said he was ready
to take town orders at any time. He optimistically declared that his
faith in the old town was firmly fixed. That optimism was entirely in
accord with Mr. Harnden's past professions; and nobody wondered much,
because he was so foolish. But he was not wholly a fool in that matter.
He had only about a fifty-per-cent faith in Egypt--he insisted on that
much discount when he took in a town order. Even at that rate, Ossian
Orne did insist that Harnden was a complete fool. Orne would not take
town orders for his nursery stock. But Orne's nose was out of joint, it
was generally agreed. Harnden's lithographs showed apples twice as big
as Orne's book did; the pears fairly oozed sweetness from their plump,
pictured mellowness; there were peaches that provoked folks to make
funny noises at the corners of their mouths when the optimistic Harnden
flipped a page and brought the fruit to view. Nobody had ever heard of
a peach tree growing among the rocks of Egypt. On the other hand, nobody
supposed that a town order on the Egypt treasury was worth anything, as
things stood. There were folks who bought peach trees!

And in the meantime there was much clatter in and about the old Britt
house, tumble of timbers and rip of wainscotings and snarl of drawing
nails. Out from the gaping windows floated the powdery drift of the
plastering which the broad shovels had tackled. The satirists said that
it was noticeable that the statue of Tasper Britt in the cemetery had
settled down heavier on its heels, as if making grimly sure that Hittie
was staying where she could not interfere.

In the meantime, also, Tasper Britt and a hired girl had become fixtures
in the Harnden home--and the hired girl was quite in love with Vona and
in entire sympathy with her stand; the girl brought to Vona's room the
tidbits of all the meals and offered to put tacks in Britt's doughnuts
if that would help matters any.

Vona was entirely serene in her companionship with her father and her
mother. As for Tasper Britt, in sitting room or hall, on the street or
on the lawn of the Harndens, he was ignored as completely, yet sweetly,
as if he were an innocuous dweller in the so-called Fourth Dimension--to
be seen through--even walked through--a mere shade, uninterred,
unhonored, and unwarranted.

Tasper Britt, relentlessly on the job of punishing those who had
poisoned his pride and his peace of mind, acknowledged to himself that
the attitude of this g