Indeed, Alice Sears' elopement and wedding became a part of Green
Valley history, so great an event was it, what with the suddenness of
it and the whole town being asked and Nan Ainslee coming home so
providentially, and Cynthia's son making a speech.

The crowd was so great and so merry that the little Brownlee girl,
having tucked her fretful mother up in bed, stole out to the garden
fence and watched the doings with all a child's wistful eyes. David
Allan, who happened to drift out that way, found her there and they
visited over the fence. It took David quite a while to tell her what
it all meant, for she was of course a stranger to Green Valley and
Green Valley ways.

Grandma watched her town folk a little mistily that night and expressed
her opinion a little tremulously to Roger Allan.

"Roger, did you ever see a town so chockful of people that you have to
laugh over one minute and cry over the next?"

Nan's father, walking home with her through the quiet streets, stopped
to light a cigar. When it was burning properly he remarked innocently
to his daughter:

"I don't know when I've met so unusually good-looking and likeable a
fellow as this minister chap, Knight."

Nan looked at her father with cold and suspicious eyes and her voice
when she answered was scornful.