at Tommy's and Alice's wedding. The bride wore a beautifully simple dress that came from Paris in Nan's trunk. And there were roses in her hair and Tommy hardly knew her, and her father and mother certainly did not, so dazed were they.

The little doll house was already a home, with all of Green Valley trooping in to leave little gifts and stopping long enough to shake Tommy's hand and wish him luck and health and maybe twins.

Indeed, Alice Sears' elopement and wedding became a part of Green Valley history, so great an event was it, what with the suddenness of it and the whole town being asked and Nan Ainslee coming home so providentially, and Cynthia's son making a speech.

The crowd was so great and so merry that the little Brownlee girl, having tucked her fretful mother up in bed, stole out to the garden fence and watched the doings with all a child's wistful eyes. David Allan, who happened to drift out that way, found her there and they visited over the fence. It took David quite a while to tell her what it all meant, for she was of course a stranger to Green Valley and Green Valley ways.

Grandma watched her town folk a little mistily that night and expressed her opinion a little tremulously to Roger Allan.

"Roger, did you ever see a town so chockful of people that you have to laugh over one minute and cry over the next?"

Nan's father, walking home with her through the quiet streets, stopped to light a cigar. When it was burning properly he remarked innocently to his daughter:

"I don't know when I've met so unusually good-looking and likeable a fellow as this minister chap, Knight."

Nan looked at her father with cold and suspicious eyes and her voice when she answered was scornful.

"You thought, Mr. Ainslee, that you met the handsomest and most likeable chap on earth in Yokohama—if you remember," she reminded him icily.

"Yes, of course—I remember. But I have come to believe that I was somewhat mistaken in that boy in Yokohama. He lacked something that this chap has—an elusive quality that is hard to put a name to but which is one of the big essentials that makes for success."

"Ministers," drawled Nanny wickedly, "have never been noticeably successful in Green Valley."

"No," admitted her father, "they haven't. And of course it's too bad the boy's a minister. He's badly handicapped, naturally. Still, I never remember when I'm with him that he is a parson. It may be that women feel the same way. And you noticed that he had the good sense not to wear a frock coat to this informal little wedding. I can't recall that he has ever worn a frock coat since he's been here. I think you'd like ministers, Nanny, if they weren't so given to wearing frock coats. In fact, I'm willing to bet that you are going to like this wonderful boy from India immensely."

Nanny stood still and faced her father.

"I loathe ministers—in any kind of a coat," she explained firmly. "And I'll bet no bets with you. Such offers are unseemly in a man of your years and already apparent grayness. They are, moreover, detrimental to my morals. I should think you'd be ashamed,—and also mindful of your former losses and mistaken prophecies."

"Oh," her father assured her, "I admit my losses and mistakes. But I have by no means lost hope or faith. You never can tell. I'm bound to guess right some day. And I'm rather partial to this minister chap. It would be so natural and fitting a punishment for an irreverent young woman. For Nanny," the father added with teasing gentleness, "sweet as you are and lovable, a little reverence and religion wouldn't hurt you."

"I've always heard it said," demurely recollected Nanny, "that girls generally take after the father."

"That may be," agreed this particular father. "In that case I should think you'd be willing to marry a little religion into the family for my sake, if not your own."

Nanny's patience was beginning to feel the strain.

"Mr. Ainslee," she warned him sternly, "if this was snowball time instead of springtime in Green Valley, I'd snowball you black and blue."



CHAPTER VIII

LILAC TIME

To the knowing and observant and the loyal Green Valley is dear at all times. But what most touches and wakens a Green Valley heart is lilac time.

There are on the Green Valley calendar many red-letter days beside the regularly recurring national holidays, but lilac time, or Lilac Sunday, is Green Valley's very own glad day. It is in the spring what Thanksgiving is in the fall and wanderers who can not get home for Thanksgiving and Christmas ease their homesick hearts with promises of lilac time in the old town.

On this particular Lilac Sunday, Nan, radiant and dressed in the sort of clothes that only Nan knew how to buy and wear, was on her way to church. She was early and decided to pass the Churchill place. She always did at lilac time, for then it was fairly embedded in fragrance and flowery glory. She had cut the blooms from her own bushes and sent them on. She carried only a few of her most perfect sprays. She saw that the Churchill gardens too had been trimmed but plenty of beauty remained.

She stopped a moment to admire the wonderful old red-brick house glowing through the tender greens of spring. Her eyes drank in its beauty and then fell on two huge perfect lilac plumes on the bush nearest her. They were larger and lovelier than her own.

With a little smile Nan reached out to gather them. She broke off the first and was about to gather the other when Cynthia's son came slowly and laughingly from around the bush.

"Let me get it for you. You will soil your glove."

Nan was startled and unaccountably embarrassed. She flushed with something like annoyance.

"Mercy! I had no idea you were anywhere about. I suppose I'm greedy but these did seem lovelier than mine. This is Lilac Sunday and I thought—perhaps nobody told you—that as long as you had so many you wouldn't mind—I hope you don't think—"

She was so very evidently bothered over the whole affair, so disconcerted, she who was always so coolly dignified, that he laughed with boyish delight.

"Oh—don't explain, I understand," he begged.

The red in Nan's cheeks deepened. She stiffened and half turned away.

"Goodness," she exclaimed to no one in particular, "how I do dislike ministers. They always understand everything. You just can't tell them anything. How I loathe them! They're insufferable."

It was his turn to look a little startled and embarrassed.

"But you don't have to like me as a minister. I don't want to be your minister."

She looked up to see just what he meant. But he seemed to have forgotten her, for the smile had gone from his eyes and though he looked at her she knew that he didn't see her; that he was looking beyond her at some one, something else. When he spoke it was with a winning gravity and a wistfulness that Nanny tried not to hear.

"I miss my mother more than any one here can guess. Grandma Wentworth is wonderful. She is so wise and good and I love her. But my mother was young and gay and very beautiful. She played and laughed and talked with me. She was the loveliest soul I ever knew. You are very much like her. I have wanted you for a friend. I never had a sister but if I could have had I should have asked for a girl like you."

Oh, Nanny sensed the pitiful, childish loneliness of that plea! The wistfulness of the boy stabbed through her really tender heart. But Nanny Ainslee was a joyous, laughter-loving creature. And the idea of this boy whom already she half loved asking her to be his friend, his sister! Oh, it was childishly funny. How her father would chuckle if he knew that she who had dismissed so many suitors with platonic friendliness and sisterly solicitude was now being offered that same platonic friendliness and brotherly love. It was too much for Nanny's sense of humor!

So Nanny giggled. She giggled disgracefully and could not stop herself,—giggled even though she knew that the tall boy beside her was flushing a painful red and slowly freezing into a hurt and painful silence. But she could not save herself or him.

"You had better let me cut you a few more sprays," he said at last curtly.

She let him lay them in her arms and they walked to church in absolute silence. Nanny never knew that any living man could be so stubbornly silent. She was sorry and she wanted to tell him so. But he gave her no chance. It seemed he was a young man who never asked for things twice. Nanny was sorry but she was also, for some incomprehensible reason, angry. And the sorrier she grew the angrier she became. Cynthia's son seemed not to notice. He walked straight on into the church but Nanny stayed outside and held open court under the big horse chestnuts in front of the church door.

She had left the olive groves and almond groves, the thick roses and the blue waters of Italy, in order to be at home in time to see her native town wrapped up in its fragrant lilac glory.

She stayed out now, her arms full of lilac plumes, watching the little groups of her townspeople coming down the village streets toward the church whose bell was tolling so sweetly through the warm, spring air.

Here came Mrs. Dustin with Peter and Joe Baldwin with his two boys and Colonel Stratton with his sweet-faced wife. From the opposite direction came the Reverend Alexander Campbell with his wife in black silk, his sister in gray silk, his elderly niece in blue silk and his wife's second cousin in lavender. There was Joshua Stillman and his quiet daughter, Uncle Tony and Uncle Tony's brother William, with his four girls and Seth Curtis' wife, Ruth.

Seth never went to church, having a profound scorn for the clergy. But he always fixed things so his wife could go. He said ministers were poor business men, selfish husbands and proverbially poor fathers, from all he'd seen of them. Somehow Seth was a singularly unfortunate man in the matter of seeing things. But there was no denying the fact that he was an unusual husband. He had been caught time and again by his men friends and neighbors on a Sunday morning with one of his wife's aprons tied about him, holding the baby in one arm, while he stirred something on the stove with the other, and in various other ways superintending his household while Ruth was at church. But neither jeers nor sympathy ever upset him.

"No, I can't say that I've ever hankered for sermons much. They don't generally tally with what I've seen and know of life. But Ruth now can get something helpful out of even a fool's remarks and comes home rested and cheerful. I figure that a woman as smart as Ruth about working and saving sure earns her right to a bit of a church on Sunday if she wants it. And furthermore, I aim to give my wife anything in reason that she wants. It doesn't hurt any man to learn from a little personal experience that babies aren't just little blessings full of smiles and dimples but darn little nuisances, let me tell you. This little kid is as good as they make them but he gives me a backache all over, puts bumps on my temper and ties my nerves up in knots. And I've discovered that just watching bread or pies or pudding is work. And when a man's peeled the potatoes and set the table and sliced the bread and filled the water glasses and opened the oven a dozen times and strained and stirred and mashed and salted and peppered, he begins to understand why his wife is so tired after getting a Sunday dinner. And when he thinks of other days, washing days and ironing and baking and scrubbing and sewing days, why, if he's anyway decent he begins to suspect that he's darn lucky to get a full-grown woman to do all that work for just her room and board. And when he stops to count the times she's tied his necktie, darned his socks and patched his clothes, besides giving him a clean bed, a pretty sitting room to live in, children to play with and brag about, and a bank book to make him sleep easy on such nights as the storms are raging outside, why, a man just don't have to go to church to believe in God. He's got proofs enough right in his kitchen. It's the wife who ought to go if it's only to sit still for an hour and get time to tell herself that there is a God and that some day the work will let up maybe and her back won't ache any more and Johnny won't be so hard on his shoes and Sammy on his stockings. Why, I tell you I'm afraid to keep Ruth from church, afraid that if she loses her belief in a married woman's heaven she'll leave me for somebody better or get so discouraged that she'll just hold her breath and die."

So Ruth Curtis went to church every Sunday. And Seth saw to it that she always looked pretty. This particular Lilac Sunday she was wearing the sprigged dimity that Seth bought her over in Spring Road at Williamson's spring sale.

Softly the bell tolled and the last stragglers came hurrying leisurely, every soul carrying the lovely fragrant plumes so that the church would be sweet with the breath of spring. Later, these armfuls of beauty would be packed into huge boxes and shipped to the city hospitals to gladden pain-racked bodies and weary hearts.

Nanny Ainslee was still outside waiting for Grandma Wentworth. Lilac Sunday Nanny always waited for Grandma and always sat with her, because of a certain story that Grandma had told her once when the lamps were not yet lit and the soft summer moonlight lay in windowed squares on Grandma's sitting room floor. Nanny began to inquire of the last comers. But Tommy and Alice Winston, still bridey and shy, said they had seen nothing of her, and even Roger Allan supposed of course that she must be in her favorite pew, known to the oldtimers as Inspiration Corner. For it had been observed that all ministers sooner or later delivered their discourses to Grandma Wentworth. They were always sure of her undivided attention. Other people's eyes and minds might wander, some might be even openly bored, but Grandma's uplifted face was always kindly and encouraging, even though the sermon was hopelessly jumbled. She was the surest, severest critic and yet each man preached to her feeling that with the criticism would come kindliness and the sort of mother comfort that Grandma somehow knew how to give to the meanest and most blundering of creatures. Indeed, it was the least successful of Green Valley's ministers who had designated Grandma's seat as Inspiration Corner. And then had in a final burst of wrath told Green Valley that like Sodom and Gomorrah it was doomed, that no mere man preacher could save it, that its only hope lay in Grandma Wentworth, who alone understood its miserable, petty orneriness.

He meant to leave town a sputtering, raging man, that minister,—full of what he called righteous wrath. But he went to say good-by to Grandma and experienced a change of heart.

He began his farewell by unburdening his heart and soul of all the ponderous doctrines that sunny, joyful Green Valley had refused to listen to. He spoke earnestly of the world's terrible need of salvation, the fearful necessity for haste and wholesale repentance and the awful menace of God's wrath. And the fact that he was a man entering his forties instead of his thirties made matters worse.

But Grandma listened patiently and when he was emptied of all his sorrows and worriments she took him out into her herb-garden, seated him where he could see the sunset hills and then she preached a marvellous sermon to just this one man alone. No one but he knows what she told him but he went forth a humble, tired, quiet man, filled to the brim with a sudden belief in just life as it is lived by a few hundred million humans. Five years later word came to Green Valley that this same man was a much loved pastor somewhere in the mountains. And Green Valley, perennially young, unthinking, joyous Green Valley, laughed incredulously as a sweet-hearted but wrongly educated child always laughs at a true fairy tale or a simple miracle.

"If I had the making and raising of ministers," Grandma was heard to say, apropos of this clergyman, "about the first thing I'd set them to learning would be to laugh, first at themselves and then at other people. And as for this repentance and exhortation business I believe it is worn out. Humans have gotten tired of that 'last call for the paradise express.' They like this world and its life and they know they could be pretty decent if somebody would only explain a few little things to them. It isn't that they hate religion but they want to be allowed to grow into it naturally and sanely. Religion getting ought to be the quietest, happiest process, just pleasant neighboring like and comparing of ideas, with every now and then a holy hush when men and women have suddenly sensed some big beauty in life. All this noise is unnecessary, for every living soul of us, barring idiots, repents several times a day even though we don't admit it in so many words. And as for righteous wrath—it's a good thing and I believe in it, but like cayenne pepper it wants to be used sparingly and only at the right place and on the right person. Any one would think to hear some ministers talk that the Almighty was a combination of Theodore Roosevelt, the Kaiser and a New York Police Commissioner working the third degree.

"I wonder what the colleges can be thinking of, turning loose such stale foolishness and old canned stuff on a mellow, sunny little home town like Green Valley that's full of plain, blundering but well-meaning, God-fearing people who work joyfully at their business of living and turn up more religion when they plow a furrow or make over the wedding dress for the baby than these ministers can dig up out of all their musty books. I've prayed for all kinds of qualities in ministers but I've come to the point where I ask nothing more of a preacher than a laugh now and then, some horse sense and health.

"I used to think that only mature men ought to be sent out but now I shall be glad to see a boy in the pulpit to show us the way to salvation,—a boy it may be with a head full of foolish notions that old folks say are not practical and some of which won't of course stand wear; but a boy, with a glad young face, eyes full of faith and dreams and the sort of insane courage and daring that only the young know. Such a boy needs considerable education in certain earthly matters, of course, but he's lovable and teachable and will in time grow into a real, God-knowing, truth-interpreting man."

Oh, Grandma Wentworth was an authority on ministers—ministers and babies. And it was a baby that had kept her away from church this Lilac Sunday; a little, merry, red-headed boy baby that had come in the early morning to make glad the heart of unbusinesslike Billy Evans and his neat businesslike wife. For several hours Doc Philipps and Grandma had despaired of both baby and mother, but when the pink dawn came smiling over the world's rim Billy's little son was born alive and unblemished and Billy's wife crept back from the Valley of the Shadow and smiled a bit into Billy's white, stricken face. And Billy looked deep down into the brown eyes of the girl and the terrible numbness went out of his muscles and the icy hardness from around his heart and he slipped out into the morning world to thank the Great Spirit that moved it for His mercy and wonderful gift. He just stood on his front doorstep and, looking about his pretty home and remembering the miracle within the house, poured a great prayer into the heart of the glad morning.

Billy's house was one of the most picturesque of the many pretty homes in Green Valley. It had been a ramshackle, tumbled-down old cabin lost in a tangle of bushes and hidden from the road by a shabby, unsightly row of old willows. Billy was going to rent it for temporary barn purposes but his wife, who had a nimble and a prophetic eye, made him buy it. Then, under her supervision Billy enlarged and remodeled it and Billy's wife waved some sort of a fairy wand over it, for it became over night a lovely, story-book home. When everything was ready she had the unsightly willows cut, revealing a gently rising stretch of mossy sward ending in a cluster of old trees from which the cozy house peeped roguishly, tantalizingly. Two old walnuts guarded the little footpath to the door and two huge lilac bushes screened the porch from the too curious gaze of travelers on the road below. Indeed, so altogether taking and fascinating a bit of property did it become after its transformation that it was said that two of Green Valley's real estate men never went down that road without doing sums in their heads and calling themselves names for overlooking such a bargain. It takes constructive imagination to be successful in real estate.

And now around this cozy home spot Billy wandered deliriously, aimlessly. It was the tolling of the church bell and the smell of the lilacs that recalled to him the significance of the day.

"Why, he was born on Lilac Sunday and he's red-headed just like Her. Gosh—I must a bin born lucky!"

Billy looked once more all about his story-book home and then his eyes strayed away to Petersen's Woods, fairy green and already full of deep shadowed aisles, full of fretted beauty and solemnity. Beyond them lay the creek, a pool of silver draped in misty morning veils.

"Gosh—I wish to God I was religious!" suddenly, contritely murmured Billy Evans. In high heaven the angels, and in Billy's kitchen Grandma Wentworth, overheard and smiled.

When Hank Lolly came up from the livery barn for a late breakfast, his face drawn and eyes full of fear for the man and woman who had been family and home to him, Billy went down the footpath to meet him.

"It's all right, Hank! He's here, red hair and all," Billy informed him in the merest breath of a whisper. Hank wiped his face in limp relief and sat down quite suddenly on the grass beside the path. Instinctively Billy sat down with him.

They said nothing for a time, just looked and looked at the wide blue sky, the green sweet world, tried for perhaps the millionth time to sense Eternity and the what-and-why-and-how of it all and then gave it up and like children accepted the day, the little new life, the whole wonder of it as happy children accept it all, on faith and with untainted joy. It was just good to be there and there was no doubting the perfect May day. So they sat reverently until Billy, looking again at that mass of shimmering greens and into those church-like aisles, said:

"Hank, some one of us had ought to go to church to-day. I wish to God I had kep' up going to Sunday school. Mother got me started but she died before she could get me started in on church. So I never went. It's a terrible thing for a man not to learn religion along with his reading and writing and 'rithmetic. I used to think it was nobody's business whether I had any religion or not after mother died. I knew that where she was she'd understand. But I see now it was a terrible mistake thinking that way and not laying in a supply of religion. A man thinks he owns himself and that certain things are nobody's business, but by-and-by along comes a wife or a red-headed baby and things happen different from what you've ever expected, things that you just got to have religion for, and gosh—what are you going to do then if you ain't got any?"

This terrible situation being beyond the mental powers of Hank, that soul just sat still until Billy puzzled a way out.

"Somebody'd ought to go to church from out this house to-day," went on Billy in a low voice. "Grandma Wentworth can't go on account of Her and It. I can't go because—gosh—I'm so kind of split, my head going one way and my legs another, that as likely as not I'd wind up in the blacksmith shop or the hotel or fall in the creek. I ain't safe on the streets to-day, Hank. And, anyway, I've got to keep up fires and water boiling and them dumb'd frogs under the willows from croaking so's She can sleep to-night. That leaves nobody but you, Hank."

Billy hesitated, realizing the enormity of the request he was about to make.

"Hank—I wish to God, you'd go and sort of settle the bill up for me. Just go, Hank, and tell Him, that's the Big Boss, how darned thankful we all are about what's happened to-day and that we'll do right by the little shaver and that we'll try to run the livery business so's He won't find too many mistakes when He gets around to looking over the books Barney and you and me's keeping. And you might mention how we've always made it a point to treat our horses well but will do better in the future. And tell Him I'll see that the Widow Green's spring plowing is done sooner after this. It was a darn shame her being left last like that but that she never asked me, me being so easy-going and she so neat, until the rest of them left her in the lurch. And tell Him I'll take the sheriff's job, though if there's one thing I can't do it's watching people and jumping on them. Just talk to Him that way, Hank. Put in any little thing you happen to think of and go as far as you like in promises and subscriptions. The business is moving and what promises you and I can't keep She'll find a way to pay off. And here's a ten-dollar gold piece to drop in the hat when it comes around. You—"

But Hank was standing now and looking at his employer with such terror in every line of his weather-beaten face that Billy paused again.

"My God—Billy! You ain't asking me—me—to—to—to—to go to church?" Hank's voice fairly squeaked and stuttered with the horror that clutched him.

"Hank, if there was any one else—"

But Hank, shaking in every joint and muscle of his still flabby body, wagged his head in utter misery.

"Billy, I'll do anything else for you and Mrs. Evans and little Billy—anything but that. I'll jump into Wimple's pond, get drunk, sign the pledge—anything but that. What you're a-wanting, Billy, ain't to be thought of. You're forgetting, Billy, what I was and what I am. Why, Billy, that there church belongs to the best people in this town and it ain't for the likes of me to go into such vallyable places, a-tramplin' on that there expensive carpet we both of us hauled free of charge last September. There's Doc Philipps and Tony and Grandma Wentworth and any number of good friends of mine in there. And do you think I want to shame them and insult them by coming into their church, disturbing the doings? You just let things be and when Mrs. Evans is up and around again she'll go like she always does when she's got enough vittles cooked up for us men folks. I'm a miserable, no-account drunk, that's what I am, Billy Evans, and I ain't no proper person to send on an errand to the Lord. Why, church ain't for the likes of me—it's—it's—"

But at this point language failed Hank entirely, and the enormity of the proposed undertaking once more sweeping over him, Hank searched for his bandanna and wiped the beads of cold sweat from around his mouth and the back of his stringy neck.

Billy was silent. He knew that Hank was right and that he had asked an impossible service of his faithful helper. Still there in the morning sun glistened the green grove and through the holiness of the spring morning tolled the old church bell. So Billy rose and walked slowly and a little sadly up the narrow path. And Hank walked up with him.

It was in silence that they sat down to their late breakfast. But in the act of swallowing his tenth cornmeal pancake dripping with maple syrup Hank had a sudden inspiration. The misery in his face gave place to a grim determination.

"Billy," he offered remorsefully, "I can't go to church for you, but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go to the dentist's and have these bad teeth fixed that Doc and Mrs. Evans and you have been at me about. Next to going to church that's the awfullest thing I know of and I'll do it. Doc says that bad teeth make a bad stomach and a bad stomach makes a bad man and it may be so. And as for that ten-dollar gold piece, I don't see why you can't send that by Barney, same as you'd send him to the bank for change or to Tony's to pay the gas bill. When I go back now I'll just send Barney along with it, and then I'll go see Doc Mitchell and let him kill me with that there machine of his."

That's how it happened that a little thin hand caught Nanny Ainslee's just as she was entering the church door and Barney of the spindle legs begged frenziedly for assistance.

"Aw, Nan—look at this!" and he held out the gold piece. "Billy Evans' got a little baby down to his house and he's clean crazy. Grandma Wentworth's bossing the baby show and she says for you to take the minister home to dinner. And Billy's sent this here and wants me to put it in the collection box and I don't dast. Why, say, old man Austin that passes the collection plate would have me pinched if he saw me drop that in it.

"And, anyhow, I ain't been liked around here ever since last Christmas when I got three boxes of candy by mistake. And, gee—Nan, I don't know what to do about it. Billy Evans is the best man in this here town and I'd do most anything for him, but he's such a good guy himself he don't see that church ain't any place for a kid like me and that it was a mistake to send me with this coin."

Nan's amazement gave way to sudden enlightenment. She knew now why Grandma Wentworth had not put in an appearance, and knowing Billy Evans well, she instantly comprehended the situation.

"Barney, what in the world are you talking about, saying this church is no place for you. This is just the place for a boy who gets several boxes of Christmas candy by mistake. You come right along with me."

"Aw, Nan, why can't you drop it in for me? I just ain't got the nerve. I'd rather get all my teeth pulled like Hank is going to do. Why, say, Nan, just the sight of old Austin makes my hair curl. I tell ya he don't like me and I'll be pinched—"

But Nan had already drawn Billy's spindle-legged assistant inside and as no man yet had been known to show anything but quiet pride when escorting Nanny Ainslee, Barney straightened manfully and with an outward serenity that amazed even himself he gracefully slid into a seat, having first gallantly stepped aside to permit his gracious lady to be seated. And life being that morning especially a thing of tender humor, they had no sooner settled themselves comfortably when Fanny Foster, the last comer, sank down beside them, breathing heavily.

Fanny Foster was always late for church, not from any notion that a late entrance was fashionable but because of some hitch in her domestic affairs. She always explained to the congregation afterward just what had caused her delay and the congregation was always ready to listen to her excuses, for they were as a rule highly original ones.

Fate was always sending Fanny the most thrilling experiences at the most improper times. The children were always falling into the cistern or setting the barn afire as she was about to start out somewhere. And such things as buttonhooks and hairpins had a way of disappearing just when she was in the greatest hurry. Not that the lack of these toilet necessities ever stopped Fanny from attending any town function.

If the buttonhook could not be found she set out with her shoes unbuttoned, borrowing the necessary implement on the way. If she had no hairpins she put her hair up temporarily with two knitting needles or lead pencils or anything like that that came handy, stopped at Jessup's, bought her hairpins, and while reporting news in Mrs. Green's kitchen did up her hair without the aid of brush, comb or mirror.

This trait Fanny came by naturally. She had had a droll grandmother. It was authentic history that once at the very moment when she was getting ready to attend a Green Valley funeral this grandmother's false teeth broke, leaving her somewhat dazed. But only for a moment, for she was a woman with a perfect memory. She suddenly remembered that the wife of the deceased had an old emergency set; so, slipping through the back streets, she arrived at the house of grief, borrowed the new widow's old teeth and wept as copiously and sincerely, albeit a little carefully, over the remains as any one else there.

Now, scarcely waiting to regain her breath, Fanny turned to Nanny with the usual explanations, only stopping to exclaim over Barney—"Land sakes, Barney, what are you doing here!" A breath and then in sibilant whispers:

"Well—I thought I'd never get here. When I come to dress I found the children had cut up my corset into a harness for the dog and Jessup's said they hadn't anybody to send up with a new one and John said he couldn't go because his foot's bad, him having stepped on the rake yesterday afternoon and not wanting to irritate it, so's he could go to work tomorrow as usual. And Grandma's up to Billy Evans' trying to keep him from going crazy or I could have borrowed one of hers. So I 'phoned Central to see if she couldn't hunt up somebody to bring me that new corset from Jessup's. Well, who does she get hold of but Denny, just as he's going past with a telegram for Jocelyn Brownlee. He brought the corset with the string gone and the box broken and asked me to help him figure out what that telegram meant. It said,

"'Coming better call it phyllis BOB.'

"There's few men that can write a proper letter. We had to give it up. And as if that wasn't enough, when I got to the creamery I met Skinflint Holden and he told me there was a lot of disease amongst the cattle and the men all got together and had a meeting and made Jake Tuttle deputy marshal or something. It's a wonder Jake wouldn't say something. I suppose he thinks the few old cows we have here in town ain't worth saving.

"Well, anyhow, I was hurrying along so's not to be late and just as I turned Tumley's hedge didn't Bessie come out with her face swollen so she looked homelier than Theresa Meyer. It seems she had a birthday and Alex brought her a big box of chocolates and they give her the toothache. She went to Doc Mitchell but he put her off because he was regulating and pulling every tooth in Hank Lolly's head. She was just sick to think she had to miss Lilac Sunday and Mr. Courtney's last sermon, but she told me to be sure and listen and if he let on he was sorry he was leaving not to believe him, because he's had everything except the parlor furniture crated for a month. They've been eating off tin plates and drinking out of two enamel cups on the kitchen table. Bessie thinks that for a minister he's full of sin and self-pride. But I say even a minister—"

But at this point the hymn singing was over, the congregation settled itself in comfortable attitudes, and the careful Mr. Courtney rose to deliver his farewell sermon.

It was a sermon that stirred nobody. Green Valley was as glad to see the Reverend Courtney departing as he was to go. His one cautious reference to their pastorless state, for he did not know that Green Valley had already selected its new minister, brought not a line of worry to the faces turned so politely to the pulpit, for on Lilac Sunday and to a farewell sermon Green Valley was ever polite.

Green Valley, listening, thought with relief of the Sundays ahead and felt very much the way a hospitable housewife feels when an uncongenial guest departs and the home springs back to its old cheery order and family peace.

When the services were over Green Valley strolled out into the May sunshine in twos and threes and stood about as always in little groups to exchange the week's news. Billy Evans' new happiness, the ten-dollar gold piece and all its attending incidents were duly talked over. Under the horse chestnuts Max Longman was telling Colonel Stratton how the day before Sam Ellis had at last leased the hotel to a Chicago man. It was reported that there was to be no new barber shop, but that over on West Street a poolroom, also run by a city stranger, was already doing business. Several people had passed it that morning on their way to church and all said it had a peculiar appearance.

"Looks like one of those woebegone city dens, with its green plush curtains so you can't see what's going on inside. All it needs is fly specks on the windows and a strong smell at its side door. That'll come with time. I hear you can play billiards and pool in there and there's some slot machines for those too young to take a hand at cards."

So said Jake Tuttle, who now that he was a deputy sheriff on the watch for diseases threatening his and his neighbors' cattle, suddenly realized that there might be such a thing as a deputy sheriff to look out for the physical and moral health of humans.

Green Valley listened to Max Longman's announcement and Jake's comment and made up its mind to go around and see. Sam Ellis' withdrawal from business made Green Valley folks a little uneasy. The hotel in other hands might become a strange place. For a moment an uncomfortable feeling gripped those who heard. Sam, an old friend and a neighbor, with his genial good sense and old-fashioned hotel was one thing. A stranger from the big and wicked city was another.

Green Valley almost began to worry a bit. But on the way home this feeling wore off. How could things change? Why, there were the Spencer boys taking turns at the ice-cream freezer on the back porch. There was Ella Higgins coming out with a saucer of milk for her cat. Downer's barn door was open and any one could see by the new buggy that stood in it that Jack Downer's brother and family had driven in from the farm for a Sunday dinner and visit. Williamson's dog, Caesar, was tied up,—a sure sign that Mel and Emmy had gone off to see Emmy's folks over in Spring Road. The chairs in Widow Green's orchard told plainly that her sister's girls had come in from the city for the week-end. On the Fenton's front porch sat pretty Millie Fenton, waiting to put a flower in Robbie Longman's buttonhole. While everybody knew that just next door homely Theresa Meyer was putting an extra pan of fluffy soda biscuits into the oven as the best preparation for her beau.

So Green Valley looked and smiled and went joyously home to its fragrant, old-fashioned Sunday dinner. New elements might and would come but this smiling town would absorb them, mellow them to its own golden hue and go on its way living and rejoicing.

Cynthia's son went to dinner with the Ainslees. He walked with Mr. Ainslee while Nan and her brother went on ahead. Nan was almost noisily gay but no one seemed to be at all aware of it.

The dinner was delicious and went off without the least bit of embarrassment. At the table Nan was as suddenly still as she had been noisily gay. She let the men do the talking while she scrupulously attended to their wants. Once she forgot herself and while he was talking studied the face of Cynthia's son. Her father caught her at it and smiled. This made her flush and to even up matters she deliberately put salt instead of sugar into her father's after-dinner cup of coffee. Whereupon he, tasting the salt, made an irrelevant remark about handwriting on the wall.



CHAPTER IX

GREEN VALLEY MEN

Close on the heels of Lilac Sunday comes Decoration Day. And nowhere is it observed so thoroughly as in Green Valley.

The whole week preceding the day there is heard everywhere the whir of sewing machines. New dresses are feverishly cut and made; old ones ripped and remade. Hats are bought, old ones are retrimmed. Buggies are repainted and baby carriages oiled. Dick does a thriving business in lemons, picnic baskets, flags, peanuts and palm-leaf fans, these being things that Jessup's chronically forget to carry, regarding them as trifles and rather scornfully leaving them to Dick, who makes a point of having on hand a very choice supply.

This fury of work gradually dies down, to be followed by such an epidemic of baking that the old town smells like a sweet old bakery shop with its doors and windows wide open. There is then every evening a careful survey of the flower beds in the garden, a rigid economy of blossoms and even much skilful forcing of belated favorites.

The last day is generally given over to hat buying, the purchasing of the last forgotten fixings and clothes inspections. From one end of the town to the other clotheslines, dining-room chairs, porch rockers and upstairs bedrooms are overflowing with silk foulards, frilled dimities, beribboned and belaced organdies, not to mention the billows of dotted swiss and muslin.

On short clotheslines, stretched across corners of back and side porches or in the tree-shaded nooks of back yards, may be seen hanging the holiday garments of Green Valley men. But what most catches the eye are the old suits of army blue flapping gently in the spring breeze with here and there a brass button glinting. There are a surprising number of these suits of army blue just as there are a surprising number of graves in the little Green Valley cemetery over which, the long year through, flutters the small flag set there by loving hands each Decoration Day.

There are all manner of cleaning operations going on in full view of anybody and everybody who might be interested enough to look. For there is no streak of mean secretiveness in Green Valley folks.

This is the one time in the year when Widow Green takes off and "does up" the yellow silk tidy that drapes the upper right-hand corner of her deceased husband's portrait which stands on an easel in the darkest corner of her parlor. This little service is not the tender attention of a loving and grieving wife for a sadly missed husband but rather a patriotic woman's tribute to a man, who, worthless and cruel as a husband, had yet been a gallant and an honorable soldier.

As the widow sits on the back steps carefully washing the tidy in a hand basin and with a bar of special soap highly recommended by Dick, she looks over into the next yard and calls to Jimmy Rand and asks him whether he's going to march with the rest of the school children and will there be anything special on the programme this year. And he tells her sure he's going to march. Ain't he got a new pair of pants, a blouse, a navy blue tie and a new stickpin? And as for the programme, he warns her to watch out "fur us kids because we're going to be fixed up for something, but I dassent tell because it's a surprise the teachers got up."

This is the one day in the year when Jimmy Rand polishes his grandfather's shoes with scrupulous care and without demanding the usual nickel. He takes his payment in watching the blue army suit swaying on the line under the tall poplars and in hearing the crowds on Decoration Day shout themselves hoarse for old Major Rand.

It is the one time too when Old Skinflint Holden gets from his fellow citizens and neighbors a certain grave respect, for they all know that on the morrow among the men in blue will be this same Old Skinflint Holden with a medal on his breast.

Though every preparation has seemingly been made days ago, still that last night before the event is the very busiest time of all.

Joe Baldwin's little shop is crowded. Jake Tuttle is there with the four children, buying them the fanciest of footgear for the morrow. The two Miller boys, who work in the creamery until nine every night but have special leave this day to purchase holiday necessities, are standing awkwardly near Joe's side door and waiting patiently for Frankie Stevens and Dora Langely, better known as "Central," to depart with their black velvet slippers, before making any effort to have Joe try his wares on their awkward feet. Little Johnny Peterson comes in to inquire if Joe has sewed the buttons on his, Johnny's, shoes, and Martha Gray has a hard time trying to decide which of two pairs of moccasins are most becoming to her youngest baby. Any number of youths are hanging about waiting for Joe to get around to selling them a box of his best shoe polish and some, getting impatient, wait on themselves. Joe, with his spectacles pushed up into his hair, is rushing around from customer to customer and through it all is dimly conscious of the fact that outside under the awning Dolly Beatty is waiting anxiously for the men folks to get out before she ventures in to buy her Joe's special brand of corn salve and bunion plaster.

And so it is all the way down Main Street. In the gents' furnishings' corner of Peter Sweeney's dry-goods store Seth Curtis is buying a new hat, a little jaunty hat that seems to fit his head well enough but doesn't somehow become the rest of him. Seth looks best in a cap and always wears one except, of course, on such state occasions as the coming one. He asks the Longman boys how he looks in the brown fedora Pete has just put on his head and Max Longman laughs and wants to know what difference it makes how a married man with a bald spot looks. Then he turns away to pick out carefully the kind of tie that will make him most pleasing in Clara's sight on the morrow.

In the ladies' department of that same store Jocelyn Brownlee is asking for long, white silk gloves. A little hush falls on the crowd of feminine shoppers as Mrs. Pete gets the stepladder, mounts it and brings down with a good deal of visible pride a pasteboard box containing six pairs of white silk gloves that Pete bought three years ago in a moment of incomprehensible madness, a thing which Mrs. Pete has never until this minute forgiven him.

Jocelyn, pretty, eager, unaffected, selects the very first pair and is wholly unconscious of the stir she has made. It is only when David Allan comes up and asks her if she is ready that she becomes confused and conscious of the watching eyes of the other buyers.

She has promised to go to the Decoration Day exercises with David and has hurried to buy gloves for the occasion not knowing, in her city innocence, that gloves aren't the style in Green Valley, leastways not for any outdoor festival.

David watches the gloves being wrapped up and that reminds him that it wouldn't hurt to buy a new buggy whip, one of the smart ones with the bit of red, white and blue ribbon on its tip that he saw standing in Dick's window.

So he and Jocelyn go off together to get the whip. It is the first time that Jocelyn has been out in the village streets after nightfall and she looks about her with eager eyes.

"My—how pretty the streets look and sound! It's ever so much prettier than village street scenes on the stage!" she confides to David. And David laughs and takes her over to Martin's for a soda and then, because it is still early, he coaxes her to walk about town with him and as a final treat they stop in front of Mary Langely's millinery shop.

Mary Langely's shop stands right back of Joe Baldwin's place on the next street. Mary is a widow with two girls. Dora is the Green Valley telephone operator and Nellie is typist and office girl for old Mr. Dunn who is Green Valley's best real estate and lawyer man. He sells lots, now and then a house, writes insurance and draws up wills, collects bills or rather coaxes careless neighbors to settle their accounts, and he absolutely does not believe in divorce or woman suffrage. These two matters stir the gentle little man to great wrath. His wife is even a gentler soul than he is. She is the eldest of the Tumleys, sister of George Hoskins' wife and to Joe Tumley, the little man with a voice as sweet as a skylark's.

You go to Mr. Dunn's office through a little low gate and you find an old, deep-eaved, gambrel-roofed house with a hundred little window panes smiling at you from out its mantle of ivy. You love it at once but you don't go in right away, because the great old trees won't let you. You go and stand under them and wonder how old they are and lay your hand caressingly on the fine old trunks. And then you see the myrtle and violets growing beneath them and near the house clumps of daisies and forget-me-nots. And then you spy the beehives and the quaint old well and you walk through the cool grape arbor right into the little kitchen, where Mrs. Dunn, as likely as not, is making a cherry pie or currant jell or maybe a strawberry shortcake. She is a delicious and an old-fashioned cook. Why, she even keeps a giant ten-gallon cooky jar forever filled with cookies, although there are now no children in this sweet old manse. Nobody now but Nellie Langely who goes home every night to the millinery shop where she helps her mother make and sell the bonnets that have made Mary Langely famous in all the country round.

Green Valley folks have never quite gotten over wondering about Mary Langely. When Tom Langely was alive Mary was a self-effacing, oddly silent woman. People said she and Tom were a queer pair. Tom had great ambitions in almost every direction. He even made brave beginnings. But that was all. Then one day, in the midst of all manner of ambitious enterprises, he grew tired of living and died. And then it was that Mary Langely rose from obscurity and made Green Valley rub its eyes. For within a week after Tom's death she had gathered together all the loose ends of things that he had started, clapped a frame second story on the imposing red brick first floor of the house Tom had begun, converted this first floor into a store, and inside of a month was selling hats to women who hadn't until then realized they needed a hat.

There were more electric bulbs and mirrors in Mary's shop than in any three houses in Green Valley. That was why it was always the gayest spot in town on the night preceding any holiday.

It was interesting and pleasant to watch through the brightly lighted windows and the wide double glass doors the women trying on the gay creations and hovering over the heaps of flowers and glittering ornaments heaped upon the counters.