owan'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