Only all the time he was
talking I kept thinking how he teased me to marry him. I really liked
Bud Willis over in Elmwood better, in a way, than I did John. And I
meant to marry Bud. He wasn't as good a boy as John, but he was so
jolly and we'd have had such a good time together that I'd never have
got mixed up in any mess like this. Maybe we would have ended in the
poorhouse but we'd have had a good time going, and I bet Bud and I
would have found something to laugh at even when we got there. Oh, I'm
glad it's over. Don't think I'm afraid to die. I kind of hate to
leave Robbie. Robbie's like me. And some day somebody'll tell him
what a fool he is--like they told me. I wish I could warn him or learn
him not to care. But, barring Robbie, I'm not afraid to go. But I'd
be afraid to live. To live all the rest of my days on my back or in a
chair--I--who was made to go? John can't abide me well and able to
work. He'd hate the sight of me useless. No, sir! There's nothing
nor nobody I'd sit in a chair for all the rest of my life."

"Yes, there is--Peggy."

John spoke from the shadowy doorway, for the dusk had fallen.

"You will do it for me, girl. I'll get you the nicest chair and the
prettiest crutches. And when you are tired of them I'll carry you
about in my arms. And you'll never again--I swear it--be sorry that
you didn't marry Bud Willis."

The spring twilight filled the room. Through it the doctor tiptoed to
the door and left these two to build a new world out of the fragments
and blunders of the old.

CHAPTER XXII

BEFORE THE DAWN

"I wonder if Fanny's sacrifice isn't enough to drive the evil thing out
of our lives and out of Green Valley forever. Seems as if everybody
ought to vote the saloon out now," said Grandma Wentworth to Cynthia's
son a couple of weeks later, when the whole town was celebrating
because Fanny Foster had sat up for the first time in her chair that
day.

After all, John didn't buy Fanny her chair. Seth Curtis wanted to do
it all himself but Green Valley wouldn't let him. It was a wonderful
chair. You could lower it to different heights and it was full of all
manner of attachments to make the invalid forget her helplessness. Of
course Fanny was still too weak to use these but she knew about them
and seemed pleased, even said she believed that when she got the hang
of it she could get about the house and yard and might even venture
into the streets in tim