still white ones
that smell so sweet. You don't know how lonesome I get off here. I've
got that picture of you in the sunbonnet right where it's handy, but
how I wish I had a picture of you without the sunbonnet so's I could
see your face, and say, Grandma, since I've been alone out here I've
come to see the sense in praying now and then, and tell Freddy Williams
I'll knock the stuffin's out of him when I hit town which will be in
about two years at the latest. He knows what for. Is Hank Lolly still
talking his way into three square meals a day and drinks, and is all
the news still ground over at Uncle Tony's gossip factory and is Mert
Hagley as big a tightwad as ever and is it true that Billy Evans
married a red-headed girl from Bloomingdale and started a livery barn,
and has Green Valley got a minister yet that's suitable to you and
Uncle Roger Allan? I'll have to stop and run out to the mail box with
this. The nearest one is twenty-five miles away but that's near in
this country and now for pity's sake, Grandma, don't forget . . ."

She didn't forget a thing. The messages were all delivered, the seeds
sent off and every question fully answered. Grandma did more than
that. She had Nanny Ainslee take pictures of the various Green Valley
institutions while going full blast. How Tommy laughed at the familiar
faces in Uncle Tony's armchairs and at Hank Lolly leaning up against
the livery barn, and how homesick he grew as he looked at the crowd
getting off at the station, and the school children playing in the old
school yard where he used to play. The picture of Grandma Wentworth
and Carrie standing on Grandma's front porch hurt his throat and shook
him strangely. That was Tommy Dudley.

And there was Susie Melton. Grandma saved and remade Susie that time
she went to New York to see the world. Susie had taught a country
school for twenty years, ever since she was sixteen, and that trip to
New York was her first vacation. Susie was an innocent soul and the
very second day in the great city some heartless thief took everything
out of her purse but a two-cent stamp. Susie was panic-stricken and
the only thing she could think of was Grandma Wentworth's face. So she
took that stamp and sent a letter to Green Valley and it was Grandma
Wentworth who really managed that vacation though to this day nobody
but she herself knows how and she won't tell. Susie came back so
rejuvenated, with such color in her cheeks,