Jim was taking a folding wheel chair out of his big Buick. She saw him hesitate as to where to place his charge, and Old Pete lean out and speak to him. Apparently Old Pete had decided that he would take up his stand in front of the schoolhouse, and there, a few minutes later, he was settled in. Ellen ran out to speak to him, but was stopped en route by Miss Plummer’s hearty voice: “Greased pig this year! For the bicentennial!” and she doubled over with laughter. “Who would have thought it? Such an occasion!”

“Going to be hot,” Ellen said, and moved on, leaving Miss Plummer to chaff John Chapman, now busily knotting rope in one of the big maples for the children to climb.

Miss Plummer looked up at him merrily. “Need some help? I’m raring to go.”

John smiled. “No thanks.”

Miss Plummer, he noted, had dressed for the occasion in a red-white-and-blue blouse and a straw hat with a red ribbon round it.

“You’ll make us all spruce up, you look so grand and festive, Miss Plummer!”

At this she blushed and laughed. “Made the blouse myself,” she said, and added, “put the flag up over the library door, too. How is it we have never had a flagpole in Willard? It’s too queer,” she said. “People would think nobody cared.”

“Isn’t that Old Pete?” John called down from his tree.

“Yes, isn’t it wonderful he could come? Jim and Sarie went to the hospital and got him out for the day.”

Meanwhile Ellen and Sarie were standing, one on each side of the wheel chair, deep in conversation with the old man. He looked a little wan, maybe because no one had ever seen him with a close shave and so clean before. But his eyes had the same old twinkle, and he was eager as a boy, waiting to be made much of, to be noticed.

When Sarie went to join Jim, whose business at the moment was to get the big guestbook out for people to sign, Old Pete proudly pulled up his trouser leg and showed Ellen his light plastic false leg. “I’ll be walking in a month,” he said.

“Now tell me about Nick before all the others get here,” he went on.

“Well,” Ellen said, “he’s in there. I don’t know what more I can say.”

“Seems pretty cheerful?”

“I guess so. Nick doesn’t talk. But he’s safe, Pete—that’s something.

“They have all these drugs now, tranquilizers—they should let him come home.” Old Pete felt around for a package of cigarettes in his pocket and lit up. “They won’t let me smoke my pipe in the hospital.” He spoke into Ellen’s silence. “Won’t seem natural without Jane Tuttle … without Nick …”

Ellen wandered off, unable to talk about these things that lay heavy on her heart.