The greensward was as rich and velvety as if the season had been midsummer and the foliage of the trees as luxuriant and almost as bright, on this Saturday afternoon of the third week of September when the minister sauntered slowly up the broad walk leading to the porch. For the summer had been wet: more than one week had disproved the old saying that there will always be one fair day in the six to dry the parson’s shirt. It had been favourable for grass and trees and uncultivated vegetation but too rainy for crops. The September sunshine was, however, making amends; and as he glanced at the picturesque regularity of the fenced and walled fields of a farm across the river, Mr. Langley said to himself that the harvest would be bountiful after all if the frosts held off a bare fortnight. The choir had been rehearsing for the morrow and the women members were lingering in the porch to chat. The minister had just noticed that Miss Garland, a member who had been away on a visit in the West for three months or more, had returned, when he heard her ask who was staying with old Miss Penny this winter. It gave him a start to hear Miss Penny called old, though she hadn’t been a young woman when he had come to the two villages straight from theological school, and if he had stopped to reckon the years he must have realised that she was well beyond three score and ten. But he did not stop, for Miss Harriman’s reply gave him another start. “The other Miller girl,” she said in her high, strong voice which fortunately lost its nasal twang when she sang. “Rusty has gone to college, you know, even though she didn’t get the Wadsworth prize. But this girl goes to the academy and it seems to me that Miss Penny ought to have more help than she can give her outside of school hours, for she has rheumatism so bad now that she’s almost a cripple.” Glancing up, the speaker saw that the minister was upon them and smilingly apprised him of the obvious fact that Miss Garland had got back. He shook hands with Miss Garland and with the other three, questioned the former about her summer and declared that he should call upon her next week for a fuller account. Then he turned to Miss Merriman. “What was that I overheard you saying, Miss Merriman?” he asked with his slow smile. “Did I hear you speak of _the other_ Miller girl? And does that mean Anna?” “Yes, Mr. Langley, Anna Miller. But that is what everybody in the South Hollow, and for that matter, in Farleigh, too, I guess, calls her. But she was away so long that people forgot there was such a person--such as knew of the family at all--and anyhow, she seems so different from Rusty. Of course she’s pretty,--she looks for all the world like a doll,--and everybody says she’s good-natured to a fault. And there’s something droll about her. And yet----” The expression of Mr. Langley’s face made her pause.