waiting to put a flower in Robbie Longman's buttonhole. While
everybody knew that just next door homely Theresa Meyer was putting an
extra pan of fluffy soda biscuits into the oven as the best preparation
for _her_ beau.

So Green Valley looked and smiled and went joyously home to its
fragrant, old-fashioned Sunday dinner. New elements might and would
come but this smiling town would absorb them, mellow them to its own
golden hue and go on its way living and rejoicing.

Cynthia's son went to dinner with the Ainslees. He walked with Mr.
Ainslee while Nan and her brother went on ahead. Nan was almost
noisily gay but no one seemed to be at all aware of it.

The dinner was delicious and went off without the least bit of
embarrassment. At the table Nan was as suddenly still as she had been
noisily gay. She let the men do the talking while she scrupulously
attended to their wants. Once she forgot herself and while he was
talking studied the face of Cynthia's son. Her father caught her at it
and smiled. This made her flush and to even up matters she
deliberately put salt instead of sugar into her father's after-dinner
cup of coffee. Whereupon he, tasting the salt, made an irrelevant
remark about handwriting on the wall.




CHAPTER IX

GREEN VALLEY MEN