I.

The persuasive agent sought old Miss Abigail out among her flower-beds and

held up to her a tiny chair with roses painted on the back. "I was told to

see you about these. They're only four dollars a dozen, and the smallest

school children love 'em." Miss Abigail straightened herself with

difficulty. She had been weeding the gladiolus bed. "Four dollars," she

mused, "I was going to put four dollars into rose-bushes this fall." She

put out a strong, earth-stained old hand and took the chair. Her affection

for her native Greenford began to rise through her life-long thrift, a

mental ferment not unusual with her. Finally, "All right," she said; "send

'em to the schoolhouse, and say they're in memory of all my grandfathers

and grandmothers that learned their letters in that schoolhouse."

She went back to her digging and the agent clicked the gate back of his

retreat. Suddenly she stood up without remembering to ease her back. She

heard the first shot from the enemy who was to advance so rapidly upon her

thereafter. "Wait a minute," she called to the agent. As he paused, she

made a swift calculation. "I don't believe I want a dozen," she said, much

surprised. "I can't think of that many little ones." The agent took his

notebook. "How many?" he asked.

The ponderous old woman stared at him absently, while she made a mental

canvass of the town. She spoke with a gasp. "We don't need any!" she

cried. "There ain't a child in school under eleven."

"Take some now and have them handy," urged the agent.

Miss Abigail's gaze again narrowed in silent calculation. When she spoke

her exclamation was not for her listener. She had forgotten him. "Good

Lord of Love!" she cried. "There ain't a single one comin' up to sit on

those chairs if I should buy 'em!"

The agent was utterly blotted from her mind. She did not know when he left

her garden. She only knew that there were no children in Greenford. There

were no children in her town! "Why, what's comin' to Greenford!" she

cried.

And yet, even as she cried out, she was aware that she had had a warning,

definite, ominous, a few days before, from the lips of Molly Leonard. At

that time she had put away her startled uneasiness with a masterful hand,

burying it resolutely where she had laid away all the other emotions of

her life, under the brown loam of her garden. But it all came back to her

now.

Her thin, fluttering, little old friend had begun with tragic emphasis,

"The roof to the library leaks!"

Miss Abigail had laughed as usual at Molly's habit of taking small events

with bated breath. "What of it?" she asked. "That roof never was good,

even back in the days when 'twas a private house and my great-uncle lived

in it."

Miss Molly fluttered still more before the awfulness of her next

announcement.

"Well, the talk is that the town won't vote a cent toward repairs."

"They'll have to! You can't get along without a library!"

"No, they won't. The talk is that the men won't vote to have the town give

a bit of money for shingles. No, nor to pay somebody to take the place of

Ellen Monroe as librarian. She's got work in the print mill at

Johnsonville and is going to move down there to be near her mother's

family."

"Oh, _talk_!" said Miss Abigail with the easy contempt she had for things

outside her garden hedge. "Haven't you heard men talk before?"

"But they say really they _won't!_ They say nobody ever goes into it any

more when the summer folks go away in the autumn."

Miss Abigail's gesture indicated that the thing was unthinkable. "What's

the matter with young folks nowadays, anyhow? They always used to run

there and chatter till you couldn't hear yourself think."

Miss Molly lowered her voice like a person coming to the frightening

climax of a ghost story. "Miss Abigail, they _ain't_ any young folks here

any more!"

"What do you call the Pitkin girls!" demanded the other.

"They were the very last ones and they and their mother have decided

they'll move to Johnsonville this fall."

Miss Abigail cried out in energetic disapproval, "What in the Lord's world

are the Pitkinses going to move away from Greenford for! They belong

here!"

Miss Molly marshaled the reasons with a sad swiftness, "There aren't any

music pupils left for the oldest one, the two next have got positions in

the print mill and little Sarah is too old for the school here any more."

Miss Abigail shook her head impatiently as though to brush away a

troublesome gnat. "How about the Leavitts? There ought to be enough young

ones in that or family to--"

"They moved to Johnsonville last week, going to rent their house to city

folks in the summer, the way all the rest here in the street do. They

didn't want to go a bit. Eliza felt dreadful about it, but what can they

do? Ezra hasn't had enough carpentering to do in the last six months to

pay their grocery bill, and down in Johnsonville they can't get carpenters

enough. Besides, all the children's friends are there, and they got so

lonesome here winters."

Miss Abigail quailed a little, but rallying, she brought out, "What's the

matter with the Bennetts? The whole kit and b'iling of them came in here

the other day to pester me asking about how I grew my lilies."

"Why, Miss Abigail! You don't pay any more attention to village news!

They've been working in the mills for two years now, and only come home

for two weeks in the summer like everybody else."

The old woman stirred her weighty person wrathfully. "Like everybody else!

Molly, you talk like a fool! As if there was nobody lived here all the

year around!"

"But it's _so!_ I don't know what's coming to Greenford!"

An imperative gesture from the older woman cut her short. "Don't chatter

so, Molly! If it's true, that about the library, we've got to do

something!"

The interview had ended in an agreement from her, after a struggle with

the two passions of her life, to give up the tulip bulbs for which she had

been saving so long, and spend the money for repairing the roof. Miss

Molly, having no money to give, since she was already much poorer than she

could possibly be and live, agreed, according to Miss Abigail's peremptory

suggestion, to give her time, and keep the library open at least during

the afternoons.

"You can do it, Molly, as well as not, for you don't seem to have half the

sewing you used to."

"There's nobody here any more to sew _for_--" began the seamstress

despairingly, but Miss Abigail would not listen, bundling her out of the

garden gate and sending her trotting home, cheered unreasonably by the old

woman's jovial blustering, "No such kind of talk allowed in _my_ garden!"

But now, after the second warning, Miss Abigail felt the need of some

cheer for herself as she toiled among the hollyhocks and larkspurs. She

would not let herself think of the significance of the visit of the agent

for the chairs, and she could not force herself to think of anything else.

For several wretched weeks she hung in this limbo. Then, one morning as

she stood gazing at her Speciosums Rubrums without seeing them, she

received her summons to the front. She had a call from her neighbor, Mr.

Edward Horton, whom the rest of the world knows as a sculptor, but whom

Miss Abigail esteemed only because of his orthodox ideas on rose culture.

He came in to ask some information about a blight on his Red Ramblers,

although after Miss Abigail had finished her strong recommendation to use

whale oil soap sprayed, and not hellebore, he still lingered, crushing a

leaf of lemon verbena between his fingers and sniffing the resultant

perfume with thoughtful appreciation. He was almost as enthusiastic a

horticulturist as Miss Abigail, and stood high in her good graces as one

of the few individuals of sense among the summer colony. She faced him

therefore in a peaceable, friendly mood, glad of the diversion from her

thoughts, and quite unprepared for the shock he was about to give her.

"I'm on my way to interview the trustees of the church," he remarked. "It

is curious that all but one of them now really live in Johnsonville,

although they still keep their nominal residence here."

"What do you want to see _them_ for?" asked Miss Abigail, with a bluntness

caused in part by her wincing at his casual statement of an unwelcome fact.

"Why, I've had what I flatter myself is an inspiration for everyone

concerned. I've got a big commission for part of the decorations of the

new State House in Montana, and I need a very large studio. It occurred to

me the other day that instead of building I'd save time by buying the old

church here and using that."

Miss Abigail leaned against the palings. "_Buy our church!_" she said, and

every letter was a capital.

"I didn't know you were a member," said the sculptor, a little surprised.

"You don't often go."

Miss Abigail shouted out, "Why, my grandfather was minister in that

church!" Mr. Horton received this as a statement of fact. "Indeed? I

didn't realize the building was so old. I wonder if the foundations are

still in good shape." He went on, explanatorily, "I really don't know why

I hadn't thought of the plan before. The number who attend church in that

great barn of a place could easily be put into someone's parlor, and save

the trustees the expense of heating. One of them whom I saw the other day

seemed quite pleased with the notion--said they'd been at a loss to know

what to do about conditions here." He glanced at his watch. "Well, I must

be going or I shall miss the train to Johnsonville. Thank you very much

for the hint about the blight."

He went down the street, humming a cheerful little tune.

To Miss Abigail it was the bugle call of "Forward, charge!" She had been,

for the last few weeks, a little paler than usual. Now her powerful old

face flushed to an angry red. She dashed her trowel to the garden path and

clenched her fists. "What's coming to Greenford!" she shouted. It was no

longer a wail of despair. It was a battle-cry of defiance.