.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 47854
   :PG.Title: Greenacre Girls
   :PG.Released: 2015-06-11
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Izola \L. Forrester
   :DC.Title: Greenacre Girls
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1915
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

===============
GREENACRE GIRLS
===============

.. clearpage::

.. pgheader::

.. container:: titlepage center white-space-pre-line

   .. vspace:: 4

   .. class:: xx-large bold

      GREENACRE
      GIRLS

   .. vspace:: 2

   .. class:: medium

      BY

   .. class:: large

      IZOLA L. FORRESTER

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. class:: medium

      THE WORLD SYNDICATE PUBLISHING CO.
      CLEVELAND, \O. NEW YORK, \N.\Y.

   .. vspace:: 4

.. container:: verso center white-space-pre-line

   .. class:: small

      *Copyright, 1915, by
      George W. Jacobs & Company
      All rights reserved*

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. class:: small

      *Printed in the United States of America*

   .. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

  CONTENTS

.. class:: noindent small

CHAPTER

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

I  `The Finger of Providence`_
II  `The Motherbird and Her Robins`_
III  `Breakers Ahead`_
IV  `The Queen's Privy Council`_
V  `Kit Rebels`_
VI  `White Hyacinths`_
VII  `The Land o' Rest`_
VIII  `Spying the Promised Land`_
IX  `The Lady Managers Choose a Name`_
X  `Settling the Nest`_
XI  `Ma Parmelee's Chicks`_
XII  `Gilead's Girl Neighbors`_
XIII  `Cousin Roxy to the Rescue`_
XIV  `The Lawn Fête`_
XV  `Kit Pulls Anchor`_
XVI  `Guests and Ghosts`_
XVII  `Billie Meets Trespassers`_
XVIII  `Harvesting Hopes`_
XIX  `Ralph and Honey Take the Long Trail`_
XX  `Roxana's Romance`_





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FINGER OF PROVIDENCE`:

.. class:: center x-large bold

   GREENACRE GIRLS

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER I

.. class:: center medium bold

   THE FINGER OF PROVIDENCE

.. vspace:: 2

"It does seem to me, folkses," said Kit warmly,
"that when anyone is trying to write, you might
be a little quiet."

The three at the end of the room heeded not the
admonition.  Doris was so interested that she
had almost succeeded in reclining like a Roman
maiden on the library table, trying to see over
Helen's shoulder.  Jean was drawing up the plan
for action.  The list of names lay before her, and
she tapped her pencil on her nose meditatively as
she eyed it.

"Now, listen, Jean," Helen proposed.  "This
would really be a novelty.  Let's have a Cupid
for postman and not give out our valentines until
after the games.  And just when we've got them
all seated for supper have the bell ring, and a real
postman's whistle blow, and enter Cupid!"

"It's too cold for wings," Doris interposed mildly.

"Oh, Dorrie, you goose.  He'd be all dressed
up beautifully.  Buster Phelps is going to be
Cupid, only we were going to have him sit in
front of a Valentine box and just hand them out.
We'll put a little white suit on him with red
hearts dangling all over him, and curl his hair
angelically."

"You'd better have red heart favors too,
Helen," Jean added; "something that opens and
shuts, with something else inside for a surprise.
And we'll put red crepe shades on all the electric
bulbs.  Could we get those, do you think, girls?"

"We can get anything if Dad and Mother are
home by that time," answered Helen.  The rest
were silent.  Kit, sitting at her mother's desk
beside the wide bay window, looked up and
frowned at the stuffed golden pheasant on top of
the nearest bookcase.  Outside snow was falling
lightly.  The view of the Sound was obscured.
A pearly grayness seemed to be settling around
the big house as if it were being cut off from the
rest of the world by some magic spell.

"Hope Dad's feeling all right by now," Kit
said suddenly, pushing back her thick, dark curls
restlessly.  "They sail from Sanibel Island the
8th.  Wasn't it the 8th, Jean?"

"Oh, they'll be home in plenty of time," Jean
exclaimed.  "Here we all sit, having the silent
mullygrumps when he's better.  Mother said
positively in her last letter that he had improved
wonderfully the previous week."

Helen stared at the long leather couch on one
side of the open fireplace.  It was over four
weeks since her father had lain on it.  Throughout
the winter there had been day after day of
unremitting weakness following his breakdown,
and somehow she could not help wondering
whether the future held the same.  She rose
quickly, shaking her head with defiance at the
thought.

"Let's not worry, girls.  If we all are blue
when he comes, he'll have a relapse."

Then Jean spoke, anxiously, tenderly,--her
big dark eyes questioning Kit.

"What about Mother?"

"We're all worried about Mother, Jean.  It
isn't just you at all," Kit spluttered.  "But you
can be just boiling inside with love and helpfulness,
and still not go around with a face like that!"

"Like what?" demanded Jean haughtily.

"Don't fight, children, don't fight," Doris
counseled, just as if she were the eldest instead of
the youngest.  "Remember what Cousin Roxy
says about the tongue starting more fires than the
heart can put out.  You two scrap much more
than Helen and I do."

"Well, I think," said Helen sedately, "that
we ought to remember Mother just as Jean says.
She's almost sick herself worrying over Dad, and
there she is, away down in Florida with just the
White Hen to talk to."

Jean smiled, thinking of the plump little
trained nurse, Miss Patterson, so spick and span
and placid that the girls had declared they
expected her to cluck at any moment.  They had
nicknamed her the White Hen, and it surely
suited her.  Even though no Chantecler had
arrived yet to claim her, she was the White
Hen,--good-tempered, cheerful, attending strictly to
business always, but not just what one might
call a lovable companion.

"She's too chirpy for anyone who has
responsibilities," Jean said.

"Note Jean when she has responsibilities," Kit
proclaimed.  "Jean's been playing Mrs. Atlas
and carrying the rest of us around on her
shoulders.  And look at her!  Where is the merry
smile of old, fair sister?"

Jean smiled rather forlornly.  It was true that
she had shouldered most of the responsibility
since they had been left alone.  Cousin Roxana
had arrived only a few days previous to the
departure of Mrs. Robbins, and it had been rather
a formidable task suddenly to assume a mother's
place and run the home.

"Oh, I'm all right," she said.  "It's only that
everything seems to be coming at once.  The
valentine party and Kit's special effusion for
Lincoln's Birthday."

"Class symposium on 'Lincoln--the Man--the
President--the Liberator'--" Kit ran it off
proudly.  "Little classics of three hundred words
each.  You just ought to see Billie Dunbar's,
Jean.  He's been boiling it down for a week from
two thousand words, and every day Babbie Kane
asks him how he's getting along.  And you know
how Billie talks!  He just glowers and glooms
and this morning he told her, 'It's still just
sap.'  He's a scream."

"Kit, don't," laughed Jean in spite of herself.
"If you get ink spots on Mother's best suede desk
pad, you'll find yourself a little classic."

Kit moved the ink well farther back as a slight
concession, and suggested once more that the rest
of the family try their level best to keep still
about their old party while she finished her symposium.

"You know," Helen began with a far-off look
in her eyes, "I think we're awfully selfish, and I
mean all of us, not just Kit--"

"Thanking your royal highness," murmured Kit.

"Here's Dad coming back home after five
weeks' absence, and we don't know really whether
he's better or worse--"

"Helen, don't be a raven quothing things at
us," pleaded Jean.

"But it's perfectly true.  He needs rest above
everything else, Miss Patterson told me so; and
here we're planning for a party the minute he gets home."

"Dad says always to go right ahead and have a
good time, that it makes him happier to know we
are happy."

Kit frowned again.  She had straight dark
brows set above wide gray eyes, and her frown
was somewhat portentous.  At fifteen she was
far more energetic than Jean at seventeen.  No
matter what fate might deliver to her she would
always find a quick antidote for any manner of
trouble.  With her short curly hair, she seemed
more like the boy of the family, like her father
himself, cheery, optimistic, fond of all outdoor
life.  It was a saying in the Robbins family that
Kit might neglect the weeds a bit in her special
garden of life, but the general landscape effect
would always be artistic and beautiful.

Privately, now that the family were facing a
crisis, Kit felt far more competent to act as the
head pro tem. than did Jean.  The main trouble
was, as Helen had said, that Kathleen needed a
brake to check her official impetus.

"Anyway, the invitations are all out now and
Mother knows we're going to have the party
because I wrote her all about it, and she sent back
word that she didn't mind a bit so long as we had
Cousin Roxy to steer us safely."

"But did you ask Cousin Roxy, Jean?"

"You ask her," said Jean.  "She'd fly around
the morning star if you asked her to, Helenita."

Helen thawed at once.  The thought of their
elderly and stately Cousin Roxana sailing
blithesomely around in the early dawn circling the
morning star, brought about an immediate
resumption of friendly relations.  It was the
prerogative of sisters to scrap, Kit always held.
Sometimes it was quite a satisfaction to say just
what you thought in the bosom of your family,
get it all off your mind, and know that the family
loved you just the same.  Under these
circumstances, Kit was wont to chant feelingly:

   |  "Oh, what was love made for, if 'twere not the same
   |  Through joy and through torment, through sorrow and shame.
   |  I know not, I ask not, if guilt's in that heart,
   |  But I know that I love thee, whatever thou art."
   |

Therefore the mere mention of Cousin Roxana
brought harmony and mirth into the strained
atmosphere of the library.

It seemed as if a special dispensation of Fate
had brought their elderly cousin down from her
calm and well-ordered seclusion at Gilead
Center, Connecticut, just when they needed her most.

Usually she contented herself with sending the
family useful and proper gifts on birthdays and
at Christmas, but otherwise she did not manifest
herself.

She was forty-seven, plump, serene, and still
good to look upon, with her fluffy flaxen hair just
beginning to look a trifle silvery, and a fine
network of wrinkles showing around the corners of
her eyes and mouth.

"Land alive, Elizabeth Ann," she had told
Mrs. Robbins happily the moment she set foot
inside the wide entrance hall at Shady Cove,
"didn't I know you needed me?"  And she
laughed wholesomely.  "I didn't plan to descend
on you so sudden, but it looked as if it was the
finger of Providence pointing the way, with
Jerry down sick and you so sort of pindling
yourself.  Don't you fret a mite about my being put
out.  I'll stay here with the children and take
care of things till you get back home."

And lovely Elizabeth Ann, she who had been
Betty all through her girlhood and graceful
matronhood, had agreed thankfully.  After a three
months' siege of nursing her husband through a
nervous breakdown, she was glad indeed to
welcome the hearty assistance of Cousin Roxy.

"Let's put it right up to her now," Kit
exclaimed.  "I'd just as soon ask her if Helen's
afraid."

Before the others could hold her back, she had
slipped out of the library and was running up
the stairs, two at a time, into the large sunny
room at the south end of the house which Cousin
Roxy had chosen because from its windows she
could look out over Long Island Sound.  But
at the door Kit stopped short.  Over at the
window stood Cousin Roxy, energetically wiping her
eyes with a generous-sized plain linen handkerchief,
and the end of her nose was red from weeping.

"Come in, child, come right in," she said
hastily, as Kit backed away.  "I'm glad you
happened up.  Come here to your old second cousin
and comfort her.  I feel as if all the waves and
billows of David had washed over me."

Kit hurried over and wrapped her arms around
the tall, self-sufficient figure.

"There, there, save the bones," laughed Cousin
Roxana, through her tears.  "You're just like
your father; oh, dear me, Kit, your dear splendid
father."

"What's the matter with Dad?" demanded Kit,
swift to catch the connection between her cousin's
tears and words.  "Did you get a letter?"

In silence Cousin Roxana handed over a
telegram.  It was from Miss Patterson at Palm
Beach.  They were to stop there after leaving
Sanibel Island on the west coast.  Kit read it
breathlessly:

.. vspace:: 2

"Mr. Robbins worse.  Sailing 2nd."

.. vspace:: 2

"You know, Kit, they'd never do that if there
hadn't been a turn for the worse."  There was a
break in Cousin Roxana's voice as she reached for
the telegram.  "I just wish that I had him up
home safe in the room he used to have when he
was a boy.  He had measles the same time I did
when my mother was alive.  That's your Aunt
Charlotte, Kit, she that was Charlotte Peabody
from Boston.  But I always seemed to take after
the Robbins' side 'stid of the Peabody, they said,
and Jerry was just like own brother to me.  I
wish I had him away from doctors and trained
nurses, and old Doctor Gallup tending him.
I've seen him march right up to Charon's
ferryboat and haul out somebody he didn't think was
through living."

Kit stood with her hands clasped behind her
head, looking down at the pines, their branches
lightly crystalled with snow and ice.  Somehow
it didn't seem as if God could let her big, splendid
father slip out of the world just when they all
needed him so much.  During all the months of
illness, the girls had not grasped the seriousness
of it.  He only seemed weak and not himself.
They knew he had had to give up his work
temporarily, that he never went to the office in New
York any more, that it was even an effort for him
to give orders over the telephone, but they had
taken these things as of little moment.

Perhaps only Jean had really gleaned the real
import of her mother's anxious face, the steady
daily visits of the nerve specialist, and, last of
all, the consultation two days before they had left
for the South.

Kit closed her eyes and wrinkled her face as if
with a twinge of sharp pain.  "It's going to be
awful," she said softly, "just awful for Mother."

Cousin Roxana squared her ample shoulders
unconsciously, and lifted her double chin in
challenge to the worry that the next few days might
hold.

"It's more awful for you poor children and
Jerry.  We women folks are given special
strength to bear just such trials; we've *got* to be
strong."

But the tears came slowly, miserably to Kit's
gray eyes.  She pulled the curtains back, and
looked out of the window to where the blue waters
of Manhasset Bay were turning purple and violet
in the gathering gloom of the late afternoon.
The land looked desolate, and yet it was but a
light snowfall.  Down close to the bay some
gulls rose and swept in a big half circle towards
the other side of the inlet.  Buster Phelps,
running along the sidewalk towards home, waved up
at her a big bunch of pussy willows.

"Spring's coming, Kit," he called riotously.
"Just found some and they're 'most out!"

Kit waved back mechanically.  Of course she
must not break down and cry.  Doris might do
that, but she and Jean must be strong and brace
up the two younger ones so they all could help
their mother.  Still the tears came.  What was
the use of spring if--

"Kit, aren't you ever coming down?" called
Jean from the foot of the stairs.

"Right now," Kit answered.  "You come too,
please, Cousin Roxy.  We need you fearfully to
tell us what to do next."

"No, you don't," said Cousin Roxana calmly.
"You don't need me any more than the earth
needs me to tell it this snow's going away and
the flowers will soon be blossoming.  Just trust
in the Lord, child.  'It may not be my way, and
it may not be thy way, but yet in His own way,
the Lord will provide.'  It's one thing to stand
in the choir and sing that, and it's another to live
up to it.  The first thing you girls must do is
learn how to meet your father with a smile."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE MOTHERBIRD AND HER ROBINS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE MOTHERBIRD AND HER ROBINS

.. vspace:: 2

The next three days were ones of anxious
waiting.  All plans for the Valentine party had been
abandoned, and after school hours the girls hung
around Cousin Roxana feeling that she alone
could help them bear the suspense.  Jean
occasionally stole away to her mother's room and
looked around to be sure that everything was as
she liked it best, and when she came out into the
wide upper hall she usually met Kit and Doris
stealing from their father's room, their eyes red
from weeping.

Helen hunted the cosy corners and curled herself
up like a forlorn kitten.  Kit declared there
wasn't a dry sofa cushion in the house.

"How about your own self?" Doris asked.

"I cry too, but not all the time.  Jean and I
are standing shoulder to shoulder with Cousin
Roxy."  Kit straightened her shoulders and
stood in martial attitude.  "We represent the--the
ultima--what's the farthest beyond in Latin,
Jean?  Anyway that's what we represent, the
beyondness in feminine efficiency."

"What does that mean, Kit?"

Kit patted the short bobbed curls on the head of
the youngest "robin."

"Means that we've got to keep our heads no
matter what happens."

Jean said little.  Ever since she could
remember, her mother had said to her, "You know I
rely on you most, dear.  You're mother's comforter."

It was a thought that always gave her fresh
strength, to know how much her mother needed
her.  She was smaller than Kit, slender and with
dark eyes, with a look in them that Doris said
reminded her of the eyes of a deer.

"Jeanie, there's a Virginia fallow deer over in
the Park that looks exactly like you," she would
say soberly.  "And so do all the squirrels when
they keep still and stare at one sideways.
You've got such sympathetic, interested, mellow
eyes."

"Eyes can't be mellow, Dorrie," Jean laughed.
"Try something else."

"Well, they are mellow just the same,--tender
and nice, aren't they, Helen?"

And Helen would always agree that they were,
tender like the eyes of Jeanne, the girl in the
garden at Arles, listening to the voices.

But they were full of trouble now, as Jean
hurried around the house, following Cousin
Roxana's directions, and encouraging Tekla, the
Hungarian cook, to stand at her post.  Cousin
Roxana really did herself proud, as she would
have said, as director of preparations.  Mr. Robbins'
rooms were as immaculate and as clear of
non-essentials as the deck of a battleship.
Under her orders the girls and Bertha, the second
maid, worked faithfully; while Tekla regarded
her with silent, wide-eyed admiration.

"We'd never have managed without you,
Cousin Roxy," Jean declared when the final
half-hour arrived, and they all gathered in the long
living-room, listening for the hum of the car up
the drive.  Helen and Doris were together, arms
entwined about each other's shoulders, on the
wide window-seat.  Kit paced back and forth
restlessly, and Jean sat on the arm of her father's
favorite chair before the open fireplace, her eyes
watching the curling flames.

"Land, child, I don't see what you want to
burn open fires for when you run a good furnace,"
Cousin Roxana had demurred.  "Up home, I'd
be only too glad of the furnace.  I have to keep
the kitchen stove going steady all day, and run
one more in the sitting-room."

"I know it isn't necessary," Jean answered,
sitting on the rug before the fire, her hands clasped
around her knees, kiddie fashion, in spite of her
seventeen years, "but it warms the cockles of your
heart to watch an open fire.  Don't you think so,
Cousin Roxy?"

Cousin Roxana sat in the low willow rocker,
placidly knitting on a counterpane square of
old-fashioned filet.

"We must all hope for the best," she said,
beaming at the anxious faces.  "Helen, for pity's
sake stop that silent drizzling.  If it should be
the will of the Lord that your blessed father be
taken, it isn't right for us to rebel and take on so,
is it?  I feel just as badly as any of you."  She
took off her eyeglasses, that were always
balanced half way down her nose, and ruminated,
"Land, didn't I live with him for years after his
mother died.  That was your own grandmother,
Helen Faunce Robbins.  I've got her spinning-wheel
up home in the garret still.  But I always
did say we made too much woe of the passing
over of our dear ones.  Why, it isn't any time at
all before we're going along right after them.
I do believe there's many a person been worried
to death by weeping relations.  Smile, girls, even
if your hearts do ache, and cheer him up.  Don't
meet him with tears and fears.  Jean, run and
tell Tekla to keep an eye on that beef tea while
I'm up here.  It has to keep simmering.  Kit,
can't you keep still for a minute, or does it rest
your mortal coil to keep it on the trot?"

So she cheered and encouraged them, and when
the automobile rolled up to the veranda steps
with Mr. and Mrs. Robbins and the spotless little
White Hen, the children did their best to appear
happy.  Mr. Robbins, wrapped close in furs,
waved to them, his lean, handsome face eager with
home love and longing.

"Hello, my robins," he called to them.  "Back
to the nest.  Roxy, God bless you, give me a
hand.  I'm still rather shaky."

They were all trying to kiss him at once, and
Doris held one of his thin white hands close
against her cheek.  It did not require the look in
their mother's beautiful eyes to warn them about
being careful.  Slender and stately, she stood
behind him, smiling at them all.  Surely in all
the world there was nobody quite like Mother,
the girls thought, nobody who could be so tender
and sweet and yet so gracious and queenlike.

"Why, he doesn't look nearly so bad as I
expected," Cousin Roxana told her, kissing her in
a motherly way.  Somehow it seemed quite
natural for all to pet and comfort the Motherbird, to
try and shield her from the harsher side of life
and make the sun shine for her always.  Life
had always run in smooth, flower-bordered canals
of peace for Betty Robbins.  Only the past three
months had shown her the possibilities of trouble
and sorrow, and even now they had only knocked
at her door, not entered as unbidden guests.

"You mustn't tire him, girls," she told them
warningly, as the nurse and Cousin Roxana
assisted him upstairs, one step at a time, then a rest
before the next.  "He must have a chance to
recover from the long journey."

"Land o' rest," Roxana called back happily,
"I'm so relieved that you didn't have to bring
him back on a stretcher I can hardly catch my
breath."

"We're hopeful since he stood the journey so
well," answered Mrs. Robbins.  She leaned back
in the big, cushioned willow chair that Doris
always called "The Bungalow."  Jean slipped off
her cloak and Doris took her gloves.  Helen
knelt to put a fresh log on the fire and Kit
hurried down after a tea tray.  It was not fitting
that the Queen Mother should receive service at
the hands of hirelings.  But when she returned
she found a scene that might have baffled even
Cousin Roxana.  Helen and Doris knelt on the
floor beside the big chair, the tears running down
their faces, and Jean hung over the back with her
arms close around her mother.

"Mother darling," she begged.  "Don't, don't
cry so.  Why, you're home, and we're all going
to look after him, and be your helpers."

Helen sped up after Cousin Roxana, and presently
she came bustling downstairs, flushed and
efficient.

"Why, Elizabeth Ann," she cried, smoothing
back her hair just as if she had been one of the
girls.  "Don't give way just when your strength
should be tried and true."

"Please call me Betty," protested Mrs. Robbins,
smiling even through her tears.  "It sounds
so formal for you to call me Elizabeth Ann.  It
always makes me feel like squaring my shoulders,
Roxy."

"So you should, child," Roxana declared
cheerily.  "Betty's so sort of gaysome to my way of
thinking and there's stability to Elizabeth Ann.
Lord knows, you're going to need a lot of
stability before you find the way out of this."

"I know I am."  As she spoke the Motherbird
held her brood close to her, Doris and Helen
kneeling beside her and Jean and Kit on each
side.  She leaned back her head and smiled at
them.  It was such a lovely face, they thought.
Nobody in all the world had quite the same look
or air as Mother.  Back from her low broad
forehead waved thick brown hair.  Doris loved to
perch on the broad arm of the willow chair and
search diligently for any gray hairs that dared to
show themselves.  If any were found, they were
promptly pulled out.  Nine might come in the
place of each, as Cousin Roxana said was highly
probable according to tradition, but while they
were few and far between, they were all
eradicated, almost in indignation that Father Time
should dare to assail, ever so gently, the splendid
fortress of Mother's youth.

"Really, girls," Kit would say sometimes in
her abrupt way, "I think Mother has the most
interesting face I ever saw, and the most soulful
eyes.  They can be just as full of fun and
mischief as Dorrie's, and then, again, just watch
them when she feels sorry for anybody.  It's
worth while having a pain or something happen
to you just to see her look that way."

She was looking "that way" at this moment as
she smiled up at Cousin Roxana; just as though
there was nothing too hard or too difficult in all
the world for her to undertake.

"That's better," Cousin Roxy said comfortably.
"Now you children take her up to her
room and play you're maids of honor to the queen.
I have to tend my broth and see how Jerry's
coming along.  Looks to me like rest and quiet
and cheerful hearts will carry him through if
anything will."

"Roxy!"  There was a hidden note of tragedy
in the Motherbird's voice.  Nobody but the same
unemotional Roxy knew how she longed to put
her head right down on that ample bosom and
have a good old-fashioned cry.  "Roxy, the
doctors say he'll never be any better."

"Fiddlesticks and pinwheels!" exclaimed Miss
Robbins indignantly, with a toss of her head.
"Lots they know about it.  I declare, sometimes
I think the more you pay a doctor the less he can
do for you and the bigger-sounding names he
thinks up to call what may ail you.  I certainly
do wonder at the way they try to make folks think
they've got a special little private telephone wire
right up to the Death Angel's door.  I never take
any stock in them at all, Betty."  It came out
quite easily.  "Give me castor oil, some quinine
and calomel, and maybe a little arnica salve for
emergencies, and I'll undertake to help anybody
hang on to their mortal coils a little bit longer."

"But things seem to be near a crisis now."

"Let them."  Cousin Roxana stood with arms
akimbo, as if she were hurling defiance at
somebody, and the girls fairly hung on her words.
"If the soul never had trials, what would be the
use of life?  Put ye on the armor of faith, Betty
Robbins, and hope for the best.  As for you,
Jean and Kit, and you too, Helen and Dorrie,
if I find any of you looking down your noses, I
declare I'll stick clothes-pins on them and fasten
a smile to your lips with court plaster."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BREAKERS AHEAD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   BREAKERS AHEAD

.. vspace:: 2

St. Valentine's Day came and went without the
party.  Once, and sometimes twice, a day the
doctor's runabout turned into the broad pebbled
driveway and the children went around with
subdued voices and anxious faces.  Even Tekla,
down in her kitchen domain, wore an ominous
expression, and told Cousin Roxana that she had
dreamed three times of three black birds
perching on the chimneys, which was a sure sign of
death, anyone could tell you, in her own country.

"Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't," Roxy
laughed back comfortably.  "If I were you,
Tekla, I'd take something for my liver and go to
bed a mite earlier at night."

All the same, her own face looked worried when
she entered the sick-room and looked down at
Mr. Robbins' face on the pillows.

"It seems ridiculous for me to be lying here,
Roxy," he would say to her, with the whimsical
boyish smile she loved.  "Why, there isn't
anything the matter with me only I'm tired out.
Machinery's a bit rusty, I guess."

"No, nothing special only that you can't eat
or walk or sit up without keeling over."  Her
keen hazel eyes regarded him amusedly.  "You
know, Jerry Robbins, if it wasn't for Betty and
the girls, I'd trot you right back home with me."

He looked from her to the window.  Jean had
just brought in a bunch of daffodils in a slender
Rookwood jar and had set them in the sunlight.

"You're not going soon, are you, Roxy?"

Roxana seated herself in the chair beside his
bed.  As she would have put it, there was a time
for all things, and this seemed a propitious
moment, for her to get something off her mind that
had been weighing there for some time.

"I'll have to pretty quick.  It looks like an
early spring, Jerry, and there's a sight to do up
there.  Of course Hiram knows how things go as
well as I do, but I've been away a month now,
and I like to have the oversight of things.  Men
are menfolks after all, and you can't expect too
much from them.  I want to get the hay barn
shingled, and some new hen runs set out before
the little chicks begin to hatch, and all my berry
canes need clearing out.  You know that mass
of blackberries along the stone wall in the clover
patch below the lane--what's the matter, Jerry?"

He had closed his eyes as if in pain, and his
hand closed suddenly over her own as it lay on the
counterpane.

"It makes me homesick to hear you talk, Roxy."

Their glances met presently in a long look of
sympathetic remembrance of the dear old times
at Maple Lawn.

"If it were not for the girls," he went on
slowly.  "They are all at an age now when they
need the advantages of being near the city."

"Well, I'm not so sure of that," answered
Roxy dubiously.  "I suppose you feel that you
can do more for them down here, Jerry, and it is a
sightly place to live, but you did pretty well
yourself up at the old Frost District, didn't you?"

He smiled and nodded his head.

"I wonder what Betty would say to the Frost
District school-house?" he asked.  A vision of
it arose out of the memories of the past, the little
white school-house that stood at the crossroads,
with rocky pastures rising high behind it, and the
long white dusty road curving before it.  He had
been just a country boy, born and bred within a
few miles of Maple Lawn at the old Robbins'
homestead.  He knew every cow path through
the woods about Gilead Center, every big chestnut
and hickory tree for five miles around, every
fork and bend in the course of the wild little river
that cut through the valley meadows.  Somehow,
in these days of weakness and fear that he was
losing his grip on life, there had grown up a great
yearning to be home again, to find himself back
in the shelter of the mothering arms of the hills.
They had always been the hills of rest to him as
a boy.  Over their margins the skyline had
promised adventure and bold emprise, but now they
beckoned to him to come back to peace and health.

"She isn't country bred, is she, Jerry?"

The question recalled him to the sick-room.

"No," he answered gently, "no, Betty's from
California.  I believe her people went out
originally from New York State, but she herself was
born in San Francisco.  Later, she lived on her
father's ranch for a while in the Coronado Valley,
but she was educated in the city.  She doesn't
know anything about farm life as we do."

Roxana's placid face looked nonplussed.  California
might just as well be Kamchatka, so far as
her knowledge of it was concerned.  It did seem
rather too bad that Betty had come from such
far-off stock, but still, she thought, a great deal
could be excused in her on account of it, since
it wasn't given to everybody to be born in New
England.

"Would she mind it for just a summer, do you suppose?"

"It would have to be for a longer time than
one summer, Roxy."

Something in his voice made her suspicious.
The nurse had gone out for her daily airing
down the shore road.  Mrs. Robbins had walked
out to meet the girls on their way from school,
intending to accompany them to afternoon
Lenten service at St. James's.  A lone
adventurous fly crept up the window curtain and
Roxana promptly slapped him with a ready hand.

"Pesky thing," she said; then, "What did you
say, Jerry?"

"I said that it would have to be for a longer
time than just one summer.  Things have not
gone well with me for the past year.  I haven't
told Betty or the girls about it."

"You should have," said Roxy promptly.  "It
isn't fair to them not to share your sorrows with
them as well as your joys.  Partner, that's what
it says, doesn't it?  Partner of your joys and
sorrows, you know, Jerry."

"Betty has never seemed to understand much
about money matters so I did not want to worry her."

"Just like a man.  So you broke your health
down and landed here in bed trying to do it all
yourself.  Can I help you?  How much money
do you need to tide you over?"

He laughed unsteadily.

"Dear old Roxy.  You'd give anyone your
left ear if they needed it, wouldn't you?  You
don't understand how we live.  It takes nearly
every cent I earn to cover our current expenses.
As long as I could keep well, it did not matter,
but three months' illness shows breakers ahead.
I am wondering what we are going to do, and I
dread even speaking to Betty about it."

"Then let me do it," said Miss Robbins
promptly.  "I'd love to.  Better yet, call a
family council and talk things over if you are strong
enough to do so.  How long can you hold out here?"

"I'm not certain."  He looked weary and
bothered.  "We only rent the place, as you know.
The lease is up the first of May.  It is $1800 a
year."

"You can buy a good farm up home for that,
Jerry; house, barns, pasture, haylands, wood lots
and all," said Roxana thoughtfully.  "It's a
nice place here, but it's fearfully extravagant."

"Do you think so, Roxy?" he smiled up at her
with a glint of fun in his eyes like Kit's.  "Betty
and the girls want me to take over the estate
below here along the ocean front at $2500 a year
because they like the ocean view and the private
beach.  It really is quite moderate too,
considering we're on the North Shore.  Property on
Long Island is expensive."

She looked out at the clean park-like territory
around the large modern house.  Winding drives
swept in and out.  Each residence stood in its
own spacious grounds.  High rock walls with
ornamental entrance gates surrounded each one.
There was an artificial pond where the children
skated in whiter and the country club crowned
the hill with golf links sloping away to the shore
on the north.

Down in the ravine stood the artistic gray stone
railroad station matching the real estate office
over the way, and farther along were the village
stores, the new High School of stucco and tile,
and the two churches.  Back and forth along the
smooth highway slipped a never-ending line of
motor cars coming and going like ants over an
ant hill.  Roxy turned her head towards the bed
once more and asked:

"Would you rather do that than go up home
with me?"

"It isn't what I'd rather do.  It's what we
may have to do unless I gain my old strength."

"You'll never get a mite better lying there
worrying over unpaid bills and new ones stacking
up.  I'm going to talk to Betty."

He shook his head with a little smile of doubt.

"But it would never be fair to take them away
from this sort of thing, Roxy.  You don't
understand.  They have their church and their club
work and their special studies.  Jean has been
taking up a course in Applied Design and
Modeling, and Helen has her music.  Kit's deep in
school work and belongs to about five clubs
outside of that.  Dorrie's about the only one
disengaged, and she has a dancing class and the
Ministering Children's League over at church.
Betty's on more committees and things than I
can count, and she believes that we owe it to the
children to give them the best social environment
that we can.  Perhaps we can get along in some
way.  There's a little left at the bank."

"How much?" demanded Roxana uncompromisingly.
"I mean, after you've paid up
everything.  I'll bet there isn't five thousand
left."

"Five thousand!  I doubt much whether there
is one thousand.  Don't tell Betty that.  I have
never bothered her about such things, and there
are a few securities I might sell and realize on."

"And you think that you've been a good
husband to her.  Land alive, what are men made of!
Here she stands a chance of being left alone in
the world with four children to bring up and
you've never bothered her about your business.
The sooner you get to it, the better, I
think."  Roxana stood up and adjusted her eyeglasses
resolutely.  She had seen what he could not,
Betty coming leisurely up the box-bordered walk,
a loose cluster of yellow jonquils in her arms, and
the girls following, all except Kit.  "There
they come now.  I won't say anything till you do,
Jerry."

Suddenly Kit's voice sounded at the door.
Her short curls were rumpled and towsled, and
her eyes wide with excitement, as she hugged a
hot water bottle to her face.

"I've heard almost every word you said," she
burst out.  "I had neuralgia and stayed home
this afternoon, and I've been asleep in there on
the couch.  Please don't be sorry, Dad.  I'll help
you every blessed bit I can, and I think it would
be glorious for us all to go up into the country."

She stopped as the door below, in the front
entrance hall, banged and Doris came upstairs on
a run, a herald of love and joy.

"Well, child, keep your mouth shut till we
know where we're at," counseled Roxy quickly.
"Go back and lie down.  Here they come."

But Kit stood her ground, and Jean and Helen
seemed to catch from her the fact that there was
something unusual in the wind as they came in
behind their Mother.

"It was a lovely walk," said Mrs. Robbins,
drawing off her gloves as she sat down beside the
bed and smiled at the patient.  "We went down
to look at the Dunderdale place, Jerry.  It is
simply lovely there even in winter.  You can see
the summer possibilities.  I never saw so many
shrubs and trees and such beautiful grouping.
It made me think of our Californian places."

"Or an Italian garden, Mother dear," Jean
added eagerly.  "Why, Dad, it's exactly like some
of Parrish's pictures, don't you know; tall poplars
over here, and then a hedge effect and a low
Roman seat tucked in every once in a while.
Why, it's just as cheap as can be."

"You'd enjoy the garden so this summer, and
there are enclosed sleeping porches, and an inner
court like a patio garden.  The garage is small,
but it will do if we don't get a new car this year."

Right here Cousin Roxana sniffed, a real,
unmistakable sniff.  She was a believer in quick
action.  If you had anything to do, the quicker you
did it and got over it the better, she always said.
So now she raised her head as they all looked
at her, and sprang her bolt right out of a clear sky.

"You won't get a new car this year, Betty, my
dear, and you're not going to move into any
two-thousand-five-hundred-dollars-a-year bungalow,
either.  I'm going to take the whole lot of you
to Gilead Center, and see if Jerry can't get his
health back up in those blessed hills of rest."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE QUEEN'S PRIVY COUNCIL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE QUEEN'S PRIVY COUNCIL

.. vspace:: 2

There was a queer silence, fraught with
suspense for each person in the room.  Mrs. Robbins
looked down at the wearied face lying back
on the white pillows with a startled expression in
her usually calm eyes.  Instinctively both her
hands reached for his and held them fast, while
Jean laid her own two down on her mother's
shoulders as if she would have given her strength
for this new ordeal.

"You mean for a little visit, don't you, Cousin
Roxy?" she asked eagerly.

"No, I don't, Jeanie.  I mean for good and
all, or at least until your father has time to get
well, and that can't be done in a few days."

"But Doctor Roswell says he's gaining every
day," Mrs. Robbins said.  She waited for some
reassuring answer, her eyes almost begging for
one, but Cousin Roxana was not to be dismayed.

"Jerry, tell what the doctor said to us this
morning.  Not that I take much stock in him,
but he may be on the right track."

"Nothing special, Motherbird and robins all,"
smiled back Mr. Robbins; "only it appears that
I am to be laid up in the dry dock for repairs for
a long while, and the sinews of war won't stand
the vacation expenses if we stay where we are now."

"I wouldn't try to talk about it, dear, before
the children," began Mrs. Robbins, quick to avoid
anything that savored of trouble or anxiety.
"We must not worry.  There will be some way
out of it."

"There is," Cousin Roxy went on serenely.
"If ever the finger of Providence pointed the way,
it's doing it now.  I say you'd better move right
out of this kind of a place where expenses are
high and you can't afford anything at all.  This
is a real crisis, Elizabeth Ann."  She spoke with
more decision as she saw Jean pat her mother
comfortingly.  "It has got to be met with
common sense.  When the bread winner can't work
and there's a nestful of youngsters to bring up
and feed and clothe, it's time to sit up and take
notice, and count all of your resources."

"How would it do for you to take Father up
home with you for a rest, Cousin Roxy?" Jean
suggested, stepping into the awkward breach as
she always did.  "Then we could let Annie and
Rozika go, and just keep Tekla to do the
cooking and washing.  And when he came back we'd
have all the moving over, and it would be the
prettiest time of the year along in late August."

Mrs. Robbins' face brightened at the suggestion.

"Or we might even renew the lease here, Jerry.
The house is very pleasant after all, and we could
get along with it if it were all done over this
spring."

Mr. Robbins looked up at Cousin Roxana's
countenance with whimsical helplessness, and she
answered the appeal.

"Now, look here," she said with decision and
finality.  "You'd better put the idea of staying
here right out of your mind, Betty.  The winds
of circumstance have blown your nest all to
smithereens, and if you're the right sort of a
motherbird, you'll start right in building a fresh
one where it's safer.  I think your way lies over
the hills to Gilead Center.  You can pay all your
bills here, sell off a lot of heavy furniture, and
move up there this spring.  For you can't stay
here.  There's hardly enough money to see you
through as it is.  I'm going to help you along a
bit until you get your new start."

"Not money enough," said Mrs. Robbins as
though she could not comprehend such an idea.
"But we couldn't think of going up there and all
living with you, Cousin Roxy."

"You're not going to," answered Roxana.
"Thank the Lord, I live in a land where houses
and food are cheap and there's room for
everybody.  We don't tack a brass door-plate on a
rock pile like I saw there in New York, Betty,
and call it a residence at about ten dollars a
minute to breathe.  I've been telling Jerry you'd
better rent a farm near me, and settle down on it."

"But Roxy--" Mrs. Robbins hesitated.

"Oh, Mother, do it, do it," came in a quick
outburst from Kit, standing back against the wall.
"It would be perfectly dandy for all of us and
would do Dad a world of good!"

"We wouldn't mind a bit.  We'd love it,
wouldn't we, Dorrie?"  Helen squeezed Doris's
hand to be sure she would answer in the
affirmative.  "We'd all help you."

Doris was silent, still too bewildered at the
outlook to express an opinion.

"I shouldn't mind for myself, but we must
think of the girls--their schooling and what
environment means at their age.  I suppose Jean
could be left at school."

"Thought she was all through school," came
from Cousin Roxana.

"I am, only I've been taking lessons in town
this winter in a special course, arts and crafts,
you know, and next fall I was going into the
regular classes at the National Academy of Design."

"What for, child?"  Roxy's gray eyes
twinkled behind her glasses.  "Going to be an artist?"

"Not exactly pictures," Jean answered with
dignity.  "Conventionalized designs."

"Well, whatever it is, I guess it will hold over
for a year while you go up to the country and
learn to keep house.  Kit here can go to High
School.  It's seven miles away, but our young
folks drive down and put up their horses at
Tommy Burke's stable in East Pomfret, and
take the trolley over from there.  It's real handy."

Kit's eyes signaled to Jean, and Jean's to
Helen and Doris.  A fleeting vision of that
"handy" trip to High School in the dead of winter
appeared before them.  Kit had a ridiculous
way of expressing utter despair and astonishment.
She would open her eyes widely, inflate
her cheeks, and look precisely like Tweedledee in
"Through the Looking-Glass."  Doris emitted
a low but irrepressible giggle under the strain.

"I think," Mrs. Robbins said hurriedly, "that
we might manage if we had a little roadster."

"Rooster?" repeated Cousin Roxy in surprise.

Kit and Doris departed suddenly into the outer hall.

"No, roadster; a runabout that either Jean or
I could learn to run.  Don't they have them,
Jerry, with adjustable tops, one for passengers,
one for delivering goods, and so on?"

"Doubtless one for ploughing and harrowing
likewise, Betty," Cousin Roxana said merrily.
"I guess you'll jog along behind a good, sensible
horse for a while.  Remember Ella Lou, Jerry?
She's fifteen years old and just as perky as ever.
I always have to hold her down at the railroad
crossing."

"What do you think of it, dear?" asked Mr. Robbins,
looking longingly up at the face of the
Motherbird.  "It would be a great comfort and
relief to me to get back to those old hills of rest,
but it doesn't seem fair to you or the children.
The sacrifice is too great.  They do need the
right kind of environment, as you say.  Suppose
we left Jean at least, where she could keep
up her studies, and perhaps put Kit into a good
private school.  Then I might go up home with
Roxy, and you and the two younger girls could
go out to California to Benita Ranch--"

But Mrs. Robbins laid her fingers on his lips.

"You're not going to banish us to Benita
Ranch.  If you think it is the best thing to do,
Jerry, we'll all go with you.  Remember,
'Whither thou goest, I will go.  Where thou
lodgest, I will lodge--'"

Helen laid her hand over Jean's, and they
stepped out softly.  Their mother had slipped
down on her knees beside the bed, and even
Cousin Roxana had gone over to the window to
pretend she was looking out at the Sound.  The
girls fled downstairs to the big music-room back
of the library.  It had been their special shelter
and gathering place ever since they had lived
there.  Kit and Doris were already there, deep
into an argument about the entire situation.

"I don't think it's right to move up there,"
Helen said, judicially.  "We may not like it at
all, and there we'd be just the same, planted, and
maybe we never could get out of it, and we'd
grow old and look just like Cousin Roxy and
talk like her and everything."

"Prithee, maiden, have a care what thou sayest,"
Kit expostulated.  "Our fair cousin hath a
way, 'tis true, but she is a power in the land, and
her voice is heard in the councils of the mighty.
I wish I had half her common sense."

"I hate common sense," Jean cried passionately.
"I know it's right and we must do the
best thing, but, girls, did you see Mother's face?
It was simply tragic.  Dad's been a country boy,
and he's going back home where he knows all
about everything and loves it, but Mother's so
different.  She's like a queen."

"Marie Antoinette had an excellent dairy, and
Queen Charlotte raised a prize brand of pork,
my dear," Kit answered.  Perched upon the long
music stool, she beamed on the disconsolate ones
over on the long leather couch.  "I think
Mother's a perfect darling, but she's a good
soldier too, and she'll go, you see if she doesn't.
And it won't kill any of us.  I don't see why you
can't hammer copper and brass, and cut out
leather designs in a woodshed just as well as you
can in a studio.  The really great mind should
rise superior to its environment."

"Let's tell Kit that the first time she scraps
over dishwashing," Doris said.  "I didn't hear
anything about Tekla going along, did you, Jean?"

Kit turned around and drummed out a gay
strain of martial music on the piano keys, while
she sang:

   |  "Oh, it has to be done, and it's got to be done,
   |    If I have to do it myself."
   |

"You'll do your share all right, Kathleen
Mavourneen, and when the gray dawn is breaking at
that," laughed Jean.  "Farm life's no joke, and
really, while I wouldn't disagree with Dad and
Cousin Roxy about it, I think that those who
have special gifts--"

"Meaning our darling eldest sister," quoth Kit.

"--Should not waste their time doing what
is not their forte.  It takes away the work from
those who can't do the other things."

Jean's pointed chin was raised a bit higher in
her earnestness, but Kit shook her head.

"You're going to walk the straight and narrow
path up at Gilead Center under Cousin Roxy's
eagle eye just the same, Jean.  It's no good
kicking against the pricks.  I don't mind so much
leaving this place, but we'll miss the girls awfully."

"And the church," added Helen, who was in
the Auxiliary Girls' Choir.  "We're going to
miss that.  I wonder if there is a church up there."

"I see where Kit steps off the basket ball team
and learns how to run a lawn mower," Kit
remarked.  "Also, there will be no Wednesday
evening dancing class, Helenita, for your
princesslike toes to trip at."

"I wish we could all move back to town and see
if we couldn't do something there to earn money,"
Jean said.  "One of the girls in the art class
found a position designing wall paper the other
day, and another one decorates lacquered boxes
and trays.  When the fortunes of the house
suddenly crash, the humble but still genteel family
usually take in paying guests, or do ecclesiastical
embroidery, don't they?"

"Don't be morbid, Jean," Kit wagged an
admonishing finger at her from the stool where she
presided, "We'll not take in any boarders at
all.  I see myself waiting on table this summer
at some hillside farm retreat for aged, and
respectable females.  If we've got to work, let's
work for ourselves in the Robbins' commonwealth."

"And if it has to be, let's not fuss and make
things harder for Mother," Doris put in.

"How about Dad?" Kit demanded.  "Seems
to me that he's got the hardest part to bear.  It's
bad enough lying there sick all the time, without
feeling that you're dragging the whole family
after you and exiling them to Gilead Center."

"It's too funny, girls," Jean said all at once,
her eyes softening and her dimples showing again.
"Just the minute anyone of us takes Dad's part,
some one springs up and gives a yell for Mother,
and vice versa.  I think we're the nicest, fairest,
most loyal old crowd, don't you?  We won't be
lonesome up there so long as we have ourselves,--you
know we won't,--and if things are slow, then
we'll start something."

"Will we?  Oh, won't we?" Kit cried.  She
twirled around to the keys again, and started up
an old darky melody.

   |  "Crept to de chicken coop on my knees,
   |    Ain't going ter work any more.
   |  Thought Ah heard a chicken sneeze,
   |    Ain't going ter work any more.

   |  "Balm of Gilead!  Balm of Gilead!
   |    Balm, Balm, Balm, Balm,
   |  Ain't going ter work any more, Ah tole yer.
   |    Balm of Gilead!  Balm of Gilead!
   |  Balm, Balm, Balm, Balm,
   |    Ah ain't going ter work any more."
   |

"That's better," Jean said, with a sigh of relief.
"We've got to pull all together, and make the
best of things.  Dad's sick, and the Queen
Mother's worried to death.  Let's be the Queen's
Privy Council and act accordingly."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`KIT REBELS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   KIT REBELS

.. vspace:: 2

Cousin Roxy departed for Gilead Center,
Connecticut, the following Monday.

"I'd take you with me, Jerry, and the nurse
too, if it were spring," she said, "but the first of
March we get some pretty bad spells of weather,
and it's uncertain for anybody in poor health.
You stay here and cheer up and get stronger,
and gradually break camp.  If you need any
help, let me know."

It was harder breaking camp than any of them
realized.  They had lived six years at Shady
Cove, near Great Neck on Long Island.  Before
that time, there had been an apartment in
New York on Columbia Heights.  As Kit described
it with her usual graphic touch: "Bird's-eye
Castle, eight stories up.  Fine view of the
adjacent clouds and the Palisades.  With an
opera glass on clear days, you could also see the
tops of the Riverside 'buses."

It had seemed almost like real country to the
girls when they had left the city behind them
and moved to Shady Cove.  Doris had the
measles that year, and the doctor had ordered
fresh air and an outdoor life for her, so the whole
family had benefited, which was very thoughtful
and considerate of Dorrie, the rest said.

But now came the problem of winnowing out
what Cousin Roxana would have called the
essential things from the luxuries.

"Dear me, I had no idea we had so many of
the pomps and vanities of this wicked world,"
Jean said regretfully, one day.  There were
sixteen rooms in the big home, all well furnished.
Reception-room, library, music-room, and
dining-room, with Tekla's domain at the back.
Upstairs was a big living-room and plenty of
bedrooms, with three maids' rooms in the third story.

At the top of the broad staircase over the
sun-parlor was a wide sleeping-porch.  In the cold
weather this was enclosed and heated, and the
girls loved it.  Broad cushioned seats like cabin
lockers surrounded it on three sides, and here
they could sit and talk with the sun fairly pelting
them with warmth and light.  Here they sat
overhauling and sorting out hampers and bags
and bureau drawers of "non-essentials."

"I can't find anything more of mine that I'm
willing to throw away," said Doris flatly, stuffing
back some long strips of art denim into a box.
"I want that for a border to something, and I'll
need it fearfully one of these days.  What's a
luxury anyway?"

"Makes me think of Buster Phelps," Helen
remarked.  "Last night when I went over to tell
Mrs. Phelps that we couldn't be in the Easter
festival, Buster was just having his dinner, and
he wanted more of the fig souflé.  His mother
told him he mustn't gorge on delicacies.  So
Buster asked what a delicacy was anyway, and he
said some day he was going to have a whole meal
made of delicacies.  Isn't that lovely?"

"Don't throw away any pieces at all, girls,"
Jean warned.  "Cousin Roxy says we'll need
them all for rag carpets."

"You can buy rag rugs and carpets anywhere
now," said Helen.

"Yes, oh, Princess, and at lovely prices too.
We folks who are going to live at Gilead Center,
will cut and sew our own, roll them in nice fat
balls, and hand them over to old Pa Carpenter up
at Moosup, to be woven into the real thing at
fifteen cents a yard.  It'll last for years, Cousin
Roxy says.  When you get tired of it, you boil
it up in some dye, and have a new effect.  I like
the old hit-and-miss best."

Kit regarded her elder sister in speechless delight.

"Jean Robbins, you're getting it!" she gasped.
"You're talking exactly like Cousin Roxy."

"I don't care if I am," answered Jean blithely.
"It's common sense.  Save the pieces."

"She who erstwhile fluttered her lily white
hands over art nouveau trifles light as air,"
murmured Kit.  "I marvel."

She looked down at the garden.  Windswept
and bare it was in the chill last days of February.
Yet there was a hint of spring about it.  A robin
was perched near the little Japanese tea house
they had all enjoyed so much, with its wistaria
vines and stone lantern.  Leading from it to the
hedged garden at the back was a pergola over
a flagged walk.

The garage was of reddish fieldstone, and like
the house covered with woodbine.  A tall hedge
of California privet enclosed the grounds, with
groups of shrubbery here and there.  Memories
of all the fun which they had enjoyed in the
past six years passed through her mind.  There
had been lawn fêtes and afternoon teas, croquet
parties and tennis tournaments.  She hugged
her knees, rocking back and forth anxiously.

"What is it, Kit?" asked Jean, mildly.  Jean
was the first to have an emotional storm over the
inevitable, but once it was over, she always
settled down to making the best of things, while Kit
gloomed and raged inwardly, and felt all manner
of premonitory doubts.

"Wonder what we'll really find to do there all
the time.  I don't want to be a merry milkmaid,
do you?"

"If it would help Dad and Mother, yes."

"Certainly, certainly.  You don't quoth
'Nevermore,' do you?  You're a chirruping
raven.  We'd all walk from here to Gilead
Center on our left ears if it would help Dad and
Mother, but the fact that we'd do it wouldn't
make it any easier, would it?"

"Don't be savage, Kit," said Helen.

"Who's savage?" demanded Kit haughtily.
"I'm just as ready to face this thing as anyone.
If it were a small town up in the wilds, even, I
wouldn't mind, but it just isn't anything but
country."

Jean tapped the end of her nose thoughtfully
with her thimble.

"What is Gilead Center then?  Isn't that a town?"

"No, it isn't.  It's a hamlet.  Trolley seven
miles away, post office five.  There used to be a
post office there when the mail-wagon made the
trip over, but they needed the building to keep
the hearse in, so it's gone."

"You're making that up, Kit," severely.

"I'm not," protested Kit.  "You can ask
Cousin Roxy.  Nobody ever dies up there.
They just fade away, and the hearse is seldom
needed and was in the way.  There are only
nine houses in the village proper, one store, one
church, and one school.  Her house is a mile
outside the village, so where will we be?"

"Is it on the map?" asked Doris hopefully.

"Some maps.  Township maps.  This morning
Mother and I were looking up how to get
there.  You've got your choice of two routes and
each one's worse than the other, and more of it."

"Kit, you're crawfishing."

Kit swept by the remark, absorbed in her own
forebodings.

"You can reach this spot by land or sea.
Cousin Roxy says that it takes five hours for
anybody to extricate oneself after one is really
there.  You can take a boat to New London,
ride up to Norwich, transfer to a trolley and
trundle along for another hour, then hire a team
at Tommy Burke's stable in East Pomfret, and
drive an hour and a half more up through the
hills.  Or you can take a Boston Express up to
Willimantic, and hop on a side line from there.
A train runs twice a day--"

"What road, Kit?" asked Helen.  They
leaned around her, fascinated at her sudden
acquisition of knowledge.

"Any road you fancy.  Central Vermont up
to Plainfield, or Providence line over to South
Pomfret.  There's South Pomfret and East
Pomfret and Pomfret Green and Pomfret Station.
It really doesn't seem to matter which way
you go so long as it lands you at one of the
Pomfrets.  And Pomfret is five miles from
Gilead Center, Plainfield is seven miles,
Boulderville is--"

"Oh, please, Kit, stop it," Jean cried, with both
hands over her ears.  "We'll motor over anyway--"

"Didn't you hear that Dad's going to sell the
machine?" Helen whispered.  It would never do
to let a hint of regret reach beyond the sleeping
porch circle.  "The Phelpses are going to buy
it.  Buster told me so."

"I knew it before," Jean said quite calmly,
going on with her sorting of pieces.  "Dad says
it will pay nearly all moving expenses and keep
us for months.  What else could he do?  There'd
be nobody to run it, would there?  Anyway I
want a horse to ride, don't you, Kit?  Can't you
see us all in a joyous cavalcade riding adown the
woodland way?  I'm Guenevere."  With laughing
lips, and happy eyes she quoted:

   |  "All in the boyhood of the year
   |    Sir Launcelot and Queen Guenevere
   |  Rode to covert of the deer."
   |

"Plenty of deer up there, Cousin Roxy says.
We all can go hunting."

"Never mind the deer.  We won't be doing
that at all.  Mother says Tekla can't possibly go
and we're going to do our own housework.  Isn't
it queer, when a father breaks down, it just seems
as if a home caves in."

"Well, it doesn't do any such thing, Helen,"
responded Kit stolidly.  "It may seem to, but it
doesn't.  Even if we are going to live five miles
from nowhere with the eye of Cousin Roxana
forever resting upon us, there'll be lots of fun
ahead.  What's that about the world making a
pathway to your door?  I'm going to be famous
some day and there'll be a nice little sheep path
leading from New York up to Gilead Center,
worn by the feet of faithful pilgrims."

"It's so nice having one genius in the family,"
Jean answered, leaning her chin on one hand.
"Now I don't mind leaving the house behind, or
the machine, or anything like that.  But it's the
people I like best that I can't take up with me.
Who will we know there, I wonder?"

"Human beings anyhow," Helen stated.
"We'll make hosts of new friends.  Besides, lots
of the girls have promised to visit us.  Think of
Mother, girls.  She's breaking away from
everything she likes best.  And you know that we're
just girls after all, with all our lives ahead of us,
so we may have a chance to escape some time;
but Mother can't look forward, she is just
cutting herself off from everything."

"Just listen to dear old Lady Diogenes."  Kit
reached down and gave the slender figure a good
all-around hug.  "How do you know she's losing
what she loves best?  Don't you remember that
old Druid poem in Tennyson about the people
calling for a sacrifice and they asked which was
the king's dearest?  Supposing Dad had died
right here.  What would he have missed?  His
country club, his golf, his town club, his business,
and his business friends.  Mother loses about the
same, the country club and golf club, the church,
and the social study club.  They'll never settle
down to real farm life, Jean.  It's just
impossible.  You can't take a family of--of--"

"Peacocks?  Bulfinches?  Canaries?" suggested Doris.

"No, I should say park swans," Kit said.
"That's what we are out here,--park swans
swimming around on an artificial lake, living on an
artificial island in a little artificial swan house,
swimming around and around, preening our
feathers and watching to see what people think
of us.  You can't take park swans and put them
right out into the country, and expect them to
make the barnyard a howling success all at once."

"Kit, dear old goose," Jean interposed, "we're
not park swans or any such thing.  We're just
robins, and robins are robins whether they build
in a park catalpa or a country rock maple.
We'll just migrate, build a new nest, and behave
ourselves.  Not because we like to, but because
it's our nature to, being, as I said before, just
robins."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WHITE HYACINTHS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   WHITE HYACINTHS

.. vspace:: 2

It had been decided to leave Kit and Jean
behind to finish their schooling.  They could
board at the Phelpses' home next to Shady Cove
along the shore road, but both girls begged to go
with the family.

"Why don't you stay?" advised Helen.
"You'll escape all of the moving and settling
and ploughing."

"We don't want to escape anything," said Kit
firmly.  "It isn't any fun being left behind with
the charred remains."

"Oh, Kit, don't call them that; it's grewsome,"
begged Doris.

"I don't care.  I feel grewsome when I think
of being left behind.  How do you suppose we'd
feel to walk past the Cove and not see any of the
rest of you around."

"It's better than being cut right bang off in
the middle of everything," replied Helen, with
one of her rare explosions.  Whenever wrath
decided to perch for a minute on her flaxen hair,
it always delighted the other girls.  Kit said it
was precisely like watching a kitten arch its back
and scold.  "Everything," she repeated tragically.
"I can't finish a single thing and I know
I'll never pass, being switched off to goodness
knows what sort of a school."

"Let's not grouch anyway," counseled Jean.
"Mother's getting thinner every day.  As long
as it's got to be, tighten your belts and face the
enemy.  Right about face!  Forward!  March!"

"I do wish that Kit wouldn't be so happy
about things that make you just miserable."

Kit danced away down the hallway warbling
sweetly:

   |      "Gondolier, row, row!
   |      Gondolier, row, row!
   |  'Tis a pretty air I do declare,
   |    But it haunts a body so."
   |

"You're an old tease, Kit," Jean admonished
in her very best big-sister style.  "Please keep
away from that crate of perishable matter.
Mother's just promised me that we can go with
the rest, only I'm going up first with Dad and
Miss Patterson."

It had been decided to send Mr. Robbins up
before the moving, so he could have a week or
two of rest at Maple Lawn, Cousin Roxana's
home.  The latter was diligently sending down
descriptions of adjacent farms and all sorts of
home possibilities, but none seemed to fit the bill,
as she said.  Either there was too much land, or
not enough, or it was too far from the village or
not far enough, or too much room, or not room
enough.

"For pity's sake," Kit said one night, after all
the family had suggested various styles in nests,
"let's all tent out and do summer light
housekeeping.  We'll never find just what we
want,--never, Mumsie.  Jean wants a rose garden and
a sun dial.  I want golf links, or at least a tennis
court, even if we remove the hay fields.  Helen
wants wistaria arbors and a very large vine-covered
porch.  Doris wants a dog, four cats, a hive
of bees, a calf, and a pony.  You want a house
facing south, far back from the road, barn not
too near, dry cellar, porch, century-old elms for
shade, good well, sink in house, and option of
purchase, not over ten dollars a month."

"What do you want, Dad?" asked Jean.  It
was one of her father's "good" days, when he
was able to sit up in his big Morris chair before
the fire in the upstairs living-room, and be one of
the circle with them.

"Peace and rest," smiled Mr. Robbins.

"Me too," Kit agreed, kneeling beside his chair
and rubbing her head up and down his arm.
"Dad and I are going to seek gracious peace
the livelong day under some shady chestnut tree."

"Dad may, but you won't, Kathleen," Jean
laughingly prophesied.  "It's going to be the
commonwealth of home."

"Wish we were going to an island," Helen said
wistfully.  "I've always felt as if I could do
wonders with an island."

"Anybody could.  There's some chance for
imagination to work on an island, but what can
you do with a farm in Gilead Center?" Kit
looked like a pensive parrot, head on one side,
eyes half closed in melancholy anticipation.
"Darling, precious old Dad here doesn't know a
blessed thing about farming--"

"Now, Kit, go easy," Mr. Robbins chided.
"Seneca farmed and so did Ovid.  It's all in the
way you look at things."

"'Under the greenwood tree,' you know, Kit,"
added Jean.

"Yes, and that ends with a fatal warning too,"
Kit rejoined mournfully, "'While greasy Joan
doth keel the pot.'"

"We'll all be keeling pots, Kathleen.  It's the
Robbins' destiny.  You know, Dad, I thought
all along that Tekla would go with us.  I
thought she'd feel hurt if we didn't take her, after
she'd been telling us girls all these fairy tales
about her native land where she loved to milk
twenty cows at three A.M.  I thought she'd
simply leap at the chance of rural delights, and
now she isn't going along with us at all.  She
says she won't go anywhere unless there are street
pianos and moving pictures."

Jean's face was deliciously comical as she
recounted the backsliding of Tekla, and Helen
chanted softly:

   |  "Knowest thou the land, Mignon?"
   |

"You can laugh all you want to, but it's a
serious proposition, Helenita.  If Tekla deserts,
we'll all have to pitch in.  The Nest expects that
every robin will do its duty."

"Oh, I don't believe it's going to be nearly as
bad as we expect," Mrs. Robbins said happily,
as she passed through the room with her pet cut
glass candlesticks in her hands.  "We're facing
the summer, remember, girls, and I can't help
but think that Cousin Roxana will be a regular
bulwark of strength to all of us."

By the second week in March word came from
the family's bulwark that she thought the
weather was mild enough for Mr. Robbins and
Miss Patterson to attempt the trip.  Accordingly,
the first section of the caravan set out
on its exodus to the promised land, as Kit called it.

"It does seem, Mother dear," Jean said at the
last minute, "as if Kit ought to go with them, and
let me stay down here to help you close up things."

"I'd rather have you with your Father."  Mrs. Robbins
laid her hands on Jean's slender shoulders
tenderly.  "If I can't be with him, I'd rather
have the little first mate.  Remember how he
used to call you that, when you were only Doris's
size?"

"Well, I feel terribly grown up now, Mother.
Seventeen is really the dividing line.  You
begin to think of everything in a more serious way,
don't you know.  When I look at Kit and Helen
sometimes, it seems years and years since
I felt the way they do, so sort of irresponsible."

"Poor old grandma," Mrs. Robbins laughed,
as she kissed her.  "We'll make some nice little
lace caps for you with lavender bows.  Maybe
Cousin Roxy'll let you pour tea."

Jean had to laugh too, seeing the comic side of
her aged feeling, but it was true that she felt
a new sense of responsibility when they left New
York City for Gilead Center.  The Saturday
following their departure, the first carload of
household goods left Shady Cove.  It had been
a difficult task, weeding out the necessities from
the luxuries, as Kit expressed it.  Many a
semi-luxury had been slipped in by the girls on the
plea that Father might need it, or would miss
it.  Kit had managed to save the entire library
outfit intact on this excuse: three bookcases,
leather couch, two wide leather arm-chairs, and
the flat-topped mahogany desk.

"Books and pictures are necessities," she
declared firmly, saving an old steel engraving of
Touchstone and Audrey in the Forest of Arden.
"This, for instance, has always hung over the
little black walnut bookcase, hasn't it?  Could
we separate them?  I guess not.  In it goes,
Helen, and see that you handle it with care.
There's one thing that we can take up with us,
and no slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune
can get it away from us, either, and that's
atmosphere.  Even if we have to live in a
well-shingled, airy barn, we can have atmosphere."

"Don't laugh, Dorrie," Helen admonished, as
Doris dove into a mass of pillows.  "Kit doesn't
mean that sort of atmosphere.  She means--"

"I mean living in a garden of white hyacinths.
Miss Carruthers, our teacher at the art class,
told us a story the other day about Mahomet and
his followers.  He told them if they only had
two pence, to spend one for a loaf of bread to
feed the body, and the other for white hyacinths
to feed the soul.  That's why I want all our own
beloved things around us, don't you know,
Mother dear?  Just think of Dad's face if we
can blindfold him, lead him into a lovely sunny
room up there, take off the bandage, and let him
find himself right in his own library just as he
had it down here!"

"And as long as he's going to stay in bed, or
lie on a lounge, he'll never know what the rest of
the house is like," added Doris.

"But he's not going to stay in bed, we hope,"
answered the Motherbird, catching the youngest
robin in her arms for a quick kiss.  "That's why
we're going up there, to get him out into the
sunlight as soon as possible, so he'll get quite well
again."

Kit passed down the stairs completely covered
with the burden which she bore.

"I've got all the portières, table covers, couch
covers, scarfs and doilies," she called.  "We may
have to turn the attic into a cosy corner before we
get through.  It's all in the effect, isn't it, Mumsie?"

"I'm sorry that Dad sold the machine, that's
all," Helen remarked.  Helen was the
far-sighted one of the family.  "Talbot Pearson says
he knows we could have gotten fifteen hundred
for it just as easy as not.  His mother told him
it was worth every penny of fifteen hundred, and
Dad let it go for eight hundred just because he
liked the Phelpses."

"Helen, dear, eight hundred cash is worth more
than fifteen hundred promised," Mrs. Robbins
said, smiling over at her.  "And the machine is
last year's model.  I'm glad with all my heart
that Mr. Phelps bought it, because they've been
wanting one very much, and the children will get
so much enjoyment out of it."

The girls looked down at her admiringly,
almost gloatingly, as she sat back contentedly in
the low wicker arm-chair in the sunny bay-window.

"Mother, you're a regular darling, truly you
are," Kit exclaimed.  "You're so big and fine
and sympathetic that you make us feel like two
cents sometimes when we've been selfish.  Why
do you look so happy when everything's going
six ways for Sunday?"

Mrs. Robbins held up a letter that Doris had
just brought upstairs to her.

"Cousin Roxana writes that Father stood the
trip well and has slept every night since they
reached Maple Lawn.  Isn't that worth all the
automobiles in the world?"

The eight hundred dollars in cash had been a
helpful addition to their bank account.  During
the past few weeks, the girls had learned what it
meant to consider money, something they had
never given a thought to before.  While they
had never been rich, there had always been an
abundance of everything they wanted, with never
a suggestion of retrenching on expenses until
now.  Once they understood the situation, however,
they all seemed to enjoy helping to solve the
family problem.  For several days Doris had
appeared to have something on her mind.  Finally,
she came in smiling, and opened her hand, disclosing
a ten dollar bill.  Kit fell gracefully over
into a chair.

"Dorrie, you mustn't give your poor old sister
sudden shocks like that in these days," she
exclaimed.  "Where did you find that?"

"I sold Jiggers to Talbot Pearson," Doris
replied, her eyes shining like stars.  "He's been
asking and asking for him ever since I got him,
and now I've done it.  There's ten dollars I got
all by myself to help Dad."

Neither Kit nor Helen spoke, but they regarded
the youngest robin with the deepest pride
and affection.  Jiggers was a Boston bull puppy,
the special property of Doris, and they knew just
what a heart-wrench it had been to part with him.
Mrs. Robbins took the crisp green bill from
Doris's hand, while the tears slowly gathered on
her lashes.

"It's perfectly splendid of you, dear," she said.

Doris beamed and danced around on tiptoe
like a captive butterfly, but the family noticed
she kept away from the spot where Jiggers' little
kennel had stood.  There are some things the
heart cannot quite bear.

Much debating was held over the piano.  The
girls loved it and declared it could not be true
economy to part with it.  It was an Empire baby
grand that had descended to them from the
Riverside apartment days in town.  Helen said
she always expected to see it pick up its skirts
and pirouette like Columbine, it was so gay and
pretty in its gold case all decorated in trailing
flower garlands and little oval panels with Watteau
figures treading gaysome measures in blossomy dells.

"Listen, Mother darling," Kit said finally,
"you know what I told you about white hyacinths.
That precious old piano is a white hyacinth and
we'll starve our inmost souls if we try to live
without it.  Why, we've loved it and pounded it for
years."

So it was boxed and shipped to Gilead Center
as a white hyacinth, together with many another
disguised "necessity."

"They've turned into arrant smugglers,"
Mrs. Robbins wrote her husband.  "And I cannot
blame them, because I catch myself doing the
same thing, packing things I should not, and
making myself believe they are essential.  I'm
sure I don't see where we are ever to put
everything in a farm-house."

Cousin Roxana brightened up and smiled when
that portion of the letter was read aloud to her.
She was sitting in a straight-backed, split-bottomed
chair by the south window in the sitting-room,
sorting out morning-glory and nasturtium
seeds and putting them into baking powder boxes.

"Guess Betty'll hearten up some when she sees
the Mansion House," she said.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LAND O' REST`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LAND O' REST

.. vspace:: 2

While some of the Long Island farms had
begun to look faintly green by the end of March,
not a blade or a leaf was unfurled anywhere
around Gilead Center.  Pussy willows and
reddening maple twigs held the only promise of
spring so far.

Jean drew on a pair of heavy driving gloves,
and waited at the side "stoop" for Hiram to
drive around from the barn with Ella Lou and
the double seated democrat.  Hiram was Cousin
Roxana's hired help, smooth faced and lean,
somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty.  He
took care of three horses and two cows and
worked the farm with outside help in busy seasons.

Some folks in Gilead Center held that Roxy
Robbins could have got along with one horse, but
Roxana kept her pair of handsome Percherons
just the same, and let Hiram haul wood all
winter with them.

Ella Lou was a black mare with white shoes
and stockings and a white star on her forehead.
It really did seem as if she knew all about the
family's affairs.  She was aware of every road in
the township.  Not a tree could be cut down
along the road, not a cord of piled wood added
or taken away, that Ella Lou did not take note
of the fact at her next passing by.

To-day when Hiram drove up with her to the
three stone steps by the white lilacs, she acted as
wise and knowing as could be, turning her head
around to look at Jean just as if she could have
said, "We're going after them at last, aren't we?"

Cousin Roxy stood at the screened pantry
window, mixing pie crust.  She leaned down and
called some last advice as Jean climbed up and
took the reins.

"Hitch her to that white post above the
express office, Jeanie.  There's a couple freights
come in right after that 3:30 train, and they set
her crazy shuffling back and forth.  And have
the girls sit on the back seat 'cause them springs
are kinder giving way, and your Mother's
nervous.  And bring up a wick for the student lamp
from the Mill Company Store.  No, never
mind," just as Ella Lou started to prance,
"'cause they don't keep that kind, come to think
of it.  Good-bye.  If you don't remember the
turnings, just slack up the reins and she'll find
the right road."

Jean laughed and waved her hand.  It was
her first attempt at driving alone, but Ella Lou
seemed to appreciate just how she felt, and swung
out around the triangle of grass that marked the
entrance to the private driveway.

Maple Lawn stood just at the crossroads, a
white comfortable-looking house, one story and a
half high, with a long low "ell" hitched on to the
back, and a white woodshed leaning up against it
for company.

Four great rock maples grew before its
spacious lawn like a row of Titan sentinels, in
summertime, garbed in Lincoln green like Robin
Hood's merry men.  Then too, Baltimore orioles
and robins nested in them and contended with the
chipmunks for squatter rights.

The house stood on a hill that faced the
sunset.  Down from the orchard sloped corn fields
and rye fields.  Below the winding white road
was a deep ravine where a brook ran helterskelter
by hilly pastures until it slipped away into
the cool shade of a quiet glen, sweet scented with
hemlock and spruce.

In the distance, hill after hill rose in mellowed
beauty, each seeming to lean in sisterly fashion
against the next taller one.  From the sitting-room
window Cousin Roxana declared she had
seen "the power and the glory" unfold in
rapturous vision when the sun spread its alchemy
over old Gilead township.

The course of Little River could be traced
down through the valley by its fringe of willows
and alders.  For perhaps fifteen miles it
rambled, winding in and out around little islands,
dodging old submerged trees that lifted skeleton
arms in protest, spreading out above some old
rock dam into a tiny lake, then dashing like some
chased wild thing through a mill run and out
again into low, moist meadows, thick with flag
and rushes.

At a point about a mile below the house stood
the old Barlow lumber mill.  Ella Lou caught
the first hum of it and quickened her pace until
she came to its watering trough, half toppling
over at one side of the road, its sides all green
with moss.

Jean let her take her own way.  Once she
shied at a shadowy brown shape that skitted
across the road under her feet, and Jean
wondered whether it was a rabbit or a muskrat.
Already she was catching the country spirit.
Little objects of everyday life held a meaning for
her and she found herself watching eagerly for
new surprises as she drove along the old river
road.  How the girls would love it all, she
thought, with a little tightening of her throat.
It might be a little lonesome at first, but surely
it was, as Cousin Roxana always said, "the land
o' rest."

The final decision on the new home site was to
be left to her mother.  Several places had been
selected with a leaning towards the Mansion
House, but, as Roxy said again, in her cheery,
buoyant way, Betty must be left unbiased to
form her own opinion, although according to her
way of thinking, no sensible person with half
their wits could pass over the merits of the
Mansion House, or the wonderful opportunities it
presented.

"It's going to rack and ruin, and it fairly cries
out for somebody to take hold of it and love it,"
she had said.  "I don't know but what I'd drive
by it if I were you, Jeanie, on your way back
from the station, even if it is a mite out of your
way, just to see the look on your Mother's face
when she sees it.  There's a Providence in all
things, of course, and I ain't gainsaying it, but I
do like to jog it along a bit now and then."

It was a drive of seven miles down to Nantic,
the nearest railroad station.  Ella Lou made it
in good time and now stood complacently hitched
to the white post above the express office.
Already, it appeared, Mr. Briggs, the station
master knew Jean, and smiled over at the trim,
city-like figure pacing up and down on the platform
waiting for the Willimantic train.  This was
the side line up to Providence that connected with
the Boston express from New York.

"Expecting some of your folks up?" asked
Mr. Briggs pleasantly.  Nobody could say that
friendly interest in strangers and their affairs was
not evinced around Nantic.  It was part of the
joy of life to Mr. Briggs to locate their general
intentions.

"My Mother and sisters," Jean answered happily.

"Figure on staying a while, do they?"

She nodded rather proudly.  "We're going to
live here.  We're Miss Robbins' cousins.  You'll
have the freight car up with our goods this
week."

"Like enough," said Mr. Briggs encouragingly.
"Yes, I knew you belonged to Roxy.
I've known Roxy herself since she was knee high
to a toadstool.  There comes your local."

Around the hillside bend of track came the
train.  It seemed to Jean as if seconds turned
to minutes then.  The dear blessed train that
was bearing Mother and Helen and Kit and
Doris up out of the world of uncertainty and
trouble into this haven of blossoming hopes.  She
wanted to stretch out both her arms to it as it
slowed down and puffed, but there on the last car
she caught a glimpse of Kit, one foot all ready to
drop off, waving one hand and hanging on with
the other.

"Oh, Mother darling," Jean cried, joyously,
once she had them all safe on the platform.  "It's
so beautiful up here, and Dad's looking better
every day.  He sits up for a while now, and the
old doctor told us the only thing that ailed him
was a little distemper.  Isn't that fun?  Where
are your trunks, girls?"

But this was Mr. Briggs's cue to come forward,
hat in hand, and be introduced, so he took the
baggage under his own personal supervision.  It
appeared that you never could tell anything
about when trunks were liable to show up once
they got started for Nantic, but the likelihood
was, barring accidents, that they'd come up on
the six o'clock train, and there wasn't a bit of use
putting any reliance on that either, 'cause they
might not show up till the milk train next morning.

"Hope you'll like it up here," was his parting
salute, as they drove up the hill road, and Kit
called back that they liked it already, much to
Mr. Briggs's enjoyment.

Mrs. Robbins sat on the front seat, both as the
place of honor, and in remembrance of Cousin
Roxana's warning against the back springs.  At
the top of the hill Jean rested Ella Lou, so the
girls could look back at the little town.  There
was the huge one story stone mill, covering acres
of ground, with immense ventilators looking like
those on steamships or like strange uprearing
heads of prehistoric reptiles.

The little crooked main street could be traced
by its lines of buildings, and back in a mass of
trees stood the old French convent.  Scattered
everywhere were the houses of the mill workers,
all of a uniform pattern, painted white with
green blinds, and a patch of green yard to each.
Jean, flushed and proud of her responsibility,
turned Ella Lou's head towards home and made
quick time.  The maple buds were swelling and
looked rosy red against the thickets of dark shiny
green laurel.  Behind them rose slim lines of
white birches.  Doris named them the "White
Ladyes," after the gentle lady ghost in "The
Monastery."

"How far is it, Jeanie?" asked Helen.  Just
then the road came out on the hilltop overlooking
the big reservoir.  "Oh, look, look, girls," she
cried.  "Isn't it like a bit of out West, Motherie?
All those rocks and pines."

"I'd rather have these dear old hills than all
the mountains going," Kit declared with her
usual forcefulness.  "We seem to be going up
higher and higher all the time."

"So we are," Jean told her.  "It's a steady rise
from New London to Norwich, then up to our
own Quinnebaug hills.  Are you warm enough,
Mumsie?"

"Plenty," said Mrs. Robbins, happily.
"Though it is ever so much cooler here than on
Long Island, isn't it, girls?"

"We've got an open log fire in your room all
ready for you," Jean replied.  "You can just sit
and toast and toast away to your heart's content,
Queen Motherkin."

"For pity's sake, who ever had the courage to
carry all the rocks for these stone walls?" asked
Kit.  "Jean, what do you say to this?  Let's
buy barrels of cement, and mix it up with sand
and water, and make a lot of lovely old garden
seats and grottoes and pergolas.  I'm going to
make a sun dial."

"Why not get a Roman seat mold," Jean proposed,
"and just pour in cement and turn out a
lot of them and whenever we come to a particularly
fine view, put a seat there."

"Oh, you castle builders," laughed Mrs. Robbins.
"When we haven't even a home yet.
You'd think there was a baronial estate waiting
for us."

"There is," Jean answered mysteriously.
"Cousin Roxy and I think that we've found the
right place.  Father hasn't seen it, of course,
but I found it, and Cousin Roxy said we couldn't
get it because somebody'd died, and it had gone
to people out West."

"Which gave our precious old Jean a chance
to delve into mystery," Kit suggested.  "Yes,
yes, go on, sister mine.  You interest us
amazingly.  What didst do then?"

"Oh, I found him," said Jean, enthusiastically.
"He lives away out West in Saskatoon, and has
never even seen this place, so he's willing to sell it
for almost nothing, $2,500, and even that
includes the water power."

Kit shook her head deploringly.

"Listen to the poor child, Mother dear.  She
chats of thousands as if they were split peas and
she was making a pudding."

"Hush, Kit.  He'll rent it too for a hundred
dollars a year, timber rights reserved excepting
for our own use, and we can sell the hay."

"How many rooms, dear?" asked Mrs. Robbins.

"Seventeen," replied Jean, blithely.  "Oh, it
isn't a country cottage or a farm-house at all.
They call it the Mansion House out here, and it's
so big that nobody wants it for a gift."

"Do you want a castle or an inn?" asked Kit.

"Where is it?" Helen inquired cautiously.

"When can we move in?" Doris asked practically.

"Well, you can see the cupola, I think, as soon
as we get up to the top of Peck's Hill.  I'll stop
then.  It's fearfully lonesome, and perhaps you'd
rather be in the village.  Cousin Roxy says that
some folks do say--"

"Stop her, stop her," Kit exclaimed.  "Jean,
you're talking exactly like Cousin Roxy.  Isn't
she, Mother?"

"Never mind, dear.  Go right on," comforted
Mrs. Robbins, smiling at the eager young face
beside her.  Three weeks at Maple Lawn had
surely taken a lot of the spread out of Jean's
sails.

"I don't think we'd be one bit lonely.  It's
about a mile from Maple Lawn, and half a mile
from Mr. Peck's place down the valley, and the
mail goes right by the door.  And there's an old
ruined stone mill on an island, and a waterfall,
and a bridge, and big pines along the terrace in
the front yard.  It does need painting, I suppose,
and shingling in spots, and the veranda lops
a little bit where it needs shoring up, Hiram told me--"

"Specify Hiram," Helen asked mildly.  "We
don't know a thing about Hiram, Jeanie."

"He's the hired man, and he can do anything."

"But, dear," interrupted Mrs. Robbins, "can't
you realize that there must be something wrong
with it or it never would be rented for such a sum.

"Oh, there is," Jean replied promptly.  "It's
too far from the railroad or village, and the mill
burned down six years ago, and the owner died
from the shock of losing everything he had, and
there it stands, going to rack and ruin, Cousin
Roxy says, waiting for the Robbinses to appear
and turn it into a nest."

"How about school?" asked Kit suddenly.

Jean waved her long whip grandly.

"Who wants a school out here?  The groves
were God's first temples.  There's a school,
though, over at the Gayhead crossroads.  We're
going to have a horse and drive you over to the
trolley so you can catch it to the High School."

"Jean has us all moved and settled already,"
Mrs. Robbins said, "I'm sure I'd like to be near
where Roxana lives."

"Well, there it is," Jean exclaimed happily.
Ella Lou pricked up her ears, and quickened her
pace, down one little hill, up another, over a
culvert, and suddenly there appeared white
chimneys rising above an apple orchard at the top of
the hill.

"There it is," she said, pointing to it with her
whip.  "Seven miles from nowhere, but right
next door to Heart's Content."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SPYING THE PROMISED LAND`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   SPYING THE PROMISED LAND

.. vspace:: 2

The following morning Miss Robbins said she
thought she would drive down to the Mansion
House with Elizabeth Ann herself, and they'd
look it over.

"If you girls feel like coming down, you can
take the short cut through the woods.  Like
enough you'll find some blood root out by now
and saxifrage too.  Don't be like Jean, though.
The other day she came up from the brook and
said she'd found a calla lily, and it was just
skunk cabbage."

So the girls took the short cut through the
woods.  They were just beginning to show signs
of spring.  The trees were bare, but under the
dry leaves they found the new life springing.  It
was all new and interesting to them.  Down at
the Cove they had been in a beautiful part of
Long Island but it was all restricted property.
Here the woods and meadows spread for miles
on every hand.  Every pasture bar seemed to
invite one to climb over it and explore the
"Beyond," as Doris called it.  And where the woods
ended in rocky pastures and wide spreading
fields, they came out to a spot where they
overlooked the Mansion House and its grounds.

Cousin Roxana and Mrs. Robbins were there
before them.  The side door stood hospitably
open, and Ella Lou was hitched to the post just
as though she belonged there.  It was a curiously
interesting old place.  First of all, a rock wall
enclosed the grounds, with rock columns at the
two entrance gates.  These were wide, for the
drive entered on one side, wound around the
house, and came out on the other road, as the
house stood at a corner.

The house itself looked like a glorified
farmhouse.  It wasn't at all like a bungalow, Kit
declared.  In fact it was hard to place it in the
history of architecture.

"I think perhaps it started out to be Mid-Victorian
with that general squareness and the veranda,"
said Mrs. Robbins.

"That isn't Mid-Victorian, Mother darling,"
Jean interposed.  "That's the Reaction Period
in New England.  First of all none of the
Puritan women had any time to sit out on porches or
verandas, so all the houses were made plain faced.
Then after the war they began to turn their
minds to lighter things, so they stuck a cupola up
here, and tacked on a little porch there, and gave
the windows fancy eyebrows, and little scalloped
wooden lace ruffles along the edges of the eaves.
Isn't that so, Cousin Roxy?"

"Well, I declare, Jeanie," laughed Miss Robbins,
"maybe you're right.  I'd say, though, it
was mostly a hankering after titivation.  I don't
set much store by it myself, so long as I've got
plenty of flowering bushes 'round a house, and
climbing vines.  That makes me think, you've
got a sight of them here, flowering quince and
almond, and 'pinies,' and all sorts of hardy annuals.
There used to be a big border of them, I remember,
at the back of the house, and behind it was
an old-fashioned rose garden."

"A rose garden!" Kit and Helen gasped.

"Wish I had my sun dial under my arm this
minute," added Jean.  "Come on, girls."

Back they went to find it, and after hunting
diligently through hazel bushes and upspringing
weeds, they found where one terrace dipped into
a sunken space walled in once upon a time,
though now the tumbled gray rocks had half
fallen down, and some were sunken in the earth.
But still they found some old rose canes, and
several large bushes that looked hopeful.  There
was a flagged walk with myrtle growing up
between the stones, and a tumble-down arbor that
Doris declared looked exactly like a shipwrecked
pilot house off some boat.

"Let's call it our pilot house.  We may need
piloting before we get through," said Helen,
sitting down on the broad front steps, her chin on
her palms, listening to the music of falling water
in the distance and the wind overhead in the
great, slumbrous pines.  There were four of
these, two on each side of the long terrace, with
rock maples down near the rock wall, and
several pear and cherry trees.  Along the terrace
were old-time flower beds, three on each one,
outlined with clam shells.

"Miss Trowbridge used to have gladiolus set
out in those beds, with pansies and sweet alyssum
set 'round the edges, and outside again,
old-hen-and-her-chickens.  They looked real sightly."

"Who was Miss Trowbridge, Cousin Roxy?"
asked Mrs. Robbins.  She sat beside Jean, her
hands clasped lightly in her lap, her hat lying
beside her.  There was a look of concent on her
face that had been a stranger there for many
months.  Doris dropped a spray of half
blossomed cherry twigs in her lap, and ran away
again.

"She was own sister to the Trowbridge that
owned the mills.  She married some man out in
Canada, lived a while out there, then gave up and
died.  She never did have much backbone that I
could see, but she loved flowers.  Did you notice
a big glass bay window off the dining-room?
She called that her conservatory.  I remember
asking her if it was her 'conversationary,' and
how she did laugh at me!  Well, everyone can't
be expected to know everything.  It's all I can
do to keep up with Gilead Center these days.
Her name was Francelia and she married a McRae."

"But who had the place after she and her
brother died?"

Cousin Roxana never believed in directness
when it came to genealogies.  She delighted in
them, and would slip her glasses down to the
middle of her long nose, elevate her chin, and go
after a family tree like a government arborist.

"Well, according to my way of thinking, it
should belong to Piney Hancock and her brother
Honey.  His name's Seth, but they call him
Honey.  Their mother was Luella Trowbridge,
own sister to Francelia and Tom who owned the
mills, but she married Clint Hancock against
everybody's word, and her father cut her off in
his will, and never saw her from the day she was
married.  Tom did the same, but Francelia used
to go over and see her after Piney and Honey
were born.  They live down near Nantic.  You
must have passed the house, little bit of a gray
one with rambler roses all over it, and a well
sweep at one side.  The property went to
Francelia after Tom died, and she had one boy.  He's
out in Northwest Canada now and don't give a
snap of his finger for this place, when there's
Piney and Honey loving it to death and can't
hardly walk on the grass.  Still, I suppose if
they went to law, they'd get nothing out of it
after all the lawyers had been satisfied."

Kit and Helen listened open-eyed.

"My goodness, Cousin Roxy," exclaimed Kit,
"how on earth do you ever manage to keep track
of all of them?"

"Keep track of them?  Land, child, that ain't
anything after you've been to school with them
and lived neighbors all your life.  You children
will like Piney and her brother, and maybe you
can help put a little happiness into their lives,
poor youngsters."

"Oh, Mumsie, I love this place already,"
whispered Jean contentedly, snuggling close to her
mother's side.

"Do you, dear?"  Mrs. Robbins smiled down
into the eldest robin's face.  For some reason she
always waited for Jean's judgment and opinion.

"Yes, I do, because it isn't really a farm and
still we can have a garden and sell the hay and
get out wood and raise all we need for ourselves.
I don't think we can do much else the first year,
can we, Cousin Roxy?"

"If you do all that you'll be getting along
finely.  I'm going to start you off chicken
raising with a lot of little ones from my incubator.
You can buy all you want for ten cents apiece,
and if you get about fifteen last year pullets
and a rooster, you've got your barnyard family
all started."

"Oh, I want to be mother to the incubator
chickens; may I, please?" begged Doris instantly.
"I think one of the saddest things in life is to be
hatched without a mother."

"Sympathetic Dorrie," laughed Kit, catching
her down on the grass and rolling her.  "She's
going to adopt all the chickens and goodness only
knows what else."

"I'm going to keep bees," Helen announced
serenely, with a certain aloofness in her manner
quite as if she had stated that her chosen
occupation was one befitting a damsel of high degree.
"I've always wanted bees ever since I read
Maeterlinck's 'Life of the Bee.'  I want a garden
close and bees that bring me home the honey
from the clover fields and meadows fair."

"Lovely," Jean exclaimed, hugging her knees,
and rocking to and fro contentedly.  "You
always select such royal occupations, Helenita.  I
shall be the middleman of the farm.  I am going
to find markets for all that my princess sisters
raise.  I'll make the castle pay expenses and
that's more than most castles do.  I want a horse
and some sort of a wagon."

"Don't get anything foolish," admonished
Cousin Roxana.  "Either a good low buggy
with a top for bad weather, and a good deep
space at the back to tuck things away in, or else
a covered democrat's nice too, and you can put in
an extra seat in them if you like.  I guess a
democrat's the best thing for you after all."

"Until we get our roadster," supplemented
Helen.  "I know Mother'll never get along way
up here without some kind of a car, will you,
Mother dear?"

Mrs. Robbins shook her head smilingly.

"I'm thinking more about a new steel range
for the kitchen, Childie."

Roxana smiled too.  Only a few weeks before,
kitchen ranges had been things of small import
with Betty Robbins.  All that the Motherbird
had been able to say when questioned at that time
was that they cooked with electricity, and had a
gas range, she believed, but Tekla was the one
who knew.

"You'll have to burn wood out here, Helen,
unless you get a tame lightning rod and hitch it
to an electric stove," Kit said.

"I don't care what we have to do," Jean
interposed.  "I want the place; don't you,
Mother?"

"I think I shall love it," said Mrs. Robbins,
lifting her face to the swaying pine boughs
overhead.  "I wish that I could stay here now and
not have to go away at all."

"Helen, put the kettle on, and we'll all have
tea," chanted Kit.  "You know, Cousin Roxy,
we always make Helen fix our tea.  It isn't that
she does it so wonderfully better than the rest of
us, but she thinks she does, and she makes the
most enticing ceremonial of it.  You want to
burn incense and kowtow before her serene
highness.  Wait till you see her do it!"

Helen rose and made a deep curtsey before
Miss Robbins.

"We ask the pleasure of your ladyship's
presence at tea two weeks from today."

"Oh, I'll be here," Cousin Roxana answered.
"But I guess we'll leave the ladyship behind.
I've got a Quaker great-grandmother tucked in
behind me along the line of ancestors, and there's
a silver goblet up home that Benjamin Franklin
drank from once when he was a guest at your
great-great-great-grandfather Eliot's place on
the old Providence plantations.  Nice, pleasant,
unassuming sort of man too, I've always heard
tell he was.  So I'm all democrat clear through."

"You're a darling," Doris exclaimed, hugging
her from behind, both arms wound tightly
around her throat.  "We'd never have come up
here at all if it hadn't been for you."

"There, child, there.  It says in the Book, you
know, 'The Lord moveth in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform,' and if I do say it as
shouldn't, He seems to pick me out every once in
a while and lets me help a little bit, blessed be His
Name.  Now, let's start for home."  She rose
from the porch step energetically.  "Ella Lou's
begun to move around and that's to let me know
it's after five.  She can always tell the time when
the sun gets low."

"I feel sure Mother wants the place, don't you,
Jean?" Kit asked, as the girls went up through
the woods towards home.  "All the time we were
going through the house I could see every bit
of our furniture in the right places there.  And
there's so much room that Dad will hardly know
the difference between this place and the old one
at the Cove.  He could have those two big rooms
overlooking the valley on the second floor.  You
can see the great brown stone dam from there
and the ruins of the mill, and hear the falling
water.  I wish we had time to climb out over the
old dam to the mill."

"It's better than living right in a village," Jean
answered, pushing aside the young birches that
crowded the way.  "I rather dreaded that
somehow.  Everybody'd want to know all about us
right off, and why we came up, and what ailed
Dad, and everything else.  I hope, though,
Mother won't be lonely here.  You know, girls,
it is lonely for a woman like her, where Cousin
Roxy doesn't mind it."

"We'll have to pitch in and make up to her for
everything she's lost," said Doris solemnly.

"Dear old Dorrie."  Kit put her arm around
the littlest sister and squeezed her affectionately.
"You know, you are an awful make-believe.
You are just like somebody, I've forgotten who it
was, in the old Norse fairy lore, who lost his way
over the hills and fell asleep in a magic ring, and
when he wakened the wee folks had anointed his
eyes with fairy ointment and everything that he
looked at after that seemed beautiful to him.
Goodness knows we're going to need something
like that out here.  Of course it's all lovely now,
but what will it be like in the winter when the
north wind doth blow, and we shall have snow,
and what will poor robin do then, poor thing?"

"It's all a question of system," Jean declared,
her hands deep in her white sweater pockets, and
its collar turned high around her neck.  "We'll
have to make a business of living, and learn how
to do things we hate to do with the least effort."

"You're just a bluffer, Jean Robbins,"
exclaimed Helen, "just a bluffer.  Anyone would
think to hear you talk that you actually enjoyed
privations.  Of course when we're with Mother
and Dad, or even Cousin Roxy, we have to put
on a whole lot, but when we're alone I do think
we might at least be sincere with ourselves.  We
all know how we feel at heart about this sort of
thing."

"What sort of thing?" asked Kit, on the
offensive instantly.  "What do you mean?"

"Giving up everything we've been used to, and
living out here in the woods.  I'm going to miss
the girls most of all."

"Well, we don't like losing everything any
better than you do, Helen," Jean said soothingly.
"Only--"

"Don't pat me," retorted Helen, shaking off
her hand; "I know I'm selfish, and I'm beginning
to feel sorry I said anything.  Only it does look
so bleak and forlorn here somehow."

"But if you have to do a thing, why, you just
have to do it, that's all," Kit declared.  "It's
better to make up your mind you're going to like it.
Look at that cow ahead of us.  It must have
strayed."

Through the birches ahead they could see some
object obstructing the narrow path, its back
towards them.  Large as a cow it was, and
reddish brown, but in place of short horns, this
animal had spreading antlers, and Jean caught sight
of its round puff of a tail.

"Oh, girls, it's a deer!"

At her voice the deer started and pushed into
the thick underbrush until it came to a stone wall.
They watched it rise and clear it at a bound like
a thoroughbred horse, its knees bent under, its
head held high.  Then it was gone.

"Well, isn't that perfectly gorgeous!" gasped
Kit, explosively.  "I've never seen one on its
native heath before.  Wish we could tame some,
don't you, girls?"

"The Lady Kathleen doth already see a
baronial estate with does and fawns at large," said
Jean teasingly.  "Wouldst have a few white
peacocks standing on one foot upon thy entrance
gates, oh, sister mine?"

"Well, I don't know but what they would look
nice," Kit answered placidly.  "I tell you what
we do want to raise--turkeys.  I've always
wanted turkeys or geese.  It's the simple
turkey-tender that the fairy godmother turns into a
beauteous princess."

Doris danced along the path ahead of them.

"I like this ever so much better than the Cove,"
she called.  "It is all so wild and free."

"It will be fun mixing things up and making a
success out of it whether it wants to be or
not--I mean the new home," Jean replied.  "Only
we're sure to get lonely sometimes for the people
we liked down there.  You know what I mean,
don't you, Helen?"

"Indeed I do," Helen said fervently.  "That's
just what I told you.  Think of our being buried
up here in these woods for months and maybe
years."

"Still, it is worse for Mother.  It's sort of an
adventure for us girls from which we'll escape
some time, but it's the real thing for her,
something that's going to last perhaps all through her
life."

"No, it won't, Kit, because we'll grow up and
rescue her if she doesn't like it."

"What about Dad?" asked Doris.  "The doctors
in the city say he'll never get any better, and
the old doctor up here says he'll begin to get
better at once if he just stops thinking about himself
and gets out of doors."

"I'd believe a doctor that talked to me like that
even if I was half afraid he might be wrong," Kit
said soberly.

They paused at a spur of land that looked out
over the long valley.  Little River flowed in a
winding course marked by alders and willows.
Now that there was no foliage to obscure the view,
they could catch a glimpse here and there of a
red roof or a white chimney.  There was the
Smith mill, then the old white Murray homestead
with its weather vane standing on a little hill like
a big yardarm at large.  Then came their own
old ruined mill, half tumbling down, with empty
window casings, all overgrown with woodbine and
poison ivy.  Farther up the valley one caught
the hum of another mill, purring musically in a
sort of crescendo scale until it broke off into a
snappy zip! as the log broke.

Already Jean declared she knew the names and
histories of all the people there, and which way the
roads went, and where the nearest towns lay.

"I feel exactly as if I stood now on the crest of
the Delectable Mountains," she said with a quiet;
sigh.  They had stood there some time in silence,
looking at the widespread land of hills and
valleys, upland meadows, warm and brown in the
early spring sunshine, and sweeps of woodland,
russet red with maple and ash, with here and there
the dark sombre richness of laurel or pine.
"Who was it did that, Christian in 'Pilgrim's
Progress,' wasn't it?"

Helen and Doris knelt to look at some blossoming
saxifrage at the edge of a rock.  Kit stood
erect and tender-eyed.

"Oh, I don't know who it was," she said, quite
gently for her, "but I know how he felt anyway.
I always feel that way when I look out over vast
distances, specially skylands; I wish I had wings
or was all I want to be.  Don't you know what I
mean, Jeanie?  It makes you think of all the
things you hope to do some day."

"Like the spies that Gideon sent forth to look
over the Promised Land," Jean answered.  "I
always think of them at such times, traveling
miles and miles up through the mountains until
all at once they came to a sudden opening and
they looked out at it all lying at their feet like
this."

Kit smiled, her cheeks rosy from the upland
climb, her hands deep in her sporting coat pockets.
There was almost a challenging tilt to her chin as
she faced that sweep of valley, barren and brown
in the spring sunset hour.

"Well, it is *our* Promised Land," she declared,
"and I can tell it right now that it's got to
blossom like the rose and pour out milk and honey,
because we've come to stay."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LADY MANAGERS CHOOSE A NAME`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LADY MANAGERS CHOOSE A NAME

.. vspace:: 2

That very night a council was held of what
Mr. Robbins termed "the Board of Lady Managers."

"I think I need Hiram in here for support,"
he said laughingly, from his favorite resting place,
the old fashioned high-backed davenport in the
sitting-room.

There were no such things at Maple Lawn as
a library, a reception room, or a den.  There was
a front entry and a side entry and a well-room at
the back of the kitchen.  There was a parlor and
a front bed-room, a side bed-room and a big sunny
sitting-room that was dining-room also, and
finally the old kitchen with its Dutch oven, and
hooks in the ceiling for hanging up smoked beef
and bacon sides.

Not that Cousin Roxy ever used the Dutch
oven nowadays excepting to store things away in.
She had instead a fine shiny, water-back steel
range, over which she hovered like a sorceress
from five A.M. to eleven A.M., producing such
marvels of cookery as held the girls spellbound:
raised doughnuts with jam inside and powdered
sugar outside; apple turnovers made with Peck's
Pleasants and rich Baldwins; ginger cookies,
large as saucers with scalloped edges, soft and
rich as butter scotch; and pies, with rich, flaky
crust and delectable filling in endless varieties.
Jean declared that she had learned more about
cooking in the few weeks she had lived at Maple
Lawn than in all her life before.

"Well, there's cooking and cooking, girls,"
Cousin Roxana had replied placidly, fishing for
brown doughnuts with her long, hand-wrought
iron fork.  "It's one thing to cook when you've
got everything to do with, and quite another when
you are eternally figuring out how to make both
ends meet.  Of course, I don't have to do that.
Land knows there's plenty to eat and more to,
praise the Lord, but it's all plain food, and you've
got to learn how to toss vegetables around in
forty different ways out here if you want any variety."

That evening it was when the Board of Lady
Managers discussed everything that lay ahead
of them from the said vegetables to chickens,
cows, horses, and farm implements.

Mr. Robbins had seemed relieved when he was
sure that the Motherbird approved of the
Mansion House.  It was near Maple Lawn and
Roxana, he said, and they would surely need
both many times during their first experimental
year in the country.  Also, it was on the mail
route, and not too large a place in acreage for
them to handle.  There was a good apple
orchard, somewhat run down, but it would be all
right with pruning and proper care.  Besides,
there were four good pear trees, two large cherry
trees, white hearts and red, and three crabapple
trees.

"Guess if you hunt around, you might find
some quinces too, and plenty of berries and
currants," Cousin Roxana said.  "It's been let go to
waste the past few years, and it'll take a year or
more to get it back into shape.  You'd better
write out West and get a three-year lease, with
option of purchase."

"We couldn't think of buying it, even with
water rights and all," Mrs. Robbins demurred,
"but we might try the three-year lease.  What
do you think, dear?"

"I should write tonight," Mr. Robbins told her,
confidently.  "Even if I should gain my health
completely"--how cheerily he said it, the girls
thought--"we could still stay up here summers,
and you all would enjoy it, I know.  Look at
Dorrie's pink cheeks, and Jean looks like another
girl.  If I keep on much longer on Roxy's
cooking, I expect to be mowing hay in the lower
meadows by July."

So the letter was written, the wonderful letter
freighted with so many hopes.  All four girls
escorted Mrs. Robbins down to the mailbox at the
crossroads the next noon.  It was truly a fateful
moment, as Kit remarked solemnly.  So much
depended upon the nature of the answer from
far-off Saskatoon.  Perched on the fence rail
Dorrie began to compose poetry to fit the occasion.

"Kit, beat time for me, will you?" she called
happily, teetering on the rail like a young
bluebird.  "Here it goes now:

   |  "Oh, Saskatoon,
   |    Please answer soon!
   |  Sweet Saskatoon,
   |    We ask this boon--

What's his name, Mumsie?"

"Ralph McRae," Jean answered for her mother.

"You know, really, Dorrie," protested Helen,
"if you could just see yourself on that rail fence
chanting doggerel to the spring breezes, you'd
come down."

But Doris kept to the rail all the same, and
sang with her fair hair blowing around her little
face, already showing freckles.  Even Kit felt
the inspiration of the moment.

"Oh, I love these April mornings!  You can
smell everything that's sweet and new in the air,
can't you, Motherkin?  And I found arbutus
buds down in the pines too, and an old crow's
nest, and the crocuses are up."

Mrs. Robbins lifted her face to the blue sky,
with its great white clouds that drifted up from
the south in an endless argosy of beauty, and
quoted softly:

   |  "When Spring comes down the wildwood way,
   |    A crocus in her hair--"
   |

"There comes the mail wagon down the wildwood
way," Jean called from the curve of the
road.

Already they had grown to watch for it as the
one real event of the day.  Mrs. Robbins said it
reminded her of the little milk wagons in the
South.  It had a white oblong body with a
projection at the back, a "lean-to" as Cousin Roxana
called it, for parcel post packages.  The top
came forward over the front seat in a canopy
effect to shield Mr. Ricketts, the rural free delivery
carrier, from the sun.  Finally, there was a
plump white horse that matched the whole
turnout exactly, and Mr. Ricketts, his cap pushed
back on his head, a smile of perpetual well-being
on his face.

"Looks like we'd get a spell of fine weather,"
he called.  "Tell Miss Robbins I noticed a
postcard for her about her subscription being up for
her floral monthly, and if she ain't going to renew
hers, I'll send in my own for this year."

"Now just hear that," exclaimed Cousin Roxy
when she was given the message.  "He's read my
floral monthly regularly coming along the route.
Well, I don't know as I mind.  He's a real good
mail carrier anyhow, and all men have failings.
Hewers of wood and drawers of water, the good
Book calls them, and I'd like to know what else
the pesky things are for.  That doesn't mean you
at all, Jerry.  You were always a good boy.
Tom Ricketts knows better than to read my
floral monthly without so much as by your leave,
ma'am.  But I'll renew it."

"He must have read the postcard too," said Helen.

"Read it?" Cousin Roxy sniffed audibly.
"I'd like to see anything get by them down at that
post office.  They know a sight more about
you than you do yourself.  Postmaster Willets
could sit down single-handed and write a
history of the local inhabitants of this town just
from memory and postcards, I don't doubt a mite."

The very next day the girls went again to the
Mansion House.  The keys were at Mr. Weaver's,
the next house down the road from Maple
Lawn.  It was a regular gray mouse of a house
sitting far back from the road and facing the
western hills.  Philemon Weaver lived there
alone.  He was ninety-one and had had six
wives, Cousin Roxana told them.

"Though mercy knows, nobody holds that
against him.  It was a compliment to the sex, I
suppose, if he could get them.  And Uncle
Philly's buried them all reverently and properly."

They found the old fellow working at a
carpenter's bench out in the woodshed.  His hair was
gray and curly and his upper lip clean shaven.
Doris said he looked just like the pictures of
Uncle Sam.  He was tall and lean and
stoop-shouldered, but his blue eyes were full of twinkles
and he had the finest set of false teeth, Kit
remarked soberly, that she'd ever seen, and the
most winsome smile.

"Winsome?  Philly Weaver winsome?"
laughed Cousin Roxana when she heard it.
"Well, I must say, Kit, that is the greatest yet.
Winsome!"

"But he is," Kit protested, "really winsome.
He gave us each a drink from his well and showed
Jean his Dutch tile stove and his grandfather's
clock.  And he's got the dearest old chest out in
that side hall, Cousin Roxy.  I asked him how
much he'd take for it, and he said no, he guessed
he'd better not, though it was worth as much as
two dollars and a half, but it had been his
great-grandmother's setting-out chest.  Wasn't that
dear of him?"

Armed with the key and waving good-bye to
the old man at the top of the hill, they started
down to the crossroads.  Already they called the
house home.  It was so satisfying, Kit said, just
to wander about the rooms and plan.  There was
one large southeast room that must be the
living-room and library combined.  Back of this,
opening out on a wide side porch, was the dining-room.
On the opposite side of the front hallway was a
sitting-room with a glass-enclosed extension for
flowers, and between it and the kitchen was a
good-sized hallway lined with shelves and long
handy drawers beneath them.

It was the kitchen and garret, though, that the
girls lingered over most.  The former extended
across the entire back of the house and Helen
counted eleven doors opening out of it.  The
floor was made of oaken planks worn smooth as
satin, some of them over two feet wide.  Behind
the sheet iron partition, they found a huge
old-fashioned rock fireplace with the crane still
hanging in it.  Helen and Doris could easily stand
inside the aperture and there was a jutting out of
the walls on each side that formed the cosiest kind
of an inglenook.

   |  "It seemed from this they e'en must be,
   |  Each other's own best companie,"

quoted Kit, from "The Hanging of the Crane."
"Where are you, Jeanie?  You're missing thrills
of discovery."

But Jean was getting her own thrills.  She had
gathered her skirts around her, and ventured
down the old winding cellar steps, groped around
in the dark until she found the outside doors and
removed the big wooden bar that held them.  The
stone steps outside were green with moss, and
an indignant toad hopped back out of the sunlight
when she threw open the doors.

"We'll get the mouldy smell out of the cellar
in a few days," she told the others, rolling up her
sleeves and sitting down in the sunshine on the
top step.  "And there's a furnace down there,
too.  It looks old and rusty, but it's there.  No
wonder they called it the Mansion House with a
real furnace in the cellar and running water in
the kitchen sink.  But how funny and New
Englandy, girls, to call it that, doubling up on
mansion and house.  Let's name it something else,
something piney."

"Valley View," suggested Helen.

"Sounds too slippery," Kit said.  "How's
Heart's Content?  Too sentimental?  Well
then, Piney Crest.  It is on a sort of crest or
mount up here above the valley and the pines
make it seem solemn."

"Well, they won't after we once get here,"
Doris declared.  "Let's call it something happy."

Kit stood with arms akimbo, looking up at the
tall tapering pines.  They were splendid old
lords of the conifers, towering as high as the
cupola itself.  Their branches spread out like
great hoopskirts of green.  Underneath was a
thick silky carpet of russet needles, layer on layer
from many seasons of growth.  Beyond the limits
of the garden lay the strip of white road, and
across that came wide fields that seemed to fall in
long waves to meet the river.  On all sides they
slipped away from the old mansion, their square
borders outlined with the gray rock walls, each
with its brave showing of springtime green, where
every clambering vine had sent forth leafy
tendrils, and even the moss had freshened up under
the April showers.

"In a couple of weeks more they'll all be
green," said Jean, her dark eyes bright with
anticipation.  "And we'll plough them and sow
them, and they'll grow and grow, girls, and turn
a real golden harvest over to us by fall.  Blessed
green acres of promise!"

"There you are," exclaimed Kit triumphantly,
wheeling around on them.  "Greenacres.  It
just fits the place, and it's full of the country
and makes you think of good things to eat.
Greenacres.  All in favor of that name please
signify in the usual manner."

Whereupon Doris picked up her skirts and
made a low curtesy, and Helen did the same,
and lastly Jean and Kit swept each other an
elaborate court bow, showing that the vote was
entirely unanimous.

Therefore, Greenacres was the new name given
to the old Mansion House, and the girls felt that
in the bestowal of the name, they held a
guarantee with Fate of happy augury.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SETTLING THE NEST`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   SETTLING THE NEST

.. vspace:: 2

"Goods have come," called Mr. Ricketts from
the mail box one morning.  The pink freight
card lay on top, and he seemed as pleased as
anyone to find it there.  "Letter from out West
too, I noticed, so I presume you folks will be
settled pretty soon."

"I almost feel as if I ought to let him read
what Mr. McRae says," Mrs. Robbins said
amusedly.  "He's so friendly and interested."

As she opened the letter, the girls gathered
around her chair, eager-eyed and curious to see
what it contained.  Jean declared that she liked
the handwriting because it was firm and plain
without any flourishes.  Kit was sure he used a
stub pen and was rather morose and dignified.
Helen asked if she might keep the postage stamp
for a memento, and Doris kept patting her
mother's shoulder tenderly as if she would have
protected her against any disappointment.

"You read it, dear.  I'd much rather you did,"
the Motherbird said, handing it over to Mr. Robbins.

Cousin Roxana was out in the buttery singing
softly to herself about some day when the mists
had rolled in splendor from the beauty of the
hills, and the nurse was upstairs, packing to
return to New York the following day.  There was
just their own little home group of robins and
they listened anxiously for the verdict.  The
letter ran:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

SASKATOON, SASKATCHEWAN,
    April 4th, 19--.

.. vspace:: 1

*Mr. Jerrold Robbins, Gilead Center, Conn.*

.. vspace:: 1

MY DEAR MR. ROBBINS: Your letter of March 28th,
received.  I should be very glad to rent the old house
down at Stony Eddy on a lease, but do not want to let it
go out of the family.  Miss Robbins can tell you the
conditions under which it came into my possession and why I
am not at liberty to part with it.  If you care to rent it
at $100 a year, it is yours.  Any necessary repairs it may
need I am willing to make.  I have never seen the property
myself, but whatever Miss Robbins says about it will be
satisfactory to me, as she was my Aunt Trowbridge's
dearest friend.

Hoping if you decide to take the place, you may be
happy there, I am,

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

Yours sincerely,
    RALPH McRAE.

.. vspace:: 2

"It's ours," Jean breathed thankfully.

"I always felt that it was, somehow,"
Mrs. Robbins smiled happily around at her brood.
"And I know you'll like it, Jerry."

"Oh, I know the place, I remember admiring
it as a boy.  Besides, I'd like anything up here.
Why, I could live out yonder in Roxy's corncrib
very comfortably this summer if she'd only let
me," teased the invalid.  "Better send a check
out at once for the rent, Betty, and get into it as
soon as possible."

It was the third week in April when they drove
down in relays from Maple Lawn and took
possession of the new home.  There had been
considerable repairing to be done: painting and
papering, mending the waterpipes and furnace,
and cleaning out the chimneys.

The goods had been brought up from Nantic
by Hiram in the big hay wagon, he making four
trips.  Mrs. Robbins had wanted to hire an
automobile truck from Norwich, but Roxana said it
was all nonsense with two big horses standing idle
in the barn just aching for work, and Hiram
fussing around over frost still being in the ground
so he couldn't do any deep ploughing.  So the
goods came up and were packed into the big
front room downstairs while the girls and
Mrs. Robbins went back and forth "settling."

Hiram's younger brother came to do the
papering and painting.  He looked exactly like a
young rooster, Kit declared, all neck and legs,
and he was fearfully shy.  She found immediate
diversion in appearing before him suddenly in her
most abrupt manner and asking his opinion
anxiously on something, whereupon Shad would
blush intensely to the roots of his taffy colored
hair, and splash paste blindly.

His name was Shadrach Farnum, but Shad
suited him to perfection.  As Cousin Roxana
said, he did sort of run to bone.  But he could
paint and paper to the queen's taste and
gradually the rooms began to look different.  The big
living-room was covered with a soft wood brown
burlap that harmonized well with their ash
furniture and bookcases, and the brown Spanish
leather cushions.  Window seats were built
around the two bay windows, and the girls sewed
diligently to cover the cushions for these with
burlap, and to make inside curtains just to outline,
as Jean said, the cream filet ones.

"It looks so warm and tender and friendly,
doesn't it?" Doris exclaimed when the big brown
suede cover was laid on the long library table
and the copper lamp placed in the center.  The
copper lamp was really an institution in the
Robbins' family.  The girls had given it personal
conduct from the Cove on Long Island to Nantic.
Jean had found it in an old copper and brass shop
in New York at a wonderful reduction, and had
carted it home herself in triumph.  The bowl was
broad and low and squat, shaped a good deal
like a summer squash.  The shade was perforated
by hand with exquisite artistry into strange
Muscovite designs, through which the light shone
softly.  When it was lighted the first evening in
the new home, Helen said she felt as if she were
before a shrine.

"And it is a shrine too," Jean told them, "the
shrine of home."

Once in the long ago when they had all been
quite young, Jean had been found industriously
writing names on bits of paper, and fastening
them with mucilage to pieces of the furniture.

"I thought they might feel queer not having
any names," she said when discovery came, "so I
was naming them."

The lamp had a name too; it was always
alluded to as Diogenes.

"It looks exactly like the kind of lamp he
would have loved," Kit explained.

The day after they really moved in, Cousin
Roxana drove down with Ella Lou and some
good advice, a large brown crock of freshly baked
beans and a loaf of brown bread.

"You need a good safe horse that you all can
drive," she said.  "Sam Willetts has a brown
mare that seems just about the ticket.  I
telephoned over to him this morning and he'll sell
her for $75.00, which isn't bad at all.  If you like,
Betty, I'll call him up again as soon as I get back
and Honey Hancock can bring her over.
Honey's working for Mr. Willetts now, and the
mare used to belong to the Hancocks.  She was
a regular pet, Piney said."

Mrs. Robbins was sure it was a good plan and
Cousin Roxana was instructed to close the
bargain.  So it was that Greenacres made the
acquaintance of Honey Hancock, destined to be a
close friend before summer was over, and always
a family standby.

It was a little past the supper hour when
Honey drove up.  Hitched to the back of the
wagon was the brown mare, and they all went out
to look at her.  Honey was about fourteen and
tall for his age.  Rosy-cheeked he was, with blue
eyes and curly brown hair and dimples so deep
and ingratiating that Helen said it was a burning
shame to waste them on a boy.

He stood at the mare's head, patting her
slender, glossy neck and combing her mane with his
fingers, telling the girls her history, how she had
belonged to Molly Bawn, their old mare, and how
his father had broken her to harness himself.

"But she never had to be really broken in.
Piney and I started riding her bareback when she
was out in pasture and she was just as tame as a
kitten.  She understands anything you say to
her.  Mother hated to sell her to Mr. Willetts,
but we had to, and as I was working for him, why,
she didn't know any difference.  She's used to a
good deal of petting--"

"Oh, we'll all pet her here," Jean promised.
"We must have something to drive her in.
Haven't you a davenport that she'll drive nicely in?"

"A davenport!" exclaimed Kit.  "Jean
Robbins, a davenport's a sofa.  She'd look nice
hitched to a sofa.  My sister isn't used to the
country at all, Honey.  She means a democrat,
you know.  The kind of a wagon you can put one
seat or two on, and still have room to put things
away in."

"We haven't anything like that," said Honey,
"but they might have down at Mr. Butterick's.
He's the carriage maker.  He can take a pair
of old carriage wheels, and turn out a good buggy
almost while you watch him."

"You have wonderful people up here," Helen
said fervently.  "It seems as if whenever you
want a certain kind of a person, there he is
waiting for you.  Where does Mr. Butterick live?"

"Down in Rocky Glen; second house past the
basket weaver, Mr. Tompkins."

"Suppose we go over there tomorrow, girls,"
Jean suggested.  "Or do you have to take the
mare over, Honey, and let Mr. Butterick sort
of fit her with a carriage and a harness?  I wish
I could put her in the barn right now."

"Better get somebody to take care of her first,"
Helen said practically.  "We'd feed her fish
cakes and doughnuts."

Honey shifted his weight from one foot to the
other somewhat uneasily.

"Don't suppose you folks think of taking
anybody on regularly, do you?  Mother said I was to
ask, and say if you wanted me I might come up.
It's nearer home than Mr. Willetts' and there's
only Piney and Mother at home, and they need
me to do the chores after I get home at night."

Jean hastily signaled to Kit for fear she
wouldn't remember all that Cousin Roxana had
told them about Honey Hancock and his sister.
But just then Mrs. Robbins stepped out on the
side porch and smiled at Honey until he turned
red and grinned delightedly.

"I could come for about ten a month, Mother
thought," he vouchsafed with much embarrassment.

The other Mother thought ten was about right
too, and Honey drove away in the spring
twilight, happy as one of the barn swallows that
circled in the dusk in a wonderful vesper dance.
All the way up the hill they heard him whistling
"Beulah Land," and the hearts of the girls echoed
the sweet old melody.  Although the deal had
been closed over the brown mare, and the check
reposed in Honey's overalls' pocket, he took her
back with him, and promised to ride her over in
the morning so the girls should not have the care
of her over night.

"I asked him what her name was," Doris said,
"and he told me they just called her Mollie's
Baby.  We must think up some wonderful name
for her.  You know, Mother darling, she looked
over at me so tenderly and wistfully when Honey
said she would have to go back over night.  I
know she longed to stay with us."

The next addition to the place was the lot of
chickens.  It had been agreed the first year that
no large expenditures should be made for anything,
because it was all more or less experimental.

"We want to take care of Dad, and make him
well this first year," Jean told the other girls up
in their room one night.

One point about the Robbins family that was
different from other families was their distinctive
individualities; they simply demanded separate
expression, as Jean put it.  Nobody liked to
double up with anyone else, and here at Greenacres
there were plenty of rooms to choose from,
so that each daughter might have her own.  Two
large bed-rooms with alcoves crossed the front of
the house.  These had been turned over to
Mr. and Mrs. Robbins.  Then came curious rooms, as
Kit said.  The hallway rambled through the
second story, two steps up over here and two steps
down over there.  There were unexpected little
corridors opening out from it like crooked arms.
It really was a fascinating hallway, and the
rooms along it were quite exceptional.  There
were two wings to the house, and an extension at
the back over the summer kitchen "ell."  This
was a source of delight to the girls, for they found
all kinds of interesting relics tucked back in this
extension.

"Mother dear," Helen said seriously, appearing
one day with cobwebs in her hair and dust
smudges on her arms and face, "we've found
perfectly wonderful things.  Old newspapers before
the war, and old magazines with hoopskirts in
them and bonnets with flowers inside the poke!"

"And two old maps dated 1829, one of New
York State and one of Connecticut," Kit added.
"Both mounted on old yellow homespun linen
and braced with hand carved ebony.  Now what
do you think of that, Dad?  I'll bring them down
to you.  And a thing that looks like a little pilot
wheel, but it isn't.  Jean says it's part of a
spinning outfit because she's seen them out in front
of antique shops on Madison Avenue in New
York.  And we found a foot warmer, and an
hour glass with one support broken, and a tailor's
goose, and some old clothes-pins that had been
whittled by hand."

Jean selected the west room for her very own.
It had a square bay window over the bower, as
the girls had nicknamed the little conservatory
off the dining-room.  The upstairs window was
smaller, but almost as pleasant, with small panes
of glass and a beautiful outlook over the valley
and the old dam.

Doris had a smaller room next to Jean's, and
then came a pleasant southeast room for a guest
chamber.

"And for pity's sake, let's make it comfy and
cheery," said Kit.  "Most guest chambers give
you the everlasting dumdums, don't they, Jeanie?
Let's make ours look as if it were really to enjoy."

Kit had taken for her special domicile the room
over the summer kitchen, because it had so many
shelves and cupboards in it.  At first she had
wanted the cupola room, but was talked out of it,
much against her will and predilections.  The
upper staircase was circular, and you had to watch
out going up to the cupola, or you'd get an
unmerciful bump on the head as the door was very
low.  But once inside, it was a surprise, that held
you spellbound for a minute.  The room was
square in shape, and had eight long narrow
windows in it.  From them you caught wonderful
framed views of the far-reaching valley, the
ruined stone mill, the great brown rock dam,
covered now with the spring freshet, and beyond the
placid lake with several islands dotting it and
long rows of hills guarding its margins, one after
the other like sentinels.

"Yes, I want this one," Kit had said.  "I'm
the only one in the family with genius and this
should be mine.  I want to walk around this
crystal enclosure and play that I am one of
Maeterlinck's sleeping princesses."

"They didn't walk," Jean had protested, "and
you needn't imagine that you're a genius, Kit
Robbins, because you're not."

"Well, I'm the only one in the family with
much imagination anyway," Kit had answered
pleasantly.  "'Full many a flower is born to
blush unseen,' you know, Jeanie dear.  And if
I can't be a sleeping princess I will be the Lady
of Shalott."  Whereupon she had swept about
the room with a couch cover draped around her
in approved Camelot style, and a curtain cord
bound about her brow for a circlet, declaiming:

   |  "'Four gray walls and four gray towers,
   |    Overlook a space of flowers,
   |  And the silent isle embowers,
   |    The Lady of Shalott.'"
   |

"It would be such a hard place from which to
rescue you if the house caught fire," Helen had
remarked thoughtfully, peering from one of the
windows.  "You couldn't very well skip down
the lightning rod, Kit."

"I should prefer to have all my girls nearer to
me," Mrs. Robbins had remarked.  "Suppose
you should be taken ill in the night!  How would
any of the rest know of it or be able to help you?
You had better select a room on the floor below,
Childie."

"Very well," Kit had said regretfully.  "Of
course I will not insist if the family are going to
worry over me, but I shall come up here every
day to comb out my golden tresses.  I think we'll
get Shad to build us window seats all the way
around, stain the floor, and make a sort of sun
parlor out of it."

"Oh, Kit, remember the place in Egypt we
always wanted to see, the Ramasseum, the thinking
place of the king?"  Jean's dark eyes had
sparkled with mischief.  "Let's call this the
Thinking Place.  Then we can retire here when
we wish to meditate, and fairly soak in the
sunlight until we feel radiant and revived.  Do you
all like that?"

So it had been agreed upon and the cupola
room became the thinking place of the four princesses.

Another discovery they made soon after was
the Peace Spot.  This was over on the hillside
across the bridge.  Here was a rocky field with
any number of evergreen trees.  They were
assorted sizes and all varieties.  There were
juniper trees and hemlocks, fat tubby little spruces
and slender straggly cedars.  It looked like a
premeditated burial ground, Kit remarked, but
Helen named it the Peace Spot.  They often
walked over there in the late afternoons.  Kit
had ideas of turning it into a wonderful Italian
garden some day, but just now it was their place
of rest.

At first the housework had proved to be the
great stumbling block in the way of perfect peace
and daily comfort.

"I tell you, Motherbird, if you'll just say what
you want done, we'll be your willing handmaidens,"
Jean had promised at the very beginning,
but the willing handmaidens had found themselves
tangled up in less than two days, treading
on each other's heels and losing their tempers too.

Mrs. Robbins laughed at them when she happened
in and found them all "looking down their
noses," as Doris expressed it.

"Girls, you'll have to learn team work," she
explained.  It appeared that Jean had put a
chicken to roast in the top of the double baking
pan and the gravy had all run out of the air
draft at one end.  "You must learn that when
you put your bread to rise it doesn't shape itself
into loaves and hop into the pans and walk over
to the oven."  Here Kit blushed hotly, remembering
how her first batch had risen to the occasion
beyond all expectations, and rambled during the
night all over the edge of the pan and the arm
of the chair she had set it on.  "And, Dorrie,
precious, if you catch mice in traps alive, and
then decide to tame them, we'll have mice all over
the place."

Doris had discovered a nice little brown prisoner
under the pantry shelf, had taken him out
into the rose garden and there let him go, all in
a spirit of lofty pity that left Kit and Jean
speechless.

Also, Doris had taken to rescuing flies caught
on sticky paper, putting them into pill boxes
until they recovered their usual blithe and
debonnaire attitude towards life.  Also, sundry noises
having issued from her room at night, the other
girls had started down the dark hall to investigate,
and had stepped on turtles which Doris had
found sunning themselves on logs in the pond,
and had put into empty tomato cans and smuggled
up to her room for future humanitarian reference.

"Go for us, Queen Mother," Jean cried
valiantly.  "Go for us.  It's the only way we'll
ever learn anything.  I told Kit to fix the bread
a dozen times.  I was reading up tomato plants,
and Helen was cutting out a stencil for her scrim
curtains--conventionalized tulips--"

"Lotos buds," corrected Helen.

"Well, I'm not sure.  They look like raised
biscuits to me.  I wish spring would hurry along
and make up its mind to stay a while."  She
pressed her nose against the window pane and
stared out at the land.  Letters had come from
some girl friends back at the Cove that day, and
she felt a wave of loneliness and half panic at
what they had undertaken.

Just then Honey came to the kitchen door,
bareheaded and smiling.

"Piney said for me to tell you folks that she
heard Ma Parmelee had some good Plymouth
Rocks for sale.  They're about as reliable a hen
as you can get.  Ma's going to sell off everything
and go to live with her son down in Nantic.  It's
near towards where I live, if you'd like to drive
over that way."

Mrs. Robbins thought it was a good idea, and
that Jean could go with her.  There had been
a trip over to Rocky Glen after the purchase
of Mollie's Baby, and Mr. Butterick had been
persuaded to part with a buggy that just fit the
mare.  It was low and held three easily on its
broad cushioned seat, and there was a fair space
at the back where odds and ends could be packed
away.

It seemed rather foolish to call the mare
Mollie's Baby every time they spoke to her, so a
family council had given her a brand new cognomen
and already she pricked up her ears when she
heard it.  They called her Princess, and the
Jersey heifer that came up from the State farm was
called Buttercup, after her famous predecessor.
Buttercup was Mr. Robbins' special pride on the
farm and great things were hoped from her.

Jean gathered up the reins and Honey put
some burlap sacks in the back of the wagon for
the hens.

"Better tie them to something when you start
off," he advised.  "They always flop around a
lot in sacks."

It was a drive of about two and a half miles,
up through the hills.  Each new road seemed to
lead them straight up to the edge of the world
and then to dip again and leave cloudland
behind.  The woods held a haze of green now that
hung over the distant hills like a mist.  Once a
row of young quail blinked dizzily from a pasture
bar at the surprising apparition of the horse and
buggy.  And all at once there came the quick
thud of hoofs behind them, and a young girl
riding horseback drew rein beside their buggy.  She
was about as old as Kit, with thick brown hair
brushed back boyishly from her face, and big
friendly blue eyes.

"How do you do," she said, blushing in a way
that seemed familiar to them, for it reminded
them of Honey.  "I'm Piney Hancock.  Mollie
wouldn't let me ride by unless I stopped to let her
see Babe."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MA PARMELEE'S CHICKS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   MA PARMELEE'S CHICKS

.. vspace:: 2

"Oh, we're ever so glad to know you, Piney,"
Jean said at once.  "Honey's told us all about
you until we felt that we really did know you."

Piney blushed deeper than ever, just as Honey
did, and brushed a fly off her pony's neck.  She
rode across saddle, in a home-made corduroy
skirt, with a boy's cap set back on her head, and a
boyish waist with knotted tie.  Altogether both
Mrs. Robbins and Jean approved of her at sight,
for she seemed like a girl edition of Honey himself.

Piney told them they were on the right road,
and to keep to the left after they passed the burial
ground.

"I'm going down the other way or I'd ride
along and show you where it is."

"You must come down to see us girls when you
can, please.  We're rather lonesome, not knowing
anyone around here.  Are there many girls?"

"Quite a few," said Piney.  "There are the
Swedish girls over on the old Ames place, and
there are two French girls near us.  Their
father's the carpenter, Mr. Chapelle.  Etoile's
the older one and the little one they call Tony.
Her name's really Marie Antoinette.  Mrs.
Chapelle's awfully funny.  She told me one day
the reason they changed the little girl's name to
Tony was because if she ever should get on a
railroad track or anywhere in danger, and they
had to call her in a hurry, they wanted something
short and quick to say.  She talks broken English,
and it was so comical the way she said it."  Piney's
deep dimples were showing and her eyes
were sparkling, as she imitated the voice of
Mrs. Chapelle.  "How I say to her ver' fast Marie
Antoinette, Marie Antoinette, Marie Antoinette!
She can be dead four--five--time.  I call her
that way, I tink so.  I yell Ton-ee!  Right away
she jump."

"Isn't she a darling, Mother?" Jean exclaimed
when they drove on.  "I do hope she'll come
down.  Kit would love her."

"Anybody would love her," agreed Mrs. Robbins,
still smiling.  "You know, Jean, I think
that you girls are going to find a special work up
here that only you can do.  A work among these
girls of our own neighborhood."

"But, Mother dear, our own neighborhood up
here means a radius of about ten miles."

"Even so.  Cousin Roxana's old doctor covers
twenty miles and has been doing it for forty
years; he knows all of the families as if he were
a census taker."

Jean thought for a minute.  They were going
up a long hill and Princess took her time.
Honey had fastened two bunches of ferns to her
bridle to keep away flies, and she looked as if she
wore a Dutch bonnet.

"There seem to be so few real American girls
up here, Mother," Jean began slowly.  "I
thought we'd find ever so many, but while I lived
up at Maple Lawn I rode around a good deal,
and you'd be surprised how many foreigners are
up here.  Cousin Roxy told me the reason.  The
old families die out, or the younger generation
moves away to the towns, and the foreigners buy
up the old homesteads cheaply."

"Well, dear?"

"But, Mother, you don't understand.  There
are all sorts.  French Canadians, and a Swedish
family, and a Polish family, and the old miller
up the valley from us used to be a Prussian
sailor.  Then there are the real old families, of
course--"

"Do you think of confining your circle of
acquaintances to the old families, Jeanie?"

Jean laughed at the amusement in her mother's voice.

"I know what you're thinking, Mother, dear.
Still I suppose we must be careful just moving
into a new place like this.  We don't want to get
intimate with everybody.  You'll like some of the
old families."

"I think I'll like some of the new ones too.
Have you noticed, Jean, in driving around, that
the houses which are mostly unpainted and rather
run-down looking belong to the old timers,
grandchildren and great-grandchildren, probably, of
first settlers?"

"Oh, Mother, there are some of the most
interesting stories about them too, how they came
out--walked, actually walked most of them--from
the Massachusetts Bay Colony when there was
some sort of a break up, and a few dropped off
here, and a few there, and they settled in hamlets
wherever they happened to stop.  I found a
burial ground in the woods near Cousin Roxy's,
with old slate gravestones, and dates away back
to 1717."

"I'd like to see them, dear, but at the same time
they were foreigners too, or children of foreigners,
immigrants from a far land.  Can't you
understand what I mean?  These newer families
are like new blood to the country.  It takes only
a couple of generations to blend them in, Jean,
and they bring new strength to us.  Think what
we get from the different nations.  I remember
out in California I had a wonderful girl friend
whose people had been Polish exiles.  That was
a strange group of exiles who sought a haven in
our land of flowers.  There was Sienkiewicz the
great novelist, and splendid Helena Modjeska,
and many whose names I forget.  Wanda was
my girl friend's name, and my Mother and aunts
did not like me to chum with her because she was
a foreigner.  I think that you children are very
fortunate to be born in an age when these queer
old earth lines, these race barriers, are falling
down, and leaving the world-brotherhood idea
instead.  Up here in our lonely old hills, we are
going to face this same problem that all nations
are coping with, and we in our small way can help
open the gates of the future."

"Why, Mother, I never heard you talk this
way before," Jean exclaimed.  "You always
seemed just dear and sweet, don't you know.
I--why, somehow I never felt you were
interested in such things."

Unconsciously, she moved a little nearer to this
new kind of Mother, and Mrs. Robbins' hand
closed over hers.

"If we mothers are not interested in them, who
should be?" she asked, her eyes full of a beautiful
tenderness and compassion.  "Some one has
called us the torch bearers, the light bringers, but
I like to think of women best as the tenders of
the ever-burning temple lamps."

"You mean love and truth and--"

"I mean everything, dear, that tends for world
betterment.  And you girls are going to do your
little share right here in Gilead Center, making a
circle that shall join together the hands of all
these girls from different races.  We'll give a
party soon and get acquainted with them all.
Now let's pay attention to chickens, for I think
this must be the house."

Princess turned into a side drive leading
around to a house that stood well back from the
road.  As Jean said afterwards, the house looked
as if it had been outdoors all its life, it was so
weather-beaten and gray.  "Ma" Parmelee bustled
out to meet them, plump and busy as one of
her own Plymouth Rocks.

"Twelve pullets and one rooster you want?"
she said.  "Well, I guess I can fix you up.  I
heard you folks had moved in down yonder.
Thought I'd see you at meeting Sunday but I didn't."

Mrs. Robbins explained that they were Episcopalians
and the nearest parish was nine miles away.

"So it is, over at Riverview, but we're all bound
for the same place, so you might as well come up
and help fill the pews.  Land knows they need
it."  She led the way out to the big barn, followed
by the chickens.  The great doors were wide
open, and the barn floor was covered lightly with
wisps of hay.  "Ma" scattered a measure of
grain over this, and let the hens scratch for it.

"I have to work hard for what I get, and they
ought to too," she said pleasantly.  "Now, we'll
take any that you like and put them into bags.
I'm going to sell you my very best rooster.  His
name's Jim Dandy and he's all of that.  He's
pure Rhode Island Red, and two years old.  You
don't have to worry about hawks when he's
around."

After the chickens were all safely in the bags
and put in back of the wagon seat, "Ma" waved
good-bye and told them not to forget the Finnish
family that was moving into her house.

"I'm going to live with my married daughter,
and these poor things don't know a living soul up
here.  Do drive over and speak to them as neighbors.
There's a man and his widowed sister and
her children.  All God's folks, you know."

"Finns," murmured Jean speculatively, as they
drove away.  "There's a new blend to our Gilead
sisterhood, Motherie."

Mrs. Robbins laughed at the puzzled expression
on her eldest daughter's face.

"We'll let Kit drive over and see them," she
promised.

Spring seemed to descend on the land all at
once in the next few days, as if she had quite
made up her mind to come and sit a while, Cousin
Roxy said.  One day the earth still looked
wind-swept and bare, and the next there seemed to be a
green sheen over the land and the woods looked
hazy and lacy with the delicate budding leaves.

One night as Doris was out shutting up the hen
houses and filling the pigeons' pan with water,
she stopped short, her head upraised eagerly like
a fawn, listening to a new sound away off along
the edges of the woods, and deep down in the
lower meadow where the brook flowed.  Keenest
and sweetest it sounded over where the waters of
the lake above the old dam moved with soft low
lapping among the reeds and water grasses.
Here it became a curiously shrill trilling noise,
subdued and yet insistent like the strumming of
muffled strings on a million tiny harps.

"It's the peep frogs," called Honey, coming up
from the barn with Buttercup's creamy contribution
to the family commonwealth.  "They're
just waking up.  That means it's spring for sure."

"Isn't it dear of them to try and tell us all
about it," Doris cried delightedly, and away she
ran to the house to insist that Kit and Jean and
Helen come straight out-of-doors and listen too.
In the twilight they walked around the terraces
below the veranda, two by two.  Once Helen
stopped below their father's window to call up
to him in the long "Coo-ee!" their mother had
taught them from her own girlhood days out
in California on her grandfather's ranch.

Day by day they would assure each other of
his returning strength and health.  The country
air and utter restfulness of life as it ran here in
channels of peace were surely giving him back
at least the power to relax and rest.  He slept
as soundly as Doris herself, all night long,
something he had not been able to do in months, and
his appetite was really getting to be quite
encouraging.  The little nurse had left Greenacres
the fifteenth of April both because of his gain
in health and also to decrease expenses.

"And you needn't worry about anything at all,
Mother darling," Kit had assured her.  "Just
keep right upstairs with Dad and let us girls run
the kitchen, and we'll feed you on beautiful surprises."

Mr. Robbins smiled over at them, and quoted
teasingly:

   |  "The Chameleon's food I eat;
   |    Look you, the air, promise crammed."
   |

Piney paid her promised visit within a few
days, and from her the girls received their first
real information about the other girl neighbors
around Gilead Center.

Honey was ploughing up the kitchen garden
behind the house and Jean, with Piney at her side,
sat on the low stone wall that separated it from
the orchard, studying a seed catalogue diligently.

"I'd love some elephant ears and castor beans
and scarlet lichens in big beds along the
terraces," she said.  "Think of the splashes of red
up against those pines, girls.  Remember the
Jefferies' place back at the Cove.  Mrs. Jefferies
paid her gardener a hundred dollars a month."

"You'll like the rare, rich red of radishes and
beets and scarlet runner beans better," Piney
declared merrily.  "We always lay out money on
the food seeds first and then what is left can go
for flowers.  Anyhow, when you've got heaps of
roses and snowballs and syringas and lilacs and
things that keep coming up by themselves every
year, you don't need to buy very much.  Did you
find the lilies of the valley down along the north
wall?  Mother says they used to be beautiful
when she was a girl."

The girls were silent, remembering what
Cousin Roxana had told them of the romance of
Luella Trowbridge.  But Doris's curiosity got
the better of her caution, and she coaxed Piney
away to hunt for the delicate pale green spear
points with their white lilybells hidden away
under the hazel bushes.

It was Piney, too, who took them up the hill
to the rocky sheep pasture and showed them
where arbutus bloomed around the edges of the
gray, mossy rocks.  And it was Piney who
pointed out to them the wintergreen, or checkerberry,
as she called it, with its tiny pungent
berries.

"She's perfectly wonderful," Kit declared that
day at the noon dinner.  "She knows the exact
spot in this entire township where every single
flower bobs up in its season.  We found saxifrage
at the base of an old oak, and white trilium and
blood root, and perfect fields of bluets.  And she
wouldn't let us pick many either, only a few.
She says it's just as cruel to rob a patch of wild
flowers of all chance of blooming again next year
as it is to rob birds' nests."

Here Helen chimed in.

"And she's going to teach me how to start a
flower calendar.  Not in a book, Motherie.
We're going to take some of that dull castor-brown
burlap that was left from the library and
mount specimens on it, then make a folio with
leather covers of dyed sheepskin."

"Piney seems to be a regular dynamo for starting
activities," said Mrs. Robbins amusedly.

"She is, just exactly that," Kit answered
earnestly.  "I never met a girl with so many ideas
up her sleeve.  And they're as poor as Job's
turkey, too.  Piney told us so herself.  And here
she is, cooped up in Gilead Center without any
outlet at all.  She knows what she wants to do,
but we girls can tell her how to do it."

"I wonder what her real name is," Helen
pondered.  "Maybe it's Peony.  Cousin Roxy calls
peonies 'pinies."

"It's much nicer than that," Jean said.  "I
can't think of any other name that would suit her.
It's Proserpine.  The minute she told me I saw
her wandering along the seashore with the winds
of the isles of Greece blowing back her funny
short curls, and her hands up to her lips calling
to the sea maids to come and play with her while
her mother was away."

"That's all very pretty and poetical, Sister
Mine, but Piney's going to peddle our rhubarb
for us," Kit remarked.  "I think that rhubarb is
one of the most grateful plants we have.  It
seems to spring up everywhere and pay compound
interest on itself every year.  I found a lot
of it growing and thought it was peonies or
dahlias, but Piney told me it was rhubarb, and
we're going to market it.  She says there's a big
cranberry bog on this place too, away off in some
sunken meadows above the dam, and we must look
out because somebody comes and picks them
without asking anything at all about it.  So we're
going to watch the old wood road that turns into
the sunken meadows.  We can see it, Mother
dear, from the eyrie outlook, and heaven help any
miscreant who takes our cranberries!"

"I wouldn't start looking for him yet awhile,
dear.  Cranberries won't be along until frost,"
laughed Mrs. Robbins.

Doris, with Honey's help, was devoting herself
to the hens.  Although they had come rather
late, still quite a few were setting, and Doris had
several almanacs and calendars marked with the
dates of the "coming offs," as Honey put it.
Then there were about twenty tiny balls of fluff
in the brooder from Cousin Roxana's incubator,
and over these Doris crooned and fussed and
wasted more sentiment than any chickens deserved.

"But they're motherless.  Think of being born
motherless and helpless--"

"Don't be ridiculous, Dorrie," Kit said crossly.
"You can't be born motherless.  You're hatched."

"And if they don't know any better, what's
the difference?" added Jean.

"I don't see that at all," Doris insisted
plaintively.  "Every time I go there and they call to
me, I just want to take them in my lap, and cry
and cry over them."

One of "Ma" Parmelee's pullets had turned out
to be a vagrant.  Never would she stay with the
rest of the chickens in the hen house or yard, or
even around the barnyard.  She was jet black
and very peculiar.  At feeding time she would
show up, but hover around the outskirts of the
flock and nibble at kernels of corn anxiously.

Jean named her "Hamlet" in fun, because she
said she was always looking for "rats in the
arras."  But her real name was Gypsy.  It was agreed
that Gypsy had no idea of her natural obligation
to society at all, that she didn't have the slightest
intention of setting on any eggs, in fact that she
didn't even have the gratitude to lay any eggs.
All she did was appear promptly at meal time and
eat her share.

"There'll be Gypsy a la Reine one of these fine
Sundays," Kit prophesied darkly, but Doris
begged for her life.  In fact, whenever chicken
was on the bill-of-fare Doris always begged off
any of her flock from execution, and Honey had
to go to one of the neighboring farms and
purchase a fowl.

"It seems so awful to eat a chicken that you're
well acquainted with," Doris explained.  "And
another thing, Motherie, did you know that the
boys set traps around?  Not now, but in the fall.
At least, I think it's in the fall.  I had Honey
paint me some signs on shingles and I'm going to
put them all over the place."

"What do they say, dear?"

"They say just this," Doris's tone was full of
firmness and decision.

"*Any traps set on this-property will be sprung
by ME.*"

"Do they state who 'Me' is?"

"I signed it with Dad's name, and put
underneath 'Per D.'"

Jean wrapped loving arms around the youngest robin.

"Dorrie, you're a sweety," she said.  "We
don't appreciate you.  You adopt everything in
sight, but we have to look out for most of your
orphans and semi-orphans.  Never mind, Dorrie.
I'm for you anyway."

"We're such a devoted and loyal family tree,
I think," sighed Doris.  "Don't you, Motherie?
I'm so glad I'm a branch."

"You're not, dear, yet.  You're just a twig,"
Kit teased.  "And Mother is the beautiful dryad
who lives in her very own family tree.  Isn't that
interesting, though?  One thing about us, girls,
is this, and it is very consoling.  Scrap as we may,
we turn right around and become a mutual
admiration society at the slightest excuse.
Good-night, everybody.  The night is yet young, but
I've promised Honey,--or rather, Honey and I
have a bet that I couldn't get up at five and help
weed the garden.  And we bet my three foot rule
against Honey's two pet turtles--"

"Are they trained?" asked Doris eagerly.

"They will be if they're not already.  Don't
anyone call me, because it's got to be fair running.
Good-night."

Helen and Doris decided that they were sleepy
too, and the three went upstairs together, leaving
Jean and her mother to read in the big living-room.
Presently Mrs. Robbins glanced up and
saw that the book lay idle on Jean's lap, and she
was looking down at the wood fire that burned on
the old rock fireplace.

"What is it, dear?" she asked.  "Tired?"

Jean shook her head, and smiled half-heartedly.

"I'm awfully ashamed of it, Mother, but I do
get so lonesome now and then, for everything,
don't you know?  All the people that we knew
and the things that we used to do.  Nothing
happens up here."

"Well, cheer up," said the Motherbird happily.
"I am lonely too sometimes, but there is so much
to compensate for what we have lost that I feel
we must not dare be unhappy.  And Father
grows better every day."

Jean dropped on her knees beside her mother's
chair, arms folded close around her.

"You dear, precious, most wonderful person
that ever was," she cried.  "Don't even *think* of
what I said!  I'm not a bit lonely, and tomorrow
I'm going to see Piney and make calls."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`GILEAD'S GIRL NEIGHBORS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   GILEAD'S GIRL NEIGHBORS

.. vspace:: 2

The breakfast hour at Greenacres was
supposed to be seven-thirty, but the girls rose at
about six and spent the hour before out in the
garden.  It was so fascinating, Helen said in her
rather reserved way, to be out-of-doors in the
early morning.  Sometimes when the air was
warmer than the ground there would be a morning
mist out of which rose clumps of tree tops like
little islands.

The following day at five-thirty exactly, Jean
wakened drowsily to find Kit standing by her
bed, booted and spurred for the fray, as one might
say.

"I want you to look at this clock and be a
witness that I'm up on time," she said briskly,
holding up a bland, nickel-plated clock from the
kitchen, a relic of the days of Tekla.  "It's
perfectly gorgeous outside, Jean.  I don't see how
you girls can lie and sleep with all nature calling."

"Nature didn't call you before, did she,
Kathleen Mavourneen?  Go away and let me sleep."

"Well, I get the turtles anyway.  I've got
them named already."  She seated herself
blithely on the foot of the bed, "Triptolemus
and Prometheus.  Like them?  I'll call them
Trip and Pro for short."

Jean sat up in bed and hurled her pillow at the
laughing, fleeing form.  From the end of the
hall came a last challenge.

"I'm the early bird this morning anyway,
Sleepyhead."

After breakfast though, when the little
dew-spangled cobwebs were gone from the meadow
grass, Jean had Honey harness Princess, and
declared she was going to drive over and get Piney
to accompany her on a round of calls.  Kit and
Doris were busy out in the kitchen garden, and
Helen was helping with the dusting and upstairs
work.  For some reason Jean wanted to go without
them on this first reconnoitering expedition.

She drove down the hill towards Gilead Green,
bowed with a little rising flush of color at the
group in the front of the blacksmith shop, and
stopped in front of the brown and white house
where the Hancocks lived.  It might have been
the veritable witch's house in "Hansel and
Gretel," all constructed properly and comfortably
out of sugar-loaf and gingercakes.  The
clapboards were a deep cream color and the
trimmings were all of brown, scalloped and
perforated with trefoils and hearts.  The green stalks
of tiger lilies grew in thick clusters along its
picket fence, and marigolds and china asters were
coming up in the long beds.

"Hello, Jean," called Piney buoyantly, beating
some oval braided rugs out on the back line.
"Can you stop in?"

Jean leaned forward, the reins lying in her lap.

"I wanted to see if you couldn't go driving with
me.  Just so I can meet some of the girls.  We
want to give a lawn social or some sort of a
summer affair to get acquainted with our neighbors.
It's too warm for a house warming, so we'll have
a garden party."

"Why, the idea," Piney exclaimed, dropping
her stick and pushing back her hair.  "I think
that's awfully nice.  Wait till I ask Mother if I
can go."

Jean waited and presently Mrs. Hancock
stepped out on the side porch and down the steps
to the carriage.  She was rather like Honey and
Piney, curly-haired and young appearing, with
deep dimples and eyes that still held an abiding
happiness in their blue depths.  Her face was
careworn and there were lines around her mouth
that told of repressed pain, but it was the look in
the eyes that held you.  Luella Trowbridge may
have gone through trouble, but she had married
the man she loved and had been happy with him.
She stretched out both hands to Jean.

"Honey's told us so much about you all up
there that it seems as if I know every single one
of you," she said, pleasantly.  "You're Jean,
aren't you?  Of course Piney can go along if she
wants to.  Don't forget the new girl over at the
old Parmelee place."

"It's funny, you're speaking of a lawn social,"
Piney remarked, as they drove away.  "We've
been wanting to give one up at the church--"

"Which church?" asked Jean.  "I can see so
many little white spires every time I get to a
hilltop.  They look like fingers pointing up, don't
they?"

"I suppose so."  Piney was not much given to
sentiment.  "Anyway, here in our part of town,
we've got two.  Mother belongs to the Methodist
but Father was a Congregationalist, so Honey
and I divide up between them.  Then over at
Happy Valley, three miles south, there's another
Congregational church, and we wanted to give a
social--"

"Who wanted to?"

"We girls up here at our Congregational
church.  But our folks don't get along very well
with the folks at the Green church, and they say
we're just dead up here, dead and buried because
we never get anything up.  And Mr. Collins,
our minister, isn't on speaking terms with the
Green minister because something went wrong
when old Mr. Bartlett died.  He wasn't a
professor, you see--"

"What's that?" Jean's eyes were wide with
interest.  She was getting local data at the rate
of a mile a minute.

"Didn't belong to any of the churches at all,
but he was awfully nice, so when he died a year
ago, Mr. Collins said he'd bury him, though the
Green minister had said he wouldn't; so there
you are.  Then the other minister is a lady--"

"Forevermore!" gasped Jean.

"She's the best of them all, just the same,"
Piney said soberly.  "Only the two other
ministers say it isn't the place for women in the
pulpit, and how on earth we're ever going
to have any social and invite them all, I don't see."

Jean's eyes suddenly shone with the joy of a
new idea.

"I do," she said.  "Let's visit all the three
parsonages first off."

So they followed the road over to the Green
and stopped at the white colonial house where
Mr. Lampton lived.  He was tall and gray-haired,
and welcomed his callers with a twinkle
in his eyes.  It was not customary for two girls
to pay a business call at the parsonage, but Jean
launched upon her subject at once.  His advice
and co-operation were asked, that was all.
Greenacre lawn would be given for the social,
and the girls would look after the refreshments
and the Japanese lanterns to decorate the
grounds.  Ten cents could be charged for ice
cream and cake, and the ladies could donate the
cake.  The proceeds would go to church needs.

"I didn't tell him how many churches, did I?"
said Jean, when they drove away with Mr. Lampton's
earnest promise to help.  He was invited to
attend a committee meeting at Greenacres the
following Saturday.

Miss Titheradge of the Happy Valley Church
was delighted with the idea.  Jean liked her at
first sight.  She was rather plump, with wide
brown eyes that never seemed to blink at all, and
rosy cheeks.

"It's just what I've been telling the folks up
here in these old granite hills.  Get together,
warm your hands at the fire of neighborly love
and kindness.  Have socials and all sorts of good
times for your young people and your old people.
Bless everybody's hearts, they only need stirring
up and turning over, and the old fire burns afresh.
Yes, I'll help, children."

"We're sure of Mr. Collins," said Piney, as
they drove away this time.  "I'll see him myself,
and tell him about the committee meeting at your
house on Saturday.  Now we can find some of
the girls."

Jean never forgot that afternoon.  They drove
miles together, stopping at the different houses
and meeting the girls who were, to Jean at least,
the new material upon which she had to work.

At the old Ames place they found the two
Swedish girls, tall, blonde, and blue-eyed,
working out in the onion patch with their brothers.
Ingeborg was the elder and Astrid the younger,
sixteen and fourteen years old.  They had moved
up from New York two years before, but had
both gone to the public schools there and were
ready for anything Jean suggested.

"Ingeborg belonged to a basket ball team,"
Astrid said.  "I can swim and row best."

The Chapelles lived in a little gray house close
to the road on Huckleberry Hill, two miles
below Cousin Roxana's.  Etoile was shy-eyed and
graceful, smiling but non-committal, and little
Tony peered around her mother's skirts at the
stranger in the carriage and coquetted mischievously.
But they would come, ah, and gladly,
Mrs. Chapelle promised.

"They like ver' much to come, you see?" she
said eagerly, trying to detach Tony from her
skirt.  "Ton-ee, I have shame for you, *ma petite*.
Why you no come out, make nize bow?  Etoile,
go bring some lilacs, make quick!"

Etoile sped away to the tall rows of white and
purple lilac bushes, and broke off two large
bunches to put in the back of the wagon.  Then
Mrs. Chapelle remembered that she must send
over to her new neighbor a pat of her butter.
Such beautiful butter never anyone see, never.
Jean must drive around through the lane and see
the three Jersey cows browsing there in the clover
field, Henriette, Desiree, and Susette.

Last of all came the Icelandic farm, and here
Jean found only the hired men, two grave-faced,
light-haired transplanted vikings, who eyed her
curiously and silently.  Hedda, the daughter,
and her mother had driven over to sell two young
pigs at the Finnish place.

"Oh, dear me," laughed Jean, "let's go home.
I feel as if I had been riding like Peer Gynt, all
over the world, just touching at countries here
and there.  Let's go right straight home, so I can
talk to Mother and get a perspective on it all."

"Better ask the Mill girls over while you're
about it," Piney suggested, so they made one last
stop at the red saw-mill in the valley below
Greenacres.  "They're Americans.  My chum lives
here, Sally Peckham.  She's got five sisters and
three brothers, but Sally's the whole family herself."

The three brothers worked in the saw-mill after
school hours, and Jean only caught a glimpse of
them, but Sally sufficed.  She came running out
of the kitchen with a brown and white checked
apron covering her up, and her red hair blowing
six ways for Sunday, as Piney said laughingly
afterwards.  She was short and freckled and not
one bit pretty, unless good health and happiness
and smiles made up for beauty.  But the instant
you met Sally you recognized executive ability
concentrated in human form.

"Billy, keep out of those lettuce beds," she
called to a younger brother, strayed somehow
from the mill.  "How do you do, Miss
Robbins--"

"Oh, call me Jean," Jean said quickly.
"We're close neighbors.  If we didn't hear your
whistle we'd never know what time it is."

"Well, we've been intending to get up the valley
to see you, but Mother's rather poorly, and all
the girls are younger than me, so I help her round
the house.  We've got twins in our family, did
Piney tell you?  Piney and I named them.  We
thought of everything under the sun, Martha
Washington and Betsey Ross, and Ruth and
Naomi, and Mercy and Faith, and then we got
it all at once.  We've had twins in our family
before, Josephine and Imogene, that's Mother and
Aunt Jo, but we didn't want to repeat.  Somehow,
it didn't show any--any imagination."  She
laughed and so did Jean.  "So we called ours
Elva and Sylvia.  We say Elvy and Sylvy for
short.  Anne and Charlotte are twelve and nine
and the twins are only five.  They're too cute for
anything.  Wish you'd all come down and see us
Sunday afternoon."

"Sally'd ask the whole world to supper Sunday
afternoon," Piney said as they finally turned up
the home road.  "She's just a dear, and she has
to work all the time.  She never has a single day
to herself, and she doesn't mind it a bit.  She
does manage to get away to sing in the choir
Sunday mornings, but that's all.  And even if
she isn't pretty, she's got a voice that makes
gooseflesh come out all over you, and you shut
your eyes and just tingle when it rises and falls.
I love her, she's so--oh, so sort of big, you know.
Isn't her hair red?"

"It's coppery and it's beautiful," Jean
answered decidedly.  "I think she's dandy.  Why
can't the twins and Anne and Charlotte buckle in
and help, so that Sally can get away once in a
while?"

"Her mother says she can't do without her."

Jean pondered over that and finally tucked it
away for the consultation hour with the
Motherbird, as being too deep for her to settle.

It had been a very profitable afternoon, and
after she had taken Piney home, she drove into
the home yard, feeling as if she really had a line
on Gilead Center girls.  Doris came running
down to meet her as she jumped out, while Honey
came to take care of Princess.  Doris's eyes were
shining with excitement.

"Jean Robbins, what do you suppose has happened?"

"Something's sprouted," Jean guessed laughingly.
Doris spent most of her time watching
to see if any of the seeds had started to sprout.

"No.  It isn't that.  Gypsy's got little
chickens.  She marched into the barnyard with ten
of them, as proud as anything.  And nobody
knows where she hatched them at all.  Isn't she
a darling to attend to it all by herself?"

Jean had to go immediately to see the new
brood.  Gypsy had cuddled them around her in
the barn on a pile of hay and steadfastly refused
to be removed.  If ever a hen looked nonchalant
she did, quite as if she would have said, "I can do
it just as well as any of these ridiculous nesters
that you're so proud of, and my chicks are twice
as perfect as theirs."

"They're wonderful babies, Gypsy," Jean told
her.  "Be careful of them now.  Mothers have
to behave themselves, you know.  No more
gallivanting off to the wildwood."

"She probably will.  I'm going to have Honey
put them into a little coop tomorrow and her too,
and let's change her name, Jeanie.  Let's call
her something tender and motherly.  Call her
Cordelia, after the Roman Mother with the
jewels, that Mother was telling us about."

So Cordelia she was, and Gypsy seemed to
acclimate herself both to maternity and to her
new cognomen.  It only proved, as Kit
remarked, what children would do for a flighty and
light-minded person, and she trusted that some
day Doris would have twins to occupy her mind.

Jean changed her dress and ran down into the
kitchen to help get supper and tell her experiences
of the day, which proved so entertaining and
comical that Mrs. Robbins finally came out and asked
if they were ever to have anything to eat.

"Dad's tray is all ready, Mother mine," Jean
replied, sitting up on the tall wood box behind the
stove, "I'm just waiting for the scones to bake,
and Kit's fixing a beautiful jelly omelette.
Mother, dear, you never saw anything so funny
as these precious inhabitants, but they're all gold,
just the same, and I like them.  And we're going
to have a lawn party here and invite all the
warring factions.  Isn't that nice?  All the folks
that aren't on speaking terms with each other
we've asked to serve on the committee, so they'll
have to come here for tea and chat sociably and
neighborlike with each other."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`COUSIN ROXY TO THE RESCUE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   COUSIN ROXY TO THE RESCUE

.. vspace:: 2

"We've forgotten to write Mr. McRae and
tell him how much we like the house," Helen said
a few days later.

"He doesn't know anything about the house,
or care either," protested Kit, struggling with
some raspberry canes that needed disentangling
and tying back against the woodshed boards.
"He's never even seen it.  Do you suppose he
has the least bit of sentiment for it the way we
have or Piney has?  I wouldn't bother to write
to him."

"Oh, I would," Helen answered serenely.  She
was down on her knees in the clover diligently
hunting four-leaved ones.  "It isn't his fault that
he's never seen the place.  Maybe we could coax
him back."

"We don't want to coax him back.  It must be
our one endeavor to keep him right out there in
Saskatoon forever.  We must tell him the cellar's
damp and the roof leaks and the whole place
has gone to rack.  If we don't he may come East
and take it away from us, and we want to save up
and buy it and give it back to Piney and her
Mother and Honey."

"What's Honey's real name?" asked Doris
irrelevantly.  "I never thought to ask him.
Somehow it does seem to suit him, doesn't it?"

"He wants to study electrical engineering or
else be a rancher," Kit said.  "I never asked him
what his real name is.  You're awfully
inquisitive, Dorrie."

"What do all boys see in ranches, I wonder.
Back at the Cove, Otis Phelps always wanted to
be a cowboy and he's got to be a lawyer, his father says."

"Maybe he'll escape West some day and be
whatever he likes.  I think one of the very worst
things in life is to have to be something you don't
want to be."  Kit surveyed her work admiringly.
"Of course, in the ups and downs and uncertainties,
as Cousin Roxy would remark, we must be
prepared for all things, but if you can dig inside
of yourself and find out what you're best fitted
for, then you ought to aim everything at that
mark.  If Honey wants to be an electrical
engineer, he ought to get books now, and swallow
them whole, and if he wants to be a rancher, he
ought to go West--"

A voice came from midair apparently,
overhead on the woodshed roof which Honey was
patching with waterproof paint and tar.  It was
a mild and cheerful voice and showed plainly that
Honey was personally interested in the conversation.

"I can't go West just now, Mother needs me;
but I'm going as soon as I can."

The three girls stared up at him with laughing faces.

"Honey Hancock," exclaimed Doris, "why
didn't you sing out to us before?"

"Wanted to hear what you had to say," said
Honey simply.  "Thought maybe I'd get some
good advice.  And my first name's Guilford.
The whole thing's Guilford Trowbridge
Hancock.  I'm named for my grandfather.  Piney
called me Honey when I was a little shaver, so I
suppose I'll be that all my life."

"Piney and Honey," repeated Helen musingly,
"when you're really Proserpine and Guilford.
Nicknames are queer, aren't they?  I think that
babies should all be called pet names till they're
old enough to choose their own.  Still Guilford's
a good name.  It's a name to grow up to, Honey.
You ought to be stout and dignified, don't you
know, like Mr. Pickwick."

"Guess I don't know him, do I?" asked Honey.
"Piney wants to be something too, but girls can't
do that.  She wants to be a builder and look
after land.  She wants to go to the State Agricultural
College too, and take the forestry course.
Do you know what she does?  She read some
place that the chestnut trees were dying out, so
she takes a pocketful of sound chestnuts with
her whenever she goes out for a walk in the woods,
and every once in a while she sticks her finger in
the ground and plants a chestnut.  What do you
think of that?"

Kit drew in a deep breath.

"I think she's wonderful.  We'll do that too.
And acorns and walnuts.  I don't see why she
can't go to the State College if she likes, or why
she can't take the forestry course.  It isn't
whether you're a boy or a girl that matters in
such things.  It's just whether you can do the
work that counts."

"She can shut her eyes and walk through the
woods and tell the name of every tree just by
feeling its leaves."

Jean appeared on the back porch and called
down to them to come up and wash for dinner.
This noon-time wash-up was really a function
after one had been working and grubbing in the
garden all the morning.  Honey would bring
in a fresh pail of well water first.  Some day Kit
intended demanding water piped into the house
from Mr. McRae, but now they used the well.

Just as Honey came into the summer kitchen
with the pail of water, Ella Lou's white nose
showed outside the door by the hitching post and
Cousin Roxana's voice called to them.

"No, thanks, I can't stop," she called.  "I
want Betty and Jean."

Mrs. Robbins came downstairs from her husband's
room, cool and charming in her black and
white lawn, with her hair piled high on her head,
and little close curls framing in her face.

"Why, Roxy, come in and have dinner with
us," she exclaimed.

"Don't talk to me about things to eat, Betty,"
answered Cousin Roxana briskly.  "Never had
such a set-to in my life.  Why, I'm so turned
over I can hardly talk.  The poor thing, all alone
up there on that hill with nothing but woods
around her.  Enough to make anybody lose
heart, I declare it is.  Get your bonnet right on,
Betty.  We can't stop for anything.  I wouldn't
eat dinner with King Solomon and the Queen of
Sheba."

"What is it?  Please tell us," Jean pleaded,
and all three girls crowded around the carriage.

"Don't waste time, Jean.  Get your hat on.
She may be dead by now.  It's that little Finnish
woman up on the Parmelee place where you
bought your chickens.  Her husband's only been
dead a little while, took sick on the ship coming
over and died at Ellis Island, I heard.  And
she's pined and pined with four children on her
hands, and this morning she just tied--  Oh, my
land, I can't talk about it.  Do come along.
Thank the Lord the water wasn't very deep in
the well and they've got her out.  And we call
ourselves church folks and Christians."

"Had I better take anything with me, Roxy?"
asked Mrs. Robbins, hurrying down the porch
steps with a motor cloak thrown around her.
"Medicine, do you think?"

"No, I've got everything.  Always keep
emergency things on hand.  You never can tell
up around here what's going to happen.  Bennie
Peckham ran a big wooden splinter through his
palm the other day, and didn't I have to get it
out for him?  And Hiram stepped square bang
on a piece of glass and cut his foot so he's still
going around like old Limpy-go-fetch-it.  Have
to be prepared for anything when you live out
here.  This morning Hiram stood his fishing pole
up against the side of the house and the line got
loose, and one of my best ducks swallowed the
bait.  I got it out, though.  Go long there, Ella
Lou, pick up your feet."

Ella Lou started away as if she knew what lay
ahead.  Jean sat between her mother and Cousin
Roxana, listening with wide eyes as the latter's
tongue rambled on.  It was a beautiful day.
The air was heavy with fragrance.  Bluebirds
preened and fluttered on nearly every fence rail,
and robins hopped along the meadows, chirping
mate calls.  In the roadside thickets the swamp
apples were all in radiant pink blossom, whole
bouquets of rare color, with overhead the white
dogwood flowers and wild crab-apple.

"It seems fearful that anyone should want to
die a day like this," said Mrs. Robbins.  "How
old is she, Roxy?"

"Old enough to know better, to my way of
thinking, with all those children dependent on her
for love and care and upbringing," said Roxana
promptly.  "But that's neither here nor there.
We mustn't judge another because we don't
know how we'd act in their place.  There are
four children and her brother.  The brother's
been around peddling vegetables, potatoes and
apples, but everybody's got all they need around
here, and he didn't have the gumption to drive
fourteen miles to town with them.  If I'd been
his sister, I'd have hitched up and taken them
myself.  Men folks are all right in a way and I
suppose if the proper one had come along, I'd have
married the same as the rest of women folks, but
from what I can tell of them at a distance, they're
fearful trying and uncertain."

The hill dipped into a deep valley mottled with
cloud shadows.  When they came in sight of the
old Parmelee place, there were the four children
grouped forlornly around the barn door as if the
presence of tragedy at the house had frightened
them away from it.  Cousin Roxy waved to them
and smiled.

"Come here," she called.  "Yes, that tallest
boy.  'Most twelve, aren't you, son?  Old enough
to hitch a horse.  What's your name?"

"Yahn," answered the boy shyly.

"Yahn?  Guess that's Johnnie in plain American,
isn't it?"  She jumped to the ground as
nimbly as any girl, and handed him the hitch
rope.  "Doctor got over yet?"

Johnnie shook his head sadly, and the youngest
girl broke suddenly into frantic, half-stifled sobbing.

"There's your work cut out for you, Jean,"
Roxana said briskly.  "You amuse these children
while your Mother and I go into the house."

So Jean took the three youngest for a walk
over into the woods, and told them stories until
the frightened, blank look left their eyes and they
clung around her confidingly.  Yahn and
Maryanna, Peter and Rika.  From Yahn, who could
speak a little English, she found out that the
family had only been in the wonderful new land
a year, that their mother had been sad for weeks,
and would never smile.

"She says she don't know nobody and nobody
want to know her.  Too many woods all around, too."

"Never mind, she's going to know everyone
now," Jean promised hopefully.

Over in the house Cousin Roxy was promising
about the same thing to the discouraged little
Finnish settler.  Weak and listless, she lay on the
bed in the room.  A morning glory vine rambled
up the window casing, and framed in a view of
the orchard in full bloom.  Pink and white petals
drifted from their boughs like fairy snow.
Mrs. Robbins looked at them wistfully and remorsefully.
She had only lost in worldly goods.  This
woman had lost husband and hope and happiness,
and the old well back in the orchard had been her
solution of life's problem.  If little Yahn had not
seen her fall into it, she would have been dead
now.  When her eyes opened, and Cousin Roxy
questioned her, she only shook her head, and
whispered: "Too tired."

"Upon my heart, Betty, I think I'll just bundle
her up and take her home with me for a while to
rest and feed up, and you can take a couple of the
children down with you.  Maybe Johnnie and
the other boy could stay here with the uncle.
Anyway, we'll pull her through."

When the old doctor came he agreed it was the
very best thing to do.  The Finnish brother had
stood helplessly around in the kitchen, getting hot
water ready when he was told to and eyeing the
form on the bed with perplexity.

"She haf plenty to eat," he kept saying, until
Cousin Roxana took him by the shoulder and
almost shook him.

"Don't be so silly," she exclaimed.  "Man can
not live by bread alone, and neither can a woman.
She needs to be heartened up once in a while.
And put a cover on your old well."

Helen, Kit, and Doris were all watching for
the return, and when Jean handed them out
Maryanna and Rika, the two little Finns, Kit
gasped.

"It's our first chance at what Mother's been
telling us about," Jean declared, flushed and
enthusiastic, as she turned her two charges out to
play with Doris.  "It doesn't matter whether
your neighbor happens to be a Finn or a Feejee.
He's your neighbor and it won't do to let him
or his sister take tumbles into old wells because
they're strangers in a strange land."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LAWN FÊTE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LAWN FÊTE

.. vspace:: 2

For two weeks the little Finns remained at
Greenacres, getting rosy and happy.  The girls
hunted up their old toys; Rika rambled around
with a little red express wagon, and Maryanna
hugged a big doll to her heart all day long and
slept with it at night.

Up at Maple Lawn the tired mother grew
steadily better, partly from Dr. Gallup's
medicine, partly from Cousin Roxy's persistent
infusion of hope, womanly courage, and endurance
into her mind.  As she grew stronger she began
to help Cousin Roxy around the house, and
Hiram in caring for the cows.  This was odd for
a woman, it seemed to Miss Robbins, but Karinya
told her it was what she had always done in the
homeland when she was a girl, dairy work on a
farm, and she liked it best.  And out of this grew
a plan that Mrs. Robbins helped with.  There
were three good Holstein cows over at the
Finnish home, and when Ella Lou took back the
Mother and two kiddies, Cousin Roxana put up a
business proposition to the brother and sister.
They were to make butter, the very best butter
they could, and Mrs. Robbins would get
customers for them back at the Cove in Long Island.
Homemade butter up here in the hills ranged
from ten to twelve cents below the city market
price, and was better in every way.  So
prosperity began to dawn for the little woman who
had been too tired to live, and Cousin Roxana
kept an eye on the upland farm all summer long,
with Jean to help with the children.

After the children went home, the girls turned
their attention heart and soul to the lawn party.
The first thing to be sure of was a full moon.
This came along the last week in June, so they
made their arrangements accordingly.

The committee meeting turned out a success in
every way.  Saturday afternoon Mrs. Robbins
and the girls set the dark green willow chairs and
table under one of the pines on the lower terrace,
and prepared to conquer.  The three ministers
arrived, each one surprised to find the other two
present, but all very gracious and pleasant.

"Why, they were almost cordial before they
left," Kit declared after it was over.  "I think
the prospect of having anyone besides Cousin
Roxy make an effort for a good time inspired
them.  I'm to have charge of a fishpond, and
Helen will sell flowers with fortunes attached to
them, and Dorrie can help with the ice cream.
I know that will suit her."

"I'm to be gypsy fortune teller," Jean
announced.  "Mother, dear, may I have your
Oriental silk mantel scarf, please, and the gold
bead fringe off the little boudoir lamp in your
room?"

"You may have anything to help the cause
along," Mrs. Robbins answered happily.  "I've
sent down to New York for Chinese lanterns to
decorate the grounds with, and Hiram's going to
play the violin for us.  I'm sure it will be very
sociable and just what they need up here."

Honey and Piney took almost as much interest
in the affair as the girls themselves.  All that
day, when it finally did arrive, they worked,
putting wires around the trees out on the lawn, and
hanging up the many-colored lanterns.  Two
tents were erected, one for Jean as the gypsy,
and the other for lemonade, made in two big new
tubs.  Helen said she had cut and squeezed
lemons until her whole mouth was puckered up,
and her finger nails felt pickled.  Kit was
everywhere at once, it seemed.  She inspired the two
ministers to join hands in brotherly ardor and
erect long plank tables for refreshments.  She
showed Honey how to twist young birches
together and make an inviting arch over the
entrance posts at the end of each drive.  She
beguiled Hiram, who had come down from Maple
Lawn to help around a bit, into moving the piano
out on the front veranda.

"When you're tired of playing the violin for
them, Mother or one of us girls will play the
piano.  Music sounds ever so nice at night."

It did seem as if all Gilead Center, Gilead
Green, and Gilead Proper had turned out to
show its neighborly spirit.  There were teams
hitched along the road, and teams hitched in the
barnyard and the front yard and everywhere.
The Chinese lanterns made the grounds look
wonderfully enticing and Hiram sat up on the
veranda in a kitchen chair tipped back against the
wall, and played bewitchingly, so Helen said.

"I shouldn't wonder, Miss Robbins, if we had
as many as a hundred folks here tonight," said
Mr. Lampton.

"More likely two hundred, Mr. Lampton.  It
only goes to show what really lies back in our
hearts and needs digging up--sociability.  Bless
their hearts, how I do love to see them all
enjoying themselves."  Cousin Roxana moved her
glasses half an inch higher up on her nose and
surveyed the scene.  Miss Titheradge was
helping Mr. Collins pass the ice cream, and the two
were chatting happily together.

Up on the veranda Mrs. Robbins hovered
between the Morris chair, where Mr. Robbins sat,
and her various guests, welcoming each in her
own charming way, and blending the different
social elements together with tact and understanding.

Helen and Kit followed Jean's lead.  First
Jean rounded up the girls whom she had met on
the drive with Piney and introduced them to the
other Greenacre girls.  Doris could not be
located from one minute to another.  She was like
a firefly, bobbing around with a big orange
colored Chinese lantern on the end of a long mop
handle.  But Helen and Kit led the other girls
over to the refreshment tent and had them all don
little white aprons and help serve ice cream and
cake.  It was much better than standing around,
shy and silent, not knowing what to do next.  Kit
found one girl, Abby Tucker, leaning disconsolately
against a pear tree at the side of the drive.
Her white dress was too short for her, and her
hair was cut short to her neck and tied with a
bow on top very tightly.  She looked lonely and
rather indignant too.

"Don't you want to come over and help us with
the ice cream?" asked Kit.

"No, I don't," said Abby flatly.  "They
always ask me to help pass things to eat at the
church suppers.  I want to have a good time
myself tonight.  Though we aren't going to have a
good time."

Kit looked at her doubtfully.  She thoroughly
realized the state of mind that will not let itself
be happy, that in fact, finds its happiness in being
unhappy, but Abby's moroseness baffled her.

"Don't you like it here?" she asked.

Abby nodded.

"Don't you know anyone?"

"Know most of them.  My father's a blacksmith
and they all come over to get shod."

"Then what is it?"  Kit laid her arm around
the stooped shoulders and at the touch of real
human sympathy, Abby's reserve melted.

"My new shoes pinch awful," she exploded.

Kit never stayed upon the order of her going.
She took her straight up to the house to her own
room, and ransacked closets and shoe boxes
until she found a pair of low shoes to fit Abby, and
the latter came down again smiling and radiant,
ready to serve ice cream, or make herself
agreeable in any way she could.

Piney came up to the veranda where Mrs. Robbins
sat, personally conducting her mother to
meet her.  She was a tall, fair-haired woman with
deep dimples, like the children's, and a happy
face.  Seated in a willow rocker on the veranda
with the roses and honeysuckle shedding a
perfume around, she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Seems so nice to sit up here again, Mrs. Robbins,"
she said.  "Piney's told me all about how
you've fixed the place up till it seemed as if I
couldn't wait to see it.  I used to drive over once
in a while after Father died, and get some slips
of flowering quince and rose bushes to set out.
You know I love every blade of grass in the
garden and every pine cone on those trees."

"It's too bad you and the children could not
have had it."

"Well, I don't know.  I never fret much over
what has to be.  Maybe this boy Ralph is all
right.  He's my nephew, but I've never seen him.
His father was a claim settler out in Oregon first
off, when Cousin France married him.  We
called her that.  Her name was Francelia.
Good stock, I guess.  I wish Honey could know
him, he's so set on being a rancher.  I suppose
settling and ranching's about the same thing?"

"Not quite," Mrs. Robbins told her.  Then
came a chat about her own father's ranch in
California, and when Piney came back after her
mother, she found her all animated and
interested over Honey's future.

Kit and Etoile were arranging a dancing class
for alternate Saturday afternoons, the ones
between to be given up to lawn tennis and basket
ball.  Ingeborg and Astrid and Hedda Hagerstrom
stood listening and agreeing with shining
eyes and eager faces, but silent shy tongues.
Hedda was short and strong looking, with the
bluest eyes possible and heavy blond braids.  She
stared at Kit with wide-eyed wonder, Kit, radiant
and joyous in her prettiest summery dress, with
sprays of flowering almond around her head like
a pink blossomy crown.

"You'll come, won't you, Hedda?" she asked.
"And bring any other girls over your way."

"There's only Abby over my way.  We live
on the same road."

"Then bring Abby, but tell her to wear old
shoes.  We ought to find enough girls to make up
a good team out here."

"Do you like hikes?" asked Sally Peckham.
"I think it would be fun to have a hike club, and
each week tramp away off somewhere.  There's
ever so many places I want to see."

"It's a good idea, Sally," Piney exclaimed.
"First rate.  We could call ourselves the
Pere--pere--what's that word that means meandering
around, Jean, don't you now?"

"Peregrinating?"

"That's it.  Peregrinating Gileadites."

"I think 'Greenacre Hikers' would be better,"
said Ingeborg.  "I'd love to go along, wouldn't
you, 'Trid?"

Astrid was sure she would.  So while Hiram
played "Good-night, Ladies," and the three
ministers smiled and shook hands together and with
their hostess and host, the girls of Gilead planned
their first campaign for summer outings.

It was after twelve before the last team had
driven away.  Hiram and Kit went around with
a couple of chairs, mounting them to reach the
lanterns and blow out the candles inside.  Doris
was found sound asleep in the library on the
couch.  Jean and Helen hunted in the grass for
lost spoons and ice cream saucers.

"How much do you suppose we made?" asked
Mrs. Robbins.  "I'm so proud of it, I had to tell
our executive committee.  Forty-five dollars and
thirty-five cents.  Isn't that good for Gilead?"

"Good land alive!" Cousin Roxana exclaimed,
her shoulders shaking with laughter.  "I didn't
suppose you could ever find so much money
around loose in Gilead.  They're all of them
tighter'n the bark to a tree.  I do believe, Betty,
they paid ten cents admission to the grounds just
to see what you all looked like."

"I don't care if they did," Jean said happily.
"We got acquainted with all our neighbors, and
now I feel as if I could go ahead and organize
something."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`KIT PULLS ANCHOR`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium bold

   KIT PULLS ANCHOR

.. vspace:: 2

The following Saturday had been set as the
first day for the girls to meet at Greenacres.
Sally was the first to arrive, as she lived nearest,
and she brought with her Anne and Charlotte,
who, in a process known in large families, had
become Nan and Carlie.

Hedda and the two girls from the old Ames
place, Ingeborg and Astrid, arrived together and
helped Kit and Helen plan the tennis court.
Below the terraces the lawn lay smooth and even out
to the south wall, but it had been decided to
sacrifice a slice of the hay field across the road rather
than the garden, and Hiram had ploughed up a
good sized oblong of land for them, harrowed it
smooth, and then the girls had pondered over the
problem of rolling it.  It must be rolled flat, wet
down, and rolled again until it was fit to use.

"We could fill a barrel with sand, and roll
that," Doris suggested, thoughtfully.

"Got something better than that," Honey said.
"Over at Mr. Peckham's they've got a road roller.
Mr. Peckham's the road committee in Gilead
township--"

Kit caught him up,

"The whole committee, Honey?"

"Ain't he enough?  Ought to see him get out
and clean up with those boys of his.  He'll let us
take it, I'm sure, and it will roll that court down
as smooth as can be.  I'll go after it this
afternoon when I finish with the potato patch."

"Don't I wish we had the old garden hose,"
Helen said, after they had carried buckets of
water from the well unremittingly for nearly an
hour, and emptied them on the harrowed patch.
"I'm half dead."

"Cheer up, sister mine," Kit told her briskly.
"Think of the result.  'Finis coronat opus!'  From
dawn till dewy eve we will play out here."

"We've got a croquet set down at the house,
but the boys are always using the mallets to
pound something over at the mill, and the balls
get lost.  I like this best."  Sally stood with
arms on her hips, smiling happily.  "What else
are you going to do up here?"

"Next we're going to start weekly hikes," Kit
told her.  "You girls have lived here for years,
haven't you--"

"We just came up a while ago," Ingeborg corrected.

"I know, and so did Hedda, but Etoile and
Tony and Sally and the rest of you all grew
right here, didn't you?  Well, then.  What do
you know about the country for ten miles
around?"  Kit paused dramatically.  "Do you
know every wood road and cow path through the
woods?  Do ye ken each mountain peak and
distant vale?  Where does Little River rise?
Have any of you followed the rock ledge up into
the hills?"

"Nobody but the hunters go there, and they
don't come till fall," said Hedda gravely.  She
hardly ever smiled, this transplanted little
daughter of far-off Iceland.  Her manner and
expression always seemed to the girls to hold a certain
aloofness.  Up at her home, later on, they saw
a finely carved model of a viking ship which her
father had made back in the home island, and
Jean declared after that she always pictured
Hedda standing at its high prow, facing the gale
of the northern seas, her fair hair blowing behind
her like a golden pennant, her blue eyes fearless
and eager.

"But we'll go.  With something to eat and
trusty staves.  That makes me think, girls, we
haven't seen many snakes.  Aren't there any up
here, Sally?"

"Lots.  But mostly black snakes.  They're
ugly to look at, but they don't hurt you.  And
little garter snakes, and green grass snakes.  I
never think about them."

"Are you afraid of anything out here, Sally?"
Doris asked, interestedly.  She had eyed Sally
admiringly from the first moment of their
acquaintance, and privately Dorrie held many fears.
It was all very well to say there wasn't anything
to worry over, as Kit did; but one may step
on toads in the dark, or hear noises in the
garret that make one shiver even if they do
turn out to be just chipmunks after corn and huts.

"Nothing that I know of," Sally replied
serenely.  "I never felt afraid in the dark.  Just
as soon go all over the house, up stairs and down,
and into the cellar, as not.  And I go all over the
barn and garden at night.  Guess the only thing
I'm really afraid of is a bat."

"Everybody's afraid of something," Etoile
said, her eyes wide with mystery.  "I have the
fear too, oh, but often.  I am most afraid of
those little mulberry worms, you know them?
They come right down at you on little ropes they
make all by themselves, and they curl up in the
air and then they drop on you.  Ugh!"

Kit fairly rolled with delight at this, over on
the grass.

"How perfectly lovely," she laughed.  "Tell
some more, Etoile."

"We've got a haunted house on our road,"
Astrid said in a lowered voice.  "The little
spring house between the old mill and our place.
It's been there years and years, my father says.
He knows the old man at the mill, and he told
him.  As far back as they can remember it has
always been haunted.  First there lived an old
watchmaker there.  He had clocks and watches
all over the house, and they ticked all the time."

"Maybe they kept him from being lonely,"
Helen suggested.

"He was very strange, and when he died, then
two old Indian women came to live there.  And
there was a peddler used to go through and put
up over night there, and he never was seen any
more."

"You can see the grave in the cellar where they
buried him," Ingeborg whispered.  "Right down
at the foot of the stairs.  And at night he comes
up and goes all around the house, rattling chains.
Yes, he does.  My brother went down with some
of the boys and stayed there just to find out
and they heard him."

"Let's go over there on our hike and stay over
night, girls," Kit exclaimed.  "I think it would
be dandy."

"Don't you believe in ghosts, Kit?" asked
Sally.  "I don't like to believe in them, but I
just thought they had to be believed in if they're
really so."

"Remember in Dickens's 'Christmas Carol,'"
Jean joined in, "hew old Scrooge insisted that
he didn't believe in ghosts even when the ghost
sat right beside him, and rattled his chains?"

"Oh, don't, Jeanie," Doris begged, arms close
around the big sister's neck.  "Don't talk about it."

"We'll stay over night at the spring house,
girls," Kit promised happily.  "It's a shame to
have a real ghost around and not make it
welcome.  If there are any ghosts they must be the
lonesomest creatures in all creation because
nobody wants them around.  Suppose we say that
next Friday we'll walk up to the house and camp
out for the night.  Who's afraid?"

The girls looked at each other doubtfully.

"Can I bring our dog along?" asked Ingeborg.
"Then I am not afraid, I don't think."

"Bring anything you like.  I'm going to take
an electric flashlight.  Here comes our roller,
now.  We'd better finish the tennis court."

That night the girls talked it over themselves
up in Jean's room.  It was always the
favorite council hour, when all the queen's
hand-maidens combed their silken tresses, as Helen
said.

Somehow it did seem as if you could think
clearer and weigh matters better, after you were
undressed, with a nightgown and kimono on,
sitting cross-legged on the bed or couch.
Mrs. Robbins always stopped on her way to bed to
look in at either one room or the other, and chat
for a while.  She listened with an amused smile
to the story Ingeborg had told.

"The fear of the dark, they say, comes from
away back in the first dawn of the world," she
said.  "It is the old dread of the unknown the
cave man felt when darkness fell over the land
and wild beasts prowled near.  But this other
idea about the ghost is queer, isn't it, girls?  Do
you really want to stay over night there?"

"I think we'd better, Mother dear," Jean
answered comfortably, "We'll be the warrior
maidens, and slay the dragon Fear which hath
most wickedly enthralled our fair land.  That's
a nice little house, and everyone's afraid to live
in it."

"Ingeborg told me after you girls came up to
the house, that there was one door in the
sitting-room nobody could keep shut.  It swung open
all the time."

"Never mind, Helen," Kit said.  "I'll take it
off its hinges, and cart it right down cellar.
Then I guess it will behave itself."

Cousin Roxana told the story of the old spring
house when they saw her.  She could remember
Scotty McDougal, the old watchmaker who had
lived there.

"Land, yes, I should say I could.  He used to
wear an old coonskin cap with the tail hanging
down, and carried an old gun along with him
wherever he went.  After he died, two old
women moved in from somewhere in the woods
towards Dayville.  They were Injun, I guess, or
gypsy, real good-hearted folks so far as I could
see.  Used to weave carpet and rag rugs and
make baskets.  There was a story around that
they could tell fortunes and see things in the
future, but that's just talk.  I never pay any
attention to such things at all.  The Lord never
has seen fit to let His way be known excepting
through His own messengers.  Probably, if you
could clear the house of its name, somebody'd be
willing to live in it.  It belongs to Judge Ellis."

"Who's Judge Ellis?" asked Kit, who always
caught at a new name.

"Who is he?"  Cousin Roxy laughed heartily.
"Meanest man in seven counties, I guess.  He
ran for Senator years ago, and was beaten, and
he took a solemn oath he'd never have anything
to do with anybody in this township again, and I
guess he's kept it.  He lives in the biggest house
here."

"All alone?" asked Doris.

"All alone excepting for a housekeeper and
his grandson.  He's just a fussy old miser, and
the way he lets that boy run wild makes my
heart ache."

"How old a boy is he, Roxy?" asked Mrs. Robbins,
quick sympathy shining from her eyes.

"Oh, I should say about fifteen.  Name's
Billie.  He's a case, I tell you.  What he can't
think of in five minutes isn't worth doing.  Still,
he's a good boy too, at that.  Five of my cows
strayed off from the pasture lot last summer and
he found them after Hiram had run his legs off
looking for them.  And once we lost some turkeys,
and he found them over in the pines roosting
with the crows.  He knows every foot of
land for ten miles around here and more, I guess.
You never know when he's going to bob out of
the bushes and grin at you.  The Judge don't
pay any more attention to him than if he was a
scarecrow.  Seems that he had one son, Finley
Ellis, and he was wild and the Judge turned him
off years ago.  And one day he got a letter, so
Mr. Ricketts told me, from New York, and
away he went, looking cross enough to chew
tacks.  When he came back he had Billie with
him, and that's all Gilead ever found out.  Billie
says he's his grandfather, and the Judge says
nothing."

"I'd like to see him," Jean exclaimed.

"Who?  The Judge?"

"No, no.  Billie, this boy.  What does he look like?"

"Looks like all-get-out half the time, and
never comes to church at all.  You'll know him
by his whistling.  He can whistle like a bird.
I've heard him sometimes in the early spring, and
you couldn't tell his whistle from a real
whip-poor-will.  There is something about him that
everybody likes."

"I hope he comes over this way," Mrs. Robbins said.

"Oh, he will.  The Judge never lets him have
any pocket money, so he's always trying to earn
a little.  He'll come and try to sell you a tame
crow, most likely, or a trained caterpillar.  I was
driving over towards their place one day and I
declare if I didn't find him lying flat in the middle
of the road.  Ella Lou stopped short and I asked
him what he was doing.  'Don't drive in the
middle of the road, Miss Robbins,' he said, ''cause
I've got some ants here, taming them.'  Real
good looking boy he is too."

"My, but he sounds interesting," Kit remarked
fervently.  "I almost feel like hunting him up;
don't you, Jean?"

Jean nodded her head.  She was putting up
currants and raspberries, and the day was very warm.

"Why do you keep a fire going in the house?"
Miss Robbins asked her.  "Put an old stove out
in the back-yard, the way I do, and let it sizzle
along.  Good-bye, everybody.  I hear all the
ministers are still speaking to each other."

"Come down and play tennis with us," called Helen.

"Go 'long, child."  Cousin Roxy chuckled.
"How would I look hopping around like a katydid,
slapping at those little balls!  Get up there,
Ella Lou."

"Well," Kit exclaimed, as the buggy drove
away, "it seems as if every single day something
new happens here, and we thought it would be so
dull we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves."

"You mean Billie's something new?" asked Helen.

"Doesn't he sound interesting?  I'm going out
to ask Honey about him."

"You'd better help me finish these berries,
Kathleen," Jean urged.  So Kit gave up the
quest temporarily, and sat on the edge of the
kitchen table, stripping currants from their stems,
and singing at the top of her clear young lungs:

   |  "'Oh, where have you been, Billie Boy, Billie Boy,
   |    Where have you been, charming Billie?'
   |  'I've been to seek a wife, she's the comfort of my life,'
   |    But she's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother.'

   |  "'Did she bid you come in, Billie Boy, Billie Boy,
   |    Did she bid you come, charming Billie?'
   |  'Yes, she bid me come in, with a dimple in her chin,
   |    But she's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother.'

   |  "'Did she offer you a chair, Billie Boy, Billie Boy,
   |    Did she offer you a chair, charming Billie?'
   |  'Yes, she offered me a chair, with the ringlets in her hair,
   |    But she's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.'

   |  "'Can she make a cherry pie, Billie Boy, Billie Boy--'"
   |

"Oh, Kit, do stop," begged Jean.  "It's too
hot to sing."

Kit looked out at the widespread view of
Greenacres, rich with the uncut grass, billowing
with every vagrant breeze, like distant waves.  It
was hot in the kitchen, hot and close.

"I'll bet he'd let her stay right in the kitchen
keeling pots and making cherry pies, too," she
said suddenly.

"Who?"

"Who?" wrathfully.  "All the Billies of the
world.  They can ramble fields and whistle like
whip-poor-wills, but we've just got to stay and
make cherry pies forever and ever, amen."

"Why, Kit, dear--"

"Don't 'dear' me.  I want to get out and
tramp and live in a tent.  I hate cooking.  I
don't see why anybody wants to eat this kind of
weather.  I'd nibble grass first."

"Yes, you would," laughed Helen.  "You'll
be the first at supper to lean over sweetly and ask
for preserves and cake.  I see you nibbling grass,
Miss Nebuchanezzar."

But Kit had fled, out the back door and over
to the pasture where Princess rambled.

"Kit's fretful, isn't she?"

"She's pulling on her anchor," answered
Jean.  "We all do.  Some days I get really
homesick for the girls back home and everything
that we haven't got here,--the library and the art
galleries and the lectures and the musicales and
everything.  I think we ought to write down and
ask some of the girls to come up."

"I don't.  Not until Dad's well."

Doris was out of hearing.  Jean looked over
at Helen, who in some way always seemed nearer
her own age than Kit.

"Helen, honest and truly, do you think
Dad's getting any better?" she asked in a low
voice.

Helen hesitated, her face showing plainly how
she dreaded acknowledging even to herself the
possibility of his not improving.

"He eats better now, and he can sit up."

"But he looks awful.  It fairly makes my heart
ache to look at him sometimes.  His eyes look
as if they were gazing away off at some land we
couldn't see."

"Jean Robbins, how can you say that?"

"Hush.  Don't let Mother hear," cautioned
Jean anxiously.  "I had to tell somebody.  I
think of it all the time."

"Well, don't think of it.  That's like sticking
pins in a wax statue back in the Middle Ages,
and saying, 'He's going to die, he's going to die,'
all the time.  He's getting better."

Jean was silent.  She felt worried, but if Helen
refused to listen to her, there was nobody left
except Cousin Roxy.  Somehow, at every
emergency Cousin Roxy seemed to be the one
hope these days, unfailing and unfearing.
Dauntless and cheerful, she rode over every
obstacle like some old warrior who had elected to rid
the world of dragons.

But when Jean found an opportunity of speaking
to her of her father, Cousin Roxana's face
looked oddly passive.

"We're all in the Lord's hands, Jeanie," she
said.  "Trust and obey, you know.  There are
lots worse things than passing over Jordan, but
we've just got that notion in our heads that we
don't want to let any of our beloved ones take the
voyage.  Jerry's weak, I know, and he ain't
mending so fast as I'd hoped for, but he's gained.
That's something.  You've been up here only a
couple of months.  It took years of overwork to
break him down, and it may take years of peace
and rest to build him up.  Let's be patient.
Dr. Gallup seems to think he's got a good deal more
than a running chance."

Jean wound eager, loving arms around the
plump figure, and laid her head down on Cousin
Roxy's shoulder.

"You dear," she exclaimed.  "You're the best
angel in a gingham apron I ever saw.  I feel a
hundred times better now.  I can go back and work."

"Well, so do, child, and comfort your mother.
Hope springs eternal, you know, in the human
breast, but it takes a sight of watering just the
same to make it perk up."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`GUESTS AND GHOSTS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   GUESTS AND GHOSTS

.. vspace:: 2

It would never do to leave Piney out of any
jaunts, Kit said, as the end of the week drew
near again, and so Honey was commissioned as
despatch bearer.

"Tell her we're going to walk from here over
to Mount Ponchas, and back by way of the
Spring House.  We want to start at five Friday night."

"Ought to start at daybreak for a hike," Honey
replied.  "Never heard of starting near sundown.
You'll fetch up by dark at the rock ridge and
sleep in a deer hollow."

"Maybe we will," Kit responded hopefully.
"I hadn't thought of that, Honey.  It sounds
awfully nice.  If you could just get a peep at
our lunch you'd want to hike too, no matter where
we fetched up."

"I've camped out along the river.  Not this
river.  The big one down at the station, the
Quinnebaug.  We boys go down there when the
bass is running and fish for them nights.  Eels too."

"Do you know a boy named Billie Ellis?" Kit
asked suddenly.  "Does he ever go along with you?"

"Billie Ellis?  I should say not."  Honey was
very emphatic.  "Judge Ellis wouldn't let him
go along anywhere with the rest of us fellows.
He caught a big white owl the other day over in
the pines back of the Ellis burial ground."

"I wish he'd come over our way some time.
I'd love to know him.  He sounds so kind
of--well, different, don't you know?"

"He's different all right," laughed Honey,
good-naturedly.  "I remember once three years
ago it was awfully cold, and we boys had been
skating and went into the blacksmith shop to get
warm, Abby Tucker's father's shop.  And who
should come in but Billie Ellis without any hat
on, and only an old sweater and a pair of
corduroy knickers on, and shoes and stockings.
We asked him how he ever kept warm such
weather, and what do you suppose he said?"

"What?"  Kit's face was eager with interest.

"Said he had seven cats he kept specially to
keep him warm.  Said the Judge wouldn't let
him have any fire, so he trained the cats to
cuddle around him and keep him warm all night!
Good-night.  I'll tell Piney you want her to go
along with you."

Kit sat out on the terrace after he had passed
up the hill road.  Jean and Helen were upstairs
with their father, and Doris was practising her
music with her mother in the big living-room.
Somehow, Mother's fingers made scales sound
sweet.  Honey had been gone about fifteen
minutes when Kit heard the sound of a carriage
coming along the level valley road.  It couldn't
be anyone for Greenacres, she thought; but just
then the carriage turned in at the wide drive
entrance and came up to the veranda steps.

"You had better wait," she heard a voice say,
such a dandy voice, young and full of happy
sounding.  Then somebody bounded up the
steps, three at a time, and crossed the veranda,
with her sitting right there on the top terrace
below the rose and honeysuckle vines.  Kit was
always precipitous in her conclusions.  It flashed
across her mind in one brilliant, intuitive wave
that this was Ralph McRae, from Saskatoon.
Doris's madcap verse ran riot through her brain:

   |  "Oh, Saskatoon,
   |  Don't come too soon--"
   |

There was no door-bell or even knocker, and
the double doors stood wide open, but the screen
doors were locked, inside, so Kit stood up and
called.

"Just a minute, please.  I'm coming."

He waited for her, cap in hand and smiling.
It was shadowy, but she saw his face and liked it.
As she told the other girls later, it looked like
all the faces you could imagine that had belonged
to the real heroes' best friends, the Gratianos,
and Mercutios, and Petroniuses of life.

"Is this Miss Robbins?" he asked, and Kit
flushed at the tone.  As if she didn't long
seventeen hundred times a month to be *the* Miss
Robbins like Jean.

"No.  I'm only Kit," she answered.  "You're
our Mr. McRae, I think.  How do you do?"

He took her proffered hand and shook it
warmly, until there were little red lines around
her rings, and Kit led him around to the side
door and let him in while she lighted a lamp.

"Mother's in here," she said, leading the way
into the living-room.  Mrs. Robbins sat by the
west window.  She loved the quiet rest hour
after sundown, and Doris was playing with the
soft pedal down.  "Mother, dear," Kit said.
"Mr. McRae's come from Saskatoon."

"Just as if he'd stepped over the whole distance
in about seven strides," Doris told later, after
Mr. McRae had been safely disposed of in the
guest chamber, and the family could discuss him
safely.  "I think he's awfully nice looking, don't
you, Jean?"

"I can't think about his looks, Dorrie," Jean
replied laughingly.  "All I can do is wonder
what he has come after.  Does he want the house
and farm?  Or has his conscience troubled him so
much about Piney and her mother and Honey
that he's going to lay Greenacres on their front
doorstep in restitution?  Or did he just want to
see what we all looked like?"

"Ask him," suggested Kit blandly.  "He
seems to be a very approachable young man so
far as I can see."

"He wanted to go up to Cousin Roxy's for the
night and Mother wouldn't let him.  That shows
that she likes him."

"Mother'd spread her wing over any lone
wanderer after nightfall, Helenita.  Wait and see
what the morrow doth portend.  We'll go for our
hike just the same."

The next day Mr. Robbins sat out in a big
steamer chair on the veranda with the stranger,
and seemed to enjoy his company wonderfully.

"I do believe, Mumsie," Jean said, "that poor
Dad has been smothered with too much coddling.
Just look at him brace up and talk to Mr. McRae."

"I hope we can persuade him to stay with us
while he is in Gilead."

"He doesn't act as if he needed much persuading.
They've rambled all the way from salmon
culture to Alaska politics and whether alfalfa
would grow in Connecticut.  Now they're
settling Saskatoon's future.  It appears that if no
cyclones hit it, Saskatoon will be a booming town.
I'm glad we don't need any cyclone cellars here."

"Jeanie, you tempt Providence with your
jubilant crowing.  Come and help me put up our
lunch.  Bacon and biscuit are going to be the
staff of our existence, with gingerbread and
cheese for the reserves."

It had been agreed that the girls should meet
at Greenacres that afternoon.  Honey had been
sent up to Maple Lawn with a note announcing
the arrival of Ralph McRae, and inviting Cousin
Roxy down for tea.  She drove down about four,
fresh as a daisy in her black and white dimity
and big black sun hat with sprays of white lilacs
on it.  Ralph helped her out and stood smilingly
while she ran her fingers through his thick brown
hair and patted his shoulder.

"Just the sort of boy I expected Francelia'd
have," she said happily.  "Well set up and manly
too from all appearances.  Going to stay around
a while, Ralph, and get acquainted?"

"Why, I'd like to, Miss Roxy.  It was rather
lonesome out West with none of my own people
there.  I've always wanted to come back here
and see all of you.  Mother used to talk a lot
about you all to me when I was little.  She didn't
have anybody else to tell things to."

"Like enough," Roxy responded rather soberly
for her.  "You must meet your cousins."

"I didn't know I had any."

Miss Robbins glanced over to the woodpile
where Honey was sawing some chestnut tops
for dry wood to mix in with the birch.

"Come over here, Honey," she called briskly.
"This is the boy cousin and Piney's the girl,
both children of your mother's own sister Luella.
Guess we'll get this straightened out some time.
Honey, this is Ralph McRae, your own blood
cousin."

Ralph took the tanned, supple hand of the boy
in his, and held it fast, looking down at Honey's
cheery, freckled face.

"I think we're going to be pals, old man," he
said, and Honey's heart warmed to him.
Nobody had ever before called him that.

When Piney arrived with the other girls, she
too was introduced, but she proved less pliable
than Honey.  Straight and tall, she faced her
new cousin, every flash of her eyes telling him
that she resented his having all while they had
nothing, and Ralph could make no headway with
that branch of the family.

At five they were ready to start.  Sally could
not go, nor Nan, Carlie, or Tony.  But the older
girls were all there, and at the last minute Abby
Tucker came hurrying along the road with a
large paper bag.

"Thought I'd never get here, but I did," she
said triumphantly.  "I made popcorn balls for
all of you.  And I've got some red pepper too.
Going to throw it at the ghost."

"Why, you cold-blooded person," Kit exclaimed.
"Red pepper at a poor harmless ghost!
Shame on you."

But Abby only smiled mysteriously and gave
the girls to understand that red pepper was the
very latest weapon for vanquishing ghosts.

Jean had told each girl to bring a blanket.
These were spread down and rolled up
army-fashion until they looked like life buoys, then
slung over the girls' shoulders.  The commissary
department consisted of Kit, Hedda and
Ingeborg, who counted over their supplies almost
gloatingly.  Etoile had brought jam turnovers
and deviled-egg sandwiches.  Hedda had
brought loaf cake and cheese,--cream cheese with
sweet red peppers chopped up in it.

"So funny for Hedda to bring Italian stuff.
You'd expect pickled walrus from her," Kit remarked.

"I like this," Hedda answered gravely.  "I
never tasted walrus."

Ingeborg and Astrid brought sandwiches,
made of rye bread with home-cured roast ham.
And Piney appeared with a big bag of cherries,
white-hearts and deep red ox-hearts.

"There's a loaf of gingerbread too, with raisins
in it," she said.

"You're equipped for a journey over Chilkoot
Pass," Ralph told them teasingly.  "How many
weeks will you be gone?"

"We'll be home tomorrow about sundown,
good sir," Kit retorted haughtily.  "Should you
see the distant light of a signal fire you may
come after us."

"Piney can tell direction by the sun," Honey
said.  "You won't get lost with her along.
Better keep out of the woods though.  Mount
Ponchas is due south."

The girls left the grounds of Greenacres and
turned into the open road.  At each clear point
they paused to wave back to the group on the
veranda, but Jean and Ingeborg led at a good
pace and the rest fell into it, following the river
road to the old spring house.  Helen started to
sing with Piney, and the others joined in.  The
first mile seemed to vanish before they knew it,
and even by the time they reached the old red
saw-mill, where Mr. Rudemeir lived, they were
not tired.  He was the old Prussian sailor Honey
had told them of.  They met him driving a
couple of heavy Percheron horses along the river
path, and he waved an old pipe in friendly fashion.

"He's mighty nice," Piney said fervently.
"Last summer there were some girls boarding up
the valley, and they couldn't swim.  One went
out beyond her depth and he saved her life."

"Bless his heart, let's give him a cheer," Kit
proposed.  "He needs encouragement."

So they gave a rousing cheer, and the old man
looked back in surprise, grinned, and waved
again to them.

"Wait a minute," Jean said suddenly.
"We've forgotten matches.  Run back and ask
him for some, Dorrie, please."

"He asked where we were bound for," said
Doris when she returned.  "When I told him he
said he guessed we'd have our hands full."

"It's getting a little dark."  Etoile glanced
back over the shadowy road behind them.

"We've got a lantern and some candles," Astrid
said comfortably, "and Tip for sentinel.
There isn't anything to be afraid of that I can see."

"'Speak for yourself, John,'" Kit quoted.
"If we don't see or hear something I'm going to
be awfully disappointed.  And if we do hear
anything coming slowly upstairs, don't flash the
electric light right at it until it has a chance to
show itself.  I hope it will be a lovely pale green,
like the ghost in Hamlet."

Etoile stopped short in the middle of the road,
her eyes wide with dread.

"I think perhaps I'd better go right back now, girls."

But Kit and Ingeborg wound their arms
around her waist and promised faithfully to
guard her if she would only stick the night out.
They went on up the long wood-road, past the
falls above the mill, past Mud Hole where the
boys fished for eels, past Otter Island where
Hiram came to fish, and on to the old spring
house.  It was set far back from the road in a
garden overgrown with weeds and tall timothy
grass, and tiger lilies grew rankly in green clumps
along the gray stone walls.  The little wooden
shelter over the well was knocked over and the
boards that protected the windows had been
pulled half off.  Jean went to the kitchen door
and found it unlocked.  Only wasps and spiders
were to be seen, and one stout old toad that
backed hurriedly out of sight under the stone
doorstep.

"Let's look it all over before it gets really
dark," she said, and they went in and out of each
bare room, upstairs and downstairs, into the old
musty cellar, even into the low-roofed loft over
the summer kitchen.

"Now, we know there's nothing here, don't
we?" Kit said, after the tour of inspection was
over, and they sat out on the grass near the well,
with their lunch spread around them.  "How
perfectly wonderful things taste after you've
tramped, don't they?  More ginger cookies,
please, Hedda."

"Which room are we going to sleep in?" asked
Abby.  "I'd just as soon sleep out here all night
on blankets, wouldn't you, Etoile?"

"We don't care if you want to," Helen agreed.
"Try it on the little side porch.  Then you can
watch the cellar entrance because the ghost may
decide to come up that way."

It was getting quite dark by the time the
supper remains were cleared away.  Candles were
lighted and set on the mantel in the front room
and in the kitchen.  Kit and Hedda had
returned from a successful foraging expedition
around the barn and corn house, and had brought
back armfuls of hay to spread under their
blankets on the floor.  Tip, the brown water spaniel,
took the whole affair very seriously and made the
circuit of the grounds over and over again,
chasing imaginary intruders.

"Well, girls, I guess we're all ready to go to
bed, aren't we?" Kit called finally.  "It's
eight-thirty by Jean's watch, and we'll have to get an
early start."

They agreed it was the best plan and went into
the big living-room where the fireplace was.
The nights were still very cool up in the hills, so
Hedda and Doris had been appointed wood gatherers
and a fine dry wood fire blazed on the stone
hearth.  After they were ready for the night,
they sat around this in a semi-circle, eating
popcorn balls and telling stories, until all at once
there came a sound that silenced every one and
left them wide-eyed and scared.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BILLIE MEETS TRESPASSERS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   BILLIE MEETS TRESPASSERS

.. vspace:: 2

It was unlike any sound the girls had ever
heard back at the Cove; almost like a human
being in distress and yet like some animal cry too.

"It's a fox," whispered Astrid, getting nearer
to her big sister.

"No, it isn't," said Abby.  "That's a deer.
They always yell like that when the moon's full."

"It was right near, I think, right outside."
Kit sat up eager and tense.  "Shall I flash the
light, Jean?"

"Not yet.  Wait until it comes again.  I
think it was only some night bird."

So they waited breathlessly.  Every tiny
creaking noise in the old house was intensified by
the heavy silence.  Jean rose and went to the
window.  The moon was not up yet, and it was
hard to distinguish objects, but down in the
garden she thought she saw something that looked
like a cow lying down.

"I can't tell just what it is.  It may be only
a stray cow or horse," she said softly.

"Throw something at it," suggested Kit,
hopefully.  "Let's all throw something."

"Just to see whether it jumps or not," Astrid
assented.  She hunted around and found some
loose half bricks in the chimney place.

"Where's Tip?  He hasn't barked once,"
remarked Abby.

"Dogs are always frightened when they see
ghosts.  Let me fire away at it first, girls."  Astrid
took aim and the half brick flew down at the
dark object with a deadly thud, but there was no
stampede.  She leaned far out the window,
staring at it anxiously.  "It seems to me I can see
it move and it has horns and a sort of woolly tail,
girls."

"Sounds like a yak," Kit chuckled.  "I'm
willing to do this much.  I'll go to the door and
open it, and you girls stay here with bricks to
throw, and when I flash the light on it, if it jumps
you can save me."

But before she could carry out the plan the
sound came again, longer and more thrillingly
penetrating than before.  It was a wail and a
challenge and a moan all in one, not just one cry,
but a prolonged succession of them.  As soon
as it stopped Piney exclaimed:

"Now I know.  That's an owl and it comes
from the little garret over the 'ell' where we
couldn't climb because there weren't any stairs.
Don't you know, girls?"

"Sure, Piney?"  Etoile's tone was almost
trembling.  "Never I hear such a cry."

"Oh, I have.  It's an owl, I know it is, one of
those big ones.  Riding through the woods at
night coming home from town I've been half
scared to death by one of them.  Sounds like
seventeen ghosts all rolled into one.  Come along,
Kit.  You and I'll go hunt it up."

The rest followed gingerly, a strange procession
bearing candles, Kit leading with the flash,
light.  Tip stumbled up drowsily from the
kitchen door and barked at them.

"Oh, yes, it's all very well for you to bark
now," laughed Jean.  "Why didn't you go after
that noise?"

They reached the "ell" room and found a
trapdoor in the ceiling.  Abby remembered seeing a
ladder out in the back entry behind the door
and this was brought in.

"And see this, girls," she exclaimed, running
her finger over it.  "No dust on the rounds.
That shows it's been used lately."

"Aren't we perfectly wonderful scouts?
Abby, I love the way you never miss anything."  Kit
leaned the ladder up against the wall, and
mounted it, with Piney close behind and the other
girls at its base.  "What if it shouldn't be an
owl--"

She stopped with her palm against the trapdoor.
Raising it about an inch she flashed the
light, and there was a great fluttering and
flopping overhead.

"What did I tell you!" Piney cried excitedly.
"Do it again, Kit.  It can't hurt you and the
light blinds it."

So the trap-door was lifted again with the light
of the electric hand lamp turned on full and Kit
cautiously pulled herself up into the aperture.
It was tent shaped and low, not more than four
feet at its highest.  But instead of being bare
like the rest of the old house, there were certainly
evidences of human occupancy.  There was a
tin can filled with fresh water, and a strip of rag
carpet laid down on the floor.  A box of fish
hooks and neatly rolled lines lay on one side, and
there was a small frying pan and a horn handled
steel knife and fork.  Rolled up in one corner
was a pair of old overalls, and some books much
the worse for wear lay beside them.  Kit's glance
took in everything, and last of all, backed into a
corner and blinking hard, was the ghost itself,--a
big white owl.

Piney pulled herself up too, and reached out
after the books gently so as not to frighten the
owl any more.  With a couple in her hand, they
lowered the door again, and joined the others.

"It's an owl and a hermit's nest," Kit told
them excitedly.  "Open the books, Piney.  Is
there any name inside?"

Piney read off the titles,

"'Treasure Island' and 'Peveril of the Peak.'  He's
got a nice collection, hasn't he, whoever he
is?  There isn't any name inside.  There's a
bookplate in each though."

"Let me see."  Helen and Kit both tried to
look at the same time.  The bookplate was pasted
in each, but it was a hard one to decipher.  It
looked like some cryptogram with its intertwined
letter forms, and they gave it up for the night.

"Well, there was certainly fresh water in that
tin," Kit said positively, "and that shows the
haunted house is inhabited by something tangible,
I mean something besides the owl.  Let's go to
bed very calmly and sleep.  I'm sure we've laid
the ghost."

It did seem as though they had, for the
remainder of the night was peaceful and safe
except for the owl crying out lonesomely at
intervals until about four o'clock, when the dawn came.
Rolled in their blankets, the girls slept soundly
until the sunlight threw broad golden beams into
their quarters.

There was no rope on the windlass at the well,
so Ingeborg proposed that they go down to the
river and wash there.  It was lots of fun.  They
found that the dark and fearsome object they had
heaved bricks at the night before was only a big
gray rock half sunken in the ground.

Along the river margin turtles sunned themselves
in rows on the half-submerged logs, and a
muskrat scuttled clumsily for cover at sight of
the invaders.

"I wish we could go right in," said Jean, looking
up and down the winding course of the river
as she parted the alders; "but it isn't really safe
when you don't know the water.  This looks full
of unexpected holes and snags.  Where does it
run to?"

"Down past the two mills, and rises away up
in the Quinnebaug Hills," Piney told her,
kneeling on a flat rock and splashing herself well.
"Did you see that black snake hustle out of the
way then?  They're awful cowards.  Yes, Jean,
this comes from Judge Ellis's place about two
miles beyond here, three and a half by road."

"Judge Ellis?  Billie's grandfather?"

"You talk just as if you knew him, Kit."

"Well, I feel as if I do, and when I do I'm
going to take him right under my wing and be a
mother to him," said Kit defiantly.

"Who?  The Judge?"

"No.  This Billie person.  Or I'll trot him
home to Mother and let her be nice to him."

"Here are some fishpoles, girls, hidden in the
bushes," Doris called out.  "Know what I think?
There are boys around."

All at once upstream they heard somebody
whistling.  At first it sounded almost like a bird
trilling high and clear, but birds do not sing
"Marching Through Georgia," so the girls sat
there on the bank, sheltered from view by the
alders, and waited until a flat bottomed row-boat
came into view.  Standing at the stern, one bare
foot on the back seat and one on the cross seat,
with a long punting pole in his hands, was a boy
of about fifteen.  His head was bare and his
overalls were rolled above his knees.  Whistling
recklessly, sure of himself and the solitude, he came
down the river and guided the boat to shore near
where the girls sat.  He hauled it up half-way
out of the water, dropped the pole into it, and
started up the bank before he caught sight of them.

"That's Billie Ellis," Piney said quickly, and
waved her hand to him in friendly greeting.
"Hello, Billie."

"Hello," Billie returned.  "Where'd you come from?"

"We came from Whence and are going
Whither," Kit spoke up merrily.  "Got some
fish for breakfast?"

Billie hesitated, trying to appear nonchalant,
but plainly very much rattled at these persons
who had taken up squatter rights on his domain.
He rolled down his overalls very slowly and
deliberately to gain time, and this gave the girls a
chance to see just what he looked like, this Billie
person, as Kit had dubbed him.  He was taller
than Honey by a good deal, with short-cropped
curly hair rather nondescript in color, and big
brown eyes, eyes as startlingly frank and
uncompromising in their gaze as those of a deer.  He
was tanned a nice healthy brown, and his smile
was extremely satisfying if one were looking for
friendliness.  Altogether, the Greenacre girls
approved of Billie at sight.  To the others he
was more or less familiar, even while none of them
knew him well.

"Where you all going?" he asked.

"Just walking over the country," Abby told
him.  "Where are you going, Billie?"

Billie flushed at this direct query.

"Oh, I don't know," he answered lamely.  "I
come down the river a lot."

"We fed the owl," Kit said innocently.  "Just
some bread and ham.  I suppose it thought it
had a new kind of mouse."

Billie glanced at her with quick boyish
indignation.  They had not been satisfied with
finding out his landing place and swimming hole.
They had gone into the old house and discovered
his secret den and the big white owl.  He had
always regarded girls as semi-dangerous, but this
was worse than even he had expected.  He
turned to Piney as the one in the crowd that he
knew best.

"What did you go into the house for?"

"Shelter for the night," Piney answered
promptly.  "The door was open and we went in.
If folks don't want company they should keep
their doors locked.  Anyhow, nobody lives here
and we didn't hurt a thing.  We wanted to see
the ghost."

Billie grinned at this admission, a quick
mischievous grin that made his whole face light up
and seem to sparkle with fun.

"Did he come up and rattle his chains for you?"

"No, he didn't, and I don't believe he ever did
for anybody else."

"Maybe not," Billie agreed blandly.  "How
far up the river are you going?"

"To Mount Ponchas."

"That's only seven and a half miles.  You can
go along up the hill road from here, and when
you come to the state road that has telegraph
poles on it, you turn off and go west.  It's three
hills over and you pass through one village,
Shiloh Valley.  When you come to Ponchas don't
forget to look for the grave of the Cavalier."

"Where's that?" asked Jean.  "We haven't
heard of it at all."

This was touching Billie's heart in the right
spot.  He knew every rod of land for miles
around Gilead and loved its old historic lore.
The girls did not know it then, but life was rather
a dull affair over at the Judge's place.  There
were only the Judge himself; Mrs. Gorham, his
housekeeper; Farley Riggs, his general business
man; and Ben Brooks, the hired man.  It was
rather an unsympathetic household for a boy of
fifteen, especially one who had been unwelcome;
but he had made friends with Ben and had found
him a treasure house of information.

There might be other sections of importance
in the United States besides Gilead Center,
Connecticut, but Ben held them in slight esteem.
He had been born and brought up there and had
never even wanted to go away.  The sun had
always risen and set for him beyond the encircling
Quinnebaug Hills.  He was about forty when
Billie first came, genial, optimistic, rather
good-looking, and an insatiable reader.

Billie's two favorite occupations were ranging
the country on personal hikes of exploration and
sitting up in Ben's room over the corn house in
the evenings, looking at his books and magazines
and listening to him talk on current topics and
historic events.  No topic was too intricate for
Ben to tackle.  No government ever evaded him
when it came to diplomatic tricks or ways.  He
was on to them all, as he told Billie.

So now Billie remembered how Ben had told
him about the mysterious stranger who had come
to Gilead back in the earliest days of the
settlement.  The colonists had suffered much from
Indian raids until there came into their midst a
man whom they called the Cavalier.  With his
negro body-servant, he had lived amongst them
and taught them defense against their savage
foes, taught them the best way to win over the
soil and reclaim the wilderness.  Yet when he
died they knew no more of him than on the first
day when he rode into their village.  His grave
lay over on the south side of Mount Ponchas
where he had wished it to be, near a rock where
he had often held council with the Indians.

"Be sure to see it when you get there," Billie
advised.  "I wish I was going along with you."

"Come over to our place, won't you, Billie?"
Kit asked in her most neighborly way.  "I'd like
to ask you about some arrow heads we found.
Will you?"

Billie nodded his head nonchalantly.  It was
like giving a bird an invitation to call on you, or
handing your card to a rabbit.  But he watched
them as they went up the hill road from the river,
and when Doris turned and waved, he waved
back.  At least he was interested in his trespassers,
even though he could not quite forgive them
for having discovered his pet hiding place.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`HARVESTING HOPES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   HARVESTING HOPES

.. vspace:: 2

It was noon before they reached Ponchas,
although they might have gone ever so much faster
if every new flower by the way had not coaxed
them to linger.  Then they came to a big mill
in the heart of the woods, where the men were
cutting out chestnut trees for ties.  Then Shiloh
Valley was so pretty it was hard to leave it.
There was a little white church, with a square
steeple and green blinds, standing on a large
church green, a dot of a schoolhouse opposite, one
lone store, and about nine houses.  But each
house was set in its own little domain independent
and aloof, with its barn and granary, tool house
and smoke house, woodshed and corn crib, and
one had a silo and a forge besides.

The only person they saw was a little girl
coming out of the store, and she stood and watched
them out of sight, with wide surprised eyes, just
as if, Doris said, they were a circus.

"I suppose we're the most interesting sight
she's seen in weeks.  Wish I could run back and
coax her to go with us."

But Ponchas beckoned to them in the distance,
a violet tinted cone of rock, and they kept
steadily on until, as the shadows pointed north, they
camped for luncheon at its base.  Helen and
Ingeborg went hunting the Cavalier's grave, but
Hedda found it when she brought water from
the spring house that had been built over a live
spring gushing out at the base of the rock.
Nearby was a heap of gray moss-covered rock
piled into a cairn, with a rugged rock cross at the
head twined with wild convolvulus.  On it were
cut the words:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   "He succored us
   The Cavalier
   1679."

.. vspace:: 2

"Well, I do think they might have told us
more than that," Jean said, when the other girls
came to look at it.  "Perhaps, though, this would
have pleased him better.  Let's name him, girls."

"Sir John Lovelace," said Helen.

"Oh, no, give him something sturdy; call him
Modred or Gregory," Kit protested.  "Gregory
Grimshaw."

They stood for a few moments in silence
gazing at the quiet resting place, wondering
what the real story was of the stranger it sheltered.

"I think his servant could have told if he had
so wished," Etoile said wisely.  "I will ask my
father about him.  He knows many of the old
stories of the places around here.  He came here
from Canada when he was a very little boy.
There were gray wolves around in the winter
time, and the spring came earlier then.  He has
found arbutus the first week in March."

"What kind of wild animals are here now?"
asked Doris anxiously.  "Nothing that's
dangerous, is there?"

"Wild cats sometimes," Astrid said.  "Deer,
foxes, 'coons, muskrats, woodchucks, otters,
rabbits, squirrels.  What else, Ingeborg?"

"I can tell you of something that really
happened over where I live," Abby interrupted.
Under the excitement of the trip and its novelty,
Abby had fairly bloomed.  From a listless,
rather unhappy girl she had become a sturdy,
cheerful hiker.  Kit had taken her under her
wing from the start.

"It's fun getting hold of somebody so awfully
hopeless," she had said, "and trying to make her
see the sun shining and the flowers growing right
under her nose.  Abby's going to be happy.
She's like some little half-drowned kitten."

It was because nobody had ever taken any
interest in her before.  Her father was the
blacksmith, a silent, rather morose man who had
quarreled with his own brothers and never spoke to
them.  Her mother was a frail, nervous woman,
so used to being yelled at that she jumped the
moment anyone spoke to her.  Jean had driven
over there one day to get Princess a new set of
shoes, and Mrs. Tucker had come out from the
kitchen door, a thin, flat-chested woman with
straggly hair and vacant eyes.

"How be ye," she said wistfully, looking up
at the pretty new neighbor.  "How's your Ma?
And Pa?  Sickly, ain't he?  I suffer something
fearful all the time.  Sometimes my head feels
as if it was where my feet are, and my feet feel
as if they were where my head is.  I can't seem
to make any doctor understand what I mean, but
that's exactly the way I feel, and it's fearful
confusing."

Then Abby had come out and sort of shooed
her mother back into the house as one would a
fretful hen.

"There was a circus up at Norwich," said Abby
now.  "And a real live panther escaped and the
hunters said they found his tracks down our way.
Then one night when I was in bed, they knocked
on our door and said the tracks led right into
our woodshed.  And my father got out his
shotgun and went with them, but I went down in the
kitchen with Ma, because she's nervous, and
when I started up the back stairs I saw its eyes
shining at me right under my bed."

"How could you see your bed on the back
stairs?" asked Piney doubtfully.

"I left my door open and when I got on the
middle stair I could see right in under my bed,
and there it was."

"Abby Tucker!  What did you do?"
exclaimed Hedda.  "You never told me."

"What do you suppose I did?  I fell right
downstairs.  Guess you would have too, if you
thought you saw a live panther under your bed.
But it wasn't.  It scooted out past me and it was
our big tiger cat Franklin."

"Did they find the real one?" asked Etoile.

"He is not anywhere around now, is he, Abby?"

"Oh, land, no," laughed Abby.  "They got it
over in the pine woods and it was half starved
and cold.  It went back to the circus."

"Well," exclaimed Kit, with a sigh.  "I used
to think things were monotonous in the country,
but I've changed my mind.  There's something
new happening here every minute."

Just then Doris gave a little squeal of dismay,
and jumped up.

"Something bit my hand," she said.  The girls
searched in the grass and found the breaker of the
peace.  It was a shiny pinching beetle.

"Don't kill it," Abby warned.  "They bury
the dead birds, Ma says.  They're the sextons
of the woods."

"Maybe it thought I needed to be buried too,"
said Doris ruefully.  "It nipped me good and
plenty."

When they started back they sang along the
road, first old songs that all of them knew, and
then Hedda sang two strange Icelandic songs
her mother had taught her, lullabies with a low
minor strain running through them.

   |  "Day has barred her window close and goes with quiet feet,
   |  Night wrapped in a cloak of gray,
   |    Comes softly down the street,
   |  Mother's heart's a guiding star,
   |    Tender, strong and true,
   |  Lullaby and lulla-loo, sleep, lammie, now."
   |

The other was about the reindeer that would
surely come and carry the baby away if it didn't
go to sleep.  She had a strong, sweet voice, and
sang with much feeling.  After hearing the other
girls, Jean said they ought to have a glee club,
even if they met only once a month.

"Just for music.  Mother says that music is
the universal language that everyone understands.
Let's meet at our house next week, and
give the afternoon to it."

"I think we ought to meet somewhere else, not
all the time at your home, Jean," Etoile
demurred in her courteous French way.  "We
would be very glad to have you with us any time."

"Then we will come, won't we, girls?" Jean
agreed.  "And Sally will enjoy that because she
can sing too, and it will be near home for her.  I
think we are organizing splendidly."

But the next few weeks were filled with home
activities and it was hard to squeeze in time for
all that they had outlined.  There were berries
to can and preserve, and Mr. McRae prolonged
his stay, but only on condition that he be allowed
to take hold of the farm, with Honey's help, and
manage the haying and cultivating for them.

"I had no idea a man could be so handy," Kit
declared.  "He's mended the sink so we don't
have to cart out all the waste water, and he's
burned up the rubbish at the end of the lane, and
he put new roofing on the hen houses, and he
climbed up into the big elm and put up Doris's
swing for her.  I think he's a perfect darling."

"Kit, dear, don't be so positive and so
extreme," Mrs. Robbins warned gently.  "It's very
kind indeed of Ralph to help us, but don't let
your speech run away with you."

"I wish he belonged right in the family.  I've
always thought that every family should have a
carpenter and a gardener in it.  Mother dear, to
see him climb down the well, right down into that
thirty-foot black hole and fish out the bucket after
Helen had dropped it in, was a sight for men and
angels."

"He's very capable," Mrs. Robbins agreed
laughingly.  "I think by the time he goes we will
have everything on the place mended and
repaired.  I never saw a landlord like him."

"He's a good doctor too, a doctor of the soul,"
Jean said soberly.  "Dad's been fifty per
cent. better since he came.  I wish when he goes back
to Saskatoon that he'd take Honey with him.
Piney's able to help her mother, and Honey's
heart is set on going West.  They're own cousins
and it would be splendid for him."

"Honey's only fourteen, girlie.  I think he's
rather young to leave the Mother wings, don't you?"

Jean pondered.

"I don't know, Mother.  Mothers are wonderful
people and darlings, but I do think that
every boy needs a good father and if he can't get
a father, then the next best man who can talk
to him and teach him the--what would you call it?"

"The code of manliness?".

"That's it.  And Ralph seems so manly, don't
you think so?"

"Do you call him Ralph, dear?"

"Well, he asked me to, mother, and I didn't
want to refuse and hurt his feelings.  I suppose
it made him feel more at home.  And Cousin
Roxy says he's only twenty-four.  I don't think
that's old at all."

It took three days to cut the hay on the
Greenacre land, and the girls had a regular Greek
festival over it.  They all went down and
followed the big rake and helped pitch the hay up on
the wagon.  Then Helen got her kodak and took
pictures of them pitching, and riding on the load
up the long lane, and of the big sleepy-eyed yoke
of oxen.

"You know," Jean said, "it looks like some
scene from away back in the colonial days.  I
love to watch the oxen come along that lane with
the top of the load brushing the mulberry tree
branches."

"I'm so glad that you found out what those
trees were," Kit teased.  "Ever since we came
here, you and Helen have been watching for
apples to grow on them.  I told you they were
mulberry trees."

"It's so nice," Helen said dreamily, "to have
one in the family who is always right."

Kit quickly fired a bunch of hay at her, but she
dodged it and ran.

"Going to cut about nine ton or more," Honey
said, coming up with a pail of spring water.
"That ain't counting bedding neither.  You can
get fifteen a ton for bedding."

"What's bedding?" asked Kit.

"Oh, all sorts of stuff, pollypods and swamp
grass and such.  Say, if you go down where
Ralph's cutting now, you'll see a Bob White's
nest and speckled eggs.  Don't take any, though."

"Isn't it lovely out here, Kit?"  Jean wound
her arm around Kit's waist as they crossed the
meadow land.  "I was lonesome at first but now
I think I'd be more lonesome for this if I were
away from it long."

"I love it too, but wait until the north wind
doth blow.  What will all the poor Robbins do
then, poor things?"

"We'll pull through," Jean said pluckily.  "I
don't feel afraid of anything that can happen
since Dad really is getting better."

"Isn't it funny, Jean, how we're forgetting all
about the Cove and the things we did there?"  Kit
pushed back her hair briskly.  She was warm
and getting "frecklier," as Doris said, every
minute.  "I wonder when fall comes, if we won't miss
it all more than we do now."

"All what?"

"Places to go, mostly, and people who help us
instead of us always helping them.  Mother's
turned into a regular Lady Bountiful since we
came out here."

"I think they've all helped us just as much as
we've helped them," Jean said slowly.  "We're
getting bigger every minute.  You know what I
mean.  Broader minded.  At home we went
along in the same little groove all the time.  I
think work is splendid."

"Well, you always did have the faculty, you
know, Jean, for staring black right in the face
and declaring it was a beautiful delicate cream
color.  I suppose that's the stuff that martyrs are
made of.  Now, don't get huffy.  You're a
perfect angel of a martyr.  I like it out here and I
think the work is doing us good, but I'm like
Helen, I don't want to stay here all my life, nor
even a quarter of it.  Mother said she wanted to
let one of us older girls go back with Gwennie
Phelps."

"Back with her?" repeated Jean in dismay.
"You haven't asked her up here this summer, have
you, Kit?"

"I didn't.  Helen did before we came away.
Mother said she might.  You know Mother's
always had the happiness of the Phelps family on
her mind."

"But Gwennie!  I wouldn't mind Frances so much."

"Frances does not stand in need of missionary
work.  Gwennie does.  Anyway, she's coming
up the first week in August, and Mother says
that either you or I can go back with her for two
weeks before school opens.  Do you want to go,
Jean?  Because I really and truly don't give a
rap about it.  I'm afraid to go for fear I'll like
it and won't want to come back.  I'm just dead
afraid of the schools up here this winter."  Kit's
tone was tragic.  "This year means so much to
me in my work.  I was getting along gloriously,
you know that, Jean, and from what the girls
here tell me, the schools can't touch ours in finish."

"How are they in beginnings?" Jean asked
laughingly.  "You poor old long-sufferer, I
know what you mean.  Why don't you ask Dad
and Mother to let you board down at the Cove
with the Phelpses, and keep up your old class
work right there until you finish High School
anyway?"

"Seems like a desertion," said Kit.  "We're
here and we should stick it out.  I think you'd
better go back with Gwennie."

"We ought to talk it over with Mother
thoroughly.  She thinks she's giving us a week of
extra pleasure, probably, and to us it's a
temptation that we're afraid we can't withstand, isn't
that it?"

"Well, I feel like this, it's like taking a soldier
out of the trenches and throwing him into a
seaside week end."

"Kit, you always exaggerate fearfully.
You're a regular Donna Quixote, tilting at windmills."

"But are you willing to go back?"

"I think we'll let Helen go.  She will enjoy it
and not take it a bit seriously.  Helen's poise will
carry her through any crisis triumphantly."

Kit agreed that the thought of Helen was
really a stroke of diplomatic genius.  The waves
and billows of circumstance only buoyed Helen
up, lighter than ever.  They never went over her
or disarranged her curls a particle.  Whenever
Kit had one of her customary "brain storms" over
something and Helen suggested that she was
"fussy," Kit always retaliated with the statement
that she was the only member of the family with
any temperament.  Jean had imagination, and
Doris gave promise of much sentiment, but when
it came to real temperament Kit believed that she
had the full Robbins allowance.

"You can call it what you like, Kit.  I'd leave
off the last two syllables, though," Helen would
say serenely.

"There you are," Kit always answered.
"Only geniuses have any temperament and when
you've got one in the family you deny it.  You'll
be sorry some day, Helenita.  When you are
darning stockings with a fancy stitch for your
great grandchildren I shall face admiring throngs
all listening for pearls of wisdom to fall from
my lips."

"What do you think you're going to be anyway?"

"Haven't made up my mind yet, but something
fearfully extraordinary and special, Ladybird."

So now when the proposition was made after
supper that Helen return for a visit to the Cove
with Gwen Phelps, Helen agreed placidly that
it would be rather nice, and Jean and Kit looked
at each other with a smile of deep diplomacy.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`RALPH AND HONEY TAKE THE LONG TRAIL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   RALPH AND HONEY TAKE THE LONG TRAIL

.. vspace:: 2

The last week in July saw the end of Ralph
McRae's visit at Greenacres.  He had been East
nearly two months and Honey was to go back
with him.  It was impossible to measure or even
to estimate the inward joy of Honey over the
decision.  Through some odd twist of heredity
there had been born in him the spirit of those who
long for travel and adventure.  Every winding
road dipping over a hillcrest had always held an
invitation for him to follow it.  He had listened
often to the distant whistle of the trains that
slipped through the Quinnebaug valley, and
longed to be on them going anywhere at all.  At
home in the little parlor there were some old
seashells that a seafaring great-grandfather had
brought back with him, and Honey loved to hold
them against his ear, listening to the murmur
within.  He had never looked upon the sea.  To
do so was a promise he had made to himself.
Some day he would go and see it, and now Ralph
told him that they would go part way by sea, up
from Boston to Nova Scotia, and around to the
mouth of the St. Lawrence, and up it to Lake
Ontario, and on through the Great Lakes, and so
up to the ranch in the Northwest.

"I wish I were going too," said Piney.  "I
wish you were going, Mother, and both of us
youngsters.  I'd love to take up a claim out there
and work it."

"Oh, dear child, what strange notions you do
have for a girl," Mrs. Hancock sighed.  "I never
thought of such things when I was your age.  I
wanted to be a teacher, that was all."

"Why didn't you?"

"Well, your grandfather said I was needed at
home, and so I stayed on until I met your father
when I was eighteen.  Then I married."

"And maybe if he'd let you be a teacher, you
wouldn't have wanted to get married.  I want
to study all about trees and forestry and
conservation, and I want to ride over miles and miles
of forests that are all mine.  I'm going to, too,
some day."

"How old are you now, Piney?" asked Ralph.

"Going on sixteen."

"Maybe next year when I bring Honey home,
we can coax Aunt Luella to take a trip out with
you.  How's that?"

Mrs. Hancock flushed delicately, and smiled
up at her tall nephew.

"How you talk, Ralph.  That would cost a
sight of money."

"Well, I tell you, Aunt Luella," said Ralph,
his hands deep in his pockets, as he leaned back
against the high mantelpiece in the sitting-room,
"I want to hand over Greenacres to you and the
children.  I haven't any feeling for it like you
have, and it seems to me, after talking it over
with Mr. Robbins, that it rightfully belongs to
you.  He would like to buy it, he says, inside of
two or three years.  They like it over there, and
propose to stay here in Gilead, but if you want to
take it over, I'm willing to transfer it before I go
west."

It was said quietly and cheerfully, quite as if
he were offering her a basket of fruit that she was
partial to, and Luella Trowbridge Hancock sat
back in her rocking-chair, staring up at him as if
she could hardly believe her ears.

"Ralph, you don't mean you'd give up the
place yourself?  Why, whatever would I do with
it?  I love every inch of ground there and every
blade of grass, but you see how it is.  Honey's
set on going west and Piney wants to go to
college and I don't know what all.  I couldn't live
on there alone, and they haven't got the feeling
for it that I have.  The younger generation
seems to have rooted itself up out of the soil
somehow.  I wouldn't know what to do with it
after I'd got it, and I wouldn't take it away from
Mrs. Robbins and the girls for anything.  Why,
they love it 'most as well as I do."

"I know, Aunt Luella, but I wanted you to
have the refusal of it," answered Ralph.  "Now,
then, here's the other way out.  Supposing I
make it over to you, and you have the rental
money, and then sell it to Mr. Robbins when he is
able to take it over.  You'd have the good of it
then."

"That's the best way, Mother," Piney spoke
up.  "They have all been so nice to us, and it's
just as Ralph says.  They do love it."

"You could come back east every now and then
and visit if you did make up your mind to live
out at Saskatoon."

"Land alive, the boy speaks of journeying
thousands of miles as if he was driving up to
Norwich.  I went to Providence once after I was
married, and that's the only long trip I've ever
taken from home."

"Then it will take you a whole year to get
ready," laughed Ralph.  "Honey and I will be
back for you next summer, and Piney shall have
the best pony I've got all for her own to make up
for Princess."

The night before their departure Mrs. Robbins
gave a dinner for them, with Cousin Roxana
and Mr. and Mrs. Collins from the Center
church.  Piney was rather morose and indignant
at the fate that had made the first Hancock child
a girl and the second one a boy.

"Honey'll like the horses and the traveling,
but what does he know about land and
learning about everything?  He's only fourteen."

But Honey did not appear to be worrying.
He sat between Ralph and Helen, and really
looked like another boy in his new suit of clothes
with his hair cut properly.  Helen was quite
gracious to him, and Jean gave him a second
helping of walnut cream cake.

"We're going to miss you, Ralph," Mrs. Robbins
said, smiling over at him.  She had heard
the new business arrangement whereby Greenacres
was to become really the nest.  It had been
her suggestion first that Ralph give the place to
Mrs. Hancock, but since she had decided she
would rather have the sale price instead, a wave
of relief had swept over the Motherbird.  The
roomy old mansion had been a haven of refuge
to her and her brood during the storm stress, and
now that fair weather was with them, she found
herself greatly attached to it.

Ralph colored boyishly.  He could not bring
himself even to try and express just what it had
meant to him, this long summer sojourn with
them at Greenacres.  He had come east a
stranger, seeking the fields that had known his
mother's people, and had found the warmest kind
of welcome from the newcomers in the old home.
He looked around at them tonight, and thought
how much he felt at home there, and how dear
every single face had grown.

First there was Mr. Robbins's thin, scholarly
one with the high forehead and curly dark hair
just touched with gray, his keen hazel eyes behind
rimless glasses, and finely modeled chin.  Then
the Motherbird, surely she was the most gracious
woman he had ever known excepting his own
mother.  Her eyes were so full of sympathy and
understanding that they sometimes made him feel
about ten again, and as if he wanted to lean
against her shoulder the way Doris did, and be
comforted.  Just the mere sound of her soft,
engaging laugh made trouble seem a very
unimportant thing in life.  And Jean, almost
seventeen, already a replica of her mother in her quick
tenderness and her looks.  Ralph's eyes lingered
on her.  She was a mighty sweet little princess
royal, he thought.  Then Kit, imperious, argumentative
Kit, so full of energy that she was like
a Roman candle.

It had been Kit's voice that had spoken the
first words of welcome to him the night of his
arrival.  He thought he should always remember
her best as she had stepped out of the shadows
into the moonlight and given him her hand in
comradely fashion.

Helen beamed on him from her place next her
mother.  He came as near being a knight errant
as any that had come along the highway so far,
and Helen would have had him in crimson hose
and plumed cap if possible.  To her Saskatoon
meant nuggets and gold dust, and it did no good
at all for Jean to tell her she would have to
adventure along the trail farther north before she
would find gold, and that the only gold where
Ralph lived was the gold of ripening harvest
fields, miles upon miles of them.

Doris snuggled against his shoulder after
dinner and told him over and over again to send her
a tame bear, one that she could bring up by hand
and train.

"Well, I guess you'll have your hands full,
Ralph," Cousin Roxana exclaimed, "if you fill
all these commissions.  I declare it seems as if
you belonged to all of us."

The days that followed were very lonely ones
without Honey and Ralph.  Hedda's big brother
came to work at Greenacres.  He was a strong,
big, silent boy named Eric.  About the only
information even Kit was able to glean from him
was that he had gone barefooted in the snow in
Iceland and often stood in the hay in the barn
to get warm.

The first week of August brought Gwen
Phelps, and that auspicious event should have
satisfied anyone's craving for novelty.

"I don't know why it is that Gwen always riles
me, as Cousin Roxy says," Kit told Jean after
they were in bed the night of Gwen's arrival,
"unless it is the way she acts.  You know what I
mean, Jeanie, as if she were the queen, and the
queen could do no wrong.  Helen kowtows to
her until I could shake her.  Did you hear her
telling that she was going to Miss Anabel's
School out at Larchmont-on-the-Sound?  It's
fifteen hundred for the term, and extras, and
it's nearly all extras.  I know a girl who went
there--"

"Kit, you're getting to be as bad a gossip as
Mrs. Ricketts," Jean declared merrily.

"Well, I don't care.  It isn't the way to bring
a girl up.  What if her father were to lose
everything like Dad, and she'd have to pitch in and
work, what on earth could she do?"

"Solicit customers for Miss Anabel," laughed
Jean.  "Go to sleep, goose, and don't covet your
neighbor's automobile nor his daughter's extras."

But before the week was over, Gwen was running
around in a middy blouse, short linen skirt,
and tennis shoes like the rest of them.  She and
Sally struck up a fast friendship.  The sight of
a girl hardly any older than herself handling
most of the cooking and housework in a large
family left a lasting impression on Gwen, and she
respected Sally thoroughly.

"Why, she bakes the bread and cake and
everything, and even does the washing," she told
Helen.  "And she says it isn't hard once you get
the swing of it.  Hasn't she wonderful hair,
Helen?  It's coppery gold in the sun.  Think of
her in dull green velvet with a golden chain
around her waist like Melisande."

"Wouldn't it look cute over the wash machine?"
Kit agreed beamingly.  "Gwennie, you'll have
to learn the fitness of things if you live out here."

"I think I'd like to live here," Gwen replied
stoutly.  "I like it better than the mountain
resort where we went last summer down in North
Carolina.  But of course you couldn't stay up
here in the winter time."

"We are going to, though," Kit said.  "Right
here, with five big fires going, and cord upon cord
of wood going up in smoke.  If you come up
then, Gwen, we'll promise you some of the finest
skating along Little River you ever had, and
plenty of sleigh rides."

"You haven't a car now, have you?"

"Oh, but I could have shaken her for that,"
Kit said wrathfully, later on.  "When she knew
we had to sell ours to her father."

"But she didn't mean anything, Kit," Helen
argued.  "I think you're awfully quick tempered."

"I'm not.  I'm sweet and bland in disposition.
Don't mind me, Helenita darling.  I'm only
madly jealous because I want everything that
money can buy for Mumsie and Dad and all of
us.  I do get so tired of doing the same thing
day after day.  I'll bet a cookie even Heaven
would be monotonous if it were just some golden
clouds and singing all the time.  I hope there'll
be work to do there."

Jean drove them down to the station, and when
she returned the house seemed quite empty
without Helen and Gwen.  But she was soon too
busy to miss them.

Kit had been lent to Cousin Roxana for a few
days to help her with her canning and preserving.
Doris had her hands full with a new calf, so
only Jean was left to help her mother study out
the problem of new fall dresses to be evolved from
last year's left overs.

"When the royal family lose their throne and
fortune they always have to wear out their old
royal raiment before they can have anything new,
Mother dear.  One peculiar charm of living up
here is that you are about five years ahead of
Gilead styles.  Kit will look perfectly stunning
in that smoke gray corduroy of mine and she
may have my old blue fox set too.  I'm going to
make my chinchilla coat do another winter, and
fix over my hat till I defy anyone to recognize it.
Hiram gave me a couple of beautiful white wings.
I don't know whether they came off a goose or a
swan--no, a swan's would be too large, wouldn't
they?  Anyhow, they are lovely and I shall wear
them and feel like the Winged Victory."

Mrs. Robbins smiled happily at her eldest.
They were in the sunny sitting-room, surrounded
by patterns and pieces.  The scent of camphor
was in the room, for Jean had been unpacking
furs and hanging them out to air.

"Clothes seem of such secondary importance in
the country, probably as they were intended to
be.  Cousin Roxy said the other day the only
fashion she ever bothered about was whether her
crown of glory would be becoming to her, because
she hadn't the slightest idea how to put on a halo
and she'd probably get it on hind side before in
the excitement of the moment.  Isn't she comical,
Jean?  But her heart's as big as the world."

Jean sat on the floor straightening out
patterns that had become crumpled in packing.

"I wonder why she never married, Mother.
She's so efficient and cheery."

"She was engaged," answered Mrs. Robbins.
"Your father has told me about it.  To Judge
Ellis."

"Judge Ellis?"  Jean dropped her hands into
her lap and looked up in amazement.  "Why,
the very idea!"

"Have you ever met him, dear?"

"No, not him, but his grandson Billie Ellis.
We met him when we went on the hike over to
Mount Ponchas.  He must have married some
one else then, didn't he?"

"I believe so.  They had a dispute a few days
before they were to have been married, and
Cousin Roxana broke the engagement.  They
never spoke to each other afterwards.  She
wanted to go up to Boston on her wedding trip
and on to Concord from there, and the Judge
wanted to go to New York, as he had some
business to settle there and he thought he could
attend to it on the honeymoon trip.  Roxana said
if he couldn't take time away from his business
long enough to be married, she wouldn't bother
him to marry her at all.  Even now it's rather
hard deciding which one was right.  I'm inclined
to think the very fact that they could have a
dispute about such a subject shows they were
unfitted for each other.  If they had really loved,
she would not have cared where the honeymoon
was held, and he would have granted any desire
of her heart."

"Well, if that isn't the oddest romance!
Won't Kit love it."

"I hardly think I would talk much about it,
dear.  Roxy has never even mentioned it to
me and it might hurt her feelings.  She's such
a dear soul I wouldn't worry her for anything."

So when Kit returned home from Maple Lawn,
Jean told her nothing, but Kit brought her own
news with her.

"What do you suppose, Jeanie.  We were
rummaging in the garret after carpet rags and
there are old chests up there, and Cousin Roxy
told me I could look in them at the old linen sheets
and things, and in one I found"--Kit paused
for a good effect--"wedding clothes!"

"I know," Jean said.

"You know?  Why didn't you tell me, then?"

"Mother thought I had better not."

"Humph.  I found it out just the same, didn't
I?  But she wouldn't tell me who he was, and I
coaxed and coaxed.  I think he must have been a
soldier who died in the Civil War."

"Oh, Kit, when Cousin Roxy's only fifty-two!
Do figure better than that.  You'll have her like
the Dauphins, betrothed when they were about
three years old."

"And another thing I found out.  Who do you
suppose comes to see her regularly?  The Billie
person.  She lets him run all over the house, and
likes him immensely.  We got real well
acquainted.  He calls her Aunt Roxy, and if you
could ever see the amount of doughnuts and
cookies and apple pie and whipped cream that boy
consumes, you'd wonder how he ever managed to
get home!  They must starve him over at the
Judge's.  Cousin Roxy says he's so stingy that
he'd pinch a penny till the Indian squealed."

Jean was fairly aching to tell all she knew, but
a promise was a promise, and she kept it.  That
night, though, she dreamt that the Judge and
Cousin Roxy were being married and that she
was chasing them around with large portions of
apple pie and whipped cream.  Kit heard her
say in her sleep, very plaintively,

"Please take it."

"Take what, Jeanie?" she asked sleepily, but
Jean slumbered on without revealing the secret.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ROXANA'S ROMANCE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX


.. class:: center medium bold

   ROXANA'S ROMANCE

.. vspace:: 2

Two weeks before school opened Helen came
home.  She was not changed at bit, Doris said
admiringly, just as if she had been gone a year.

"Oh, I like it here so much better than at the
Cove," she told them.  "I wouldn't give our
precious Greenacres for all the North Shore.
Only I do kind of wonder about school, Mother dear."

"Doris will go to the District school at the
village and Kit and Helen can drive over to the
High School together.  It is only five miles, and
they can arrange to put the horse up at one of the
stables.  In severe weather Eric will take them over."

Jean was silent for a few moments.  Right
ahead of them she could see the winter.  It would
take many cords of wood to heat the big house
thoroughly.  There would be plenty of potatoes
and winter vegetables down in the cellar, plenty
of jellies and preserves and pickles, but the
running expenses were still to be considered, and
Eric's wages, and feed for the pony and Buttercup.

"Mother," she said suddenly when they were
alone, "have we really any money at all to
depend on?  Please don't mind my asking.  I
think about it so much."

"I don't mind, daughter.  Aren't we all part
of the dear home commonwealth?  Nearly all
that Father had saved has dwindled away during
his illness.  Stocks have depreciated badly the
past year.  Several that we depended on are not
paying dividends at all, and may never recover.
We have just about enough cash from the sale of
the automobile and other things, Father's law
books and some jewels that I had--"

"Mother!"  Jean sprang to her side, and
clasped her arms close around her.  She knew
how precious many of the old sets of jewelry had
been, things that had come from her grandmother
on her mother's side.  "Not the old ones?"

"No.  I saved those," the Motherbird smiled
back bravely.  "They are for you girlies.  But
I had my earrings and two rings which Father
had given to me and I sold those.  Oh, don't look
so blue, childie."  She framed Jean's anxious
face in her two hands.  "Jewelry doesn't amount
to anything at all unless it has some dear
associations.  Do you know the old Eastern legend, how
the Devas, the bright spirits, drove the dark evil
spirits underground and in revenge they
prepared gold and silver and precious stones to
ensnare the souls of men?  I was very glad indeed
to turn those diamonds into Buttercup and
Princess and many other things that have made our
new home happier."

"Wouldn't it make a lovely fairy story," Jean
exclaimed, smiling through her tears.  "The
beautiful queen with a magic wand touching her
diamonds and turning them into a cow and a pony
and household helps."

"Then," continued her mother, "you know I
have a half interest in the ranch in California.
That brings in a little, not much, because it isn't
a rich ranch by any means, just a big happy-go-lucky
one that Harry, my brother, runs.  I hope
that you girls will go there some time and meet
him, for he is a splendid uncle for you all.  I
receive about a thousand a year from that.  It isn't
a cattle ranch.  Harry raises horses.  He is
unmarried, and lives there alone with Ah Fun, a
Chinese cook, and his men.  I used to go out to
the ranch summers when I was a girl.  We lived
near San Francisco."

"And now you're clear away over here on a
Connecticut hilltop."

"Dear, I would not mind if it were a hilltop in
Labrador, if there are any there, or Kamchatka
either, so long as I was with your father.  When
you love completely, Jean, time and space and all
those little limitations that we humans feel, seem
to fall away from your soul."

It seemed to Jean as though her mother's face
was almost illumined with love as she spoke, so
radiant and tender it looked.  She laid her cheek
against the hand nearest to her.

"You make me think of something that John
Burroughs wrote, precious Mother mine, something
I always loved.  It is called 'Waiting.'  May
I say it to you?"

She repeated softly and slowly:

   |  "Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
   |    Nor care for wind or tide or sea;
   |  I rave no more 'gainst time or tide,
   |    For lo! my own shall come to me.

   |  "I stay my haste, I make delays,
   |    For what avails this eager pace?
   |  I stand amid the eternal ways,
   |    And what is mine shall know my face.

   |  "Asleep, awake, by night or day,
   |    The friends I seek are seeking me.
   |  No wind can drive my bark astray,
   |    Or change the tide of destiny.

   |  "What matter if I stand alone,
   |    I wait with joy the coming years;
   |  My heart shall reap where it has sown,
   |    And garner up its fruit of tears.

   |  "The waters know their own and draw
   |    The brook that springs in yonder height;
   |  So flows the good with equal law
   |    Unto the soul of pure delight.

   |  "The stars come nightly to the sky,
   |    The tidal wave unto the sea;
   |  Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high
   |    Can keep my own away from me."
   |

"Whoa, Ella Lou!" came Cousin Roxy's voice
out at the hitching post.  "Anybody home?"

Kit sprang out of the Bartlett pear tree and
Helen emerged from the vegetable garden as if
by magic.  The Billie person sat beside Cousin
Roxy as big as life, as she would have said, and
looked at the girls in friendly fashion.

"The Judge is very sick," Miss Robbins began
without preamble.  "I'm going down there with
Billie, and I may have to stay over night.  He's
pretty low, I understand, and wants me, so I
suppose I'll have to go.  Good-bye.  If you've
got any tansy in the garden, Betty, I'd like to
take it down."

Jean hurried to get a bunch of the desired herb,
and Mrs. Robbins stepped out beside the carriage.

"Is he very sick, really, Roxy?" she asked.

"Can't tell a thing about it till I see him, and
then maybe not.  A man's a worrisome creetur
at best and when he's sick he's worse than a sick
turkey.  I suppose it's acute indigestion.  Dick
Ellis always did think he could eat anything he
wanted to and do anything he wanted to, and the
Lord would grant him a special dispensation to
get away with it because he was Dick Ellis.  I
guess from all accounts he hasn't changed much.
I'll get a good hot mustard plaster outside, and
calomel and castor oil inside, and tansy tea to
quiet him, and I guess he'll live awhile yet.  Go
'long, Ella Lou."

"Well, of all things, Mother," Jean exclaimed,
laughing as she dropped into the nearest porch
chair.  "And they haven't spoken to each other
in over thirty years.  I think that's the
funniest thing that's happened since we came
here.  I want to go and tell Dad.  He'll love that."

"What is it?" Kit teased.  "I think you might
tell us too.  I didn't know that Cousin Roxy
knew the Judge."

"They were engaged years ago, dear," Mrs. Robbins
explained, "and quarrelled.  That is all.
Now he thinks he is dying and has sent for her.
And I suppose underneath all her odd ways, that
she loves him after all."

It was the first romance that had blossomed at
Gilead Center and the girls felt as eager over it
as though the participants had been twenty
instead of fifty years of age.  They waited eagerly
for Ella Lou's white nose to show around the
turn of the drive, but night came on and passed,
and it was well into the next afternoon before
Billie drove in alone.

"Grandfather'd like to have Mr. Robbins come
down and draw up his will.  Cousin Roxy says
he's been a lawyer, and there isn't another one
anywhere around."

"But, Billie, he isn't strong enough," began
Mrs. Robbins.  She was sitting out on the broad
veranda, a basket of mending on her lap, and in
the big steamer chair beside her was Mr. Robbins.
"Is the Judge worse?"

"Oh, no, he's better.  Aunt Roxy fixed him
right up.  He'd just eaten too much, she said."

"I think I should like to go, dear," said
Mr. Robbins.  "You could go with me, or Jean, and
I should like to meet him again.  I knew him
when I was a boy up here."

It was his first trip away from the house since
they had moved there, but now that the time had
come, it seemed an easy thing to do, as if the
strength had been granted to him to meet just
such a crisis.  Mrs. Robbins accompanied him,
and they drove over through the village and up
two miles beyond until they came to the Judge's
home, a large square colonial residence on a hill,
surrounded by tall elms and rock maples.  The
green blinds were all carefully closed excepting
in the south chamber where Roxy held supreme
sway now.  She sat by his bedside, wielding a
large palm leaf fan, spick and span in her dress
of white linen, and there was a bunch of dahlias
on the table.

"Come in, come in, boy," the Judge said in his
deep voice.  He stretched out his hand to
Mr. Robbins, and nodded his head.  Such a fine old
head it was, as it lay propped up on the big
square feather pillows, a head like Victor Hugo's
or Henri Rochefort's.  The thick curly white
hair grew in deep points about his temples, and
his moustache and imperial were white and curly
too.  There was a look in his eyes that told of an
indomitable will, but they softened when they
rested on his visitor.

"Sit down, lad; no, the easy chair.  Roxy, give
him the easy one.  So.  Well, they try their
best to get us, don't they?  I thought last night
would be my last."

"Oh, fiddlesticks," laughed Miss Robbins.
"Just ate too much, and had a little attack of
indigestion, Dick.  You'll live to be eighty-nine
and a half."

The Judge's eyes twinkled as he gazed at her.

"Still contrary as Adam's off ox, Roxy.
Won't even let me have the satisfaction of
thinking you saved my life, will you?"

"A good dose of peppermint and soda would
have done just as well," answered Roxana
serenely, turning to introduce Mrs. Robbins.  "He
says he wants to make his will, but I think it's
only a notion, and he wants company.  Still I
guess we'll humor him.  It seems that he was
going to leave everything he had to me.  And I
just found him out in time.  The very idea when
he's got Billie, his own grandchild, flesh and
blood, and such a darling boy too.  He can leave
me Billie if he likes, but he can't leave me
anything else; so you make it that way, Jerry."

"Leave her Billie, Jerry," sighed the Judge,
"leave her Billie, and me too, if she'll take us
both."

"Wouldn't have you for a gift, Dick," she
answered, cheerful and happy as a girl as she looked
down at him.  "You're a fussy, spoiled, selfish
old man, just as you always was, and I couldn't
be bothered with you.  But I'll keep an eye on
you so you don't kill yourself before your time
with sweet corn and peach shortcake, though I
suppose it's a pleasant sort of taking off at that.
I'll take Billie and Betty with me around the
garden while you and Jerry fix up that will, and
mind you do it right.  Billie's going to have all
that belongs to him."

As the door closed behind her, the Judge
winked solemnly at Mr. Robbins.

"Finest woman in seven counties.  Ought to
have been the mother of heroes and statesmen,
but there she is, mothering Billie and bossing me
to her heart's content.  Do you think she'd marry
me, Jerry?"

"I don't know, Judge," Mr. Robbins answered,
smiling.  "Roxy's odd."

"Well, maybe so.  Go ahead and make the
will as she says.  Everything to Billie, and make
her guardian.  All except," he stopped and his
eyes twinkled merrily, "the house in Boston.
Jerry, lad, it's got all our wedding furniture still
in it just as it was thirty years ago.  I bought it
and moved the stuff up there after she gave me
the mitten, and it's waited for her to change her
mind these many years.  I married for spite, and
my poor wife died after Billie's father was born.
Served me right, I guess.  Anyhow, the house
is there and she can take it or leave it as she likes."

So the will was drawn up and Mrs. Gorham
and Mrs. Robbins witnessed it.  Billie, standing
down in the garden, showing Miss Robbins the
flowers, did not realize what was happening.  He
only knew that somehow the barriers of ice were
lifted between himself and his grandfather, and
that a new era had dawned for all of them.

He watched them drive away, and went back
upstairs to the long corridor.  Roxana heard his
step and opened the door of the sickroom.

"Come in here, Billie dear," she said.  It was
the first time that Billie had ever been in his
grandfather's room.  He stood inside the door,
a sturdy, manly figure, barefooted and tanned,
with eyes oddly like those old ones that surveyed
him from the pillow.  He hesitated a moment,
but the Judge put out his hand, a strong bony
one, yellowed like old ivory, and Billie gripped it
in his broad boyish one.

"I'm awfully glad you're better, Grandfather,"
he said, a bit shyly.

"So am I, Billie.  Last night I thought my
hour had come, but I guess it was only a warning.
A meeting with the Button Moulder perhaps.
Do you know about him?  No?  You must read
'Peer Gynt.'  A boy of your age should be well
up on such things."

"And when has he had any chance to get well
up on anything, I'd like to know?" demanded
Roxana, in swift defense of her favorite.  "The
boy finished the district school a year ago.  Been
learning everything he knows since then from
Ben, your hired help.  If the Lord has spared
you for any purpose, Dick, it is to bring up Billie
right and teach him all you know."

"Well, well, quit scolding me, Roxy.  Do as
you like with him.  I'll supply the money."  The
Judge pressed Billie's hand almost with
affection.  "What do you want to be, lad?"

"A lawyer or a naturalist," said Billie promptly.

"Be both.  They're good antidotes for each
other.  Talk it over with him, Roxy, and do as
you think best."

He closed his eyes, and Billie took it as a
signal to leave the room, but the Judge spoke
again.

"Where you do sleep, Bill?"

Billie colored at this.  It was the first time
anyone had ever called him Bill.  He felt two
feet taller all at once.

"In the little bed-room over the east 'ell,' sir."

"Change your belongings to the room next this.
It faces the south and has two bookcases in it
filled with my books that I had at college.  You
will enjoy them."

Billie went out softly, down the circular
staircase to the lower hall and, once outdoors, on a
dead run for the barn.  Ben was husking corn
on the barn floor, sitting on a milking stool with
the corn rising around him in billows, whistling
and singing alternately.

Billie poured out his news breathlessly, and
Ben took it all calmly.

"Well, I'm glad for ye.  I always believed the
Judge would come out of his trance some day and
do the proper thing.  That Miss Roxy's a sightly
woman.  Knows just how to take hold.  Guess
she could marry the Judge tomorrow if she
wanted to.  Mrs. Robbins is a fine woman too.
I never see her before."

Somehow this didn't seem to fit in with Billie's
mood, and he left the barn.  All the world looked
different to him.  He was wanted, really wanted,
now.  He wasn't just somebody the Judge had
taken in because they were related and he had to
out of pride.  He was to have the big south
chamber right next the Judge's own room and
study all he wanted to.  Best of all, since he had
grasped that yellow old hand in his, he knew that
he could go to him with anything and that he
really was going to be a grandfather to him.

It was nearly two miles over to Greenacres if
he went cross lots, but he started.  The goldenrod
was high and in full bloom on every hand and
purple asters crowded it for room.  The apple
trees held ripening fruit, and the fragrance of
Shepherd Sweetings and Peck's Pleasants was
in the air.  It was the last week in August when
all the summerland seemed to rest after a good
work done, and the hush of harvest time was on
the earth.

In the woods he startled a doe and two fawns
and they leaped ahead of him through the brush.
Farther along in the pines a partridge whirred
up under his nose almost, and coaxed him away
from her young.  Some young stock, Jersey
heifers and a few Holsteins, grazed in the woods,
and lifted grave eyes to watch him pass.  Usually
he would notice them, but today all he thought
of was the Judge's words, and the longing to talk
them over with somebody.

"Why, there's Billie," Kit exclaimed, looking
up from some apples she was paring for pies.
Helen was reading on the circular seat that was
built around one of the old elms back of the house.
"Come over here and help."

Billie climbed the stone wall and came, flushed
and triumphant.  Throwing himself down on the
grass beside Kit, he told what had happened, and
she made up for all that Ben had lacked in
enthusiasm and imagination.

"Billie Ellis," she cried, setting down the pan
of apples, and hugging her knees ecstatically.
"Isn't that wonderful?  Why, you can be
anything at all now that you want to be.  Oh, I'm
so glad for you!"

Billie looked at her peacefully.

"I knew you'd take it like that," he said.  "I
just wanted to tell somebody who would almost
bump the stars over it, the way it made me feel.
Kit, you're a good old pal, know it?"

"Thank you, kind sir, thank you."  Kit spread
out her blue chambray skirt and dropped a low
curtsey.  "When you come into your kingdom,
forget not your humble handmaid, Prince Otto."

"Who was he?" demanded Billie hungrily.
"Gee, I'm tired hearing of people all the time
that I don't know about.  I'm going to read my
head off now."

"So do, child, so do," laughed Kit.  "He was a
king who left his throne to wander among his
people and see how they lived."

"It must have been awfully hard to go back
and stay on the throne.  I want to study hard
and be somebody that Grandfather will be proud
of, but I like everyday folks mighty well."

Helen dropped her book and shook back her
curls from her face.  She had hardly ever noticed
him before, but now he seemed more interesting.
Still Kit was forever spending the largesse of her
sympathy on anyone who needed it just as Doris
did on animals and birds and chickens.  So after
a moment she went on with her book, "Handbook
of Classical History," preparing for her entry
into High School with Kit the following week.
The joys and sorrows of the Billie person had
small place in her mind.

But Kit took him into the kitchen and gave
him a big square of gingerbread with whipped
cream on it, and listened to him plan out the
future without a single word of depreciation or
discouragement.  The world was golden, and Fortune
had handed him a lighted flambeau and told
him to take his place with the other Greek lads
and race for the prize.

"I just know you'll win out, Billie," she told
him confidently, when she said good-bye on the
back steps.  "Come down any time and we'll
help you out on your studies."

Jean and Doris had gone to the village for
some groceries.  Cousin Roxy was coming to
take supper with them.  Kit set the table, with
sprays of early asters in the center, singing softly
to herself Cousin Roxy's favorite hymn.

   |  "I've reached the land of corn and wine,
   |    And all its riches freely mine,
   |  Here shines undimmed one blissful day,
   |    For all my night has passed away.
   |      Oh, Beulah land, sweet Beulah land--"
   |

"Does it seem like that to you, child?" asked
her mother, coming lightly down the long
staircase and into the dining-room, mellow with late
afternoon sunlight.

"It's everything all rolled up in one," Kit
answered happily.  "It's Beulah Land and the
Land of Heart's Desire and the Promised Land,
it's the whole thing in one, Mother dear.  Don't
you feel that way too?"

And with her arm around the second daughter,
the Motherbird led her out on the wide veranda.
They could see for miles, up and down the valley
and over the distant hills.  Helen dropped her
book when she saw them, and came up the steps
to hug up close too, on the other shoulder.  And
down the river road they heard Jean and Doris
driving and singing as they came.

"Remember what we called them when we first
came up, girls?" asked Mrs. Robbins.  "The hills
of rest.  Somehow when I look at them, the
winter doesn't frighten me at all.  They look as if
they could shelter us.

   |  "'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,
   |    From whence cometh my help,'"

she quoted softly.  "They have given us security
and happiness."

"And Dad's health," added Kit.  "We've all
worked hard, but I do think we've got some
results anyway, don't you, Helen?"

"Lots of preserves," said Helen dreamily.

Cousin Roxana joined them, chin up and smiling.

"He's sound asleep," she said.  "Now that
everything's kind of quieted down, I don't mind
telling you something.  After Billie had gone,
the Judge and I talked over things before I had
Ben hitch up Ella Lou, and I don't know but
what I'll have to move over there and take care
of the two of them.  Land knows they need it."

"Oh, Cousin Roxy, marry the Judge?" gasped Kit.

"Well, I might as well," laughed Roxana.
"We've wasted thirty years now, and he'll fret
and fuss for thirty more if I don't marry him.
I'll sell Maple Lawn, or you folks can have it if
you like, rent free."

There was a moment's hesitation.  No words
were needed though.  With two pairs of arms
pressing her until they hurt, the Motherbird said
gently that she thought the Robbins would winter
at Greenacres.

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::