The last house in the village on the road to Economy was the

Harricutt's. It was built of gray cement blocks that the elder had

taken for a bad debt, and had neither vine nor blossom to soften its

grimness. Its windows were supplied with green holland shades, and its

front door-yard was efficiently manned with plum trees and a peach,

while the back yard was given over to vegetables. Elder Harricutt

walked to Economy every day to his office in the Economy bank. He said

it kept him in good condition physically. His wife was small and prim

with little quick prying eyes and a false front that had a tendency to

go askew. She wore bonnets with strings and her false teeth didn't

quite fit; they clicked as she talked. She kept a watch over the road

at all times and very little ever got by her unnoticed.

In wholesome contrast next door was the trim little white cottage where

Tom McMertrie and his mother Christie lived, smothered in vines and

ablaze with geraniums all down the front walk. And below that, almost

facing the graveyard was a little green shingled bungalow. Mary

Rafferty kept her yard aglow with phlox, verbenas and pansies, and

revelled in vines and flowering shrubs.

These two women were wonderful friends, though forty years marched

between them. Mary's hair was black as a crow's wing above her great

pansy-blue eyes with their long curling lashes, while Christie's hair

was sandy silver and her tongue full of brrrs. They had opposite pantry

windows on the neighboring sides of their houses, where they often

talked of a morning while Christie moulded her sweet loaves of bread or

mixed scones and Mary made tarts and pies and cake for Jim's supper.

Somehow without much being said about it they had formed a combination

against their hard little knot of a neighbor behind the holland shades.

The first house on the side street that ran at right angles to the main

thoroughfare, just below Rafferty's, was Duncannon's. A picket fence at

the side let into the vegetable gardens of the three, and the quiet

little Mrs. Duncannon with the rippley brown hair and soft brown eyes

often slipped through and made a morning call under cover of the kindly

pole beans that hid her entrances and exits perfectly from any green

holland shaded windows that might be open that way. Jane Duncannon

formed a third in this little combination.

On the Monday morning following the session meeting Mary Rafferty and

Christie McMertrie were at their respective pantry windows flinging

together some toothsome delicacies for the evening meal, that all might

move smoothly during the busy day.




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