Green Valley

by Katharine Yirsa Reynolds

Mary Langely's shop stands right back of Joe Baldwin's place on the next street. Mary is a widow with two girls. Dora is the Green Valley telephone operator and Nellie is typist and office girl for old Mr. Dunn who is Green Valley's best real estate and lawyer man. He sells lots, now and then a house, writes insurance and draws up wills, collects bills or rather coaxes careless neighbors to settle their accounts, and he absolutely does not believe in divorce or woman suffrage. These two matters stir the gentle little man to great wrath. His wife is even a gentler soul than he is. She is the eldest of the Tumleys, sister of George Hoskins' wife and to Joe Tumley, the little man with a voice as sweet as a skylark's.

You go to Mr. Dunn's office through a little low gate and you find an old, deep-eaved, gambrel-roofed house with a hundred little window panes smiling at you from out its mantle of ivy. You love it at once but you don't go in right away, because the great old trees won't let you. You go and stand under them and wonder how old they are and lay your hand caressingly on the fine old trunks. And then you see the myrtle and violets growing beneath them and near the house clumps of daisies and forget-me-nots. And then you spy the beehives and the quaint old well and you walk through the cool grape arbor right into the little kitchen, where Mrs. Dunn, as likely as not, is making a cherry pie or currant jell or maybe a strawberry shortcake. She is a delicious and an old-fashioned cook. Why, she even keeps a giant ten-gallon cooky jar forever filled with cookies, although there are now no children in this sweet old manse. Nobody now but Nellie Langely who goes home every night to the millinery shop where she helps her mother make and sell the bonnets that have made Mary Langely famous in all the country round.

Green Valley folks have never quite gotten over wondering about Mary Langely. When Tom Langely was alive Mary was a self-effacing, oddly silent woman. People said she and Tom were a queer pair. Tom had great ambitions in almost every direction. He even made brave beginnings. But that was all. Then one day, in the midst of all manner of ambitious enterprises, he grew tired of living and died. And then it was that Mary Langely rose from obscurity and made Green Valley rub its eyes. For within a week after Tom's death she had gathered together all the loose ends of things that he had started, clapped a frame second story on the imposing red brick first floor of the house Tom had begun, converted this first floor into a store, and inside of a month was selling hats to women who hadn't until then realized they needed a hat.

There were more electric bulbs and mirrors in Mary's shop than in any three houses in Green Valley. That was why it was always the gayest spot in town on the night preceding any holiday.

It was interesting and pleasant to watch through the brightly lighted windows and the wide double glass doors the women trying on the gay creations and hovering over the heaps of flowers and glittering ornaments heaped upon the counters.

Jocelyn and David stood in the soft shadow of an old elm and while they watched David explained the customers going in and coming out. He told her that the tall straight woman buying the spray of purple lilacs for her last year's hat was the Widow Green. The short, waddly woman trying on the wide hat with the pink roses was Bessie Williams. The tall girl with the pretty braids wound round her head was Bonnie Don, big Steve Meckling's sweetheart. Steve, David explained, was so foolishly in love that he was ready to commit murder if another lad so much as looked at Bonnie.

The tall quiet man buying hats and ribbons for his girls was John Foster. And the little bow-legged one, with the hard hat two sizes too big, was Hen Tomlins who always went shopping with his wife.

So Green Valley made its purchases and hastened home to pack its lunch basket and lay out all its clothes on the spare-room bed. Even as David and Jocelyn walked home through the laughing streets, lights were being winked out in the lower living rooms only to flash out somewhere up-stairs where the family was wisely going to bed early. No one even glanced at the sky, for it was taken for granted that Green Valley skies would do their very best, as a matter of course.

When the last star began to fade and the first little breath of a new morning ruffled the soft gray silence a sudden sharp volley rang out. It was the Green Valley boys setting off cannon crackers in front of the bank. And it must be said right here that that first signal volley was about all the fireworks ever indulged in in Green Valley. This little town, nestling in the peaceful shelter of gentle hills and softly singing woods, naturally disliked harsh, ugly sounds and was moreover far too thrifty, too practical and sane a community to put firearms and flaming death into the hands of its children. Green Valley patriotism was of a higher order.

At that sharp volley Green Valley awoke with a start and a laugh and ran to put flags on its gateposts and porch pillars and loop bunting around its windows. And when the morning broke like a great pink rose and shed its rosy light over the dimpling hills and lacy, misty woodlands the old town was a-flutter with banners, everybody was about through with breakfast and certain childless and highly efficient ladies were already taking their front and side hair out of curl papers.