

E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Jacqueline Jeremy, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)



COUNTRY NEIGHBORS

by

ALICE BROWN







Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
The Riverside Press Cambridge 1910

Copyright, 1910, by Alice Brown
All Rights Reserved
Published April 1910




CONTENTS


  THE PLAY HOUSE                     1

  HIS FIRST WIFE                    20

  A FLOWER OF APRIL                 42

  THE AUCTION                       53

  SATURDAY NIGHT                    76

  A GRIEF DEFERRED                  96

  THE CHALLENGE                    122

  PARTNERS                         150

  FLOWERS OF PARADISE              171

  GARDENER JIM                     192

  THE SILVER TEA-SET               215

  THE OTHER MRS. DILL              237

  THE ADVOCATE                     265

  THE MASQUERADE                   285

  A POETESS IN SPRING              314

  THE MASTER MINDS OF HISTORY      341




THE PLAY HOUSE


Amelia Maxwell sat by the front-chamber window of the great house
overlooking the road, and her own "story-an'-a-half" farther toward the
west. Every day she was alone under her own roof, save at the times when
old lady Knowles of the great house summoned her for work at fine sewing
or braiding rags. All Amelia's kin were dead. Now she was used to their
solemn absence, and sufficiently at one with her own humble way of life,
letting her few acres at the halves, and earning a