"I have come to tell you that I am to be married to John Roger
Churchill Knight. I have told no one but you and Grandma. I have
promised to marry him in June, so I haven't much time to get ready.
I'm hoping, Fanny, that you will come and help out."

At that, of a sudden all the old-time zest for living, the joy of
seeing, hearing and doing, surged to Fanny's very throat and force of
habit brought the words.

"Oh, land alive, Nanny," fairly gurgled the old Fanny, "such a time as
we've had in Green Valley! It was that awful cold spell after
Christmas that began it. Old man Pelley died--of complications--and
everybody thought Mrs. Dudley would sing hymns of praise in public,
they'd fought so about their chickens. But I declare if she didn't cry
about the hardest at the funeral and even blamed herself for
aggravating him.

"Of course him dying left old Mrs. Pelley alone in a big house, and her
being pretty feeble, she felt that Harry and Ivy ought to come and live
with her. Well,--Ivy went--but she vowed that there were two things
she would do, mother-in-law or no mother-in-law. She said she'd put as
many onions in her hamburger steak and Irish stew as she pleased--you
know Mrs. Pelley can't stand onions--and she'd have a fire in the
fireplace as often as the fancy struck her. Everybody thought there'd
be an awful state of things--but land--now that Mrs. Pelley has got
used to the open fire you can't drive her away from it with a stick and
she don't seem to bother her head about Ivy's cooking and last week she
actually ate three helpings of hamburger steak that Ivy said was just
reeking with onions.

"A body's never too old to learn, I suppose. There's Henry Rawlins
suddenly took the notion to quit smoking. Ettie'd been at him for
twenty-five years with twenty good reasons to quit, but no. And all of
a sudden--when Ettie's give up hope and not mentioned it for a couple
of months--he up and quits and won't even tell why. Ettie's
worried--says he's eating himself out of house and home and wants to
sleep about twenty-four hours a day.

"Talking about houses makes me think that the Stockton girls are having
their house painted by a man with a wooden leg. Billy Evans picked him
up somewhere and Seth Curtis was telling me how he came to lose that
leg. Seems like he was prospecting somewheres in Montana, got drunk,
froze it, gangrene set in and they had to amputate. They say he's a
mighty smart man too. May