wing will
cause commotion. So it was in Eden Village. On the placid surface of
existence there the faintest zephyr became a gale that raised waves of
excitement; the tiniest happening was an event. It is all a matter of
proportion. Wade experienced as much agitation when a corner of the
woodshed caught on fire, and he put it out with a broom, as when with
forty men behind him, he had fought for hours to save the buildings at
the mine two years before. Something of interest was always happening.
There was the day when the serpent appeared in Eden. Appropriately
enough, it was Eve who discovered it, curled up in the sun right by the
gate. Her appeals for assistance brought Wade in a hurry, and the
serpent, after an exciting chase through the hedges and flower beds, was
finally dispatched. It proved to be an adder of blameless character, but
neither Eve nor Miss Mullett had any regrets. Eve declared that a snake
was a snake, no matter what any one--meaning Wade--said, and Wade was
forced to acknowledge the fact. Armed with a shovel, they marched to the
back garden, Wade holding the snake by its unquiet tail, and interred it
there, so that Alexander the Great, the tortoise-shell cat, wouldn't eat
it and be poisoned. Subsequently the affair had to be discussed in all
its aspects by Eve and Wade in the shade of the cedars.

And then there was the anxious week when Zephania had a bad sore throat
that looked for awhile like diphtheria, and Wade prepared his own
breakfasts and lunches and dined alternately at The Cedars and with
Doctor Crimmins. And, of course, there was the stirring occasion of
Zephania's return to duty, Zephania being patently proud of the
disturbance she had created, and full of quaint comments on life, death,
and immortality, those subjects seemingly having engaged her mind
largely during her illness. For several days her voice was noticeably
lacking in quality and volume, and "There is a Happy Land," which was
her favorite hymn during that period, was rendered so subduedly that
Wade was worried, and had to have the Doctor's assurance that Zephania
was not going into a decline.

These are only a few of the exciting things that transpired during
Wade's first month in Eden Village. There were many others, but as I
tell them they seem much less important than they really were, and I
shall mention only one more. That was something other than a mere event;
it savored of the stupendous; it might almost be called