CHAPTER

I The Finger of Providence

II The Motherbird and Her Robins

III Breakers Ahead

IV The Queen's Privy Council

V Kit Rebels

VI White Hyacinths

VII The Land o' Rest

VIII Spying the Promised Land

IX The Lady Managers Choose a Name

X Settling the Nest

XI Ma Parmelee's Chicks

XII Gilead's Girl Neighbors

XIII Cousin Roxy to the Rescue

XIV The Lawn Fete

XV Kit Pulls Anchor

XVI Guests and Ghosts

XVII Billie Meets Trespassers

XVIII Harvesting Hopes

XIX Ralph and Honey Take the Long Trail

XX Roxana's Romance

*GREENACRE GIRLS*

*CHAPTER I*

*THE FINGER OF PROVIDENCE*

"It does seem to me, folkses," said Kit warmly, "that when anyone is

trying to write, you might be a little quiet."

The three at the end of the room heeded not the admonition. Doris was

so interested that she had almost succeeded in reclining like a Roman

maiden on the library table, trying to see over Helen's shoulder. Jean

was drawing up the plan for action. The list of names lay before her,

and she tapped her pencil on her nose meditatively as she eyed it.

"Now, listen, Jean," Helen proposed. "This would really be a novelty.

Let's have a Cupid for postman and not give out our valentines until

after the games. And just when we've got them all seated for supper

have the bell ring, and a real postman's whistle blow, and enter Cupid!"

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

"Oh, Dorrie, you goose. He'd be all dressed up beautifully. Buster

Phelps is going to be Cupid, only we were going to have him sit in front

of a Valentine box and just hand them out. We'll put a little white suit

on him with red hearts dangling all over him, and curl his hair

angelically."

"You'd better have red heart favors too, Helen," Jean added; "something

that opens and shuts, with something else inside for a surprise. And

we'll put red crepe shades on all the electric bulbs. Could we get

those, do you think, girls?"

"We can get anything if Dad and Mother are home by that time," answered

Helen. The rest were silent. Kit, sitting at her mother's desk beside

the wide bay window, looked up and frowned at the stuffed golden

pheasant on top of the nearest bookcase. Outside snow was falling

lightly. The view of the Sound was obscured. A pearly grayness seemed

to be settling around the big house as if it were being cut off from the

rest of the world by some magic spell.

"Hope Dad's feeling all right by now," Kit said suddenly, pushing back

her thick, dark curls restlessly. "They sail from Sanibel Island the

8th. Wasn't it the 8th, Jean?"

"Oh, they'll be home in plenty of time," Jean exclaimed. "Here we all

sit, having the silent mullygrumps when he's better. Mother said

positively in her last letter that he had improved wonderfully the

previous week."

Helen stared at the long leather couch on one side of the open

fireplace. It was over four weeks since her father had lain on it.

Throughout the winter there had been day after day of unremitting

weakness following his breakdown, and somehow she could not help

wondering whether the future held the same. She rose quickly, shaking

her head with defiance at the thought.

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

relapse."

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

Kit.

"What about Mother?"

"We're all worried about Mother, Jean. It isn't just you at all," Kit

spluttered. "But you can be just boiling inside with love and

helpfulness, and still not go around with a face like that!"

"Like what?" demanded Jean haughtily.

"Don't fight, children, don't fight," Doris counseled, just as if she

were the eldest instead of the youngest. "Remember what Cousin Roxy

says about the tongue starting more fires than the heart can put out.

You two scrap much more than Helen and I do."

"Well, I think," said Helen sedately, "that we ought to remember Mother

just as Jean says. She's almost sick herself worrying over Dad, and

there she is, away down in Florida with just the White Hen to talk to."

Jean smiled, thinking of the plump little trained nurse, Miss Patterson,

so spick and span and placid that the girls had declared they expected

her to cluck at any moment. They had nicknamed her the White Hen, and

it surely suited her. Even though no Chantecler had arrived yet to

claim her, she was the White Hen,--good-tempered, cheerful, attending

strictly to business always, but not just what one might call a lovable

companion.

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

"Note Jean when she has responsibilities," Kit proclaimed. "Jean's been

playing Mrs. Atlas and carrying the rest of us around on her shoulders.

And look at her! Where is the merry smile of old, fair sister?"

Jean smiled rather forlornly. It was true that she had shouldered most

of the responsibility since they had been left alone. Cousin Roxana had

arrived only a few days previous to the departure of Mrs. Robbins, and

it had been rather a formidable task suddenly to assume a mother's place

and run the home.

"Oh, I'm all right," she said. "It's only that everything seems to be

coming at once. The valentine party and Kit's special effusion for

Lincoln's Birthday."

"Class symposium on 'Lincoln--the Man--the President--the Liberator'--"

Kit ran it off proudly. "Little classics of three hundred words each.

You just ought to see Billie Dunbar's, Jean. He's been boiling it down

for a week from two thousand words, and every day Babbie Kane asks him

how he's getting along. And you know how Billie talks! He just glowers

and glooms and this morning he told her, 'It's still just sap.' He's a

scream."

"Kit, don't," laughed Jean in spite of herself. "If you get ink spots on

Mother's best suede desk pad, you'll find yourself a little classic."

Kit moved the ink well farther back as a slight concession, and

suggested once more that the rest of the family try their level best to

keep still about their old party while she finished her symposium.

"You know," Helen began with a far-off look in her eyes, "I think we're

awfully selfish, and I mean all of us, not just Kit--"

"Thanking your royal highness," murmured Kit.

"Here's Dad coming back home after five weeks' absence, and we don't

know really whether he's better or worse--"

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

"But it's perfectly true. He needs rest above everything else, Miss

Patterson told me so; and here we're planning for a party the minute he

gets home."

"Dad says always to go right ahead and have a good time, that it makes

him happier to know we are happy."

Kit frowned again. She had straight dark brows set above wide gray

eyes, and her frown was somewhat portentous. At fifteen she was far

more energetic than Jean at seventeen. No matter what fate might

deliver to her she would always find a quick antidote for any manner of

trouble. With her short curly hair, she seemed more like the boy of the

family, like her father himself, cheery, optimistic, fond of all outdoor

life. It was a saying in the Robbins family that Kit might neglect the

weeds a bit in her special garden of life, but the general landscape

effect would always be artistic and beautiful.

Privately, now that the family were facing a crisis, Kit felt far more

competent to act as the head pro tem. than did Jean. The main trouble

was, as Helen had said, that Kathleen needed a brake to check her

official impetus.

"Anyway, the invitations are all out now and Mother knows we're going to

have the party because I wrote her all about it, and she sent back word

that she didn't mind a bit so long as we had Cousin Roxy to steer us

safely."

"But did you ask Cousin Roxy, Jean?"

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

asked her to, Helenita."

Helen thawed at once. The thought of their elderly and stately Cousin

Roxana sailing blithesomely around in the early dawn circling the

morning star, brought about an immediate resumption of friendly

relations. It was the prerogative of sisters to scrap, Kit always held.

Sometimes it was quite a satisfaction to say just what you thought in

the bosom of your family, get it all off your mind, and know that the

family loved you just the same. Under these circumstances, Kit was wont

to chant feelingly:

"Oh, what was love made for, if 'twere not the same

Through joy and through torment, through sorrow and shame.

I know not, I ask not, if guilt's in that heart,

But I know that I love thee, whatever thou art."

Therefore the mere mention of Cousin Roxana brought harmony and mirth

into the strained atmosphere of the library.

It seemed as if a special dispensation of Fate had brought their elderly

cousin down from her calm and well-ordered seclusion at Gilead Center,

Connecticut, just when they needed her most.

Usually she contented herself with sending the family useful and proper

gifts on birthdays and at Christmas, but otherwise she did not manifest

herself.

She was forty-seven, plump, serene, and still good to look upon, with

her fluffy flaxen hair just beginning to look a trifle silvery, and a

fine network of wrinkles showing around the corners of her eyes and

mouth.

"Land alive, Elizabeth Ann," she had told Mrs. Robbins happily the

moment she set foot inside the wide entrance hall at Shady Cove, "didn't

I know you needed me?" And she laughed wholesomely. "I didn't plan to

descend on you so sudden, but it looked as if it was the finger of

Providence pointing the way, with Jerry down sick and you so sort of

pindling yourself. Don't you fret a mite about my being put out. I'll

stay here with the children and take care of things till you get back

home."

And lovely Elizabeth Ann, she who had been Betty all through her

girlhood and graceful matronhood, had agreed thankfully. After a three

months' siege of nursing her husband through a nervous breakdown, she

was glad indeed to welcome the hearty assistance of Cousin Roxy.

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

ask her if Helen's afraid."

Before the others could hold her back, she had slipped out of the

library and was running up the stairs, two at a time, into the large

sunny room at the south end of the house which Cousin Roxy had chosen

because from its windows she could look out over Long Island Sound. But

at the door Kit stopped short. Over at the window stood Cousin Roxy,

energetically wiping her eyes with a generous-sized plain linen

handkerchief, and the end of her nose was red from weeping.

"Come in, child, come right in," she said hastily, as Kit backed away.

"I'm glad you happened up. Come here to your old second cousin and

comfort her. I feel as if all the waves and billows of David had washed

over me."

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

figure.

"There, there, save the bones," laughed Cousin Roxana, through her

tears. "You're just like your father; oh, dear me, Kit, your dear

splendid father."

"What's the matter with Dad?" demanded Kit, swift to catch the

connection between her cousin's tears and words. "Did you get a

letter?"

In silence Cousin Roxana handed over a telegram. It was from Miss

Patterson at Palm Beach. They were to stop there after leaving Sanibel

Island on the west coast. Kit read it breathlessly:

"Mr. Robbins worse. Sailing 2nd."

"You know, Kit, they'd never do that if there hadn't been a turn for the

worse." There was a break in Cousin Roxana's voice as she reached for

the telegram. "I just wish that I had him up home safe in the room he

used to have when he was a boy. He had measles the same time I did when

my mother was alive. That's your Aunt Charlotte, Kit, she that was

Charlotte Peabody from Boston. But I always seemed to take after the

Robbins' side 'stid of the Peabody, they said, and Jerry was just like

own brother to me. I wish I had him away from doctors and trained

nurses, and old Doctor Gallup tending him. I've seen him march right up

to Charon's ferryboat and haul out somebody he didn't think was through

living."

Kit stood with her hands clasped behind her head, looking down at the

pines, their branches lightly crystalled with snow and ice. Somehow it

didn't seem as if God could let her big, splendid father slip out of the

world just when they all needed him so much. During all the months of

illness, the girls had not grasped the seriousness of it. He only

seemed weak and not himself. They knew he had had to give up his work

temporarily, that he never went to the office in New York any more, that

it was even an effort for him to give orders over the telephone, but

they had taken these things as of little moment.

Perhaps only Jean had really gleaned the real import of her mother's

anxious face, the steady daily visits of the nerve specialist, and, last

of all, the consultation two days before they had left for the South.

Kit closed her eyes and wrinkled her face as if with a twinge of sharp

pain. "It's going to be awful," she said softly, "just awful for

Mother."

Cousin Roxana squared her ample shoulders unconsciously, and lifted her

double chin in challenge to the worry that the next few days might hold.

"It's more awful for you poor children and Jerry. We women folks are

given special strength to bear just such trials; we've _got_ to be

strong."

But the tears came slowly, miserably to Kit's gray eyes. She pulled the

curtains back, and looked out of the window to where the blue waters of

Manhasset Bay were turning purple and violet in the gathering gloom of

the late afternoon. The land looked desolate, and yet it was but a light

snowfall. Down close to the bay some gulls rose and swept in a big half

circle towards the other side of the inlet. Buster Phelps, running

along the sidewalk towards home, waved up at her a big bunch of pussy

willows.

"Spring's coming, Kit," he called riotously. "Just found some and

they're 'most out!"

Kit waved back mechanically. Of course she must not break down and cry.

Doris might do that, but she and Jean must be strong and brace up the

two younger ones so they all could help their mother. Still the tears

came. What was the use of spring if--

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

stairs.

"Right now," Kit answered. "You come too, please, Cousin Roxy. We need

you fearfully to tell us what to do next."

"No, you don't," said Cousin Roxana calmly. "You don't need me any more

than the earth needs me to tell it this snow's going away and the

flowers will soon be blossoming. Just trust in the Lord, child. 'It

may not be my way, and it may not be thy way, but yet in His own way,

the Lord will provide.' It's one thing to stand in the choir and sing

that, and it's another to live up to it. The first thing you girls must

do is learn how to meet your father with a smile."

*CHAPTER II*

*THE MOTHERBIRD AND HER ROBINS*

The next three days were ones of anxious waiting. All plans for the

Valentine party had been abandoned, and after school hours the girls

hung around Cousin Roxana feeling that she alone could help them bear

the suspense. Jean occasionally stole away to her mother's room and

looked around to be sure that everything was as she liked it best, and

when she came out into the wide upper hall she usually met Kit and Doris

stealing from their father's room, their eyes red from weeping.

Helen hunted the cosy corners and curled herself up like a forlorn

kitten. Kit declared there wasn't a dry sofa cushion in the house.

"How about your own self?" Doris asked.

"I cry too, but not all the time. Jean and I are standing shoulder to

shoulder with Cousin Roxy." Kit straightened her shoulders and stood in

martial attitude. "We represent the--the ultima--what's the farthest

beyond in Latin, Jean? Anyway that's what we represent, the beyondness

in feminine efficiency."

"What does that mean, Kit?"