Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/347

 Use them! What possible reënforcements can you expect?"

The old woman opposed to his arguments nothing but a passionately bare denial. "No! No! No! We're different! It's in your blood to give up because you can reason it all out that you're beaten." She stood up, shaking with her vehemence. "It's in my blood to fight and fight and fight"

"And then what?" asked the sculptor, as she hesitated.

"Go on fighting!" she cried.

She was seventy-one years old when she first flew this flag, and for the next four years she battled unceasingly under its bold motto against odds that rapidly grew more overwhelming as the process that had been imperceptibly draining Greenford of its population gained impetus with it own action. In the beginning people moved to Johnsonville because they could get work in the print mill, but after a time they went because the others had gone. Before long there was no cobbler in Greenford because there was so little cobbling to do. After that the butcher went away, then the carpenter, and finally the grocery-store was shut up and deserted by the man whose father and grandfather had kept store in the same building for sixty years. It was the old story. He had a large family of children who needed education and "a chance."

The well-kept old village still preserved its outer shell of quaintness and had a constantly increasing charm for summering strangers who rejoiced with a shameless