"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.