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 strolling one day up the little grassy lane, thinking that it
led into the cool, thick grove back of the little house that stared so
blindly out into the green world. He had been following a new bird and
it had darted into the grove. So he came upon the little house and the
still grim old soul who sat at the open window as if to guard that
little end of the world.