Green Valley did not
resent the scandal of the occurrence. It was the absence of details
that was so maddening. But gradually these began to trickle from
doorstep to doorstep and by nightfall Green Valley was crowding out of
its front gates with little wedding gifts under its arms.
It seems that little, meek, eighteen-year-old Alice Sears had eloped
with twenty-one-year-old Tommy Winston. She explained her foolishness
in a little letter which she left on the kitchen table for her mother.
The letter ran something like this:
Dear Mother:--
It's no use waiting any longer for any of the good times or new dresses
you said I'd have by and by. We never have any good times and I'm
tired waiting for a real new hat. Tommy's going to buy me one with
bunches of violets on it and he don't drink, so it's alright and you
don't need to worry. I'll live near and be handy and don't you let
father swear too much at you because I did this.
Your loving child,
ALICE.
When Mrs. Sears found the letter she read it six times, over and over
till she knew it by heart. It wasn't the first such letter she had
ever had. When Johnny went off to Alaska or somewhere away off,
because his father took the twenty-five dollars that the
nineteen-year-old boy had saved so prayerfully for a bicycle, Johnny
had left just such a letter.
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