CHAPTER XIII
AUTUMN IN GREEN VALLEY
Joe Baldwin was standing in front of his little shop. He was bareheaded and that meant that he was worried. For it was only in moments of mental distress that Joe laid aside the black cap that gave him the look of a dashing driver of the Twentieth Century Limited.
In the autumn dusk a chilly little wind played about the street corners and wailed softly through the thinning tree-tops. The big lamp above Joe's workbench was unlighted so the little shop was in darkness except for the fitful wavering of the ruddy wood fire in the big stove.
The streets were empty and quiet. It was an hour after supper and Green Valley was indoors sitting about its first fires and talking of the coming winter; remembering cold spells of other years; thanking its stars that the coal bin was full and wondering whether it hadn't better put on its heaviest underwear.
Joe knew just about what Green Valley was thinking and saying. From where he stood he could see what a part of Green Valley was doing. For this early in the evening Green Valley never pulled down its shades. So when the lights flared out in the Wendells' west front up-stairs window Joe saw Mrs. Wendell go to the clothes closet and bring out various newspaper parcels. Joe knew very well that those parcels contained furs.
Furs and ferns were Mildred Wendell's two passions. She had furs of all sizes and colors and weights, beginning with the little muff and tippet her favorite aunt had given her long ago when she was only five to the really beautiful and expensive set her son, Charlie, had given her for her last birthday. As for ferns, she had so many that Green Valley always went to her for its wedding and funeral decorations. And she was only too happy to lend her collection of feathery beauty.
From where he stood on his doorstep Joe could look down three streets and see Green Valley in its shirt sleeves and slippers and its gingham apron, so to speak. He could look over the white sash curtains right into Mert Hagley's kitchen for Mert lived behind his store. Joe saw Mary, Mert's wife, turning the pages of the evening paper and studying the advertisements. And he knew as well as he knew his own name that Mary was talking to Mert about a new heater, begging him to buy a nice new hard-coal heater instead of the second-hand hot blast stove he was thinking of buying from some man in Spring Road.
John Henderson had another one of his bad headaches for Joe saw him lying on the dining-room couch. His wife was applying cold-water bandages and tenderness to that bald pate of his when she knew better than any one that what he needed was a stiff dose of salts and castor oil and a little self-control on the nights she had ham and cabbage for supper.
Over in the Morrison cottage Grandma Whitby was knitting stockings for the little Morrisons at a furious rate and every once in a while sending one of the children out for more wood or a fresh pail of water or some more yarn. Joe could see the children sitting around the dining-room table with their books and games and arguing with each other every time the grandmother made a new request.