"Thank you," said the squire. "I'll give you a receipt, Alvin. I am coming to your shop to get me a pair of shoes," added the squire with twinkling eyes.
July changed to August and August to September. The cock's-comb in Grandmother Gaumer's garden—it is, to this day, Grandmother Gaumer's garden—thrust its orange and crimson spikes up through the low borders of sweet alyssum, the late roses bloomed, the honeysuckle put out its last and intensely fragrant sprays. In Millerstown busy life went on. Apple-butter boiling impended; already Sarah Ann and Bevy Schnepp saw in their minds' eyes a great kettle suspended from a tripod at the foot of Sarah Ann's yard, from which should presently rise into Sarah Ann's apple tree odors fit to propitiate the angry gods, odors compounded of apples and grape juice and spices. Round this pleasant caldron, with kilted skirts and loud chatterings, the women would move like energetic priestesses, guarding a sacred flame.
There came presently occasional evenings when it was not pleasant to be out of doors, when mothers called their children earlier into the warm kitchens and when men gathered in the store. Fall was at hand; Millerstown became quieter—if, an unobservant, unappreciative stranger would have said, Millerstown could have become any quieter than it was!
But Millerstown was still talking. Millerstown was now interested in another amazing event. Katy Gaumer was going away! The Millerstonians imparted it, the one to the other, with great astonishment.
"She will have her education now," said Sarah Ann with satisfaction. Then Sarah Ann's eyes filled with tears. Katy seemed to her to belong to the past; sometimes, indeed, to Sarah Ann's own generation. "I will miss Katy."
"Going to school!" cried little Mary Kuhns, who was now Mrs. Weimer. "Going to school when we are of an age and I have two children!"
"But I am not so fortunate as you, Mary," answered Katy.
Katy spoke with the ease of the preacher or the doctor; she seemed older than all her contemporaries.
"Going to school!" cried Susannah Kuhns. "You will surely be an old maid, Katy!"
"There are worse things to be," said Katy.