nd whisky smell out of the streets as much as possible while
maybe visitors are walking about.

"We're going to send a special committee to see what the railroad will
do about fixing up this old station or, better still, giving us a new
one and beautifying its grounds.

"We're planning to see Colonel Stratton about starting up a club for
the preservation of our wild flowers and Doc Philipps is to have charge
of a fight on the moths and things that are eating and killing our
fruit trees.

"The school buildings will be investigated and conditions noted. Doc
Philipps says that if the heating plant and ventilation and light was
tended to we wouldn't have so much sickness among the children or so
many needing glasses.

"As soon as spring really comes the Woman's Civic League is going to
start up a clean-up campaign. Of course, Green Valley never was a
dirty town. Everybody likes to have their yard nice but there's
considerable old faded newspaper and rusty tin cans lying along the
roads farther out and in unnoticed corners that nobody's felt
responsible for. That will all be attended to. We'll have no filth,
no germs, no ugliness anywhere, Mrs. Brownlee says.

"And I've been appointed a committee of one to wait on Seth Curtis and
call his attention to the careless way he leaves his horses standing
about the town. Those horses are dangerous and getting uglier in
temper every day. And Seth is just as bad."

This was only too true. Seth had grown bitter and even reckless of
late. Ever since his quarrel with Ruth about Jim Tumley Seth had been
boiling with temper. Old poisons that had spoiled his life in many
ways and that he thought he had conquered crept back to tyrannize over
him. Poor Seth had had so much discipline in his youth that the least
hint of pressure threw him into a state of vicious rebellion. Seth had
a fine mind, could think quicker and straighter to the point than a
good many Green Valley men. But when that mind was clouded with anger
and stubbornness Seth was a hopeless proposition. Ruth was his one
star and even she, Seth felt, had set herself against him.

So Seth, who seldom had frequented the hotel, was there almost every
day now when he should have been working. He even drank more than
before. Not that he cared more for it but it was his way of showing
independence.

So Seth was very ugly these days and his horses suffered as they had
never suffered before. They too were growing