passed
around and read and all new photographs and the winter's crop of fancy
work exhibited and carefully examined.

Everybody talks so much that nobody listens very carefully, only half
hearing things. And when the spring madness and gladness begin to
settle and people start to repeat the things they only half heard
strange and weird tales are at times the result. And from these spring
still more fantastic rumors and versions that ripple over Green Valley
like waves of sunshine or cloud shadows, sometimes causing much joy and
merriment and sometimes considerable worry and uneasiness.

And all these rumors come eventually to Uncle Tony's where they are
solemnly examined, edited and frequently so enhanced and touched up in
color and form as to sound almost new. Then they are sent out again to
begin life all over. Many of them die but some live on and on, and
after a sufficient test of time become a part of the town chronicles.

Everybody, of course, takes a hand at helping a yarn get from house to
house but nobody makes such a specialty of this sort of social work as
Fanny Foster. There are some Green Valley folks who attribute Fanny's
up and down thinness to this wearing industry yet both men and women
are always glad to see her and her reports always drive blue cares away
and provoke ripples of sunny laughter.

Everybody in town has tried their hand at hating Fanny and despising
her and ignoring her and putting her in her place. But everybody has
long ago given it up. Stylish and convention-loving newcomers are
always disgusted and keep her at arm's length. But sooner or later
such people break an arm or a leg right in the midst of strawberry
canning maybe and it so happens that nobody sees them do this but
Fanny. And when this does happen they don't even have to mortify
themselves by calling her. She just comes of her own accord,
forgetting the cruel snubbings. She fixes that stand-offish person as
comfortable as can be, makes them laugh even, and telephones to the
doctor. Then she rolls up her sleeves and without so much as an apron
has those strawberries scientifically canned and that messy kitchen
beautifully clean.

And the curious, the pitifully, laughably incomprehensible part of it
is that in her own house Fanny absolutely never can seem to take the
least interest. Her own dishes are always standing about unwashed.
Her kitchen is spoken of in horrified whispers; her children,
buttonless, gar