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Indeed, such was the effect upon him, that he packed his suitcase the next day, Davy Munn hung his mother's sunbonnet upon the top of the stable, and the doctor boarded the train at the back lane and went to Toronto. Elmbrook literally sat up nights, speculating as to the possible reasons for his sudden departure. Mrs. Munn hadn't the faintest idea.

Since her home-coming she had been regarded with some disapproval in Elmbrook social circles because of the promptness with which she answered an invitation to sing. It was considered much more genteel and modest to at first disclaim positively all musical ability, and to yield only after much importuning.

Take him on to the station, an' we'll run up an' help her red up before he comes. An' mind you go slow!" The conductor hastily acquiesced. He was a native of Elmbrook, and knew his place when Susan Winters was giving orders. "Awl aboard!" he shouted. The group gave one final, farewell flourish toward the train, and then turned and sped up the lane to meet the new emergency.

Long before, when Elmbrook was merely a "Corners," with one or two houses, there came to the place a queer Englishman, who wandered all day about the fields, and painted pictures and read strange, dry books by a man named Ruskin. He first entered the valley on an October morning, when it was all gold and crimson, and lay shrouded in a soft violet mist.

For since Sandy had fulfilled his wager, and come back to Elmbrook church, and had apparently decided to go softly all the rest of his days, the gossips had noticed patent signs of a strong inclination on his part to go even deeper in his humility, and make a life treaty with his conqueror, and Elmbrook was all agog over the unbelievable prospect.

Should all Elmbrook have risen up one morning and gone hurtling down to Lake Simcoe, it would have left him seated alone, undisturbed, on its vacated ridge. He turned leisurely and chirped to the horses. "Jim Cameron lent yous to haul that outfit to the station," he complained, as they lumbered out through the gateway, "but I'll be darned if I promised to run 'em there, so yous kin git home."

"Say," whispered the eldest orphan, jerking his foster-father's coat, "I like that man. He's awful bad, an' I think he's just bully." The next day the tale of the tramp's outrageous treatment of the minister flew through Elmbrook like the news of a fire in the mill.

Indeed, as the deposed and indignant Mrs. Winters often declared, a body didn't dast blow their nose inside the township without Granny Long hearing it through that everlasting spyglass. But on this particular early May morning a hostile army might have marched up and seized Elmbrook unobserved. For there were great doings inside the village that demanded concentrated attention.

Engine Driver Nick Boyle, who would have willingly stopped at Elmbrook every day in the week, to talk over the back fences with the pretty girls, but who objected on principle to all that his chief did, poked his head out of his black box, grimy and disapproving. "What in thunder's Brass Buttons up to now?" he demanded.

She and Mack McQuarry sang "The Larboard Watch" at the next Elmbrook harvest home, while at one and the same time she played the accompaniment. No one had ever before conceived of such a triple triumph, and it was felt by all that Ella Anne would surely experience some disciplining misfortune to balance things.