“The minister of our church boards with me,” she told the Grenoble woman, with pardonable pride.  “I don’t know of anybody else that takes boarders in Brookville.”  She added that she had an extra room.

“Well, one of my boarders—­a real nice young lady from Boston—­has taken a queer notion to board in Brookville,” said the woman.  “She was out autoing the other day and went through there.  I guess the country ’round Brookville must be real pretty this time of year.”

“Yes; it is, real pretty,” she had told the Grenoble woman.

And this had been the simple prelude to Lydia Orr’s appearance in Brookville.

Wooded hills did not interest Mrs. Black, nor did the meandering of the silver river through its narrow valley.  But she took an honest pride in her own freshly painted white house with its vividly green blinds, and in her front yard with its prim rows of annuals and thrifty young dahlias.  As for Miss Lydia Orr’s girlish rapture over the view from her bedroom window, so long as it was productive of honestly earned dollars, Mrs. Black was disposed to view it with indulgence.  There was nothing about the girl or her possessions to indicate wealth or social importance, beyond the fact that she arrived in a hired automobile from Grenoble instead of riding over in Mrs. Solomon Black’s spring wagon.  Miss Orr brought with her to Brookville one trunk, the contents of which she had arranged at once in the bureau drawers and wardrobe of Mrs. Black’s second-best bedroom.  It was evident from a private inspection of their contents that Miss Orr was in mourning.

At this point in her meditations Mrs. Black became aware of an insistent voice hailing her from the other side of the picket fence.

It was Mrs. Daggett, her large fair face flushed with the exertion of hurrying down the walk leading from Mrs. Whittle’s house.

“Some of us ladies has been clearing up after the fair,” she explained, as she joined Mrs. Solomon Black.  “It didn’t seem no more than right; for even if Ann Whittle doesn’t use her parlor, on account of not having it furnished up, she wants it broom-clean.  My!  You’d ought to have seen the muss we swept out.”

“I’d have been glad to help,” said Mrs. Black stiffly; “but what with it being my day to go over to Grenoble, and my boarders t’ cook for and all—­”

“Oh, we didn’t expect you,” said Abby Daggett tranquilly.  “There was enough of us to do everything.”

She beamed warmly upon Mrs. Black.

“Us ladies was saying we’d all better give you a rising vote of thanks for bringing that sweet Miss Orr to the fair.  Why, ’twas a real success after all; we took in two hundred and forty-seven dollars and twenty-nine cents.  Ain’t that splendid?”

Mrs. Black nodded.  She felt suddenly proud of her share in this success.

“I guess she wouldn’t have come to the fair if I hadn’t told her about it,” she admitted.  “She only come to my house yesterd’y morning.”