f town all on a Saturday
morning. But there she was in her wheel chair, with the minister
alongside to see that the road was safe and clear.

And they say that every little while, right in the midst of her
bargaining, she would look around and say:

"My, but the world is big and pretty."

And when somebody reminded her of her belief that the world was flat
and ended on the far side of Petersen's pasture she never argued the
matter fiercely, as was her wont, but said instead that it _had_ ended
for her with Petersen's pasture until the day the new minister came.

And her daughter told how the paralyzed old body prayed day and night
for this new minister's salvation, he being other than a Lutheran.
Somebody thought that too good a joke to keep and told Cynthia's son
how hard old Mrs. Rosenwinkle was praying for his soul. They expected
him to laugh. But he didn't. He looked suddenly serious just as his
mother used to do when something touched the deep down places in her
heart.

All he said was that no man could ever have too many women praying for
him and that he was grateful as only a man whose mother was sleeping
thousands of miles away in a foreign land could be grateful.

He had his mother's trick of letting people look quite suddenly into
that part of his soul where he kept his finest thoughts and emotions.
And people looked and saw and then usually tiptoed away in puzzled awe
or a dim sympathy. And he had such a habit of turning common sense and
daylight on matters which seemed so baffling until he explained them.

It was just the minister's plain, common sense that finally got Hank
Lolly into the church. When the minister first suggested that Hank
ought to attend church services that worthy stared in amazed horror at
his new friend. And he gave his perfectly good reasons why the likes
of him had no right to step on what was Green Valley's sacred ground.

"Hank, you are entirely mistaken. I have seen you go into Green Valley
parlors and every other room in the house. I watched you move that
clumsy old sideboard of Mrs. Luttins down that narrow stairway and then
through the little side gate. You never chipped a bit of plaster or
trampled a flower beside the walk. Why, you never even tore a bit of
vine off the gate. And yesterday I saw you walking your horses ever so
carefully to the station because inside the van little Jimmy Drummond
was lying on stretchers, going to the hospital. And I was told