Green Valley

Valley is dear at all times. But what most touc

e, or Lilac Sunday, is Green Valley's very own glad day. It is in the spring what Thanksgiving is in the fall and wanderers

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

tender greens of spring. Her eyes drank in its beauty and then fell on two huge per

ke off the first and was about to gather the other when Cyn

or you. You will

ably embarrassed. She flushed

d seem lovelier than mine. This is Lilac Sunday and I thought-perhaps nobody tol

affair, so disconcerted, she who was always so coo

ain, I underst

deepened. She stiffene

slike ministers. They always understand everything. You just ca

look a little start

e me as a minister. I don'

eyes and though he looked at her she knew that he didn't see her; that he was looking beyond her at some one

er 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 ver

. 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 dismis

en though she knew that the tall boy beside her was flushing a painful red and slo

ut you a few more sprays

ut 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 a

es and the blue waters of Italy, in order to be at home in tim

groups of her townspeople coming down the village streets toward the

e 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 lav

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 w

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 p

ys looked pretty. This particular Lilac Sunday she was wearing the sprigged

ant plumes so that the church would be sweet with the breath of spring. Later, these armfuls of beauty would

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 critic

ster,-full of what he called righteous wrath. But he went

o listen to. He spoke earnestly of the world's terrible need of salvation, the fearful necessity for haste and wholesale repentance

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 ma

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, bar

-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

at 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

d 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

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 p

aimlessly. It was the tolling of the church bell and the smell

and he's red-headed just like He

ersen's Woods, fairy green and already full of deep shadowed aisles, full of fretted beaut

y murmured Billy Evans. In high heaven the angels, and in

is face drawn and eyes full of fear for the man and woman who had be

merest breath of a whisper. Hank wiped his face in limp relief and sat down qui

t 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 go

g 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

e mental powers of Hank, that soul just

d 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

g the enormity of the req

ight 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 j

employer with such terror in every line of hi

to go to church?" Hank's voice fairly squeaked

here was an

nd muscle of his still flabby body

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, disturb

undertaking once more sweeping over him, Hank searched for his bandanna and wipe

till there in the morning sun glistened the green grove and through the holiness of the spring morning tolled the o

of swallowing his tenth cornmeal pancake dripping with maple syrup Hank had a

ch 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

y Ainslee's just as she was entering the church door and B

rth'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

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

why Grandma Wentworth had not put in an appearance, and knowi

is no place for you. This is just the place for a boy who gets severa

get all my teeth pulled like Hank is going to do. Why, say, Nan, just the sight

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

some hitch in her domestic affairs. She always explained to the congregation afterward just what had caused her d

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

hairpins she put her hair up temporarily with two knitting needles or lead pencils or anything like that that came handy, stopped at J

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, slipp

he usual explanations, only stopping to exclaim over Barney-"Land sakes,

e 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 bri

ter call it

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

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 leavi

ation settled itself in comfortable attitudes, and the c

us reference to their pastorless state, for he did not know that Green Valley had already selected its new minister, brought not a l

very much the way a hospitable housewife feels when an uncongenial guest

l 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 b

e. All it needs is fly specks on the windows and a strong smell at its side door. That'll come with time. I hear y

threatening his and his neighbors' cattle, suddenly realized that there might be suc

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.

y 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

oned Sunday dinner. New elements might and would come but this smiling town would a

Mr. Ainslee while Nan and her brother went on ahead. Nan was

rupulously 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 ev