Green Valley | Page 3

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 to answer.
"From the middle of next May on into early June."
The stranger smiled his thanks in a way that made Martin look at his clerk with a mournful eye.
"Jee-rusalem! Now, Eddie, why can't you smile like that? Say, if I had that fellow behind this soda counter I'd be doing a rushing business every night."
When the Limited was again winging its way toward the Golden West and train life had settled down to its regular routine, one dining-car waiter was saying to another:
"Yes, sah--the gentleman