old, deep-eaved, gambrel-roofed house with a hundred little window
panes smiling at you from out its mantle of ivy. You love it at once
but you don't go in right away, because the great old trees won't let
you. You go and stand under them and wonder how old they are and lay
your hand caressingly on the fine old trunks. And then you see the
myrtle and violets growing beneath them and near the house clumps of
daisies and forget-me-nots. And then you spy the beehives and the
quaint old well and you walk through the cool grape arbor right into
the little kitchen, where Mrs. Dunn, as likely as not, is making a
cherry pie or currant jell or maybe a strawberry shortcake. She is a
delicious and an old-fashioned cook. Why, she even keeps a giant
ten-gallon cooky jar forever filled with cookies, although there are
now no children in this sweet old manse. Nobody now but Nellie Langely
who goes home every night to the millinery shop where she helps her
mother make and sell the bonnets that have made Mary Langely famous in
all the country round.

Green Valley folks have never quite gotten over wondering about Mary
Langely. When Tom Langely was alive Mary was a self-effacing, oddly
silent woman. People said she and Tom were a queer pair. Tom had
great ambitions in almost every direction. He even made brave
beginnings. But that was all. Then one day, in the midst of all
manner of ambitious enterprises, he grew tired of living and died. And
then it was that Mary Langely rose from obscurity and made Green Valley
rub its eyes. For within a week after Tom's death she had gathered
together all the loose ends of things that he had started, clapped a
frame second story on the imposing red brick first floor of the house
Tom had begun, converted this first floor into a store, and inside of a
month was selling hats to women who hadn't until then realized they
needed a hat.