though was a good one. And the widow having no money didn't want to
stay amongst her rich city friends and so she's come here. They say
she hates Green Valley like poison but that the girl Jocelyn thinks
it's fun living here, even though her hands are blistered and there's
no place to go evenings. I heard that David Allan's been plowing up
the Brownlee garden lot and helping the girl set things out.

"And now, Grandma, what of all things do you suppose has happened? Old
man Mullin's back. Nobody can hardly believe it. He's been gone these
ten years and nobody blamed him a mite when he left that miserly,
nagging wife of his and went off to California. Why, they say she
nearly died giving him a ten-cent piece every week for spending money
and that he used to work on the sly unbeknownst to her to get money for
his tobacco and then didn't dare smoke it where she could see him. And
he's come back. Some say he's got so much money of his own that she
can't worry him and that he's got to be so deaf besides that he's safe
more or less.

"And as if that wasn't enough, there's talk of Sam Ellis's selling the
hotel and going out of business. It seems since the two boys and the
girl came back from college they've talked nothing but temperance and
prohibition. Not that they are a mite ashamed of Sam. But not one of
them will step into the hotel for love or money. And Sam's beginning
to think as they do, seems like. For they say he was awful mad when he
heard about Jim Tumley getting so full he was sick. Sam was out that
afternoon and he says Curley Watson, his barkeeper, is a danged
chucklehead. And that ain't all. They're saying that Sam told George
Hoskins to let up on the drinks the other night, that maybe he could
stand it but other men couldn't. And Sam the hotel keeper, mind you!
Of course Sam is well off but still the men haven't got over it yet.