a
collection of children's pictures?" he asked with such innocent
curiosity that Nanny's self-control gave way and she laughed until she
cried. He stood by, helpless and puzzled. When Nanny, having gotten
to the tears, searched in vain for her handkerchief he gravely offered
his.

Nanny took it and used it and then looked up at him with eyes as full
of laughing despair as his were full of bewilderment.

"John Roger Churchill Knight--you will some day be the very death of
me."

CHAPTER XV

INDIAN SUMMER

"Well, I guess this is about the last spell of pretty weather we're
going to have," sighed Fanny Foster as she sat herself down on Grandma
Wentworth's back steps and went right to work helping Grandma sort the
herbs and bulbs and the seeds she had been gathering for a whole week.

"I'm hoping not," said Grandma, "though when the air is like warm gold
dust, and the sun's heat just mellows you through and through, and the
last bobolink calls from the hill, why, a body just knows such perfect
days can't last. Still, I'm hoping it'll stay a bit longer, though I
can't say I'm not ready for cold weather."

"Oh, I guess everybody is," agreed Fanny with that joyous, bubbling,
luxurious note that Grandma knew so well. "I saw Mary Hagley polishing
her very knuckles off on that second-hand stove Mert bought from that
watery-eyed man from Spring Road who drives through here with the lame
buckskin horse and pieced-out harness. Lutie Barlow's got her fall
tinting and painting all done. She's painted the inside of her chicken
coops a bright yellow, so's to fool her hens into thinking the sun's
forever shining, and the inside of her stormshed a red, so's to make it
seem warmer when she goes out there on a cold day to the coal and wood
box. There ain't anybody can beat Lutie on color ideas.

"Minnie Eton's dyed her heavy lace curtains in coffee and has a new set
made for the dining room, besides having a picture of the third boy
enlarged for the parlor. She started crocheting the lace for a new
bedspread for her company bedroom yesterday. And--oh, my lands, I
forgot to tell you the rest of that second-hand stove business. You
see Mary was feeling pretty bad about having to put up with another old
stove and envying Cissie Harvey hers. Cissie's new parlor stove is a
monster, made seemingly of nothing but pure nickel and isinglass. Mary
went over to look at it and when she come home and took another look at
her