"All alone?" asked Doris.

"All alone excepting for a housekeeper and his grandson. He's just a

fussy old miser, and the way he lets that boy run wild makes my heart

ache."

"How old a boy is he, Roxy?" asked Mrs. Robbins, quick sympathy shining

from her eyes.

"Oh, I should say about fifteen. Name's Billie. He's a case, I tell

you. What he can't think of in five minutes isn't worth doing. Still,

he's a good boy too, at that. Five of my cows strayed off from the

pasture lot last summer and he found them after Hiram had run his legs

off looking for them. And once we lost some turkeys, and he found them

over in the pines roosting with the crows. He knows every foot of land

for ten miles around here and more, I guess. You never know when he's

going to bob out of the bushes and grin at you. The Judge don't pay any

more attention to him than if he was a scarecrow. Seems that he had one

son, Finley Ellis, and he was wild and the Judge turned him off years

ago. And one day he got a letter, so Mr. Ricketts told me, from New

York, and away he went, looking cross enough to chew tacks. When he

came back he had Billie with him, and that's all Gilead ever found out.

Billie says he's his grandfather, and the Judge says nothing."

"I'd like to see him," Jean exclaimed.

"Who? The Judge?"

"No, no. Billie, this boy. What does he look like?"

"Looks like all-get-out half the time, and never comes to church at all.

You'll know him by his whistling. He can whistle like a bird. I've

heard him sometimes in the early spring, and you couldn't tell his

whistle from a real whip-poor-will. There is something about him that

everybody likes."

"I hope he comes over this way," Mrs. Robbins said.

"Oh, he will. The Judge never lets him have any pocket money, so he's

always trying to earn a little. He'll come and try to sell you a tame

crow, most likely, or a trained caterpillar. I was driving over towards

their place one day and I declare if I didn't find him lying flat in the

middle of the road. Ella Lou stopped short and I asked him what he was

doing. 'Don't drive in the middle of the road, Miss Robbins,' he said,

''cause I've got some ants here, taming them.' Real good looking boy he

is too."

"My, but he sounds interesting," Kit remarked fervently. "I almost feel

like hunting him up; don't you, Jean?"

Jean nodded her head. She was putting up currants and raspberries, and

the day was very warm.

"Why do you keep a fire going in the house?" Miss Robbins asked her.

"Put an old stove out in the back-yard, the way I do, and let it sizzle

along. Good-bye, everybody. I hear all the ministers are still

speaking to each other."

"Come down and play tennis with us," called Helen.

"Go 'long, child." Cousin Roxy chuckled. "How would I look hopping

around like a katydid, slapping at those little balls! Get up there,

Ella Lou."

"Well," Kit exclaimed, as the buggy drove away, "it seems as if every

single day something new happens here, and we thought it would be so

dull we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves."

"You mean Billie's something new?" asked Helen.

"Doesn't he sound interesting? I'm going out to ask Honey about him."

"You'd better help me finish these berries, Kathleen," Jean urged. So

Kit gave up the quest temporarily, and sat on the edge of the kitchen

table, stripping currants from their stems, and singing at the top of

her clear young lungs:

"'Oh, where have you been, Billie Boy, Billie Boy,

Where have you been, charming Billie?'

'I've been to seek a wife, she's the comfort of my life,'

But she's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother.'

"'Did she bid you come in, Billie Boy, Billie Boy,

Did she bid you come, charming Billie?'

'Yes, she bid me come in, with a dimple in her chin,

But she's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother.'

"'Did she offer you a chair, Billie Boy, Billie Boy,

Did she offer you a chair, charming Billie?'

'Yes, she offered me a chair, with the ringlets in her hair,

But she's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.'

"'Can she make a cherry pie, Billie Boy, Billie Boy--'"

"Oh, Kit, do stop," begged Jean. "It's too hot to sing."

Kit looked out at the widespread view of Greenacres, rich with the uncut

grass, billowing with every vagrant breeze, like distant waves. It was

hot in the kitchen, hot and close.

"I'll bet he'd let her stay right in the kitchen keeling pots and making

cherry pies, too," she said suddenly.

"Who?"

"Who?" wrathfully. "All the Billies of the world. They can ramble

fields and whistle like whip-poor-wills, but we've just got to stay and

make cherry pies forever and ever, amen."

"Why, Kit, dear--"

"Don't 'dear' me. I want to get out and tramp and live in a tent. I

hate cooking. I don't see why anybody wants to eat this kind of

weather. I'd nibble grass first."

"Yes, you would," laughed Helen. "You'll be the first at supper to lean

over sweetly and ask for preserves and cake. I see you nibbling grass,

Miss Nebuchanezzar."

But Kit had fled, out the back door and over to the pasture where

Princess rambled.

"Kit's fretful, isn't she?"

"She's pulling on her anchor," answered Jean. "We all do. Some days I

get really homesick for the girls back home and everything that we

haven't got here,--the library and the art galleries and the lectures

and the musicales and everything. I think we ought to write down and

ask some of the girls to come up."

"I don't. Not until Dad's well."

Doris was out of hearing. Jean looked over at Helen, who in some way

always seemed nearer her own age than Kit.

"Helen, honest and truly, do you think Dad's getting any better?" she

asked in a low voice.

Helen hesitated, her face showing plainly how she dreaded acknowledging

even to herself the possibility of his not improving.

"He eats better now, and he can sit up."

"But he looks awful. It fairly makes my heart ache to look at him

sometimes. His eyes look as if they were gazing away off at some land

we couldn't see."

"Jean Robbins, how can you say that?"

"Hush. Don't let Mother hear," cautioned Jean anxiously. "I had to

tell somebody. I think of it all the time."

"Well, don't think of it. That's like sticking pins in a wax statue

back in the Middle Ages, and saying, 'He's going to die, he's going to

die,' all the time. He's getting better."

Jean was silent. She felt worried, but if Helen refused to listen to

her, there was nobody left except Cousin Roxy. Somehow, at every

emergency Cousin Roxy seemed to be the one hope these days, unfailing

and unfearing. Dauntless and cheerful, she rode over every obstacle like

some old warrior who had elected to rid the world of dragons.

But when Jean found an opportunity of speaking to her of her father,

Cousin Roxana's face looked oddly passive.

"We're all in the Lord's hands, Jeanie," she said. "Trust and obey, you

know. There are lots worse things than passing over Jordan, but we've

just got that notion in our heads that we don't want to let any of our

beloved ones take the voyage. Jerry's weak, I know, and he ain't

mending so fast as I'd hoped for, but he's gained. That's something.

You've been up here only a couple of months. It took years of overwork

to break him down, and it may take years of peace and rest to build him

up. Let's be patient. Dr. Gallup seems to think he's got a good deal

more than a running chance."

Jean wound eager, loving arms around the plump figure, and laid her head

down on Cousin Roxy's shoulder.

"You dear," she exclaimed. "You're the best angel in a gingham apron I

ever saw. I feel a hundred times better now. I can go back and work."

"Well, so do, child, and comfort your mother. Hope springs eternal, you

know, in the human breast, but it takes a sight of watering just the

same to make it perk up."

*CHAPTER XVI*

*GUESTS AND GHOSTS*

It would never do to leave Piney out of any jaunts, Kit said, as the end

of the week drew near again, and so Honey was commissioned as despatch

bearer.

"Tell her we're going to walk from here over to Mount Ponchas, and back

by way of the Spring House. We want to start at five Friday night."

"Ought to start at daybreak for a hike," Honey replied. "Never heard of

starting near sundown. You'll fetch up by dark at the rock ridge and

sleep in a deer hollow."

"Maybe we will," Kit responded hopefully. "I hadn't thought of that,

Honey. It sounds awfully nice. If you could just get a peep at our

lunch you'd want to hike too, no matter where we fetched up."

"I've camped out along the river. Not this river. The big one down at

the station, the Quinnebaug. We boys go down there when the bass is

running and fish for them nights. Eels too."

"Do you know a boy named Billie Ellis?" Kit asked suddenly. "Does he

ever go along with you?"

"Billie Ellis? I should say not." Honey was very emphatic. "Judge

Ellis wouldn't let him go along anywhere with the rest of us fellows. He

caught a big white owl the other day over in the pines back of the Ellis

burial ground."

"I wish he'd come over our way some time. I'd love to know him. He

sounds so kind of--well, different, don't you know?"

"He's different all right," laughed Honey, good-naturedly. "I remember

once three years ago it was awfully cold, and we boys had been skating

and went into the blacksmith shop to get warm, Abby Tucker's father's

shop. And who should come in but Billie Ellis without any hat on, and

only an old sweater and a pair of corduroy knickers on, and shoes and

stockings. We asked him how he ever kept warm such weather, and what do

you suppose he said?"

"What?" Kit's face was eager with interest.

"Said he had seven cats he kept specially to keep him warm. Said the

Judge wouldn't let him have any fire, so he trained the cats to cuddle

around him and keep him warm all night! Good-night. I'll tell Piney you

want her to go along with you."

Kit sat out on the terrace after he had passed up the hill road. Jean

and Helen were upstairs with their father, and Doris was practising her

music with her mother in the big living-room. Somehow, Mother's fingers

made scales sound sweet. Honey had been gone about fifteen minutes when

Kit heard the sound of a carriage coming along the level valley road.

It couldn't be anyone for Greenacres, she thought; but just then the

carriage turned in at the wide drive entrance and came up to the veranda

steps.

"You had better wait," she heard a voice say, such a dandy voice, young

and full of happy sounding. Then somebody bounded up the steps, three

at a time, and crossed the veranda, with her sitting right there on the

top terrace below the rose and honeysuckle vines. Kit was always

precipitous in her conclusions. It flashed across her mind in one

brilliant, intuitive wave that this was Ralph McRae, from Saskatoon.

Doris's madcap verse ran riot through her brain:

"Oh, Saskatoon,

Don't come too soon--"

There was no door-bell or even knocker, and the double doors stood wide

open, but the screen doors were locked, inside, so Kit stood up and

called.

"Just a minute, please. I'm coming."

He waited for her, cap in hand and smiling. It was shadowy, but she saw

his face and liked it. As she told the other girls later, it looked like

all the faces you could imagine that had belonged to the real heroes'

best friends, the Gratianos, and Mercutios, and Petroniuses of life.

"Is this Miss Robbins?" he asked, and Kit flushed at the tone. As if

she didn't long seventeen hundred times a month to be _the_ Miss Robbins

like Jean.

"No. I'm only Kit," she answered. "You're our Mr. McRae, I think. How

do you do?"

He took her proffered hand and shook it warmly, until there were little

red lines around her rings, and Kit led him around to the side door and

let him in while she lighted a lamp.

"Mother's in here," she said, leading the way into the living-room.

Mrs. Robbins sat by the west window. She loved the quiet rest hour

after sundown, and Doris was playing with the soft pedal down. "Mother,

dear," Kit said. "Mr. McRae's come from Saskatoon."

"Just as if he'd stepped over the whole distance in about seven

strides," Doris told later, after Mr. McRae had been safely disposed of

in the guest chamber, and the family could discuss him safely. "I think

he's awfully nice looking, don't you, Jean?"

"I can't think about his looks, Dorrie," Jean replied laughingly. "All

I can do is wonder what he has come after. Does he want the house and

farm? Or has his conscience troubled him so much about Piney and her

mother and Honey that he's going to lay Greenacres on their front

doorstep in restitution? Or did he just want to see what we all looked

like?"

"Ask him," suggested Kit blandly. "He seems to be a very approachable

young man so far as I can see."

"He wanted to go up to Cousin Roxy's for the night and Mother wouldn't

let him. That shows that she likes him."

"Mother'd spread her wing over any lone wanderer after nightfall,

Helenita. Wait and see what the morrow doth portend. We'll go for our

hike just the same."

The next day Mr. Robbins sat out in a big steamer chair on the veranda

with the stranger, and seemed to enjoy his company wonderfully.

"I do believe, Mumsie," Jean said, "that poor Dad has been smothered

with too much coddling. Just look at him brace up and talk to Mr.

McRae."

"I hope we can persuade him to stay with us while he is in Gilead."

"He doesn't act as if he needed much persuading. They've rambled all the

way from salmon culture to Alaska politics and whether alfalfa would

grow in Connecticut. Now they're settling Saskatoon's future. It

appears that if no cyclones hit it, Saskatoon will be a booming town.

I'm glad we don't need any cyclone cellars here."

"Jeanie, you tempt Providence with your jubilant crowing. Come and help

me put up our lunch. Bacon and biscuit are going to be the staff of our

existence, with gingerbread and cheese for the reserves."

It had been agreed that the girls should meet at Greenacres that

afternoon. Honey had been sent up to Maple Lawn with a note announcing

the arrival of Ralph McRae, and inviting Cousin Roxy down for tea. She

drove down about four, fresh as a daisy in her black and white dimity

and big black sun hat with sprays of white lilacs on it. Ralph helped

her out and stood smilingly while she ran her fingers through his thick

brown hair and patted his shoulder.

"Just the sort of boy I expected Francelia'd have," she said happily.

"Well set up and manly too from all appearances. Going to stay around a

while, Ralph, and get acquainted?"

"Why, I'd like to, Miss Roxy. It was rather lonesome out West with none

of my own people there. I've always wanted to come back here and see

all of you. Mother used to talk a lot about you all to me when I was

little. She didn't have anybody else to tell things to."

"Like enough," Roxy responded rather soberly for her. "You must meet

your cousins."

"I didn't know I had any."

Miss Robbins glanced over to the woodpile where Honey was sawing some

chestnut tops for dry wood to mix in with the birch.

"Come over here, Honey," she called briskly. "This is the boy cousin and

Piney's the girl, both children of your mother's own sister Luella.

Guess we'll get this straightened out some time. Honey, this is Ralph

McRae, your own blood cousin."

Ralph took the tanned, supple hand of the boy in his, and held it fast,

looking down at Honey's cheery, freckled face.

"I think we're going to be pals, old man," he said, and Honey's heart

warmed to him. Nobody had ever before called him that.

When Piney arrived with the other girls, she too was introduced, but she

proved less pliable than Honey. Straight and tall, she faced her new

cousin, every flash of her eyes telling him that she resented his having

all while they had nothing, and Ralph could make no headway with that

branch of the family.

At five they were ready to start. Sally could not go, nor Nan, Carlie,

or Tony. But the older girls were all there, and at the last minute

Abby Tucker came hurrying along the road with a large paper bag.

"Thought I'd never get here, but I did," she said triumphantly. "I made

popcorn balls for all of you. And I've got some red pepper too. Going

to throw it at the ghost."

"Why, you cold-blooded person," Kit exclaimed. "Red pepper at a poor

harmless ghost! Shame on you."

But Abby only smiled mysteriously and gave the girls to understand that

red pepper was the very latest weapon for vanquishing ghosts.

Jean had told each girl to bring a blanket. These were spread down and

rolled up army-fashion until they looked like life buoys, then slung

over the girls' shoulders. The commissary department consisted of Kit,

Hedda and Ingeborg, who counted over their supplies almost gloatingly.

Etoile had brought jam turnovers and deviled-egg sandwiches. Hedda had

brought loaf cake and cheese,--cream cheese with sweet red peppers

chopped up in it.

"So funny for Hedda to bring Italian stuff. You'd expect pickled walrus

from her," Kit remarked.

"I like this," Hedda answered gravely. "I never tasted walrus."

Ingeborg and Astrid brought sandwiches, made of rye bread with

home-cured roast ham. And Piney appeared with a big bag of cherries,

white-hearts and deep red ox-hearts.

"There's a loaf of gingerbread too, with raisins in it," she said.

"You're equipped for a journey over Chilkoot Pass," Ralph told them

teasingly. "How many weeks will you be gone?"

"We'll be home tomorrow about sundown, good sir," Kit retorted

haughtily. "Should you see the distant light of a signal fire you may

come after us."

"Piney can tell direction by the sun," Honey said. "You won't get lost

with her along. Better keep out of the woods though. Mount Ponchas is

due south."

The girls left the grounds of Greenacres and turned into the open road.

At each clear point they paused to wave back to the group on the

veranda, but Jean and Ingeborg led at a good pace and the rest fell into

it, following the river road to the old spring house. Helen started to

sing with Piney, and the others joined in. The first mile seemed to

vanish before they knew it, and even by the time they reached the old

red saw-mill, where Mr. Rudemeir lived, they were not tired. He was the

old Prussian sailor Honey had told them of. They met him driving a

couple of heavy Percheron horses along the river path, and he waved an

old pipe in friendly fashion.

"He's mighty nice," Piney said fervently. "Last summer there were some

girls boarding up the valley, and they couldn't swim. One went out

beyond her depth and he saved her life."

"Bless his heart, let's give him a cheer," Kit proposed. "He needs

encouragement."

So they gave a rousing cheer, and the old man looked back in surprise,

grinned, and waved again to them.

"Wait a minute," Jean said suddenly. "We've forgotten matches. Run back

and ask him for some, Dorrie, please."

"He asked where we were bound for," said Doris when she returned. "When

I told him he said he guessed we'd have our hands full."

"It's getting a little dark." Etoile glanced back over the shadowy road

behind them.

"We've got a lantern and some candles," Astrid said comfortably, "and

Tip for sentinel. There isn't anything to be afraid of that I can see."

"'Speak for yourself, John,'" Kit quoted. "If we don't see or hear

something I'm going to be awfully disappointed. And if we do hear

anything coming slowly upstairs, don't flash the electric light right at

it until it has a chance to show itself. I hope it will be a lovely

pale green, like the ghost in Hamlet."

Etoile stopped short in the middle of the road, her eyes wide with

dread.

"I think perhaps I'd better go right back now, girls."

But Kit and Ingeborg wound their arms around her waist and promised

faithfully to guard her if she would only stick the night out. They went

on up the long wood-road, past the falls above the mill, past Mud Hole

where the boys fished for eels, past Otter Island where Hiram came to

fish, and on to the old spring house. It was set far back from the road

in a garden overgrown with weeds and tall timothy grass, and tiger

lilies grew rankly in green clumps along the gray stone walls. The

little wooden shelter over the well was knocked over and the boards that

protected the windows had been pulled half off. Jean went to the

kitchen door and found it unlocked. Only wasps and spiders were to be

seen, and one stout old toad that backed hurriedly out of sight under

the stone doorstep.

"Let's look it all over before it gets really dark," she said, and they

went in and out of each bare room, upstairs and downstairs, into the old

musty cellar, even into the low-roofed loft over the summer kitchen.

"Now, we know there's nothing here, don't we?" Kit said, after the tour

of inspection was over, and they sat out on the grass near the well,

with their lunch spread around them. "How perfectly wonderful things

taste after you've tramped, don't they? More ginger cookies, please,

Hedda."

"Which room are we going to sleep in?" asked Abby. "I'd just as soon

sleep out here all night on blankets, wouldn't you, Etoile?"

"We don't care if you want to," Helen agreed. "Try it on the little side

porch. Then you can watch the cellar entrance because the ghost may

decide to come up that way."

It was getting quite dark by the time the supper remains were cleared

away. Candles were lighted and set on the mantel in the front room and

in the kitchen. Kit and Hedda had returned from a successful foraging

expedition around the barn and corn house, and had brought back armfuls

of hay to spread under their blankets on the floor. Tip, the brown

water spaniel, took the whole affair very seriously and made the circuit

of the grounds over and over again, chasing imaginary intruders.

"Well, girls, I guess we're all ready to go to bed, aren't we?" Kit

called finally. "It's eight-thirty by Jean's watch, and we'll have to

get an early start."

They agreed it was the best plan and went into the big living-room where

the fireplace was. The nights were still very cool up in the hills, so

Hedda and Doris had been appointed wood gatherers and a fine dry wood

fire blazed on the stone hearth. After they were ready for the night,

they sat around this in a semi-circle, eating popcorn balls and telling

stories, until all at once there came a sound that silenced every one

and left them wide-eyed and scared.

*CHAPTER XVII*

*BILLIE MEETS TRESPASSERS*

It was unlike any sound the girls had ever heard back at the Cove;

almost like a human being in distress and yet like some animal cry too.

"It's a fox," whispered Astrid, getting nearer to her big sister.

"No, it isn't," said Abby. "That's a deer. They always yell like that

when the moon's full."

"It was right near, I think, right outside." Kit sat up eager and tense.

"Shall I flash the light, Jean?"

"Not yet. Wait until it comes again. I think it was only some night

bird."

So they waited breathlessly. Every tiny creaking noise in the old house

was intensified by the heavy silence. Jean rose and went to the window.

The moon was not up yet, and it was hard to distinguish objects, but

down in the garden she thought she saw something that looked like a cow

lying down.

"I can't tell just what it is. It may be only a stray cow or horse,"

she said softly.

"Throw something at it," suggested Kit, hopefully. "Let's all throw

something."

"Just to see whether it jumps or not," Astrid assented. She hunted

around and found some loose half bricks in the chimney place.

"Where's Tip? He hasn't barked once," remarked Abby.

"Dogs are always frightened when they see ghosts. Let me fire away at

it first, girls." Astrid took aim and the half brick flew down at the

dark object with a deadly thud, but there was no stampede. She leaned

far out the window, staring at it anxiously. "It seems to me I can see

it move and it has horns and a sort of woolly tail, girls."

"Sounds like a yak," Kit chuckled. "I'm willing to do this much. I'll

go to the door and open it, and you girls stay here with bricks to

throw, and when I flash the light on it, if it jumps you can save me."

But before she could carry out the plan the sound came again, longer and

more thrillingly penetrating than before. It was a wail and a challenge

and a moan all in one, not just one cry, but a prolonged succession of

them. As soon as it stopped Piney exclaimed:

"Now I know. That's an owl and it comes from the little garret over the

'ell' where we couldn't climb because there weren't any stairs. Don't

you know, girls?"

"Sure, Piney?" Etoile's tone was almost trembling. "Never I hear such

a cry."

"Oh, I have. It's an owl, I know it is, one of those big ones. Riding

through the woods at night coming home from town I've been half scared

to death by one of them. Sounds like seventeen ghosts all rolled into

one. Come along, Kit. You and I'll go hunt it up."

The rest followed gingerly, a strange procession bearing candles, Kit

leading with the flash, light. Tip stumbled up drowsily from the

kitchen door and barked at them.

"Oh, yes, it's all very well for you to bark now," laughed Jean. "Why

didn't you go after that noise?"

They reached the "ell" room and found a trapdoor in the ceiling. Abby

remembered seeing a ladder out in the back entry behind the door and

this was brought in.

"And see this, girls," she exclaimed, running her finger over it. "No

dust on the rounds. That shows it's been used lately."

"Aren't we perfectly wonderful scouts? Abby, I love the way you never

miss anything." Kit leaned the ladder up against the wall, and mounted

it, with Piney close behind and the other girls at its base. "What if

it shouldn't be an owl--"

She stopped with her palm against the trapdoor. Raising it about an inch

she flashed the light, and there was a great fluttering and flopping

overhead.

"What did I tell you!" Piney cried excitedly. "Do it again, Kit. It

can't hurt you and the light blinds it."

So the trap-door was lifted again with the light of the electric hand

lamp turned on full and Kit cautiously pulled herself up into the

aperture. It was tent shaped and low, not more than four feet at its

highest. But instead of being bare like the rest of the old house,

there were certainly evidences of human occupancy. There was a tin can

filled with fresh water, and a strip of rag carpet laid down on the

floor. A box of fish hooks and neatly rolled lines lay on one side, and

there was a small frying pan and a horn handled steel knife and fork.

Rolled up in one corner was a pair of old overalls, and some books much

the worse for wear lay beside them. Kit's glance took in everything,

and last of all, backed into a corner and blinking hard, was the ghost

itself,--a big white owl.

Piney pulled herself up too, and reached out after the books gently so

as not to frighten the owl any more. With a couple in her hand, they

lowered the door again, and joined the others.

"It's an owl and a hermit's nest," Kit told them excitedly. "Open the

books, Piney. Is there any name inside?"

Piney read off the titles,

"'Treasure Island' and 'Peveril of the Peak.' He's got a nice

collection, hasn't he, whoever he is? There isn't any name inside.

There's a bookplate in each though."

"Let me see." Helen and Kit both tried to look at the same time. The

bookplate was pasted in each, but it was a hard one to decipher. It

looked like some cryptogram with its intertwined letter forms, and they

gave it up for the night.

"Well, there was certainly fresh water in that tin," Kit said

positively, "and that shows the haunted house is inhabited by something

tangible, I mean something besides the owl. Let's go to bed very calmly

and sleep. I'm sure we've laid the ghost."

It did seem as though they had, for the remainder of the night was

peaceful and safe except for the owl crying out lonesomely at intervals

until about four o'clock, when the dawn came. Rolled in their blankets,

the girls slept soundly until the sunlight threw broad golden beams into

their quarters.

There was no rope on the windlass at the well, so Ingeborg proposed that

they go down to the river and wash there. It was lots of fun. They

found that the dark and fearsome object they had heaved bricks at the

night before was only a big gray rock half sunken in the ground.

Along the river margin turtles sunned themselves in rows on the

half-submerged logs, and a muskrat scuttled clumsily for cover at sight

of the invaders.

"I wish we could go right in," said Jean, looking up and down the

winding course of the river as she parted the alders; "but it isn't

really safe when you don't know the water. This looks full of

unexpected holes and snags. Where does it run to?"

"Down past the two mills, and rises away up in the Quinnebaug Hills,"

Piney told her, kneeling on a flat rock and splashing herself well. "Did

you see that black snake hustle out of the way then? They're awful

cowards. Yes, Jean, this comes from Judge Ellis's place about two miles

beyond here, three and a half by road."

"Judge Ellis? Billie's grandfather?"

"You talk just as if you knew him, Kit."

"Well, I feel as if I do, and when I do I'm going to take him right

under my wing and be a mother to him," said Kit defiantly.

"Who? The Judge?"

"No. This Billie person. Or I'll trot him home to Mother and let her

be nice to him."

"Here are some fishpoles, girls, hidden in the bushes," Doris called

out. "Know what I think? There are boys around."

All at once upstream they heard somebody whistling. At first it sounded

almost like a bird trilling high and clear, but birds do not sing

"Marching Through Georgia," so the girls sat there on the bank,

sheltered from view by the alders, and waited until a flat bottomed

row-boat came into view. Standing at the stern, one bare foot on the

back seat and one on the cross seat, with a long punting pole in his

hands, was a boy of about fifteen. His head was bare and his overalls

were rolled above his knees. Whistling recklessly, sure of himself and

the solitude, he came down the river and guided the boat to shore near

where the girls sat. He hauled it up half-way out of the water, dropped

the pole into it, and started up the bank before he caught sight of

them.

"That's Billie Ellis," Piney said quickly, and waved her hand to him in

friendly greeting. "Hello, Billie."

"Hello," Billie returned. "Where'd you come from?"

"We came from Whence and are going Whither," Kit spoke up merrily. "Got

some fish for breakfast?"

Billie hesitated, trying to appear nonchalant, but plainly very much

rattled at these persons who had taken up squatter rights on his domain.

He rolled down his overalls very slowly and deliberately to gain time,

and this gave the girls a chance to see just what he looked like, this

Billie person, as Kit had dubbed him. He was taller than Honey by a

good deal, with short-cropped curly hair rather nondescript in color,

and big brown eyes, eyes as startlingly frank and uncompromising in

their gaze as those of a deer. He was tanned a nice healthy brown, and

his smile was extremely satisfying if one were looking for friendliness.

Altogether, the Greenacre girls approved of Billie at sight. To the

others he was more or less familiar, even while none of them knew him

well.

"Where you all going?" he asked.

"Just walking over the country," Abby told him. "Where are you going,

Billie?"

Billie flushed at this direct query.

"Oh, I don't know," he answered lamely. "I come down the river a lot."

"We fed the owl," Kit said innocently. "Just some bread and ham. I

suppose it thought it had a new kind of mouse."

Billie glanced at her with quick boyish indignation. They had not been

satisfied with finding out his landing place and swimming hole. They had

gone into the old house and discovered his secret den and the big white

owl. He had always regarded girls as semi-dangerous, but this was worse

than even he had expected. He turned to Piney as the one in the crowd

that he knew best.

"What did you go into the house for?"

"Shelter for the night," Piney answered promptly. "The door was open

and we went in. If folks don't want company they should keep their doors

locked. Anyhow, nobody lives here and we didn't hurt a thing. We

wanted to see the ghost."

Billie grinned at this admission, a quick mischievous grin that made his

whole face light up and seem to sparkle with fun.

"Did he come up and rattle his chains for you?"

"No, he didn't, and I don't believe he ever did for anybody else."

"Maybe not," Billie agreed blandly. "How far up the river are you

going?"

"To Mount Ponchas."

"That's only seven and a half miles. You can go along up the hill road

from here, and when you come to the state road that has telegraph poles

on it, you turn off and go west. It's three hills over and you pass

through one village, Shiloh Valley. When you come to Ponchas don't

forget to look for the grave of the Cavalier."

"Where's that?" asked Jean. "We haven't heard of it at all."

This was touching Billie's heart in the right spot. He knew every rod

of land for miles around Gilead and loved its old historic lore. The

girls did not know it then, but life was rather a dull affair over at

the Judge's place. There were only the Judge himself; Mrs. Gorham, his

housekeeper; Farley Riggs, his general business man; and Ben Brooks, the

hired man. It was rather an unsympathetic household for a boy of

fifteen, especially one who had been unwelcome; but he had made friends

with Ben and had found him a treasure house of information.

There might be other sections of importance in the United States besides

Gilead Center, Connecticut, but Ben held them in slight esteem. He had

been born and brought up there and had never even wanted to go away.

The sun had always risen and set for him beyond the encircling

Quinnebaug Hills. He was about forty when Billie first came, genial,

optimistic, rather good-looking, and an insatiable reader.

Billie's two favorite occupations were ranging the country on personal

hikes of exploration and sitting up in Ben's room over the corn house in

the evenings, looking at his books and magazines and listening to him

talk on current topics and historic events. No topic was too intricate

for Ben to tackle. No government ever evaded him when it came to

diplomatic tricks or ways. He was on to them all, as he told Billie.

So now Billie remembered how Ben had told him about the mysterious

stranger who had come to Gilead back in the earliest days of the

settlement. The colonists had suffered much from Indian raids until

there came into their midst a man whom they called the Cavalier. With

his negro body-servant, he had lived amongst them and taught them

defense against their savage foes, taught them the best way to win over

the soil and reclaim the wilderness. Yet when he died they knew no more

of him than on the first day when he rode into their village. His grave

lay over on the south side of Mount Ponchas where he had wished it to

be, near a rock where he had often held council with the Indians.

"Be sure to see it when you get there," Billie advised. "I wish I was

going along with you."

"Come over to our place, won't you, Billie?" Kit asked in her most

neighborly way. "I'd like to ask you about some arrow heads we found.

Will you?"

Billie nodded his head nonchalantly. It was like giving a bird an

invitation to call on you, or handing your card to a rabbit. But he

watched them as they went up the hill road from the river, and when

Doris turned and waved, he waved back. At least he was interested in

his trespassers, even though he could not quite forgive them for having

discovered his pet hiding place.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*HARVESTING HOPES*

It was noon before they reached Ponchas, although they might have gone

ever so much faster if every new flower by the way had not coaxed them

to linger. Then they came to a big mill in the heart of the woods,

where the men were cutting out chestnut trees for ties. Then Shiloh

Valley was so pretty it was hard to leave it. There was a little white

church, with a square steeple and green blinds, standing on a large

church green, a dot of a schoolhouse opposite, one lone store, and about

nine houses. But each house was set in its own little domain

independent and aloof, with its barn and granary, tool house and smoke

house, woodshed and corn crib, and one had a silo and a forge besides.

The only person they saw was a little girl coming out of the store, and

she stood and watched them out of sight, with wide surprised eyes, just

as if, Doris said, they were a circus.

"I suppose we're the most interesting sight she's seen in weeks. Wish I

could run back and coax her to go with us."

But Ponchas beckoned to them in the distance, a violet tinted cone of

rock, and they kept steadily on until, as the shadows pointed north,

they camped for luncheon at its base. Helen and Ingeborg went hunting

the Cavalier's grave, but Hedda found it when she brought water from the

spring house that had been built over a live spring gushing out at the

base of the rock. Nearby was a heap of gray moss-covered rock piled into

a cairn, with a rugged rock cross at the head twined with wild

convolvulus. On it were cut the words:

"He succored us

The Cavalier

1679."

"Well, I do think they might have told us more than that," Jean said,

when the other girls came to look at it. "Perhaps, though, this would

have pleased him better. Let's name him, girls."

"Sir John Lovelace," said Helen.

"Oh, no, give him something sturdy; call him Modred or Gregory," Kit

protested. "Gregory Grimshaw."

They stood for a few moments in silence gazing at the quiet resting

place, wondering what the real story was of the stranger it sheltered.

"I think his servant could have told if he had so wished," Etoile said

wisely. "I will ask my father about him. He knows many of the old

stories of the places around here. He came here from Canada when he was

a very little boy. There were gray wolves around in the winter time, and

the spring came earlier then. He has found arbutus the first week in

March."

"What kind of wild animals are here now?" asked Doris anxiously.

"Nothing that's dangerous, is there?"

"Wild cats sometimes," Astrid said. "Deer, foxes, 'coons, muskrats,

woodchucks, otters, rabbits, squirrels. What else, Ingeborg?"

"I can tell you of something that really happened over where I live,"

Abby interrupted. Under the excitement of the trip and its novelty, Abby

had fairly bloomed. From a listless, rather unhappy girl she had become

a sturdy, cheerful hiker. Kit had taken her under her wing from the

start.

"It's fun getting hold of somebody so awfully hopeless," she had said,

"and trying to make her see the sun shining and the flowers growing

right under her nose. Abby's going to be happy. She's like some little

half-drowned kitten."

It was because nobody had ever taken any interest in her before. Her

father was the blacksmith, a silent, rather morose man who had quarreled

with his own brothers and never spoke to them. Her mother was a frail,

nervous woman, so used to being yelled at that she jumped the moment

anyone spoke to her. Jean had driven over there one day to get Princess

a new set of shoes, and Mrs. Tucker had come out from the kitchen door,

a thin, flat-chested woman with straggly hair and vacant eyes.

"How be ye," she said wistfully, looking up at the pretty new neighbor.

"How's your Ma? And Pa? Sickly, ain't he? I suffer something fearful

all the time. Sometimes my head feels as if it was where my feet are,

and my feet feel as if they were where my head is. I can't seem to make

any doctor understand what I mean, but that's exactly the way I feel,

and it's fearful confusing."

Then Abby had come out and sort of shooed her mother back into the house

as one would a fretful hen.

"There was a circus up at Norwich," said Abby now. "And a real live

panther escaped and the hunters said they found his tracks down our way.

Then one night when I was in bed, they knocked on our door and said the

tracks led right into our woodshed. And my father got out his shotgun

and went with them, but I went down in the kitchen with Ma, because

she's nervous, and when I started up the back stairs I saw its eyes

shining at me right under my bed."

"How could you see your bed on the back stairs?" asked Piney doubtfully.

"I left my door open and when I got on the middle stair I could see

right in under my bed, and there it was."

"Abby Tucker! What did you do?" exclaimed Hedda. "You never told me."

"What do you suppose I did? I fell right downstairs. Guess you would

have too, if you thought you saw a live panther under your bed. But it

wasn't. It scooted out past me and it was our big tiger cat Franklin."

"Did they find the real one?" asked Etoile.

"He is not anywhere around now, is he, Abby?"

"Oh, land, no," laughed Abby. "They got it over in the pine woods and

it was half starved and cold. It went back to the circus."

"Well," exclaimed Kit, with a sigh. "I used to think things were

monotonous in the country, but I've changed my mind. There's something

new happening here every minute."

Just then Doris gave a little squeal of dismay, and jumped up.

"Something bit my hand," she said. The girls searched in the grass and

found the breaker of the peace. It was a shiny pinching beetle.

"Don't kill it," Abby warned. "They bury the dead birds, Ma says.

They're the sextons of the woods."

"Maybe it thought I needed to be buried too," said Doris ruefully. "It

nipped me good and plenty."

When they started back they sang along the road, first old songs that

all of them knew, and then Hedda sang two strange Icelandic songs her

mother had taught her, lullabies with a low minor strain running through

them.

"Day has barred her window close and goes with quiet feet,

Night wrapped in a cloak of gray,

Comes softly down the street,

Mother's heart's a guiding star,

Tender, strong and true,

Lullaby and lulla-loo, sleep, lammie, now."

The other was about the reindeer that would surely come and carry the

baby away if it didn't go to sleep. She had a strong, sweet voice, and

sang with much feeling. After hearing the other girls, Jean said they

ought to have a glee club, even if they met only once a month.

"Just for music. Mother says that music is the universal language that

everyone understands. Let's meet at our house next week, and give the

afternoon to it."

"I think we ought to meet somewhere else, not all the time at your home,

Jean," Etoile demurred in her courteous French way. "We would be very

glad to have you with us any time."

"Then we will come, won't we, girls?" Jean agreed. "And Sally will

enjoy that because she can sing too, and it will be near home for her.

I think we are organizing splendidly."

But the next few weeks were filled with home activities and it was hard

to squeeze in time for all that they had outlined. There were berries

to can and preserve, and Mr. McRae prolonged his stay, but only on

condition that he be allowed to take hold of the farm, with Honey's

help, and manage the haying and cultivating for them.

"I had no idea a man could be so handy," Kit declared. "He's mended the

sink so we don't have to cart out all the waste water, and he's burned

up the rubbish at the end of the lane, and he put new roofing on the hen

houses, and he climbed up into the big elm and put up Doris's swing for

her. I think he's a perfect darling."

"Kit, dear, don't be so positive and so extreme," Mrs. Robbins warned

gently. "It's very kind indeed of Ralph to help us, but don't let your

speech run away with you."

"I wish he belonged right in the family. I've always thought that every

family should have a carpenter and a gardener in it. Mother dear, to

see him climb down the well, right down into that thirty-foot black hole

and fish out the bucket after Helen had dropped it in, was a sight for

men and angels."

"He's very capable," Mrs. Robbins agreed laughingly. "I think by the

time he goes we will have everything on the place mended and repaired.

I never saw a landlord like him."

"He's a good doctor too, a doctor of the soul," Jean said soberly.

"Dad's been fifty per cent. better since he came. I wish when he goes

back to Saskatoon that he'd take Honey with him. Piney's able to help

her mother, and Honey's heart is set on going West. They're own cousins

and it would be splendid for him."

"Honey's only fourteen, girlie. I think he's rather young to leave the

Mother wings, don't you?"

Jean pondered.

"I don't know, Mother. Mothers are wonderful people and darlings, but I

do think that every boy needs a good father and if he can't get a

father, then the next best man who can talk to him and teach him

the--what would you call it?"

"The code of manliness?".

"That's it. And Ralph seems so manly, don't you think so?"

"Do you call him Ralph, dear?"

"Well, he asked me to, mother, and I didn't want to refuse and hurt his

feelings. I suppose it made him feel more at home. And Cousin Roxy

says he's only twenty-four. I don't think that's old at all."

It took three days to cut the hay on the Greenacre land, and the girls

had a regular Greek festival over it. They all went down and followed

the big rake and helped pitch the hay up on the wagon. Then Helen got

her kodak and took pictures of them pitching, and riding on the load up

the long lane, and of the big sleepy-eyed yoke of oxen.

"You know," Jean said, "it looks like some scene from away back in the

colonial days. I love to watch the oxen come along that lane with the

top of the load brushing the mulberry tree branches."

"I'm so glad that you found out what those trees were," Kit teased.

"Ever since we came here, you and Helen have been watching for apples to

grow on them. I told you they were mulberry trees."

"It's so nice," Helen said dreamily, "to have one in the family who is

always right."

Kit quickly fired a bunch of hay at her, but she dodged it and ran.

"Going to cut about nine ton or more," Honey said, coming up with a pail

of spring water. "That ain't counting bedding neither. You can get

fifteen a ton for bedding."

"What's bedding?" asked Kit.

"Oh, all sorts of stuff, pollypods and swamp grass and such. Say, if

you go down where Ralph's cutting now, you'll see a Bob White's nest and

speckled eggs. Don't take any, though."

"Isn't it lovely out here, Kit?" Jean wound her arm around Kit's waist

as they crossed the meadow land. "I was lonesome at first but now I

think I'd be more lonesome for this if I were away from it long."

"I love it too, but wait until the north wind doth blow. What will all

the poor Robbins do then, poor things?"

"We'll pull through," Jean said pluckily. "I don't feel afraid of

anything that can happen since Dad really is getting better."

"Isn't it funny, Jean, how we're forgetting all about the Cove and the

things we did there?" Kit pushed back her hair briskly. She was warm

and getting "frecklier," as Doris said, every minute. "I wonder when

fall comes, if we won't miss it all more than we do now."

"All what?"

"Places to go, mostly, and people who help us instead of us always

helping them. Mother's turned into a regular Lady Bountiful since we

came out here."

"I think they've all helped us just as much as we've helped them," Jean

said slowly. "We're getting bigger every minute. You know what I mean.

Broader minded. At home we went along in the same little groove all the

time. I think work is splendid."

"Well, you always did have the faculty, you know, Jean, for staring

black right in the face and declaring it was a beautiful delicate cream

color. I suppose that's the stuff that martyrs are made of. Now, don't

get huffy. You're a perfect angel of a martyr. I like it out here and

I think the work is doing us good, but I'm like Helen, I don't want to

stay here all my life, nor even a quarter of it. Mother said she wanted

to let one of us older girls go back with Gwennie Phelps."

"Back with her?" repeated Jean in dismay. "You haven't asked her up here

this summer, have you, Kit?"

"I didn't. Helen did before we came away. Mother said she might. You

know Mother's always had the happiness of the Phelps family on her

mind."

"But Gwennie! I wouldn't mind Frances so much."

"Frances does not stand in need of missionary work. Gwennie does.

Anyway, she's coming up the first week in August, and Mother says that

either you or I can go back with her for two weeks before school opens.

Do you want to go, Jean? Because I really and truly don't give a rap

about it. I'm afraid to go for fear I'll like it and won't want to come

back. I'm just dead afraid of the schools up here this winter." Kit's

tone was tragic. "This year means so much to me in my work. I was

getting along gloriously, you know that, Jean, and from what the girls

here tell me, the schools can't touch ours in finish."

"How are they in beginnings?" Jean asked laughingly. "You poor old

long-sufferer, I know what you mean. Why don't you ask Dad and Mother

to let you board down at the Cove with the Phelpses, and keep up your

old class work right there until you finish High School anyway?"

"Seems like a desertion," said Kit. "We're here and we should stick it

out. I think you'd better go back with Gwennie."

"We ought to talk it over with Mother thoroughly. She thinks she's

giving us a week of extra pleasure, probably, and to us it's a

temptation that we're afraid we can't withstand, isn't that it?"

"Well, I feel like this, it's like taking a soldier out of the trenches

and throwing him into a seaside week end."

"Kit, you always exaggerate fearfully. You're a regular Donna Quixote,

tilting at windmills."

"But are you willing to go back?"

"I think we'll let Helen go. She will enjoy it and not take it a bit

seriously. Helen's poise will carry her through any crisis

triumphantly."

Kit agreed that the thought of Helen was really a stroke of diplomatic

genius. The waves and billows of circumstance only buoyed Helen up,

lighter than ever. They never went over her or disarranged her curls a

particle. Whenever Kit had one of her customary "brain storms" over

something and Helen suggested that she was "fussy," Kit always

retaliated with the statement that she was the only member of the family

with any temperament. Jean had imagination, and Doris gave promise of

much sentiment, but when it came to real temperament Kit believed that

she had the full Robbins allowance.

"You can call it what you like, Kit. I'd leave off the last two

syllables, though," Helen would say serenely.

"There you are," Kit always answered. "Only geniuses have any

temperament and when you've got one in the family you deny it. You'll

be sorry some day, Helenita. When you are darning stockings with a

fancy stitch for your great grandchildren I shall face admiring throngs

all listening for pearls of wisdom to fall from my lips."

"What do you think you're going to be anyway?"

"Haven't made up my mind yet, but something fearfully extraordinary and

special, Ladybird."

So now when the proposition was made after supper that Helen return for

a visit to the Cove with Gwen Phelps, Helen agreed placidly that it

would be rather nice, and Jean and Kit looked at each other with a smile

of deep diplomacy.

*CHAPTER XIX*

*RALPH AND HONEY TAKE THE LONG TRAIL*

The last week in July saw the end of Ralph McRae's visit at Greenacres.

He had been East nearly two months and Honey was to go back with him.

It was impossible to measure or even to estimate the inward joy of Honey

over the decision. Through some odd twist of heredity there had been

born in him the spirit of those who long for travel and adventure.

Every winding road dipping over a hillcrest had always held an

invitation for him to follow it. He had listened often to the distant

whistle of the trains that slipped through the Quinnebaug valley, and

longed to be on them going anywhere at all. At home in the little

parlor there were some old seashells that a seafaring great-grandfather

had brought back with him, and Honey loved to hold them against his ear,

listening to the murmur within. He had never looked upon the sea. To

do so was a promise he had made to himself. Some day he would go and see

it, and now Ralph told him that they would go part way by sea, up from

Boston to Nova Scotia, and around to the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and

up it to Lake Ontario, and on through the Great Lakes, and so up to the

ranch in the Northwest.

"I wish I were going too," said Piney. "I wish you were going, Mother,

and both of us youngsters. I'd love to take up a claim out there and

work it."

"Oh, dear child, what strange notions you do have for a girl," Mrs.

Hancock sighed. "I never thought of such things when I was your age. I

wanted to be a teacher, that was all."

"Why didn't you?"

"Well, your grandfather said I was needed at home, and so I stayed on

until I met your father when I was eighteen. Then I married."

"And maybe if he'd let you be a teacher, you wouldn't have wanted to get

married. I want to study all about trees and forestry and conservation,

and I want to ride over miles and miles of forests that are all mine.

I'm going to, too, some day."

"How old are you now, Piney?" asked Ralph.

"Going on sixteen."

"Maybe next year when I bring Honey home, we can coax Aunt Luella to

take a trip out with you. How's that?"

Mrs. Hancock flushed delicately, and smiled up at her tall nephew.

"How you talk, Ralph. That would cost a sight of money."

"Well, I tell you, Aunt Luella," said Ralph, his hands deep in his

pockets, as he leaned back against the high mantelpiece in the

sitting-room, "I want to hand over Greenacres to you and the children.

I haven't any feeling for it like you have, and it seems to me, after

talking it over with Mr. Robbins, that it rightfully belongs to you. He

would like to buy it, he says, inside of two or three years. They like

it over there, and propose to stay here in Gilead, but if you want to

take it over, I'm willing to transfer it before I go west."

It was said quietly and cheerfully, quite as if he were offering her a

basket of fruit that she was partial to, and Luella Trowbridge Hancock

sat back in her rocking-chair, staring up at him as if she could hardly

believe her ears.

"Ralph, you don't mean you'd give up the place yourself? Why, whatever

would I do with it? I love every inch of ground there and every blade

of grass, but you see how it is. Honey's set on going west and Piney

wants to go to college and I don't know what all. I couldn't live on

there alone, and they haven't got the feeling for it that I have. The

younger generation seems to have rooted itself up out of the soil

somehow. I wouldn't know what to do with it after I'd got it, and I

wouldn't take it away from Mrs. Robbins and the girls for anything.

Why, they love it 'most as well as I do."

"I know, Aunt Luella, but I wanted you to have the refusal of it,"

answered Ralph. "Now, then, here's the other way out. Supposing I make

it over to you, and you have the rental money, and then sell it to Mr.

Robbins when he is able to take it over. You'd have the good of it

then."

"That's the best way, Mother," Piney spoke up. "They have all been so

nice to us, and it's just as Ralph says. They do love it."

"You could come back east every now and then and visit if you did make

up your mind to live out at Saskatoon."

"Land alive, the boy speaks of journeying thousands of miles as if he

was driving up to Norwich. I went to Providence once after I was

married, and that's the only long trip I've ever taken from home."

"Then it will take you a whole year to get ready," laughed Ralph.

"Honey and I will be back for you next summer, and Piney shall have the

best pony I've got all for her own to make up for Princess."

The night before their departure Mrs. Robbins gave a dinner for them,

with Cousin Roxana and Mr. and Mrs. Collins from the Center church.

Piney was rather morose and indignant at the fate that had made the

first Hancock child a girl and the second one a boy.

"Honey'll like the horses and the traveling, but what does he know about

land and learning about everything? He's only fourteen."

But Honey did not appear to be worrying. He sat between Ralph and Helen,

and really looked like another boy in his new suit of clothes with his

hair cut properly. Helen was quite gracious to him, and Jean gave him a

second helping of walnut cream cake.

"We're going to miss you, Ralph," Mrs. Robbins said, smiling over at

him. She had heard the new business arrangement whereby Greenacres was

to become really the nest. It had been her suggestion first that Ralph

give the place to Mrs. Hancock, but since she had decided she would

rather have the sale price instead, a wave of relief had swept over the

Motherbird. The roomy old mansion had been a haven of refuge to her and

her brood during the storm stress, and now that fair weather was with

them, she found herself greatly attached to it.

Ralph colored boyishly. He could not bring himself even to try and

express just what it had meant to him, this long summer sojourn with

them at Greenacres. He had come east a stranger, seeking the fields

that had known his mother's people, and had found the warmest kind of

welcome from the newcomers in the old home. He looked around at them

tonight, and thought how much he felt at home there, and how dear every

single face had grown.

First there was Mr. Robbins's thin, scholarly one with the high forehead

and curly dark hair just touched with gray, his keen hazel eyes behind

rimless glasses, and finely modeled chin. Then the Motherbird, surely

she was the most gracious woman he had ever known excepting his own

mother. Her eyes were so full of sympathy and understanding that they

sometimes made him feel about ten again, and as if he wanted to lean

against her shoulder the way Doris did, and be comforted. Just the mere

sound of her soft, engaging laugh made trouble seem a very unimportant

thing in life. And Jean, almost seventeen, already a replica of her

mother in her quick tenderness and her looks. Ralph's eyes lingered on

her. She was a mighty sweet little princess royal, he thought. Then

Kit, imperious, argumentative Kit, so full of energy that she was like a

Roman candle.

It had been Kit's voice that had spoken the first words of welcome to

him the night of his arrival. He thought he should always remember her

best as she had stepped out of the shadows into the moonlight and given

him her hand in comradely fashion.

Helen beamed on him from her place next her mother. He came as near

being a knight errant as any that had come along the highway so far, and

Helen would have had him in crimson hose and plumed cap if possible. To

her Saskatoon meant nuggets and gold dust, and it did no good at all for

Jean to tell her she would have to adventure along the trail farther

north before she would find gold, and that the only gold where Ralph

lived was the gold of ripening harvest fields, miles upon miles of them.

Doris snuggled against his shoulder after dinner and told him over and

over again to send her a tame bear, one that she could bring up by hand

and train.

"Well, I guess you'll have your hands full, Ralph," Cousin Roxana

exclaimed, "if you fill all these commissions. I declare it seems as if

you belonged to all of us."

The days that followed were very lonely ones without Honey and Ralph.

Hedda's big brother came to work at Greenacres. He was a strong, big,

silent boy named Eric. About the only information even Kit was able to

glean from him was that he had gone barefooted in the snow in Iceland

and often stood in the hay in the barn to get warm.

The first week of August brought Gwen Phelps, and that auspicious event

should have satisfied anyone's craving for novelty.

"I don't know why it is that Gwen always riles me, as Cousin Roxy says,"

Kit told Jean after they were in bed the night of Gwen's arrival,

"unless it is the way she acts. You know what I mean, Jeanie, as if she

were the queen, and the queen could do no wrong. Helen kowtows to her

until I could shake her. Did you hear her telling that she was going to

Miss Anabel's School out at Larchmont-on-the-Sound? It's fifteen

hundred for the term, and extras, and it's nearly all extras. I know a

girl who went there--"

"Kit, you're getting to be as bad a gossip as Mrs. Ricketts," Jean

declared merrily.

"Well, I don't care. It isn't the way to bring a girl up. What if her

father were to lose everything like Dad, and she'd have to pitch in and

work, what on earth could she do?"

"Solicit customers for Miss Anabel," laughed Jean. "Go to sleep, goose,

and don't covet your neighbor's automobile nor his daughter's extras."

But before the week was over, Gwen was running around in a middy blouse,

short linen skirt, and tennis shoes like the rest of them. She and

Sally struck up a fast friendship. The sight of a girl hardly any older

than herself handling most of the cooking and housework in a large

family left a lasting impression on Gwen, and she respected Sally

thoroughly.

"Why, she bakes the bread and cake and everything, and even does the

washing," she told Helen. "And she says it isn't hard once you get the

swing of it. Hasn't she wonderful hair, Helen? It's coppery gold in

the sun. Think of her in dull green velvet with a golden chain around

her waist like Melisande."

"Wouldn't it look cute over the wash machine?" Kit agreed beamingly.

"Gwennie, you'll have to learn the fitness of things if you live out

here."

"I think I'd like to live here," Gwen replied stoutly. "I like it

better than the mountain resort where we went last summer down in North

Carolina. But of course you couldn't stay up here in the winter time."

"We are going to, though," Kit said. "Right here, with five big fires

going, and cord upon cord of wood going up in smoke. If you come up

then, Gwen, we'll promise you some of the finest skating along Little

River you ever had, and plenty of sleigh rides."

"You haven't a car now, have you?"

"Oh, but I could have shaken her for that," Kit said wrathfully, later

on. "When she knew we had to sell ours to her father."

"But she didn't mean anything, Kit," Helen argued. "I think you're

awfully quick tempered."

"I'm not. I'm sweet and bland in disposition. Don't mind me, Helenita

darling. I'm only madly jealous because I want everything that money

can buy for Mumsie and Dad and all of us. I do get so tired of doing

the same thing day after day. I'll bet a cookie even Heaven would be

monotonous if it were just some golden clouds and singing all the time.

I hope there'll be work to do there."

Jean drove them down to the station, and when she returned the house

seemed quite empty without Helen and Gwen. But she was soon too busy to

miss them.

Kit had been lent to Cousin Roxana for a few days to help her with her

canning and preserving. Doris had her hands full with a new calf, so

only Jean was left to help her mother study out the problem of new fall

dresses to be evolved from last year's left overs.

"When the royal family lose their throne and fortune they always have to

wear out their old royal raiment before they can have anything new,

Mother dear. One peculiar charm of living up here is that you are about

five years ahead of Gilead styles. Kit will look perfectly stunning in

that smoke gray corduroy of mine and she may have my old blue fox set

too. I'm going to make my chinchilla coat do another winter, and fix

over my hat till I defy anyone to recognize it. Hiram gave me a couple

of beautiful white wings. I don't know whether they came off a goose or

a swan--no, a swan's would be too large, wouldn't they? Anyhow, they

are lovely and I shall wear them and feel like the Winged Victory."

Mrs. Robbins smiled happily at her eldest. They were in the sunny

sitting-room, surrounded by patterns and pieces. The scent of camphor

was in the room, for Jean had been unpacking furs and hanging them out

to air.

"Clothes seem of such secondary importance in the country, probably as

they were intended to be. Cousin Roxy said the other day the only

fashion she ever bothered about was whether her crown of glory would be

becoming to her, because she hadn't the slightest idea how to put on a

halo and she'd probably get it on hind side before in the excitement of

the moment. Isn't she comical, Jean? But her heart's as big as the

world."

Jean sat on the floor straightening out patterns that had become

crumpled in packing.

"I wonder why she never married, Mother. She's so efficient and cheery."

"She was engaged," answered Mrs. Robbins. "Your father has told me about

it. To Judge Ellis."

"Judge Ellis?" Jean dropped her hands into her lap and looked up in

amazement. "Why, the very idea!"

"Have you ever met him, dear?"

"No, not him, but his grandson Billie Ellis. We met him when we went on

the hike over to Mount Ponchas. He must have married some one else

then, didn't he?"

"I believe so. They had a dispute a few days before they were to have

been married, and Cousin Roxana broke the engagement. They never spoke

to each other afterwards. She wanted to go up to Boston on her wedding

trip and on to Concord from there, and the Judge wanted to go to New

York, as he had some business to settle there and he thought he could

attend to it on the honeymoon trip. Roxana said if he couldn't take

time away from his business long enough to be married, she wouldn't

bother him to marry her at all. Even now it's rather hard deciding

which one was right. I'm inclined to think the very fact that they

could have a dispute about such a subject shows they were unfitted for

each other. If they had really loved, she would not have cared where

the honeymoon was held, and he would have granted any desire of her

heart."

"Well, if that isn't the oddest romance! Won't Kit love it."

"I hardly think I would talk much about it, dear. Roxy has never even

mentioned it to me and it might hurt her feelings. She's such a dear

soul I wouldn't worry her for anything."

So when Kit returned home from Maple Lawn, Jean told her nothing, but

Kit brought her own news with her.

"What do you suppose, Jeanie. We were rummaging in the garret after

carpet rags and there are old chests up there, and Cousin Roxy told me I

could look in them at the old linen sheets and things, and in one I

found"--Kit paused for a good effect--"wedding clothes!"

"I know," Jean said.

"You know? Why didn't you tell me, then?"

"Mother thought I had better not."

"Humph. I found it out just the same, didn't I? But she wouldn't tell

me who he was, and I coaxed and coaxed. I think he must have been a

soldier who died in the Civil War."

"Oh, Kit, when Cousin Roxy's only fifty-two! Do figure better than that.

You'll have her like the Dauphins, betrothed when they were about three

years old."

"And another thing I found out. Who do you suppose comes to see her

regularly? The Billie person. She lets him run all over the house, and

likes him immensely. We got real well acquainted. He calls her Aunt

Roxy, and if you could ever see the amount of doughnuts and cookies and

apple pie and whipped cream that boy consumes, you'd wonder how he ever

managed to get home! They must starve him over at the Judge's. Cousin

Roxy says he's so stingy that he'd pinch a penny till the Indian

squealed."

Jean was fairly aching to tell all she knew, but a promise was a

promise, and she kept it. That night, though, she dreamt that the Judge

and Cousin Roxy were being married and that she was chasing them around

with large portions of apple pie and whipped cream. Kit heard her say

in her sleep, very plaintively,

"Please take it."

"Take what, Jeanie?" she asked sleepily, but Jean slumbered on without

revealing the secret.

*CHAPTER XX*

*ROXANA'S ROMANCE*

Two weeks before school opened Helen came home. She was not changed at

bit, Doris said admiringly, just as if she had been gone a year.

"Oh, I like it here so much better than at the Cove," she told them. "I

wouldn't give our precious Greenacres for all the North Shore. Only I do

kind of wonder about school, Mother dear."

"Doris will go to the District school at the village and Kit and Helen

can drive over to the High School together. It is only five miles, and

they can arrange to put the horse up at one of the stables. In severe

weather Eric will take them over."

Jean was silent for a few moments. Right ahead of them she could see

the winter. It would take many cords of wood to heat the big house

thoroughly. There would be plenty of potatoes and winter vegetables

down in the cellar, plenty of jellies and preserves and pickles, but the

running expenses were still to be considered, and Eric's wages, and feed

for the pony and Buttercup.

"Mother," she said suddenly when they were alone, "have we really any

money at all to depend on? Please don't mind my asking. I think about

it so much."

"I don't mind, daughter. Aren't we all part of the dear home

commonwealth? Nearly all that Father had saved has dwindled away during

his illness. Stocks have depreciated badly the past year. Several that

we depended on are not paying dividends at all, and may never recover.

We have just about enough cash from the sale of the automobile and other

things, Father's law books and some jewels that I had--"

"Mother!" Jean sprang to her side, and clasped her arms close around

her. She knew how precious many of the old sets of jewelry had been,

things that had come from her grandmother on her mother's side. "Not

the old ones?"

"No. I saved those," the Motherbird smiled back bravely. "They are for

you girlies. But I had my earrings and two rings which Father had given

to me and I sold those. Oh, don't look so blue, childie." She framed

Jean's anxious face in her two hands. "Jewelry doesn't amount to

anything at all unless it has some dear associations. Do you know the

old Eastern legend, how the Devas, the bright spirits, drove the dark

evil spirits underground and in revenge they prepared gold and silver

and precious stones to ensnare the souls of men? I was very glad indeed

to turn those diamonds into Buttercup and Princess and many other things

that have made our new home happier."

"Wouldn't it make a lovely fairy story," Jean exclaimed, smiling through

her tears. "The beautiful queen with a magic wand touching her diamonds

and turning them into a cow and a pony and household helps."

"Then," continued her mother, "you know I have a half interest in the

ranch in California. That brings in a little, not much, because it isn't

a rich ranch by any means, just a big happy-go-lucky one that Harry, my

brother, runs. I hope that you girls will go there some time and meet

him, for he is a splendid uncle for you all. I receive about a thousand

a year from that. It isn't a cattle ranch. Harry raises horses. He is

unmarried, and lives there alone with Ah Fun, a Chinese cook, and his

men. I used to go out to the ranch summers when I was a girl. We lived

near San Francisco."

"And now you're clear away over here on a Connecticut hilltop."

"Dear, I would not mind if it were a hilltop in Labrador, if there are

any there, or Kamchatka either, so long as I was with your father. When

you love completely, Jean, time and space and all those little

limitations that we humans feel, seem to fall away from your soul."

It seemed to Jean as though her mother's face was almost illumined with

love as she spoke, so radiant and tender it looked. She laid her cheek

against the hand nearest to her.

"You make me think of something that John Burroughs wrote, precious

Mother mine, something I always loved. It is called 'Waiting.' May I

say it to you?"

She repeated softly and slowly:

"Serene, I fold my hands and wait,

Nor care for wind or tide or sea;

I rave no more 'gainst time or tide,

For lo! my own shall come to me.

"I stay my haste, I make delays,

For what avails this eager pace?

I stand amid the eternal ways,

And what is mine shall know my face.

"Asleep, awake, by night or day,

The friends I seek are seeking me.

No wind can drive my bark astray,

Or change the tide of destiny.

"What matter if I stand alone,

I wait with joy the coming years;

My heart shall reap where it has sown,

And garner up its fruit of tears.

"The waters know their own and draw

The brook that springs in yonder height;

So flows the good with equal law

Unto the soul of pure delight.

"The stars come nightly to the sky,

The tidal wave unto the sea;

Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high

Can keep my own away from me."

"Whoa, Ella Lou!" came Cousin Roxy's voice out at the hitching post.

"Anybody home?"

Kit sprang out of the Bartlett pear tree and Helen emerged from the

vegetable garden as if by magic. The Billie person sat beside Cousin

Roxy as big as life, as she would have said, and looked at the girls in

friendly fashion.

"The Judge is very sick," Miss Robbins began without preamble. "I'm

going down there with Billie, and I may have to stay over night. He's

pretty low, I understand, and wants me, so I suppose I'll have to go.

Good-bye. If you've got any tansy in the garden, Betty, I'd like to

take it down."

Jean hurried to get a bunch of the desired herb, and Mrs. Robbins

stepped out beside the carriage.

"Is he very sick, really, Roxy?" she asked.

"Can't tell a thing about it till I see him, and then maybe not. A

man's a worrisome creetur at best and when he's sick he's worse than a

sick turkey. I suppose it's acute indigestion. Dick Ellis always did

think he could eat anything he wanted to and do anything he wanted to,

and the Lord would grant him a special dispensation to get away with it

because he was Dick Ellis. I guess from all accounts he hasn't changed

much. I'll get a good hot mustard plaster outside, and calomel and

castor oil inside, and tansy tea to quiet him, and I guess he'll live

awhile yet. Go 'long, Ella Lou."

"Well, of all things, Mother," Jean exclaimed, laughing as she dropped

into the nearest porch chair. "And they haven't spoken to each other in

over thirty years. I think that's the funniest thing that's happened

since we came here. I want to go and tell Dad. He'll love that."

"What is it?" Kit teased. "I think you might tell us too. I didn't

know that Cousin Roxy knew the Judge."

"They were engaged years ago, dear," Mrs. Robbins explained, "and

quarrelled. That is all. Now he thinks he is dying and has sent for

her. And I suppose underneath all her odd ways, that she loves him after

all."

It was the first romance that had blossomed at Gilead Center and the

girls felt as eager over it as though the participants had been twenty

instead of fifty years of age. They waited eagerly for Ella Lou's white

nose to show around the turn of the drive, but night came on and passed,

and it was well into the next afternoon before Billie drove in alone.

"Grandfather'd like to have Mr. Robbins come down and draw up his will.

Cousin Roxy says he's been a lawyer, and there isn't another one

anywhere around."

"But, Billie, he isn't strong enough," began Mrs. Robbins. She was

sitting out on the broad veranda, a basket of mending on her lap, and in

the big steamer chair beside her was Mr. Robbins. "Is the Judge worse?"

"Oh, no, he's better. Aunt Roxy fixed him right up. He'd just eaten

too much, she said."

"I think I should like to go, dear," said Mr. Robbins. "You could go

with me, or Jean, and I should like to meet him again. I knew him when

I was a boy up here."

It was his first trip away from the house since they had moved there,

but now that the time had come, it seemed an easy thing to do, as if the

strength had been granted to him to meet just such a crisis. Mrs.

Robbins accompanied him, and they drove over through the village and up

two miles beyond until they came to the Judge's home, a large square

colonial residence on a hill, surrounded by tall elms and rock maples.

The green blinds were all carefully closed excepting in the south

chamber where Roxy held supreme sway now. She sat by his bedside,

wielding a large palm leaf fan, spick and span in her dress of white

linen, and there was a bunch of dahlias on the table.

"Come in, come in, boy," the Judge said in his deep voice. He stretched

out his hand to Mr. Robbins, and nodded his head. Such a fine old head

it was, as it lay propped up on the big square feather pillows, a head

like Victor Hugo's or Henri Rochefort's. The thick curly white hair

grew in deep points about his temples, and his moustache and imperial

were white and curly too. There was a look in his eyes that told of an

indomitable will, but they softened when they rested on his visitor.

"Sit down, lad; no, the easy chair. Roxy, give him the easy one. So.

Well, they try their best to get us, don't they? I thought last night

would be my last."

"Oh, fiddlesticks," laughed Miss Robbins. "Just ate too much, and had a

little attack of indigestion, Dick. You'll live to be eighty-nine and a

half."

The Judge's eyes twinkled as he gazed at her.

"Still contrary as Adam's off ox, Roxy. Won't even let me have the

satisfaction of thinking you saved my life, will you?"

"A good dose of peppermint and soda would have done just as well,"

answered Roxana serenely, turning to introduce Mrs. Robbins. "He says

he wants to make his will, but I think it's only a notion, and he wants

company. Still I guess we'll humor him. It seems that he was going to

leave everything he had to me. And I just found him out in time. The

very idea when he's got Billie, his own grandchild, flesh and blood, and

such a darling boy too. He can leave me Billie if he likes, but he

can't leave me anything else; so you make it that way, Jerry."

"Leave her Billie, Jerry," sighed the Judge, "leave her Billie, and me

too, if she'll take us both."

"Wouldn't have you for a gift, Dick," she answered, cheerful and happy

as a girl as she looked down at him. "You're a fussy, spoiled, selfish

old man, just as you always was, and I couldn't be bothered with you.

But I'll keep an eye on you so you don't kill yourself before your time

with sweet corn and peach shortcake, though I suppose it's a pleasant

sort of taking off at that. I'll take Billie and Betty with me around

the garden while you and Jerry fix up that will, and mind you do it

right. Billie's going to have all that belongs to him."

As the door closed behind her, the Judge winked solemnly at Mr. Robbins.

"Finest woman in seven counties. Ought to have been the mother of

heroes and statesmen, but there she is, mothering Billie and bossing me

to her heart's content. Do you think she'd marry me, Jerry?"

"I don't know, Judge," Mr. Robbins answered, smiling. "Roxy's odd."

"Well, maybe so. Go ahead and make the will as she says. Everything to

Billie, and make her guardian. All except," he stopped and his eyes

twinkled merrily, "the house in Boston. Jerry, lad, it's got all our

wedding furniture still in it just as it was thirty years ago. I bought

it and moved the stuff up there after she gave me the mitten, and it's

waited for her to change her mind these many years. I married for

spite, and my poor wife died after Billie's father was born. Served me

right, I guess. Anyhow, the house is there and she can take it or leave

it as she likes."

So the will was drawn up and Mrs. Gorham and Mrs. Robbins witnessed it.

Billie, standing down in the garden, showing Miss Robbins the flowers,

did not realize what was happening. He only knew that somehow the

barriers of ice were lifted between himself and his grandfather, and

that a new era had dawned for all of them.

He watched them drive away, and went back upstairs to the long corridor.

Roxana heard his step and opened the door of the sickroom.

"Come in here, Billie dear," she said. It was the first time that

Billie had ever been in his grandfather's room. He stood inside the

door, a sturdy, manly figure, barefooted and tanned, with eyes oddly

like those old ones that surveyed him from the pillow. He hesitated a

moment, but the Judge put out his hand, a strong bony one, yellowed like

old ivory, and Billie gripped it in his broad boyish one.

"I'm awfully glad you're better, Grandfather," he said, a bit shyly.

"So am I, Billie. Last night I thought my hour had come, but I guess it

was only a warning. A meeting with the Button Moulder perhaps. Do you

know about him? No? You must read 'Peer Gynt.' A boy of your age

should be well up on such things."

"And when has he had any chance to get well up on anything, I'd like to

know?" demanded Roxana, in swift defense of her favorite. "The boy

finished the district school a year ago. Been learning everything he

knows since then from Ben, your hired help. If the Lord has spared you

for any purpose, Dick, it is to bring up Billie right and teach him all

you know."

"Well, well, quit scolding me, Roxy. Do as you like with him. I'll

supply the money." The Judge pressed Billie's hand almost with

affection. "What do you want to be, lad?"

"A lawyer or a naturalist," said Billie promptly.

"Be both. They're good antidotes for each other. Talk it over with

him, Roxy, and do as you think best."

He closed his eyes, and Billie took it as a signal to leave the room,

but the Judge spoke again.

"Where you do sleep, Bill?"

Billie colored at this. It was the first time anyone had ever called

him Bill. He felt two feet taller all at once.

"In the little bed-room over the east 'ell,' sir."

"Change your belongings to the room next this. It faces the south and

has two bookcases in it filled with my books that I had at college. You

will enjoy them."

Billie went out softly, down the circular staircase to the lower hall

and, once outdoors, on a dead run for the barn. Ben was husking corn on

the barn floor, sitting on a milking stool with the corn rising around

him in billows, whistling and singing alternately.

Billie poured out his news breathlessly, and Ben took it all calmly.

"Well, I'm glad for ye. I always believed the Judge would come out of

his trance some day and do the proper thing. That Miss Roxy's a sightly

woman. Knows just how to take hold. Guess she could marry the Judge

tomorrow if she wanted to. Mrs. Robbins is a fine woman too. I never

see her before."

Somehow this didn't seem to fit in with Billie's mood, and he left the

barn. All the world looked different to him. He was wanted, really

wanted, now. He wasn't just somebody the Judge had taken in because

they were related and he had to out of pride. He was to have the big

south chamber right next the Judge's own room and study all he wanted

to. Best of all, since he had grasped that yellow old hand in his, he

knew that he could go to him with anything and that he really was going

to be a grandfather to him.

It was nearly two miles over to Greenacres if he went cross lots, but he

started. The goldenrod was high and in full bloom on every hand and

purple asters crowded it for room. The apple trees held ripening fruit,

and the fragrance of Shepherd Sweetings and Peck's Pleasants was in the

air. It was the last week in August when all the summerland seemed to

rest after a good work done, and the hush of harvest time was on the

earth.

In the woods he startled a doe and two fawns and they leaped ahead of

him through the brush. Farther along in the pines a partridge whirred up

under his nose almost, and coaxed him away from her young. Some young

stock, Jersey heifers and a few Holsteins, grazed in the woods, and

lifted grave eyes to watch him pass. Usually he would notice them, but

today all he thought of was the Judge's words, and the longing to talk

them over with somebody.

"Why, there's Billie," Kit exclaimed, looking up from some apples she

was paring for pies. Helen was reading on the circular seat that was

built around one of the old elms back of the house. "Come over here and

help."

Billie climbed the stone wall and came, flushed and triumphant.

Throwing himself down on the grass beside Kit, he told what had

happened, and she made up for all that Ben had lacked in enthusiasm and

imagination.

"Billie Ellis," she cried, setting down the pan of apples, and hugging

her knees ecstatically. "Isn't that wonderful? Why, you can be anything

at all now that you want to be. Oh, I'm so glad for you!"

Billie looked at her peacefully.

"I knew you'd take it like that," he said. "I just wanted to tell

somebody who would almost bump the stars over it, the way it made me

feel. Kit, you're a good old pal, know it?"

"Thank you, kind sir, thank you." Kit spread out her blue chambray

skirt and dropped a low curtsey. "When you come into your kingdom,

forget not your humble handmaid, Prince Otto."

"Who was he?" demanded Billie hungrily. "Gee, I'm tired hearing of

people all the time that I don't know about. I'm going to read my head

off now."

"So do, child, so do," laughed Kit. "He was a king who left his throne

to wander among his people and see how they lived."

"It must have been awfully hard to go back and stay on the throne. I

want to study hard and be somebody that Grandfather will be proud of,

but I like everyday folks mighty well."

Helen dropped her book and shook back her curls from her face. She had

hardly ever noticed him before, but now he seemed more interesting.

Still Kit was forever spending the largesse of her sympathy on anyone

who needed it just as Doris did on animals and birds and chickens. So

after a moment she went on with her book, "Handbook of Classical

History," preparing for her entry into High School with Kit the

following week. The joys and sorrows of the Billie person had small

place in her mind.

But Kit took him into the kitchen and gave him a big square of

gingerbread with whipped cream on it, and listened to him plan out the

future without a single word of depreciation or discouragement. The

world was golden, and Fortune had handed him a lighted flambeau and told

him to take his place with the other Greek lads and race for the prize.

"I just know you'll win out, Billie," she told him confidently, when she

said good-bye on the back steps. "Come down any time and we'll help you

out on your studies."

Jean and Doris had gone to the village for some groceries. Cousin Roxy

was coming to take supper with them. Kit set the table, with sprays of

early asters in the center, singing softly to herself Cousin Roxy's

favorite hymn.

"I've reached the land of corn and wine,

And all its riches freely mine,

Here shines undimmed one blissful day,

For all my night has passed away.

Oh, Beulah land, sweet Beulah land--"

"Does it seem like that to you, child?" asked her mother, coming lightly

down the long staircase and into the dining-room, mellow with late

afternoon sunlight.

"It's everything all rolled up in one," Kit answered happily. "It's

Beulah Land and the Land of Heart's Desire and the Promised Land, it's

the whole thing in one, Mother dear. Don't you feel that way too?"

And with her arm around the second daughter, the Motherbird led her out

on the wide veranda. They could see for miles, up and down the valley

and over the distant hills. Helen dropped her book when she saw them,

and came up the steps to hug up close too, on the other shoulder. And

down the river road they heard Jean and Doris driving and singing as

they came.

"Remember what we called them when we first came up, girls?" asked Mrs.

Robbins. "The hills of rest. Somehow when I look at them, the winter

doesn't frighten me at all. They look as if they could shelter us.

"'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,

From whence cometh my help,'"

she quoted softly. "They have given us security and happiness."

"And Dad's health," added Kit. "We've all worked hard, but I do think

we've got some results anyway, don't you, Helen?"

"Lots of preserves," said Helen dreamily.

Cousin Roxana joined them, chin up and smiling.

"He's sound asleep," she said. "Now that everything's kind of quieted

down, I don't mind telling you something. After Billie had gone, the

Judge and I talked over things before I had Ben hitch up Ella Lou, and I

don't know but what I'll have to move over there and take care of the

two of them. Land knows they need it."

"Oh, Cousin Roxy, marry the Judge?" gasped Kit.

"Well, I might as well," laughed Roxana. "We've wasted thirty years now,

and he'll fret and fuss for thirty more if I don't marry him. I'll sell

Maple Lawn, or you folks can have it if you like, rent free."

There was a moment's hesitation. No words were needed though. With two

pairs of arms pressing her until they hurt, the Motherbird said gently

that she thought the Robbins would winter at Greenacres.