yourselves down gradually, and not bolt out of the house as if you had
been evicted. If Bart went paperless and letterless this very first
morning, until he has met something that interests him more, he would
think about the lack of the news and the mail all day until they became
more than usually important!" So saying, Maria swept the stems and
litter of the flowers she had been arranging into her apron, and
annexing the Infant to one capable finger, all the other nine being
occupied, she went down the path toward the garden for fresh supplies,
leaving Ann-stasia, as the Infant calls her, to serve the coffee, a
prerogative of which she would not consent to be bereft, not even upon
the plea of lightening her labours!
"Isn't this perfect!" I exclaimed, looking toward a gap in the hills
that was framed by the debatable knoll on one side and reached by a
short cut across the old orchard and abandoned meadows of the farm
above, the lack of cultivation resulting in a wealth of field flowers.
"Entirely!" assented Bart, his spoon in the coffee cup stirring
vigorously and his head enveloped in the newspaper. But what did the
point of view matter: he was content and unhurried--what better
beginning for a vacation? In fact in those two words lies the real
vacation essence.
Meanwhile, as I munched and sipped, with luxurious irresponsibility, I
watched Maria moving to and fro between the shrubs that bounded the east
alley of the old garden. In her compressed city surroundings she had
always seemed to me a very big sort of person, with an efficiency that
was at times overpowering, whose brown eyes had a "charge bayonet" way
of fixing one, as if commanding the attention of her pupils by force of
eye had become a habit. But here, her most cherished belongings given
room to breathe in the spare room that rambles across one end of the
house, while her wardrobe has a chance to realize itself in the deep
closet, Maria in two short days had become another person.
She does not seem large, but merely well built. The black gowns and
straight white collars that she always wore, as a sort of professional
garb, have vanished before a shirtwaist with an openwork neck and half
sleeves, while the flesh exposed thereby is pink and wholesome. Hair not
secured for the wear and tear of the daily rounds of school, but allowed
to air itself, requires only a few hair-pins, and, if it is naturally
wavy, follows its own will with good effect. While as to her eyes, what
in them seemed piercing at short range melted to an engaging frankness
in the soft light under the trees. In short, if she had been any other
than Maria Maxwell, music teacher, Bart's staid cousin and the avowed
family spinster, I should have thought of her as a fine-looking woman
who only needed a magic touch of some sort to become positively
handsome. Coffee and paper finished, I became aware that Bart was gazing
at me.
"Well," I said, extending my hand, "what next?" I had speedily made up
my mind that Bart should take the initiative in our camping-out
arrangement, and I therefore did not suggest that the first thing to be
done was to set our camp itself in order.
"Come out," he said, taking my hand in the same way that the Infant does
when she wishes to lead the way to the discovery of the fairyland that
lies beyond the meadows of the farm. So we sauntered out. Once under
the sun, the same delicious thought occurred to each that, certain
prudences having been seen to, we were for the time without
responsibilities, and the fact made us laugh for the very freedom of it
and pull one another hither and thither like a couple of children.
Meanwhile the word _knoll_ had not been uttered, but our feet were at
once drawn in its direction by an irresistible force, and presently we
found ourselves standing at the lower end of the ridge and looking up
the slope!
"I wish we had a picture of it as it must have been before the land was
cleared,--it would be a great help in replanting," I said; "it needs
something dense and bold for a background to the rocks."
"The skeleton of the old barn on the other side spoils it; it ought to
come down," was Bart's rejoinder. "It seems as if everything we wish to
do hinges on some other thing."
This barn had been set back against the knoll so that from the house the
hayloft window seemed like a part of a low shed. Certainly our forbears
knew the ways of the New England wind very thoroughly, judging by the
way they huddled their houses and outbuildings in hollows or under
hillsides to avoid its stress. And when they couldn't do that, they
turned sloping, humpbacked roofs toward the northeast to shed the snow
and tempt the wind in its wild moods to play leapfrog and thus pass
over.
Such a roof as this has the house at the next farm, and judging by the
location of the old hay barn, and the lay of the road, it must have once
belonged to this adjoining property rather than to ours.
Slowly we circled the knoll, dropped into the hollow, and stood upon the
uneven floor of wide chestnut planks that was to be our camp. Other
lodgers had this barn besides ourselves and, unlike ourselves,
hereditary tenants. Swallows of steel-blue wings hung their nests in a
whispering colony against the beams, a pair of gray squirrels arched
their tails at us and chattering whisked up aloft, where they evidently
have a family in the dilapidated pigeon cote, while among some
cornstalks and other litter in the low earth cellar beneath we could
hear the rustling doubtless born of the swift little feet of mice. (Yes,
I know that it is a feminine quality lacking in me, but I have never yet
been able to conjure up any species of fear in connection with these
playful little rodents.)
The cots, table, chairs, and screens were as I had placed them several
days ago; but it was not the interior that held us but the view looking
eastward across the sunlit meadows. In fact this side of the barn had
the wide openings of an observatory. The gnarled apple trees of the
orchard still bore pink-and-white wreaths on the shady side, and the
purling of bluebirds blended with the voice of the river that ran
between the hills afar off--the same stream that further up country was
to be pent between walls and prisoned to make a reservoir. Sitting
there, we gazed upon the soft yet glowing beauty of it all, with never a
thought of pick and spade, grub axe or crowbar, to pry between the rocks
of the knoll to find the depth or quality of its soil or test the
planting possibilities.
"Let us go up to the woods and see Blake; he wrote me that he is to be
there to-day, and suggested we should both meet him and see the
treasure-trove to be found there before the spring blossoms are quite
shed," said Bart, suddenly, fumbling among the letters in his pocket;
"and by the way, he said he would come back with us. He evidently
forgets that we are not 'at home' to company!"
"But _The Man from Everywhere_ is not company. He is simply a permanent
institution and can go on dropping in as usual all summer if he likes.
Ann-stasia adores him, for did he not bring her a beautiful sandalwood
rosary of carved beads from somewhere and a pair of real tortoise-shell
combs not two months ago? And of course Maria Maxwell will not object;
why should she? he will come and go as usual, and she will hardly know
that he is in the house."
Barney harnessed the mild-faced horse of our neighbour's lending to that
most comfortable of all vehicles, a buggy with an ample box behind and a
top that can be dropped and made into a deep pocket to hold gleanings,
or raised as a shield from sun and rain. Ah! dear Mrs. Evan, is there
anything that turns a sober, settled married couple backward to the
enchanted "engaged" region like driving away through the spring lanes in
a buggy pulled by a horse who has had nature-loving owners, so that he
seems to know by intuition when to pause and when it would be most
acceptable to his passengers to have him wander from the beaten track
and browse among the tender wayside grasses that always seem so much
more tempting than any pasture grazing?
As you will infer from this, Romeo is not only of a gentle, meditative
disposition, but his harness is destitute of a check rein, overdraw, or
otherwise.
"Have you put in the trowels?" I asked, as we drove out the gate, the
reins hanging so loosely from between Bart's knees, as he lit his pipe,
that it was by mere chance that Romeo took the right turn.
"No, I never thought of them; this is merely a prospecting trip. Did you
put in the lunch?"
I was obliged to confess that I had not, but later on a box of
sandwiches was found under the seat in company with Romeo's nose-bag of
oats, this indication being that, as Barney alone knew directly of our
destination, he must have informed Anastasia, who took pity, regarding
us, as she does, as a cross between lunatics and the babes in the woods.
We chose byways, and only crossed the macadamized highroad, that haunt
of automobiles, once, and after an hour's sauntering crossed the river
and drove into the woodlots to the north of it, now the property of the
water company, who have already posted warning to trespassers. We
straightway began to trespass, seeing _The Man from Everywhere_ on
horseback coming down to meet us.
Without an apparent change of soil or altitude, the scenery at once grew
more bold and dramatic.
"What is it?" I said. "We have been driving through lanes lined by
dogwood and yet that little tree below and the scrubby bit of hillside
make a more perfect picture than any we have seen!"
[Illustration: THE PICTORIAL VALUE OF EVERGREENS.]
Bart, who had left the buggy and was walking beside it with _The Man_,
who had dismounted and led his nag, turned and looked backward, but did
not answer.
"It is the evergreens that give it the quality," said _The Man_, "even
though they are only those stiff little Noah's-ark cedars. I notice it
far and wide, wherever I go; a landscape is never monotonous so long as
there is a pine, spruce, hemlock, or bit of a cedar to bind it together.
I believe that is why I am never content for long in the land of palms!"
"I love evergreens in winter, but I've never thought much about them in
the growing leafy season; they seem unimportant then," I said.
"Unimportant or not, they are still there. Look at that wall of trees
rising across the river! Every conceivable tint of green is there,
besides shades of pink and lavender in leaf case and catkin, but what
dominates and translates the whole? The great hemlocks on the crest and
the dark pointed cedars off on the horizon where the woodland thins
toward the pastures. Whether you separate them or not, they are there.
People are only just beginning to understand the value of evergreens in
their home gardens, both as windbreaks and backgrounds. No, I don't mean
stark, isolated specimens, stiff as Christmas trees. You have a
magnificent chance to use them on that knoll of yours that you are going
to restore!"
As he was speaking I thought Bart paid very scant attention, but
following his pointing finger I at once saw what had absorbed him. On
the opposite side of the river, extending into the brush lots, was a
knoll the size and counterpart of ours, even in the way that it lay by
the compass, only this was untouched, as nature planned it, and the
model for our restoration.
"Do you clear the land as far back as this?" Bart asked of _The Man_,
eagerly.
"Yes, not for the sake of the land, but for the boulders and loose rock
on those ledges; all the rock hereabout will be little enough for our
masonry!"
"Then," said Bart, "I'm going to transplant the growth on this knoll,
root and branch, herb and shrub, moss and fern, to our own, if it takes
me until Christmas! It isn't often that a man finds an illustrated plan
with all the materials for carrying it out under his hand for merely the
taking. There are enough young hemlocks up there to windbreak our whole
garden. The thing I'm not sure about is just when it will do to begin
the transplanting. Meanwhile I'll make a list of the plants we know that
we can add to as others develop and blossom."
So he set to work on his list then and there, _The Man from Everywhere_
helping, because he can name a plant from its leaves or even the twigs.
I said that I would write to you _at once_ and ask you or Evan to tell
us about the best way to transplant all the wild things, except woody
shrubs and trees, because we know it's best to wait for those until leaf
fall. But as it turns out, I've waited six days--oh! such aggravating
days when there is so much to decide and do!
That afternoon _The Man_ rode home with us, as a matter of course, we
quite forgetting that instead of late dinner, as usual, the meal would
be tea, as the Infant and Maria Maxwell are to dine now at one! As a
shower threatened, it seemed much more natural for us to turn into the
house than the camp, and before I knew how it happened I was sitting at
the head of my own table serving soup instead of tea! I dared not look
at Maria, but as the meal was nearly ended she remarked demurely,
looking out of the west window to where the shower was passing off
slantwise, leaving a glorious sunset trail in its wake, "Wouldn't you
like to have your coffee in camp, as the rain forced you to take dinner
indoors?" by which I knew that Maria would not allow us to lose sight of
our outdoor intentions.
Bart laughed, and _The Man_, gazing around the table innocently said,
"Oh, has _it_ begun, and am I intruding and breaking up plans? Why
didn't you tell me?"
So we went out through the sweet-smelling twilight, or rather the glow
that comes before it, and as we idly sipped the coffee, lo and behold,
the old farm lay before us--a dream picture painted by the twilight! The
little window-panes, iridescent with age and bulged into odd shapes by
yielding sashes, caught the sunset hues and turned to fire opals; the
light mist rising over the green meadows where the flowers now slept
with heads bent and eyes closed lent the green and pearl tints of those
mysterious gems to which drops of rain or dew strung everywhere made
diamond settings.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Bart, "how beautiful the Opie farm looks to-night!
If a real-estate agent could only get a photograph of what we see, we
should soon have a neighbour to rescue the place!"
"You mustn't call it the Opie farm any more; it is Opal Farm from
to-night!" I cried, "and no one shall buy it unless they promise to
leave in the old windows and let the meadow and crab orchard stay as
they are, besides giving me right of way through it quite down to the
river woods!"
But to get back by this circuitous route to the threatened danger with
which I opened this letter--
The postman whistled, as he has an alluring way of doing when he brings
the evening mail, always hoping that some one will come out for a bit of
evening gossip, in which he is rarely disappointed.
We all started to our feet, but Maria, whose special duty it had become
to look over the mail, distanced us all by taking a short cut,
regardless of wet grass.
Talk branched into divers pleasant ways, and we had almost forgotten her
errand when she returned and, breaking abruptly into the conversation,
said to Bart, "Sorry to interrupt, but the postman reports that there
are three large crates of live stock down at the station, and the agent
says will you please send for them to-night, as he doesn't dare leave
them out, there are so many strangers about, and they will surely stifle
if he crowds them into the office!"
"Live stock!" exclaimed Bart, "I'm sure I've bought nothing!" Then, as
light broke in his brain,--"Maybe it's that setter pup that Truesdale
promised me as soon as it was weaned, which would be about now!"
"Would a setter pup come in three crates?" inquired _The Man_, solemnly.
"It must be live plants and not live stock!" I said, coming to Bart's
rescue, "for Aunt Lavinia Cortright wrote me last week that she was
sending me some of her prize pink Dahlias, and some gladioli bulbs!"
"Possibly these might fill three large cases!" laughed Bart, in his
turn.
"Why not see if any of those letters throw light upon the mystery, and
then I'll help 'hook up,' as I suppose Barney has gone home, and we will
bring up the crates even if they contain crocodiles!" said _The Man_,
cheerfully. Complications always have an especially cheering effect upon
him, I've often noticed.
The beams of a quarter moon were picturesque, but not a satisfactory
light by which to read letters, especially when under excitement, so
Bart brought out a carriage lantern with which we had equipped our camp,
and proceeded to sort the mail, tossing the rejected letters into my
lap.
Suddenly he paused at one, extra bulky and bearing the handwriting of
his mother, weighed it on the palm of his hand, and opened it slowly.
From it fell three of the yellow-brown papers upon which receipts for
expressage are commonly written; I picked them up while Bart read
slowly--
"MY DEAR SON,
"We were most glad to hear through daughter Mary of your eminently
sensible and frugal plan for passing your summer vacation in the
improvement of your land without the expense of travel.
"Wishing to give you some solid mark of our approval, as well as to
contribute what must be a material aid to your income, father and I send
you to-day, by express, three crates of Hens--one of White Leghorns, one
of Plymouth Rocks, and one of Brown Dorkings, a male companion
accompanying each crate, as I am told is usual. We did not select an
incubator, thinking you might have some preference in the matter, but it
will be forthcoming when your decision is made.
"Of course I know that you cannot usually spare the time for the care of
these fowls, but it will be a good outdoor vocation for Mary, amusing
and lucrative, besides being thoroughly feminine, for such poultry
raising was considered even in my younger days.
"A book, _The Complete Guide to Poultry Farming_, which I sent Mary a
year ago on her birthday, as a mere suggestion, will tell her all she
need know in the beginning, and the responsibility and occupation itself
will be a good corrective for giving too much time to the beauties of
the flower garden, which are merely pleasurable.
"I need not remind you that the different breeds should be housed
separately, but you who always had a gift for carpentry can easily
arrange this. Indeed it was only yesterday that in opening a chest of
drawers I came across a small lead saw bought for sixpence, with which
you succeeded in quite cutting through the large Wisteria vine on
Grandma Bartram's porch! I wished to punish you, but she said--'No,
Susanna, rather preserve the tool as a memento of his industry and
patience.'
"I wish that I could be near to witness your natural surprise on
receiving this token of our approval, but I must trust Mary to write us
of it.
"Your mother,
"SUSAN BARTRAM PENROSE."
With something between a groan and a laugh Bart dropped this letter into
my lap, with the others.
"So, after a successful struggle all these five years of our country
life against the fatal magnetism of _Hens_ that has run epidemic up and
down the population of commuting householders, bringing financial
prostration to some and the purely nervous article to others; after
avoiding 'The Wars of the Chickens, or Who scratched up those Early
Peas,'--events as celebrated in local history as the Revolution or War
of the Rebellion,--we are to be forced into the chicken business for the
good of Bart's health and pocket, and my mental discipline, and also
that a thrifty Pennsylvania air may be thrown about our altogether too
delightful and altruistic summer arrangements! It's t-o-o bad!" I
wailed.
Of course I know, Mrs. Evan, that I was in a temper, and that my
"in-laws" mean well, but since comfortable setting hens have gone out of
fashion, and incubators and brooders taken their place, there is no more
pleasure or sentiment about raising poultry than in manufacturing any
other article by rule. It's a business, and a very pernickety one to
boot, and it's to keep Bart away from business that we are striving.
Besides, that chicken book tells how many square feet per hen must be
allowed for the exercising yards, and how the pens for the little chicks
must be built on wheels and moved daily to fresh pasture. All the
vegetable garden and flower beds and the bit of side lawn which I want
for mother's rose garden would not be too much! But I seem to be leaving
the track again.
Bart didn't say a word, except that "At any rate we must bring the fowls
up from the station," and as the stable door was locked and the key in
Barney's pocket, Bart and _The Man_ started to walk down to the village
to look him up in some of his haunts, or failing in this to get the
express wagon from the stable.
Maria and I sat and talked for some time about _The_ _Man from
Everywhere_, the chickens, and the location of the rose beds. She is
surprisingly keen about flowers, considering that it is quite ten years
since her own home in the country was broken up, but then I think this
is the sort of knowledge that stays by one the longest of all. I hope
that I have succeeded in convincing her that _The Man_ is not company to
be bothered about, but a comfortable family institution to come and go
as he likes, to be taken easily and not too seriously.
When the moon disappeared beyond the river woods, we went to the
southwest porch, and there decided that the piece of lawn where we had
some uninteresting foliage beds one summer was the best place for the
roses and we might possibly have a trellis across the north wall for
climbers. Would you plant roses in rows or small separate beds? And how
about the soil? But perhaps the plan you are sending me will explain all
this.
It was more than an hour before the men returned, and, not having found
Barney, Bart had signed for the poultry in order to leave the express
agent free to go home, and had left word at the stable for them to send
the crates up as soon as the long wagon returned from Leighton, whither
it had gone with trunks.
After much discussion we decided that the fowls should be housed for
the night in the small yard back of the stable, where the Infant's cow
(a present from _my_ mother) spends her nights under the shed.
"Did you find any signs of a chicken house on the place when you first
came?" asked Maria, in a matter-of-fact tone, as if its location was the
only thing now to be considered.
"Yes, there was one directly in the fence line at the eastern gap where
we see the Three Brothers Hills," said Bart, "and I've always intended
to plant a flower bed of some sort there both to hide the gap in the
wall and that something may be benefited by the hen manure of decades
that must have accumulated there!"
"How would the place do for the new hen-house?" pursued Maria,
relentlessly.
"Not at all!" I snapped very decidedly: "it is directly in the path the
cool summer winds take on their way to the dining room, and you know at
best fowl houses are not bushes of lemon balm!"
"Then why not locate your bed of good-smelling things in the gap, and
sup on nectar and distilled perfume," said _The Man from Everywhere_,
soothingly.
"The very thing! and I will write Mrs. Evan at once for a list of the
plants in her 'bed of sweet odours,' as she calls it." Then presently,
as the men sat talking, Maria having gone into the house, our summer
work seemed to lie accomplished and complete before me, even as you once
saw your garden of dreams before its making,--the knoll restored to its
wildness, ending not too abruptly at the garden in some loose rock; the
bed of sweet odours filling the gap between it and the gate of the
little pasture in the rear; straight beds of hardy plants bordering the
vegetable squares; the two seed beds topping the furthest bit, then a
space of lawn with the straight walk of the old garden running through,
to the sundial amid some beds of summer flowers at the orchard end,
while the open lawn below the side porch is given up to roses!
I even crossed the fence in imagination, and took in the possibilities
of Opal Farm. If only I could have some one there to talk flowers and
other perplexities to, as you have Lavinia Cortright, without going
through the front gate!
Two hours must have passed in pleasant chat, for the hall clock, the
only one in the front part of the house we had not stopped, was chiming
eleven when wheels paused before the house and the latch of the gate
that swung both ways gave its double click!
"The hens have come!" I cried in dismay, the dream garden vanishing
before an equally imaginary chorus of clucks and crows.