THE TENTS OF GREENACRES
If it had not been for the opening of Hope College the week after New
Years, Miss Daphne declared, for her part, she would not have gone back to
Delphi until she had at least seen the arbutus bloom again in April. After
Christmas at Greenacres, Cousin Roxy insisted on both her and the Dean
visiting at Elmhurst, but before they left, the Dean had unfolded his
plan.
"Daphne is well provided for in case of my passing over," he said,
genially and unexpectedly, the last evening he was with them, "and I have
been thinking a good deal lately over what Kit has well named the folly of
'dead men's shoes.'" He turned to where Mr. Robbins sat on the opposite
side of the round library table, nearest the fire. "So I've taken the
liberty, Jerry, of making over to you now what you would have had
inevitably some day. Don't say anything, please. It's a personal
indulgence on my part. I want to see, while I am alive, just exactly how
much happiness it will bring you and yours. It is all well invested, but
you may do as you like with it. I would suggest that you would live on the
income, and stop worrying."
And when both Mr. Robbins and the Mother Bird tried to expostulate, the
Dean only laughed at them, brushing their arguments aside.
"Why, if I were to turn over everything I own to the clan of Robbins, I
could hardly pay back all that Kit has done for me. I'm a new man, Jerry.
Sometimes I feel like a prehistoric toad just released from a clay-bank
and blinking in the sunlight. Not only has she taught me the joy of
living, but through her ingenuity she brought about one of the greatest
discoveries that has been made in years on ancient Egypt. I feel guilty in
taking any credit for it whatsoever, for while I was groping blindly after
the solution, she put her finger, as it were, on the whole source of the
trouble."
After they had returned west, and Jean had gone back to New York, Kit
found her opportunity of laying her summer plan before her mother and
father.
"There are acres and acres here that we never use at all. All that
wonderful land on both sides of the river up through the valley, and the
two islands besides. What I thought we could do was this, if you could
just let us girls manage it. Couldn't we start a regular tent colony? Jean
was telling me before she left about an artists' colony up in the
Catskills, where they have tents fitted up for light housekeeping, and I'm
sure we could do it here."
It had taken much argument and figuring on paper before the consent of
both was won, but Cousin Roxy approved of the scheme highly.
"Land alive, Elizabeth Ann," she exclaimed, heartily, "don't crush
anything that looks like budding initiative in your girls. I'd let them
put tents all over the place until it blossomed like the wilderness.
There's a stack of old furniture up in the garret at Maple Lawn and over
at Elmhurst, too, and they're welcome to it. Get some pots of paint in
and go to work, girls."
Kit acted immediately on the suggestion and drove up with Shad to look
over the collection of discarded antiques in the two garrets. What she
liked best of all were the three-drawer, old-fashioned chests and
hand-made wooden chairs. There were ewer stands also, and several old
single slat bedsteads.
"We're going to paint them all over, mother dear, in the loveliest yellows
and grays, and Shad says that it won't be any trick at all for him to
build the floors for us, and he says he can fix up little
hanging-cupboards like they have in the tea-rooms, don't you know, to hold
a few plates and dishes for light housekeeping."
"I don't see what else we're going to need," Helen put in, thoughtfully,
"except the finishing touches, and I can add those. They'll need some jars
for wild flowers and cushions and little things like that."
"Well, don't forget that they'll have to eat some time," Cousin Roxy
remarked. "Get some two-burner oil stoves and folding tables and camp
chairs, or if you want to be real rustic and quaint, have Shad here knock
some white birch ones together, and probably the city folks will admire
them more than anything you could buy. Lay in a stock of candles and
bracket lamps. I'd make them bring up their own bedding if I were you,
'cause that would be the only nuisance you'd have to contend with."
"It's too bad," Kit said, reflectively, "that we're so far away from any
kind of stores. I'm planning on eight tents all together, and there'll be
ever so many things people will want to buy. Do you suppose, mother, that
Mr. Peckham would let Sally manage anything like that up here? She's just
dying to do something besides housework all her life."
"But where would you put her, dear?"
"Put her in another tent, if we couldn't do anything else, but I'll bet a
cookie the boys down there at the mill could throw together a perfectly
dandy little slab shack with birch trimmings. They could either have it
down by the mill or put it right here at the crossroads. Sally could put
in all kinds of supplies, kodaks and phonographs and post-cards and
candy."
"Better put in a few canned goods, too, and staples," added Cousin Roxy.
"I declare, I'd kind of like to have a hand in that myself. I'd put Cynthy
to work right away at home bakery goods. Kit, I do believe, child, you've
started something that may waken Gilead out of its Rip Van Winkle
slumber."
Kit thought so too before she had half started the winter's work. Shad
became a tower of strength when it came to painting the old furniture.
They took one of the large upper chambers that was unoccupied, and set up
a stove to keep it warm. Helen called it the atelier, but it was more like
a paint shop before Shad finished.
Jean did her share by sending up some stencils she had designed herself
for the backs of the chairs and panels in the chests and headboards.
"They look just exactly like the painted furniture you see in the New York
shops," Cousin Roxy declared, the first time she inspected the results.
"When the Judge and I were down before Christmas, I saw a little
dining-room set that looked kind of cute, although it wasn't anything but
plain gray with a few morning-glory vines trailing over it. I think you've
done splendidly, girls. You've set your hand to the plow and started some
fine deep furrows. But just remember, it's a long way around a ten-acre
lot, so faint not in the heat of the day."
Kit herself attacked the problem of winning over the Peckhams to her idea
of Sally's taking charge of a little store at the crossroads. Sally
herself sat with wide anxious eyes on the extreme edge of a black
haircloth armchair, while her mother said over and over again it was
utterly impossible.
"Why, I couldn't get along without Sally, especially in the summer, with
all the fruit to put up and the young ones home from school."
"But, Mrs. Peckham," pleaded Kit, "when you were Sally's age, wasn't there
ever anything that you wanted to do or be with all your heart and soul?
Didn't you ever just want to get away from what you had been doing for
years, and start something new?"
"Well, come to think of it now," smiled Mrs. Peckham, "I'd have given my
eye-teeth to have left home and gone to be a teacher in some town."
"Then please let Sally do this. Cousin Roxy says she's willing to keep an
eye over everything, and one of us girls will probably be helping her out
most of the time, too. It would only be until the middle of September,
although if it wasn't too cold later on, we might be able to rent the
tents and outfits to the hunters when they come up. Piney'll be home for
vacation and Elvy and Sylvy can help you. They're eight years old now, and
Anne's fifteen and Charlotte's twelve. Why, it isn't fair to them to let
them think all Sally's good for is to stay at home and do housework. You
will let her go, won't you, Mrs. Peckham?"
Mrs. Peckham sighed and smiled at the same time.
"You're a fearful good pleader. I don't suppose it would hurt the other
girls any to take hold and help, but it's such a nuisance to have to teach
them everything when Sally can go right ahead. Still, I'm willing, and if
her father is, why, she can go. Seems as if you girls are starting
something you can't finish, but mebbe you can."
Piney Hancock had boarded in Willimantic that winter for her third year in
high school. So the girls had seen very little of her since the previous
September, but Kit rounded up the old members of the Hiking Club, and
welded them together into a sort of efficiency committee to help with the
summer plan.