Green Valley Part 9

"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 hoa.r.s.ely, 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.

f.a.n.n.y Foster had found time to run down to Jessup's and buy the bride a first-cla.s.s tablecloth and some towels. f.a.n.n.y 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," f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 a.s.sured 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 s...o...b..ll time instead of springtime in Green Valley, I'd s...o...b..ll 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 pa.s.s 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 embarra.s.sed. 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 n.o.body 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 embarra.s.sed.

"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.