arts of robin's-egg blue paint. You know
that's Uncle Tony's favor-ite woodwork paint and nobody goes in there
for paint but what he's trying to get them to buy robin's-egg blue.
Seems his mother's kitchen on the old farm was done that way and Uncle
Tony's never been able to see any other color.

"Well, I thought those four cans of paint was about the highest kind of
good luck but when Mrs. Dustin give her message I nearly fell dead, and
as for them old he-gossips they were about paralyzed, I guess. Why
even you, Grandma, couldn't hardly guess what that message was;" here
Fanny pulled up a sagging stocking and hurried on lest she should be
interrupted.

"It was nothing more nor less than that Bernard Rollins, the artist,
wants to paint Uncle Tony's portraiture. 'And, of course, Tony,' said
Mrs. Dustin in that sweet way of hers, 'you won't refuse, will you?'
And I declare the lovely way she looked at him and he at her I come
near believing Sadie might be right by accident. But, land--in this
town everybody has growed up with everybody else and somebody is always
saying that somebody is sweet on somebody else or was when he or she
were young.

"So there's that portraiture to look forward to. And now there's that
yarn that some careless busybody started about Nanny Turner being left
a fortune of eighteen thousand dollars. Everybody's been crazy,
praising her luck to her face and envying her behind her back.
Everybody most but Dell Parsons. Dell felt sick when she heard it
because she and Nanny have been such friends and Dell just knew that no
matter how they'd both try to keep things the same there'd always be
that eighteen-thousand-dollar difference between them when now there's
nothing dividing them but a little low honeysuckle fence with a gate
cut through it. And there would, of course. Nanny'd be on one side,
cutting aprons out of nice new gingham, and Dell'd be on the other,
cutting _her_ aprons out of Jim's old shirt backs.

"But as soon as Nanny heard it she up and told everybody it wasn't so,
that she and Will wouldn't thank anybody for a fortune now that they've
paid for their home and garden.

"I met Jessie Williams in the drug store. She was buying dye to do
over her last year's silk and she says Nanny was a fool to contradict a
fine story like that. That she should have said nothing and used the
rumor to her social advantage. Jessie says that story alone would have
brought that uppish Mrs. Br