Green Valley

sunshine. Somehow though the big trees sag and drip and the wind

and there, smile up at you from under big umbrellas. After the school bell rings the streets do get quiet but there i

arefully watching the street. Whenever anybody passes to whom she wants to talk she taps on the window with her thimble. She is a dear entertaining old soul bu

always leaves her kitchen door open while she is doing this because she say

likely Bessie sees you and comes running out with a few samples of her heavenly work. As you dispose of those cinnamon buns you forget that Bessie's voi

ngs that he loves. He has paid two hundred and fifty dollars apiece for those horses and is mighty proud of them. But Seth's temper is never good on a rainy day. Rain means no teaming and a money l

is life he has craved and been denied. Few of his neighbors know how he laughs and romps and s

He is wide and square-shouldered though short, has a round stubborn head of reddish hair with a promising bald spot, close-s

erheads of all sizes, up to Colonel Stratton's place. The

y located residence in Green Valley and like Doc Philipps has some of the most beautiful trees in town. The great silv

the colonel tends himself. In June it is a hedge of lovely wild roses followed a little later by masses of purple phlox. Then come the

hat it is he takes instead from his well-filled book shelves "The Decli

the colonel's house, lives and labors Joshua Stillman, a man with the most wonderful memory, the readiest ton

f doing what he loves to do and he squanders, as his friends truly suspect, much secret money of his own on it. T

live. He goes to the city every day and comes back early every afternoon. As he so seldom talks a

phold. He upholds them with great humor. Not only is he full of old war and family lore, but he has been mixed

ans and the little Chicago town built out on the mudflats. He remembers very well indeed the steady stream of ox-teams toiling over the few crude state roads. And

humor and wisdom. He is an easily traced descendant of the Scottish Stuarts. On a rainy day you will always find him busy writing up the history of his family.

our or five volumes of really good old-fashioned sermons, "books," as he will tell you with a twinkle in his eye, "that nobody could or would read nowadays.

s, and working in his garden. He has several ingenious methods of fighting

and memories and scholarly pursuits. They know little of the doings and talks that go on in Billy Evans' livery barn, or the hotel. They do, of course, go to the barber shop, the bank and the postoffice, and always when abroad give courteous greeting to every townsman. But they

e very heart of Green Valley's business life. Without turning your head scarcely you can keep an eye on Martin's drug store, keep tab on the comings and goings of the town's two doctors, and the hotel's arrivin

e acquaintances stand idly by and discuss the weather. Besides its mail, Green Valley usually buys two cents' wort

ging its name as permitting a new grocer to open up a rival store. And nobody dreams of disloyalty when buying trifles at the post-office. In fact housewives are open

pe of great things to come. And so though Green Valley buys only its yeast and buns over his little counter he is happy and wraps each purchase up carefully. And all the time he is thoughtfully, carefully setting out other handy things and aids to the harassed housewife. For with his giant patience Dick is waiting,-waiting and planning for a time that is coming, that he knows must come. He talks these matters over with no one except Joe Baldwin. He and Joe are great frie

rights and politics. Joe and Dick, both silent men, look with awe at John's great mental and discoursive powers. And because his

ave been repeatedly warned against him. But they are his loyal friends at all times. This three-cornered friendship i

d retold at church the next moraine and repeated through the countryside the week following,-pointing to Joe, Dick and John who all three happened to be going to the bank

ple that nobody else knows. And when any Green Valley folks go a-traveling they sooner or later write to Grandma Wentworth. Soon

t stranded somewhere in the western desert and Jamie wanted to come home. He knew that his mother would be glad to see h

-steading somewhere out West and who writes r

-a-gun of an Andrew Langly, if they thought she was having anything to do with a worthless heathen cuss like me. And say, Grandma, throw in some of your flower seeds, those right out of your own garden, you know, the tall ones along the fence and the little ones with the blue eyes and the still white ones that smell so sweet. You don't know how lonesome I get off here. I've got that picture of you in the sunbonnet right where it's handy, but how I wish I had a picture of you without the sunbonnet so's I could see your face, and say, Grandma, since I've been alone out here I've come to see the sense in praying now and then, and tell Freddy Williams I'll knock t

hile going full blast. How Tommy laughed at the familiar faces in Uncle Tony's armchairs and at Hank Lolly leaning up against the livery barn, and how homesick he grew as he looked at the crowd getting off at the station

sie was panic-stricken and the only thing she could think of was Grandma Wentworth's face. So she took that stamp and sent a letter to Green Valley and it was Grandma Wentworth who really managed that vacation though to this day nobody but she herself knows how and she won't tell. Susie came back so rejuvenated, with such color in her cheeks, such brightness in her eyes, and so much

As for Jake, he is so in love with his rosy little wife and his four good-looking children that he just goes on raising bumper crops without hardly knowing how he does it. And he says

st of us ain't any too wise while we stand beside a bar. And I'd ruther go home dead than go back to Susie and the children the least bit silly with liquor.

en as find the atmosphere in the hotel and blacksmith shop a litt

it off in his barns. And he is the only man in Green Valley who ever seriously hired Hank Lolly and kept him sober twelve hours at a stretch. The other business men make considerabl

terrible easy-going myself and I know just how kids like Charlie Pinley feel working for a man, a careful, exact man like Mr. James D. Austin. By gosh! if I had to work a whole week for Mr. Austin I'd kill myself. Never could stand too much neatness and worrying about time being money and hu

t the house. My old woman (Billy's wife was a pretty girl of twenty-three and still a bride) sides in with what I'm doing and she sets Hank down every day to three square meals. And a man just can't hold so much liquor on a comfortably filled stomach. Anyhow, Hank is doing fine and I'm putting a few dollars in the bank unbeknownst for him. I can't trust him just yet with any noticeable amount of cash. But I'm never down on him for his drinking. No, sir! Every time he feels that he must get drunk or die why he just comes up and tells me and I get him whatever he thinks he needs for his jag and let him get full right here where I can watch him. Why-Grandma, Hank has an easier life than I have. He doesn't need to worry about anything and he knows it. And I'll be goshed if I don'

nywhere. But all these five hours that the rain was a-sloshing me I kept thinking of them there apple dumplings with cream that Mrs. Evans makes (Hank a

ing. Anyway, Hank filled up so that he said he felt like a flour barrel with an apple tree a-sprouting out of it. And Do

e she steps in here. I'm goshed if this here stove don't get fuller of ashes quicker than any other stove in Green Valley. And you know the boys who come in here do spit about car

d the kid stole money. Well, now-Grandma, you know that's a hard thing to start out a boy in life with in a town of this size, especi

y, could you keep

e,' h

sawdust and rags somewheres in the barn. Ask Hank about them. And Barney,' I says, 'here's the money in

the change and help me get this business going lickety-split so's we'll all be rich together. For when the profits go up here the wages are going up. It isn't ju

n to a sixth man that come in here until I came in and made the deal. Never let go of him a minute and just entertained him to kill time and give me a chance to get here. And I'm going to buy some books to learn myself and Barney bookkeeping. We can't none of us keep books here and that dumbed account book is

zy way of doing things ever since that time when you sent me to the store fo

entworth laughed, too, laughed so hard that she ha

gs just so and listening to petitions for sunshine and petitions for rain and to prayers for automobiles and diamonds and interest on mortgages and silk stockings, death and babies that some days

ld to run his business. He's just using love,-plain, old-fashioned love,-and love is making money for Billy. He's picked out of the very gutters all the human waste and rubbish that the others, the wise business men, threw there and with the town's worst drunkard and half a dozen mistreated, m

as sweet and pretty as a picture-well-I just laugh. Nobody but God could have arranged things and balanced them up like that

just what Billy was doing in his droll, unconscious, warm-hearted way. Still Joe liked Billy. In fact, eve

n body, big in temper, big in his friendships, big in his drinks. He was indeed so big a man that he did not know how to be mean or little in any way. He did not know his own gre

Other women George did not see though he spoke to them on the street. He had pleaded on bended knees for the love of his tiny woma

rowd of lesser men, their husbands, gathered about him. They went home and told each other that George Hoskins wa

s shop some smug traveling man who had stepped into it to get in out of the rain and had mista

Valley. They are listed here to give the right sort of set