n the drinks the other night, that maybe he could
stand it but other men couldn't. And Sam the hotel keeper, mind you!
Of course Sam is well off but still the men haven't got over it yet.
They say you could have heard a pin drop and that George stood with his
mouth open for five full minutes.

"Somebody told John Gans that there was going to be another barber shop
in town and so he's excited. And Mr. Pelly and Mrs. Dudley had their
first fight this year over their chickens. Mr. Pelly swears she lets
them out a-purpose before he's awake in the morning and Mrs. Dudley
says that if he don't mend his fence and hurts a feather of a single
one of her animals she'll have him before Judge Hewitt.

"Of course, Marion Travers is spending every cent of her husband's
salary on new clothes, trying to get in with the South End crowd. And
Sam Bobbins has given up trying to raise violets to make a sudden
fortune. He's changed his mind and gone to raising mushrooms down in
his cellar. Simpson's gray horse is dead, the lame one, and one of the
White twins cut his head pretty bad on a toy engine and Benny Smith's
wife is giving strawberry sets away. Jessups are all out of tomato
plants and onion sets and won't get any more, but Dick has them,
besides a real tasty looking lot of garden seed. Ella Higgins actually
found that Dick had two kinds of flower seed that she'd never grown or
heard of.

"Mrs. Rosenwinkle's full of rheumatism with all joints swelled and says
the world is coming to a terrible end. I guess she figures though that
she and those two grandchildren of hern will be about all that's left
after the thing blows over. My land, ain't some folks ignorant!
And--what was I going to say--oh, yes, of course Robinson ain't
expected to live--and well--what _was_ it I was going to say--something
that begins with a c--good land, there's the 6:10 and I bet John's on
it. He never misses his train twice in a year's time. Get out of
here, children. You know your father wants to see you all at home when
he gets there."

There was a scramble for the door and Grandma Wentworth's heart ached
for John Foster, the big, silent, steady man who brushes his girls'
hair every Sunday morning and brings them fresh hair ribbons and who
somehow manages to get them to Sunday School looking half respectable.
John never says a word scarcely to any one, from one week's end to the
other. He never spends a free hour away from home, he never inv