r by, the distant whetting of a
scythe, the monotonous whang of a steam thresher not far away, the happy
voices of children, and thought how empty a life in this village would
be; almost as dreary and uninteresting as living in a desert--and then
suddenly she caught a name and the pink flew into her cheeks and memory
set her heart athrob.

It was the landlord talking to a lingering summer boarder, a quiet,
gray-haired woman who sat reading at the end of the piazza.

"Well, Miss Norton, so you're goin' to leave us next week. Sorry to hear
it. Don't seem nat'ral 'thout you clear through October. Ca'c'late
you're comin' back to Granville in the spring?"

Granville! Granville! Where had she heard of Granville? Ah! She knew
instantly. It was his old home! His mother lived there! But then of
course it might have been another Granville. She wasn't even sure what
state they were in now, New Hampshire or Vermont. They had been wavering
about on the state line several times that day, and she never paid
attention to geography.

Then the landlord raised his voice again.

He was gazing across the road where a white colonial house, white-fenced
with pickets like clean sugar frosting, nestled in the luscious grass,
green and clean and fresh, and seeming utterly apart from the soil and
dust of the road, as if nothing wearisome could ever enter there.
Brightly there bloomed a border of late flowers, double asters, zinnias,
peonies, with a flame of scarlet poppies breaking into the smoke-like
blue of larkspurs and bachelor buttons, as it neared the house. Hazel
had not noticed it until now and she almost cried out with pleasure over
the splendour of colour.

"Wal," said the landlord chinking some loose coins in his capacious
pockets, "I reckon Mis' Brownleigh'll miss yeh 'bout as much as enny of
us. She lots on your comin' over to read to her. I've heerd her say as
how Amelia Ellen is a good nurse, but she never was much on the readin',
an' Amelia Ellen knows it too. Mis' Brownleigh she'll be powerful
lonesome fer yeh when yeh go. It's not so lively fur her tied to her bed
er her chair, even ef John does write to her reg'lur twicet a week."

And now Hazel noticed that on the covered veranda in front of the wing
of the house across the way there sat an old lady on a reclining wheeled
chair, and that another woman in a plain blue gown hovered near waiting
upon her. A luxuriant woodbine partly hid the chair, and the distance
was too