The day after the return of Mr. Sanders and Francis Bethune from the war, Gabriel\'s grandmother had an early caller in the person of Miss Fanny Tomlin. For a maiden lady, Miss Fanny was very plump and good-looking. Her hair was grey, and she still wore it in short curls, just as she had worn it when a girl. The style became her well. The short curls gave her an air of jauntiness, which was in perfect keeping with her disposition, and they made a very pretty frame for her rosy, smiling face. Socially, she was the most popular person in the town, with both young and old. A children\'s party was a dull affair in Shady Dale without Miss Fanny to give it shape and form, to suggest games, and to make it certain that the timid ones should have their fair share of the enjoyment. Indeed, the community would have been a very dull one but for Miss Fanny; in return for which the young people conferred the distinction of kinship on her by calling her Aunt Fanny. She had remained single because her youngest brother, Pulaski, was unmarried, and needed some one to take care of him, so she said. But she had another brother, Silas Tomlin, who was twice a widower, and who seemed to need some one to take care of him, for he presented a very mean and miserable appearance.