ull of friends and everywhere the
fragrance of home. Oh, there are many there who will love you for my
sake and who will make up to you for--me."

Her hand caressed his hair and her voice trailed off into a sigh for
she knew what he didn't, wouldn't believe--that she was never to see
that little green town across the gray-green ocean waves.

At the very last she had whispered:

"Oh, Boy of Mine, when you go home greet them all for me. And if ever
you go to rummaging about in the attic remember you must never open the
square trunk with the brass nail heads unless Mary Wentworth is there
to explain. Tell Mary I love her and that I am not sorry. She will
understand."

So as he looked out of Grandma Wentworth's upstairs windows he
remembered those last talks and understood that yearning for home.
When he had been in Green Valley only a few weeks the old life began to
grow vague and unreal. The mother was real and near. But the splendid
figure of his father was fading into a strange memory. He was a father
to be proud of, that strong, cool, selfless man who had asked nothing
of life but to take what it would of him.

He had seemed so towering, so enduring, that preacher father. Yet when
the frail mother went the strong man followed within a year. So then
there was nothing to do but go home to Green Valley. He went. And the
spirit of the vivid little mother seemed to have come with him. Every
day that he spent in the town that had reared her seemed to bring her
nearer. He could picture her going about the sunny roads and friendly
streets and stopping to chat and neighbor with Green Valley folks.

So he too roamed over the town and chatted and neighbored as he felt
she would have done. That was how he came to know every nook and
cranny, every turn of the happily straying roads and all the lame, odd,
damaged and droll characters that make a town home just as the
broken-nosed pitcher, the cracked old mirror in an up-stairs bedroom,
and the sagging old armchair in the shadowy corner of the sitting room
make home.

Not only did he come to know these people but he understood them. For
his was the quick eye and interpreting heart willed him by a great
father and an equally great mother. And because he came into Green
Valley with a fresh mind and a keen appetite for life nothing escaped
him, not even old Mrs. Rosenwinkle sitting in paralyzed patience beside
the open window of her little blind house.

He was