the livery barn, and how homesick he grew as he looked at the crowd
getting off at the station, and the school children playing in the old
school yard where he used to play. The picture of Grandma Wentworth
and Carrie standing on Grandma's front porch hurt his throat and shook
him strangely. That was Tommy Dudley.

And there was Susie Melton. Grandma saved and remade Susie that time
she went to New York to see the world. Susie had taught a country
school for twenty years, ever since she was sixteen, and that trip to
New York was her first vacation. Susie was an innocent soul and the
very second day in the great city some heartless thief took everything
out of her purse but a two-cent stamp. Susie was panic-stricken and
the only thing she could think of was Grandma Wentworth's face. So she
took that stamp and sent a letter to Green Valley and it was Grandma
Wentworth who really managed that vacation though to this day nobody
but she herself knows how and she won't tell. Susie came back so
rejuvenated, with such color in her cheeks, such brightness in her
eyes, and so much snap and spunk in her system that Jake Tuttle up and
married her two months after she came home. And he's been happy ever
since for in spite of her school-teaching handicap Susie has turned out
to be a born cook and housewife. And as if to make up to her those
twenty colorless years Providence sent Susie twin boys at the end of
her first year and twin girls at the end of the third.

This blossoming out of little drab Susie Melton was a shock to Green
Valley. But Grandma Wentworth wasn't a mite surprised and said she
knew that Susie would come into her own some day. As for Jake, he is
so in love with his rosy little wife and his four good-looking children
that he just goes on raising bumper crops without hardly knowing how he
does it. And he says he doesn't hanker much after heaven; that home is