Green Valley | Page 6

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and a basket of nuts or apples maybe under his workbench. He is never
lonely nor does he miss a bit of news though he seldom goes anywhere
but to the barber shop on Saturdays and to church on Sundays.
Out on her sunny cellar steps sits Mrs. Jerry Dustin, sorting onion sets

and seed potatoes. She is a little, rounded old lady with silvery hair, the
softest, smoothest, fairest of complexions, forget-me-not eyes and a
smile that is as gladdening as a golden daffodil. Few people know that
she has in her heart a longing to see the world, a longing so intense, a
life-long wanderlust so great that had she been a man it would have
swept her round the globe. But she has never crossed the State line. She
has big sons and daughters who all somehow have inherited their
father's stay-at-home nature. Her youngest boy, Peter, however, is only
seventeen and on him she has built her last hopes. He, like herself, has
a gipsy song in his heart and she often dreams of the places they will
visit together.
And while she is waiting for Peter to grow up she travels about and
around Green Valley. She wanders far up the Glen Road into the deep
fairy woods between Green Valley and Spring Road. Here she strays
alone for hours, searching for ferns and adventure.
Once a week she rides away to the city where she spends the morning
in the gay and crowded stores and the afternoon in the Art Institute. She
never wearies of seeing pictures. She never, if she can help it, misses an
exhibition, and whenever the day's doings have not tired her too much
this little old lady will steal off to the edge of the great lake and dream
of what lies in the world beyond its rim. She often wishes she could
paint the restless stretch of water but though she knows its every mood
and though she is a wonderful judge of pictures she can not reproduce
except in words the lovely nooks and beauty spots of her little world.
Perhaps it is this knowledge of her limitations that causes that little
strain of wistful sadness to creep into her voice sometimes and that
sends her very often out beyond the town, south along Park Lane to the
little Green Valley cemetery.
She loves to read on the mossy stones the unchanging little histories, so
brief but so eloquent, some of them. The stone that interests her most
and that each time seems like a freshly new adventure is the simple
shaft that bears no name, no date, just the tenderly sweet and pathetic
little message:

"I miss Thee so."
Mrs. Jerry Dustin knows very well for whom that low green bed was
made and who has had that little message of lonely love cut into stone.
But she longs to know the rest of the story.
Sometimes she has a real adventure. It was here at the cemetery one
day that she met Bernard Rollins, the artist. He was out sketching the
fields that lie everywhere about, rounding and rolling off toward the
horizon with the roofs of homesteads and barns just showing above the
swells, with crows circling about the solitary clusters of trees, and men
and horses plodding along the furrows.
No artist could have passed Mrs. Jerry Dustin by, for in her face and
about her was the beauty that she had for years fed her soul. So Rollins
spoke to her that summer day and they are friends now, great friends.
She visits his studio frequently and he tells her all about France or
Venice or wherever he has spent his busy summer. And she sits and
listens happily.
Rollins bought out what used to be in Chicago's young days an old
tavern and half-way house. It was a dilapidated old ruin, crumbling
away in a shaggy old orchard full of gnarled and ancient apple trees,
satin-skinned cherry trunks, some plums and peaches, and tangled
shrubs of all kinds.
With the aid of his wife Elizabeth, some dollars and much work,
Rollins transformed the old ruin into the sort of a country place that one
reads about and imagines only millionaires may have. They say that
when Old Skinflint Holden saw the transformation he stood stock-still,
then tied his team to the artistic hitching post under the old elms and
went in search of Rollins. He found him in the orchard in the laziest of
hammocks literally worshipping the flowering trees all about him. Old
Skinflint Holden was awed.
"Jehohasaphat! Bern, how did you do it?"
"Oh," smiled the artist, "we cleaned and patched it, put on a new bit

here and there and sort of nursed it into shape. Doc Philipps gave us