The women watched each other to see who would go to see her first. She came to church with her boy, to the little church on the river flat, and the minister shook hands with her and told her he was glad to see her. But the next week his wife, spending the afternoon at Mrs. Cowan's, "heard something," and the next Sunday, although he shook hands with her and began to say he was glad to see her, catching Mrs. Cowan's eye on him, he changed his sentence and said he was glad to see so many out.
All summer long the women at Purple Springs held to the hope that someone would come to see her. At first she could not believe they were wilfully slighting her. It was just their way, she thought. They were busy women; she often saw them out in their gardens, and at such times it was hard for her to keep from waving to them.
The woman who lived the nearest to her, geographically, was Mrs. Cowan, and one day—the first summer—she saw Mrs. Cowan beating rugs on the line, and as the day was breezy, it seemed as if she waved her apron. Mrs. Gray waved back, in an ecstacy of joy and expectation—but there came no response from her neighbor—no answering signal, and as the lonely woman watched, hoping, looking, praying—there rolled over her with crushing sadness the conviction that all her hopes of friendliness were in vain. The neighborhood would not receive her—she was an outcast. They were condemning her without a hearing—they were hurling against her the thunders of silence! The injustice of it ate deeply into her soul.
Then it was that she began to make the name "Purple Springs" out of the willow withes which grew below the house. She made the letters large, and with a flourish, and dyed them the most brilliant purple they would take, and set them on a wire foundation above her gate. The work of doing it gave solace to her heart, and when the words were set in place—it seemed to her that she had declared her independence, and besides, they reminded her of something very sweet and reassuring—something which helped her to hold her head up against the current of ill thoughts her neighbors were directing toward her.
That was the year the school was built, and no other name for it but "Purple Springs" was even mentioned, and when the track was extended from Millford west, and a mahogany-red station built, with a tiny freight shed of the same color, the name of Purple Springs in white letters was put on each end of the station. So, although the neighbors would not receive the woman, they took the name she brought.
Her son Jim, a handsome lad of seven, went to school the first day it was opened. Her mother heart was fearful for the reception he might get, and yet she tried to tell herself that children were more just than their elders. They would surely be fair to Jim, and when she had him ready, with his leather book-bag, his neat blue serge knickerbocker suit, his white collar and well-polished boots, she thought, with a swelling of pride, that there would not be a handsomer child in the school, nor one that was better cared for.
Down the hill went Jim Gray, without a shadow on his young heart. So long as he had his mother, and his mother smiled at him, life was all sunshine.
He gave his name to the teacher, and answered all her questions readily, and was duly enrolled as a pupil in Grade I, along with Bennie Cowan, Edgar Zinc and Bessie Brownlees, and set at work to make figures. He wondered what the teacher wanted with so many figures, but decided he would humor her, and made page after page of them for her. By noon the teacher decided, on further investigation, to put Master James Gray in Grade II, and by four o'clock he was a member in good standing of Grade III.
That night there was much talk of James Gray, his good clothes, and his general proficiency, around the firesides of the Purple Springs district.
The next day Bennie Cowan, who was left behind in Grade I, although a year older than Jim Gray, made the startling announcement: