What's his name, Mumsie?"

"Ralph McRae," Jean answered for her mother.

"You know, really, Dorrie," protested Helen, "if you could just see

yourself on that rail fence chanting doggerel to the spring breezes,

you'd come down."

But Doris kept to the rail all the same, and sang with her fair hair

blowing around her little face, already showing freckles. Even Kit felt

the inspiration of the moment.

"Oh, I love these April mornings! You can smell everything that's sweet

and new in the air, can't you, Motherkin? And I found arbutus buds down

in the pines too, and an old crow's nest, and the crocuses are up."

Mrs. Robbins lifted her face to the blue sky, with its great white

clouds that drifted up from the south in an endless argosy of beauty,

and quoted softly:

"When Spring comes down the wildwood way,

A crocus in her hair--"

"There comes the mail wagon down the wildwood way," Jean called from the

curve of the road.

Already they had grown to watch for it as the one real event of the day.

Mrs. Robbins said it reminded her of the little milk wagons in the

South. It had a white oblong body with a projection at the back, a

"lean-to" as Cousin Roxana called it, for parcel post packages. The top

came forward over the front seat in a canopy effect to shield Mr.

Ricketts, the rural free delivery carrier, from the sun. Finally, there

was a plump white horse that matched the whole turnout exactly, and Mr.

Ricketts, his cap pushed back on his head, a smile of perpetual

well-being on his face.

"Looks like we'd get a spell of fine weather," he called. "Tell Miss

Robbins I noticed a postcard for her about her subscription being up for

her floral monthly, and if she ain't going to renew hers, I'll send in

my own for this year."

"Now just hear that," exclaimed Cousin Roxy when she was given the

message. "He's read my floral monthly regularly coming along the route.

Well, I don't know as I mind. He's a real good mail carrier anyhow, and

all men have failings. Hewers of wood and drawers of water, the good

Book calls them, and I'd like to know what else the pesky things are

for. That doesn't mean you at all, Jerry. You were always a good boy.

Tom Ricketts knows better than to read my floral monthly without so much

as by your leave, ma'am. But I'll renew it."

"He must have read the postcard too," said Helen.

"Read it?" Cousin Roxy sniffed audibly. "I'd like to see anything get by

them down at that post office. They know a sight more about you than

you do yourself. Postmaster Willets could sit down single-handed and

write a history of the local inhabitants of this town just from memory

and postcards, I don't doubt a mite."

The very next day the girls went again to the Mansion House. The keys

were at Mr. Weaver's, the next house down the road from Maple Lawn. It

was a regular gray mouse of a house sitting far back from the road and

facing the western hills. Philemon Weaver lived there alone. He was

ninety-one and had had six wives, Cousin Roxana told them.

"Though mercy knows, nobody holds that against him. It was a compliment

to the sex, I suppose, if he could get them. And Uncle Philly's buried

them all reverently and properly."

They found the old fellow working at a carpenter's bench out in the

woodshed. His hair was gray and curly and his upper lip clean shaven.

Doris said he looked just like the pictures of Uncle Sam. He was tall

and lean and stoop-shouldered, but his blue eyes were full of twinkles

and he had the finest set of false teeth, Kit remarked soberly, that

she'd ever seen, and the most winsome smile.

"Winsome? Philly Weaver winsome?" laughed Cousin Roxana when she heard

it. "Well, I must say, Kit, that is the greatest yet. Winsome!"

"But he is," Kit protested, "really winsome. He gave us each a drink

from his well and showed Jean his Dutch tile stove and his grandfather's

clock. And he's got the dearest old chest out in that side hall, Cousin

Roxy. I asked him how much he'd take for it, and he said no, he guessed

he'd better not, though it was worth as much as two dollars and a half,

but it had been his great-grandmother's setting-out chest. Wasn't that

dear of him?"

Armed with the key and waving good-bye to the old man at the top of the

hill, they started down to the crossroads. Already they called the

house home. It was so satisfying, Kit said, just to wander about the

rooms and plan. There was one large southeast room that must be the

living-room and library combined. Back of this, opening out on a wide

side porch, was the dining-room. On the opposite side of the front

hallway was a sitting-room with a glass-enclosed extension for flowers,

and between it and the kitchen was a good-sized hallway lined with

shelves and long handy drawers beneath them.

It was the kitchen and garret, though, that the girls lingered over

most. The former extended across the entire back of the house and Helen

counted eleven doors opening out of it. The floor was made of oaken

planks worn smooth as satin, some of them over two feet wide. Behind

the sheet iron partition, they found a huge old-fashioned rock fireplace

with the crane still hanging in it. Helen and Doris could easily stand

inside the aperture and there was a jutting out of the walls on each

side that formed the cosiest kind of an inglenook.

"It seemed from this they e'en must be,

Each other's own best companie,"

quoted Kit, from "The Hanging of the Crane." "Where are you, Jeanie?

You're missing thrills of discovery."

But Jean was getting her own thrills. She had gathered her skirts

around her, and ventured down the old winding cellar steps, groped

around in the dark until she found the outside doors and removed the big

wooden bar that held them. The stone steps outside were green with

moss, and an indignant toad hopped back out of the sunlight when she

threw open the doors.

"We'll get the mouldy smell out of the cellar in a few days," she told

the others, rolling up her sleeves and sitting down in the sunshine on

the top step. "And there's a furnace down there, too. It looks old and

rusty, but it's there. No wonder they called it the Mansion House with

a real furnace in the cellar and running water in the kitchen sink. But

how funny and New Englandy, girls, to call it that, doubling up on

mansion and house. Let's name it something else, something piney."

"Valley View," suggested Helen.

"Sounds too slippery," Kit said. "How's Heart's Content? Too

sentimental? Well then, Piney Crest. It is on a sort of crest or mount

up here above the valley and the pines make it seem solemn."

"Well, they won't after we once get here," Doris declared. "Let's call

it something happy."

Kit stood with arms akimbo, looking up at the tall tapering pines. They

were splendid old lords of the conifers, towering as high as the cupola

itself. Their branches spread out like great hoopskirts of green.

Underneath was a thick silky carpet of russet needles, layer on layer

from many seasons of growth. Beyond the limits of the garden lay the

strip of white road, and across that came wide fields that seemed to

fall in long waves to meet the river. On all sides they slipped away

from the old mansion, their square borders outlined with the gray rock

walls, each with its brave showing of springtime green, where every

clambering vine had sent forth leafy tendrils, and even the moss had

freshened up under the April showers.

"In a couple of weeks more they'll all be green," said Jean, her dark

eyes bright with anticipation. "And we'll plough them and sow them, and

they'll grow and grow, girls, and turn a real golden harvest over to us

by fall. Blessed green acres of promise!"

"There you are," exclaimed Kit triumphantly, wheeling around on them.

"Greenacres. It just fits the place, and it's full of the country and

makes you think of good things to eat. Greenacres. All in favor of that

name please signify in the usual manner."

Whereupon Doris picked up her skirts and made a low curtesy, and Helen

did the same, and lastly Jean and Kit swept each other an elaborate

court bow, showing that the vote was entirely unanimous.

Therefore, Greenacres was the new name given to the old Mansion House,

and the girls felt that in the bestowal of the name, they held a

guarantee with Fate of happy augury.

*CHAPTER X*

*SETTLING THE NEST*

"Goods have come," called Mr. Ricketts from the mail box one morning.

The pink freight card lay on top, and he seemed as pleased as anyone to

find it there. "Letter from out West too, I noticed, so I presume you

folks will be settled pretty soon."

"I almost feel as if I ought to let him read what Mr. McRae says," Mrs.

Robbins said amusedly. "He's so friendly and interested."

As she opened the letter, the girls gathered around her chair,

eager-eyed and curious to see what it contained. Jean declared that she

liked the handwriting because it was firm and plain without any

flourishes. Kit was sure he used a stub pen and was rather morose and

dignified. Helen asked if she might keep the postage stamp for a

memento, and Doris kept patting her mother's shoulder tenderly as if she

would have protected her against any disappointment.

"You read it, dear. I'd much rather you did," the Motherbird said,

handing it over to Mr. Robbins.

Cousin Roxana was out in the buttery singing softly to herself about

some day when the mists had rolled in splendor from the beauty of the

hills, and the nurse was upstairs, packing to return to New York the

following day. There was just their own little home group of robins and

they listened anxiously for the verdict. The letter ran:

SASKATOON, SASKATCHEWAN,

April 4th, 19--.

_Mr. Jerrold Robbins, Gilead Center, Conn._

MY DEAR MR. ROBBINS: Your letter of March 28th, received. I should be

very glad to rent the old house down at Stony Eddy on a lease, but do

not want to let it go out of the family. Miss Robbins can tell you the

conditions under which it came into my possession and why I am not at

liberty to part with it. If you care to rent it at $100 a year, it is

yours. Any necessary repairs it may need I am willing to make. I have

never seen the property myself, but whatever Miss Robbins says about it

will be satisfactory to me, as she was my Aunt Trowbridge's dearest

friend.

Hoping if you decide to take the place, you may be happy there, I am,

Yours sincerely,

RALPH McRAE.

"It's ours," Jean breathed thankfully.

"I always felt that it was, somehow," Mrs. Robbins smiled happily around

at her brood. "And I know you'll like it, Jerry."

"Oh, I know the place, I remember admiring it as a boy. Besides, I'd

like anything up here. Why, I could live out yonder in Roxy's corncrib

very comfortably this summer if she'd only let me," teased the invalid.

"Better send a check out at once for the rent, Betty, and get into it as

soon as possible."

It was the third week in April when they drove down in relays from Maple

Lawn and took possession of the new home. There had been considerable

repairing to be done: painting and papering, mending the waterpipes and

furnace, and cleaning out the chimneys.

The goods had been brought up from Nantic by Hiram in the big hay wagon,

he making four trips. Mrs. Robbins had wanted to hire an automobile

truck from Norwich, but Roxana said it was all nonsense with two big

horses standing idle in the barn just aching for work, and Hiram fussing

around over frost still being in the ground so he couldn't do any deep

ploughing. So the goods came up and were packed into the big front room

downstairs while the girls and Mrs. Robbins went back and forth

"settling."

Hiram's younger brother came to do the papering and painting. He looked

exactly like a young rooster, Kit declared, all neck and legs, and he

was fearfully shy. She found immediate diversion in appearing before

him suddenly in her most abrupt manner and asking his opinion anxiously

on something, whereupon Shad would blush intensely to the roots of his

taffy colored hair, and splash paste blindly.

His name was Shadrach Farnum, but Shad suited him to perfection. As

Cousin Roxana said, he did sort of run to bone. But he could paint and

paper to the queen's taste and gradually the rooms began to look

different. The big living-room was covered with a soft wood brown

burlap that harmonized well with their ash furniture and bookcases, and

the brown Spanish leather cushions. Window seats were built around the

two bay windows, and the girls sewed diligently to cover the cushions

for these with burlap, and to make inside curtains just to outline, as

Jean said, the cream filet ones.

"It looks so warm and tender and friendly, doesn't it?" Doris exclaimed

when the big brown suede cover was laid on the long library table and

the copper lamp placed in the center. The copper lamp was really an

institution in the Robbins' family. The girls had given it personal

conduct from the Cove on Long Island to Nantic. Jean had found it in an

old copper and brass shop in New York at a wonderful reduction, and had

carted it home herself in triumph. The bowl was broad and low and

squat, shaped a good deal like a summer squash. The shade was

perforated by hand with exquisite artistry into strange Muscovite

designs, through which the light shone softly. When it was lighted the

first evening in the new home, Helen said she felt as if she were before

a shrine.

"And it is a shrine too," Jean told them, "the shrine of home."

Once in the long ago when they had all been quite young, Jean had been

found industriously writing names on bits of paper, and fastening them

with mucilage to pieces of the furniture.

"I thought they might feel queer not having any names," she said when

discovery came, "so I was naming them."

The lamp had a name too; it was always alluded to as Diogenes.

"It looks exactly like the kind of lamp he would have loved," Kit

explained.

The day after they really moved in, Cousin Roxana drove down with Ella

Lou and some good advice, a large brown crock of freshly baked beans and

a loaf of brown bread.

"You need a good safe horse that you all can drive," she said. "Sam

Willetts has a brown mare that seems just about the ticket. I

telephoned over to him this morning and he'll sell her for $75.00, which

isn't bad at all. If you like, Betty, I'll call him up again as soon as

I get back and Honey Hancock can bring her over. Honey's working for Mr.

Willetts now, and the mare used to belong to the Hancocks. She was a

regular pet, Piney said."

Mrs. Robbins was sure it was a good plan and Cousin Roxana was

instructed to close the bargain. So it was that Greenacres made the

acquaintance of Honey Hancock, destined to be a close friend before

summer was over, and always a family standby.

It was a little past the supper hour when Honey drove up. Hitched to

the back of the wagon was the brown mare, and they all went out to look

at her. Honey was about fourteen and tall for his age. Rosy-cheeked he

was, with blue eyes and curly brown hair and dimples so deep and

ingratiating that Helen said it was a burning shame to waste them on a

boy.

He stood at the mare's head, patting her slender, glossy neck and

combing her mane with his fingers, telling the girls her history, how

she had belonged to Molly Bawn, their old mare, and how his father had

broken her to harness himself.

"But she never had to be really broken in. Piney and I started riding

her bareback when she was out in pasture and she was just as tame as a

kitten. She understands anything you say to her. Mother hated to sell

her to Mr. Willetts, but we had to, and as I was working for him, why,

she didn't know any difference. She's used to a good deal of petting--"

"Oh, we'll all pet her here," Jean promised. "We must have something to

drive her in. Haven't you a davenport that she'll drive nicely in?"

"A davenport!" exclaimed Kit. "Jean Robbins, a davenport's a sofa.

She'd look nice hitched to a sofa. My sister isn't used to the country

at all, Honey. She means a democrat, you know. The kind of a wagon you

can put one seat or two on, and still have room to put things away in."

"We haven't anything like that," said Honey, "but they might have down

at Mr. Butterick's. He's the carriage maker. He can take a pair of old

carriage wheels, and turn out a good buggy almost while you watch him."

"You have wonderful people up here," Helen said fervently. "It seems as

if whenever you want a certain kind of a person, there he is waiting for

you. Where does Mr. Butterick live?"

"Down in Rocky Glen; second house past the basket weaver, Mr. Tompkins."

"Suppose we go over there tomorrow, girls," Jean suggested. "Or do you

have to take the mare over, Honey, and let Mr. Butterick sort of fit her

with a carriage and a harness? I wish I could put her in the barn right

now."

"Better get somebody to take care of her first," Helen said practically.

"We'd feed her fish cakes and doughnuts."

Honey shifted his weight from one foot to the other somewhat uneasily.

"Don't suppose you folks think of taking anybody on regularly, do you?

Mother said I was to ask, and say if you wanted me I might come up. It's

nearer home than Mr. Willetts' and there's only Piney and Mother at

home, and they need me to do the chores after I get home at night."

Jean hastily signaled to Kit for fear she wouldn't remember all that

Cousin Roxana had told them about Honey Hancock and his sister. But just

then Mrs. Robbins stepped out on the side porch and smiled at Honey

until he turned red and grinned delightedly.

"I could come for about ten a month, Mother thought," he vouchsafed with

much embarrassment.

The other Mother thought ten was about right too, and Honey drove away

in the spring twilight, happy as one of the barn swallows that circled

in the dusk in a wonderful vesper dance. All the way up the hill they

heard him whistling "Beulah Land," and the hearts of the girls echoed

the sweet old melody. Although the deal had been closed over the brown

mare, and the check reposed in Honey's overalls' pocket, he took her

back with him, and promised to ride her over in the morning so the girls

should not have the care of her over night.

"I asked him what her name was," Doris said, "and he told me they just

called her Mollie's Baby. We must think up some wonderful name for her.

You know, Mother darling, she looked over at me so tenderly and

wistfully when Honey said she would have to go back over night. I know

she longed to stay with us."

The next addition to the place was the lot of chickens. It had been

agreed the first year that no large expenditures should be made for

anything, because it was all more or less experimental.

"We want to take care of Dad, and make him well this first year," Jean

told the other girls up in their room one night.

One point about the Robbins family that was different from other

families was their distinctive individualities; they simply demanded

separate expression, as Jean put it. Nobody liked to double up with

anyone else, and here at Greenacres there were plenty of rooms to choose

from, so that each daughter might have her own. Two large bed-rooms

with alcoves crossed the front of the house. These had been turned over

to Mr. and Mrs. Robbins. Then came curious rooms, as Kit said. The

hallway rambled through the second story, two steps up over here and two

steps down over there. There were unexpected little corridors opening

out from it like crooked arms. It really was a fascinating hallway, and

the rooms along it were quite exceptional. There were two wings to the

house, and an extension at the back over the summer kitchen "ell." This

was a source of delight to the girls, for they found all kinds of

interesting relics tucked back in this extension.

"Mother dear," Helen said seriously, appearing one day with cobwebs in

her hair and dust smudges on her arms and face, "we've found perfectly

wonderful things. Old newspapers before the war, and old magazines with

hoopskirts in them and bonnets with flowers inside the poke!"

"And two old maps dated 1829, one of New York State and one of

Connecticut," Kit added. "Both mounted on old yellow homespun linen and

braced with hand carved ebony. Now what do you think of that, Dad?

I'll bring them down to you. And a thing that looks like a little pilot

wheel, but it isn't. Jean says it's part of a spinning outfit because

she's seen them out in front of antique shops on Madison Avenue in New

York. And we found a foot warmer, and an hour glass with one support

broken, and a tailor's goose, and some old clothes-pins that had been

whittled by hand."

Jean selected the west room for her very own. It had a square bay window

over the bower, as the girls had nicknamed the little conservatory off

the dining-room. The upstairs window was smaller, but almost as

pleasant, with small panes of glass and a beautiful outlook over the

valley and the old dam.

Doris had a smaller room next to Jean's, and then came a pleasant

southeast room for a guest chamber.

"And for pity's sake, let's make it comfy and cheery," said Kit. "Most

guest chambers give you the everlasting dumdums, don't they, Jeanie?

Let's make ours look as if it were really to enjoy."

Kit had taken for her special domicile the room over the summer kitchen,

because it had so many shelves and cupboards in it. At first she had

wanted the cupola room, but was talked out of it, much against her will

and predilections. The upper staircase was circular, and you had to

watch out going up to the cupola, or you'd get an unmerciful bump on the

head as the door was very low. But once inside, it was a surprise, that

held you spellbound for a minute. The room was square in shape, and had

eight long narrow windows in it. From them you caught wonderful framed

views of the far-reaching valley, the ruined stone mill, the great brown

rock dam, covered now with the spring freshet, and beyond the placid

lake with several islands dotting it and long rows of hills guarding its

margins, one after the other like sentinels.

"Yes, I want this one," Kit had said. "I'm the only one in the family

with genius and this should be mine. I want to walk around this crystal

enclosure and play that I am one of Maeterlinck's sleeping princesses."

"They didn't walk," Jean had protested, "and you needn't imagine that

you're a genius, Kit Robbins, because you're not."

"Well, I'm the only one in the family with much imagination anyway," Kit

had answered pleasantly. "'Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,'

you know, Jeanie dear. And if I can't be a sleeping princess I will be

the Lady of Shalott." Whereupon she had swept about the room with a

couch cover draped around her in approved Camelot style, and a curtain

cord bound about her brow for a circlet, declaiming:

"'Four gray walls and four gray towers,

Overlook a space of flowers,

And the silent isle embowers,

The Lady of Shalott.'"

"It would be such a hard place from which to rescue you if the house

caught fire," Helen had remarked thoughtfully, peering from one of the

windows. "You couldn't very well skip down the lightning rod, Kit."

"I should prefer to have all my girls nearer to me," Mrs. Robbins had

remarked. "Suppose you should be taken ill in the night! How would any

of the rest know of it or be able to help you? You had better select a

room on the floor below, Childie."

"Very well," Kit had said regretfully. "Of course I will not insist if

the family are going to worry over me, but I shall come up here every

day to comb out my golden tresses. I think we'll get Shad to build us

window seats all the way around, stain the floor, and make a sort of sun

parlor out of it."

"Oh, Kit, remember the place in Egypt we always wanted to see, the

Ramasseum, the thinking place of the king?" Jean's dark eyes had

sparkled with mischief. "Let's call this the Thinking Place. Then we

can retire here when we wish to meditate, and fairly soak in the

sunlight until we feel radiant and revived. Do you all like that?"

So it had been agreed upon and the cupola room became the thinking place

of the four princesses.

Another discovery they made soon after was the Peace Spot. This was

over on the hillside across the bridge. Here was a rocky field with any

number of evergreen trees. They were assorted sizes and all varieties.

There were juniper trees and hemlocks, fat tubby little spruces and

slender straggly cedars. It looked like a premeditated burial ground,

Kit remarked, but Helen named it the Peace Spot. They often walked over

there in the late afternoons. Kit had ideas of turning it into a

wonderful Italian garden some day, but just now it was their place of

rest.

At first the housework had proved to be the great stumbling block in the

way of perfect peace and daily comfort.

"I tell you, Motherbird, if you'll just say what you want done, we'll be

your willing handmaidens," Jean had promised at the very beginning, but

the willing handmaidens had found themselves tangled up in less than two

days, treading on each other's heels and losing their tempers too.

Mrs. Robbins laughed at them when she happened in and found them all

"looking down their noses," as Doris expressed it.

"Girls, you'll have to learn team work," she explained. It appeared

that Jean had put a chicken to roast in the top of the double baking pan

and the gravy had all run out of the air draft at one end. "You must

learn that when you put your bread to rise it doesn't shape itself into

loaves and hop into the pans and walk over to the oven." Here Kit

blushed hotly, remembering how her first batch had risen to the occasion

beyond all expectations, and rambled during the night all over the edge

of the pan and the arm of the chair she had set it on. "And, Dorrie,

precious, if you catch mice in traps alive, and then decide to tame

them, we'll have mice all over the place."

Doris had discovered a nice little brown prisoner under the pantry

shelf, had taken him out into the rose garden and there let him go, all

in a spirit of lofty pity that left Kit and Jean speechless.

Also, Doris had taken to rescuing flies caught on sticky paper, putting

them into pill boxes until they recovered their usual blithe and

debonnaire attitude towards life. Also, sundry noises having issued

from her room at night, the other girls had started down the dark hall

to investigate, and had stepped on turtles which Doris had found sunning

themselves on logs in the pond, and had put into empty tomato cans and

smuggled up to her room for future humanitarian reference.

"Go for us, Queen Mother," Jean cried valiantly. "Go for us. It's the

only way we'll ever learn anything. I told Kit to fix the bread a dozen

times. I was reading up tomato plants, and Helen was cutting out a

stencil for her scrim curtains--conventionalized tulips--"

"Lotos buds," corrected Helen.

"Well, I'm not sure. They look like raised biscuits to me. I wish

spring would hurry along and make up its mind to stay a while." She

pressed her nose against the window pane and stared out at the land.

Letters had come from some girl friends back at the Cove that day, and

she felt a wave of loneliness and half panic at what they had

undertaken.

Just then Honey came to the kitchen door, bareheaded and smiling.

"Piney said for me to tell you folks that she heard Ma Parmelee had some

good Plymouth Rocks for sale. They're about as reliable a hen as you

can get. Ma's going to sell off everything and go to live with her son

down in Nantic. It's near towards where I live, if you'd like to drive

over that way."

Mrs. Robbins thought it was a good idea, and that Jean could go with

her. There had been a trip over to Rocky Glen after the purchase of

Mollie's Baby, and Mr. Butterick had been persuaded to part with a buggy

that just fit the mare. It was low and held three easily on its broad

cushioned seat, and there was a fair space at the back where odds and

ends could be packed away.

It seemed rather foolish to call the mare Mollie's Baby every time they

spoke to her, so a family council had given her a brand new cognomen and

already she pricked up her ears when she heard it. They called her

Princess, and the Jersey heifer that came up from the State farm was

called Buttercup, after her famous predecessor. Buttercup was Mr.

Robbins' special pride on the farm and great things were hoped from her.

Jean gathered up the reins and Honey put some burlap sacks in the back

of the wagon for the hens.

"Better tie them to something when you start off," he advised. "They

always flop around a lot in sacks."

It was a drive of about two and a half miles, up through the hills.

Each new road seemed to lead them straight up to the edge of the world

and then to dip again and leave cloudland behind. The woods held a haze

of green now that hung over the distant hills like a mist. Once a row

of young quail blinked dizzily from a pasture bar at the surprising

apparition of the horse and buggy. And all at once there came the quick

thud of hoofs behind them, and a young girl riding horseback drew rein

beside their buggy. She was about as old as Kit, with thick brown hair

brushed back boyishly from her face, and big friendly blue eyes.

"How do you do," she said, blushing in a way that seemed familiar to

them, for it reminded them of Honey. "I'm Piney Hancock. Mollie

wouldn't let me ride by unless I stopped to let her see Babe."

*CHAPTER XI*

*MA PARMELEE'S CHICKS*

"Oh, we're ever so glad to know you, Piney," Jean said at once.

"Honey's told us all about you until we felt that we really did know

you."

Piney blushed deeper than ever, just as Honey did, and brushed a fly off

her pony's neck. She rode across saddle, in a home-made corduroy skirt,

with a boy's cap set back on her head, and a boyish waist with knotted

tie. Altogether both Mrs. Robbins and Jean approved of her at sight,

for she seemed like a girl edition of Honey himself.

Piney told them they were on the right road, and to keep to the left

after they passed the burial ground.

"I'm going down the other way or I'd ride along and show you where it

is."

"You must come down to see us girls when you can, please. We're rather

lonesome, not knowing anyone around here. Are there many girls?"

"Quite a few," said Piney. "There are the Swedish girls over on the old

Ames place, and there are two French girls near us. Their father's the

carpenter, Mr. Chapelle. Etoile's the older one and the little one they

call Tony. Her name's really Marie Antoinette. Mrs. Chapelle's awfully

funny. She told me one day the reason they changed the little girl's

name to Tony was because if she ever should get on a railroad track or

anywhere in danger, and they had to call her in a hurry, they wanted

something short and quick to say. She talks broken English, and it was

so comical the way she said it." Piney's deep dimples were showing and

her eyes were sparkling, as she imitated the voice of Mrs. Chapelle.

"How I say to her ver' fast Marie Antoinette, Marie Antoinette, Marie

Antoinette! She can be dead four--five--time. I call her that way, I

tink so. I yell Ton-ee! Right away she jump."

"Isn't she a darling, Mother?" Jean exclaimed when they drove on. "I do

hope she'll come down. Kit would love her."

"Anybody would love her," agreed Mrs. Robbins, still smiling. "You

know, Jean, I think that you girls are going to find a special work up

here that only you can do. A work among these girls of our own

neighborhood."

"But, Mother dear, our own neighborhood up here means a radius of about

ten miles."

"Even so. Cousin Roxana's old doctor covers twenty miles and has been

doing it for forty years; he knows all of the families as if he were a

census taker."

Jean thought for a minute. They were going up a long hill and Princess

took her time. Honey had fastened two bunches of ferns to her bridle to

keep away flies, and she looked as if she wore a Dutch bonnet.

"There seem to be so few real American girls up here, Mother," Jean

began slowly. "I thought we'd find ever so many, but while I lived up

at Maple Lawn I rode around a good deal, and you'd be surprised how many

foreigners are up here. Cousin Roxy told me the reason. The old

families die out, or the younger generation moves away to the towns, and

the foreigners buy up the old homesteads cheaply."

"Well, dear?"

"But, Mother, you don't understand. There are all sorts. French

Canadians, and a Swedish family, and a Polish family, and the old miller

up the valley from us used to be a Prussian sailor. Then there are the

real old families, of course--"

"Do you think of confining your circle of acquaintances to the old

families, Jeanie?"

Jean laughed at the amusement in her mother's voice.

"I know what you're thinking, Mother, dear. Still I suppose we must be

careful just moving into a new place like this. We don't want to get

intimate with everybody. You'll like some of the old families."

"I think I'll like some of the new ones too. Have you noticed, Jean, in

driving around, that the houses which are mostly unpainted and rather

run-down looking belong to the old timers, grandchildren and

great-grandchildren, probably, of first settlers?"

"Oh, Mother, there are some of the most interesting stories about them

too, how they came out--walked, actually walked most of them--from the

Massachusetts Bay Colony when there was some sort of a break up, and a

few dropped off here, and a few there, and they settled in hamlets

wherever they happened to stop. I found a burial ground in the woods

near Cousin Roxy's, with old slate gravestones, and dates away back to

1717."

"I'd like to see them, dear, but at the same time they were foreigners

too, or children of foreigners, immigrants from a far land. Can't you

understand what I mean? These newer families are like new blood to the

country. It takes only a couple of generations to blend them in, Jean,

and they bring new strength to us. Think what we get from the different

nations. I remember out in California I had a wonderful girl friend

whose people had been Polish exiles. That was a strange group of exiles

who sought a haven in our land of flowers. There was Sienkiewicz the

great novelist, and splendid Helena Modjeska, and many whose names I

forget. Wanda was my girl friend's name, and my Mother and aunts did

not like me to chum with her because she was a foreigner. I think that

you children are very fortunate to be born in an age when these queer

old earth lines, these race barriers, are falling down, and leaving the

world-brotherhood idea instead. Up here in our lonely old hills, we are

going to face this same problem that all nations are coping with, and we

in our small way can help open the gates of the future."

"Why, Mother, I never heard you talk this way before," Jean exclaimed.

"You always seemed just dear and sweet, don't you know. I--why, somehow

I never felt you were interested in such things."

Unconsciously, she moved a little nearer to this new kind of Mother, and

Mrs. Robbins' hand closed over hers.

"If we mothers are not interested in them, who should be?" she asked,

her eyes full of a beautiful tenderness and compassion. "Some one has

called us the torch bearers, the light bringers, but I like to think of

women best as the tenders of the ever-burning temple lamps."

"You mean love and truth and--"

"I mean everything, dear, that tends for world betterment. And you

girls are going to do your little share right here in Gilead Center,

making a circle that shall join together the hands of all these girls

from different races. We'll give a party soon and get acquainted with

them all. Now let's pay attention to chickens, for I think this must be

the house."

Princess turned into a side drive leading around to a house that stood

well back from the road. As Jean said afterwards, the house looked as

if it had been outdoors all its life, it was so weather-beaten and gray.

"Ma" Parmelee bustled out to meet them, plump and busy as one of her own

Plymouth Rocks.

"Twelve pullets and one rooster you want?" she said. "Well, I guess I

can fix you up. I heard you folks had moved in down yonder. Thought I'd

see you at meeting Sunday but I didn't."

Mrs. Robbins explained that they were Episcopalians and the nearest

parish was nine miles away.

"So it is, over at Riverview, but we're all bound for the same place, so

you might as well come up and help fill the pews. Land knows they need

it." She led the way out to the big barn, followed by the chickens.

The great doors were wide open, and the barn floor was covered lightly

with wisps of hay. "Ma" scattered a measure of grain over this, and let

the hens scratch for it.

"I have to work hard for what I get, and they ought to too," she said

pleasantly. "Now, we'll take any that you like and put them into bags.

I'm going to sell you my very best rooster. His name's Jim Dandy and

he's all of that. He's pure Rhode Island Red, and two years old. You

don't have to worry about hawks when he's around."

After the chickens were all safely in the bags and put in back of the

wagon seat, "Ma" waved good-bye and told them not to forget the Finnish

family that was moving into her house.

"I'm going to live with my married daughter, and these poor things don't

know a living soul up here. Do drive over and speak to them as

neighbors. There's a man and his widowed sister and her children. All

God's folks, you know."

"Finns," murmured Jean speculatively, as they drove away. "There's a

new blend to our Gilead sisterhood, Motherie."

Mrs. Robbins laughed at the puzzled expression on her eldest daughter's

face.

"We'll let Kit drive over and see them," she promised.

Spring seemed to descend on the land all at once in the next few days,

as if she had quite made up her mind to come and sit a while, Cousin

Roxy said. One day the earth still looked wind-swept and bare, and the

next there seemed to be a green sheen over the land and the woods looked

hazy and lacy with the delicate budding leaves.

One night as Doris was out shutting up the hen houses and filling the

pigeons' pan with water, she stopped short, her head upraised eagerly

like a fawn, listening to a new sound away off along the edges of the

woods, and deep down in the lower meadow where the brook flowed.

Keenest and sweetest it sounded over where the waters of the lake above

the old dam moved with soft low lapping among the reeds and water

grasses. Here it became a curiously shrill trilling noise, subdued and

yet insistent like the strumming of muffled strings on a million tiny

harps.

"It's the peep frogs," called Honey, coming up from the barn with

Buttercup's creamy contribution to the family commonwealth. "They're

just waking up. That means it's spring for sure."

"Isn't it dear of them to try and tell us all about it," Doris cried

delightedly, and away she ran to the house to insist that Kit and Jean

and Helen come straight out-of-doors and listen too. In the twilight

they walked around the terraces below the veranda, two by two. Once

Helen stopped below their father's window to call up to him in the long

"Coo-ee!" their mother had taught them from her own girlhood days out in

California on her grandfather's ranch.

Day by day they would assure each other of his returning strength and

health. The country air and utter restfulness of life as it ran here in

channels of peace were surely giving him back at least the power to

relax and rest. He slept as soundly as Doris herself, all night long,

something he had not been able to do in months, and his appetite was

really getting to be quite encouraging. The little nurse had left

Greenacres the fifteenth of April both because of his gain in health and

also to decrease expenses.

"And you needn't worry about anything at all, Mother darling," Kit had

assured her. "Just keep right upstairs with Dad and let us girls run

the kitchen, and we'll feed you on beautiful surprises."

Mr. Robbins smiled over at them, and quoted teasingly:

"The Chameleon's food I eat;

Look you, the air, promise crammed."

Piney paid her promised visit within a few days, and from her the girls

received their first real information about the other girl neighbors

around Gilead Center.

Honey was ploughing up the kitchen garden behind the house and Jean,

with Piney at her side, sat on the low stone wall that separated it from

the orchard, studying a seed catalogue diligently.

"I'd love some elephant ears and castor beans and scarlet lichens in big

beds along the terraces," she said. "Think of the splashes of red up

against those pines, girls. Remember the Jefferies' place back at the

Cove. Mrs. Jefferies paid her gardener a hundred dollars a month."

"You'll like the rare, rich red of radishes and beets and scarlet runner

beans better," Piney declared merrily. "We always lay out money on the

food seeds first and then what is left can go for flowers. Anyhow, when

you've got heaps of roses and snowballs and syringas and lilacs and

things that keep coming up by themselves every year, you don't need to

buy very much. Did you find the lilies of the valley down along the

north wall? Mother says they used to be beautiful when she was a girl."

The girls were silent, remembering what Cousin Roxana had told them of

the romance of Luella Trowbridge. But Doris's curiosity got the better

of her caution, and she coaxed Piney away to hunt for the delicate pale

green spear points with their white lilybells hidden away under the

hazel bushes.

It was Piney, too, who took them up the hill to the rocky sheep pasture

and showed them where arbutus bloomed around the edges of the gray,

mossy rocks. And it was Piney who pointed out to them the wintergreen,

or checkerberry, as she called it, with its tiny pungent berries.

"She's perfectly wonderful," Kit declared that day at the noon dinner.

"She knows the exact spot in this entire township where every single

flower bobs up in its season. We found saxifrage at the base of an old

oak, and white trilium and blood root, and perfect fields of bluets.

And she wouldn't let us pick many either, only a few. She says it's just

as cruel to rob a patch of wild flowers of all chance of blooming again

next year as it is to rob birds' nests."

Here Helen chimed in.

"And she's going to teach me how to start a flower calendar. Not in a

book, Motherie. We're going to take some of that dull castor-brown

burlap that was left from the library and mount specimens on it, then

make a folio with leather covers of dyed sheepskin."

"Piney seems to be a regular dynamo for starting activities," said Mrs.

Robbins amusedly.

"She is, just exactly that," Kit answered earnestly. "I never met a

girl with so many ideas up her sleeve. And they're as poor as Job's

turkey, too. Piney told us so herself. And here she is, cooped up in

Gilead Center without any outlet at all. She knows what she wants to

do, but we girls can tell her how to do it."

"I wonder what her real name is," Helen pondered. "Maybe it's Peony.

Cousin Roxy calls peonies 'pinies."

"It's much nicer than that," Jean said. "I can't think of any other

name that would suit her. It's Proserpine. The minute she told me I saw

her wandering along the seashore with the winds of the isles of Greece

blowing back her funny short curls, and her hands up to her lips calling

to the sea maids to come and play with her while her mother was away."

"That's all very pretty and poetical, Sister Mine, but Piney's going to

peddle our rhubarb for us," Kit remarked. "I think that rhubarb is one

of the most grateful plants we have. It seems to spring up everywhere

and pay compound interest on itself every year. I found a lot of it

growing and thought it was peonies or dahlias, but Piney told me it was

rhubarb, and we're going to market it. She says there's a big cranberry

bog on this place too, away off in some sunken meadows above the dam,

and we must look out because somebody comes and picks them without

asking anything at all about it. So we're going to watch the old wood

road that turns into the sunken meadows. We can see it, Mother dear,

from the eyrie outlook, and heaven help any miscreant who takes our

cranberries!"

"I wouldn't start looking for him yet awhile, dear. Cranberries won't

be along until frost," laughed Mrs. Robbins.

Doris, with Honey's help, was devoting herself to the hens. Although

they had come rather late, still quite a few were setting, and Doris had

several almanacs and calendars marked with the dates of the "coming

offs," as Honey put it. Then there were about twenty tiny balls of fluff

in the brooder from Cousin Roxana's incubator, and over these Doris

crooned and fussed and wasted more sentiment than any chickens deserved.

"But they're motherless. Think of being born motherless and helpless--"

"Don't be ridiculous, Dorrie," Kit said crossly. "You can't be born

motherless. You're hatched."

"And if they don't know any better, what's the difference?" added Jean.

"I don't see that at all," Doris insisted plaintively. "Every time I go

there and they call to me, I just want to take them in my lap, and cry

and cry over them."

One of "Ma" Parmelee's pullets had turned out to be a vagrant. Never

would she stay with the rest of the chickens in the hen house or yard,

or even around the barnyard. She was jet black and very peculiar. At

feeding time she would show up, but hover around the outskirts of the

flock and nibble at kernels of corn anxiously.

Jean named her "Hamlet" in fun, because she said she was always looking

for "rats in the arras." But her real name was Gypsy. It was agreed

that Gypsy had no idea of her natural obligation to society at all, that

she didn't have the slightest intention of setting on any eggs, in fact

that she didn't even have the gratitude to lay any eggs. All she did was

appear promptly at meal time and eat her share.

"There'll be Gypsy a la Reine one of these fine Sundays," Kit prophesied

darkly, but Doris begged for her life. In fact, whenever chicken was on

the bill-of-fare Doris always begged off any of her flock from

execution, and Honey had to go to one of the neighboring farms and

purchase a fowl.

"It seems so awful to eat a chicken that you're well acquainted with,"

Doris explained. "And another thing, Motherie, did you know that the

boys set traps around? Not now, but in the fall. At least, I think it's

in the fall. I had Honey paint me some signs on shingles and I'm going

to put them all over the place."

"What do they say, dear?"

"They say just this," Doris's tone was full of firmness and decision.

"_Any traps set on this-property will be sprung by ME._"

"Do they state who 'Me' is?"

"I signed it with Dad's name, and put underneath 'Per D.'"

Jean wrapped loving arms around the youngest robin.

"Dorrie, you're a sweety," she said. "We don't appreciate you. You

adopt everything in sight, but we have to look out for most of your

orphans and semi-orphans. Never mind, Dorrie. I'm for you anyway."

"We're such a devoted and loyal family tree, I think," sighed Doris.

"Don't you, Motherie? I'm so glad I'm a branch."

"You're not, dear, yet. You're just a twig," Kit teased. "And Mother

is the beautiful dryad who lives in her very own family tree. Isn't

that interesting, though? One thing about us, girls, is this, and it is

very consoling. Scrap as we may, we turn right around and become a

mutual admiration society at the slightest excuse. Good-night,

everybody. The night is yet young, but I've promised Honey,--or rather,

Honey and I have a bet that I couldn't get up at five and help weed the

garden. And we bet my three foot rule against Honey's two pet

turtles--"

"Are they trained?" asked Doris eagerly.

"They will be if they're not already. Don't anyone call me, because

it's got to be fair running. Good-night."

Helen and Doris decided that they were sleepy too, and the three went

upstairs together, leaving Jean and her mother to read in the big

living-room. Presently Mrs. Robbins glanced up and saw that the book lay

idle on Jean's lap, and she was looking down at the wood fire that

burned on the old rock fireplace.

"What is it, dear?" she asked. "Tired?"

Jean shook her head, and smiled half-heartedly.

"I'm awfully ashamed of it, Mother, but I do get so lonesome now and

then, for everything, don't you know? All the people that we knew and

the things that we used to do. Nothing happens up here."

"Well, cheer up," said the Motherbird happily. "I am lonely too

sometimes, but there is so much to compensate for what we have lost that

I feel we must not dare be unhappy. And Father grows better every day."

Jean dropped on her knees beside her mother's chair, arms folded close

around her.

"You dear, precious, most wonderful person that ever was," she cried.

"Don't even _think_ of what I said! I'm not a bit lonely, and tomorrow

I'm going to see Piney and make calls."

*CHAPTER XII*

*GILEAD'S GIRL NEIGHBORS*

The breakfast hour at Greenacres was supposed to be seven-thirty, but

the girls rose at about six and spent the hour before out in the garden.

It was so fascinating, Helen said in her rather reserved way, to be

out-of-doors in the early morning. Sometimes when the air was warmer

than the ground there would be a morning mist out of which rose clumps

of tree tops like little islands.

The following day at five-thirty exactly, Jean wakened drowsily to find

Kit standing by her bed, booted and spurred for the fray, as one might

say.

"I want you to look at this clock and be a witness that I'm up on time,"

she said briskly, holding up a bland, nickel-plated clock from the

kitchen, a relic of the days of Tekla. "It's perfectly gorgeous

outside, Jean. I don't see how you girls can lie and sleep with all

nature calling."

"Nature didn't call you before, did she, Kathleen Mavourneen? Go away

and let me sleep."

"Well, I get the turtles anyway. I've got them named already." She

seated herself blithely on the foot of the bed, "Triptolemus and

Prometheus. Like them? I'll call them Trip and Pro for short."

Jean sat up in bed and hurled her pillow at the laughing, fleeing form.

From the end of the hall came a last challenge.

"I'm the early bird this morning anyway, Sleepyhead."

After breakfast though, when the little dew-spangled cobwebs were gone

from the meadow grass, Jean had Honey harness Princess, and declared she

was going to drive over and get Piney to accompany her on a round of

calls. Kit and Doris were busy out in the kitchen garden, and Helen was

helping with the dusting and upstairs work. For some reason Jean wanted

to go without them on this first reconnoitering expedition.

She drove down the hill towards Gilead Green, bowed with a little rising

flush of color at the group in the front of the blacksmith shop, and

stopped in front of the brown and white house where the Hancocks lived.

It might have been the veritable witch's house in "Hansel and Gretel,"

all constructed properly and comfortably out of sugar-loaf and

gingercakes. The clapboards were a deep cream color and the trimmings

were all of brown, scalloped and perforated with trefoils and hearts.

The green stalks of tiger lilies grew in thick clusters along its picket

fence, and marigolds and china asters were coming up in the long beds.

"Hello, Jean," called Piney buoyantly, beating some oval braided rugs

out on the back line. "Can you stop in?"

Jean leaned forward, the reins lying in her lap.

"I wanted to see if you couldn't go driving with me. Just so I can meet

some of the girls. We want to give a lawn social or some sort of a

summer affair to get acquainted with our neighbors. It's too warm for a

house warming, so we'll have a garden party."

"Why, the idea," Piney exclaimed, dropping her stick and pushing back

her hair. "I think that's awfully nice. Wait till I ask Mother if I

can go."

Jean waited and presently Mrs. Hancock stepped out on the side porch and

down the steps to the carriage. She was rather like Honey and Piney,

curly-haired and young appearing, with deep dimples and eyes that still

held an abiding happiness in their blue depths. Her face was careworn

and there were lines around her mouth that told of repressed pain, but

it was the look in the eyes that held you. Luella Trowbridge may have

gone through trouble, but she had married the man she loved and had been

happy with him. She stretched out both hands to Jean.

"Honey's told us so much about you all up there that it seems as if I

know every single one of you," she said, pleasantly. "You're Jean,

aren't you? Of course Piney can go along if she wants to. Don't forget

the new girl over at the old Parmelee place."

"It's funny, you're speaking of a lawn social," Piney remarked, as they

drove away. "We've been wanting to give one up at the church--"

"Which church?" asked Jean. "I can see so many little white spires

every time I get to a hilltop. They look like fingers pointing up,

don't they?"

"I suppose so." Piney was not much given to sentiment. "Anyway, here

in our part of town, we've got two. Mother belongs to the Methodist but

Father was a Congregationalist, so Honey and I divide up between them.

Then over at Happy Valley, three miles south, there's another

Congregational church, and we wanted to give a social--"

"Who wanted to?"

"We girls up here at our Congregational church. But our folks don't get

along very well with the folks at the Green church, and they say we're

just dead up here, dead and buried because we never get anything up.

And Mr. Collins, our minister, isn't on speaking terms with the Green

minister because something went wrong when old Mr. Bartlett died. He

wasn't a professor, you see--"

"What's that?" Jean's eyes were wide with interest. She was getting

local data at the rate of a mile a minute.

"Didn't belong to any of the churches at all, but he was awfully nice,

so when he died a year ago, Mr. Collins said he'd bury him, though the

Green minister had said he wouldn't; so there you are. Then the other

minister is a lady--"

"Forevermore!" gasped Jean.

"She's the best of them all, just the same," Piney said soberly. "Only

the two other ministers say it isn't the place for women in the pulpit,

and how on earth we're ever going to have any social and invite them

all, I don't see."

Jean's eyes suddenly shone with the joy of a new idea.

"I do," she said. "Let's visit all the three parsonages first off."

So they followed the road over to the Green and stopped at the white

colonial house where Mr. Lampton lived. He was tall and gray-haired,

and welcomed his callers with a twinkle in his eyes. It was not

customary for two girls to pay a business call at the parsonage, but

Jean launched upon her subject at once. His advice and co-operation

were asked, that was all. Greenacre lawn would be given for the social,

and the girls would look after the refreshments and the Japanese

lanterns to decorate the grounds. Ten cents could be charged for ice

cream and cake, and the ladies could donate the cake. The proceeds

would go to church needs.

"I didn't tell him how many churches, did I?" said Jean, when they drove

away with Mr. Lampton's earnest promise to help. He was invited to

attend a committee meeting at Greenacres the following Saturday.

Miss Titheradge of the Happy Valley Church was delighted with the idea.

Jean liked her at first sight. She was rather plump, with wide brown

eyes that never seemed to blink at all, and rosy cheeks.

"It's just what I've been telling the folks up here in these old granite

hills. Get together, warm your hands at the fire of neighborly love and

kindness. Have socials and all sorts of good times for your young

people and your old people. Bless everybody's hearts, they only need

stirring up and turning over, and the old fire burns afresh. Yes, I'll

help, children."

"We're sure of Mr. Collins," said Piney, as they drove away this time.

"I'll see him myself, and tell him about the committee meeting at your

house on Saturday. Now we can find some of the girls."

Jean never forgot that afternoon. They drove miles together, stopping

at the different houses and meeting the girls who were, to Jean at

least, the new material upon which she had to work.

At the old Ames place they found the two Swedish girls, tall, blonde,

and blue-eyed, working out in the onion patch with their brothers.

Ingeborg was the elder and Astrid the younger, sixteen and fourteen

years old. They had moved up from New York two years before, but had

both gone to the public schools there and were ready for anything Jean

suggested.

"Ingeborg belonged to a basket ball team," Astrid said. "I can swim and

row best."

The Chapelles lived in a little gray house close to the road on

Huckleberry Hill, two miles below Cousin Roxana's. Etoile was shy-eyed

and graceful, smiling but non-committal, and little Tony peered around

her mother's skirts at the stranger in the carriage and coquetted

mischievously. But they would come, ah, and gladly, Mrs. Chapelle

promised.

"They like ver' much to come, you see?" she said eagerly, trying to

detach Tony from her skirt. "Ton-ee, I have shame for you, _ma petite_.

Why you no come out, make nize bow? Etoile, go bring some lilacs, make

quick!"

Etoile sped away to the tall rows of white and purple lilac bushes, and

broke off two large bunches to put in the back of the wagon. Then Mrs.

Chapelle remembered that she must send over to her new neighbor a pat of

her butter. Such beautiful butter never anyone see, never. Jean must

drive around through the lane and see the three Jersey cows browsing

there in the clover field, Henriette, Desiree, and Susette.

Last of all came the Icelandic farm, and here Jean found only the hired

men, two grave-faced, light-haired transplanted vikings, who eyed her

curiously and silently. Hedda, the daughter, and her mother had driven

over to sell two young pigs at the Finnish place.

"Oh, dear me," laughed Jean, "let's go home. I feel as if I had been

riding like Peer Gynt, all over the world, just touching at countries

here and there. Let's go right straight home, so I can talk to Mother

and get a perspective on it all."

"Better ask the Mill girls over while you're about it," Piney suggested,

so they made one last stop at the red saw-mill in the valley below

Greenacres. "They're Americans. My chum lives here, Sally Peckham.

She's got five sisters and three brothers, but Sally's the whole family

herself."

The three brothers worked in the saw-mill after school hours, and Jean

only caught a glimpse of them, but Sally sufficed. She came running out

of the kitchen with a brown and white checked apron covering her up, and

her red hair blowing six ways for Sunday, as Piney said laughingly

afterwards. She was short and freckled and not one bit pretty, unless

good health and happiness and smiles made up for beauty. But the

instant you met Sally you recognized executive ability concentrated in

human form.

"Billy, keep out of those lettuce beds," she called to a younger

brother, strayed somehow from the mill. "How do you do, Miss Robbins--"

"Oh, call me Jean," Jean said quickly. "We're close neighbors. If we

didn't hear your whistle we'd never know what time it is."

"Well, we've been intending to get up the valley to see you, but

Mother's rather poorly, and all the girls are younger than me, so I help

her round the house. We've got twins in our family, did Piney tell you?

Piney and I named them. We thought of everything under the sun, Martha

Washington and Betsey Ross, and Ruth and Naomi, and Mercy and Faith, and

then we got it all at once. We've had twins in our family before,

Josephine and Imogene, that's Mother and Aunt Jo, but we didn't want to

repeat. Somehow, it didn't show any--any imagination." She laughed and

so did Jean. "So we called ours Elva and Sylvia. We say Elvy and Sylvy

for short. Anne and Charlotte are twelve and nine and the twins are

only five. They're too cute for anything. Wish you'd all come down and

see us Sunday afternoon."

"Sally'd ask the whole world to supper Sunday afternoon," Piney said as

they finally turned up the home road. "She's just a dear, and she has

to work all the time. She never has a single day to herself, and she

doesn't mind it a bit. She does manage to get away to sing in the choir

Sunday mornings, but that's all. And even if she isn't pretty, she's

got a voice that makes gooseflesh come out all over you, and you shut

your eyes and just tingle when it rises and falls. I love her, she's

so--oh, so sort of big, you know. Isn't her hair red?"

"It's coppery and it's beautiful," Jean answered decidedly. "I think

she's dandy. Why can't the twins and Anne and Charlotte buckle in and

help, so that Sally can get away once in a while?"

"Her mother says she can't do without her."

Jean pondered over that and finally tucked it away for the consultation

hour with the Motherbird, as being too deep for her to settle.

It had been a very profitable afternoon, and after she had taken Piney

home, she drove into the home yard, feeling as if she really had a line

on Gilead Center girls. Doris came running down to meet her as she

jumped out, while Honey came to take care of Princess. Doris's eyes

were shining with excitement.

"Jean Robbins, what do you suppose has happened?"

"Something's sprouted," Jean guessed laughingly. Doris spent most of her

time watching to see if any of the seeds had started to sprout.

"No. It isn't that. Gypsy's got little chickens. She marched into the

barnyard with ten of them, as proud as anything. And nobody knows where

she hatched them at all. Isn't she a darling to attend to it all by

herself?"

Jean had to go immediately to see the new brood. Gypsy had cuddled them

around her in the barn on a pile of hay and steadfastly refused to be

removed. If ever a hen looked nonchalant she did, quite as if she would

have said, "I can do it just as well as any of these ridiculous nesters

that you're so proud of, and my chicks are twice as perfect as theirs."

"They're wonderful babies, Gypsy," Jean told her. "Be careful of them

now. Mothers have to behave themselves, you know. No more gallivanting

off to the wildwood."

"She probably will. I'm going to have Honey put them into a little coop

tomorrow and her too, and let's change her name, Jeanie. Let's call her

something tender and motherly. Call her Cordelia, after the Roman

Mother with the jewels, that Mother was telling us about."

So Cordelia she was, and Gypsy seemed to acclimate herself both to

maternity and to her new cognomen. It only proved, as Kit remarked,

what children would do for a flighty and light-minded person, and she

trusted that some day Doris would have twins to occupy her mind.

Jean changed her dress and ran down into the kitchen to help get supper

and tell her experiences of the day, which proved so entertaining and

comical that Mrs. Robbins finally came out and asked if they were ever

to have anything to eat.

"Dad's tray is all ready, Mother mine," Jean replied, sitting up on the

tall wood box behind the stove, "I'm just waiting for the scones to

bake, and Kit's fixing a beautiful jelly omelette. Mother, dear, you

never saw anything so funny as these precious inhabitants, but they're

all gold, just the same, and I like them. And we're going to have a

lawn party here and invite all the warring factions. Isn't that nice?

All the folks that aren't on speaking terms with each other we've asked

to serve on the committee, so they'll have to come here for tea and chat

sociably and neighborlike with each other."

*CHAPTER XIII*

*COUSIN ROXY TO THE RESCUE*

"We've forgotten to write Mr. McRae and tell him how much we like the

house," Helen said a few days later.

"He doesn't know anything about the house, or care either," protested

Kit, struggling with some raspberry canes that needed disentangling and

tying back against the woodshed boards. "He's never even seen it. Do

you suppose he has the least bit of sentiment for it the way we have or

Piney has? I wouldn't bother to write to him."

"Oh, I would," Helen answered serenely. She was down on her knees in

the clover diligently hunting four-leaved ones. "It isn't his fault

that he's never seen the place. Maybe we could coax him back."

"We don't want to coax him back. It must be our one endeavor to keep

him right out there in Saskatoon forever. We must tell him the cellar's

damp and the roof leaks and the whole place has gone to rack. If we

don't he may come East and take it away from us, and we want to save up

and buy it and give it back to Piney and her Mother and Honey."

"What's Honey's real name?" asked Doris irrelevantly. "I never thought

to ask him. Somehow it does seem to suit him, doesn't it?"

"He wants to study electrical engineering or else be a rancher," Kit

said. "I never asked him what his real name is. You're awfully

inquisitive, Dorrie."

"What do all boys see in ranches, I wonder. Back at the Cove, Otis

Phelps always wanted to be a cowboy and he's got to be a lawyer, his

father says."

"Maybe he'll escape West some day and be whatever he likes. I think one

of the very worst things in life is to have to be something you don't

want to be." Kit surveyed her work admiringly. "Of course, in the ups

and downs and uncertainties, as Cousin Roxy would remark, we must be

prepared for all things, but if you can dig inside of yourself and find

out what you're best fitted for, then you ought to aim everything at

that mark. If Honey wants to be an electrical engineer, he ought to get

books now, and swallow them whole, and if he wants to be a rancher, he

ought to go West--"

A voice came from midair apparently, overhead on the woodshed roof which

Honey was patching with waterproof paint and tar. It was a mild and

cheerful voice and showed plainly that Honey was personally interested

in the conversation.

"I can't go West just now, Mother needs me; but I'm going as soon as I

can."

The three girls stared up at him with laughing faces.

"Honey Hancock," exclaimed Doris, "why didn't you sing out to us

before?"

"Wanted to hear what you had to say," said Honey simply. "Thought maybe

I'd get some good advice. And my first name's Guilford. The whole

thing's Guilford Trowbridge Hancock. I'm named for my grandfather.

Piney called me Honey when I was a little shaver, so I suppose I'll be

that all my life."

"Piney and Honey," repeated Helen musingly, "when you're really

Proserpine and Guilford. Nicknames are queer, aren't they? I think that

babies should all be called pet names till they're old enough to choose

their own. Still Guilford's a good name. It's a name to grow up to,

Honey. You ought to be stout and dignified, don't you know, like Mr.

Pickwick."

"Guess I don't know him, do I?" asked Honey. "Piney wants to be

something too, but girls can't do that. She wants to be a builder and

look after land. She wants to go to the State Agricultural College too,

and take the forestry course. Do you know what she does? She read some

place that the chestnut trees were dying out, so she takes a pocketful

of sound chestnuts with her whenever she goes out for a walk in the

woods, and every once in a while she sticks her finger in the ground and

plants a chestnut. What do you think of that?"

Kit drew in a deep breath.

"I think she's wonderful. We'll do that too. And acorns and walnuts. I

don't see why she can't go to the State College if she likes, or why she

can't take the forestry course. It isn't whether you're a boy or a girl

that matters in such things. It's just whether you can do the work that

counts."

"She can shut her eyes and walk through the woods and tell the name of

every tree just by feeling its leaves."

Jean appeared on the back porch and called down to them to come up and

wash for dinner. This noon-time wash-up was really a function after one

had been working and grubbing in the garden all the morning. Honey

would bring in a fresh pail of well water first. Some day Kit intended

demanding water piped into the house from Mr. McRae, but now they used

the well.

Just as Honey came into the summer kitchen with the pail of water, Ella

Lou's white nose showed outside the door by the hitching post and Cousin

Roxana's voice called to them.

"No, thanks, I can't stop," she called. "I want Betty and Jean."

Mrs. Robbins came downstairs from her husband's room, cool and charming

in her black and white lawn, with her hair piled high on her head, and

little close curls framing in her face.

"Why, Roxy, come in and have dinner with us," she exclaimed.

"Don't talk to me about things to eat, Betty," answered Cousin Roxana

briskly. "Never had such a set-to in my life. Why, I'm so turned over

I can hardly talk. The poor thing, all alone up there on that hill with

nothing but woods around her. Enough to make anybody lose heart, I

declare it is. Get your bonnet right on, Betty. We can't stop for

anything. I wouldn't eat dinner with King Solomon and the Queen of

Sheba."

"What is it? Please tell us," Jean pleaded, and all three girls crowded

around the carriage.

"Don't waste time, Jean. Get your hat on. She may be dead by now. It's

that little Finnish woman up on the Parmelee place where you bought your

chickens. Her husband's only been dead a little while, took sick on the

ship coming over and died at Ellis Island, I heard. And she's pined and

pined with four children on her hands, and this morning she just tied--

Oh, my land, I can't talk about it. Do come along. Thank the Lord the

water wasn't very deep in the well and they've got her out. And we call

ourselves church folks and Christians."

"Had I better take anything with me, Roxy?" asked Mrs. Robbins, hurrying

down the porch steps with a motor cloak thrown around her. "Medicine, do

you think?"

"No, I've got everything. Always keep emergency things on hand. You

never can tell up around here what's going to happen. Bennie Peckham

ran a big wooden splinter through his palm the other day, and didn't I

have to get it out for him? And Hiram stepped square bang on a piece of

glass and cut his foot so he's still going around like old

Limpy-go-fetch-it. Have to be prepared for anything when you live out

here. This morning Hiram stood his fishing pole up against the side of

the house and the line got loose, and one of my best ducks swallowed the

bait. I got it out, though. Go long there, Ella Lou, pick up your

feet."

Ella Lou started away as if she knew what lay ahead. Jean sat between

her mother and Cousin Roxana, listening with wide eyes as the latter's

tongue rambled on. It was a beautiful day. The air was heavy with

fragrance. Bluebirds preened and fluttered on nearly every fence rail,

and robins hopped along the meadows, chirping mate calls. In the

roadside thickets the swamp apples were all in radiant pink blossom,

whole bouquets of rare color, with overhead the white dogwood flowers

and wild crab-apple.

"It seems fearful that anyone should want to die a day like this," said

Mrs. Robbins. "How old is she, Roxy?"

"Old enough to know better, to my way of thinking, with all those

children dependent on her for love and care and upbringing," said Roxana

promptly. "But that's neither here nor there. We mustn't judge another

because we don't know how we'd act in their place. There are four

children and her brother. The brother's been around peddling

vegetables, potatoes and apples, but everybody's got all they need

around here, and he didn't have the gumption to drive fourteen miles to

town with them. If I'd been his sister, I'd have hitched up and taken

them myself. Men folks are all right in a way and I suppose if the

proper one had come along, I'd have married the same as the rest of

women folks, but from what I can tell of them at a distance, they're

fearful trying and uncertain."

The hill dipped into a deep valley mottled with cloud shadows. When

they came in sight of the old Parmelee place, there were the four

children grouped forlornly around the barn door as if the presence of

tragedy at the house had frightened them away from it. Cousin Roxy

waved to them and smiled.

"Come here," she called. "Yes, that tallest boy. 'Most twelve, aren't

you, son? Old enough to hitch a horse. What's your name?"

"Yahn," answered the boy shyly.

"Yahn? Guess that's Johnnie in plain American, isn't it?" She jumped

to the ground as nimbly as any girl, and handed him the hitch rope.

"Doctor got over yet?"

Johnnie shook his head sadly, and the youngest girl broke suddenly into

frantic, half-stifled sobbing.

"There's your work cut out for you, Jean," Roxana said briskly. "You

amuse these children while your Mother and I go into the house."

So Jean took the three youngest for a walk over into the woods, and told

them stories until the frightened, blank look left their eyes and they

clung around her confidingly. Yahn and Maryanna, Peter and Rika. From

Yahn, who could speak a little English, she found out that the family

had only been in the wonderful new land a year, that their mother had

been sad for weeks, and would never smile.

"She says she don't know nobody and nobody want to know her. Too many

woods all around, too."

"Never mind, she's going to know everyone now," Jean promised hopefully.

Over in the house Cousin Roxy was promising about the same thing to the

discouraged little Finnish settler. Weak and listless, she lay on the

bed in the room. A morning glory vine rambled up the window casing, and

framed in a view of the orchard in full bloom. Pink and white petals

drifted from their boughs like fairy snow. Mrs. Robbins looked at them

wistfully and remorsefully. She had only lost in worldly goods. This

woman had lost husband and hope and happiness, and the old well back in

the orchard had been her solution of life's problem. If little Yahn had

not seen her fall into it, she would have been dead now. When her eyes

opened, and Cousin Roxy questioned her, she only shook her head, and

whispered: "Too tired."

"Upon my heart, Betty, I think I'll just bundle her up and take her home

with me for a while to rest and feed up, and you can take a couple of

the children down with you. Maybe Johnnie and the other boy could stay

here with the uncle. Anyway, we'll pull her through."

When the old doctor came he agreed it was the very best thing to do.

The Finnish brother had stood helplessly around in the kitchen, getting

hot water ready when he was told to and eyeing the form on the bed with

perplexity.

"She haf plenty to eat," he kept saying, until Cousin Roxana took him by

the shoulder and almost shook him.

"Don't be so silly," she exclaimed. "Man can not live by bread alone,

and neither can a woman. She needs to be heartened up once in a while.

And put a cover on your old well."

Helen, Kit, and Doris were all watching for the return, and when Jean

handed them out Maryanna and Rika, the two little Finns, Kit gasped.

"It's our first chance at what Mother's been telling us about," Jean

declared, flushed and enthusiastic, as she turned her two charges out to

play with Doris. "It doesn't matter whether your neighbor happens to be

a Finn or a Feejee. He's your neighbor and it won't do to let him or his

sister take tumbles into old wells because they're strangers in a

strange land."

*CHAPTER XIV*

*THE LAWN FETE*

For two weeks the little Finns remained at Greenacres, getting rosy and

happy. The girls hunted up their old toys; Rika rambled around with a

little red express wagon, and Maryanna hugged a big doll to her heart

all day long and slept with it at night.

Up at Maple Lawn the tired mother grew steadily better, partly from Dr.

Gallup's medicine, partly from Cousin Roxy's persistent infusion of

hope, womanly courage, and endurance into her mind. As she grew

stronger she began to help Cousin Roxy around the house, and Hiram in

caring for the cows. This was odd for a woman, it seemed to Miss

Robbins, but Karinya told her it was what she had always done in the

homeland when she was a girl, dairy work on a farm, and she liked it

best. And out of this grew a plan that Mrs. Robbins helped with. There

were three good Holstein cows over at the Finnish home, and when Ella

Lou took back the Mother and two kiddies, Cousin Roxana put up a

business proposition to the brother and sister. They were to make

butter, the very best butter they could, and Mrs. Robbins would get

customers for them back at the Cove in Long Island. Homemade butter up

here in the hills ranged from ten to twelve cents below the city market

price, and was better in every way. So prosperity began to dawn for the

little woman who had been too tired to live, and Cousin Roxana kept an

eye on the upland farm all summer long, with Jean to help with the

children.

After the children went home, the girls turned their attention heart and

soul to the lawn party. The first thing to be sure of was a full moon.

This came along the last week in June, so they made their arrangements

accordingly.

The committee meeting turned out a success in every way. Saturday

afternoon Mrs. Robbins and the girls set the dark green willow chairs

and table under one of the pines on the lower terrace, and prepared to

conquer. The three ministers arrived, each one surprised to find the

other two present, but all very gracious and pleasant.

"Why, they were almost cordial before they left," Kit declared after it

was over. "I think the prospect of having anyone besides Cousin Roxy

make an effort for a good time inspired them. I'm to have charge of a

fishpond, and Helen will sell flowers with fortunes attached to them,

and Dorrie can help with the ice cream. I know that will suit her."

"I'm to be gypsy fortune teller," Jean announced. "Mother, dear, may I

have your Oriental silk mantel scarf, please, and the gold bead fringe

off the little boudoir lamp in your room?"

"You may have anything to help the cause along," Mrs. Robbins answered

happily. "I've sent down to New York for Chinese lanterns to decorate

the grounds with, and Hiram's going to play the violin for us. I'm sure

it will be very sociable and just what they need up here."

Honey and Piney took almost as much interest in the affair as the girls

themselves. All that day, when it finally did arrive, they worked,

putting wires around the trees out on the lawn, and hanging up the

many-colored lanterns. Two tents were erected, one for Jean as the

gypsy, and the other for lemonade, made in two big new tubs. Helen said

she had cut and squeezed lemons until her whole mouth was puckered up,

and her finger nails felt pickled. Kit was everywhere at once, it

seemed. She inspired the two ministers to join hands in brotherly ardor

and erect long plank tables for refreshments. She showed Honey how to

twist young birches together and make an inviting arch over the entrance

posts at the end of each drive. She beguiled Hiram, who had come down

from Maple Lawn to help around a bit, into moving the piano out on the

front veranda.

"When you're tired of playing the violin for them, Mother or one of us

girls will play the piano. Music sounds ever so nice at night."

It did seem as if all Gilead Center, Gilead Green, and Gilead Proper had

turned out to show its neighborly spirit. There were teams hitched

along the road, and teams hitched in the barnyard and the front yard and

everywhere. The Chinese lanterns made the grounds look wonderfully

enticing and Hiram sat up on the veranda in a kitchen chair tipped back

against the wall, and played bewitchingly, so Helen said.

"I shouldn't wonder, Miss Robbins, if we had as many as a hundred folks

here tonight," said Mr. Lampton.

"More likely two hundred, Mr. Lampton. It only goes to show what really

lies back in our hearts and needs digging up--sociability. Bless their

hearts, how I do love to see them all enjoying themselves." Cousin

Roxana moved her glasses half an inch higher up on her nose and surveyed

the scene. Miss Titheradge was helping Mr. Collins pass the ice cream,

and the two were chatting happily together.

Up on the veranda Mrs. Robbins hovered between the Morris chair, where

Mr. Robbins sat, and her various guests, welcoming each in her own

charming way, and blending the different social elements together with

tact and understanding.

Helen and Kit followed Jean's lead. First Jean rounded up the girls

whom she had met on the drive with Piney and introduced them to the

other Greenacre girls. Doris could not be located from one minute to

another. She was like a firefly, bobbing around with a big orange

colored Chinese lantern on the end of a long mop handle. But Helen and

Kit led the other girls over to the refreshment tent and had them all

don little white aprons and help serve ice cream and cake. It was much

better than standing around, shy and silent, not knowing what to do

next. Kit found one girl, Abby Tucker, leaning disconsolately against a

pear tree at the side of the drive. Her white dress was too short for

her, and her hair was cut short to her neck and tied with a bow on top

very tightly. She looked lonely and rather indignant too.

"Don't you want to come over and help us with the ice cream?" asked Kit.

"No, I don't," said Abby flatly. "They always ask me to help pass

things to eat at the church suppers. I want to have a good time myself

tonight. Though we aren't going to have a good time."

Kit looked at her doubtfully. She thoroughly realized the state of mind

that will not let itself be happy, that in fact, finds its happiness in

being unhappy, but Abby's moroseness baffled her.

"Don't you like it here?" she asked.

Abby nodded.

"Don't you know anyone?"

"Know most of them. My father's a blacksmith and they all come over to

get shod."

"Then what is it?" Kit laid her arm around the stooped shoulders and at

the touch of real human sympathy, Abby's reserve melted.

"My new shoes pinch awful," she exploded.

Kit never stayed upon the order of her going. She took her straight up

to the house to her own room, and ransacked closets and shoe boxes until

she found a pair of low shoes to fit Abby, and the latter came down

again smiling and radiant, ready to serve ice cream, or make herself

agreeable in any way she could.

Piney came up to the veranda where Mrs. Robbins sat, personally

conducting her mother to meet her. She was a tall, fair-haired woman

with deep dimples, like the children's, and a happy face. Seated in a

willow rocker on the veranda with the roses and honeysuckle shedding a

perfume around, she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Seems so nice to sit up here again, Mrs. Robbins," she said. "Piney's

told me all about how you've fixed the place up till it seemed as if I

couldn't wait to see it. I used to drive over once in a while after

Father died, and get some slips of flowering quince and rose bushes to

set out. You know I love every blade of grass in the garden and every

pine cone on those trees."

"It's too bad you and the children could not have had it."

"Well, I don't know. I never fret much over what has to be. Maybe this

boy Ralph is all right. He's my nephew, but I've never seen him. His

father was a claim settler out in Oregon first off, when Cousin France

married him. We called her that. Her name was Francelia. Good stock, I

guess. I wish Honey could know him, he's so set on being a rancher. I

suppose settling and ranching's about the same thing?"

"Not quite," Mrs. Robbins told her. Then came a chat about her own

father's ranch in California, and when Piney came back after her mother,

she found her all animated and interested over Honey's future.

Kit and Etoile were arranging a dancing class for alternate Saturday

afternoons, the ones between to be given up to lawn tennis and basket

ball. Ingeborg and Astrid and Hedda Hagerstrom stood listening and

agreeing with shining eyes and eager faces, but silent shy tongues.

Hedda was short and strong looking, with the bluest eyes possible and

heavy blond braids. She stared at Kit with wide-eyed wonder, Kit,

radiant and joyous in her prettiest summery dress, with sprays of

flowering almond around her head like a pink blossomy crown.

"You'll come, won't you, Hedda?" she asked. "And bring any other girls

over your way."

"There's only Abby over my way. We live on the same road."

"Then bring Abby, but tell her to wear old shoes. We ought to find

enough girls to make up a good team out here."

"Do you like hikes?" asked Sally Peckham. "I think it would be fun to

have a hike club, and each week tramp away off somewhere. There's ever

so many places I want to see."

"It's a good idea, Sally," Piney exclaimed. "First rate. We could call

ourselves the Pere--pere--what's that word that means meandering around,

Jean, don't you now?"

"Peregrinating?"

"That's it. Peregrinating Gileadites."

"I think 'Greenacre Hikers' would be better," said Ingeborg. "I'd love

to go along, wouldn't you, 'Trid?"

Astrid was sure she would. So while Hiram played "Good-night, Ladies,"

and the three ministers smiled and shook hands together and with their

hostess and host, the girls of Gilead planned their first campaign for

summer outings.

It was after twelve before the last team had driven away. Hiram and Kit

went around with a couple of chairs, mounting them to reach the lanterns

and blow out the candles inside. Doris was found sound asleep in the

library on the couch. Jean and Helen hunted in the grass for lost

spoons and ice cream saucers.

"How much do you suppose we made?" asked Mrs. Robbins. "I'm so proud of

it, I had to tell our executive committee. Forty-five dollars and

thirty-five cents. Isn't that good for Gilead?"

"Good land alive!" Cousin Roxana exclaimed, her shoulders shaking with

laughter. "I didn't suppose you could ever find so much money around

loose in Gilead. They're all of them tighter'n the bark to a tree. I

do believe, Betty, they paid ten cents admission to the grounds just to

see what you all looked like."

"I don't care if they did," Jean said happily. "We got acquainted with

all our neighbors, and now I feel as if I could go ahead and organize

something."

*CHAPTER XV*

*KIT PULLS ANCHOR*

The following Saturday had been set as the first day for the girls to

meet at Greenacres. Sally was the first to arrive, as she lived nearest,

and she brought with her Anne and Charlotte, who, in a process known in

large families, had become Nan and Carlie.

Hedda and the two girls from the old Ames place, Ingeborg and Astrid,

arrived together and helped Kit and Helen plan the tennis court. Below

the terraces the lawn lay smooth and even out to the south wall, but it

had been decided to sacrifice a slice of the hay field across the road

rather than the garden, and Hiram had ploughed up a good sized oblong of

land for them, harrowed it smooth, and then the girls had pondered over

the problem of rolling it. It must be rolled flat, wet down, and rolled

again until it was fit to use.

"We could fill a barrel with sand, and roll that," Doris suggested,

thoughtfully.

"Got something better than that," Honey said. "Over at Mr. Peckham's

they've got a road roller. Mr. Peckham's the road committee in Gilead

township--"

Kit caught him up,

"The whole committee, Honey?"

"Ain't he enough? Ought to see him get out and clean up with those boys

of his. He'll let us take it, I'm sure, and it will roll that court

down as smooth as can be. I'll go after it this afternoon when I finish

with the potato patch."

"Don't I wish we had the old garden hose," Helen said, after they had

carried buckets of water from the well unremittingly for nearly an hour,

and emptied them on the harrowed patch. "I'm half dead."

"Cheer up, sister mine," Kit told her briskly. "Think of the result.

'Finis coronat opus!' From dawn till dewy eve we will play out here."

"We've got a croquet set down at the house, but the boys are always

using the mallets to pound something over at the mill, and the balls get

lost. I like this best." Sally stood with arms on her hips, smiling

happily. "What else are you going to do up here?"

"Next we're going to start weekly hikes," Kit told her. "You girls have

lived here for years, haven't you--"

"We just came up a while ago," Ingeborg corrected.

"I know, and so did Hedda, but Etoile and Tony and Sally and the rest of

you all grew right here, didn't you? Well, then. What do you know

about the country for ten miles around?" Kit paused dramatically. "Do

you know every wood road and cow path through the woods? Do ye ken each

mountain peak and distant vale? Where does Little River rise? Have any

of you followed the rock ledge up into the hills?"

"Nobody but the hunters go there, and they don't come till fall," said

Hedda gravely. She hardly ever smiled, this transplanted little

daughter of far-off Iceland. Her manner and expression always seemed to

the girls to hold a certain aloofness. Up at her home, later on, they

saw a finely carved model of a viking ship which her father had made

back in the home island, and Jean declared after that she always

pictured Hedda standing at its high prow, facing the gale of the

northern seas, her fair hair blowing behind her like a golden pennant,

her blue eyes fearless and eager.

"But we'll go. With something to eat and trusty staves. That makes me

think, girls, we haven't seen many snakes. Aren't there any up here,

Sally?"

"Lots. But mostly black snakes. They're ugly to look at, but they

don't hurt you. And little garter snakes, and green grass snakes. I

never think about them."

"Are you afraid of anything out here, Sally?" Doris asked, interestedly.

She had eyed Sally admiringly from the first moment of their

acquaintance, and privately Dorrie held many fears. It was all very well

to say there wasn't anything to worry over, as Kit did; but one may step

on toads in the dark, or hear noises in the garret that make one shiver

even if they do turn out to be just chipmunks after corn and huts.

"Nothing that I know of," Sally replied serenely. "I never felt afraid

in the dark. Just as soon go all over the house, up stairs and down,

and into the cellar, as not. And I go all over the barn and garden at

night. Guess the only thing I'm really afraid of is a bat."

"Everybody's afraid of something," Etoile said, her eyes wide with

mystery. "I have the fear too, oh, but often. I am most afraid of

those little mulberry worms, you know them? They come right down at you

on little ropes they make all by themselves, and they curl up in the air

and then they drop on you. Ugh!"

Kit fairly rolled with delight at this, over on the grass.

"How perfectly lovely," she laughed. "Tell some more, Etoile."

"We've got a haunted house on our road," Astrid said in a lowered voice.

"The little spring house between the old mill and our place. It's been

there years and years, my father says. He knows the old man at the mill,

and he told him. As far back as they can remember it has always been

haunted. First there lived an old watchmaker there. He had clocks and

watches all over the house, and they ticked all the time."

"Maybe they kept him from being lonely," Helen suggested.

"He was very strange, and when he died, then two old Indian women came

to live there. And there was a peddler used to go through and put up

over night there, and he never was seen any more."

"You can see the grave in the cellar where they buried him," Ingeborg

whispered. "Right down at the foot of the stairs. And at night he

comes up and goes all around the house, rattling chains. Yes, he does.

My brother went down with some of the boys and stayed there just to find

out and they heard him."

"Let's go over there on our hike and stay over night, girls," Kit

exclaimed. "I think it would be dandy."

"Don't you believe in ghosts, Kit?" asked Sally. "I don't like to

believe in them, but I just thought they had to be believed in if

they're really so."

"Remember in Dickens's 'Christmas Carol,'" Jean joined in, "hew old

Scrooge insisted that he didn't believe in ghosts even when the ghost

sat right beside him, and rattled his chains?"

"Oh, don't, Jeanie," Doris begged, arms close around the big sister's

neck. "Don't talk about it."

"We'll stay over night at the spring house, girls," Kit promised

happily. "It's a shame to have a real ghost around and not make it

welcome. If there are any ghosts they must be the lonesomest creatures

in all creation because nobody wants them around. Suppose we say that

next Friday we'll walk up to the house and camp out for the night.

Who's afraid?"

The girls looked at each other doubtfully.

"Can I bring our dog along?" asked Ingeborg. "Then I am not afraid, I

don't think."

"Bring anything you like. I'm going to take an electric flashlight.

Here comes our roller, now. We'd better finish the tennis court."

That night the girls talked it over themselves up in Jean's room. It

was always the favorite council hour, when all the queen's hand-maidens

combed their silken tresses, as Helen said.

Somehow it did seem as if you could think clearer and weigh matters

better, after you were undressed, with a nightgown and kimono on,

sitting cross-legged on the bed or couch. Mrs. Robbins always stopped on

her way to bed to look in at either one room or the other, and chat for

a while. She listened with an amused smile to the story Ingeborg had

told.

"The fear of the dark, they say, comes from away back in the first dawn

of the world," she said. "It is the old dread of the unknown the cave

man felt when darkness fell over the land and wild beasts prowled near.

But this other idea about the ghost is queer, isn't it, girls? Do you

really want to stay over night there?"

"I think we'd better, Mother dear," Jean answered comfortably, "We'll be

the warrior maidens, and slay the dragon Fear which hath most wickedly

enthralled our fair land. That's a nice little house, and everyone's

afraid to live in it."

"Ingeborg told me after you girls came up to the house, that there was

one door in the sitting-room nobody could keep shut. It swung open all

the time."

"Never mind, Helen," Kit said. "I'll take it off its hinges, and cart

it right down cellar. Then I guess it will behave itself."

Cousin Roxana told the story of the old spring house when they saw her.

She could remember Scotty McDougal, the old watchmaker who had lived

there.

"Land, yes, I should say I could. He used to wear an old coonskin cap

with the tail hanging down, and carried an old gun along with him

wherever he went. After he died, two old women moved in from somewhere

in the woods towards Dayville. They were Injun, I guess, or gypsy, real

good-hearted folks so far as I could see. Used to weave carpet and rag

rugs and make baskets. There was a story around that they could tell

fortunes and see things in the future, but that's just talk. I never

pay any attention to such things at all. The Lord never has seen fit to

let His way be known excepting through His own messengers. Probably, if

you could clear the house of its name, somebody'd be willing to live in

it. It belongs to Judge Ellis."

"Who's Judge Ellis?" asked Kit, who always caught at a new name.

"Who is he?" Cousin Roxy laughed heartily. "Meanest man in seven

counties, I guess. He ran for Senator years ago, and was beaten, and he

took a solemn oath he'd never have anything to do with anybody in this

township again, and I guess he's kept it. He lives in the biggest house

here."