Dear Mr. Craig: Your letter of March 28th received. I should be very
glad to rent the old house down at Stony Eddy on a lease, but do not
want to let it go out of the family. Miss Craig can tell you the
conditions under which it came into my possession and why I am not at
liberty to part with it. If you care to rent it at $65 a month, it is
yours. Any necessary repairs it may need I am willing to make. I have
never seen the property myself, but whatever Miss Craig says about it
will be satisfactory to me, as she was my Aunt Trowbridge’s dearest
friend.
Hoping if you decide to take the place, you may be happy there, I am,
Yours sincerely,
RALPH McRAE.
“It’s ours,” Jean breathed thankfully.
“I always felt that it was, somehow,” Mrs. Craig smiled happily around
at her family. “And I know you’ll like it, Tom.”
“Oh, I know the place, I remember admiring it as a boy. Besides, I’d
like anything up here. Why, I could live out yonder in Becky’s corncrib
very comfortably this summer if she’d only let me,” teased the invalid.
“Better send a check out at once for the rent, Margie, and get into it
as soon as possible.”
It was the third week in April when they drove down in relays from Maple
Grove and took possession of the new home. There had been considerable
repairing to be done—painting and papering, mending the water pipes and
furnace, and cleaning out the chimneys.
The goods had been brought up from Nantic by Matt in the big hay wagon
in four trips. Mrs. Craig had wanted to hire a truck from Norwich, but
Rebecca said it was all nonsense with two big horses standing idle in
the barn just aching for work, and Matt fussing around over frost still
being in the ground so he couldn’t do any deep ploughing. So the goods
came up and were packed into the big front room downstairs while the
girls and Mrs. Craig went back and forth settling.
Matt’s younger brother came to do the papering and painting. He looked
exactly like a young rooster, Kit declared, all neck and legs, and he
was fearfully shy. She found immediate diversion in appearing before him
suddenly in her most abrupt manner to ask his opinion anxiously on
something, whereupon Shad would blush intensely to the roots of his
taffy-colored hair, and splash paste blindly.
His name was Shadrach Farnum, but Shad suited him to perfection. As
Rebecca said, he did sort of run to bone. But he could paint and paper
well, and gradually the rooms began to look different. The big living
room was covered with a soft gray that harmonized well with their dark
green and chartreuse upholstered furniture. The bookcases were painted
the same shade of gray. Window seats were built around the two bay
windows, and the girls worked hard making new chartreuse cushions and
crisp white curtains for the windows.
“It looks so warm and friendly, doesn’t it?” Doris exclaimed when the
big round table was brought in and the copper lamp placed in the center.
The copper lamp was really an institution in the Craig family. The girls
had given it personal conduct from the Cove on Long Island to Nantic.
Jean had found it in an old copper and brass shop in New York at a
wonderful reduction, and had carted it home herself in triumph. The bowl
was broad and low and squat, shaped a good deal like a summer squash.
The parchment shade was perforated by hand with exquisite artistry into
strange Muscovite designs, through which the light shone softly. When it
was lighted the first evening in the new home, Doris said she felt that
everything was complete.
The day after they really moved in, Rebecca drove down with Ella Lou and
some good advice, a large brown crock of freshly baked beans and a loaf
of brown bread.
“You need a good safe horse that you all can ride and also use for
work,” she said. “Sam Willetts has a brown mare that seems just about
the ticket. I telephoned over to him this morning and he’ll sell her for
$75, which isn’t bad at all. If you like, Margie, I’ll call him up again
as soon as I get back and Buzzy Hancock can bring her over. Buzzy’s
working for Mr. Willetts now, and the mare used to belong to the
Hancocks. She was a regular pet, Sally said.”
Mrs. Craig was sure it was a good plan and Rebecca was instructed to
close the bargain. So it was thus Woodhow made the acquaintance of Buzzy
Hancock, destined to be a close friend before summer was over, and
always a family standby.
It was a little while after supper when Buzzy rode up leading the mare
behind his own horse, and they all went out to look at her. Buzzy was
about seventeen and tall. He had rosy cheeks, blue eyes, curly brown
hair, and dimples so deep that Doris said it was a burning shame to
waste them on a boy.
He stood at the mare’s head, patting her slender, glossy neck and
combing her mane with his fingers, telling the girls and Tommy her
history, how she had belonged to Molly Bawn, their old mare, and how his
father had broken her to harness himself.
“But she never had to be really broken in. Sally and I started riding
her bareback when she was out in pasture and she was just as tame as a
kitten. She understands anything you say to her. Mother hated to sell
her to Mr. Willetts, but we had to, and as I was working for him, why,
she didn’t know any difference. She’s used to a good deal of petting—”
“Oh, we’ll all pet her,” Jean promised. “We must get a saddle and
harness. Do you know where we can get some?”
“Down at Mr. Butterick’s,” said Buzzy. “He’s the man who handles all
sorts of riding equipment.”
“You have wonderful people up here,” Doris said fervently. “It seems as
if whenever you want a certain kind of a person, there he is waiting for
you. Where does Mr. Butterick live?”
“Down in Rocky Glen. Second house past the basket weaver, Mr. Tompkins.”
“Suppose we go over there tomorrow, kids,” Jean suggested. “Or do you
have to take the mare over, Buzzy, and let Mr. Butterick sort of fit her
with a harness and saddle? I wish I could put her in the barn right
now.”
“Better get somebody to take care of her first,” Doris said practically.
“We’d feed her fish cakes and doughnuts.”
Buzzy shifted his weight from one foot to the other uneasily.
“Don’t suppose you folks think of taking anybody on regularly, do you?
Mother said I was to ask, and say if you wanted me I might come up. It’s
nearer home than Mr. Willetts’ and there’s only Sally and Mom at home,
and they need me to do the chores after I get home at night.”
Jean hastily glanced at Kit for fear she wouldn’t remember all that
Rebecca had told them about Buzzy Hancock and his sister. But just then
Mrs. Craig stepped out on the side porch and smiled at Buzzy until he
turned red and grinned.
“I could come for about ten a month, Mother thought,” he added with much
embarrassment.
Mrs. Craig thought ten was about right too, and Buzzy rode away in the
spring twilight. All the way up the hill they heard him whistling
_Stardust_. Although the deal had been closed over the brown mare, and
the check reposed in Buzzy’s overalls’ pocket, he took her back with
him, and promised to ride her over in the morning so the Craigs should
not have the care of her overnight.
“I asked him what her name was,” Tommy said, “and he told me they just
called her Molly’s Baby. We must think up a better name than that. You
know, Mom, she looked over at me so wistfully when Buzzy said she would
have to go back overnight. I know she wanted to stay with us.”
The next addition to the place was the lot of chickens. It had been
agreed the first year that no large expenditures should be made for
anything, because it was all more or less experimental.
“We want to take care of Dad, and make him well this first year,” Jean
told the others up in their room one night.
At first the housework had proved to be the great stumbling block in the
way of perfect peace and daily comfort.
“I tell you, Mom, if you’ll just say what you want done, we’ll do our
best to oblige,” Jean had promised at the very beginning, but the girls
had found themselves tangled up in less than two days, treading on each
other’s heels and losing their tempers, too.
Mrs. Craig laughed at them when she happened in and found them all
bickering.
“You’ll have to learn teamwork,” she explained. “You must learn that
when you put your bread to rise it doesn’t shape itself into loaves and
hop into the pans and walk over to the oven.” Here Kit blushed hotly,
remembering how her first batch had risen to the occasion beyond all
expectations, and rambled during the night all over the edge of the pan
and the arm of the chair she had set it on. “And, Tommy, darling, if you
catch mice in traps alive, and then decide to tame them, we’ll have mice
all over the place.”
Tommy had discovered a nice little brown prisoner under the pantry
shelf, had taken him out into the rose garden and there let him go, all
in a spirit of pity that left Kit and Jean speechless.
Also, sundry noises having issued from his room at night, the girls had
started down the dark hall to investigate, and had stepped on turtles
which Tommy had found sunning themselves on logs in the pond, and had
put into empty tomato cans and smuggled up to his room for future
humanitarian reference.
“OK, Mom,” said Jean in a subdued voice, “we’ll try to make fewer
mistakes. With patience maybe we’ll learn how to do housework with one
hand. I told Kit to fix the bread a dozen times, but she wouldn’t
listen.”
Just then Buzzy came to the kitchen door, bare-headed and smiling.
“Sally said for me to tell you folks that she heard Ma Parmelee had some
good Plymouth Rocks for sale. They’re about as reliable a hen as you can
get. Ma’s going to sell off everything and go to live with her son down
in Nantic. It’s near toward where I live, if you’d like to drive over
that way.”
Mrs. Craig thought it was a good idea, and that Jean could drive her
over. Jean went into the living room to get the keys for the car from
the desk and came back. She and Buzzy walked out to the garage for the
car together.
As they walked along, Jean said, “I wish spring would hurry up and make
up its mind to stay awhile.” Letters had come from some of the girls
back at the Cove that day and she felt a wave of loneliness and half
panic at what they had undertaken.
After Jean had backed the car out of the garage, Buzzy helped her to
attach the new trailer. At the back door Jean tooted the horn and waited
for her mother to join them. While they were waiting Buzzy loaded some
burlap sacks into the trailer for the hens.
“Better tie them to something when you start off,” he advised. “They
always flop around a lot in sacks.”
It was a drive of about two and a half miles, up through the hills. Each
new road seemed to lead them straight up to the edge of the world and
then to dip again and leave the clouds behind. The woods held a haze of
green now that hung over the distant hills like a mist. Once a row of
young quail blinked dizzily from a pasture bar and fled at the noise of
the approaching car. And all at once there came the quick thud of hoofs
from a lane at the right of them, and a young girl riding horseback
waved for them to stop. She was about as old as Kit, with friendly blue
eyes and brown hair brushed back from her face and fastened with a
silver clasp at the nape of her neck.
“How do you do,” she said, blushing in a way that seemed familiar to
them, for it reminded them of Buzzy. “I’m Sally Hancock.”