Green Valley | Page 3

filled the room.
Outside little day noises were dying out.
"Grandma dear, don't you worry about me. I intend to marry a Green
Valley man if possible. But even if I didn't I'd always come back to
Green Valley."
"No, you wouldn't. You couldn't, any more than Cynthia could. Cynthia
loved this town better even than you love it. Yet she is lying under
strange stars in a foreign land, far from her old home. Her father, they
say, is dying in California. I suppose the old Churchill place will go
now unless Cynthia's son comes back to take it over. But that isn't
likely."

"Why--did Cynthia Churchill leave a son?" wondered Nanny.
"Yes. He must be a few years older than you. He was born and raised in
India. 'Tisn't likely he'd come to Green Valley now that he's a man
grown. Still, if Joshua Churchill dies out there in California, that boy
will come into all his grandfather's property."
"Well," Nanny stood up and walked to the window from which she
could see the fine old home of the Churchills, "if any one willed me a
lovely old place like that Churchill homestead I'd come from the moon
to claim it, let alone India."
"Nanny, are you sure there's no boy now in Green Valley who could
keep you from roaming? I thought maybe Max Longman or Ronny
Deering--"
"No--no one yet, Grandma. I like them all--but love--no. Love, it seems
to me, must be something very different."
"Yes, I know," sighed Grandma.
When Uncle Tony returned from viewing the wreck he assured his
townsmen that it was a wreck of such beautiful magnitude that traffic
on the Northwestern would be tied up for twenty-four hours. It was
feared that Mr. Ainslee would not be able to get his train and would
have to drive five miles to the other railroad.
However Uncle Tony was reckoning things from a Green Valley point
of view. As a matter of fact the wreckage was sufficiently cleared away
so that the eastbound trains were running on time. It was the westbound
ones that were stalled. The Los Angeles Limited Pullmans stood right
in the Green Valley station. They were still standing there when Nanny
and her father came to take the 10:27 east.
Perhaps nothing could explain so well Nanny Ainslee's popularity as
the gathering of folks who came to see her off.
Fanny had stopped at the drug store and bought some headache pills.

"This excitement and hurry and you not scarcely eating any supper is
apt to give you a bad headache. They'll come handy. And here's some
seasick tablets. Martin says they're the newest thing out. And oh,
Nanny, when you're seeing all those new places and people just take an
extra look for me, seeing as I'll never know the color of the ocean."
Uncle Tony was tending to Nanny's hand luggage and in his heart
wishing he could go along, even though he knew that one week spent
away from his beloved hardware store would be the death of him.
It was a neighborly crowd that waited for the 10:27. And as it waited
Jim Tumley started singing "Auld Lang Syne." He began very softly
but soon the melody swelled to a clear sweetness that hushed the
laughing chatter and stilled the shuffling feet of the Pullman passengers
who crowded the train vestibules or strolled in weary patience along the
station platform.
Then the 10:27 swung around the curve and the good-bys began.
"So long, dear folks! I shall write. Don't you dare cry, Grandma. I'll be
back next lilac time. Remember, oh, just remember, all you Green
Valley folks, that I'll be back when the lilacs bloom again!"
Nanny's voice, husky with laughter and tears, rippled back to the
cluster of old neighbors waving hats and handkerchiefs. They watched
her standing in the golden light of the car doorway until the train
vanished from their sight. Then they drifted away in twos and threes.
From the dimmest corner of the observation platform a man had
witnessed the departure of Nanny Ainslee. He had heard Jim's song,
had caught the girl's farewells. And now he was delightedly repeating
to himself her promise--"I'll be back when the lilacs bloom again."
Then quite suddenly he stepped from the train and made his way to
where the magenta-pink and violet lights of Martin's drugstore glowed
in the night. He bought a soda and some magazines and asked the
druggist an odd question.

"When," asked the stranger, smiling, "will the lilacs bloom again in this
town?"
Martin, who for hours had been rushing madly about, waiting on the
thirsty crowd of stalled visitors, stopped to stare. But he answered.
Something in the mysteriously rich face of the big, brown boy made
him eager