Green Valley

Socially ambitious matrons move out of it, or, if that is not possible, despise it. Real estate m

ccident, says that once, when the Limited was stalled at the Old Roads Corner,

ldn't have been anything less than a

What peace-a

to come to when you have lost your last friend." And

y guessed, must have been the alderman's wife,

so you get all the sweet smells from Grandma Wentworth's herb garden and all

m one old maid relative to another till in Ella's time it does seem as if every wild and home flower that ever bloomed was fairly rooted and represented there. I

get-me-nots are known clear over in Bloomingdale and bespoken by flower lovers in Spring Road. And as for her tulips, well-ther

la's place was all right but that it had no style or system, and that you couldn't have a proper

ssly pinned up and two wide-open brown eyes fairly aching with curiosity. You have to know Fanny a long time before the poignant wistfulness of her clutches at your heart, before you can know the singular sweetness of her nature. And even when you come to love her you keep wishing that her collars were pinned on straight and that her skirts were hung evenly at the bottom. Th

nly when you know how cozily Green Valley sets in its hollows, how quaintly its old tree-shaded roads dip and wander about over little sunny hills and through still, dee

ts little warm winds are straying, looking for tulip beds and spring borders. The sunshine that elsewhere looks thin and pale drops warmly

lings of robins, bluebirds, red-winged blackbirds and bobolinks. While somewhere from the swaying tops of la

reek the new grass is peeping. The sunny clearing back of Petersen's woods will be full of mus

children and the low-dropping honk of the wild geese that in a scarcely quivering line are sailing north

y's squatty, weathered little farmhouse. The eastern windows of this little silver-gray house are gay with blossoming house plants and across

and is called Lovers' Lane because it curves and winds mysteriously through a l

and as tidy as himself. He is a bachelor, but years ago he took little David from the dead arms of an unhappy, wild young stepsister and has brought him up as his own. People used to know the reasons why Roger Allan had never

far enough out beyond Petersen's pasture you would most certainly fall off. She also believes that only Lutherans like herself can go to heaven. But to-day, beside the open window, with a soft,

tent stove for cold ones. Nobody but Grandma Wentworth and such other folks like Roger Allan ever suspect the real reason for all those comfortable sitting-down places in Joe's shop. And Joe never tells a soul that it is just an idea of his for keeping his own two boys and the boys of other men under his eye. In Joe's gentle opinion the hotel and livery barn and blacksmith shop are not exactly the best plac

. Few people know that she has in her heart a longing to see the world, a longing so intense, a life-long wanderlust so great that had she been a man it would have swept her round the globe. But she has never crossed the State line. She has big sons and daughters wh

ley. She wanders far up the Glen Road into the deep fairy woods between Green Valley

an exhibition, and whenever the day's doings have not tired her too much this little old lady will steal off to the edge of the great lake and dream of what lies in the world beyond its rim. She often wishes she co

f wistful sadness to creep into her voice sometimes and that sends her very ofte

e of them. The stone that interests her most and that each time seems like a freshly new adventure i

ss Th

d was made and who has had that little message of lonely lov

hing the fields that lie everywhere about, rounding and rolling off toward the horizon with the roofs of homesteads and barns just

her soul. So Rollins spoke to her that summer day and they are friends now, great friends. She visits his studio frequen

was a dilapidated old ruin, crumbling away in a shaggy old orchard full of gnarled and ancient a

lionaires may have. They say that when Old Skinflint Holden saw the transformation he stood stock-still, then tied his team to the artistic hitching post under the old elms

! Bern, how d

there and sort of nursed it into shape. Doc Philipps gave us bulbs and seeds

nflint Holden. "Must have

ch as love. If you use plenty of that you can economize on the money som

ng about. His great star was money. He had had a chance to buy the old tavern but had seen no possibilities in it of

hildren calls flags, over to one corner looking so darn pretty, like a chunk of sky had droppe

gate without having tucked somewhere into the many pockets about his big person a stout trowel, some choice apple seeds, peach and cherry stones or seedlings of trees and shrubs. In every ramble, and he is a great walker, he searches for a spot where a tree seedling might grow

r daughter-in-law, Mrs. George Howe. She is a regal old lady of eighty-three and spends most of he

family portraits and there is the wonderful Madam herself, regal and silver-haired. If she likes you she will take you to her great room and tell you about the Revolutionary War as it happened in and to her family; and about her great r

ses and bits of lace and samplers like the one that hangs fram

WINSLO

e

well she will tell you of the wonderful love stories that were enacted on that settee. She will begin away, away back with some great-great-grandmother or some great-grand-aunt and come gradually down to her own time and history; and as she tells of the young yea

stroll through its tree-guarded old streets, and at every turn taste romance and adventure, revel in beauty of

tle undistinguished depot just as the 6:10 pulls in, you will see pouring joyously out of it the Green Valley men, th

nd hand greetings to the home folks and the store propr

ewhere. In somebody's chicken coop a frightened, dozing hen gargles its throat and then goes to sleep again. The frogs along Silver Creek and in Wimple's pond are going full bla

the world into a new, tingling beauty. She sees the lacy loveliness of the birc

anny will be here soon now. And who knows! Cynthia's