Madam's good graces. You must never sit down on the brocade-covered
settee with the beautiful rose wreath hand-carved on its gracefully
curving walnut back. Some day when she gets to know you very well she
will tell you of the wonderful love stories that were enacted on that
settee. She will begin away, away back with some great-great-grandmother
or some great-grand-aunt and come gradually down to her own time and
history; and as she tells of the young years of her life, her eyes will
go dreaming off into the past and she will forget you entirely. And you
will slip away from that great room and leave her sitting there, regal
and silver haired, her face mellow and sweet with the golden memories of
far, by-gone days.

You can wander in this happy, aimless fashion all about Green Valley, go
in and out its deep-rooted old homes, stroll through its tree-guarded old
streets, and at every turn taste romance and adventure, revel in beauty
of some sort. Even the old, red-brick creamery, ugly in itself, is a
thing of beauty when seen against a sunset sky.

The people who pass you on the streets all smile and nod, stranger though
you are. And if you happen to be at the little undistinguished depot
just as the 6:10 pulls in, you will see pouring joyously out of it the
Green Valley men, those who every day go to the great city to work and
every night come thankfully back to their little home town to live.

They hurry along in twos and threes, waving newspaper and hand greetings
to the home folks and the store proprietors who stand in their doorways
to watch them go by.

There is a fragrant smell of supper in the air and a slight feel of
coming rain. Here and there a mother calls a belated child. Doors slam,