"Means that we've got to keep our heads no matter what happens."
Jean said little. Ever since she could remember, her mother had said to
her, "You know I rely on you most, dear. You're mother's comforter."
It was a thought that always gave her fresh strength, to know how much
her mother needed her. She was smaller than Kit, slender and with dark
eyes, with a look in them that Doris said reminded her of the eyes of a
deer.
"Jeanie, there's a Virginia fallow deer over in the Park that looks
exactly like you," she would say soberly. "And so do all the squirrels
when they keep still and stare at one sideways. You've got such
sympathetic, interested, mellow eyes."
"Eyes can't be mellow, Dorrie," Jean laughed. "Try something else."
"Well, they are mellow just the same,--tender and nice, aren't they,
Helen?"
And Helen would always agree that they were, tender like the eyes of
Jeanne, the girl in the garden at Arles, listening to the voices.
But they were full of trouble now, as Jean hurried around the house,
following Cousin Roxana's directions, and encouraging Tekla, the
Hungarian cook, to stand at her post. Cousin Roxana really did herself
proud, as she would have said, as director of preparations. Mr.
Robbins' rooms were as immaculate and as clear of non-essentials as the
deck of a battleship. Under her orders the girls and Bertha, the second
maid, worked faithfully; while Tekla regarded her with silent, wide-eyed
admiration.
"We'd never have managed without you, Cousin Roxy," Jean declared when
the final half-hour arrived, and they all gathered in the long
living-room, listening for the hum of the car up the drive. Helen and
Doris were together, arms entwined about each other's shoulders, on the
wide window-seat. Kit paced back and forth restlessly, and Jean sat on
the arm of her father's favorite chair before the open fireplace, her
eyes watching the curling flames.
"Land, child, I don't see what you want to burn open fires for when you
run a good furnace," Cousin Roxana had demurred. "Up home, I'd be only
too glad of the furnace. I have to keep the kitchen stove going steady
all day, and run one more in the sitting-room."
"I know it isn't necessary," Jean answered, sitting on the rug before
the fire, her hands clasped around her knees, kiddie fashion, in spite
of her seventeen years, "but it warms the cockles of your heart to watch
an open fire. Don't you think so, Cousin Roxy?"
Cousin Roxana sat in the low willow rocker, placidly knitting on a
counterpane square of old-fashioned filet.
"We must all hope for the best," she said, beaming at the anxious faces.
"Helen, for pity's sake stop that silent drizzling. If it should be the
will of the Lord that your blessed father be taken, it isn't right for
us to rebel and take on so, is it? I feel just as badly as any of you."
She took off her eyeglasses, that were always balanced half way down her
nose, and ruminated, "Land, didn't I live with him for years after his
mother died. That was your own grandmother, Helen Faunce Robbins. I've
got her spinning-wheel up home in the garret still. But I always did
say we made too much woe of the passing over of our dear ones. Why, it
isn't any time at all before we're going along right after them. I do
believe there's many a person been worried to death by weeping
relations. Smile, girls, even if your hearts do ache, and cheer him up.
Don't meet him with tears and fears. Jean, run and tell Tekla to keep
an eye on that beef tea while I'm up here. It has to keep simmering.
Kit, can't you keep still for a minute, or does it rest your mortal coil
to keep it on the trot?"
So she cheered and encouraged them, and when the automobile rolled up to
the veranda steps with Mr. and Mrs. Robbins and the spotless little
White Hen, the children did their best to appear happy. Mr. Robbins,
wrapped close in furs, waved to them, his lean, handsome face eager with
home love and longing.
"Hello, my robins," he called to them. "Back to the nest. Roxy, God
bless you, give me a hand. I'm still rather shaky."
They were all trying to kiss him at once, and Doris held one of his thin
white hands close against her cheek. It did not require the look in
their mother's beautiful eyes to warn them about being careful. Slender
and stately, she stood behind him, smiling at them all. Surely in all
the world there was nobody quite like Mother, the girls thought, nobody
who could be so tender and sweet and yet so gracious and queenlike.
"Why, he doesn't look nearly so bad as I expected," Cousin Roxana told
her, kissing her in a motherly way. Somehow it seemed quite natural for
all to pet and comfort the Motherbird, to try and shield her from the
harsher side of life and make the sun shine for her always. Life had
always run in smooth, flower-bordered canals of peace for Betty Robbins.
Only the past three months had shown her the possibilities of trouble
and sorrow, and even now they had only knocked at her door, not entered
as unbidden guests.
"You mustn't tire him, girls," she told them warningly, as the nurse and
Cousin Roxana assisted him upstairs, one step at a time, then a rest
before the next. "He must have a chance to recover from the long
journey."
"Land o' rest," Roxana called back happily, "I'm so relieved that you
didn't have to bring him back on a stretcher I can hardly catch my
breath."
"We're hopeful since he stood the journey so well," answered Mrs.
Robbins. She leaned back in the big, cushioned willow chair that Doris
always called "The Bungalow." Jean slipped off her cloak and Doris took
her gloves. Helen knelt to put a fresh log on the fire and Kit hurried
down after a tea tray. It was not fitting that the Queen Mother should
receive service at the hands of hirelings. But when she returned she
found a scene that might have baffled even Cousin Roxana. Helen and
Doris knelt on the floor beside the big chair, the tears running down
their faces, and Jean hung over the back with her arms close around her
mother.
"Mother darling," she begged. "Don't, don't cry so. Why, you're home,
and we're all going to look after him, and be your helpers."
Helen sped up after Cousin Roxana, and presently she came bustling
downstairs, flushed and efficient.
"Why, Elizabeth Ann," she cried, smoothing back her hair just as if she
had been one of the girls. "Don't give way just when your strength
should be tried and true."
"Please call me Betty," protested Mrs. Robbins, smiling even through her
tears. "It sounds so formal for you to call me Elizabeth Ann. It
always makes me feel like squaring my shoulders, Roxy."
"So you should, child," Roxana declared cheerily. "Betty's so sort of
gaysome to my way of thinking and there's stability to Elizabeth Ann.
Lord knows, you're going to need a lot of stability before you find the
way out of this."
"I know I am." As she spoke the Motherbird held her brood close to her,
Doris and Helen kneeling beside her and Jean and Kit on each side. She
leaned back her head and smiled at them. It was such a lovely face,
they thought. Nobody in all the world had quite the same look or air as
Mother. Back from her low broad forehead waved thick brown hair. Doris
loved to perch on the broad arm of the willow chair and search
diligently for any gray hairs that dared to show themselves. If any
were found, they were promptly pulled out. Nine might come in the place
of each, as Cousin Roxana said was highly probable according to
tradition, but while they were few and far between, they were all
eradicated, almost in indignation that Father Time should dare to
assail, ever so gently, the splendid fortress of Mother's youth.
"Really, girls," Kit would say sometimes in her abrupt way, "I think
Mother has the most interesting face I ever saw, and the most soulful
eyes. They can be just as full of fun and mischief as Dorrie's, and
then, again, just watch them when she feels sorry for anybody. It's
worth while having a pain or something happen to you just to see her
look that way."
She was looking "that way" at this moment as she smiled up at Cousin
Roxana; just as though there was nothing too hard or too difficult in
all the world for her to undertake.
"That's better," Cousin Roxy said comfortably. "Now you children take
her up to her room and play you're maids of honor to the queen. I have
to tend my broth and see how Jerry's coming along. Looks to me like
rest and quiet and cheerful hearts will carry him through if anything
will."
"Roxy!" There was a hidden note of tragedy in the Motherbird's voice.
Nobody but the same unemotional Roxy knew how she longed to put her head
right down on that ample bosom and have a good old-fashioned cry.
"Roxy, the doctors say he'll never be any better."
"Fiddlesticks and pinwheels!" exclaimed Miss Robbins indignantly, with a
toss of her head. "Lots they know about it. I declare, sometimes I
think the more you pay a doctor the less he can do for you and the
bigger-sounding names he thinks up to call what may ail you. I
certainly do wonder at the way they try to make folks think they've got
a special little private telephone wire right up to the Death Angel's
door. I never take any stock in them at all, Betty." It came out quite
easily. "Give me castor oil, some quinine and calomel, and maybe a
little arnica salve for emergencies, and I'll undertake to help anybody
hang on to their mortal coils a little bit longer."
"But things seem to be near a crisis now."
"Let them." Cousin Roxana stood with arms akimbo, as if she were
hurling defiance at somebody, and the girls fairly hung on her words.
"If the soul never had trials, what would be the use of life? Put ye on
the armor of faith, Betty Robbins, and hope for the best. As for you,
Jean and Kit, and you too, Helen and Dorrie, if I find any of you
looking down your noses, I declare I'll stick clothes-pins on them and
fasten a smile to your lips with court plaster."
*CHAPTER III*
*BREAKERS AHEAD*
St. Valentine's Day came and went without the party. Once, and
sometimes twice, a day the doctor's runabout turned into the broad
pebbled driveway and the children went around with subdued voices and
anxious faces. Even Tekla, down in her kitchen domain, wore an ominous
expression, and told Cousin Roxana that she had dreamed three times of
three black birds perching on the chimneys, which was a sure sign of
death, anyone could tell you, in her own country.
"Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't," Roxy laughed back comfortably. "If I
were you, Tekla, I'd take something for my liver and go to bed a mite
earlier at night."
All the same, her own face looked worried when she entered the sick-room
and looked down at Mr. Robbins' face on the pillows.
"It seems ridiculous for me to be lying here, Roxy," he would say to
her, with the whimsical boyish smile she loved. "Why, there isn't
anything the matter with me only I'm tired out. Machinery's a bit rusty,
I guess."
"No, nothing special only that you can't eat or walk or sit up without
keeling over." Her keen hazel eyes regarded him amusedly. "You know,
Jerry Robbins, if it wasn't for Betty and the girls, I'd trot you right
back home with me."
He looked from her to the window. Jean had just brought in a bunch of
daffodils in a slender Rookwood jar and had set them in the sunlight.
"You're not going soon, are you, Roxy?"
Roxana seated herself in the chair beside his bed. As she would have
put it, there was a time for all things, and this seemed a propitious
moment, for her to get something off her mind that had been weighing
there for some time.
"I'll have to pretty quick. It looks like an early spring, Jerry, and
there's a sight to do up there. Of course Hiram knows how things go as
well as I do, but I've been away a month now, and I like to have the
oversight of things. Men are menfolks after all, and you can't expect
too much from them. I want to get the hay barn shingled, and some new
hen runs set out before the little chicks begin to hatch, and all my
berry canes need clearing out. You know that mass of blackberries along
the stone wall in the clover patch below the lane--what's the matter,
Jerry?"
He had closed his eyes as if in pain, and his hand closed suddenly over
her own as it lay on the counterpane.
"It makes me homesick to hear you talk, Roxy."
Their glances met presently in a long look of sympathetic remembrance of
the dear old times at Maple Lawn.
"If it were not for the girls," he went on slowly. "They are all at an
age now when they need the advantages of being near the city."
"Well, I'm not so sure of that," answered Roxy dubiously. "I suppose
you feel that you can do more for them down here, Jerry, and it is a
sightly place to live, but you did pretty well yourself up at the old
Frost District, didn't you?"
He smiled and nodded his head.
"I wonder what Betty would say to the Frost District school-house?" he
asked. A vision of it arose out of the memories of the past, the little
white school-house that stood at the crossroads, with rocky pastures
rising high behind it, and the long white dusty road curving before it.
He had been just a country boy, born and bred within a few miles of
Maple Lawn at the old Robbins' homestead. He knew every cow path
through the woods about Gilead Center, every big chestnut and hickory
tree for five miles around, every fork and bend in the course of the
wild little river that cut through the valley meadows. Somehow, in
these days of weakness and fear that he was losing his grip on life,
there had grown up a great yearning to be home again, to find himself
back in the shelter of the mothering arms of the hills. They had always
been the hills of rest to him as a boy. Over their margins the skyline
had promised adventure and bold emprise, but now they beckoned to him to
come back to peace and health.
"She isn't country bred, is she, Jerry?"
The question recalled him to the sick-room.
"No," he answered gently, "no, Betty's from California. I believe her
people went out originally from New York State, but she herself was born
in San Francisco. Later, she lived on her father's ranch for a while in
the Coronado Valley, but she was educated in the city. She doesn't know
anything about farm life as we do."
Roxana's placid face looked nonplussed. California might just as well
be Kamchatka, so far as her knowledge of it was concerned. It did seem
rather too bad that Betty had come from such far-off stock, but still,
she thought, a great deal could be excused in her on account of it,
since it wasn't given to everybody to be born in New England.
"Would she mind it for just a summer, do you suppose?"
"It would have to be for a longer time than one summer, Roxy."
Something in his voice made her suspicious. The nurse had gone out for
her daily airing down the shore road. Mrs. Robbins had walked out to
meet the girls on their way from school, intending to accompany them to
afternoon Lenten service at St. James's. A lone adventurous fly crept
up the window curtain and Roxana promptly slapped him with a ready hand.
"Pesky thing," she said; then, "What did you say, Jerry?"
"I said that it would have to be for a longer time than just one summer.
Things have not gone well with me for the past year. I haven't told
Betty or the girls about it."
"You should have," said Roxy promptly. "It isn't fair to them not to
share your sorrows with them as well as your joys. Partner, that's what
it says, doesn't it? Partner of your joys and sorrows, you know,
Jerry."
"Betty has never seemed to understand much about money matters so I did
not want to worry her."
"Just like a man. So you broke your health down and landed here in bed
trying to do it all yourself. Can I help you? How much money do you
need to tide you over?"
He laughed unsteadily.
"Dear old Roxy. You'd give anyone your left ear if they needed it,
wouldn't you? You don't understand how we live. It takes nearly every
cent I earn to cover our current expenses. As long as I could keep well,
it did not matter, but three months' illness shows breakers ahead. I am
wondering what we are going to do, and I dread even speaking to Betty
about it."
"Then let me do it," said Miss Robbins promptly. "I'd love to. Better
yet, call a family council and talk things over if you are strong enough
to do so. How long can you hold out here?"
"I'm not certain." He looked weary and bothered. "We only rent the
place, as you know. The lease is up the first of May. It is $1800 a
year."
"You can buy a good farm up home for that, Jerry; house, barns, pasture,
haylands, wood lots and all," said Roxana thoughtfully. "It's a nice
place here, but it's fearfully extravagant."
"Do you think so, Roxy?" he smiled up at her with a glint of fun in his
eyes like Kit's. "Betty and the girls want me to take over the estate
below here along the ocean front at $2500 a year because they like the
ocean view and the private beach. It really is quite moderate too,
considering we're on the North Shore. Property on Long Island is
expensive."
She looked out at the clean park-like territory around the large modern
house. Winding drives swept in and out. Each residence stood in its
own spacious grounds. High rock walls with ornamental entrance gates
surrounded each one. There was an artificial pond where the children
skated in whiter and the country club crowned the hill with golf links
sloping away to the shore on the north.
Down in the ravine stood the artistic gray stone railroad station
matching the real estate office over the way, and farther along were the
village stores, the new High School of stucco and tile, and the two
churches. Back and forth along the smooth highway slipped a
never-ending line of motor cars coming and going like ants over an ant
hill. Roxy turned her head towards the bed once more and asked:
"Would you rather do that than go up home with me?"
"It isn't what I'd rather do. It's what we may have to do unless I gain
my old strength."
"You'll never get a mite better lying there worrying over unpaid bills
and new ones stacking up. I'm going to talk to Betty."
He shook his head with a little smile of doubt.
"But it would never be fair to take them away from this sort of thing,
Roxy. You don't understand. They have their church and their club work
and their special studies. Jean has been taking up a course in Applied
Design and Modeling, and Helen has her music. Kit's deep in school work
and belongs to about five clubs outside of that. Dorrie's about the
only one disengaged, and she has a dancing class and the Ministering
Children's League over at church. Betty's on more committees and things
than I can count, and she believes that we owe it to the children to
give them the best social environment that we can. Perhaps we can get
along in some way. There's a little left at the bank."
"How much?" demanded Roxana uncompromisingly. "I mean, after you've paid
up everything. I'll bet there isn't five thousand left."
"Five thousand! I doubt much whether there is one thousand. Don't tell
Betty that. I have never bothered her about such things, and there are
a few securities I might sell and realize on."
"And you think that you've been a good husband to her. Land alive, what
are men made of! Here she stands a chance of being left alone in the
world with four children to bring up and you've never bothered her about
your business. The sooner you get to it, the better, I think." Roxana
stood up and adjusted her eyeglasses resolutely. She had seen what he
could not, Betty coming leisurely up the box-bordered walk, a loose
cluster of yellow jonquils in her arms, and the girls following, all
except Kit. "There they come now. I won't say anything till you do,
Jerry."
Suddenly Kit's voice sounded at the door. Her short curls were rumpled
and towsled, and her eyes wide with excitement, as she hugged a hot
water bottle to her face.
"I've heard almost every word you said," she burst out. "I had
neuralgia and stayed home this afternoon, and I've been asleep in there
on the couch. Please don't be sorry, Dad. I'll help you every blessed
bit I can, and I think it would be glorious for us all to go up into the
country."
She stopped as the door below, in the front entrance hall, banged and
Doris came upstairs on a run, a herald of love and joy.
"Well, child, keep your mouth shut till we know where we're at,"
counseled Roxy quickly. "Go back and lie down. Here they come."
But Kit stood her ground, and Jean and Helen seemed to catch from her
the fact that there was something unusual in the wind as they came in
behind their Mother.
"It was a lovely walk," said Mrs. Robbins, drawing off her gloves as she
sat down beside the bed and smiled at the patient. "We went down to
look at the Dunderdale place, Jerry. It is simply lovely there even in
winter. You can see the summer possibilities. I never saw so many
shrubs and trees and such beautiful grouping. It made me think of our
Californian places."
"Or an Italian garden, Mother dear," Jean added eagerly. "Why, Dad,
it's exactly like some of Parrish's pictures, don't you know; tall
poplars over here, and then a hedge effect and a low Roman seat tucked
in every once in a while. Why, it's just as cheap as can be."
"You'd enjoy the garden so this summer, and there are enclosed sleeping
porches, and an inner court like a patio garden. The garage is small,
but it will do if we don't get a new car this year."
Right here Cousin Roxana sniffed, a real, unmistakable sniff. She was a
believer in quick action. If you had anything to do, the quicker you
did it and got over it the better, she always said. So now she raised
her head as they all looked at her, and sprang her bolt right out of a
clear sky.
"You won't get a new car this year, Betty, my dear, and you're not going
to move into any two-thousand-five-hundred-dollars-a-year bungalow,
either. I'm going to take the whole lot of you to Gilead Center, and
see if Jerry can't get his health back up in those blessed hills of
rest."
*CHAPTER IV*
*THE QUEEN'S PRIVY COUNCIL*
There was a queer silence, fraught with suspense for each person in the
room. Mrs. Robbins looked down at the wearied face lying back on the
white pillows with a startled expression in her usually calm eyes.
Instinctively both her hands reached for his and held them fast, while
Jean laid her own two down on her mother's shoulders as if she would
have given her strength for this new ordeal.
"You mean for a little visit, don't you, Cousin Roxy?" she asked
eagerly.
"No, I don't, Jeanie. I mean for good and all, or at least until your
father has time to get well, and that can't be done in a few days."
"But Doctor Roswell says he's gaining every day," Mrs. Robbins said.
She waited for some reassuring answer, her eyes almost begging for one,
but Cousin Roxana was not to be dismayed.
"Jerry, tell what the doctor said to us this morning. Not that I take
much stock in him, but he may be on the right track."
"Nothing special, Motherbird and robins all," smiled back Mr. Robbins;
"only it appears that I am to be laid up in the dry dock for repairs for
a long while, and the sinews of war won't stand the vacation expenses if
we stay where we are now."
"I wouldn't try to talk about it, dear, before the children," began Mrs.
Robbins, quick to avoid anything that savored of trouble or anxiety. "We
must not worry. There will be some way out of it."
"There is," Cousin Roxy went on serenely. "If ever the finger of
Providence pointed the way, it's doing it now. I say you'd better move
right out of this kind of a place where expenses are high and you can't
afford anything at all. This is a real crisis, Elizabeth Ann." She
spoke with more decision as she saw Jean pat her mother comfortingly.
"It has got to be met with common sense. When the bread winner can't
work and there's a nestful of youngsters to bring up and feed and
clothe, it's time to sit up and take notice, and count all of your
resources."
"How would it do for you to take Father up home with you for a rest,
Cousin Roxy?" Jean suggested, stepping into the awkward breach as she
always did. "Then we could let Annie and Rozika go, and just keep Tekla
to do the cooking and washing. And when he came back we'd have all the
moving over, and it would be the prettiest time of the year along in
late August."
Mrs. Robbins' face brightened at the suggestion.
"Or we might even renew the lease here, Jerry. The house is very
pleasant after all, and we could get along with it if it were all done
over this spring."
Mr. Robbins looked up at Cousin Roxana's countenance with whimsical
helplessness, and she answered the appeal.
"Now, look here," she said with decision and finality. "You'd better
put the idea of staying here right out of your mind, Betty. The winds
of circumstance have blown your nest all to smithereens, and if you're
the right sort of a motherbird, you'll start right in building a fresh
one where it's safer. I think your way lies over the hills to Gilead
Center. You can pay all your bills here, sell off a lot of heavy
furniture, and move up there this spring. For you can't stay here.
There's hardly enough money to see you through as it is. I'm going to
help you along a bit until you get your new start."
"Not money enough," said Mrs. Robbins as though she could not comprehend
such an idea. "But we couldn't think of going up there and all living
with you, Cousin Roxy."
"You're not going to," answered Roxana. "Thank the Lord, I live in a
land where houses and food are cheap and there's room for everybody. We
don't tack a brass door-plate on a rock pile like I saw there in New
York, Betty, and call it a residence at about ten dollars a minute to
breathe. I've been telling Jerry you'd better rent a farm near me, and
settle down on it."
"But Roxy--" Mrs. Robbins hesitated.
"Oh, Mother, do it, do it," came in a quick outburst from Kit, standing
back against the wall. "It would be perfectly dandy for all of us and
would do Dad a world of good!"
"We wouldn't mind a bit. We'd love it, wouldn't we, Dorrie?" Helen
squeezed Doris's hand to be sure she would answer in the affirmative.
"We'd all help you."
Doris was silent, still too bewildered at the outlook to express an
opinion.
"I shouldn't mind for myself, but we must think of the girls--their
schooling and what environment means at their age. I suppose Jean could
be left at school."
"Thought she was all through school," came from Cousin Roxana.
"I am, only I've been taking lessons in town this winter in a special
course, arts and crafts, you know, and next fall I was going into the
regular classes at the National Academy of Design."
"What for, child?" Roxy's gray eyes twinkled behind her glasses.
"Going to be an artist?"
"Not exactly pictures," Jean answered with dignity. "Conventionalized
designs."
"Well, whatever it is, I guess it will hold over for a year while you go
up to the country and learn to keep house. Kit here can go to High
School. It's seven miles away, but our young folks drive down and put
up their horses at Tommy Burke's stable in East Pomfret, and take the
trolley over from there. It's real handy."
Kit's eyes signaled to Jean, and Jean's to Helen and Doris. A fleeting
vision of that "handy" trip to High School in the dead of winter
appeared before them. Kit had a ridiculous way of expressing utter
despair and astonishment. She would open her eyes widely, inflate her
cheeks, and look precisely like Tweedledee in "Through the
Looking-Glass." Doris emitted a low but irrepressible giggle under the
strain.
"I think," Mrs. Robbins said hurriedly, "that we might manage if we had
a little roadster."
"Rooster?" repeated Cousin Roxy in surprise.
Kit and Doris departed suddenly into the outer hall.
"No, roadster; a runabout that either Jean or I could learn to run.
Don't they have them, Jerry, with adjustable tops, one for passengers,
one for delivering goods, and so on?"
"Doubtless one for ploughing and harrowing likewise, Betty," Cousin
Roxana said merrily. "I guess you'll jog along behind a good, sensible
horse for a while. Remember Ella Lou, Jerry? She's fifteen years old
and just as perky as ever. I always have to hold her down at the
railroad crossing."
"What do you think of it, dear?" asked Mr. Robbins, looking longingly up
at the face of the Motherbird. "It would be a great comfort and relief
to me to get back to those old hills of rest, but it doesn't seem fair
to you or the children. The sacrifice is too great. They do need the
right kind of environment, as you say. Suppose we left Jean at least,
where she could keep up her studies, and perhaps put Kit into a good
private school. Then I might go up home with Roxy, and you and the two
younger girls could go out to California to Benita Ranch--"
But Mrs. Robbins laid her fingers on his lips.
"You're not going to banish us to Benita Ranch. If you think it is the
best thing to do, Jerry, we'll all go with you. Remember, 'Whither thou
goest, I will go. Where thou lodgest, I will lodge--'"
Helen laid her hand over Jean's, and they stepped out softly. Their
mother had slipped down on her knees beside the bed, and even Cousin
Roxana had gone over to the window to pretend she was looking out at the
Sound. The girls fled downstairs to the big music-room back of the
library. It had been their special shelter and gathering place ever
since they had lived there. Kit and Doris were already there, deep into
an argument about the entire situation.
"I don't think it's right to move up there," Helen said, judicially.
"We may not like it at all, and there we'd be just the same, planted,
and maybe we never could get out of it, and we'd grow old and look just
like Cousin Roxy and talk like her and everything."
"Prithee, maiden, have a care what thou sayest," Kit expostulated. "Our
fair cousin hath a way, 'tis true, but she is a power in the land, and
her voice is heard in the councils of the mighty. I wish I had half her
common sense."
"I hate common sense," Jean cried passionately. "I know it's right and
we must do the best thing, but, girls, did you see Mother's face? It was
simply tragic. Dad's been a country boy, and he's going back home where
he knows all about everything and loves it, but Mother's so different.
She's like a queen."
"Marie Antoinette had an excellent dairy, and Queen Charlotte raised a
prize brand of pork, my dear," Kit answered. Perched upon the long
music stool, she beamed on the disconsolate ones over on the long
leather couch. "I think Mother's a perfect darling, but she's a good
soldier too, and she'll go, you see if she doesn't. And it won't kill
any of us. I don't see why you can't hammer copper and brass, and cut
out leather designs in a woodshed just as well as you can in a studio.
The really great mind should rise superior to its environment."
"Let's tell Kit that the first time she scraps over dishwashing," Doris
said. "I didn't hear anything about Tekla going along, did you, Jean?"
Kit turned around and drummed out a gay strain of martial music on the
piano keys, while she sang:
"Oh, it has to be done, and it's got to be done,
If I have to do it myself."
"You'll do your share all right, Kathleen Mavourneen, and when the gray
dawn is breaking at that," laughed Jean. "Farm life's no joke, and
really, while I wouldn't disagree with Dad and Cousin Roxy about it, I
think that those who have special gifts--"
"Meaning our darling eldest sister," quoth Kit.
"--Should not waste their time doing what is not their forte. It takes
away the work from those who can't do the other things."
Jean's pointed chin was raised a bit higher in her earnestness, but Kit
shook her head.
"You're going to walk the straight and narrow path up at Gilead Center
under Cousin Roxy's eagle eye just the same, Jean. It's no good kicking
against the pricks. I don't mind so much leaving this place, but we'll
miss the girls awfully."
"And the church," added Helen, who was in the Auxiliary Girls' Choir.
"We're going to miss that. I wonder if there is a church up there."
"I see where Kit steps off the basket ball team and learns how to run a
lawn mower," Kit remarked. "Also, there will be no Wednesday evening
dancing class, Helenita, for your princesslike toes to trip at."
"I wish we could all move back to town and see if we couldn't do
something there to earn money," Jean said. "One of the girls in the art
class found a position designing wall paper the other day, and another
one decorates lacquered boxes and trays. When the fortunes of the house
suddenly crash, the humble but still genteel family usually take in
paying guests, or do ecclesiastical embroidery, don't they?"
"Don't be morbid, Jean," Kit wagged an admonishing finger at her from
the stool where she presided, "We'll not take in any boarders at all. I
see myself waiting on table this summer at some hillside farm retreat
for aged, and respectable females. If we've got to work, let's work for
ourselves in the Robbins' commonwealth."
"And if it has to be, let's not fuss and make things harder for Mother,"
Doris put in.
"How about Dad?" Kit demanded. "Seems to me that he's got the hardest
part to bear. It's bad enough lying there sick all the time, without
feeling that you're dragging the whole family after you and exiling them
to Gilead Center."
"It's too funny, girls," Jean said all at once, her eyes softening and
her dimples showing again. "Just the minute anyone of us takes Dad's
part, some one springs up and gives a yell for Mother, and vice versa.
I think we're the nicest, fairest, most loyal old crowd, don't you? We
won't be lonesome up there so long as we have ourselves,--you know we
won't,--and if things are slow, then we'll start something."
"Will we? Oh, won't we?" Kit cried. She twirled around to the keys
again, and started up an old darky melody.
"Crept to de chicken coop on my knees,
Ain't going ter work any more.
Thought Ah heard a chicken sneeze,
Ain't going ter work any more.
"Balm of Gilead! Balm of Gilead!
Balm, Balm, Balm, Balm,
Ain't going ter work any more, Ah tole yer.
Balm of Gilead! Balm of Gilead!
Balm, Balm, Balm, Balm,
Ah ain't going ter work any more."
"That's better," Jean said, with a sigh of relief. "We've got to pull
all together, and make the best of things. Dad's sick, and the Queen
Mother's worried to death. Let's be the Queen's Privy Council and act
accordingly."
*CHAPTER V*
*KIT REBELS*
Cousin Roxy departed for Gilead Center, Connecticut, the following
Monday.
"I'd take you with me, Jerry, and the nurse too, 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 Shady 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 the adjacent clouds and the Palisades. With
an opera glass on clear days, you could also see the tops of the
Riverside 'buses."
It had seemed almost like real country to the girls when they had left
the city behind them and moved to Shady Cove. Doris had the measles
that year, and the doctor had ordered fresh air and an outdoor life for
her, so the whole family had benefited, which was very thoughtful and
considerate of Dorrie, the rest said.
But now came the problem of winnowing out what Cousin Roxana 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 sixteen rooms
in the big home, all well furnished. Reception-room, library,
music-room, and dining-room, with Tekla's domain at the back. Upstairs
was a big living-room and plenty of bedrooms, with three maids' rooms in
the third story.
At the top of the broad staircase over the sun-parlor was a wide
sleeping-porch. In the cold weather this was enclosed and heated, and
the girls loved it. Broad cushioned seats like cabin lockers surrounded
it on three sides, and here they could sit and talk with the sun fairly
pelting them with warmth and light. Here they sat overhauling and
sorting out hampers and bags and bureau drawers of "non-essentials."
"I can't find anything more of mine that I'm willing to throw away,"
said Doris flatly, stuffing back some long strips of art denim into a
box. "I want that for a border to something, and I'll need it fearfully
one of these days. What's a luxury anyway?"
"Makes me think of Buster Phelps," Helen remarked. "Last night when I
went over to tell Mrs. Phelps that we couldn't be in the Easter
festival, Buster was just having his dinner, and he wanted more of the
fig soufle. His mother told him he mustn't gorge on delicacies. So
Buster 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 lovely?"
"Don't throw away any pieces at all, girls," Jean warned. "Cousin Roxy
says we'll need them all for rag carpets."
"You can buy rag rugs and carpets anywhere now," said Helen.
"Yes, oh, Princess, and at lovely prices too. We folks who are going to
live at Gilead Center, will cut and sew our own, roll them in nice fat
balls, and hand them over to old Pa Carpenter up at Moosup, to be woven
into the real thing at fifteen cents a yard. It'll last for years,
Cousin Roxy says. When you get tired of it, you boil it up in some dye,
and have a new effect. I like the old hit-and-miss best."
Kit regarded her elder sister in speechless delight.
"Jean Robbins, you're getting it!" she gasped. "You're talking exactly
like Cousin Roxy."
"I don't care if I am," answered Jean blithely. "It's common sense.
Save the pieces."
"She who erstwhile fluttered her lily white hands over art nouveau
trifles light as air," murmured Kit. "I marvel."
She looked down at the garden. Windswept and bare it was in the chill
last days of February. Yet there was a hint of spring about it. A robin
was perched near the little Japanese tea house they had all enjoyed so
much, with its wistaria vines and stone lantern. Leading from it to the
hedged garden at the back was a pergola over a flagged walk.
The garage was of reddish fieldstone, and like the house covered with
woodbine. A tall hedge of California privet enclosed the grounds, with
groups of shrubbery here and there. Memories of all the fun which they
had enjoyed in the past six years passed through her mind. There had
been lawn fetes and afternoon teas, croquet parties and tennis
tournaments. She hugged her knees, rocking back and forth anxiously.
"What is it, 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 making the best of things, while Kit gloomed and raged
inwardly, and felt all manner of premonitory doubts.
"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."
"Certainly, certainly. You don't quoth 'Nevermore,' do you? You're a
chirruping raven. We'd all walk from here to Gilead Center 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 savage, Kit," said Helen.
"Who's savage?" demanded Kit haughtily. "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 tapped the end of her nose thoughtfully with her thimble.
"What is Gilead Center then? Isn't that a town?"
"No, it isn't. It's a hamlet. Trolley seven miles away, post office
five. There used to be a post office there when the mail-wagon made the
trip over, but they needed the building to keep the hearse in, so it's
gone."
"You're making that up, Kit," severely.
"I'm not," protested Kit. "You can ask Cousin Roxy. 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 Doris 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 crawfishing."
Kit swept by the remark, absorbed in her own forebodings.
"You can reach this spot by land or sea. Cousin Roxy says that it takes
five hours for anybody to extricate oneself after one is really there.
You can take a boat to New London, ride up to Norwich, transfer to a
trolley and trundle along for another hour, then hire a team at Tommy
Burke's stable in East Pomfret, and drive an hour and a half 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 Helen. They leaned around her, fascinated at
her sudden acquisition of knowledge.
"Any road you fancy. Central Vermont up to Plainfield, or Providence
line over to South Pomfret. There's South Pomfret and East Pomfret and
Pomfret Green and Pomfret Station. It really doesn't seem to matter
which way you go so long as it lands you at one of the Pomfrets. And
Pomfret is five miles from Gilead Center, Plainfield is seven miles,
Boulderville is--"
"Oh, please, Kit, stop it," Jean cried, with both hands over her ears.
"We'll motor over anyway--"
"Didn't you hear that Dad's going to sell the machine?" Helen whispered.
It would never do to let a hint of regret reach beyond the sleeping
porch circle. "The Phelpses are going to buy it. Buster told me so."
"I knew it before," Jean said quite calmly, going on with her sorting of
pieces. "Dad says it will pay nearly all moving expenses and keep us
for months. What else could he do? There'd be nobody to run it, would
there? Anyway I want a horse to ride, don't you, Kit? Can't you see us
all in a joyous cavalcade riding adown the woodland way? I'm
Guenevere." With laughing lips, and happy eyes she quoted:
"All in the boyhood of the year
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guenevere
Rode to covert of the deer."
"Plenty of deer up there, Cousin Roxy says. We all can go hunting."
"Never mind the deer. We won't be doing that at all. Mother says Tekla
can't possibly go and we're going to do our own housework. Isn't it
queer, when a father breaks down, it just seems as if a home caves in."
"Well, it doesn't do any such thing, Helen," 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 Cousin Roxana 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 little sheep path leading from New York up to Gilead Center, worn
by the feet of faithful pilgrims."
"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
machine, 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," Helen stated. "We'll make hosts of new friends.
Besides, lots of the girls have promised to visit us. Think of Mother,
girls. She's breaking away from everything she likes best. And you
know that we're just girls after all, with all our lives ahead of us, so
we may have a chance to escape some time; but Mother can't look forward,
she is just cutting herself off from everything."
"Just listen to dear old Lady Diogenes." Kit reached down and gave the
slender figure a good all-around hug. "How do you know she's losing
what she loves best? Don't you remember that old Druid poem in Tennyson
about the people calling for a sacrifice and they asked which was the
king's dearest? Supposing Dad had died right here. What would he have
missed? His country club, his golf, his town club, his business, and
his business friends. Mother loses about the same, the country club and
golf club, the church, and the social study club. They'll never settle
down to real farm life, Jean. It's just impossible. You can't take a
family of--of--"
"Peacocks? Bulfinches? Canaries?" suggested Doris.
"No, I should say park swans," Kit said. "That's what we are out
here,--park swans swimming around on an artificial lake, living on an
artificial island in a little artificial swan house, swimming around and
around, preening our feathers and watching to see what people think of
us. You can't take park swans and put them right out into the country,
and expect them to make the barnyard a howling success all at once."
"Kit, dear old goose," Jean interposed, "we're not park swans or any
such thing. We're just robins, and robins are robins whether they build
in a park catalpa or a country rock maple. We'll just migrate, build a
new nest, and behave ourselves. Not because we like to, but because
it's our nature to, being, as I said before, just robins."
*CHAPTER VI*
*WHITE HYACINTHS*
It had been decided to leave Kit and Jean behind to finish their
schooling. They could board at the Phelpses' home next to Shady Cove
along the shore road, but both girls begged to go with the family.
"Why don't you stay?" advised Helen. "You'll escape all of the moving
and settling and ploughing."
"We don't want to escape anything," said Kit firmly. "It isn't any fun
being left behind with the charred remains."
"Oh, Kit, don't call them that; it's grewsome," begged Doris.
"I don't care. I feel grewsome when I think of being left behind. How
do you suppose we'd feel to walk past the Cove and not see any of the
rest of you around."
"It's better than being cut right bang off in the middle of everything,"
replied Helen, with one of her rare explosions. Whenever wrath decided
to perch for a minute on her flaxen hair, it always delighted the other
girls. Kit said it was precisely like watching a kitten arch its back
and scold. "Everything," she repeated tragically. "I can't finish a
single thing and I know I'll never pass, being switched off to goodness
knows what sort of a school."
"Let's not grouch anyway," counseled Jean. "Mother's getting thinner
every day. As long as it's got to be, tighten your belts and face the
enemy. Right about face! Forward! March!"
"I do wish that Kit wouldn't be so happy about things that make you just
miserable."
Kit danced away down the hallway warbling sweetly:
"Gondolier, row, row!
Gondolier, row, row!
'Tis a pretty air I do declare,
But it haunts a body so."
"You're an old tease, Kit," Jean admonished in her very best big-sister
style. "Please keep away from that crate of perishable matter. Mother's
just promised me that we can go with the rest, only I'm going up first
with Dad and Miss Patterson."
It had been decided to send Mr. Robbins up before the moving, so he
could have a week or two of rest at Maple Lawn, Cousin Roxana's home.
The latter was diligently sending down descriptions of adjacent farms
and all sorts of home possibilities, but none seemed to fit the bill, as
she said. Either there was too much land, or not enough, or it was too
far from the village or not far enough, or too much room, or not room
enough.
"For pity's sake," Kit said one night, after all the family had
suggested various styles in nests, "let's all tent out and do summer
light housekeeping. We'll never find just what we want,--never, Mumsie.
Jean wants a rose garden and a sun dial. I want golf links, or at least
a tennis court, even if we remove the hay fields. Helen wants wistaria
arbors and a very large vine-covered porch. Doris wants a dog, four
cats, a hive of bees, a calf, and a pony. You want a house facing
south, far back from the road, barn not too near, dry cellar, porch,
century-old elms for shade, good well, sink in house, and option of
purchase, not over ten dollars a month."
"What do you want, Dad?" asked Jean. It was one of her father's "good"
days, when he was able to sit up in his big Morris chair before the fire
in the upstairs living-room, and be one of the circle with them.
"Peace and rest," smiled Mr. Robbins.
"Me too," Kit agreed, kneeling beside his chair and rubbing her head up
and down his arm. "Dad and I are going to seek gracious peace the
livelong day under some shady chestnut tree."
"Dad may, but you won't, Kathleen," Jean laughingly prophesied. "It's
going to be the commonwealth of home."
"Wish we were going to an island," Helen said wistfully. "I've always
felt as if I could do wonders with an island."
"Anybody could. There's some chance for imagination to work on an
island, but what can you do with a farm in Gilead Center?" Kit looked
like a pensive parrot, head on one side, eyes half closed in melancholy
anticipation. "Darling, precious old Dad here doesn't know a blessed
thing about farming--"
"Now, Kit, go easy," Mr. Robbins chided. "Seneca farmed and so did Ovid.
It's all in the way you look at things."
"'Under the greenwood tree,' you know, Kit," added Jean.
"Yes, and that ends with a fatal warning too," Kit rejoined mournfully,
"'While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.'"
"We'll all be keeling pots, Kathleen. It's the Robbins' destiny. You
know, Dad, I thought all along that Tekla would go with us. I thought
she'd feel hurt if we didn't take her, after she'd been telling us girls
all these fairy tales about her native land where she loved to milk
twenty cows at three A.M. I thought she'd simply leap at the chance of
rural delights, and now she isn't going along with us at all. She says
she won't go anywhere unless there are street pianos and moving
pictures."
Jean's face was deliciously comical as she recounted the backsliding of
Tekla, and Helen chanted softly:
"Knowest thou the land, Mignon?"
"You can laugh all you want to, but it's a serious proposition,
Helenita. If Tekla deserts, we'll all have to pitch in. The Nest
expects that every robin will do its duty."
"Oh, I don't believe it's going to be nearly as bad as we expect," Mrs.
Robbins said happily, as she passed through the room with her pet cut
glass candlesticks in her hands. "We're facing the summer, remember,
girls, and I can't help but think that Cousin Roxana will be a regular
bulwark of strength to all of us."
By the second week in March word came from the family's bulwark that she
thought the weather was mild enough for Mr. Robbins and Miss Patterson
to attempt the trip. Accordingly, the first section of the caravan set
out on its exodus to the promised land, as Kit called it.
"It does seem, Mother dear," Jean said at the last minute, "as if Kit
ought to go with them, and let me stay down here to help you close up
things."
"I'd rather have you with your Father." Mrs. Robbins laid her hands on
Jean's slender shoulders tenderly. "If I can't be with him, I'd rather
have the little first mate. Remember how he used to call you that, when
you were only Doris's size?"
"Well, I feel terribly grown up now, Mother. Seventeen is really the
dividing line. You begin to think of everything in a more serious way,
don't you know. When I look at Kit and Helen sometimes, it seems years
and years since I felt the way they do, so sort of irresponsible."
"Poor old grandma," Mrs. Robbins laughed, as she kissed her. "We'll
make some nice little lace caps for you with lavender bows. Maybe
Cousin Roxy'll let you pour tea."
Jean had to laugh too, seeing the comic side of her aged feeling, but it
was true that she felt a new sense of responsibility when they left New
York City for Gilead Center. The Saturday following their departure,
the first carload of household goods left Shady Cove. It had been a
difficult task, weeding out the necessities from the luxuries, as Kit
expressed it. Many a semi-luxury had been slipped in by the girls on
the plea that Father might need it, or would miss it. Kit had managed
to save the entire library outfit intact on this excuse: three
bookcases, leather couch, two wide leather arm-chairs, and the
flat-topped mahogany desk.
"Books and pictures are necessities," she declared firmly, saving an old
steel engraving of Touchstone and Audrey in the Forest of Arden. "This,
for instance, has always hung over the little black walnut bookcase,
hasn't it? Could we separate them? I guess not. In it goes, Helen,
and see that you handle it with care. There's one thing that we can take
up with us, and no slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune can get it
away from us, either, and that's atmosphere. Even if we have to live in
a well-shingled, airy barn, we can have atmosphere."
"Don't laugh, Dorrie," Helen admonished, as Doris dove into a mass of
pillows. "Kit doesn't mean that sort of atmosphere. She means--"
"I mean living in a garden of white hyacinths. Miss Carruthers, our
teacher at the art class, told us a story the other day about Mahomet
and his followers. He told them if they only had two pence, to spend
one for a loaf of bread to feed the body, and the other for white
hyacinths to feed the soul. That's why I want all our own beloved
things around us, don't you know, Mother dear? Just think of Dad's face
if we can blindfold him, lead him into a lovely sunny room up there,
take off the bandage, and let him find himself right in his own library
just as he had it down here!"
"And as long as he's going to stay in bed, or lie on a lounge, he'll
never know what the rest of the house is like," added Doris.
"But he's not going to stay in bed, we hope," answered the Motherbird,
catching the youngest robin in her arms for a quick kiss. "That's why
we're going up there, to get him out into the sunlight as soon as
possible, so he'll get quite well again."
Kit passed down the stairs completely covered with the burden which she
bore.
"I've got all the portieres, table covers, couch covers, scarfs and
doilies," she called. "We may have to turn the attic into a cosy corner
before we get through. It's all in the effect, isn't it, Mumsie?"
"I'm sorry that Dad sold the machine, that's all," Helen remarked.
Helen was the far-sighted one of the family. "Talbot Pearson says he
knows we could have gotten fifteen hundred for it just as easy as not.
His mother told him it was worth every penny of fifteen hundred, and Dad
let it go for eight hundred just because he liked the Phelpses."
"Helen, dear, eight hundred cash is worth more than fifteen hundred
promised," Mrs. Robbins said, smiling over at her. "And the machine is
last year's model. I'm glad with all my heart that Mr. Phelps bought
it, because they've been wanting one very much, and the children will
get so much enjoyment out of it."
The girls looked down at her admiringly, almost gloatingly, as she sat
back contentedly in the low wicker arm-chair in the sunny bay-window.
"Mother, you're a regular darling, truly you are," Kit exclaimed.
"You're so big and fine and sympathetic that you make us feel like two
cents sometimes when we've been selfish. Why do you look so happy when
everything's going six ways for Sunday?"
Mrs. Robbins held up a letter that Doris had just brought upstairs to
her.
"Cousin Roxana writes that Father stood the trip well and has slept
every night since they reached Maple Lawn. Isn't that worth all the
automobiles in the world?"
The eight hundred dollars in cash had been a helpful addition to their
bank account. During the past few weeks, the girls had learned what it
meant to consider money, something they had never given a thought to
before. While they had never been rich, there had always been an
abundance of everything they wanted, with never a suggestion of
retrenching on expenses until now. Once they understood the situation,
however, they all seemed to enjoy helping to solve the family problem.
For several days Doris had appeared to have something on her mind.
Finally, she came in smiling, and opened her hand, disclosing a ten
dollar bill. Kit fell gracefully over into a chair.
"Dorrie, you mustn't give your poor old sister sudden shocks like that
in these days," she exclaimed. "Where did you find that?"
"I sold Jiggers to Talbot Pearson," Doris replied, her eyes shining like
stars. "He's been asking and asking for him ever since I got him, and
now I've done it. There's ten dollars I got all by myself to help Dad."
Neither Kit nor Helen spoke, but they regarded the youngest robin with
the deepest pride and affection. Jiggers was a Boston bull puppy, the
special property of Doris, and they knew just what a heart-wrench it had
been to part with him. Mrs. Robbins took the crisp green bill from
Doris's hand, while the tears slowly gathered on her lashes.
"It's perfectly splendid of you, dear," she said.
Doris beamed and danced around on tiptoe like a captive butterfly, but
the family noticed she kept away from the spot where Jiggers' little
kennel had stood. There are some things the heart cannot quite bear.
Much debating was held over the piano. The girls loved it and declared
it could not be true economy to part with it. It was an Empire baby
grand that had descended to them from the Riverside apartment days in
town. Helen said she always expected to see it pick up its skirts and
pirouette like Columbine, it was so gay and pretty in its gold case all
decorated in trailing flower garlands and little oval panels with
Watteau figures treading gaysome measures in blossomy dells.
"Listen, Mother darling," Kit said finally, "you know what I told you
about white hyacinths. That precious old piano is a white hyacinth and
we'll starve our inmost souls if we try to live without it. Why, we've
loved it and pounded it for years."
So it was boxed and shipped to Gilead Center as a white hyacinth,
together with many another disguised "necessity."
"They've turned into arrant smugglers," Mrs. Robbins wrote her husband.
"And I cannot blame them, because I catch myself doing the same thing,
packing things I should not, and making myself believe they are
essential. I'm sure I don't see where we are ever to put everything in
a farm-house."
Cousin Roxana brightened up and smiled when that portion of the letter
was read aloud to her. She was sitting in a straight-backed,
split-bottomed chair by the south window in the sitting-room, sorting
out morning-glory and nasturtium seeds and putting them into baking
powder boxes.
"Guess Betty'll hearten up some when she sees the Mansion House," she
said.
*CHAPTER VII*
*THE LAND O' REST*
While some of the Long Island farms had begun to look faintly green by
the end of March, not a blade or a leaf was unfurled anywhere around
Gilead Center. Pussy willows and reddening maple twigs held the only
promise of spring so far.
Jean drew on a pair of heavy driving gloves, and waited at the side
"stoop" for Hiram to drive around from the barn with Ella Lou and the
double seated democrat. Hiram was Cousin Roxana's hired help, smooth
faced and lean, somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty. He took care of
three horses and two cows and worked the farm with outside help in busy
seasons.
Some folks in Gilead Center held that Roxy Robbins could have got along
with one horse, but Roxana kept her pair of handsome Percherons just the
same, and let Hiram haul wood all winter with them.
Ella Lou was a black mare with white shoes and stockings and a white
star on her forehead. It really did seem as if she knew all about the
family's affairs. She was aware of every road in the township. Not a
tree could be cut down along the road, not a cord of piled wood added or
taken away, that Ella Lou did not take note of the fact at her next
passing by.
To-day when Hiram drove up with her to the three stone steps by the
white lilacs, she acted as wise and knowing as could be, turning her
head around to look at Jean just as if she could have said, "We're going
after them at last, aren't we?"
Cousin Roxy stood at the screened pantry window, mixing pie crust. She
leaned down and called some last advice as Jean climbed up and took the
reins.
"Hitch her to that white post above the express office, Jeanie. There's
a couple freights come in right after that 3:30 train, and they set her
crazy shuffling back and forth. And have the girls sit on the back seat
'cause them springs are kinder giving way, and your Mother's nervous.
And bring up a wick for the student lamp from the Mill Company Store.
No, never mind," just as Ella Lou started to prance, "'cause they don't
keep that kind, come to think of it. Good-bye. If you don't remember
the turnings, just slack up the reins and she'll find the right road."
Jean laughed and waved her hand. It was her first attempt at driving
alone, but Ella Lou seemed to appreciate just how she felt, and swung
out around the triangle of grass that marked the entrance to the private
driveway.
Maple Lawn stood just at the crossroads, a white comfortable-looking
house, one story and a half high, with a long low "ell" hitched on to
the back, and a white woodshed leaning up against it for company.
Four great rock maples grew before its spacious lawn like a row of Titan
sentinels, in summertime, garbed in Lincoln green like Robin Hood's
merry men. Then too, Baltimore orioles and robins nested in them and
contended with the chipmunks for squatter rights.
The house stood on a hill that faced the sunset. Down from the orchard
sloped corn fields and rye fields. Below the winding white road was a
deep ravine where a brook ran helterskelter by hilly pastures until it
slipped away into the cool shade of a quiet glen, sweet scented with
hemlock and spruce.
In the distance, hill after hill rose in mellowed beauty, each seeming
to lean in sisterly fashion against the next taller one. From the
sitting-room window Cousin Roxana declared she had seen "the power and
the glory" unfold in rapturous vision when the sun spread its alchemy
over old Gilead township.
The course of Little River could be traced down through the valley by
its fringe of willows and alders. For perhaps fifteen miles it rambled,
winding in and out around little islands, dodging old submerged trees
that lifted skeleton arms in protest, spreading out above some old rock
dam into a tiny lake, then dashing like some chased wild thing through a
mill run and out again into low, moist meadows, thick with flag and
rushes.
At a point about a mile below the house stood the old Barlow lumber
mill. Ella Lou caught the first hum of it and quickened her pace until
she came to its watering trough, half toppling over at one side of the
road, its sides all green with moss.
Jean let her take her own way. Once she shied at a shadowy brown shape
that skitted across the road under her feet, and Jean wondered whether
it was a rabbit or a muskrat. Already she was catching the country
spirit. Little objects of everyday life held a meaning for her and she
found herself watching eagerly for new surprises as she drove along the
old river road. How the girls would love it all, she thought, with a
little tightening of her throat. It might be a little lonesome at first,
but surely it was, as Cousin Roxana always said, "the land o' rest."
The final decision on the new home site was to be left to her mother.
Several places had been selected with a leaning towards the Mansion
House, but, as Roxy said again, in her cheery, buoyant way, Betty must
be left unbiased to form her own opinion, although according to her way
of thinking, no sensible person with half their wits could pass over the
merits of the Mansion House, or the wonderful opportunities it
presented.
"It's going to rack and ruin, and it fairly cries out for somebody to
take hold of it and love it," she had said. "I don't know but what I'd
drive by it if I were you, Jeanie, on your way back from the station,
even if it is a mite out of your way, just to see the look on your
Mother's face when she sees it. There's a Providence in all things, of
course, and I ain't gainsaying it, but I do like to jog it along a bit
now and then."
It was a drive of seven miles down to Nantic, the nearest railroad
station. Ella Lou made it in good time and now stood complacently
hitched to the white post above the express office. Already, it
appeared, Mr. Briggs, the station master knew Jean, and smiled over at
the trim, city-like figure pacing up and down on the platform waiting
for the Willimantic train. This was the side line up to Providence that
connected with the Boston express from New York.
"Expecting some of your folks up?" asked Mr. Briggs pleasantly. Nobody
could say that friendly interest in strangers and their affairs was not
evinced around Nantic. It was part of the joy of life to Mr. Briggs to
locate their general intentions.
"My Mother and sisters," Jean answered happily.
"Figure on staying a while, do they?"
She nodded rather proudly. "We're going to live here. We're Miss
Robbins' cousins. You'll have the freight car up with our goods this
week."
"Like enough," said Mr. Briggs encouragingly. "Yes, I knew you belonged
to Roxy. I've known Roxy herself since she was knee high to a toadstool.
There comes your local."
Around the hillside bend of track came the train. It seemed to Jean as
if seconds turned to minutes then. The dear blessed train that was
bearing Mother and Helen and Kit and Doris up out of the world of
uncertainty and trouble into this haven of blossoming hopes. She wanted
to stretch out both her arms to it as it slowed down and puffed, but
there on the last car she caught a glimpse of Kit, one foot all ready to
drop off, waving one hand and hanging on with the other.
"Oh, Mother darling," Jean cried, joyously, once she had them all safe
on the platform. "It's so beautiful up here, and Dad's looking better
every day. He sits up for a while now, and the old doctor told us the
only thing that ailed him was a little distemper. Isn't that fun?
Where are your trunks, girls?"
But this was Mr. Briggs's cue to come forward, hat in hand, and be
introduced, so he took the baggage under his own personal supervision.
It appeared that you never could tell anything about when trunks were
liable to show up once they got started for Nantic, but the likelihood
was, barring accidents, that they'd come up on the six o'clock train,
and there wasn't a bit of use putting any reliance on that either,
'cause they might not show up till the milk train next morning.
"Hope you'll like it up here," was his parting salute, as they drove up
the hill road, and Kit called back that they liked it already, much to
Mr. Briggs's enjoyment.
Mrs. Robbins sat on the front seat, both as the place of honor, and in
remembrance of Cousin Roxana's warning against the back springs. At the
top of the hill Jean rested Ella Lou, so the girls could look back at
the little town. There was the huge one story stone mill, covering
acres of ground, with immense ventilators looking like those on
steamships or like strange uprearing heads of prehistoric reptiles.
The little crooked main street could be traced by its lines of
buildings, and back in a mass of trees stood the old French convent.
Scattered everywhere were the houses of the mill workers, all of a
uniform pattern, painted white with green blinds, and a patch of green
yard to each. Jean, flushed and proud of her responsibility, turned Ella
Lou's head towards home and made quick time. The maple buds were
swelling and looked rosy red against the thickets of dark shiny green
laurel. Behind them rose slim lines of white birches. Doris named them
the "White Ladyes," after the gentle lady ghost in "The Monastery."
"How far is it, Jeanie?" asked Helen. Just then the road came out on
the hilltop overlooking the big reservoir. "Oh, look, look, girls," she
cried. "Isn't it like a bit of out West, Motherie? All those rocks and
pines."
"I'd rather have these dear old hills than all the mountains going," Kit
declared with her usual forcefulness. "We seem to be going up higher
and higher all the time."
"So we are," Jean told her. "It's a steady rise from New London to
Norwich, then up to our own Quinnebaug hills. Are you warm enough,
Mumsie?"
"Plenty," said Mrs. Robbins, happily. "Though it is ever so much cooler
here than on Long Island, isn't it, girls?"
"We've got an open log fire in your room all ready for you," Jean
replied. "You can just sit and toast and toast away to your heart's
content, Queen Motherkin."
"For pity's sake, who ever had the courage to carry all the rocks for
these stone walls?" asked Kit. "Jean, what do you say to this? Let's
buy barrels of cement, and mix it up with sand and water, and make a lot
of lovely old garden seats and grottoes and pergolas. I'm going to make
a sun dial."
"Why not get a Roman seat mold," Jean proposed, "and just pour in cement
and turn out a lot of them and whenever we come to a particularly fine
view, put a seat there."
"Oh, you castle builders," laughed Mrs. Robbins. "When we haven't even a
home yet. You'd think there was a baronial estate waiting for us."
"There is," Jean answered mysteriously. "Cousin Roxy and I think that
we've found the right place. Father hasn't seen it, of course, but I
found it, and Cousin Roxy said we couldn't get it because somebody'd
died, and it had gone to people out West."
"Which gave our precious old Jean a chance to delve into mystery," Kit
suggested. "Yes, yes, go on, sister mine. You interest us amazingly.
What didst do then?"
"Oh, I found him," said Jean, enthusiastically. "He lives away out West
in Saskatoon, and has never even seen this place, so he's willing to
sell it for almost nothing, $2,500, and even that includes the water
power."
Kit shook her head deploringly.
"Listen to the poor child, Mother dear. She chats of thousands as if
they were split peas and she was making a pudding."
"Hush, Kit. He'll rent it too for a hundred dollars a year, timber
rights reserved excepting for our own use, and we can sell the hay."
"How many rooms, dear?" asked Mrs. Robbins.
"Seventeen," replied Jean, blithely. "Oh, it isn't a country cottage or
a farm-house at all. They call it the Mansion House out here, and it's
so big that nobody wants it for a gift."
"Do you want a castle or an inn?" asked Kit.
"Where is it?" Helen inquired cautiously.
"When can we move in?" Doris asked practically.
"Well, you can see the cupola, I think, as soon as we get up to the top
of Peck's Hill. I'll stop then. It's fearfully lonesome, and perhaps
you'd rather be in the village. Cousin Roxy says that some folks do
say--"
"Stop her, stop her," Kit exclaimed. "Jean, you're talking exactly like
Cousin Roxy. Isn't she, Mother?"
"Never mind, dear. Go right on," comforted Mrs. Robbins, smiling at the
eager young face beside her. Three weeks at Maple Lawn had surely taken
a lot of the spread out of Jean's sails.
"I don't think we'd be one bit lonely. It's about a mile from Maple
Lawn, and half a mile from Mr. Peck's place down the valley, and the
mail goes right by the door. And there's an old ruined stone mill on an
island, and a waterfall, and a bridge, and big pines along the terrace
in the front yard. It does need painting, I suppose, and shingling in
spots, and the veranda lops a little bit where it needs shoring up,
Hiram told me--"
"Specify Hiram," Helen asked mildly. "We don't know a thing about
Hiram, Jeanie."
"He's the hired man, and he can do anything."
"But, dear," interrupted Mrs. Robbins, "can't you realize that there
must be something wrong with it or it never would be rented for such a
sum.
"Oh, there is," Jean replied promptly. "It's too far from the railroad
or village, and the mill burned down six years ago, and the owner died
from the shock of losing everything he had, and there it stands, going
to rack and ruin, Cousin Roxy says, waiting for the Robbinses to appear
and turn it into a nest."
"How about school?" asked Kit suddenly.
Jean waved her long whip grandly.
"Who wants a school out here? The groves were God's first temples.
There's a school, though, over at the Gayhead crossroads. We're going
to have a horse and drive you over to the trolley so you can catch it to
the High School."
"Jean has us all moved and settled already," Mrs. Robbins said, "I'm
sure I'd like to be near where Roxana lives."
"Well, there it is," Jean exclaimed happily. Ella Lou pricked up her
ears, and quickened her pace, down one little hill, up another, over a
culvert, and suddenly there appeared white chimneys rising above an
apple orchard at the top of the hill.
"There it is," she said, pointing to it with her whip. "Seven miles
from nowhere, but right next door to Heart's Content."
*CHAPTER VIII*
*SPYING THE PROMISED LAND*
The following morning Miss Robbins said she thought she would drive down
to the Mansion House with Elizabeth Ann herself, and they'd look it
over.
"If you girls feel like coming down, you can take the short cut through
the woods. Like enough you'll find some blood root out by now and
saxifrage too. Don't be like Jean, though. The other day she came up
from the brook and said she'd found a calla lily, and it was just skunk
cabbage."
So the girls took the short cut through the woods. They were just
beginning to show signs of spring. The trees were bare, but under the
dry leaves they found the new life springing. It was all new and
interesting to them. Down at the Cove they had been in a beautiful part
of Long Island but it was all restricted property. Here the woods and
meadows spread for miles on every hand. Every pasture bar seemed to
invite one to climb over it and explore the "Beyond," as Doris called
it. And where the woods ended in rocky pastures and wide spreading
fields, they came out to a spot where they overlooked the Mansion House
and its grounds.
Cousin Roxana and Mrs. Robbins were there before them. The side door
stood hospitably open, and Ella Lou was hitched to the post just as
though she belonged there. It was a curiously interesting old place.
First of all, a rock wall enclosed the grounds, with rock columns at the
two entrance gates. These were wide, for the drive entered on one side,
wound around the house, and came out on the other road, as the house
stood at a corner.
The house itself looked like a glorified farmhouse. It wasn't at all
like a bungalow, Kit declared. In fact it was hard to place it in the
history of architecture.
"I think perhaps it started out to be Mid-Victorian with that general
squareness and the veranda," said Mrs. Robbins.
"That isn't Mid-Victorian, Mother darling," Jean interposed. "That's
the Reaction Period in New England. First of all none of the Puritan
women had any time to sit out on porches or verandas, so all the houses
were made plain faced. Then after the war they began to turn their minds
to lighter things, so they stuck a cupola up here, and tacked on a
little porch there, and gave the windows fancy eyebrows, and little
scalloped wooden lace ruffles along the edges of the eaves. Isn't that
so, Cousin Roxy?"
"Well, I declare, Jeanie," laughed Miss Robbins, "maybe you're right.
I'd say, though, it was mostly a hankering after titivation. I don't
set much store by it myself, so long as I've got plenty of flowering
bushes 'round a house, and climbing vines. That makes me think, you've
got a sight of them here, flowering quince and almond, and 'pinies,' and
all sorts of hardy annuals. There used to be a big border of them, I
remember, at the back of the house, and behind it was an old-fashioned
rose garden."
"A rose garden!" Kit and Helen gasped.
"Wish I had my sun dial under my arm this minute," added Jean. "Come
on, girls."
Back they went to find it, and after hunting diligently through hazel
bushes and upspringing weeds, they found where one terrace dipped into a
sunken space walled in once upon a time, though now the tumbled gray
rocks had half fallen down, and some were sunken in the earth. But still
they found some old rose canes, and several large bushes that looked
hopeful. There was a flagged walk with myrtle growing up between the
stones, and a tumble-down arbor that Doris declared looked exactly like
a shipwrecked pilot house off some boat.
"Let's call it our pilot house. We may need piloting before we get
through," said Helen, sitting down on the broad front steps, her chin on
her palms, listening to the music of falling water in the distance and
the wind overhead in the great, slumbrous pines. There were four of
these, two on each side of the long terrace, with rock maples down near
the rock wall, and several pear and cherry trees. Along the terrace
were old-time flower beds, three on each one, outlined with clam shells.
"Miss Trowbridge used to have gladiolus set out in those beds, with
pansies and sweet alyssum set 'round the edges, and outside again,
old-hen-and-her-chickens. They looked real sightly."
"Who was Miss Trowbridge, Cousin Roxy?" asked Mrs. Robbins. She sat
beside Jean, her hands clasped lightly in her lap, her hat lying beside
her. There was a look of concent on her face that had been a stranger
there for many months. Doris dropped a spray of half blossomed cherry
twigs in her lap, and ran away again.
"She was own sister to the Trowbridge that owned the mills. She married
some man out in Canada, lived a while out there, then gave up and died.
She never did have much backbone that I could see, but she loved
flowers. Did you notice a big glass bay window off the dining-room? She
called that her conservatory. I remember asking her if it was her
'conversationary,' and how she did laugh at me! Well, everyone can't be
expected to know everything. It's all I can do to keep up with Gilead
Center these days. Her name was Francelia and she married a McRae."
"But who had the place after she and her brother died?"
Cousin Roxana never believed in directness when it came to genealogies.
She delighted in them, and would slip her glasses down to the middle of
her long nose, elevate her chin, and go after a family tree like a
government arborist.
"Well, according to my way of thinking, it should belong to Piney
Hancock and her brother Honey. His name's Seth, but they call him
Honey. Their mother was Luella Trowbridge, own sister to Francelia and
Tom who owned the mills, but she married Clint Hancock against
everybody's word, and her father cut her off in his will, and never saw
her from the day she was married. Tom did the same, but Francelia used
to go over and see her after Piney and Honey were born. They live down
near Nantic. You must have passed the house, little bit of a gray one
with rambler roses all over it, and a well sweep at one side. The
property went to Francelia after Tom died, and she had one boy. He's
out in Northwest Canada now and don't give a snap of his finger for this
place, when there's Piney and Honey loving it to death and can't hardly
walk on the grass. Still, I suppose if they went to law, they'd get
nothing out of it after all the lawyers had been satisfied."
Kit and Helen listened open-eyed.
"My goodness, Cousin Roxy," exclaimed Kit, "how on earth do you ever
manage to keep track of all of them?"
"Keep track of them? Land, child, that ain't anything after you've been
to school with them and lived neighbors all your life. You children
will like Piney and her brother, and maybe you can help put a little
happiness into their lives, poor youngsters."
"Oh, Mumsie, I love this place already," whispered Jean contentedly,
snuggling close to her mother's side.
"Do you, dear?" Mrs. Robbins smiled down into the eldest robin's face.
For some reason she always waited for Jean's judgment and opinion.
"Yes, I do, because it isn't really a farm and still we can have a
garden and sell the hay and get out wood and raise all we need for
ourselves. I don't think we can do much else the first year, can we,
Cousin Roxy?"
"If you do all that you'll be getting along finely. I'm going to start
you off chicken raising with a lot of little ones from my incubator. You
can buy all you want for ten cents apiece, and if you get about fifteen
last year pullets and a rooster, you've got your barnyard family all
started."
"Oh, I want to be mother to the incubator chickens; may I, please?"
begged Doris instantly. "I think one of the saddest things in life is to
be hatched without a mother."
"Sympathetic Dorrie," laughed Kit, catching her down on the grass and
rolling her. "She's going to adopt all the chickens and goodness only
knows what else."
"I'm going to keep bees," Helen announced serenely, with a certain
aloofness in her manner quite as if she had stated that her chosen
occupation was one befitting a damsel of high degree. "I've always
wanted bees ever since I read Maeterlinck's 'Life of the Bee.' I want a
garden close and bees that bring me home the honey from the clover
fields and meadows fair."
"Lovely," Jean exclaimed, hugging her knees, and rocking to and fro
contentedly. "You always select such royal occupations, Helenita. I
shall be the middleman of the farm. I am going to find markets for all
that my princess sisters raise. I'll make the castle pay expenses and
that's more than most castles do. I want a horse and some sort of a
wagon."
"Don't get anything foolish," admonished Cousin Roxana. "Either a good
low buggy with a top for bad weather, and a good deep space at the back
to tuck things away in, or else a covered democrat's nice too, and you
can put in an extra seat in them if you like. I guess a democrat's the
best thing for you after all."
"Until we get our roadster," supplemented Helen. "I know Mother'll
never get along way up here without some kind of a car, will you, Mother
dear?"
Mrs. Robbins shook her head smilingly.
"I'm thinking more about a new steel range for the kitchen, Childie."
Roxana smiled too. Only a few weeks before, kitchen ranges had been
things of small import with Betty Robbins. All that the Motherbird had
been able to say when questioned at that time was that they cooked with
electricity, and had a gas range, she believed, but Tekla was the one
who knew.
"You'll have to burn wood out here, Helen, unless you get a tame
lightning rod and hitch it to an electric stove," Kit said.
"I don't care what we have to do," Jean interposed. "I want the place;
don't you, Mother?"
"I think I shall love it," said Mrs. Robbins, lifting her face to the
swaying pine boughs overhead. "I wish that I could stay here now and
not have to go away at all."
"Helen, put the kettle on, and we'll all have tea," chanted Kit. "You
know, Cousin Roxy, we always make Helen fix our tea. It isn't that she
does it so wonderfully better than the rest of us, but she thinks she
does, and she makes the most enticing ceremonial of it. You want to
burn incense and kowtow before her serene highness. Wait till you see
her do it!"
Helen rose and made a deep curtsey before Miss Robbins.
"We ask the pleasure of your ladyship's presence at tea two weeks from
today."
"Oh, I'll be here," Cousin Roxana answered. "But I guess we'll leave the
ladyship behind. I've got a Quaker great-grandmother tucked in behind me
along the line of ancestors, and there's a silver goblet up home that
Benjamin Franklin drank from once when he was a guest at your
great-great-great-grandfather Eliot's place on the old Providence
plantations. Nice, pleasant, unassuming sort of man too, I've always
heard tell he was. So I'm all democrat clear through."
"You're a darling," Doris exclaimed, hugging her from behind, both arms
wound tightly around her throat. "We'd never have come up here at all
if it hadn't been for you."
"There, child, there. It says in the Book, you know, 'The Lord moveth
in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform,' and if I do say it as
shouldn't, He seems to pick me out every once in a while and lets me
help a little bit, blessed be His Name. Now, let's start for home."
She rose from the porch step energetically. "Ella Lou's begun to move
around and that's to let me know it's after five. She can always tell
the time when the sun gets low."
"I feel sure Mother wants the place, don't you, Jean?" Kit asked, as the
girls went up through the woods towards home. "All the time we were
going through the house I could see every bit of our furniture in the
right places there. And there's so much room that Dad will hardly know
the difference between this place and the old one at the Cove. He could
have those two big rooms overlooking the valley on the second floor.
You can see the great brown stone dam from there and the ruins of the
mill, and hear the falling water. I wish we had time to climb out over
the old dam to the mill."
"It's better than living right in a village," Jean answered, pushing
aside the young birches that crowded the way. "I rather dreaded that
somehow. Everybody'd want to know all about us right off, and why we
came up, and what ailed Dad, and everything else. I hope, though,
Mother won't be lonely here. You know, girls, it is lonely for a woman
like her, where Cousin Roxy doesn't mind it."
"We'll have to pitch in and make up to her for everything she's lost,"
said Doris solemnly.
"Dear old Dorrie." Kit put her arm around the littlest sister and
squeezed her affectionately. "You know, you are an awful make-believe.
You are just like somebody, I've forgotten who it was, in the old Norse
fairy lore, who lost his way over the hills and fell asleep in a magic
ring, and when he wakened the wee folks had anointed his eyes with fairy
ointment and everything that he looked at after that seemed beautiful to
him. Goodness knows we're going to need something like that out here.
Of course it's all lovely now, but what will it be like in the winter
when the north wind doth blow, and we shall have snow, and what will
poor robin do then, poor thing?"
"It's all a question of system," Jean declared, her hands deep in her
white sweater pockets, and its collar turned high around her neck.
"We'll have to make a business of living, and learn how to do things we
hate to do with the least effort."
"You're just a bluffer, Jean Robbins," exclaimed Helen, "just a bluffer.
Anyone would think to hear you talk that you actually enjoyed
privations. Of course when we're with Mother and Dad, or even Cousin
Roxy, we have to put on a whole lot, but when we're alone I do think we
might at least be sincere with ourselves. We all know how we feel at
heart about this sort of thing."
"What sort of thing?" asked Kit, on the offensive instantly. "What do
you mean?"
"Giving up everything we've been used to, and living out here in the
woods. I'm going to miss the girls most of all."
"Well, we don't like losing everything any better than you do, Helen,"
Jean said soothingly. "Only--"
"Don't pat me," retorted Helen, shaking off her hand; "I know I'm
selfish, and I'm beginning to feel sorry I said anything. Only it does
look so bleak and forlorn here somehow."
"But if you have to do a thing, why, you just have to do it, that's
all," Kit declared. "It's better to make up your mind you're going to
like it. Look at that cow ahead of us. It must have strayed."
Through the birches ahead they could see some object obstructing the
narrow path, its back towards them. Large as a cow it was, and reddish
brown, but in place of short horns, this animal had spreading antlers,
and Jean caught sight of its round puff of a tail.
"Oh, girls, it's a deer!"
At her voice the deer started and pushed into the thick underbrush until
it came to a stone wall. They watched it rise and clear it at a bound
like a thoroughbred horse, its knees bent under, its head held high.
Then it was gone.
"Well, isn't that perfectly gorgeous!" gasped Kit, explosively. "I've
never seen one on its native heath before. Wish we could tame some,
don't you, girls?"
"The Lady Kathleen doth already see a baronial estate with does and
fawns at large," said Jean teasingly. "Wouldst have a few white
peacocks standing on one foot upon thy entrance gates, oh, sister mine?"
"Well, I don't know but what they would look nice," Kit answered
placidly. "I tell you what we do want to raise--turkeys. I've always
wanted turkeys or geese. It's the simple turkey-tender that the fairy
godmother turns into a beauteous princess."
Doris danced along the path ahead of them.
"I like this ever so much better than the Cove," she called. "It is all
so wild and free."
"It will be fun mixing things up and making a success out of it whether
it wants to be or not--I mean the new home," Jean replied. "Only we're
sure to get lonely sometimes for the people we liked down there. You
know what I mean, don't you, Helen?"
"Indeed I do," Helen said fervently. "That's just what I told you.
Think of our being buried up here in these woods for months and maybe
years."
"Still, it is worse for Mother. It's sort of an adventure for us girls
from which we'll escape some time, but it's the real thing for her,
something that's going to last perhaps all through her life."
"No, it won't, Kit, because we'll grow up and rescue her if she doesn't
like it."
"What about Dad?" asked Doris. "The doctors in the city say he'll never
get any better, and the old doctor up here says he'll begin to get
better at once if he just stops thinking about himself and gets out of
doors."
"I'd believe a doctor that talked to me like that even if I was half
afraid he might be wrong," Kit said soberly.
They paused at a spur of land that looked out over the long valley.
Little River flowed in a winding course marked by alders and willows.
Now that there was no foliage to obscure the view, they could catch a
glimpse here and there of a red roof or a white chimney. There was the
Smith mill, then the old white Murray homestead with its weather vane
standing on a little hill like a big yardarm at large. Then came their
own old ruined mill, half tumbling down, with empty window casings, all
overgrown with woodbine and poison ivy. Farther up the valley one
caught the hum of another mill, purring musically in a sort of crescendo
scale until it broke off into a snappy zip! as the log broke.
Already Jean declared she knew the names and histories of all the people
there, and which way the roads went, and where the nearest towns lay.
"I feel exactly as if I stood now on the crest of the Delectable
Mountains," she said with a quiet; sigh. They had stood there some time
in silence, looking at the widespread land of hills and valleys, upland
meadows, warm and brown in the early spring sunshine, and sweeps of
woodland, russet red with maple and ash, with here and there the dark
sombre richness of laurel or pine. "Who was it did that, Christian in
'Pilgrim's Progress,' wasn't it?"
Helen and Doris knelt to look at some blossoming saxifrage at the edge
of a rock. Kit stood erect and tender-eyed.
"Oh, I don't know who it was," she said, quite gently for her, "but I
know how he felt anyway. I always feel that way when I look out over
vast distances, specially skylands; I wish I had wings or was all I want
to be. Don't you know what I mean, Jeanie? It makes you think of all
the things you hope to do some day."
"Like the spies that Gideon sent forth to look over the Promised Land,"
Jean answered. "I always think of them at such times, traveling miles
and miles up through the mountains until all at once they came to a
sudden opening and they looked out at it all lying at their feet like
this."
Kit smiled, her cheeks rosy from the upland climb, her hands deep in her
sporting coat pockets. There was almost a challenging tilt to her chin
as she faced that sweep of valley, barren and brown in the spring sunset
hour.
"Well, it is _our_ Promised Land," she declared, "and I can tell it
right now that it's got to blossom like the rose and pour out milk and
honey, because we've come to stay."
*CHAPTER IX*
*THE LADY MANAGERS CHOOSE A NAME*
That very night a council was held of what Mr. Robbins termed "the Board
of Lady Managers."
"I think I need Hiram in here for support," he said laughingly, from his
favorite resting place, the old fashioned high-backed davenport in the
sitting-room.
There were no such things at Maple Lawn as a library, a reception room,
or a den. There was a front entry and a side entry and a well-room at
the back of the kitchen. There was a parlor and a front bed-room, a
side bed-room and a big sunny sitting-room that was dining-room also,
and finally the old kitchen with its Dutch oven, and hooks in the
ceiling for hanging up smoked beef and bacon sides.
Not that Cousin Roxy ever used the Dutch oven nowadays excepting to
store things away in. She had instead a fine shiny, water-back steel
range, over which she hovered like a sorceress from five A.M. to eleven
A.M., producing such marvels of cookery as held the girls spellbound:
raised doughnuts with jam inside and powdered sugar outside; apple
turnovers made with Peck's Pleasants and rich Baldwins; ginger cookies,
large as saucers with scalloped edges, soft and rich as butter scotch;
and pies, with rich, flaky crust and delectable filling in endless
varieties. Jean declared that she had learned more about cooking in the
few weeks she had lived at Maple Lawn than in all her life before.
"Well, there's cooking and cooking, girls," Cousin Roxana had replied
placidly, fishing for brown doughnuts with her long, hand-wrought iron
fork. "It's one thing to cook when you've got everything to do with,
and quite another when you are eternally figuring out how to make both
ends meet. Of course, I don't have to do that. Land knows there's
plenty to eat and more to, praise the Lord, but it's all plain food, and
you've got to learn how to toss vegetables around in forty different
ways out here if you want any variety."
That evening it was when the Board of Lady Managers discussed everything
that lay ahead of them from the said vegetables to chickens, cows,
horses, and farm implements.
Mr. Robbins had seemed relieved when he was sure that the Motherbird
approved of the Mansion House. It was near Maple Lawn and Roxana, he
said, and they would surely need both many times during their first
experimental year in the country. Also, it was on the mail route, and
not too large a place in acreage for them to handle. There was a good
apple orchard, somewhat run down, but it would be all right with pruning
and proper care. Besides, there were four good pear trees, two large
cherry trees, white hearts and red, and three crabapple trees.
"Guess if you hunt around, you might find some quinces too, and plenty
of berries and currants," Cousin Roxana said. "It's been let go to
waste the past few years, and it'll take a year or more to get it back
into shape. You'd better write out West and get a three-year lease,
with option of purchase."
"We couldn't think of buying it, even with water rights and all," Mrs.
Robbins demurred, "but we might try the three-year lease. What do you
think, dear?"
"I should write tonight," Mr. Robbins told her, confidently. "Even if I
should gain my health completely"--how cheerily he said it, the girls
thought--"we could still stay up here summers, and you all would enjoy
it, I know. Look at Dorrie's pink cheeks, and Jean looks like another
girl. If I keep on much longer on Roxy's cooking, I expect to be mowing
hay in the lower meadows by July."
So the letter was written, the wonderful letter freighted with so many
hopes. All four girls escorted Mrs. Robbins down to the mailbox at the
crossroads the next noon. It was truly a fateful moment, as Kit
remarked solemnly. So much depended upon the nature of the answer from
far-off Saskatoon. Perched on the fence rail Dorrie began to compose
poetry to fit the occasion.
"Kit, beat time for me, will you?" she called happily, teetering on the
rail like a young bluebird. "Here it goes now:
"Oh, Saskatoon,
Please answer soon!
Sweet Saskatoon,
We ask this boon--