Becky departed for Elmhurst, Connecticut, the following Monday.
“I’d take you with me, Tom, if it were spring,” she said, “but the first
of March we get some pretty bad spells of weather, and it’s uncertain
for anybody in poor health. You stay here and cheer up and get stronger,
and gradually break camp. If you need any help, let me know.”
It was harder breaking camp than any of them realized. They had lived
six years at Sandy Cove, near Great Neck on Long Island. Before that
time, there had been an apartment in New York on Columbia Heights. As
Kit described it with her usual graphic touch, “Bird’s-eye Castle, eight
stories up. Fine view of adjacent clouds. With field glasses on clear
days, you could also see the tops of the Riverside busses.”
It had seemed almost like real country to the girls and Tommy when they
had left the city behind them and moved to Sandy Cove. Tommy had the
measles that year, and the doctor had ordered fresh air and an outdoor
life for him, so the whole family had benefited, which was very
thoughtful and considerate of Tommy, the rest said.
But now came the problem of weeding out what Rebecca would have called
the essential things from the luxuries.
“Dear me, I had no idea we had so many of the pomps and vanities of this
wicked world,” Jean said regretfully one day. There were eight rooms in
the big home, all well-furnished. Living room, dining room and study,
with Lydia’s domain at the back. Upstairs were four bedrooms. Sitting on
the bed and the floor of Jean’s room, the three girls and Tommy were
sorting out their belongings and piling up nonessentials to be thrown
away.
“I can’t find anything more of mine that I’m willing to part with,” said
Tommy flatly, stuffing a catcher’s mitt into a box already jammed full.
“I’ll need that to practice with. What’s a luxury anyway?”
“Makes me think of Bob Phelps,” Doris remarked. “Last night when I went
over to tell Mrs. Phelps that we couldn’t be in the Easter play, Bob was
just having his supper, and he wanted more of the prune whip. His mother
told him he mustn’t gorge on delicacies. So Bob asked what a delicacy
was anyway, and he said some day he was going to have a whole meal made
of delicacies. Isn’t that a scream?”
“Don’t throw away any pieces at all, kids,” Jean warned. “Becky says
we’ll need them all for rag carpets.”
“You can buy rag rugs and carpets anywhere now,” said Doris.
“Yes, and oh, brother, at what prices too. We people who are going to
live at Elmhurst will cut and sew our own, roll them in nice fat balls,
and hand them over to Mr. Carpenter up at Denton, to be woven into the
real thing at fifteen cents a yard. It’ll last for years, Becky says.
When you get tired of it, you boil it up in some dye, and have a new
effect.”
Kit regarded her elder sister in speechless delight.
“Jean Craig, you’re catching it!” she gasped. “You’re talking exactly
like Becky.”
“What if I am. I don’t care,” answered Jean blithely, “it’s common
sense. Save the pieces.”
“She who used to be most concerned about what she was going to wear to
the next formal has suddenly changed her tune,” murmured Kit. “I
marvel.”
She looked down at the garden, windswept and bare in the last chilly
days of February. Yet there was a hint of spring in the air. An early
robin was perched near the grape arbor they had all enjoyed so much,
with its luscious grapes and ceiling of green leaves. Leading from it to
the hedged garden at the back was a flagged walk.
The garage was of reddish fieldstone and, like the house, covered with
ivy. A tall privet hedge enclosed the grounds. Memories of all the fun
which they had enjoyed in the past six years passed through her mind.
There had been picnics and dances, beach parties and tennis games. She
hugged her knees, rocking back and forth anxiously.
“What’s eating you, Kit?” asked Jean, mildly. Jean was the first to have
an emotional storm over the inevitable, but once it was over, she always
settled down to make the best of things, while Kit was gloomy and raged
inwardly for days.
“Wonder what we’ll really find to do there all the time. I don’t want to
be a merry milkmaid, do you?”
“If it would help Dad and Mother, yes.”
“But definitely. You don’t have a monopoly on the desire to help, you
know. We’d all walk from here to Elmhurst on our left ears if it would
help Dad and Mother, but the fact that we’d do it wouldn’t make it any
easier, would it?”
“Don’t be a dope, Kit,” said Tommy.
“Who’s a dope?” demanded Kit. “I’m just as ready to face this thing as
anyone. If it were a small town up in the wilds, even, I wouldn’t mind,
but it just isn’t anything but country.”
Jean pulled off the ribbon that tied her hair back and started pulling
at a lock thoughtfully. “What’s Elmhurst then? Isn’t that a town?”
“No, it isn’t. It’s a village. Nearest town seven miles away, post
office five. There used to be a post office there when the mail truck
made the trip over, but they needed the building to keep the hearse in,
so it’s gone.”
“You’re making that up, Kit,” put in Doris.
“I’m not,” protested Kit. “You can ask Becky. Nobody ever dies up there.
They just fade away, and the hearse is seldom needed and was in the way.
There are only nine houses in the village proper, one store, one church,
and one school. Her house is a mile outside the village, so where will
we be?”
“Is it on the map?” asked Tommy hopefully.
“Some maps. Township maps. This morning Mother and I were looking up how
to get there. You’ve got your choice of two routes and each one’s worse
than the other, and more of it.”
“Kit, you’re exaggerating.”
Kit ignored the remark, absorbed in her own forebodings.
“You can reach this spot by land or sea. Becky says that it takes five
hours for anybody to get out of there once they’re in. You can take a
boat to New London, ride up to Norwich on the train, transfer to a bus
and rattle along for another hour, then hire a cab in East Elmhurst, and
drive twenty minutes more up through the hills. Or you can take a Boston
Express up to Willimantic, and hop on a side line from there. A train
runs twice a day—”
“What road, Kit?” asked Doris. They leaned around her, fascinated at her
sudden store of information.
“Any road you please. Central Vermont up to Plainfield, or Providence
line over to South Elmhurst. There’s South Elmhurst and East Elmhurst
and Elmhurst Green and Elmhurst Station. It really doesn’t seem to
matter which way you go so long as it lands you at one of the Elmhursts.
And Elmhurst Station is five miles from Elmhurst, Plainfield is seven
miles, Boulderville is—”
“Oh, please, Kit, quit it,” Jean cried, both hands over her ears. “We’ll
drive over anyway. Didn’t you know that Dad and I are going to take the
car up first before the rest of you? We’re going to sell Mother’s car,”
said Jean. “The Phelpses are going to buy it. Bob told me so.”
“Dad says it will pay nearly all moving expenses and keep us for months.
What else could he do? Besides, we’ll still have one car, that’s enough.
At least we won’t be completely marooned. He’d sell that one too only
it’s an absolute necessity to have one. We’re going to have to buy a
trailer, too, for hauling things. Anyway I want a horse to ride, don’t
you, Kit?”
“Isn’t it queer,” Doris broke in, “when a father breaks down, it just
seems as if a home caves in.”
“Well, it doesn’t do any such thing, Doris,” responded Kit stolidly. “It
may seem to, but it doesn’t. Even if we are going to live five miles
from nowhere with the eye of Rebecca forever resting upon us, there’ll
be lots of fun ahead. What’s that about the world making a pathway to
your door? I’m going to be famous some day and there’ll be a nice,
well-worn path leading from New York up to Elmhurst, worn by the feet of
faithful admirers.”
“It’s so nice having one genius in the family,” Jean answered, leaning
her chin on one hand. “Now I don’t mind leaving the house behind, or the
car, or anything like that. But it’s the people I like best that I can’t
take up with me. Who will we know there, I wonder?”
“Human beings anyhow,” Doris stated. “We’ll make oodles of new friends.
Besides, lots of the girls have promised to visit us. We’re not going to
be lonesome.”