The last and surest sign of spring's arrival in Green Valley is gossip. The mornings may be ever so full of meadow larks, the woods moistly sweet and carpeted with spring's frail and dainty blossoms, but no one dreams of letting the furnace go out or their base burner get cold until they see Fanny Foster flitting about town at all hours of the day and behold the array of shiny armchairs standing so invitingly in front of Uncle Tony's hardware store. When these two great news agencies open up for business Green Valley laughs and goes to Martin's drug store to buy moth balls and talks about how it's going to paint its kitchen woodwork and paper its upstairs hall and where it's buying its special garden seed. Then the whole town wakes up and comes outdoors to work and talk. There are fences to be mended and gardens to be planted and houses to be cleaned and all the winter happenings to be gone over. All the doctor cases have to be discussed critically and the winter invalids, strong once again, come out to visit one another and compare notes. Letters from special relatives and former Green Valley souls are passed around and read and all new photographs and the winter's crop of fancy work exhibited and carefully examined. Everybody talks so much that nobody listens very carefully, only half hearing things. And when the spring madness and gladness begin to settle and people start to repeat the things they only half heard strange and weird tales are at times the result. And from these spring still more fantastic rumors and versions that ripple over Green Valley like waves of sunshine or cloud shadows, sometimes causing much joy and merriment and sometimes considerable worry and uneasiness. And all these rumors come eventually to Uncle Tony's where they are solemnly examined, edited and frequently so enhanced and touched up in color and form as to sound almost new. Then they are sent out again to begin life all over. Many of them die but some live on and on, and after a sufficient test of time become a part of the town chronicles. Everybody, of course, takes a hand at helping a yarn get from house to house but nobody makes such a specialty of this sort of social work as Fanny Foster. There are some Green Valley folks who attribute Fanny's up and down thinness to this wearing industry yet both men and women are always glad to see her and her reports always drive blue cares away and provoke ripples of sunny laughter.