FALCON BOOKS

_Jean Craig In New York_

BY KAY LYTTLETON

When lovely Jean Craig moved with her family to Woodhow farm in
Connecticut, she thought she was giving up her art lessons forever. And
then suddenly the opportunity came to go to New York to study, and she
went to live with her cousin Beth in the suburbs of New York. These
months were an exciting interlude in her life. She loved seeing her old
friends again, going to parties, and meeting new people, among them
Aldo Thomas, an artist from Italy.

_Jean Craig in New York_ tells of Jean’s adventures in the city,
but it is also the story of the Craigs who meet life’s adventures with
gaiety and courage.


Other FALCON BOOKS for Girls:

  JEAN CRAIG GROWS UP
  JEAN CRAIG FINDS ROMANCE
  PATTY AND JO, DETECTIVES




[Illustration: There sat a robust, middle-aged newcomer.]




  _JEAN CRAIG
   IN NEW YORK_

  by KAY LYTTLETON

  [Illustration: FALCON BOOKS]

  THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY

  CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK




  Falcon Books
  _are published by_ THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
  _2231 West 110th Street · Cleveland 2 · Ohio_

  W 2

  COPYRIGHT 1948 BY THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY

  MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




Contents


   1. Jean Finds a Stranger              9

   2. New York Cousins                  23

   3. Exhibit A                         38

   4. Christmas at the Ellis Place      52

   5. New York Dreams Come True         61

   6. Leaving Home                      75

   7. Aldo from Italy                   82

   8. Jean Meets a Contessa             94

   9. Letters from Home                109

  10. At the Art Academy               122

  11. The Sculptured Head              136

  12. From Out of the West             148

  13. Spring Picnic                    158

  14. Billie’s Crisis                  172

  15. Fire!                            190

  16. Future Plans                     205




JEAN CRAIG IN NEW YORK


1. Jean Finds a Stranger


It was just five days before Christmas when a pink express card arrived
in the noon mail. The Craigs knew there must be something unusual
in the mail, for Mr. Ricketts, the rural free delivery carrier, had
lingered at the end of the drive.

Jean, the oldest of the four children, slipped into a coat and stadium
boots and ran down the drive to see what he wanted.

“There’s something for you folks at the express office, I guess. If
it’s anything heavy I suggest you go down and get it today. Looks like
we’d have some snow before nightfall.” He waited while Jean glanced at
the card. “Know what it is?”

“Why, no, I don’t believe I do,” she answered. “We’ve gotten all our
Christmas packages. Maybe they’re books for Dad.”

“Like enough,” said Mr. Ricketts. “I didn’t know. I always feel a
little bit interested, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” laughed Jean, as he started his truck. She hurried back
to the house, her head down against the wind. The front door banged as
Kit, fifteen and two years younger than Jean, let her in, her hands
floury from baking.

“For Pete’s sake, why do you stand talking all day to that old gossip?
Any mail from the West?”

The previous spring, the Craig family had moved to Elmhurst,
Connecticut, because of Mr. Craig’s health. Due to a war injury, he
had required a complete rest. At the suggestion of his cousin Rebecca,
the family had left Long Island to live on a farm. Rural living was
far different from anything Jean, Kit, thirteen-year-old Doris, and
eleven-year-old Tommy were used to, but they grew to love it more and
more as they made new friends and discovered the never-ending surprises
that the country held for them.

As told in _Jean Craig Grows Up_, the family met their landlord,
Ralph McRae, a young good-looking boy of twenty-four, from Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, who was immediately attracted to Jean. When he returned
to his western ranch, he took Buzzy Hancock, his cousin and Kit’s best
friend, back with him. Now, Jean was finding it hard to wait for the
summer to come when Ralph and Buzzy would return.

With a letter from Ralph in her hand, Jean answered Kit’s questions
hurriedly. “Mr. Ricketts only wanted to know about an express package,
whether it was heavy or light, where it came from, and if we expected
it.” She piled the rest of the mail on the dining room table. “There is
no mail from Saskatoon for you, Kit, only for me.”

“Oh, I thought maybe Buzzy might have written to me. The mug, he
promised to send me a silver fox skin for Christmas, if he could find
one. I’m going to give up waiting for it. With Christmas five days
away, he surely would have sent it by now.”

Kit’s face was perfectly serious. Buzzy had asked her before he left
Elmhurst what she would like best, and she had told him. The others
laughed at her, but she held firmly to the idea that if it were
possible, Buzzy would get it for her.

Jean was engrossed in a five-page letter from Ralph and had paid no
attention to Kit’s remarks. She finished reading the letter, full of
Christmas wishes and regret for having to be away from her, especially
during the holiday season, and opened another from one of the students
at the Academy back in New York. The previous winter, Jean had studied
art there and had been sorry to give it up.

“Peg Moffat is taking up impressionism.” Jean turned back to the first
page of the letter she had been reading. “She says she never fully
realized before that art is only the highest form of expressing your
ideals to the world at large.”

“Tell her she’s all wrong.” Kit looked up from her seed catalogues.
“Becky told me the other day she believes schools were first invented
for the relief of distressed parents just to give them a breathing
spell, and not for kids at all.”

“Still, if Peg’s hit a new trail of interest, it will make her think
she’s really working. Things have come to her so easily, she doesn’t
appreciate them. Perhaps she can express herself now.”

“Express herself? For gosh sakes, Jeannie, tell her to come up here,
and we’ll let her express herself all over the place. Gee! Just smell
my mince pies this minute. Isn’t cooking an expression of individual
art too?” And Kit made a beeline for the oven in time to rescue four
mince pies.

“Who’s going to drive down after the package?” asked Mrs. Craig from
the doorway. “I want to send an order for groceries too and you’ll want
to be back before dark.”

“I’m terribly sorry, Mom,” called Kit from the kitchen, “but Lucy and
some of the girls are coming over and I promised them I’d go after
evergreen and Princess pine. We’re getting it for wreaths and stars to
decorate the church.”

“Tommy and I’ll go. I love the drive.” Jean handed Peg’s letter over
to Kit to read, and gave just a bit of a sigh. Nobody could possibly
have sustained any inward melancholy at Woodhow. There was too much
to be done every minute of the day. Still, Peg’s letter did bring
back vividly memories of last winter at the Art Academy. Perhaps the
students did take themselves and their aims too seriously, yet it had
all been wonderful and interesting. Even in the peaceful countryside,
Jean missed the companionship of girls her own age, with the same
tastes and interests as herself.

She called to Tommy, who was down in the basement making a model
airplane, and told him to come with her to the express office. He came
upstairs under protest, his face smeared with dirt.

“Gosh, Tommy, you look a sight. If you’re going to come with me, you’ll
have to wash first. Look at your hands.”

“Gee, whiz,” he grumbled, “what’s the use in washing all the time. A
guy only gets dirty again, anyway.” But he leisurely went upstairs and
came down again after what seemed to Jean an unnecessarily long time.

“What took you so long, anyway? Hurry up. I don’t want to be driving
after dark.”

“OK, OK, I’m coming.” And the two went out the back door to the garage.

It was only a drive of seven miles to Nantic, but the children never
tired of the ride. It was so still and dreamlike with the early winter
silence on the land. At the mill house, Lucy Peckham waved to them.
Along the riverside meadows they saw the two little Peckham boys
driving sheep with Shep, their black and white dog, barking madly at
the foot of a tall hickory tree.

“Look, Tommy, see those red berries in that thicket overhanging the
rail fence? Will you get out and pick me some?” Jean stopped the car
and Tommy jumped out. A car passed going the other way while Jean was
waiting, and she recognized the driver as the stationmaster’s son.

“Somebody is coming home for Christmas, I guess,” she remarked to Tommy
when he came back.

Jean drove on with her chin up, cheeks rosy and eyes alert. When they
drove up in front of the express office, Tommy didn’t want to wait in
the car, so they walked up the steps of the office together. Just as
they opened the door, they caught the voice of Mr. Briggs, the agent,
not pleasant and sociable as it usually was, but sharp and high-pitched.

“Well, you can’t loaf around here, son, I tell you that right now. The
minute I spied you hiding behind that stack of ties down the track,
I knew you’d run away from some place, and I’m going to find out all
about you and let your family know you’re caught.”

“I ain’t got any family,” came back a boy’s voice hopefully. “I’m my
own boss and can go where I please.”

“Did you hear that, Jean?” exclaimed Mr. Briggs, turning around at the
opening of the door. “Just size him up, will you. He says he’s his own
boss, and he’s no bigger than a pint of cider. Where did you come from?”

“Off a freight train.”

Mr. Briggs leaned his hands on his knees and bent down to get his face
on a level with the boy’s.

“Isn’t he slick, though? Can’t get a bit of real information out of
him except that he liked the looks of Nantic and dropped off the slow
freight when she was shunting back and forth up yonder. What’s your
name?”

“Jack. Jack Davis.” He didn’t look at Mr. Briggs, but off at the
hills, windswept and bare except for their patches of green pines.
There was a curious expression in his eyes, Jean thought, not
loneliness, but a dumb fatalism. As Becky might have said, it was as if
he had known nothing but trouble and didn’t expect anything better.

“How old are you?”

“’Bout nine or ten.”

“What made you drop off that freight here?”

Jack was silent and seemed embarrassed. Tommy, who had been eyeing him
curiously, responded instantly.

“Because you like it best, isn’t that why?” he suggested eagerly.
Jack’s face brightened up at that.

“I liked the looks of the hills, but when I saw all them mills, I--I
thought I’d get some work maybe.”

“You’re too little,” Mr. Briggs cut in. “I’m going to hand you right
over to the proper authorities, and you’ll land up in the State Home
for Boys if you haven’t got any folks of your own.”

Jack met the shrewd gray eyes doubtfully. His own filled with tears
that rose slowly and dropped on his worn short coat. He put his hand up
to his shirt collar and held on to it tightly as if he would have kept
back the ache there, and Jean’s heart could stand it no longer.

“I think he belongs up at Woodhow, please, Mr. Briggs,” she said
quickly. “I know Mother and Dad will take him up there if he hasn’t any
place to go, and we’ll look after him. I’m sure of it. He can drive
back with us.”

“But you don’t know where he came from nor anything about him, Jean. I
tell you he’s just a little tramp. You can see that, or he wouldn’t be
hitching on to freight trains. That’s no way to do if you’re decent
God-fearing folks, riding freights and dodging trainmen.”

“Let me take him home with me now, anyway,” pleaded Jean. “We can find
out about him, later. It’s Christmas Friday, remember, Mr. Briggs.”

There was no resisting the appeal that underlay her words, and Mr.
Briggs relented gracefully, although he maintained the county school
was the proper receptacle for all such human rubbish.

Jean laughed at him happily, as he stood with his feet wide apart, his
hands thrust into his coat pockets.

“It’s your own affair, Jean,” he returned dubiously. “I wouldn’t stand
in your way so long as you see fit to take him along. But he’s just
human rubbish. Want to go, Jack?”

And Jack rose, wiping his eyes with his coat sleeve, and glared
resentfully back at Mr. Briggs. He took the smaller package, Tommy the
other, and the three left the office.

“Guess we can all squeeze into the front seat,” Jean said. “We’re going
down to the store, and then home.”




2. New York Cousins


Doris caught the sound of the squeaking snow under the tires of the car
as it came up the drive about four o’clock. It was nearly dark. She
was standing in the living room lighting the Christmas candles in the
windows, and she ran to the front door.

“Hi,” called Jean when she saw Doris in the doorway, “we’re back.”

Tommy jumped out of the car at the back door and took Jack by the hand,
giving it a reassuring squeeze. He was shivering, but Tommy pulled
him into the kitchen where Kit was getting supper. Over in a corner
lay the pile of evergreens and pine that she and the other girls had
gathered that afternoon.

“Look, Kit,” Tommy cried, quite as if Jack had been some wonderful
gift instead of a dusty, tired, limp little derelict of fate and
circumstance. “This is Jack and he’s come to stay with us. Where’s Mom?”

One quick look at Jack’s face checked all mirthfulness in Kit. There
were times when it was better to say nothing. She was always intuitive,
quick to catch moods in others and understand. This case needed her
mother. Jack was fairly blue from the cold, and there was a pinched,
hungry look around his mouth and nose that made Kit leave her currant
biscuits.

“Upstairs with Dad. Beat it up there fast and call her, Tommy.” She
smiled at Jack, a radiant, comradely smile that endeared Kit to all she
met. “We’re so glad you’ve come home,” she said, drawing him over to
the stove. “You sit up on that stool and get warm.” She slipped into
the pantry and dipped out a mug of rich, creamy milk, then cut a wide
slice of warm gingerbread. “There now. See how that tastes. You know,
it’s the funniest thing how wishes come true. I was just longing for
somebody to sample my cake and tell me if it was good. Is it?”

Jack drank nearly the whole glass of milk before he spoke, looking over
the rim at her with very sleepy eyes.

“It’s awful good,” he said. “I ain’t had anything to eat since
yesterday morning.”

“Oh, dear,” cried Kit. This was beyond her. She turned with relief at
Mrs. Craig’s quick light step in the hall.

“Yes, dear, I know. Jeannie told me.” She went straight over to the
stool. And she did just the one right thing. That was the marvel of
Mrs. Craig, she always seemed to know naturally what a person needed
most and gave it to them. She took Jack in her arms, his head on her
shoulder, patting him while he began to cry chokingly.

“Never mind, child, now,” she told him. “You’re home.” She lifted him
to her lap and started to untie his worn sodden shoes. “Tommy, get your
slippers, dear, and a pair of wool socks. Warm the milk, Kit, it’s
better that way. And you cuddle down on the couch by the living room
fire, Jack, and rest.”

Mrs. Craig had gone into the living room and found a gray woolen
blanket in the wall closet off the little side hall. From the chest of
drawers she took some of Tommy’s outgrown winter underwear. Supper was
nearly ready, but Jack was to have a warm bath and be clad in clean
fresh clothing. Tucking him under one wing, as Kit said, she left the
kitchen, and Jean told the rest how she had rescued him from Mr.
Briggs’s righteous indignation and charitable intentions.

“Got a good face and looks you square in the eye,” said Doris. “I’d
take a chance on him any day, and he can help around the place a lot,
splitting kindlings and shifting stall bedding and what not. He and
Tommy seem to be good friends already.”

The telephone bell rang and Jean answered. Rambling up through the
hills from Norwich was the party line, two lone wires stretching from
telephone pole to telephone pole. Its tingling call was a welcome
sound. This time it was Rebecca at the other end. After her marriage
to Judge Ellis, they had taken the long-deferred wedding trip up to
Boston, visiting relatives there, and returning in time for a splendid
old-fashioned Thanksgiving celebration at the Ellis home. Maple Grove,
Becky’s former home, was closed for the winter but Matt, the hired
man, decided to stay on there indefinitely and work the farm on shares
for Miss Becky, as he still called her.

“And like enough,” Becky said comfortably, when she heard of his
intentions, “he’s going to marry somebody himself. I wouldn’t put it
past him a bit. I wish he’d choose Cindy Anson. There she is living
alone down in that little bit of a house, running a home bakery when
she’s born to fuss over a man. I told Matt when I left, if I were he
I’d buy all my pies and cake from Cindy, and then when I drove by
Cindy’s I just dropped a passing word about how badly I felt at leaving
such a fine man as Matt to shift for himself up at the house, so she
said she’d keep an eye on him.”

Over the telephone now came her voice, vibrant and cheery, and Jean
answered the call.

“Hello, yes, this is Jean. Mother’s right in the living room. Who?
Oh, wait till I tell the kids.” She turned her head, her brown eyes
sparkling. “New York cousins over at the Judge’s. Who did you say they
are, Becky? Yes? Beth and Elliott Newell. I’ll tell Dad right away.
Tomorrow morning early? That’s swell. ’Bye.”

Before the others could stop her, she was on her way upstairs. The
largest, sunniest room had been given over to her father. The months of
relaxation and rest up in the hills had worked wonders in Mr. Craig’s
health. As old Dr. Gallup was apt to say when Kit rebelled at the
slowness of recovery, “Can’t expect to do everything in a minute. Even
the Lord took six days to fix things the way he liked them.”

Instead of spending two-thirds of his time in bed or on the couch now,
he would sit up for hours and could walk around the wide porch, or even
along the garden paths before the cold weather set in. But there still
swept over him without warning the great fatigue and weakness, the
dizziness and exhaustion which had followed as one of the lesser ills
in his nervous breakdown.

He sat before the open fire now, reading from one of his favorite news
magazines, with Miss Tilly purring on his knees. Tommy had found Miss
Tilly one day late in October, loafing along the barren stretch of road
going over to Gayhead school. She was a yellow kitten with white nose
and paws. Tommy, forever adopting stray animals, had tucked her up in
his arms and taken her home. Becky had looked at the yellow kitten with
instant recognition.

“That’s a Scarborough kitten. Sally Scarborough’s raised yellow kittens
with white paws ever since I can remember.”

“Had I better take it back?” asked Tommy anxiously.

“Land, no, child. It’s a barn-cat. You can tell that, it’s so
frisky. Ain’t got a bit of repose or common sense. Like enough Mrs.
Scarborough’d be real glad if it had a good home. Give it a name, and
feed it well, and it’ll slick right up.”

So Miss Tilly had remained, but not out in the barn. Somehow she had
found her way up to Mr. Craig’s room and its peace must have appealed
to her, for she would stay there for hours, dozing with half-closed
jade-green eyes and incurved paws.

“Dad!” Jean exclaimed, entering the quiet room like an autumn flurry of
wind. “What do you think? Becky just phoned, and she wants me to tell
you two New York cousins are there. Beth and Elliott Newell. Do you
remember them?”

“Of course,” smiled Mr. Craig. “It must be little Cousin Beth and her
boy. I used to visit at her old home when I was a little boy. She
wanted to be an artist, I know.”

“Oh, Dad, an artist? And did she study and succeed?”

“I think so. I remember she lived abroad for some time and married
there. Her maiden name was Lowell, Beth Lowell.”

“Did she marry an artist too?” Jean leaned forward from her low chair
facing him, her eyes bright with romance, but Mr. Craig laughed.

“No, indeed, she married a schoolmate from New York. He went after her,
for I suppose he tired of waiting for Beth’s career to come true. They
had a very happy life together and I think Beth misses him very much
since he died about two years ago. Listen a minute.”

Up from the lower part of the house floated strains of music. Surely
there had never issued such music from a mouth organ. The tune was a
mournful blues that had a haunting melody.

“It must be Jack,” Jean said, smiling mischievously up at her father,
for he had not yet met Jack. She ran out to the head of the stairs.

“Can Jack come up, Mom?”

Up he came, fresh from a tubbing, wearing a shirt and a pair of
overalls that belonged to Tommy. His straight blond hair fairly
glistened from its recent brushing and his face shone, but it was
Jack’s eyes that won him friends at the start. Mixed in color they
were, like a moss agate, with long dark lashes, and just now they were
filled with contentment.

“They wanted me to play for them downstairs,” he said gravely, stopping
beside Mr. Craig’s chair. “I can play lots of tunes. My mother gave me
this last Christmas.”

This was the first time he had mentioned his mother and Jean followed
up the clue gently.

“Where, Jack?”

He looked down at the floor, shifting his weight from one foot to
the other. “Over in Providence. She got sick and they took her to the
hospital and she never came back.”

“Not at all?”

He shook his head. “Then afterwards--” much was comprised in that one
word and Jack’s tone, “afterwards we started off together, my Dad and
me. He said he’d try and get a job on some farm with me, but nobody
wanted him this time of year, and with me too. And he said one morning
he wished he didn’t have me bothering around. When I woke up on the
freight yesterday morning, he wasn’t there. Guess he must have dropped
off. Maybe he can get a job now.”

So it slipped out, Jack’s personal history, and the father and
daughter wondered at his sturdy acceptance of life’s discipline. Only
nine, but already he faced the world as his own master, fearless and
optimistic. All through that first evening he sat in the kitchen on
the high stool, playing tunes he had learned from his father. Tommy was
entranced and begged him to teach him how to play.

After supper the girls and Tommy drew up their chairs around the dining
room table as usual. Here every night the three younger ones prepared
their lessons for the next day. Jean generally read or sat with her
father awhile, but tonight she answered Peg Moffat’s letter. It was
read over twice, the letter that blended in so curiously with the
coming of the cousins from New York.

Ever since Jean could remember she had drawn pictures. No one guessed
how she loved the paintings in New York’s art galleries. They had
seemed so real to her, the face of a Millet peasant lad crossing a
stubble field at dawn; a Breton girl knitting as she walked homeward
behind some straying sheep; one of Frans Hals’ Flemish boys, his chin
pressed close to his violin, his deep eyes looking at you from under
the brim of his hat.

Once she had read of Albrecht Dürer, painting his masterpieces while he
starved. How the people whispered after his death that he had used his
heart’s blood to mix with his wonderful pigments. Of course it was only
a story, but Jean remembered it. When she saw a picture that seemed to
hold one and speak its message of beauty, she would say to herself,
“There is Dürer’s secret.”

And some day, if she ever could put on canvas the dreams that came to
her, she meant to use the same secret.

“I do think Socrates was an old bore,” said Kit, yawning and stretching
her arms, after a struggle with her homework. “Always mixing in and
contradicting everybody and starting something. No wonder his wife was
cranky.”

“He died beautifully,” Doris replied. “Something about a sunset and all
his friends around him.”

“If you’ve finished your homework, why don’t you go to bed?” Jean told
them. She finished her letter alone. It was not easy to write it. Peg
wanted her to come down for the spring term. She could board with her
if she liked. Expenses were very light.

Any expense would be heavy if piled on the monthly budget of Woodhow.
Jean knew that. So she wrote back with a heartache behind the plucky
refusal, and stepped out on the moonlit porch for a minute. It was
clear and cold after the light snowfall. The stars were very faint.
From the river came the sound of the waterfall.

“You stand steady, Jean Craig,” she said, between her teeth. “Don’t you
dare be a quitter. You’ve got to see this winter straight through.”




3. Exhibit A


After her marriage to Judge Ellis, Becky had taken Ella Lou, her big
collie dog, from Maple Grove over to the large white house behind its
towering elms.

“I’ve had that dog for ten years and never saw another one like her
for intelligence,” she would say, her head held a little bit high, her
glasses halfway down her nose. “I told the Judge if he wanted me he’d
have to take Ella Lou too.”

So it was Ella Lou’s familiar black nose that poked around the door
the following morning when the New York cousins came over to get
acquainted.

Jean never forgot her introduction to Beth Newell. She was about
forty-seven then, with her son Elliott fully five inches taller than
herself, but she looked about twenty-seven. Her feathery brown hair,
her wide gray eyes, and quick, sweet laughter, endeared her to Jean
right away.

Elliott was about fifteen, not one single bit like his mother, but
broad-shouldered and blond and sturdy. It was so much fun, Kit said, to
watch him take care of his mother.

“Where’s your high school out here?” he asked. “I’m at prep school
specializing in math.”

“And how any son of mine can adore mathematics is beyond me,” Beth
laughed. “I suppose it’s reaction. Do you like math, Jean?” She put her
arm around the slender figure nearest her.

“I should say not,” Jean answered immediately, and then all at once,
out popped her heart’s desire before she could check the words.
Anybody’s heart’s desire would pop out with Beth’s eyes coaxing it.
“I--I want to be an artist.”

“Keep on wishing and working then, dear, and as Becky says, if it is to
be it will be.”

While the others talked of New England farms, these two sat together on
the couch, Jean listening eagerly and wistfully while her cousin told
of her own girlhood aims and how she carried them out.

“We didn’t have much money, so I knew I had to win out for myself.
There were two boys to help bring up, and Mother was not well, but I
used to sketch every spare moment I could, and I read everything on
art I could find, even articles from old magazines in the attic. But
most of all I sketched anything and everything, studying form and
composition. When I was eighteen, I taught school for two terms in the
country. Dad had said if I earned the money myself, I could go abroad,
and how I worked to get that first nest egg.”

“How much did you get a week?”

“Twelve dollars, but my board was only three and a half in the country,
and I saved all I could. Of course, at that time, it was cheaper to
go abroad--and easier, too. I wouldn’t recommend your trying to go to
Europe right now, but there are plenty of good schools and teachers
in this country. If you really do want work and kind of hunt a groove
you’re fitted for, you’ll always find something to do.”

Jean was leaning forward, her chin propped on her hands. “Yes, I know,”
she said. “Do go on, please.”

“Ellen Brainerd, the teacher I studied under in Boston at one time, was
one of New England’s marvelous spinsters with the far vision and cash
enough to make a few of her dreams come true. Every year she used to
take a group of art students to Europe, and with her encouragement I
went the third year, helping her with a few of the younger ones, and
paying part of my tuition that way. And oh,” Beth’s eyes were sparkling
as she recalled her student days, “we set up our easels in the fountain
square in Barcelona and hunted Dante types in Florence. We trailed
through Flanders and Holland and lived for a time in Paris.”

“And you painted all those places?” exclaimed Jean. “I’ve wanted so
much to go.”

“Well, I tried to,” Beth looked ruefully into the open fire. “Yes, I
tried to paint like all the old masters and new masters, from Rembrandt
to Degas. I did everything except try to develop a technique of my own.”

“But isn’t it important to study the techniques of the masters?”

“Yes, of course it is, but it was long after I came back home that I
realized this. After David came over and stopped my career by marrying
me I came back home. We lived out near New Rochelle and I began
painting things of everyday life just as I saw them, the things I
loved. It was our old apple tree out by the well, steeped in full May
bloom, that brought me my first prize.”

“Gee, after Paris and all the rest!”

“Yes. And the next year they accepted our red barn in a snowstorm. I
painted it from our kitchen window. Another was a water color of our
Jersey calves standing knee deep in the brook in June. That is the kind
of picture I have succeeded with. I think because, as I say, they are
part of the home life and scenes I love best and so I have put a part
of myself into them.”

Dürer’s heart’s blood, Jean thought to herself. “You’ve helped me so
much, Beth,” she said aloud. “I was just longing to go back to the art
school right now, and throw up everything here that I ought to do.”

“Keep on sketching every spare moment you can. Learn form and color and
composition. Things are only beautiful according to the measure of our
own minds. I’d like you to come to New York and study there. You could
stay with me and share my studio when you weren’t in classes.”

“I’d love to come when Mother can spare me.” Jean’s eyes sparkled at
this prospect.

“Well, do so, my dear,” Becky’s hands were laid on her shoulders from
behind. “It’s a poor family that can’t support one genius.” She laughed
in her full-hearted, joyous way. “Now, listen, all of you. I’ve come to
invite you to have Christmas dinner with us.”

“But, Becky,” began Mrs. Craig, “there are so many of us--”

“Not half enough to fill the big old house. Some day after all the
children are married and there are plenty of grandchildren, then we
can talk about there being too many, though I doubt it. There’s always
as much house room as there is heart room, if you only think so. Bring
along the little one too.” She smiled over her shoulder at Jack,
sitting in his favorite corner in the kitchen working industriously on
one of Tommy’s model airplanes, and he gave a funny little one-sided
grin back in shy return. “Billie’s going away to school after New
Year’s, did I tell you?”

“Oh, golly,” cried Doris, so abruptly that everyone laughed at her.
“Doesn’t it seem as if boys get all of the adventures of life just
naturally.” Billie was the Judge’s grandson and Doris’s pal. He was
two years older than Doris but they liked the same things and had been
great friends ever since Doris first found his secret hide-out.

“He’s had adventures enough, but he does need the friendship of boys
his own age. I don’t want him to be tied down with a couple of old
folks like the Judge and myself. You’re never young but once. Besides,
I always did want to go to these college football games and have a boy
of mine in the huddle.”

“Gol--lee!” Doris exclaimed after the front door had closed on the
last glimpse of Ella Lou’s plumed tail going out to the car. “Doesn’t
it seem as if Becky leaves behind her a big sort of glow? She can say
more nice things in a few minutes than anybody I ever heard. Except
about Billie’s going away. I wonder why he didn’t come down and tell me
himself.”

“Well, you know, Doris,” Kit remarked, “you haven’t a mortgage on
Billie.”

“Oh, I don’t care if he goes away. It isn’t that,” Doris answered
easily. “I wouldn’t like a boy that couldn’t hold his own with the
other guys. Jean, did you realize the full significance of Becky’s
invitation? No baking or cooking. No working our fingers to the bone
for dinner on Christmas Day. I think she’s simply wonderful.”

Jean laughed and slipped up the back stairs to her own room. She felt
around in her desk until she found her folio of sketches. The dining
room was deserted excepting for Doris watering the rows of geraniums in
the bay window, so Jean sat down to look over her old art work. Doris
went upstairs to see her father, and Kit appeared with a frown on her
face, puzzling over a knitting book.

“I hate the last days before Christmas,” she said savagely. “What on
earth can we concoct at this last minute for Beth? I think I’ll knit
her a pair of white cable-stitch gloves. If I can’t finish them in time
I’ll give her one with the promise of the other. What can I give to
Judge Ellis?”

“Something useful,” Jean answered.

“I can’t bear useful things for Christmas presents. Abby Tucker says
she never gets any winter clothes till Christmas and then all the
family unload useful things on her. I’m going to send her a bottle
of perfume in a green leather case. I’ve had it for months and never
touched it and she’ll adore it. I wish I could think of something for
Billie too, something he’s never had and always wanted.”

“He’s going away,” Jean mused. “Why don’t you fix up a book of
snapshots taken all around here. We took some marvelous ones this
summer.”

“A boy wouldn’t like that.”

“He will when he’s homesick.” Jean opened her folio and began turning
over her art school studies, mostly conventionalized designs from
her beginnings in textile design. After her talk with Beth they only
dissatisfied her. Suddenly she glanced up at the figure across the
table, Kit with rumpled short curls, her bangs in disarray, and an
utterly relaxed posture, elbows on the table, her feet sprawled in
front of her. Jean’s pencil began to move over the back of her drawing
pad. She was pleased to see how easy it was to catch Kit’s expression.
It wasn’t so hard, the ruffled hair, the half-averted face. Kit’s face
was such an odd mixture of whimsicality and determination. The rough
sketch grew and all at once Kit glanced up and caught on to what was
going on.

“Oh, it’s me, isn’t it, Jean? I wish you’d conventionalized me and
embellished me. I’d like to look glamorous and sophisticated. That’s
lovely, specially with the nose screwed up that way and my forehead
wrinkled. I like that, it’s so subtle. Anyone getting one good look at
the helpless frenzy in that downcast gaze--”

“Oh, Kit, be good,” laughed Jean. She held the sketch away from her
critically. “Looks just like you.”

“OK, hang it up as ‘Exhibit A.’ I don’t mind. There’s a look of genius
to it at that.”

“Naturally, I had to include that too,” replied Jean teasingly. Just
then Mrs. Craig came into the room.

“Mom, look what my sister has done to me,” Kit cried tragically. Jean
said nothing, only the color rose slowly in her cheeks as her mother
stood looking at it.

“It’s the first since I left school,” she said, half-ashamed of the
effort and all it implied.

“Finish it up, dear, and let me have it.”

“Oh, would you really like it, Mom?”

“Love it,” answered her mother promptly. “And don’t give up hope.
Perhaps we may be able to squeeze in the spring term after all.”




4. Christmas at the Ellis Place


It took two trips in the car to transport the Christmas guests and
gifts from Woodhow over to the Ellis place. It was one of the few
pretentious houses in Elmhurst. For seven generations it had been
in the Ellis family. The old house sat far back from the road with
a double drive curving like a big U around it. Huge elms stood
protectingly before it, and behind lay a succession of buildings from
the old forge, no longer used, to the smokehouse. One barn stood across
the road and another at the top of the lane.

Doris and Tommy were the first to run up the steps and into the center
hall, almost bumping into Billie as he ran to meet them. Behind him
came Mrs. Ellis in a soft gray suit. Her white blouse was fastened at
the throat with a cameo pin. “Come right in, all of you,” she called
happily. “Do stop jumping up and down, Tommy, you make me nervous.
Merry Christmas.”

Up the long colonial staircase she led the way into the big guest room.
Down in the library, Beth was playing softly on the big square piano,
_Oh Little Town of Bethlehem_. The air was filled with the scent
of pine and hemlock, and enticing odors of things cooking stole up the
back stairs.

Doris and Billie retreated to a corner with the latter’s book supply,
with Tommy and Jack peering over Billie’s shoulder to get a look too.
It was hard to realize that this was really Billie, the Huckleberry
Finn of the summer before. All of the old self-consciousness and
shy abstraction had gone. Even the easy comradely manner in which he
leaned over the Judge’s chair showed the good understanding and sure
confidence between the two.

“Yes, he does show up real proud,” Becky agreed warmly with Mrs. Craig
when they were all downstairs before the glowing fire. “Of course,
we’re going to miss him when he goes away to school, but he’s getting
along splendidly. I want him to go where he’ll associate with plenty of
other boys. He’s lived alone with the ants and bees and rabbits long
enough.”

As the others went in to dinner Jean lingered behind a minute to glance
about the pleasant room. The fire crackled down in the deep old rock
hearth. In each of the windows a white candle was burning brightly.
Festoons of ground pine and evergreen draped the mantelpiece. Jean
gazed out at the somber, frost-touched garden. There wasn’t one bit of
peace in her heart, even while she fairly ached with the longing to be
like the others.

“You’re a coward, Jean Craig, a deliberate coward,” she told herself.
“You don’t like the country one bit. You love the city where
everybody’s doing something, and it’s just a rat race for all. You’re
longing for everything you can’t have, and you’re afraid to face the
winter up here. You might just as well tell yourself the truth. You
hate to be poor.”

There came a burst of laughter from the dining room and Kit calling to
her to hurry up. It appeared that Doris, the tender-hearted, had said
pathetically when Mrs. Gorham, the housekeeper, brought in the great
roast turkey, “Poor old General Putnam!”

“That isn’t the General,” Billie called from his place. “The General
ran away yesterday. First off, he lit up in the apple trees. Then as
soon as he saw Ben was high enough, off he flopped and made for the
corncrib. Just as he caught up with him there, he chose the wagon sheds
and perched on the rafters, and when he’d almost got hold of his tail
feathers, if he didn’t try the barn and all his flock after him, mind
you. So he thought he’d let him roost till dark, and when he stole in
after supper, the old codger had gone, bag and baggage. He’ll come back
as soon as he knows our minds aren’t set on wishbones.”

“Then who is this?” asked Kit, quite as if it were some personage who
rested in state on the big willow platter.

“That is some unnamed patriot who died for his country’s good,” said
the Judge solemnly. “Who says white meat and who says dark?”

“For pity’s sake, child, what are you crying about?” exclaimed Becky
after dinner while they were all sitting around the table talking
leisurely.

Jack sobbed sleepily, “I--I don’t know.”

“He’s lonely for his own family,” Doris spoke up.

“I ain’t neither,” groaned Jack, “it’s too much mince pie.”

So under Becky’s directions, Billie took him up to his room, and
administered “good hot water and soda.”

“Too bad, ’cause he missed seeing all the things taken off the tree,”
said Becky, laying aside Jack’s presents for him, a long warm knit
muffler from herself, a fine knife from the Judge with a pocket chain
on it, a package of Billie’s books that he had had as a child, and ice
skates from the Craigs. After much figuring over the balance left from
their Christmas money they had gone together on the skates for him,
knowing he would have more fun and exercise out of them than anything,
and he needed something to bring back the sparkle to his eyes and the
color to his cheeks.

“Put them all up on the bed beside him, and he’ll find them in the
morning,” Billie suggested. “If you’ll let him stay, Mrs. Craig, I’ll
bring him over.”

Tommy was the most excited over his Christmas presents. Kit and Jean
had given him a hockey stick and puck to use on the river when it was
frozen over, his mother and father a ping pong set that he was bursting
to set up in the basement, a model airplane kit from Doris, and a pair
of argyle socks and Norwegian sweater from the Judge and Becky. But
Billie had given him his most coveted present, his own tame crow, Moki.
“Where’d you get the name from, Billie?” he asked.

Billie stroked the smooth glossy back of the crow fondly. “I found
him one day over in the pine woods on the hill. He was just a little
thing then. The nest was in a dead pine, and somebody’d shot it all to
pieces. The rest of the family had gone, but I found him fluttering
around on the ground, scared to death with a broken wing. Ben helped me
fix it, and he told me to call him Moki. You know he’s read everything,
and he can talk some Indian, Pequod mostly, he says. He isn’t sure but
what there may be some Pequod in him way back, he can talk it so well,
and Moki means ‘watch out’ in Pequod. I call him that because I used to
put him on my shoulder and he’d go anywhere with me through the woods,
and call out when he thought I was in danger.”

“How do you know what he thought?”

“After you get acquainted with him, you’ll know what he thinks too,”
answered Billie.

Always living in a little world of make-believe all her own, Doris
received mostly fairy tales and what Kit called “princess stories.”
Saved from the old home at Sandy Cove, her mother and father gave her
two glass lamps for her bureau and Jean had made the shades herself,
out of starched white dotted swiss. Becky had knit each of the girls
soft angora socks and mittens in matching pastels, and Beth gave them
old silver spoons that had been part of their great great-grandmother
Peabody’s wedding silver.

“When you come to New York,” she told Jean, “I’ll show you many of her
things.”

Jean nodded, remembering her longing to go away earlier in the evening.
But the look in her father’s face made her realize more than anything
that had happened in the long months of trial in the country, how
worthwhile was the sacrifice that had brought him back into his home
country for healing and happiness.




5. New York Dreams Come True


Christmas week had already passed when the surprise came. As Kit said
the charm of the unexpected was always catching you unaware when you
lived on the edge of nowhere.

Beth and Elliott had departed two days after Christmas for New York.
Somehow even Tommy could not get really acquainted with this new boy
cousin. Billie, once won, was a friend forever, but Elliott was a
smiling, confident boy, quiet and resourceful, with little to say.

By this time, Jean had settled down contentedly to the winter regime.
She was giving Doris piano lessons, and taking over more of the
household duties with Kit back at school. School had been one of
the problems to be solved that first year. Doris and Tommy went to
the District schoolhouse at the crossroads, a one-story, red frame
building. Doris had despised it thoroughly until she heard that her
father had gone there in his boyhood, and she had found his old desk
with his initials carved on it.

Kit was in high school, and the nearest one was over the hills six
miles away. Every morning, she caught the school bus at the end of the
drive. Mrs. Craig would often stand out on the wide porch in the early
morning and watch the three go off.

“I think they’re wonderfully plucky,” she said one morning to Jean. “If
they had been country girls, born and bred, it would be different, but
stepping right out of Long Island shore life into these hills, you
have all managed splendidly.”

“We’d have been a fine lot of quitters if we hadn’t,” Jean answered. “I
think it’s been much harder for you than for us, Mom.”

And then the oddest, most unexpected thing had happened, something that
strengthened the bond between them and made Jean’s way easier. Her
mother had turned and had met Jean’s glance with a telltale flush on
her cheeks and a certain whimsical glint in her eyes.

“Jean, do you never suspect me?” she had asked, half laughingly. “I
know just exactly what a struggle you have gone through, and how you
miss all that lies back in New York. I do too. If we could just divide
up the time, and live part of the year here and the other part back at
the Cove. I wouldn’t dare tell Becky that I had ever regretted, but
there are days when the silence and the loneliness up here seem to
crush so strongly in on one.”

“Oh, Mom! I never knew you felt like that.” Jean leaned her head
against her shoulder. “I’ve been horribly selfish, just thinking of
myself. But now that Dad’s getting strong again, you can go away, can’t
you, for a little visit anyway?”

“Not without him,” Mrs. Craig said decidedly. “Perhaps by next summer
we can, I don’t know. I don’t want to suggest it until he feels the
need of a change too. But I’ve been thinking about you, Jean, and I
want you to go to school in New York for a little while anyway. Beth
and I had a talk together before she left, and I felt proud of you,
when I heard her speak of your work. She says the greatest worry on her
mind is that Elliott has no definite ambition, no aim. He has always
had everything that they could give him, and she begins now to realize
it was all wrong.”

“But, Mother, how can I go and leave you?”

“I want you to, Jean. You have been a great help to me. Don’t think I
haven’t noticed everything you have done to save me worry, because I
have.”

“Well, you had Dad to care for--”

“I know, and he’s so much better now that I haven’t any dread left.”

Peg Moffat wrote after receiving her Christmas box from Jean. Jean had
gathered pine cones, ground pine, sprays of red berries, and little
winter ferns. It was one of several she had sent to friends in the city
for whom she felt she could not afford expensive presents.

Peg had caught the real spirit of it, and had written back urgently.
“You must run down if only for a few days, Jean. I put the pines and
other greens around the studio for decorations at Christmas and they
just talk at me about you all the time. Never mind about new clothes.
Come along.”

It was these same new clothes that secretly worried Jean all the same,
but with some new ribbon for two of her formals, her brown wool suit
cleaned, and a new feather for her hat, she felt she could make the
trip if it were only possible.

It was the letter that arrived the following day that really caused a
stir in the family. Beth wrote to Jean that there was a special course
beginning the following week at the Academy in textile designing. It
was only a two-months’ course so it wouldn’t be very expensive and Jean
could stay with her, eliminating the problem of board. “I really think
if you can possibly be spared from home at this time, it would be a
wise thing for you to enroll in the course. It is in the field you’re
interested in and you will learn both valuable and practical things
from it. Please write me immediately and say you’ll come.”

When Jean showed the letter to her mother, her answer was swift and
decisive. “An opportunity such as this cannot be ignored. Of course you
will go.”

The winter sunshine had barely clambered to the crests of the hills the
following morning when Becky drove up with Ella Lou.

“Thought I’d get an early start so I could sit awhile with you,” she
called breezily. “The Judge had to go to court at Putnam. Real sad
case, too. Some of our neighborhood boys in trouble. I told him not to
dare send them up to any State homes or reformatories, but to put them
on probation and make their families pay the fines.”

Kit was just putting on her stadium boots. “Oh, what is it, Becky?” she
called from the kitchen. “What’s the news?”

“Well, I guess it’s pretty exciting for the poor mothers.” Mrs. Ellis
put her feet up on the stool. “There’s been considerable things stolen
lately, just odds and ends of harness and bicycle supplies from the
store, and three hams from Miss Bugbee’s cellar, and so on; a little
here and a little there, hardly no more’n a real smart magpie could
make away with. But the men set out to catch whoever it might be, and
if they didn’t land three of our own boys. It makes every mother in
town shiver.”

“None that we know, are there?” asked Doris, with wide eyes.

“I guess not, unless maybe Abby Tucker’s brother Martin. There his
poor mother scrimped and saved for weeks to buy him a bicycle out of
her butter-and-egg money, and it just landed him in mischief. Off he
kited, first here and then there with the two Lonergan boys, and they
had a camp up toward Cynthy Allan’s place, where they played they were
cave robbers or something. I had the Judge up and promise he’d let them
off on probation. There isn’t one of them over fifteen, and Elmhurst
can’t afford to let her boys go to prison. And I shall drive over this
afternoon and give their mothers some good advice.”

“Why not the fathers too?” asked Jean. “Seems as if mothers get all the
blame when boys go wrong.”

“No, it isn’t that exactly. I knew the two fathers when they were
youngsters too. Fred Lonergan was as nice and obliging a lad as ever
you did see, but he always liked cider too well, and that made him lax.
I used to tell him when he couldn’t get it any other way, he’d squeeze
the dried winter apples hanging still on the wild trees. He’ll have to
pay the money damage, but the real sorrow of the heart will fall on
Emily, his wife. She used to be our minister’s daughter, and she knows
what’s right. And the Tucker boy never did have any sense or his father
before him, but his mother’s the best quilter we’ve got. If I’d been
in her shoes I’d have put Philemon Tucker right straight out of the
house just as soon as he began to squander and hang around the grocery
store swapping stories with men just like him. It’s her house from her
father, and I shall put her right up to making Philemon walk a chalk
line after this, and do his duty as a father.”

“Oh, you’re a glorious peacemaker,” exclaimed Mrs. Craig. “Hurry,
children, you’ll be late for school.” She hurriedly put the last
touches to three hearty lunches, and followed them out to the front
porch and watched them out of sight.

“Lovely morning,” said Becky, fervently. “The ice on the trees makes
the country look like fairyland.”

“And here I’ve been shivering ever since I got out of bed,” Jean cried,
laughingly. “It seemed so bleak and cheerless. You find something
beautiful in everything, Becky.”

“Well, happiness is a sort of habit, I guess, Jeannie. Come tell me,
now, how you are fixed about going away? That’s why I came down.”

“You mean--”

“I mean in clothes. Don’t mind my speaking right out, because I know
that Beth will want to take you places, and you must look right. And
don’t you say one word against it, Margaret,” as Mrs. Craig started
to speak. “The child must have her chance. Makes me think, Jean, of
my first silk dress. Nobody knew how much I wanted one, and I was
about fourteen, skinny and overgrown, with pigtails down my back. A
well-to-do aunt in Boston sent a silk dress to my little sister Susan
who died. I can see it now, just as plain as can be, a sort of dark
bottle-green with a little spray of violets here and there. Susan was
sort of pining anyway, and green made her look too pale, so the dress
was set aside for me. Mother said she’d let the hem down and face it
when she had time. But there was a picnic and my heart hungered for
that silk dress to wear. I managed somehow to squeeze into it, and slip
away with the other girls before Mother noticed me.”

“But did it fit you?” asked Jean.

“Fit me?” Becky laughed. “Fit me like an acorn cap would a bullfrog. I
let the hem down as far as I could, but didn’t stop to hem it or face
it, and there it hung, six inches below my petticoat, with the sun
shining through as nice as could be. My Sunday School teacher took me
to one side and said severely, ‘Rebecca Craig, does your mother know
that you’ve let that hem down without fixing it properly?’ Well, it did
take away my hankering for a silk dress. Now, run along upstairs and
get out all your wardrobe so we can look it over.”

Jean obeyed for somehow Becky swept away objections before her airily.
And the wardrobe was at a low ebb.

Becky dragged her chair over beside the couch now, and took inventory
of the pile of clothing Jean laid there.

“You’ll want a good knockabout sport coat like the other girls are
wearing. Then a couple of new sweaters and skirts for school. Now, what
about date dresses?”

Here Jean felt quite proud as she laid out her assortment. She and Kit
had always gone out a good deal at the Cove, and she had a number of
well-chosen, expensive dresses.

“They look all right to me, but I guess Beth will know what to do to
them, with a touch here and there. Well, if I were you, I’d just bundle
all I wanted to take along in the way of pretty things into the trunk
and let Beth tell you what to do with them. I’ll give you the money to
buy the other things you’ll need in New York. Their stores have more
selection than what we’ve got around here. Good heavens, child, you’ll
squeeze the breath out of me,” as Jean gave her a hug of thanks. “I
must be going along.”




6. Leaving Home


Thursday of that week was set for Jean’s departure. This gave very
little time for preparations, and Kit plunged into them with a zest and
vigor that made Jean laugh.

“Well, so little ever happens up here we just have to make the most of
goings and comings,” said Kit exuberantly. “And besides, I’m rather
fond of you, in an offhand sort of way.”

“Of course, we’re all glad for you,” Doris put in seriously. “It’s an
opportunity, Mom says, and I suppose we’ll all get one in time.”

Jean glanced up as they sat around the last evening, planning and
talking. Out in the side hall stood her trunk, packed, locked, and
strapped, ready for the early trip in the morning. Tommy was trying his
best to nurse a frost-bitten chicken back to life out by the kitchen
stove, where Jack was mending Doris’s skates. Kit and Doris were freely
giving her advice.

“Enjoy yourself all you can, but think of us left at home and don’t
stay too long,” advised Doris.

“Yes, and learn all about designing things for people. Personally I
don’t want to make things for people,” Kit said emphatically. “I want
to soar alone. I’m going with Sally to live on the top of a mountain.
But, gosh, I do envy you, Jean, after all. You must write and tell us
every single thing that happens, for we’ll love to hear it all. Don’t
be afraid it won’t be interesting. I wish you’d even keep a diary.
Buzzy told me once that his grandmother did, every day from the time
she was fourteen, and they had a perfectly awful time getting rid of
them when she died. Imagine burning barrels full of diaries.”

Tommy came out of the kitchen to tell them to be quiet. “I’ve just this
minute got that chicken to sleep. They’re such light sleepers, but I
think it will get well. It only had its poor toes frostbitten. Jack
found it on the ground this morning, crowded off the perch. Chickens
look so civilized, and they’re not. They’re regular savages.”

There flashed across Jean’s mind a picture of the evenings ahead
without the home circle, without the familiar living room, and the
other room upstairs where at this time her mother would be brushing out
her soft hair, and listening to some choice bit of reading Mr. Craig
had run across during the day and saved for her.

“I just wish I had a chance to go West like Sally,” Kit said suddenly.
“When I’m old enough, I’m going to take up a homestead claim and live
on it with a wonderful horse and some dogs, wolf dogs. I wish Sally’d
wait till we were both old enough, and had finished school. She could
be a forest ranger and I’d raise--”

“Ginseng,” Jean suggested mischievously. “Dopey. It takes far more
courage than that just to stick it out on one of these old barren
farms, all run-down and fairly begging for somebody to take them in
hand. What do you want to hunt a western claim for? Besides, I don’t
think there are any left anymore.”

“Space,” Kit answered with feeling. “I don’t want to see my neighbors’
chimney pots sticking up all around me through the trees. I want to
gaze off at a hundred hilltops, and not see somebody’s scarecrow
waggling empty sleeves at me. Sally and I have the spirits of eagles.”

“Isn’t that nice,” said Doris pleasantly. “It’ll make such a good place
to spend our vacations, kids. While Sally and Kit are out soaring, we
can fish and ride and have really swell times.”

“Cut it out,” Jean whispered, as Kit’s ire started to rise. “It’s
getting late, really, and I have to get up while it is still night, you
know. Good night all.”

The start next morning was made at seven, before the sun was up. The
tears were wet on Jean’s cheeks as she climbed into the seat beside
Kit, and turned to wave goodbye to the group on the porch. She had not
realized before what this first trip away from home meant.

“Write us everything,” called Doris, waving both hands to her.

“Come back soon,” yelled Tommy.

But her mother went back into the house in silence, away from the
living room into the study where Jean had kept her own bookcase, desk,
and a few choice pictures. A few old paintbrushes lay beside Jean’s
worn pigskin gloves on the table. Mrs. Craig picked up both, laid her
cheek against the gloves and closed her eyes. The years were racing
by so fast, so fast, she thought, and mothers must be wide-eyed and
generous and fearless, when the children suddenly begin to top heads
with one, and feel impatient to be out on their own.

Ready to try it alone, she thought. If it had been Kit now, she would
not have felt this curious little pang. Kit was self-sufficient and
full of buoyancy that was bound to carry her over obstacles, but
Jean was sensitive and dependent on her environment for spur and
stimulation. She heard a step behind her and turned eagerly as Mr.
Craig came into the room, looking for her. He saw the brushes and the
gloves in her hand, and the look in her eyes uplifted to his own. Very
gently he folded his arms around her, his cheek pressed close to her
brown hair.

“She’s only seventeen,” whispered Mrs. Craig.

“Eighteen in April,” he answered, “and dear, she isn’t trusting to her
own strength for the flight. Don’t you know this quiet little girl of
ours is mounted on Pegasus, and riding him handily in her upward trend?”

But there was no winged horse or genius in view to Jean’s blurred sight
as she watched the road unroll before her, and looking back, saw only
the curling smoke from Woodhow’s white chimneys.




7. Aldo from Italy


“This is truly beautiful,” Jean said, in breathless admiration, as
she laid aside her coat and hat, and stood in the big living room
in Hastings. The beautiful home not far from New York had been a
revelation to her. Overlooking the Hudson River, the view, although
totally different, reminded her a little of her former home at Sandy
Cove.

The center hall had a blazing fire in the big old rock fireplace, and
Victoria, a prize-winning Angora, opened her wide blue eyes at the
newcomer but did not stir. In the living room was another open fire.
Influence of an artist’s hand was quite evident in the details of the
room. There were flowering plants at the windows, and fresh roses on
the table in gracefully studied arrangements.

“You know, or maybe you don’t know,” said Beth, “that we have one hobby
here, raising flowers, and especially roses. We exhibit every year,
and you’ll grow to know them and love the special varieties just as I
do. You have no idea, Jean, of the thrill when you find a new bloom
different from all the rest.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised to find out anything new and wonderful about
this place.” Jean laughed, leaning back in the deep-seated chair. Like
the rest of the room’s furniture it was slipcovered in chintz, deep
cream, cross-barred in dull green, with splashy pink roses scattered
here and there. Two large white Polar rugs lay on the polished floor.

“If those were not members of the Peabody family, old and venerated,
they never would be allowed to bask before my fire,” Beth said. “But
way back there was an Abner Peabody who sailed the northern seas, and
used to bring back trophies and bestow them on members of his family as
future heirlooms. Consequently, we fall over these bears in the dark,
and bless Abner’s precious memory.”

After she was thoroughly warmed up and had drunk a cup of scalding tea,
Jean found her way up to the room that was to be hers during her visit.
It was the sunniest kind of a retreat in daffodil yellow and rich
brown. The furniture was all in warm, deep-toned ivory, and there were
springlike bouquets of daffodils everywhere.

“Gee, I think this is just darling,” Jean gasped, standing in the
middle of the floor and gazing around happily. “It’s just as if spring
were already here.”

“I put a drawing board here for you too,” Beth told her. “Of course
you’ll use my studio any time you like, but it’s handy to have a corner
all your own at odd times. I forgot to mention it before, but we’re
going to have a guest for the weekend. A boy whose parents I knew in
Sorrento years ago. His name is Aldo Thomas. His father was an American
sculptor who married an Italian Contessa. Aldo is also studying art
here in New York this winter and lives with his aunt. He has inherited
his father’s artistic talent so I know you will find much in common.
And I also think you’ll do each other a world of good.”

“How?”

“Well, you’re thoroughly an American girl, Jean, and Aldo is half
Italian. You’ll understand what I mean when you see him. He is
high-strung and temperamental, and you are so steady-nerved and
well-balanced.”

Jean thought over this last when she was alone, and smiled to herself.
Why on earth did one have to give outward signs of temperament,
she wondered, before people believed one had sensitive feelings or
responsive emotions? Must she wear her heart on her sleeve for a sort
of personal barometer? Peg Moffat was high-strung and temperamental
too. So was Kit. They both indulged now and then in mental fireworks,
but nobody took them seriously, or considered it a mark of genius. She
felt just a shade of half-amused tolerance toward this Aldo person who
was to get any balance or poise out of her own nature.

“If Beth knew for one minute,” she told the face in the oval mirror of
the dressing table, “what kind of a person you really are, she’d never
trust you to balance anybody’s temperament.”

But the following day brought a trim car to the door, and out stepped
Aldo. And Jean, coming down the wide center staircase, saw Beth before
the fire with a tall, thin figure, whose clothes seemed to hang on him
carelessly as if he wore them as a concession to convention.

“This is my cousin Jean,” said Mrs. Newell in her pleasant way. Aldo
extended his hand diffidently. “I want you two to be very good friends.”

“But I know, surely, we shall be,” Aldo said easily. And at the sound
of his voice Jean’s prejudices melted. He had very dark eyes with lids
that drooped slightly at the outer corners. His thin face emphasized
his prominent cheekbones and his skin was fair in spite of his Italian
heritage.

“Now, you won’t be treated one bit as guests,” Beth told them. “You
must come and go as you like, and have the freedom of the house. I
keep my own study hours and like to be alone then. Do as you like and
be happy. Run along, both of you.”

“She is wonderful, isn’t she?” Aldo said as they walked out to the
cliff above the river. “She makes me feel always as if I were a ship
waiting with loose sails, and all at once--a breeze--and I am on my way
again. You have not been to Sorrento, have you? You can see the little
fisher boats from our terraces. It is all so beautiful, but now the
villa is quite shabby and parts of it are gone. It was bombed during
the war and there are no materials to rebuild it. But it is still
beautiful.”

Jean was strangely charmed by him. He was so different from anyone
she had ever known. None of the boys she knew would have talked so
poetically, even if they had known the right words and phrases to use.
That would be sissy stuff.

“I wonder if you ever knew Peg Moffat. She’s a Long Island girl from
the Cove where I used to live, and she lived abroad every year until
the war came, for two or three months with her mother. She is an
artist.”

“I don’t know her,” Aldo shook his head doubtfully. “You see over
there, while we entertained a great deal, I was away at school in Milan
or Rome and scarcely met anyone excepting in the summertime, and then
we went to my aunt’s villa up on Lake Maggiore. Ah, but that is the
most beautiful spot of all. There is one island there called Isola
Bella. I wish I could carry it right over here with me and set it down
for you to see. It is all terraces and splendid old statuary, and when
you see it at sunrise it is like a jewel, it glows so with color.”

Jean stood looking down at the river, listening. There was always a
lingering love in her heart for the beauty and romance of Europe, and
especially of Italy. “I’d love to go there,” she said, with a little
sigh.

“And that is what I was always saying when I was there, and my father
told me of this country. I wanted to see it so. He would tell me of
the great gray hills that climb to the north, and the craggy broken
shoreline up through Maine, and the little handful of amethyst isles
that lie all along it. He was born in New Hampshire, at Portsmouth.
We are going up to see the house some day, but I know just what it
looks like. It stands close down by the water’s edge in the old part
of the town, and there is a big rambling garden with flagged walks.
His grandfather was a shipbuilder and sent his ships out all over the
world. And he had just one daughter. There was an artist who came up
from the south in one of his ships, and he was taken very ill. So they
took him in as a guest, and the daughter cared for him. And when he was
well, what do you think?”

“They married.”

“But more than that,” he said warmly. “He carved the most wonderful
figureheads for my great grandfather’s ships. All over the world they
were famous. His son was my father.”

It was indescribable, the tone in which he said the last. It told more
than anything else how much he admired this sculptor father of his.
That night Jean wrote to Ralph.

    Dearest Ralph,

    I know you’ll want to know all about my trip. Beth met me
    at Grand Central Station and we drove out here to Hastings.
    Honestly, Ralph, when I saw the house, I had to blink my eyes.
    It looks as if it belonged right out on the North Shore at the
    Cove. The lawn sweeps down at the back to the cliffs where you
    can look right down at the Hudson. And inside the house it is
    summertime even now. They have flowers everywhere you look,
    because they raise their own. Beth says she’ll give me slips
    from her rosebushes and I can start a sunken rose garden.

    A most interesting artist friend of Beth’s has come out to
    spend the weekend here. His name is Aldo Thomas--the Aldo
    because his mother is an Italian countess and the Thomas
    because his father is an American sculptor. He has been telling
    me all about Italy and his father’s statues.

    Monday I begin my course at the Academy and I am so excited,
    although it seems as though I have forgotten all I have
    learned. I have to keep reminding myself that all of this is
    really happening to me. I woke up this morning completely
    bewildered for I thought I was still back in Elmhurst.

    I hope to see Peg Moffat while I am here. Of course I shall
    probably see her at school, but I won’t have much opportunity
    to really talk to her there. She has a studio in Greenwich
    Village that I am simply dying to see.

    Even with all these new things to do and see and learn I still
    miss you terribly. And June seems such a long way off. I wish
    it were tomorrow that you were coming back so that you could
    enjoy this with me. But since that is impossible I shall write
    you everything that happens while I’m here.

    All my love,
                 Jeannie




8. Jean Meets a Contessa


“I’ve just had a telephone call from your aunt, the Contessa,” Beth
said to Aldo at breakfast Saturday morning. “She sends an invitation
to us for this afternoon, a private view of paintings and sculpture at
Henri Morel’s studio. She knew him in Italy and France, and he leaves
for the west coast on Monday. There will be a small reception and tea,
nothing too formal, Jean, so dress well, hold up your chin and turn out
your toes, and behave with credit to your chaperon. It is your debut.”

Aldo looked at her quite seriously, but Jean caught the flutter of fun
in her eyes, and knew it would not be as ceremonious as it sounded.
When she was ready that afternoon she slipped into Beth’s own bedroom,
at the south end of the house. Here were three rooms, all so different,
and each showing a distinct phase of character. One was her winter
studio. This was a large sunny room, paneled in soft-toned pine, with a
wood-brown rug on the floor, and all the treasures accumulated abroad
during her years there of study and travel. In this room Jean used to
find the girl Beth, who had ventured forth after the laurels of genius,
and found success awaiting her with love back in Hastings.

The second room was a private sitting room, comfortable furniture,
and window boxes filled with blooming hyacinths. Here were framed
photographs of family and friends, a portrait of Elliott over the desk,
his class colors on the wall, and intimate snapshots he had sent her.
This was the mother’s and wife’s room. And the last was her bedroom.
Here Jean found her dressing. All in black, with a bunch of violets
pinned to her waist. She turned and looked at Jean critically.

“I only had this new green suit,” said Jean. “I thought with a sort of
feminine blouse it would look all right.”

The blouse was white handkerchief linen with folded-back cuffs that
were edged with Irish crochet lace. Above it Jean’s eager face framed
in brown hair, her brown eyes, small imperative chin with its deep
cleft, and look of interest that Kit called “questioning curiosity,”
all seemed accentuated.

“It’s just right, dear,” said Beth. “Go get a yellow jonquil to wear.”

There was a clean smell of fresh snow in the air as they drove along
the highway to New York that afternoon. Once Aldo called out in
surprise. A pair of sparrows teetered on a fence rail, bickering with
each other.

“Ah, there they are,” he cried. “And in Italy now there would be no
snow. My father told me of the sparrows here. He said they were such
quarrelsome and saucy birds that he really didn’t like them when he
lived here. But now, not seeing them, he misses their chirping.”

“How queer it is,” Jean said, “I mean the way one remembers and loves
all the little things about one’s own country.”

“Not so much all the country. Just the spot of earth you spring from.
He loves New England.”

“And I love Long Island. I was born there, not at the Cove, but farther
down the coast near Montauk Point, and the smell of salt water and the
marshes always stirs me. I love the long green rolling stretches, and
the little low hills in the background like you see in paintings of
the Channel Islands and some of the ones along the Scotch coast. Just
a few straggly scrub pines, you know, and the willows and wild cherry
trees and beach plums.”

“Somewhere I’ve read about that--the earth’s hold upon her people. I’m
afraid I only respond to New York’s rolling country, too. I’ve been so
homesick abroad just to look at a crooked apple tree in bloom that I
didn’t know what to do. Where were you born, Aldo?”

“At the Villa Marina. Ah, but you should see it.” Aldo’s dark eyes
glowed with pride. “It is dull terra cotta color, and then dull green
too, the mold of ages, I think, like the under side of an olive leaf,
and flowers everywhere, and poplars in long avenues. My father laughs
at our love for it, and says it is just a moldy old ruin, but every
summer we used to spend there. Some day perhaps you could come to see
us, Jean. Would they lend her to us for a while, do you think, Mrs.
Newell?”

“I should love to. Isn’t it fun dreaming of impossible things like
this?”

“Sometimes they turn out to be very possible,” Beth returned,
whimsically. “Hopes to me are so tangible. We just set ahead of us the
big hope, and the very thought gives us incentive and endeavor and
punch. Plan from now on, Jean, for one spring in Italy. Then, maybe,
some spring you’ll find yourself there.”

They arrived just a little late at the Morel studio. Jean had expected
it to be more of the usual workshop, where canvases heaped against the
walls seemed to have collected the dust of ages, and a broom would have
been a desecration. Here, you ascended in an elevator, from an entrance
hall that Beth declared always made her think of an Egyptian tomb.

When they reached the ninth floor, they found themselves in the long
foyer of the Morel studio. Jean had rather a confused idea of what
followed. There was the meeting with Morel himself, stoop-shouldered
and thin, with his vivid foreign face, half-closed eyes, and sparse
gray hair. Near him stood Madame Morel, with a wealth of auburn hair
and big dark eyes. Aldo said to Jean just before they were separated,
“He loves to paint red hair, and Aunt Signa says she has the most
wonderful hair you ever saw.”

Beth had been taken possession of by a stout smiling young man with
horn-rimmed glasses and was already the center of a little group. Jean
heard his name, and recognized it as that of a famous illustrator. Aldo
introduced her to a tall girl in brown whom he had met in Italy, and
then somehow, Jean could not have told how it happened, they drifted
apart. Not but what she was glad of a breathing spell, just a chance
to get her bearings. Morel was showing some recent canvases, still
unframed, at the end of the studio, and everyone seemed to gravitate
that way.

Jean found a quiet corner just as someone handed her fragrant tea in
a little red and gold cup, and she was free to look around her. A
beautiful woman had just arrived. She was tall and past first youth,
but Jean leaned forward expectantly. This must be the Contessa. Her
gown seemed as indefinite and elusive in detail as a cloud. It was
dull blue violet in color, with a gleam of gold here and there as she
moved slowly toward Morel’s group. Under a wide-brimmed felt hat, the
same shade of blue violet, Jean saw the lifted face, with tired lovely
eyes, and close waves of pale golden hair. And this was not all. If
only Doris could have seen her, thought Jean. She had wanted a princess
from real life, or a countess, anything that was tangibly romantic and
noble, and here was the very pattern of a princess, even to a splendid
white Russian wolfhound that followed her with docile eyes and drooping
long nose.

“My dear, would you mind coaxing that absent-minded girl at the tea
table to part with some lemon for my tea? And the Roquefort sandwiches
are excellent too.”

Jean turned at the sound of the new voice beside her. There on the same
settee sat a robust, middle-aged latecomer. Her black coat was worn and
frayed, her hat altogether too youthful with its pink and purple roses
veiled in net. Jean saw, too, that there was a button missing from
her dress, and her collar was pinned at a slightly crooked angle. But
the collar was real lace and the pin was of old pearls and amethysts.
It was her face that charmed. Framed in an indistinct mass of fluffy
hair, mixed gray and blonde, with a turned-up, winning mouth, and
delightfully expressive eyes, it was impossible not to feel immediately
interested and acquainted.

Before long, Jean found herself indulging in all sorts of confidences.
They seemed united by a common feeling of, not isolation exactly, but
newness to this circle.

“I enjoy it so much more sitting over here and looking on,” Jean said.
“Beth, my cousin, knows everyone, of course, but it is like a painting.
You close one eye, and get the group effect. And I must remember
everything to write home to the girls and Tommy.”

“Tell me about them. Who are they that you love them so?” asked her new
friend. “I, too, like the bird’s-eye view best. I told Morel I did not
come to see anything but his pictures, and now I am ready for tea and
talk.”

So Jean told all about Woodhow and the family there and before she knew
it, she had disclosed too, her own hopes and ambitions, and perhaps a
glimpse of what it might mean to the others at home, if she, the first
to leave, could only make good. And her companion told her, in return,
of how sure one must be that the career decided upon was what one
really wanted before one gives up all to it.

“Over in France, and in Italy, too, but mostly in France,” she said, “I
have found girls like you who before the war were living on little but
hopes, wasting their time and what money could be spared them from some
home over here, following false hopes, and sometimes starving. It is
but a will-o’-the-wisp, this success in art, a sort of pitiful madness
that takes possession of our brains and hearts and makes us forget the
commonplace things in life that lie before us.”

“But how can you tell for sure?” asked Jean, leaning forward anxiously.

“Who can answer that? I have only pitied the ones who could not see
that they had no genius. Ah, my dear, when you meet real genius, then
you know the difference instantly. It is like the real gems and the
paste. There is consecration and no thought of gain. The work is done
irresistibly, spontaneously, because they cannot help it. They do not
think of so-called success, it is only the fulfillment of their own
visions that they love. You like to draw and paint, you say, and you
have studied some in New York. What then?”

Jean pushed back her hair impulsively.

“Do you know, I think you are a little bit wrong. You won’t mind my
saying that, will you, please? It is only this. Suppose we are not
geniuses, we who see pictures in our minds and long to paint them. I
think that is the gift too, quite as much as the other, as the power to
execute. Think how many go through life with eyes blind to all beauty
and color! Surely it must be something to have the power of seeing it
all, and of knowing what you want to paint. My cousin Becky back home
says it’s better to aim at the stars and hit the fence post, than to
aim at the fence post and hit the ground.”

“Ah, so, and one of your English poets says too, ‘A man’s aim should
outreach his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’ Maybe, you are quite
right. The vision is the gift.” She turned and laid her hand on Jean’s
shoulder, her eyes beaming with enjoyment of their talk. “I shall
remember you, Brown Eyes.”

And just at this point Beth and Aldo came toward them, the former
smiling at Jean. “Don’t you think you’ve monopolized the Contessa
long enough?” she asked. Jean could not answer. The Contessa? This
whimsical, oddly-dressed woman who had sat and talked with her over
their tea in the friendliest sort of way, all the time that Jean had
thought the Contessa was the tall lady in the ethereal dress with the
Russian wolfhound at her heels.

“But this is delightful,” exclaimed the Contessa, happily. “We have met
incognito. I thought she was some demure little art student who knew no
one here, and she has been so kind to me, who also seemed lonely. Come
now, we will meet with the celebrities.”

With her arm around Jean’s waist, she led her over to the group around
Morel, and told them in her charming way of how they had discovered
each other.

“And she has taught me a lesson that you, Morel, with all your art,
do not know, I am sure. It is not the execution that is the crown of
ambition and aspiration, it is the vision itself. For the vision is
divine inspiration, but the execution is the groping of the human
hand.”

“Oh, but I never could say it so beautifully,” exclaimed Jean,
pink-cheeked and embarrassed, as Morel laid his hand over hers.

“Nevertheless,” he said, gently, “success to thy fingertips,
Mademoiselle.”




9. Letters from Home


Jean confessed her mistake to Beth after they had returned home.
There were just a few minutes to spare before bedtime, after wishing
Aldo good night, and she sat on a little stool before the fire in the
sitting room.

“I hadn’t the least idea she was the Contessa. You know that tall woman
with the wolfhound, Beth--”

Mrs. Newell laughed softly. “That was Betty Goodwin. Betty loves to
dress up. She plays little parts for herself all the time. I think
today she was an Austrian princess perhaps. The next time she will be a
tailor-made English girl. Betty indulges her whims, and she has just
had her portrait done by Morel as a sort of dream maiden, I believe. I
caught a glimpse of it on exhibition last week. Looks as little like
Betty as I do. Jean, paint if you must, but paint the thing as you see
it, and do choose apple trees and red barns rather than dream maidens
who aren’t real.”

“I don’t know what I shall paint,” Jean answered with a little quick
sigh. “She rather frightened me, I mean the Contessa. I don’t think she
has much use for my kind of art. She thinks only real geniuses should
paint.”

“Nonsense. Paint all you like. It will train you in form and color and
that you can apply later to your designing. You’re seventeen, aren’t
you, Jean?”

Jean nodded. “Eighteen in April.”

“You seem younger than that. If I could, I’d swamp you in paint and
study for the next two years. By that time you would have either found
out that you were tired to death of it, and wanted real life, or you
would be doing something worthwhile in the art line. But in any event
you would have no regrets. I mean you could live the rest of your life
contentedly, without feeling there was something you had missed. It was
odd your meeting the Contessa as you did. She likes you very much. Now
run along and good night, dear.”

When Jean reached her own room, she found a surprise. On the desk lay
a letter from home that Mathilda had laid there. Mathilda was Beth’s
standby, as she said. She was tall and spare and middle-aged, with a
broad serene face, and sandy-red hair worn parted in the middle. It was
just like her, Jean thought, to lay the letter from home where it would
catch her eye and make her happy before she went to sleep.

One joy of a letter from home was that it turned out to be several as
soon as you got it out of the envelope. The one on top was from her
mother, written just before the mail truck came up the hill.

    Dear Princess,

    You have been much on my mind, but I haven’t time for a long
    letter, since Mr. Ricketts may chug up over the hill any
    minute, and he won’t wait. I am ever so glad for you that you
    have had this opportunity to study again. Dad is really quite
    himself these days, and Becky has lent me Mrs. Gorham, so the
    work has been very easy for me, even without you.

    Becky says it looks like an early spring this year, although
    how she can tell when it is still so bleak and barren is
    beyond me. The roads are still piled with snow and the river
    is frozen over. The girls, Tommy, and Jack have been skating
    almost every day.

    Have you everything you need? Let me know otherwise. You
    know, I can always find some way out. Write often to us, my
    dear. I feel very near you these days in love and thought.
    Your character is developing so fast and I want to watch so
    carefully. There is always a curious bond between the firstborn
    and a mother, to the mother especially, for you taught me
    motherhood, my darling. Some day you will understand what I
    mean, when you look down into the face of your own. I must
    stop, for I am getting altogether homesick for you.

    Tenderly,
              Mother.

Jean sat for a few minutes after reading this, without unfolding the
other letters. Mothers were wonderful persons, she thought. Their
loving arms stretched so far over one, and gave forth a love and
protectiveness such as nothing else in the world could do.

The next was from Doris, quite like her too. Brief and beautifully
penned on her very own pink notepaper.

    Dear Jeannie,

    I do hope you are having a wonderful time. Have you met any
    glamorous people yet? If you have, I hope you write us all
    about them. I want to know everything.

    School is very uninteresting just now and it is cold walking to
    school. But I do have that one teacher that I’m crazy about,
    you know, Miss Simmons. She wears such nice clothes and her
    voice is so beautiful. I can’t bear people with loud voices.
    When I see her in the morning, it just wipes out all the cold
    walk and everything that’s gone wrong.

    I wish I could have gone away to school like you and Billie, or
    at least I wish Billie was back home. Kit says it’s time to go
    to bed.

    Your loving sister,
                        Doris.

“Oh, Doris, you crazy kid,” Jean laughed to herself. The letter was
entirely typical of Doris and her vagaries.

Tommy’s letter was hurried.

    Dear Jean,

    We miss you awfully. Jack got hurt yesterday. His foot was
    jammed when a tree fell on it. He is better now because I
    helped to take care of his foot. He wasn’t hurt badly.

    We go skating every day for the river is frozen over. Jack and
    I and some of the other boys have been playing hockey with my
    new puck that you gave me for Christmas.

    Mrs. Gorham made caramel filling today the way you do and it
    all ran out in the oven. She said the funniest thing. “Thunder
    and lightning.” Just like that. And when I laughed, she told
    me not to because she ought not to say such things, but when
    cooking went wrong, she just lost her head completely. Isn’t
    that funny? Bring me home a puppy. I’d love it.

    Love,
          Tommy.

The letter from her father was gay and cheerful and full of advice. He
did sound better, just as her mother had said.

    Jeannie dear,

    Although we all miss you, we seem to be getting along pretty
    well. With Mrs. Gorham to help, your mother does not have too
    much to do.

    The Judge dropped in last evening for a visit. He says that
    Billie is getting along splendidly at school. He has many new
    friends and seems to like the work. Becky and the Judge, of
    course, miss him as we do you, my dear.

    I am in the middle of an interesting new book on world
    economics. I wish you were here so that I could read parts
    of it to you. Even though your art work is very important,
    it is equally valuable to be well-informed on the affairs of
    the world in which you live. I hope you will keep this bit of
    advice in mind, for in order to be fully successful, you must
    keep abreast of the times and not be so completely engrossed in
    your work, that you fail to recognize what goes on around you.

    But I didn’t mean to start preaching. You shall learn all this
    as you study and grow older, I am sure. I expect to see great
    changes in you when you return. But do not change too much so
    that we won’t know you. We love you as you are, darling.

    With all my love,
                      Dad.

Jean was quite moved by this letter, for her father was making her
responsible for her own future. It made her feel quite different
somehow, as though she was entrusted with the power to make or break
her own career.

Last of all was Kit’s letter, two sheets of penciled scribbling,
crowded together on both sides.

    Hi, Jean,

    I’m writing this the last thing at night when my brain is
    getting calm. Any old time the poet starts singing carelessly
    of the joys and beauties of the country in the wintertime, I
    hope he lands on this waste spot during a January blizzard.
    He’d change his mind in a hurry.

    If you get your hands on any of the current fashion magazines,
    be sure to send them home to us. Even if we can’t indulge,
    we can dream, can’t we? I’m getting awfully tired of skirts
    and sweaters. It’s high time I was allowed to burst forth in
    something really stunning that would knock everybody cold.

    I have a new friend, a dog. Jack says he’s just a stray, but
    he isn’t. He’s a shepherd dog, and very intelligent. I’ve
    named him Mac. He fights with Tommy, which is strange for that
    brother of ours usually has a way with animals. I guess he’s
    just a one-man dog, for he likes me alone.

    I miss you in the evenings an awful lot. Doris goes around in a
    sort of moon ring of romance nowadays, so it’s no fun talking
    to her, and Tommy spends most of his time fooling around with
    those blasted airplanes of his. His attitude toward Jack is
    really wonderful, it’s almost fatherly. Did you ever wish we
    had another boy in the family? I do now and then. I’d like one
    about sixteen, just between us two, that I could be pals with.
    Tommy’s too little. Buzzy comes the nearest to being a big
    brother that I’ve ever had. That guy really had a marvelous
    sense of fairness, Jean, do you realize that? I hope being out
    West hasn’t changed him too much. I liked him the way he was.
    I am impatient for his return. Do you feel the same way about
    Ralph?

    Well, my dear artistic close relative and beloved sister, it is
    almost ten, so it’s time for Kathleen to turn into her lonely
    cot. Give my love to Beth, and write to me personally. We can’t
    bear your inclusive family letters.

    Yours,
           Kit.

If it hadn’t been so late, Jean felt she could have sat down then and
there, and answered every one of them. They took her straight back to
Woodhow and all the daily round of fun there. In the morning she read
parts of them to Aldo.

“Ah, but you are lucky,” Aldo said quietly when she had finished. “I am
just myself, and it’s so monotonous. I wish I could meet your family
and know them all.”

“They are a wonderful family, although I rather envy you in a way.
Sometimes it seems as if one loses individuality in a large family.”

“You shouldn’t feel that way,” replied Aldo. “Why, look, here you are
in New York about to start studying again. Isn’t that proof enough that
there is room for individuality even in a big family?”

Jean thought of this later when she was getting ready for the next day
at school and decided that Aldo was probably right. “I’ll work so hard
these next two months, that the family will be convinced that the time
was well spent. I’ll make them proud of me, or at least I’ll try.”




10. At the Art Academy


The next morning Jean took the commuter’s train into New York and found
her way to the Art Academy. The first person she ran into after she had
enrolled was Peg Moffat.

“Gosh, it’s good to see you again, Jean. I was so excited when you
wrote to say you were coming back. How long will you be here?”

“Just a couple of months, Peg. I’m taking that special course in
textile designing.”

It was now nearly a year since Jean had been a student at the art
school. She had gone into the work enthusiastically when they had lived
at the Cove on Long Island, making the trip back and forth every day.
It thrilled her to be back again for it represented so much to her, all
the aims and ambitions of a year before.

As they walked upstairs to Jean’s classroom, some of the girls
recognized her and called out. Jean waved her hand to them, but did
not stop. She was too busy looking at the sketches along the walls,
listening to the familiar sounds through open doors, Pop Higgins’ deep
laugh, Miss Weston’s clear voice calling to one of the girls, Pierre
the Frenchman, standing with his arm resting on a boy’s shoulders,
pointing out to him mistakes in underlay of shadows. Even the familiar
smell of turpentine and paint made her unbearably happy to be there.

Margaret Weston was the girls’ favorite instructor. The daughter of
an artist herself, she had been born in Florence, Italy, and brought
up there, later living in London and then Boston. Jean remembered how
delightful her talks with the girls had been when she had described her
father’s intimate circle of friends back in Italy. It had seemed so
interesting to link the past and present with one who could remember,
as a little girl, visits to all the art shrines. Jean had always been a
favorite with her. The quiet, imaginative girl had appealed to Margaret
Weston perhaps because she had the gift of visualizing the past and its
great dreamers. She took both her hands now in a firm clasp, smiling
down at her.

“Back again, Jean?”

“Only for this special course, Miss Weston,” Jean smiled a little
wistfully. “I wish it were for longer. It seems awfully good to be here
and see you all.”

“Have you done any work at all in the country?”

Had she done any work? A swift memory of the real work of Woodhow swept
over Jean, and she could have laughed.

“Not much.” She shook her head. “I sort of lost my way for a while,
there was so much else that had to be done, but I’m going to study now.”

So for two months, Jean could make believe that she was back as a
“regular.” Every morning she went to class, getting inspiration and
courage even from the teamwork. Later that first month, she was
surprised to see Aldo waiting for her at the main entrance.

“I’ve come to take you away. It is not good to bury yourself completely
in your work. It is time that you thought of something besides paint
and warp and woof.”

Jean suddenly remembered the words of her father’s first letter to her.
How he had warned her of forgetting everything but her work. “Where are
we going?” she asked.

“I have tickets to the latest Broadway play. It’s a musical and very
good, from all I hear and have read about it. But first we are going to
lunch at the Waldorf.”

Jean never forgot that afternoon with Aldo. She forgot the art school
completely while she listened to the gay tunes and witty dialogue
coming from the stage. When she returned to Elmhurst, she often
remembered that day and it made it easier for her to work at home at
everyday chores.

Later, while they were having dinner in a small Italian restaurant that
Aldo frequented often, she told him of her work. How her designs were
progressing and how she was learning to weave and how wonderful it was
to see her own designs come to life in the threads of the material on
her loom.

In return, Aldo told her of his own work. He was now working in clay
and hoped to do some real sculpture before he was through. “I want to
work in marbles, the way my father does,” he said simply. In those few
words his own ambitions were exposed.

They parted at Grand Central, Jean to go back to Beth’s in Hastings and
Aldo to take the subway uptown to his aunt’s apartment.

A few days later, Jean went home with Peg Moffat to spend the weekend
with her in her Greenwich Village studio. “Yet you can hardly call it
a studio now, since Mom came and took possession,” Peg said. “We girls
had it all nice and messy, and she keeps it in order, I tell you.”

“Somebody was needed to keep it in order,” Mrs. Moffat put in. They
were all sitting around the table after dinner that evening.

“Eloise and Janet and I kept house,” Peg put in significantly. “And,
really, talk about temperament! We had no regular meals at all, and
Eloise says if you show her crackers and pimento cheese again for a
year, she’ll simply die in her tracks. Mom has fed us up beautifully
since she came back from Miami. Real substantial food.”

“Yes and they didn’t think they needed me at all, Jean. Somehow a
mother doesn’t go with studio equipment, but this one does, and now
everyone in the block comes down to visit us. They all need mothering
now.”

Jean found the studio delightfully attractive. The ceiling was beamed
in dark oak, and a wide fireplace with a crackling wood fire made
Jean almost feel as if she were back home. There were wide shelves
lined with books on painting all around the room. At the windows hung
shrimp-colored draperies that could be pulled across on transverse rods
to shut out the night. A small spinet piano took up one corner of the
room and now Peg walked over to it and sat down to play. In the middle
of a Mozart sonata, Jean sighed heavily.

Peg stopped playing, turned around, and asked, “What is it? Tired?”

Jean’s lashes were wet with unshed tears.

“I was wishing Mother were here too,” she answered. “She loves all this
so--just as I do. It’s awfully lonesome up there sometimes without any
of this. I love the hills and the freedom, but, oh, it is so lonely.
Why, I even love to hear the horns of the cabs blowing impatiently and
the sound of the busses releasing their air brakes.”

Jean slept late the next morning, late for her at least. It was nearly
ten when Mrs. Moffat came into the large room to pull back the curtains
and say that breakfast was nearly ready.

“Did you close the big house at the Cove?” Jean asked while they were
dressing.

“Rented it furnished. With Brock away at college and me sharing this
studio with Eloise and Janet, Mother thought she’d let it go, and stay
with me when she came back from Florida. She’s over at Aunt Win’s while
I’m at classes. They’ve got an apartment overlooking Central Park
because Uncle Frank can’t bear commuting in the winter. We’ll go over
there tomorrow afternoon. Aunt Win’s up to her eyebrows in hospital
work.”

“Know something, Peg?” Jean said suddenly, “I do believe that’s what
ails Elmhurst. Nobody up there is doing anything different this winter
from what they have every winter for the last fifty years. Down here
there’s always something new and interesting going on.”

“Sure, but is that good? After a while you expect something new all the
time, and you can’t settle down to any one thing steadily. Coming,
Mom, right away.”

“Good morning, lazy things,” said Mrs. Moffat as she poured the coffee.
“I’ve had my breakfast. I’ve got two appointments this morning and must
rush.”

“Mother always mortgages tomorrow. I’ll bet anything she’s got
appointments lined up for a month ahead. What’s on for today?”

“Dentist and shopping with your Aunt Win. I’m going to have lunch with
her, so you girls will be alone. There are seats for a recital at
Carnegie Hall if you’d enjoy it. I think Jean would. It’s a Chamber
Music group. Peg only likes orchestral concerts, but if you go to this,
you might drop in later at Signa’s. It’s not far, you know, Peg, and
not a bit out of your way. Aunt Win and I will join you there.”

“Isn’t she the dearest, bustling Mother?” Peg said placidly, when they
were alone. “Sometimes I feel ages older than she is. She has as much
fun dashing around to everything as if New York were a steady sideshow.
Do you want to go?”

“I’d love to,” Jean answered frankly. “Who’s Signa?”

“A girl Aunt Win’s interested in. She plays the violin. Jean Craig, do
you realize the world is just jammed full of people who can do things,
I mean unusual things like painting and playing and singing, better
than the average person, and yet there are only a few of them who are
really great. It’s such a tragedy because they all keep on working
and hoping and thinking they’re going to be great. Aunt Win has about
a dozen tucked under her wing that she encourages, and I think it’s
perfectly deadly.”

Peg planted both elbows on the table and held her cup of coffee in the
air.

“Because they won’t be great geniuses, you mean?”

“Sure. They’re just half-way. All they’ve got is the longing, the urge
forward.”

“But it’s something to have the aims and the ambitions, don’t you
think?”

“Maybe so,” Peg said briskly. “Maybe I can’t see them myself, and it’s
just a waste of time keeping me at the Academy. I’m not a genius, and
I’ll never paint great pictures, but I am going to be an illustrator,
and while I’m learning I can imagine myself all the geniuses that ever
lived. We were told, not long ago, to paint a typical city scene. Most
of the class went in for the regulation things, Washington Arch and
Grant’s Tomb, Madison Square and the opera crowd at the Met. Do you
know what I did?” She pushed back her hair from her eager face, and
smiled. “I went down on the East Side and you know how they’re always
digging up the streets here after the gas mains or something that’s
gone wrong? Well, I found some workmen resting, sitting on the edge
of the trench eating lunch in the sunlight, and some kids playing in
the dirt as if it were sand. Golly, it was wonderful, Jean, the color
and composition and I managed to get it all in lovely splashes. I just
called it _Noon_. Does it sound good?”

“Splendid,” said Jean.

Peg nodded happily. “Miss Weston said it was the best thing I had done,
the best in the class. You can find beauty anywhere if you look for it.”

“Oh, gee, it’s good to be down talking to you again,” Jean exclaimed.
“It spurs me along so to be where others are working and thinking.”

“Think so?” Peg turned her head with her funny quizzical smile. “You
ought to hear Pop Higgins talk on that. He runs away to a little shack
somewhere up on the Hudson when he wants to paint. He says Emerson and
Thoreau were right when they wrote about the still places where you
rest and invite your soul. Let’s get dressed. It’s after eleven already
and if we want to do any shopping before that concert we ought to be
going.”




11. The Sculptured Head


That evening a few of Peg’s artist friends came in to talk shop, and
Jean found her old-time favorite teacher, Pop Higgins, among them. He
was about seventy, but erect and quick of step as any of the boys, with
iron-gray hair, close-cut and curly, and keen brown eyes. He was really
splendid looking, Jean thought.

“You know, Jeannie,” he began, slipping comfortably down a trifle in
his chair, “you’re looking fine. I think your studies here have done
something to you. How is it going?”

“It’s going beautifully, but much too fast. I’ll have to be going home
soon, I’m afraid. There are only a few weeks left in the course.”

“That’s all right. Anything that tempers character while you’re young
is good for the whole system. I was born out west in Kansas, when the
West was still pretty wild. I used to ride cattle for my father when I
was only about ten. And, Lord above, those nights on the plains taught
my heart the song of life. I wouldn’t take back one single hour of
them.”

“Did you paint then?”

He laughed, a deep, hearty laugh that made Mrs. Moffat smile at them.
“Never touched a brush until after I was thirty. I loved color and
could see it. I knew that shadows were purple or blue, and I used to
squint one eye to get the tint of the earth after we’d plowed, dull
rusty-red like old wounds, it was. First sketch I ever drew was one of
my sister Polly. She stood on the edge of a gully hunting some stray
turkeys. I’ve got the painting I made later from that sketch. It was
exhibited, too, called _Sundown_.”

“Oh, I’ve seen it,” Jean said. “The land is all in deep blues and
hyacinth tones and the sky is amber and the queerest green, and her
skirt is just a dash of red.”

“The red that shows under an oriole’s wing when he flies. She was
seventeen then. About your age, isn’t it, Jeannie?”

He glanced at her sideways. Jean nodded.

“I thought so, although she looked younger.”

“I--I hope she didn’t die,” said Jean anxiously.

“Die? Bless your heart,” he laughed again. “She’s living up in
Colebrook. Went back over the same route her mother had traveled, and
married in the old home town. Pioneer people live to be pretty old.”

“It must have been wonderful,” Jean said. “Mother’s from the West too,
only way out West, from California. Her brother has the big ranch there
where she was born, but she never knew any hardships at all. Everything
was comfortable and there was always plenty of money, she says, and it
never seemed like the real West to us, when she’d tell of it.”

“Oh, but it is, the real West of the last sixty years, as it has grown
up to success and prosperity. If I keep you here talking any longer
to an old fellow like myself, the boys won’t be responsible for their
actions. You’re a novelty, you know. Bruce is glaring at me.”

He rose leisurely and went over beside Mrs. Moffat’s chair, and Bruce
Pearson hurried to take his place.

“I thought he’d keep you talking here all night. And you sat there
drinking it all in as if you liked it.”

“I did,” said Jean flatly. “I loved it. I haven’t been here at all.
I’ve been way out on a Kansas prairie.”

“Stuff,” said Bruce calmly. “Say, got any good dogs up at your place?”

“No. Kit wrote me she picked up a stray shepherd dog, but I haven’t
seen him yet. Why?” Jean looked at him with sudden curiosity.

“Nothing, only you remember when you were moving from the Cove, Tommy
sold me his Cocker pup?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“We’ve got some swell puppies. I was wondering whether you’d take one
home to Tommy from me if I brought it in.”

“I’d love to. Tommy had his twelfth birthday the other day and I
couldn’t think of anything to get him so I just sent a birthday
telegram. The puppy will make a perfect belated gift,” said Jean, her
face aglow. It was just like Bruce to think of that, and how Tommy
would love it. “I think we’ll name him Bruce, if you don’t mind.”

Bruce didn’t mind in the least. In fact, he felt it would be a sign of
remembrance, he said. And he would bring in the puppy as soon as Jean
was ready to go home.

“But you needn’t hurry her,” Peg warned, coming to sit with them. “She
hasn’t been here long, and I’m hoping if I can just stretch it along
rather unconsciously, she’ll stay right through the term, the way she
should.”

Jean felt almost guilty, as her own heart echoed the wish. How she
would study, if only it could happen.

On the following Saturday afternoon, Jean left Beth to go browsing
through the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She had little
time left in New York, and wanted to revisit some of her favorites
before she had to go back to Elmhurst.

Beth drove her up to the station and waved to her as she boarded the
local. “Call me before you leave, and I’ll pick you up,” she called as
the train started to move. Jean nodded, walked back into the car, and
found a seat.

After settling herself comfortably, she opened her bag, and found a
letter from Ralph that had been in the day’s mail. She had not had time
to read it before she left. She opened it now and read.

    Jeannie darling,

    Your last letter sounded so enthusiastic about your work, that
    I know you must be having a marvelous time. It’s too bad you
    can’t stay there longer.

    But who’s this Aldo guy that’s been squiring you thither and
    yon, all over New York? You needn’t be so nice to him just
    because he’s a friend of your cousin Beth’s. Too bad that I’m
    not there to look after things. You better not go falling for
    him with all his foreign airs and old-world charm. I know
    that type of smooth operator, for I saw a bunch of them when I
    served with the army overseas.

    You’ll say I’m jealous. Well, what if I am? After all, I saw
    you first.

    Write me, my darling, immediately and say these fears of mine
    are completely unfounded. I’ll be waiting anxiously for your
    sweet words of comfort and encouragement. If I don’t receive
    them, I’ll hop the next train and see for myself what the score
    is.

    Buzzy and I are working hard as usual and life goes on in
    its unaltered and unalterable course. We will probably leave
    here in April, instead of waiting until June. I want to be in
    Elmhurst in the spring with you.

    Dearest love,
                  Ralph.

Jean was greatly amused by his letter and laughed to herself over the
“villainous character” who was taking her away from Ralph. Of course
Aldo had been very nice to her, taking her to lunch and all that. But
he was only a good friend.

She spent a pleasant afternoon wandering through the art galleries of
the museum. She revisited many of her old favorites--paintings she had
stood before many times when the family had lived on Long Island. Then
she found a special exhibition of paintings by modern American artists.

Jean spent a long time looking at these. Some of the artists’ names
were familiar to her, others were new. In one corner of the gallery
she came upon the sculptured head of a woman. Her face looked old
and the lines in it were the lines of extreme hardship and pain. The
forehead was high, the nose long and sharp, but the mouth was quite
different. It was smiling, “in spite of everything,” Jean thought to
herself. Although everything else about the head characterized utter
disillusionment, the mouth looked gay and carefree.

A step behind her made Jean turn suddenly and there stood Aldo.

“Like it?” he asked briefly.

“Why, yes--no--I don’t know.” Jean hesitated, confused. “It’s so
strange. I can’t reconcile the mouth to the rest of the head--”

“I’ll tell you about her, then maybe you’ll understand. She is an old
Italian woman. Her husband and three sons were killed in the first
World War, but undaunted, she raised her youngest son alone, although
she was very poor and it was hard. Her son married and had two sons of
his own. He became a successful lawyer. Then the second war came. Her
home was demolished, her son’s entire family was killed, and yet, in
spite of everything she has been through, she manages to smile that
way, the smile of a young girl. I think it’s the best thing my father
ever did.”

“Your father? I didn’t know--I mean--I never looked at the nameplate.”

“Yes. You see, I brought it with me when I came. Then, when I heard
they were having this exhibition here, I entered it in his name. I
think he’ll be pleased when he hears. He never exhibited anything in
this country.”

The two stood and gazed at the head awhile in silence. It was Aldo who
spoke first. “Look, are you doing anything now, could we go somewhere
and have supper?”

“I think I could. If you’ll wait until I call Beth, so she won’t worry.”

They went back to the small Italian restaurant where Aldo had taken
Jean before. It was almost empty when they walked in for it was still
quite early. After they had eaten, Aldo said suddenly, “I’m going back
to Italy next week.”

“Oh, I’m sorry you’re going so soon,” replied Jean. “But we wouldn’t
have seen much more of each other anyway, I’m going home too.”

“Perhaps we will meet again someday, in Italy. Then I will show you all
the beautiful places I love that I have told you about.”

“Perhaps,” said Jean doubtfully. It seemed so far away, like having a
star for a goal and she was bound to hit the fence post.




12. From Out of the West


All too soon, the course was over for Jean and now she was going home.
It was hard for her to say goodbye to her friends at school, especially
Peg Moffat. She would always be indebted to Beth for giving her this
opportunity. They had many long talks about art and Beth offered to
criticize Jean’s work if she would send it to her.

Jean had had a letter from Ralph just before she left New York and he
said he was leaving then for Elmhurst. He and Buzzy had decided to
return earlier than they had previously planned so they could be at
Woodhow in time to celebrate Jean’s eighteenth birthday. He would
arrive about the same time she did. That was almost the only reason
she could think of for returning home and leaving the glamor and
breathlessness of New York behind her, although she had to admit to
herself she missed her family. It was the day before her birthday when
she arrived.

Jean looked around eagerly as she jumped to the platform, wondering
which of the family would drive down to meet her, but instead of Kit or
her mother, Ralph stepped up to her with outstretched arms. All the way
from Saskatoon, she thought, and just the same as he was a year before.
Kit said later, in describing him, “He doesn’t look as if he could be
the hero, but he’d always be the hero’s best friend, like Mercutio was
to Romeo.” But Jean felt differently. This was the one she had waited
for all those months to come back to her. Her exciting stay in New
York, the course at the art school, all faded into insignificance by
comparison with her feeling about Ralph.

Mr. Briggs waved a welcome as he trundled the express truck past them
down the platform. “Looks a bit like rain. Good for the planters,” he
called.

Ralph took Jean by the hand and led her over to the car. They drove up
the long curved hill from the station and Jean lifted her head to it
all, the long overlapping hill range that unfolded as they came to the
first stretch of level road, the rich green of the pines gracing their
slopes, and most of all the beautiful haze of young green that lay like
a veil over the land from the first bursting leaf buds.

“Oh, it’s swell to be home,” she exclaimed. “Over at Beth’s the land
seems so level, and I guess I really like the hills.”

“What on earth have you got in the basket, Jean?”

Jean had forgotten all about the puppy. Bruce had kept his word and
met her at the train with a sleepy, diminutive cocker pup all curled
up comfortably in a basket. He had started to show signs of personal
interest, scratching and whining as soon as Jean had set the basket
down at her feet in the car.

“It’s for Tommy. Bruce Pearson sent it up to him to remember Jiggers
by.”

“Jiggers?”

“It’s the dog Tommy had back at the Cove. He sold him to Bruce, a
neighbor of ours, before we moved away. Now, Bruce is sending one of
the pups back for Tommy.”

“How nice. I hear he and his friend Jack have been pleading for a
puppy. This will be a pleasant surprise. The girls were sorry they
couldn’t drive down,” Ralph said. “They were having some sort of Easter
doings at school. Buzzy and I arrived two days ago and I asked for
the privilege of coming down. Your mother’s up at the Judge’s today.
Billie’s pretty sick, I think.”

“Billie?” cried Jean. “Not Billie?”

Even to think of Billie’s being ill was absurd. It was like saying
a raindrop had the measles. He had never been sick all the years he
had lived up there, bare-headed in the winter, free as the birds and
animals he loved. All the way home she felt subdued.

“He came back from school Monday for Easter vacation and they are
afraid of pneumonia. I don’t understand how he could have gotten it,
but I’m sure if anybody could pull him through it would be Mrs. Ellis,”
said Ralph.

But even with the best nursing and care, things looked bad for Billie.
It was supper time before Mrs. Craig returned. The reunion between
mother and daughter was indeed a happy one. “I can’t tell you how I
feel to have you back again, darling.”

“And it’s wonderful to be back. I missed you all so.”

Doris was indignant and stunned at the blow that had fallen on her
friend, Billie. She sputtered, “The idea that Billie should have to be
sick during vacation. How long will he be in bed, Mother?”

“I don’t know, dear,” Mrs. Craig said. “He’s strong and husky, but it
will be some time, I’m afraid, before he’ll be well again. Dr. Gallup
came right over.”

“That’s good,” Kit put in. “He’ll get him well in no time. I don’t
think there ever was a doctor so set on making people well. I’d rather
see him come in the door, no matter what was wrong with me, sit down
and tell me I had just a little distemper, open his black case, and mix
me up that everlasting mess that tastes like cinnamon and sugar, than
have a whole line of city specialists tapping me.”

Doris and Tommy clung closely to Jean, taking her and Ralph around the
place to show her all the new chicks, orphans and otherwise. Woodhow
really was showing signs of full return this year for the care and love
spent on its rehabilitation. The fruit trees, after Buzzy’s pruning and
fertilizing, and general treatment that made them look like swaddled
babies, were blossoming profusely, and on the south slope of the field
along the river, rows and rows of young peach trees had been set out.
The garden too, had come in for its share of attention. Doris loved
flowers, and had worked there more diligently than she usually could be
coaxed to on any sort of real labor. She had cleared away the old dead
plants first, and with Tommy’s help had plowed up the central plot,
taking care to save all the perennials.

“You know what I wish, Mom,” said Doris, standing with earth-stained
fingers in the midst of the tangle of old vines and bushes. “I wish we
could lay out paths and put stones down on them, flat stones, I mean,
like flags. And have flower beds with borders. Could we, do you think?”

Her earnestness made Mrs. Craig smile, but she agreed to the plan, and
Becky helped out with slips from her flower store, so that the prospect
for a garden was very good. And later Buzzy Hancock came up with Sally
to advise and help too. The year out West had turned the country boy
into a stalwart, independent individual whom even Sally regarded with
some respect. He was taller than before, broad-shouldered, and sure of
himself.

“I think Ralph has done wonders for him,” Sally said. “Mother thinks
so too. He talks so enthusiastically about the West that she doesn’t
seem to mind going out there any more, after seeing what it’s made of
Buzzy. And Ralph says we’ll always keep the home here so that when we
want to come back, we can. I think he likes Elmhurst. He says it never
seems like home way out West. You need to walk on the earth where your
fathers and grandfathers have trod, and even to breathe the same air.
Mom says the only place she hates to leave behind is our little family
burial plot over in the woods.”

Although the Craig family had planned a birthday party and Kit had
baked a beautiful cake, it was at Jean’s own request that they decided
not to have the party since Billie was sick. Instead they had a family
picnic dinner in the back yard. Of course, Ralph and Buzzy were there.

Jean was thrilled with all her lovely gifts, especially with the rough
turquoise that Ralph had brought from Saskatoon. When he gave it to
her, he said, “I knew you would like to design your own setting for
this stone.” Jean was very pleased with his thoughtfulness.

Even Jack had a present for her, a picture that he had made by
collecting leaves and flowers from the woods and glueing them to a
piece of plywood. Tommy had helped him to make the birchwood frame, and
Jean was touched by their efforts to make her birthday such a happy
one.




13. Spring Picnic


In the days following Easter, while Mrs. Craig was over at the Ellis
place helping care for Billie who was still very sick, the girls and
Tommy managed the house alone. When Tommy came in from the barn one
morning, he found Jean getting breakfast in the kitchen. “Seen anything
of Jack?” he asked. “I haven’t seen him this morning, and he was going
to help me and Ralph plow. I’ll bet a cookie he’s taken to his heels.
He’s been acting funny for several days ever since that peddler went
along here.”

“Oh, not really, Tommy,” said Jean anxiously. She had overlooked Jack
completely in the excitement of Billie’s illness. “What could happen to
him?”

“Nothing special,” answered Tommy dryly, “maybe he was tired of staying
here and working all the time.”

“You can’t expect a little kid only nine to work very hard, can you?”

“No--o. But he’s got to do something. He keeps asking me when
somebody’s going down to Nantic. Looks suspicious to me!”

“Nantic? Do you suppose--” Jean stopped short. Tommy failed to notice
her hesitancy, but went on outdoors. Perhaps the boy was wondering if
he could get any trace of his father down at Nantic, she thought. There
was a great deal of her mother’s nature in Jean’s sympathy and swift,
sure understanding of another’s need. She kept an eye out for Jack all
day, but the afternoon passed and supper was on the table without any
sign of their Christmas waif. And finally, when Ralph came in from the
barn with Tommy, he said he was pretty sure Jack had run away.

“Do you think it’s because he didn’t want to stay with us while Mother
was away?” asked Doris.

“No, I don’t,” Tommy put in. “I think he’s just born restless and he
had to take to the road when the call came to him.”

But Jean felt the responsibility of Jack’s loss, and set a lamp burning
all night in the living room window as a sign to light his way back
home. It was such a long walk down to Nantic, and when he got there,
Mr. Briggs would be sure to see him, and make trouble for him. And
perhaps he had just wandered out into the hills on a regular hike and
had gotten lost.

But neither the next day, nor the day after, did any news come to them
of Jack. Mr. Briggs was sure he hadn’t been around the station or the
freight trains. Saturday Kit and Doris drove around through the wood
roads, looking for some sign of him, and Jean telephoned to all the
points she could think of, giving a description of him, and asking them
to send the wanderer back if they found him. But the days passed, and
it looked as if Jack had really gone.

One afternoon Jean and Ralph were sitting on the back steps when Buzzy
and Kit hailed them from the hill. Kit was wearing a pair of slacks and
a red blouse hanging outside of them. On her head she had jammed one of
Tommy’s caps, and on the side she had stuck a quail’s feather.

“Hi,” called Kit, “we’ve been for a hike, clear over to the village.
Mother phoned she needed some things from the drugstore, so we thought
we’d walk over and get them. Billie’s just the same. He doesn’t know
a soul, and all he talks about is making his math exams. I think it’s
perfectly shameful to take a boy like that who loves reading and nature
and natural things, and grind him down to regular stuff.”

She flopped down on the grass in front of them with Buzzy at her
side. “I love a good long hike,” Kit went on. “Especially when I feel
bothered or indignant. We’ve kept up the hiking club ever since the
roads opened up, Jean. It’s more fun than anything out here. I never
realized there was so much to know about just woods and fields until
Sally taught me where to hunt for things. Do you like to hike, Ralph?”

“I don’t know. Not too long. I think I’d rather ride.”

“Me, too,” Doris said flatly. She had been working in the garden and
had come up when she heard Kit and Buzzy’s voices. “I don’t see a
bit of fun dragging around like Kit does, through the woods and over
swamps, climbing hills, and always wanting to get to the top of the
next one.”

“Oh, but I love to,” Kit replied. “Maybe I’ll be a mountain climber
yet. Kids, you don’t grasp that there is something strange and
interesting in my own special temperament. The longing to attain,
the--the insatiable desire to seize adventure and follow her fleeing
footsteps, the longing to tap the stars on their foreheads and let them
know I’m here.”

Ralph laughed at her. “Well, even if I don’t share such desires with
you, Kit, how about all of us going for a picnic one of these days. It
seems to me that the ground isn’t too wet for one, and it would do us
all good to stop worrying about Billie since there is nothing we can do
to hasten his recovery. Do you agree, Buzzy?”

“That’s a swell idea, Ralph,” he replied, chewing on a blade of grass.
“Why not make it tomorrow. I’ll ask Mom to pack us up some food.”

“No, leave that to us, Buzzy,” Jean interrupted. “We’ve got some
steaks in the house that are just asking to be broiled outdoors over
a charcoal fire. With those and some fruit and coffee, we should have
enough. Let’s plan to leave here around five and make an evening of it.”

“What good times a large family can have,” Ralph said as he slipped his
arm through Jean’s on a walk through the garden later. “Sometimes I
wish I had been lucky enough to have had brothers and sisters. You feel
so odd when you are all the family yourself.”

The next evening Kit, Buzzy, Jean, and Ralph hiked down the river to
a small beach that seemed to all of them ideal for a picnic. It was
Buzzy who had suggested the spot. He said he and the other boys used to
go there a lot in the summer to fish and swim. While the boys built the
fire, Kit and Jean walked on down the river a little way.

Not far off, the girls found some violets and picked some to take home.
Looking across the river, Jean saw an old house nestled among the
trees. “Who lives there, do you know, Kit? I never saw it before.”

“It’s Cynthy Allen’s place. People say she’s queer, but I don’t think
so. She’s real old, over seventy. But she thinks she is only about
seventeen, and she’s always doing flighty things. She’s lived out in
the woods ever since she ran away from her family years ago. Once she
started to make doughnuts and they found her hanging them on nails all
over the kitchen. So people have been afraid of her ever since. Isn’t
that silly?”

“Let’s go over to see her some day. Want to?”

“Sure. I’ll bet she gets lonely there, all by herself. Say, we’d better
start back. That fire ought to be started by now.”

And it was. The boys were lying lazily on their backs in front of it
when Kit and Jean came up. “Hey, you lazy guys, why aren’t you cooking
the steaks instead of lying there doing nothing?” Kit called.

“We’re waiting for you to do it,” retorted Buzzy. “It’s women’s work to
do the cooking. Besides, you have to wait until the wood’s burned down
to coals before you can start broiling.”

“We’ve got news for you,” put in Ralph, “we did put in the potatoes to
bake. So you see, you’ve jumped to conclusions as usual, Kit, and we
weren’t as lazy as you thought.”

“I’m so hungry from that trek down the hillside, I could eat those
steaks raw,” said Jean. “Shall I put them on now? When did you start
the potatoes?”

“Quite a while ago. They should be done soon. Here, I’ll test them.”
Ralph groaned as he struggled to his feet. “This is the life for me.
Flat on my back beside a nice warm fire.”

Going back up the hill after the picnic was much harder, they found,
than it had been to go down. “Why did you let me eat so much,” mourned
Buzzy. “I’ll never make it to the top.”

“Come on, I’ll race you,” cried Kit, and pulling him along she began to
run. Laughing and shouting, they soon were out of earshot and Jean and
Ralph walked leisurely on behind.

“Nothing could make me run after a supper like that,” Ralph commented.
The moon had risen and it shone down on Jean’s hair making it look
silvery in the pale light. Ralph kissed her lightly. “You’re awfully
sweet, Jeannie. Do you know that? I wish I could make you mine forever.”

“Maybe it could be arranged sometime,” Jean said lightly.

“Won’t you be serious?”

“No. I can’t be now. I’m too young. Besides they need me at home.”

Ralph felt slightly discouraged by her answer, but he knew she was
right. True, she was young, but he was young, too. And he would wait
for her until she was ready, he thought to himself. He could tell by
the radiant look in her face that she, too, was in love.

Before she went upstairs to bed that night, Jean went out in the
kitchen to make sure the back door was locked. She glanced out of the
window and caught her breath. Dodging out of sight behind a pile of
wood that was waiting to be split, was a familiar figure. Without
waiting to call anyone, she slipped quietly around the house and there,
sure enough, backed up against the woodshed, was Jack.

“Oh, Jack,” Jean exclaimed happily. “Come here this minute. Nobody’s
going to hurt you, don’t you know that? Aren’t you hungry?”

Jack nodded mutely. He didn’t look one bit ashamed, just eager and glad
to be back home. Jean put her arm around him, patting him as her mother
would have done, and leading him to the kitchen.

After he had finished a huge sandwich, several glasses of milk, and a
piece of cake, the truth finally came out. “I went hunting my dad down
around Norwich,” he said.

“Did you find him?” cried Jean.

Jack nodded happily.

“Braced him up too. He says he won’t drink any more ’cause it’ll
disgrace me. He’s gone to work up there in the lockshop steady. He
wanted me to stay with him, but as soon as I got him braced up, I came
back here. You didn’t get my letter, did you? I left it stuck in the
clock.”

Stuck in the clock? Jean looked up at the old eight-day Seth Thomas on
the kitchen shelf that Kit had bought from old Mr. Weaver as a joke. It
was made of black walnut, with green vines painted on it and morning
glories rambling in wreaths around its borders. She opened the little
glass door and felt inside. Sure enough, tucked far back was Jack’s
farewell letter, put carefully where nobody would ever think of finding
it. It was written laboriously in pencil, and Jean read it to herself.

    Dere folks,

    I hered from a pedlar my dad is sick up in norwich. goodbye
    and thanks i am coming back sumday.

    yurs with luv,
                   Jack.

Jack looked at her with his old confident smile.

“See?” he said. “I told you I was coming back.”

“And you’re going to stay too,” replied Jean thankfully. “I’m so glad
you weren’t lost forever, Jack. Now you’d better run along to bed.”




14. Billie’s Crisis


Billie failed to rally from the pneumonia as soon as everyone had
hoped. Doris was restless and uneasy over her pal’s plight. She
would saddle Princess and ride over on her twice a day to see what
the bulletins were, and sometimes sit out in the garden watching the
windows of the room where Becky kept vigil. She almost resented the
joyous activity of the bees and birds in their spring delirium when she
thought of Billie, lying there fighting pneumonia.

Jean never forgot the final night. She had a phone call from her mother
about nine, to leave Mrs. Gorham in charge and come to her.

“I’d like you to be here, dear. It’s the crisis, and we can’t be sure
what may happen. Billie’s in a heavy sleep now, and the old doctor says
we can just wait. Becky is with him.”

Jean took off her coat when she arrived, and went in where old Dr.
Gallup sat. It always seemed foolish to call him old, although he was
over sixty. His hair was gray and straggled boyishly as some football
hero’s, his eyes were brown and bright, and his smile something so much
better than medicine that one just naturally revived at the sight of
him, Becky said. He sat now by the table, looking out of the window,
one hand tapping the edge, the other deep in his pocket. One could not
have said what his thoughts were as he sat looking out into the shadowy
spring night.

“Hello, Jeannie,” he said cheerily. “Going to keep me company, are
you? Did you come up alone?”

“Kit drove me over. Doctor, Billie is all right, isn’t he?”

“We hope so,” answered the old doctor. “But what is it to be all right?
If the boy’s race is run, it has been a good one, and he goes out
fearlessly, and if not, then he is all right too, and we hope to hold
him with us. But when this time comes and it’s the last sleep before
dawn, there’s nothing to do but watch and wait.”

“But do you think--”

Jean hesitated. She could not help feeling he must know what the hope
was.

“He’s got a fine fighting chance,” said the doctor. “Now, I’m going in
with Mrs. Ellis, and you comfort the Judge and brace him up. He’s in
the study there.”

It was dark in the study. Jean opened the door gently and looked in.
The old Judge sat in his deep, old leather chair by the desk, and his
head was bent forward. She did not say a word, but tiptoed over and
knelt beside him, her cheek against his sleeve. And the Judge laid his
arm around her shoulders in silence, patting her absent-mindedly. So
they sat until out of the windows the garden took on a lighter aspect,
and there came the faint twittering of birds wakening in their nests.

Jean, watching the beautiful miracle of the dawn, marveled. The dew
lent a silvery radiance to every blade of grass, every leaf and twig.
There was an unearthly, mystic beauty to the whole landscape and the
garden.

And just then the old doctor put his head in the door and sang out
cheerily, “It’s all right. Billie’s awake.”

Jean called Kit later to tell her the good news and Kit drove over
shortly. “That’s a relief,” Kit exclaimed. “I hardly slept a wink all
night, I was so worried. You don’t look as if you slept.”

“I didn’t and I’m practically dead on my feet. But I’m so glad that
Billie is going to pull through.”

Now that Billie’s recovery was assured everybody’s spirits seemed to
become lighter. After two weeks of almost daily showers there had come
a spell of close warm weather that dried up the fields and woods, and
left them, so Becky said, dry as tinder and twice as dangerous.

Kit and Doris were preparing the garden for planting.

“Oh, dear!” Kit leaned back against the side of the barn and looked
lazily off at the widening valley before her. “I’m so afraid that Dad
will get too interested in chicken raising and crops and soils and
things, so that we’ll stay on here forever. Somehow I didn’t mind it
half as much all through the winter, but now that spring is here, it’s
just simply awful to have to pitch in and work from the rising of the
sun until it goes down. I want to be a lady of leisure.”

Overhead the great fleecy, white clouds sailed up from the south in
a squadron of splendor. A new family of bluebirds lately hatched was
calling hungrily from a nest in the old cherry tree nearby, and being
scolded lustily by a catbird for lack of patience. There was a delicate
haze lingering still over the woods and distant fields. The new foliage
was out, but hardly enough to make any difference in the landscape’s
coloring.

“How’s Billie?” asked Doris suddenly. “I’ll be awfully glad when he’s
out again.”

“They’ve got him on the porch bundled up like a mummy. He’s so topply
that you can push him over with one finger and Becky treats him as
if she had him wadded up in pink cotton. I think if they just stopped
treating him like a half-sick person, and just let him do as he pleased
he’d get well twice as fast.”

Doris had been gazing up at the sky dreamily. All at once she said,
“What a funny cloud that is over there, Kit.”

It hung over a big patch of woods toward the village, a low motionless,
pearl-colored cloud, very peculiar looking, and very suspicious, and
the odd part about it was that it seemed balanced on a base of cloud,
like a huge mushroom or a waterspout in shape.

“What on earth is that?” exclaimed Kit, springing to her feet. “That’s
never a cloud, and it’s right over the old Ames place. Do you suppose
they’re out burning brush with the woods so dry?”

“There’s nobody home today. Don’t you know it’s Saturday, and Astrid
said they were all going to the auction at Woodchuck Hill?”

Kit did not wait to hear any more. She sped to the house like a young
deer and, with eyes quite as startled, she burst into the kitchen and
called up the stairs.

“Mother, do you see that smoke over the Ames’s woods?”

“Smoke,” echoed Mrs. Craig’s voice. “Why, no, dear, I haven’t noticed
any. Wait a minute, and I’ll see.”

But Kit was by nature a joyous alarmist. She loved a new thrill, and
in the daily monotony that smothered one in Elmhurst anything that
promised an adventure came as a heaven-sent relief. She flew up the
stairs, stopping to call to Jean who was in her room. Her father and
mother were standing at the open window when she entered their room,
and Mr. Craig had his field glasses.

“It is a fire, isn’t it, Dad?” Kit asked eagerly, and even as she
spoke there came the long, shrill blast of alarm on the Peckham mill
whistle. There was no fire department of any kind for fourteen miles
around. Nothing seemed to unite the little outlying communities of
the hill country so much as the fire peril, but on this Saturday it
happened that nearly all the available men had leisurely jaunted over
to the Woodchuck Hill auction. This was one of the characteristics of
Elmhurst, shunting its daily tasks when any diversion offered.

“Oh, listen,” exclaimed Doris who had followed Kit from the barn.
“There’s the alarm bell ringing up at the church, too. It must be a big
one.”

Even as she spoke the telephone bell rang downstairs, while Tommy
called from the front garden. “Awful big fire just broke out between
here and Ames’s. I’m going over with the mill boys to help fight it.”

“Be careful, son,” called Mr. Craig.

“Can I go too, Tommy?” cried Jack eagerly. “I won’t be in the way,
honest, I won’t.”

“Naw, you’d better stay here. You might get hurt and I won’t be able to
take care of you. Besides you should be here to milk the cow in case I
don’t get back on time.” Tommy started off up the road with a shovel
over one shoulder and a heavy mop over the other. Jean was at the
telephone. It was Judge Ellis calling.

“He’s worried about Becky, Mother,” Jean called up the stairs. “Cynthy
Allen wanted her to come over to her place today to get some carpet
rags, and Becky drove over there about an hour ago. He says her place
lies right in the path of the fire. Mrs. Gorham has gone away for the
day to the auction with Ben, and the Judge will have to stay with
Billie. He’s terribly anxious.”

“Oh, Dad,” exclaimed Kit, “couldn’t I please, please, go over and stay
with Billie, and let the Judge come up to the fire, if he wants to. I’m
sure he’s just dying to. Not but what I’m sure Becky can take care of
herself. May I? Oh, you dear. Tell him I’m coming, Jean.”

Jean had left the telephone and was putting on her coat. “Mother,” she
asked, “do you mind if Doris and I just walk up the wood road a little
way? We won’t go near the fighting line where the men are at all, and
I’d love to see it. Besides I thought perhaps we might work our way
around through that big back wood lot to Cynthy’s place and see if
Becky is there. Then, we could drive back with them.”

“Why, yes, Jean, I think it’s safe for you both to go. Don’t you, Tom?”

Mr. Craig smiled at Jean’s flushed, excited face. It was so seldom that
she lost her presence of mind and really became excited. “I don’t
think it will hurt them a bit,” he said.

Doris grabbed her coat and the two girls started up the hill road for
about three-quarters of a mile. The church bell over at the Plains kept
ringing steadily. At the top of the hill they came to the old wood
road that formed a short cut over to the old Ames place. Here where
the trees met overhead in an arcade the road was heavy with black mud,
and they had to keep to the side up near the old rock walls. As they
advanced farther there came a sound of driving wheels, and all at once
Hedda’s mother appeared in her car. She sat hunched over the wheel, a
man’s old felt hat jammed down over her heavy, blonde hair, and an old
overcoat with the collar upturned, thrown about her. Leaning forward
with eager eyes, she seemed to be thoroughly enthusiastic over this new
excitement in Elmhurst.

“Looks like it’s going to be some fire, girls,” she said as she
stopped the car momentarily to speak to them. “I’m giving the alarm
along the road.” And off she went.

“Isn’t that something?” declared Jean. “And to think that she runs a
ninety-acre farm with the help of Hedda, thirteen years old, and two
hired men. She gets right out into the fields with them and manages
everything herself.”

A farm truck coming the opposite way held Mr. Rudemeir and his son
August. An array of mops, axes, and shovels hung out over the rear of
the truck. Mr. Rudemeir was smoking his clay pipe placidly, and merely
waved one hand at the girls in salutation, but August called, “It has
broken out on the other side of the road, farther down.”

“It must be going toward the Allan place, then,” said Jean anxiously.
She hesitated. The smoke was thickening in the air, but they penetrated
farther into the woods. Up on the hill to one side, she saw the Ames
place, half obscured already by the blue haze. It lay directly in the
path of the fire, unless the wind happened to change, and if it should
change it would surely catch Doris and herself if they tried to reach
Cynthy’s house down near the river bank. Still she felt that she must
take the chance. There was an old road used by the lumber men, and she
knew every step of the way.

“Come on,” she said to Doris. “I’m sure we can make it.”

They turned now from the main road into an old overgrown byway. Along
its sides rambled ground pine, and wintergreen grew thickly in the
shade of the old oaks. Jean took the lead, hurrying on ahead. When they
came out on the river road, the little gray house was in sight, and
sure enough Becky’s car was out in front.

Jean didn’t even stop to rap at the door. It stood wide open, and the
girls went through the door into the kitchen. It was empty.

“Becky,” called Jean loudly. “Becky, are you here?”

From somewhere upstairs there came an answer.

“For pity’s sakes, child!” exclaimed Becky, appearing at the top of
the stairs with her arms full of carpet rags. “What are you doing down
here? Cynthy and I are just sorting out some things she wanted to take
over to my place.”

“Haven’t you seen the smoke? All the woods are on fire up around the
Ames place. The Judge was worried, and telephoned for us to warn you.”

“Land!” laughed Mrs. Ellis. “Won’t he ever learn that I’m big enough
and old enough to take care of myself. I never saw an Elmhurst fire yet
that put me in any danger.”

She stepped out of the doorway, pushed her glasses up on her forehead
and sniffed the air.

“’Tis kind of smoky, ain’t it,” she said. “And the wind’s beginning to
shift.” She looked up over the rise of the hill in front of the house.
Above it poured great belching masses of lurid smoke. Even as she
looked, the huge winglike mass veered and swayed in the sky like vast
shapes of strange animals. Jean caught her breath as she gazed.

Becky started out to the car with Doris. “Jean, you go and get Cynthy
quick as you can!” she called.

Jean ran to the house and met Cynthy groping her way nervously
downstairs. She was old and frail and her scrawny hands clutching the
banister were knotted and the veins were large.

“What on earth is it?” she faltered. “Land, I ain’t had such a set-to
with my heart in years. Is the fire coming this way? Where’s Becky?”

“She says for you to come right away. Please, please hurry up, Miss
Allan.”

But Cynthy sat down in a forlorn heap on the step, rocking her arms,
and crying, piteously.

“Oh, I never, never can leave them, my poor, precious darlings. Can’t
you get them for me? There’s General Washington and Ethan Allen, Betsey
Ross and Pocahontas, and there’s three new kittens in my yarn basket in
the old garret over the ell.”

Jean surmised that she meant her pet cats, dearer to her probably than
any human being in the world. Supporting her gently, she got her out
of the house, promising her she would find the cats. For the next five
minutes, just at the most crucial moment, she hunted for the cats,
and finally succeeded in coaxing all of them into meal bags. Every
scurrying breeze brought down fluttering wisps of half-burned leaves
from the burning woods. The shouts of the men could be plainly heard
calling to each other as they worked to keep the fire back from the
valuable timber along the river front.

“I think we’ve just about time to get by before the fire breaks
through,” said Mrs. Ellis calmly. Jean was on the back seat, one arm
supporting old Cynthy, her other hand pacifying the rebellious captives
in the bags.

Not a word was said as Becky turned the car toward home, but they had
not gone far before the wind changed suddenly. The full force of the
smoke from the fire-swept area poured over them suffocatingly. Cynthy
half-rose to her feet in terror, Jean’s arm around her waist trying to
hold her down as she screamed.

“For land’s sakes, Cynthy, keep your head,” called Mrs. Ellis. “If it’s
the Lord’s will that we should all go up in a chariot of fire, don’t
squeal out like a stuck pig. Hold her close, Jean. I’m going to drive
into the river.”




15. Fire!


At the bend of the road the land sloped suddenly straight for the river
brink. A quarter of a mile below was the dam, above Mr. Rudemeir’s red
sawmill. Little River widened at this point, and swept in curves around
a little island. There were no buildings on it, only broad low lush
meadows that provided a home for muskrats and waterfowl. Late in the
fall fat otters could be seen circling around the still waters, and
wild geese and ducks made it a port of call in their flights north and
south.

As Becky started to drive the car into the water, Jean asked just one
question.

“Do you know how deep it is here?”

“No, it varies in spots,” answered Becky cheerfully. Her chin was
up, her firm lips set in an unswerving smile. She was holding the
steering wheel tightly. To Jean she had never seemed more resourceful
or fearless. “There’s some pretty deep holes, here and there, but we’ll
trust that we don’t hit them.”

Becky edged the car along slowly and inch by inch they moved across the
river. Out in midstream, the car stalled once and for a minute or two,
danger seemed imminent. By a stroke of luck, the car started again and
Becky gave a quick look over her shoulder.

Jean was hanging on grimly to the cats and Cynthy. It was hard saying
which of the two was proving the more difficult to manage. The car
lurched perilously, but Becky held steady, and suddenly they felt the
rise of the shore line again. Overhead, there had flown a vanguard of
frightened birds, flying ahead of the smothering clouds of smoke that
poured now in blinding masses down from the burning woods. The faint
cries and calls of the men working along the back fire line reached the
little group on the far shore.

As the car jolted up the bank, Doris glanced back over her shoulder at
the way they had come. Cynthy gave one look too, and covered her face
with her hands. The flames had swept straight down over her little
home, and she cried out in anguish.

“Pity’s sakes, Cynthy, praise God that the two of us aren’t burning up
this minute with those old shingles and rafters,” cried Mrs. Ellis,
joyfully.

“Oh, and Miss Allan, not one of the cats got wet even,” Doris
exclaimed, laughing almost hysterically. “You should be thankful for
that.”

The flames had reached the opposite shore, but while the smoke billowed
across, Little River left them high and dry in the safety zone.

“I guess we’d better be making for home as quick as we can,” said
Becky. Except for a little pallor around her lips, and an extra
brightness to her eyes, no one could have told that she had just fought
a winning battle with death. She stepped on the starter and headed
toward home.

The Judge was watching anxiously, pacing up and down the long porch
with Billie sitting in his chair bolstered up with pillows beside him.
He had telephoned repeatedly down to Woodhow, but they were all quite
as anxious now as himself. It was Billie who first caught sight of the
car and its occupants.

Kit had gone out to the kitchen to start lunch going. She had refused
to believe that any harm could come to Becky or anyone under her care,
and at the sound of Billie’s voice, she glanced from the window and
caught sight of Jean’s coat.

“Land alive, don’t hug me to death, all of you,” exclaimed Becky.
“Jean, you go and telephone your mother right away and relieve her
anxiety. Like enough, she thinks we’re all burned to cinders by this
time, and tell her she’d better have plenty of coffee and sandwiches
made up to send over to the men in the woods. All us women will have
our night’s work cut out for us.”

It was the Craigs’ first experience with a country forest fire. All
through the afternoon fresh relays of men kept arriving from the nearby
villages, and outlying farms, ready to relieve those who had been
working through the morning.

There was but little sleep for any members of the family that night.
Jean never forgot the thrill of watching the fire from the upstairs
windows, and when she wasn’t preparing food with the others, she spent
most of the time up there until daybreak. There was a fascination in
seeing that battle from afar, and realizing how the little puny efforts
of a handful of men could hold in check such a devastating force. Only
country dwellers could appreciate the peril of having all one owned
in the world, all that was dear and precious, and comprised the word
“home,” swept away in the path of the flames.

“Poor old Cynthy,” said Jean. “I’m so glad she has her cats. I shall
never forget her face when she looked back. Just think of losing all
the little keepsakes of a lifetime.”

It was nearly five o’clock when Tommy returned. Even though he was only
twelve, he had certainly done a man-sized job that day. He was grimy
and smoky, but exuberant.

“By golly, we’ve got her under control,” he cried. “Got some milk and
doughnuts for a guy? Who do you suppose worked better than anybody?
Gave us all pointers on how to manage a fire. He says this is just a
little fire compared with the ones he has up home. He says he’s seen a
forest fire twenty miles wide, sweeping over the mountains.”

“Who do you mean, Tommy?” asked Jean. “For gosh sakes, quit elaborating
and come to the point.”

“Who do you suppose I mean?” asked Tommy reproachfully. “Buzzy
Hancock’s cousin, your Ralph McRae from Saskatoon.”

Jean blushed prettily, as she always did when Ralph’s name was
mentioned. She hadn’t spent as much time with Ralph since his arrival
as she had wanted to owing to Billie’s illness. Still, oddly enough,
even Tommy’s high praise of him made her feel shyly happy.

The fire burned fitfully for three days, breaking out unexpectedly in
new spots and keeping everyone excited and busy. The old Ames barn went
up in smoke, and Mr. Rudemeir’s sawmill caught fire three times.

“Whew!” he said, jubilantly, “I guess I sat out on that roof all night
long, slapping sparks with a wet mop, but it didn’t get ahead of me.”

Lucy Peckham and Kit ran a sort of pony express, riding horseback from
house to house, carrying food and coffee over to the men who were
scattered nearly four miles around the fire-swept area. Ralph and Sally
ran their own rescue work at the north end of town. Buzzy had been put
on the mail truck with Mr. Rickett’s eldest boy, while the former gave
his services on the volunteer fire corps. The end of the third day
Jean was driving back from Nantic after a load of groceries when she
noticed Ralph turning on to the main road ahead of her. She stopped the
car beside him and asked him to get in.

“The fire’s all out,” he said. “We have left some of the boys on guard
yet, in case it may be smouldering in the underbrush. I have just been
telling Rudemeir and the other men, if they’d learn to pile their brush
the way we do up home, they would be able to control these little fires
in no time. You girls must be awfully tired out. You did splendid work.”

“Kit and Lucy did, you mean,” answered Jean. “All I did was to help
cook.” She laughed. “I never dreamed that men and boys could eat so
many doughnuts and cupcakes. Becky says she sent over twenty-two loaves
of gingerbread, not counting all the other stuff. Was anyone hurt, at
all?”

“You mean eating too much?” asked Ralph teasingly. Then more seriously,
he added, “A few of the men were burnt a little bit, but nothing to
speak of. How beautiful your springtime is down here in New England. It
makes me want to take off my coat and go to work right here, reclaiming
some of these old worked-out acres, and making them show the good that
still lies in them if they are plowed deep enough.”

Jean sighed quickly. “Do you really think one could ever make any money
here?” she asked. “Sometimes I get awfully discouraged, Ralph. Of
course, we didn’t come up here with the idea of being farmers. It was
Dad’s health that brought us, but once we were here, we couldn’t help
but see the chance of making Woodhow pay our way a little. Becky has
told us we’re in awfully good luck to even get our vegetables and fruit
out of it this last year, and it isn’t the past year I’m thinking of.
It’s the next year, and the next one and the next. One of the most
appalling things about Elmhurst is, that you get absolutely contented
up here, and you go around singing blissfully. Old Pop Higgins who
taught our art class down in New York always said that contentment was
fatal to progress, and I believe it. Dad is really a brilliant man, and
he’s getting his full strength back. And while I have a full sense of
gratitude toward the healing powers of these old green hills, still I
have a horror of Dad stagnating here.”

Ralph turned his head to watch her face. “Has he said anything himself
about wanting to go back to his work?” he asked.

“Not yet. I suppose that is what we really must wait for. His own
confidence returning. You see, what I’m afraid of is this. Dad was born
and brought up right here, and the granite of these old hills is in his
system. He loves every square foot of land around here. Just supposing
he should be contented to settle down, like old Judge Ellis, and turn
into a sort of Connecticut country squire.”

“There are worse things than that in the world,” Ralph replied. “Too
many of our best men forget the land that gave them birth, and pour the
full strength of their powers and capabilities into the city market.
You speak of Judge Ellis. Look at what that old man’s mind has done for
his home community. He has literally brought modern improvements into
Elmhurst. He has represented her up at Hartford off and on for years,
when he was not sitting in judgment here.”

“You mean, that you think Dad ought not to go back?” asked Jean, almost
resentfully. “That just because he happened to have been born here, he
owes it to Elmhurst to stay here now, and give it the best he has?”

Ralph laughed good-naturedly. “We’re getting into rather deep water,
Jeannie,” he answered. “I can see that you don’t like the country,
and I do. I love it down east here where all of my family came from
originally, and I’m very fond of the West.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’d like that too,” broke in Jean eagerly. “Mother’s
from the West, California, and I’d love to go out there. I would love
the scope and freedom. What bothers me here are all those rock walls,
for instance.” She pointed at the old one along the road, uneven, half
tumbling down, and overgrown with gray moss--the standing symbol of the
infinite patience and labor of a bygone generation. “Just think of all
the people who spent their lives carrying those stones, and cutting up
all this beautiful land into these little shut-in pastures.”

“Yes, but those rocks represent the clearing of fields for tillage. If
they hadn’t dug them out of the ground, they wouldn’t have had any
cause for Thanksgiving dinners. I’m extremely proud of my New England
blood, and I want to tell you right now, if it wasn’t for the New
England blood that went out to conquer the West, where would the West
be today?”

“That’s OK,” said Jean, a little crossly, “but if they had pioneered a
little bit right around here, there wouldn’t be so many run-down farms.
What I would like to do, now that Dad is getting well, is make Woodhow
our playground in summertime, and go back home in the winter.”

“Home,” he repeated, curiously.

“Yes, we were all born down in New York,” answered Jean, looking
south over the country landscape as though she could see Manhattan’s
panoramic skyline rising like a mirage of beckoning promises. “I’m
afraid that is home to me.”

Ralph was quiet while Jean was lost in her memories of her wonderful
visit with Beth in New York. Suddenly she turned to Ralph.

“I’m very confused,” she said. “I really don’t know what I want. The
only thing I am sure of is that I like you better than any boy I’ve
ever met.” Jean hesitated a little over this admission. “When I’m here
I long to be in New York, and when I was in New York I missed everybody
and everything in the country very much.”

“You’re still very young, Jean, but with your level head I’m sure
you’ll be able to make a decision soon. I, for one, am willing to
wait,” said Ralph.




16. Future Plans


“It always seems to me,” said Becky, the first time she drove down with
Billie to spend the day, “as if Maytime is a sort of fulfilled promise
to us, after the winter and spring. When I was a girl, spring up here
behaved itself. It was sweet and balmy and gentle, and now it’s turned
into an uncertain young tomboy. The weather doesn’t really begin to
settle until the middle of May, but when it does--” She drew in a deep
breath and smiled. “Just look around you at the beauty it gives us.”

She sat out on the tree seat in the garden that sloped from the south
side of the house. The terraces were a riot of spring bloom; tall gold
and purple flags grew side by side with dainty columbine and narcissus.
Along the stone walls white and purple lilacs flung their delicious
perfume to every passing breeze. The old apple trees that straggled
in uneven rows up through the hill pasture behind the barn had been
transformed into gorgeous splashy masses of pink bloom against the
tender green of young foliage.

“What’s Jean doing over there in the orchard?” Kit rose from her knees,
her fingers grimy with the soil, her face flushed and warm from her
labors, and answered her own question. “Why, she’s painting.”

Jean was out of their hearing. Frowning slightly, with compressed
lips, she bent over her work. She was sitting on the ground, her knees
supporting her drawing board. The week before she had sent off five
studies to Beth, and two of her very best ones down to Mr. Higgins.
Answers had come back from both, full of criticism, but with plenty
of encouragement, too. Mrs. Craig had read the two letters and given
her eldest the quick impulsive embrace which ever since her childhood
had been to Jean her highest reward of merit. But it was from her
father, perhaps, that she derived the greatest happiness. He laid one
arm around her shoulders, smiling at her with a certain whimsical
speculation in his keen eyes.

“Well, my dear, if you will persist in developing such talent, we
can’t afford to hide this light under a bushel. You should have more
training.”

“But when?” interrupted Jean. “It isn’t that I want to know for my own
pleasure, but you don’t know how fearfully precious these last years
in my teens seem to me. There’s such a terrible lot of things to learn
before I can really say I’ve finished.”

“And one of the first things you have to learn is just that you never
stop learning. That you never really start to learn until you know your
own limitations. Somewhere over there lies New York,” he said, looking
down the valley. “Often through the past year, I have stood looking in
that direction. I’ve got a job back there waiting--”

Jean interrupted, her face alight with gladness. “Oh, Dad, Dad, you do
want to go back. You don’t know how afraid I’ve been that you’d take
root up here and stay forever. I know it’s perfectly splendid, and it
has been a place of refuge for us all, but now that you are getting to
be just like your old self--”

Her father’s hand checked her.

“Steady there,” he warned. “Not quite so fast. I am still a little bit
uncertain when I try to speed up. We’ve got to be patient a little
while longer.”

Jean pressed his hand in hers and understood. If it had been hard for
them to be patient, it had been doubly so for him, groping his way back
slowly, the past year, on the upgrade to health.

Jean was thinking of their talk as she sat out in the orchard today,
trying to catch some of the fleeting beauty of its blossom-laden trees.

“How are you getting along, dear?” asked a well-known voice behind her.

“I don’t know, Dad,” said Jean, leaning back with her head on one side,
looking for all the world like a meditative brown thrush. “I can’t seem
to get that queer silver-gray effect. You take a day like this, just
before a rain, and it seems to underlie everything. I’ve tried dark
green and gray and sienna, and it doesn’t do a bit of good.”

“Mix a little Chinese black with every color you use,” said her father,
closing one eye to look at her painting. “It’s the old master’s trick.
You’ll find it in the Flemish school, and the Veronese. It gives you
the atmospheric gray quality in everything. Here come Ralph and Sally.”

Sally waved her hand, but joined Kit, Doris and Billie in the lower
garden at their grubbing for cutworms.

“If you put plenty of salt in the water when you sprinkle those, it’ll
help a lot,” she told them.

“Oh, we’ve salted them. We each took a bag of salt and went out
sprinkling one night, and then it rained, and I honestly believe it was
a tonic to the cutworm colony. The only thing to do, is go after them
and annihilate them.”

Ralph nodded to the group on the terrace, but went on up to the
orchard. Kit watched him with speculative eyes and spoke in her usual
impulsive fashion.

“Do you suppose he’s come here with the idea of taking Jean away?
Because if he has any such notions at all, I’d like to tell him she’s
not for him. If he thinks for one moment he’s going to throw her across
his saddle and carry her off to Saskatoon, he’s very much mistaken.”

Sally glanced up at the figures in the orchard, before she answered in
her slow, deliberate fashion. “I’m sure I don’t know, but Ralph said he
was coming back here every spring, so he can’t expect to take her away
this year.”

Ralph threw himself down in the grass beside Jean. She smiled at him,
then bent over her board, absently touching in some shadows on the
trunks of the trees. Her thoughts had wandered from the old orchard, as
they did so often these days. It was the future that seemed more real
to her, with its hopes and ambitions, than the present.

“Oh, Jean,” called Kit, “Becky’s going now.”

Ralph rose and caught her hand as she started to leave. “I hope your
ambitions carry you far, Jean,” he said earnestly. “Sally, Buzzy, Mrs.
Hancock and I are leaving for Saskatoon Monday morning and I’ll hardly
get over again since Buzzy and I are doing all the packing and crating,
but you’ll see me again next spring, won’t you?”

Jean looked up at him startled.

“Why, I didn’t know you were going so soon. Of course, I’ll see you
when you come back,” she said with a heavy heart. Heavier than she
would have wanted Ralph to see.

“I’ll come,” Ralph promised, and he stood where she left him, under the
blossoming apple trees, watching her as she joined her family circle.
Ralph had deliberately planned this abrupt goodbye. With his usual
thoughtfulness he did not want to influence Jean’s thinking.

As Jean walked back across the path to the lower terrace, her thoughts
were sad. Perhaps she would never see him again, perhaps she would
decide never to marry and to continue her art career, yet if she could
have known, many changes would take place in the next year that are
told in _Jean Craig Finds Romance_.

She shook off these unhappy thoughts and came up to the others smiling
and saying to Becky, “You’ll be over again to see us soon, won’t you?”

Becky gave her an understanding smile that seemed to say, “I’m always
here and you belong here too.”




Transcriber’s Note:

Punctuation has been standardised. Hyphenation has been retained as it
appears in the original publication. The following change was made:

  Page 112
    it still so bleak _changed to_
    is still so bleak