“Not money enough!” said Mrs. Craig as though she could not believe it. “But we couldn’t think of going up there and all living with you, Becky.”
“You’re not going to,” answered Rebecca. “Thank the Lord, I live in a land where houses and food are comparatively cheap and there’s room for everybody. We don’t tack a brass doorplate on a rock pile like I saw there in New York, Margie, and call it a home at about ten dollars a minute to breathe. I’ve been telling Tom you’d better rent a farm near me, and settle down on it.”
“But Becky—” Mrs. Craig hesitated.
“Oh, Mom, do it, do it,” came in a quick outburst from Kit, standing back against the wall. “It would be swell for all of us and would do wonders for Dad!”
“We wouldn’t mind a bit. We’d love it, wouldn’t we, Tommy?” Doris squeezed Tommy’s hand to be sure he would answer in the affirmative. “We’d all help you.”
Tommy was silent, still too bewildered at the idea to express an opinion.
“I shouldn’t mind for myself, but we must think of the children—their schooling and what environment means to teen-agers. I suppose Jean could be left at school.”
“Thought she was all through school,” interrupted Rebecca.
“I am, only I’ve been taking lessons in town this winter in a special course, arts and crafts, you know, and next fall I was going into the regular classes at the National Academy of Design.”
“What for, dear?” Becky’s gray eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “Going to be an artist?”
“Not exactly pictures,” Jean answered with dignity. “Textile design.”
“Well, whatever it is, I guess it will hold over for a year while you go up to the country and learn to keep house. Kit here can go to high school. It’s seven miles away, but there’s a school bus that picks up those who live too far away to walk. It’s real handy.”
Kit’s eyes signaled to Jean, and Jean’s to Doris and Tommy. A fleeting vision of that “handy” trip to high school in the dead of winter appeared before them.
“What do you think of it, dear?” asked Mr. Craig, looking longingly up at the face of his wife. “It would be a great comfort and relief to me to get back to those old hills, but it doesn’t seem fair to you or the children. The sacrifice is too great. They do need the right kind of environment, as you say. Suppose we left Jean where she could keep up her studies, and perhaps put Kit into a private school. Then I might go up home with Becky, and you and the two younger ones could go out to California to Benita Ranch—”
But Mrs. Craig laid her fingers on his lips.
“You’re not going to banish us to Benita Ranch. If you think it is the best thing to do, Tom, we’ll all go with you. Wherever you go, I’m going.”
Doris laid her hand over Jean’s, and they stepped out softly. Their mother, they saw, needed to be alone with their father. They fled downstairs to the study back of the living room and were followed by Kit and Tommy who were already deep in an argument about the entire situation.
“I don’t think it’s right to move up there,” Doris said, judicially. “We may not like it at all, and there we’d be just the same, stuck in a rut, and maybe we never could get out of it, and we’d grow old and look just like Becky and talk like her and everything.”
“Take it easy, kid, be careful of what you say,” Kit said sharply. “Becky is odd in some ways but she influences a lot of people in her home town. And here too. I wish I had half her common sense.”
“I hate common sense,” Jean cried passionately. “I suppose it’s the only thing to do but did you see Mom’s face? It was utterly tragic. Dad’s been a country boy, and he’s going back home where he knows all about everything and loves it, but Mother’s so different.”
“I think Mom’s a darling, but she’s adaptable too, and she’ll go, you see if she doesn’t. And it won’t kill any of us. The really great mind should rise superior to its environment.”
“Let’s tell Kit that the first time she gripes about dishwashing,” Doris said. “I didn’t hear anything about Lydia going along, did you, Jean?”
“You’ll do your share all right, Kathleen, and when the gray dawn is breaking at that,” laughed Jean. “Farm life’s no snap and really, while I wouldn’t disagree with Dad and Becky about it, I think that those who have special gifts—”
“Meaning you?” asked Kit.
“Meaning me—should not waste their time doing what is not their forte. It takes away the work from those who can’t do the other things.”
Jean’s eyes twinkled and she smiled slightly, but Kit took her seriously and shook her head.
“You’re going to walk the straight and narrow path up at Elmhurst under Becky’s eagle eye just the same, Jean. It’s no use kicking. I don’t mind so much leaving this place, but we’ll miss the kids like crazy.”
“And the roller skating,” added Doris, who went to the neighborhood skating rink with a gang of boys and girls every Friday night. “I’m going to miss that. I wonder if there is a roller rink up there.”
“I see where Kit steps off the basketball team and learns how to run a lawn mower,” Kit remarked. “Also there will be no Wednesday evening dancing class, Doris, where you can polish your jitterbug steps.”
“I wish we could all move back to town and see if we couldn’t do something to earn money,” Jean said. “One of the girls in the art class found a job designing wallpaper the other day, and another one is making ceramics. When the fortunes of the Victorian family suddenly crashed, the humble but still genteel family usually took in paying guests, didn’t they?”
“Yes, but it went out of style ages ago, Jeannie,” Kit kicked off her shoes and stared at her blue angora socks. “We’ll not take in any boarders at all. I see myself waiting on table this summer at some hillside farm retreat for aged and respectable females. If we’ve got to work, let’s pitch in and help at home first.”
“And if it has to be, let’s not fuss and make things harder for Mom,” Doris put in.
“How about Dad?” Kit demanded. “Seems to me that he’s got the hardest part to bear. It’s bad enough lying there sick all the time, without feeling that you’re dragging the whole family after you and exiling them to Elmhurst.”
“It’s a riot, kids,” Jean said all at once, her eyes softening and her dimples showing again. “Just the minute any one of us takes Dad’s part, someone springs up and gives a yell for Mother, and vice versa. We won’t be lonesome up there so long as we have ourselves—you know we won’t—and if things are slow, then we’ll start something.”
“Will we? Oh, won’t we?” Kit cried. She got up, walked across the study, and put a stack of records on the phonograph. In a few seconds Begin the Beguine blared out and Kit did a few dance steps back to her seat.
“That’s better,” Jean said with a sigh of relief. “We’ve got to pull all together, and make the best of things. Dad’s sick, and Mother’s worried to death. Let’s promise ourselves to be as much help as possible and otherwise not get in the way.”
5. Busy Days Ahead
Becky departed for Elmhurst, Connecticut, the following Monday.
“I’d take you with me, Tom, if it were spring,” she said, “but the first of March we get some pretty bad spells of weather, and it’s uncertain for anybody in poor health. You stay here and cheer up and get stronger, and gradually break camp. If you need any help, let me know.”
It was harder breaking camp than any of them realized. They had lived six years at Sandy Cove, near Great Neck on Long Island. Before that time, there had been an apartment in New York on Columbia Heights. As Kit described it with her usual graphic touch, “Bird’s-eye Castle, eight stories up. Fine view of adjacent clouds. With field glasses on clear days, you could also see the tops of the Riverside busses.”
It had seemed almost like real country to the girls and Tommy when they had left the city behind them and moved to Sandy Cove. Tommy had the measles that year, and the doctor had ordered fresh air and an outdoor life for him, so the whole family had benefited, which was very thoughtful and considerate of Tommy, the rest said.
But now came the problem of weeding out what Rebecca would have called the essential things from the luxuries.
“Dear me, I had no idea we had so many of the pomps and vanities of this wicked world,” Jean said regretfully one day. There were eight rooms in the big home, all well-furnished. Living room, dining room and study, with Lydia’s domain at the back. Upstairs were four bedrooms. Sitting on the bed and the floor of Jean’s room, the three girls and Tommy were sorting out their belongings and piling up nonessentials to be thrown away.
“I can’t find anything more of mine that I’m willing to part with,” said Tommy flatly, stuffing a catcher’s mitt into a box already jammed full. “I’ll need that to practice with. What’s a luxury anyway?”
“Makes me think of Bob Phelps,” Doris remarked. “Last night when I went over to tell Mrs. Phelps that we couldn’t be in the Easter play, Bob was just having his supper, and he wanted more of the prune whip. His mother told him he mustn’t gorge on delicacies. So Bob asked what a delicacy was anyway, and he said some day he was going to have a whole meal made of delicacies. Isn’t that a scream?”
“Don’t throw away any pieces at all, kids,” Jean warned. “Becky says we’ll need them all for rag carpets.”
“You can buy rag rugs and carpets anywhere now,” said Doris.
“Yes, and oh, brother, at what prices too. We people who are going to live at Elmhurst will cut and sew our own, roll them in nice fat balls, and hand them over to Mr. Carpenter up at Denton, to be woven into the real thing at fifteen cents a yard. It’ll last for years, Becky says. When you get tired of it, you boil it up in some dye, and have a new effect.”
Kit regarded her elder sister in speechless delight.
“Jean Craig, you’re catching it!” she gasped. “You’re talking exactly like Becky.”
“What if I am. I don’t care,” answered Jean blithely, “it’s common sense. Save the pieces.”
“She who used to be most concerned about what she was going to wear to the next formal has suddenly changed her tune,” murmured Kit. “I marvel.”
She looked down at the garden, windswept and bare in the last chilly days of February. Yet there was a hint of spring in the air. An early robin was perched near the grape arbor they had all enjoyed so much, with its luscious grapes and ceiling of green leaves. Leading from it to the hedged garden at the back was a flagged walk.
The garage was of reddish fieldstone and, like the house, covered with ivy. A tall privet hedge enclosed the grounds. Memories of all the fun which they had enjoyed in the past six years passed through her mind. There had been picnics and dances, beach parties and tennis games. She hugged her knees, rocking back and forth anxiously.
“What’s eating you, Kit?” asked Jean, mildly. Jean was the first to have an emotional storm over the inevitable, but once it was over, she always settled down to make the best of things, while Kit was gloomy and raged inwardly for days.
“Wonder what we’ll really find to do there all the time. I don’t want to be a merry milkmaid, do you?”
“If it would help Dad and Mother, yes.”
“But definitely. You don’t have a monopoly on the desire to help, you know. We’d all walk from here to Elmhurst on our left ears if it would help Dad and Mother, but the fact that we’d do it wouldn’t make it any easier, would it?”
“Don’t be a dope, Kit,” said Tommy.
“Who’s a dope?” demanded Kit. “I’m just as ready to face this thing as anyone. If it were a small town up in the wilds, even, I wouldn’t mind, but it just isn’t anything but country.”
Jean pulled off the ribbon that tied her hair back and started pulling at a lock thoughtfully. “What’s Elmhurst then? Isn’t that a town?”
“No, it isn’t. It’s a village. Nearest town seven miles away, post office five. There used to be a post office there when the mail truck made the trip over, but they needed the building to keep the hearse in, so it’s gone.”
“You’re making that up, Kit,” put in Doris.
“I’m not,” protested Kit. “You can ask Becky. Nobody ever dies up there. They just fade away, and the hearse is seldom needed and was in the way. There are only nine houses in the village proper, one store, one church, and one school. Her house is a mile outside the village, so where will we be?”
“Is it on the map?” asked Tommy hopefully.
“Some maps. Township maps. This morning Mother and I were looking up how to get there. You’ve got your choice of two routes and each one’s worse than the other, and more of it.”
“Kit, you’re exaggerating.”
Kit ignored the remark, absorbed in her own forebodings.
“You can reach this spot by land or sea. Becky says that it takes five hours for anybody to get out of there once they’re in. You can take a boat to New London, ride up to Norwich on the train, transfer to a bus and rattle along for another hour, then hire a cab in East Elmhurst, and drive twenty minutes more up through the hills. Or you can take a Boston Express up to Willimantic, and hop on a side line from there. A train runs twice a day—”
“What road, Kit?” asked Doris. They leaned around her, fascinated at her sudden store of information.
“Any road you please. Central Vermont up to Plainfield, or Providence line over to South Elmhurst. There’s South Elmhurst and East Elmhurst and Elmhurst Green and Elmhurst Station. It really doesn’t seem to matter which way you go so long as it lands you at one of the Elmhursts. And Elmhurst Station is five miles from Elmhurst, Plainfield is seven miles, Boulderville is—”
“Oh, please, Kit, quit it,” Jean cried, both hands over her ears. “We’ll drive over anyway. Didn’t you know that Dad and I are going to take the car up first before the rest of you? We’re going to sell Mother’s car,” said Jean. “The Phelpses are going to buy it. Bob told me so.”
“Dad says it will pay nearly all moving expenses and keep us for months. What else could he do? Besides, we’ll still have one car, that’s enough. At least we won’t be completely marooned. He’d sell that one too only it’s an absolute necessity to have one. We’re going to have to buy a trailer, too, for hauling things. Anyway I want a horse to ride, don’t you, Kit?”
“Isn’t it queer,” Doris broke in, “when a father breaks down, it just seems as if a home caves in.”
“Well, it doesn’t do any such thing, Doris,” responded Kit stolidly. “It may seem to, but it doesn’t. Even if we are going to live five miles from nowhere with the eye of Rebecca forever resting upon us, there’ll be lots of fun ahead. What’s that about the world making a pathway to your door? I’m going to be famous some day and there’ll be a nice, well-worn path leading from New York up to Elmhurst, worn by the feet of faithful admirers.”
“It’s so nice having one genius in the family,” Jean answered, leaning her chin on one hand. “Now I don’t mind leaving the house behind, or the car, or anything like that. But it’s the people I like best that I can’t take up with me. Who will we know there, I wonder?”
“Human beings anyhow,” Doris stated. “We’ll make oodles of new friends. Besides, lots of the girls have promised to visit us. We’re not going to be lonesome.”
6. Pulling Up Stakes
It had been suggested that Kit and Jean stay behind to finish their schooling. They could board at the Phelpses’ home next to Sandy Cove along the shore road, but both girls begged to go with the family.
“Why don’t you stay?” advised Doris. “You’ll escape all of the moving and settling and ploughing.”
“We don’t want to escape anything,” said Kit firmly. “It isn’t any fun being left behind with the charred remains.”
“Oh, Kit, don’t call them that, it’s gruesome.”
“I don’t care. I feel gruesome when I think of being left behind. How do you suppose we’d feel to walk past the Cove and not see any of the rest of you around?”
“It’s better than being cut right bang off in the middle of everything,” replied Doris, with one of her rare explosions. “But everything,” she repeated tragically. “I can’t finish a single thing and I know I’ll never pass, being switched off to gosh knows what sort of a school.”
“Let’s not grouch anyway,” reminded Jean. “Mom’s getting thinner every day. As long as it’s got to be, let’s be cheerful about it.”
“I do wish that Kit wouldn’t be so happy about things that make you just miserable,” grumbled Doris.
Kit danced away down the hallway crooning:
“You’re an old tease, Kit,” Jean admonished in her very best big-sister style. “Please keep away from that crate of dishes.”
It had been decided to send Mr. Craig up before the moving, so he could have a week or two of rest at Maple Grove, Rebecca’s home. The latter was diligently sending down descriptions of adjacent farms and all sorts of home possibilities, but none seemed to fit the bill. Either there was too much land or not enough, or it was too far from the village or not far enough, or too much room or not room enough.
“For gosh sake,” Kit said one night, after all the family had suggested various possible houses, “let’s all tent out and do summer light housekeeping. We’ll never find just what we want—never, Mom. Jean wants a rose garden. I want at least a tennis court, even if we have to remove the hay fields. Doris wants wisteria arbors and a very large vine-covered porch. Tommy wants a dog, four cats, a hive of bees, a calf, and a pony. You want a house facing south, far back from the road, barn not too near, dry cellar, porch, century-old elms for shade, modern kitchen, indoor plumbing, and option of purchase, not over sixty-five dollars a month.”
“What do you want, Dad?” asked Jean. It was one of her father’s good days, when he was able to sit up in his big lounge chair before the fire in the bedroom, and be one of the family circle with them.
“Peace and rest,” smiled Mr. Craig.
“Me too,” Kit agreed, kneeling beside his chair and rubbing her head up and down his arm. “Dad and I are going to seek glorious peace the livelong day under some shady chestnut tree.”
“Dad may, but you won’t, Kathleen,” Jean laughingly warned. “It’s going to be a family project and you’ll have to do your share.”
“Wish we were going to an island,” Doris said wistfully. “I’ve always felt as if I could do wonders with an island.”
“Anybody could. There’s some chance for imagination to work on an island, but what can you do with a farm in Elmhurst?” Kit looked pensive with her head on one side, eyes half closed in melancholy anticipation. “Darling, precious old Dad here doesn’t know a blessed thing about farming—”
“Now, Kit, go easy,” Mr. Craig chided. “After all, I was born and raised on a farm. I should have learned something about it, I expect.”
“We’ll all be scouring pots, Kathleen,” offered Jean. “It’s the Craigs’ destiny. You know, Dad, I thought all along that Lydia would go with us. I thought she’d feel hurt if we didn’t take her, after she’d been telling us all these fairy tales about her native land where she loved to milk twenty cows at three A. M. I thought she’d simply leap at the chance of rural delights, and now she isn’t going along with us at all. She says she won’t go anywhere unless there are streetcars, tall buildings, and movies. It’s going to be tough without her.”
“Oh, I don’t believe it’s going to be nearly as bad as we expect,” Mrs. Craig said happily, as she passed through the room with her favorite silver candlesticks in her hands. “We’re facing the summer, remember, and I can’t help thinking that Rebecca will be a regular bulwark of strength to all of us.”
By the second week in March word came from the family’s bulwark that she thought the weather was mild enough for Jean and Mr. Craig to attempt the trip. Accordingly, the first section of the caravan set out on its trip to the land of oblivion, as Kit called it.
“It does seem, Mom,” Jean said at the last minute, “as if Kit ought to go with Dad, and let me stay down here to help you close up things. Kit knows how to drive.”
“I’d rather have you with your father.” Mrs. Craig laid her hands tenderly on Jean’s slender shoulders. “If I can’t be with him, I’d rather have the little first mate. Remember how he used to call you that, when you were only Tommy’s size?”
“Well, I feel terribly grown up now, Mother. Seventeen is really the dividing line. You begin to think of everything in a more serious way, you know. When I look at Kit and Doris sometimes, it seems years and years since I felt the way they do, so sort of irresponsible.”
“Poor old grandma.” Mrs. Craig laughed as she kissed her.
Jean had to laugh too, seeing the comic side of her aged feeling, but it was true that she felt a new sense of responsibility when they left New York for Elmhurst. The Saturday following their departure, the first carload of household goods left Sandy Cove. It had been a difficult job, weeding out the necessities from the luxuries, as Kit expressed it. Many a semi-luxury was slipped in by the girls on the plea that Father might need it, or would miss it. Kit had managed to save all the furniture from the study on this excuse.
“Books and pictures are necessities,” she declared firmly, saving a still life done in water colors. “This, for instance, has always hung over the desk, hasn’t it? Could we separate them? I guess not. In it goes, Doris, and see that you handle it with care. There’s one thing that we can take up with us and nothing can get it away from us, either, that’s atmosphere. Even if we have to live in a well-shingled, airy barn, we can have atmosphere.”
“Don’t laugh, Tommy,” Doris admonished as he dove into a mass of pillows. “Kit doesn’t mean that sort of atmosphere. She means—”
“I mean living with a copper vase. Miss Carruthers, our teacher at the art class, told us a story the other day about a woman she knew who was married to a band leader and they had to travel continually, living only in hotel rooms. She had a copper vase that she took wherever they went. She said even one familiar object like that, in strange surroundings, was the difference between living and just existing. Just think of Dad’s face if we can blindfold him, lead him into a lovely sunny room up there, take off the bandage, and let him find himself right in his own study just as he had it down here!”
“And as long as he’s going to stay in bed or lie on a couch he’ll never know what the rest of the house is like,” added Doris.
“But he’s not going to stay in bed, we hope,” answered their mother, catching up Tommy for a quick kiss, and for once he didn’t protest. “That’s why we’re going up there, to get him out into the sunlight as soon as possible, so he’ll get quite well again.”
Kit passed down the stairs completely covered with the burden which she bore. “I’ve got all the drapes, tablecloths, slipcovers, and underneath this load is me,” she called. “We may have to turn the attic into a cosy corner before we get through. It’s all in the effect, isn’t it, Mom?”
“I’m sorry that Dad sold your car, that’s all,” Doris remarked. Doris was the farsighted one of the family. “Bruce Pearson says he knows we could have gotten fifteen hundred for it just as easy as not. His mother told him it was worth every penny of fifteen hundred, and Dad let it go for eight hundred just because he liked the Phelpses.”
“Doris, dear, eight hundred cash is worth more than fifteen hundred promised,” Mrs. Craig said, smiling over at her. “And the car is several years old. I’m glad with all my heart that Mr. Phelps bought it, because they’ve been wanting one very much, and the children will get so much pleasure out of it.”
The children looked down at her admiringly, almost gloatingly, as she sat back contentedly in the low slipper chair in the sunny window.
“Mother, you’re a regular darling, truly you are,” Kit exclaimed. “You’re so big and fine and sympathetic that you make us feel like two cents sometimes when we’ve been selfish. Why do you look so happy when everything’s going topsy-turvy?”
Mrs. Craig held up a letter that Tommy had just brought in from the mailbox.
“Rebecca writes that Father stood the trip well and has slept every night since they reached Maple Grove. Isn’t that worth all the automobiles in the world?”
The eight hundred dollars in cash had been a helpful addition to their bank account. During the past few weeks, the girls and Tommy had learned what it meant to consider money, something they had never given a thought to before. While they had never been rich, they never had wanted, and never a suggestion of retrenching on expenses until now. Once they understood the situation, however, they all seemed to enjoy helping to solve the family problem. For several days Tommy had appeared to have something on his mind. Finally, he came in smiling and opened his hand, disclosing a ten-dollar bill. Kit staggered over to fall into a chair.
“Tommy, you mustn’t give your poor old sister sudden shocks like that in these days,” she exclaimed. “Where did you find that?”
“I sold Jiggers to Bruce Pearson,” Tommy replied, his eyes shining like stars. “He’s been asking and asking for him ever since I got him, and now I’ve done it. There’s ten dollars I got all by myself to help Dad.”
Neither Kit nor Doris spoke, but they regarded the youngest member of the family with the deepest pride and affection. Jiggers was a cocker spaniel puppy, the special property of Tommy, and they knew just what it took to part with him. Mrs. Craig took the crisp green bill from Tommy’s hand, while the tears slowly gathered on her lashes.
“It’s perfectly splendid of you, dear,” she said.
Tommy beamed and put his hands into his pockets. The family noticed that he kept carefully avoiding the window for outside was where Jiggers’ little kennel had stood. There are some things the heart cannot quite bear.
Much debating was held over the piano. The children loved it and declared it could not be true economy to part with it. It was a baby grand that they had had ever since the Riverside apartment days in town. Doris said she wanted to continue her practicing even if she couldn’t take any more lessons.
“Listen, Mom,” Kit said finally, “you know what I told you about the copper vase. That precious old piano is a copper vase and we’ll starve our inmost souls if we try to live without it. Why, we’ve loved it and pounded it for years.”
So it was boxed and shipped to Elmhurst as a copper vase, together with many another disguised necessity.
“They’ve turned into arrant smugglers,” Mrs. Craig wrote her husband. “And I cannot blame them, because I catch myself doing the same thing, packing things I should not take, and making myself believe they are essential. I’m sure I don’t see where we are ever to put everything in a farmhouse.”
Rebecca brightened up and smiled when that portion of the letter was read aloud to her. She was sitting in a straight-backed, split-bottomed chair by the south window in the sitting room, sorting out morning-glory and nasturtium seeds and putting them into old baking powder cans.
“Guess Margie’ll buck up some when she sees the house we think she will like,” she said.
7. Country Bound
While some of the Long Island farms had begun to look faintly green by the end of March, not a blade or a leaf was unfurled anywhere around Elmhurst. There was a feeling of spring in the air with a promise of buds ready to open.
Jean put on her yellow topper, tied a scarf over her head and put on a pair of pigskin gloves. She was waiting for Matt to drive around from the garage with the car and Ella Lou, Becky’s big tan and white collie. Matt was Rebecca’s hired help, smooth-faced and lean, somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty. He took care of three horses and two cows and worked the farm with outside help in busy seasons.
Ella Lou was a lovable dog who followed Becky wherever she went and since Jean’s arrival, she had taken to tagging her footsteps too. She knew every road in the township. Not a thing could be changed that Ella Lou did not take note of the fact the next time she passed by.
Today when Matt drove up with her, she was standing in the back seat with her muzzle hanging out of the window. She acted as wise and knowing as could be, turning her head around to look at Jean and barking just as if she was saying “We’re going after them at last, aren’t we?”
Becky stood at the screened pantry window, mixing pie crust. She leaned down and called some last advice as Jean got into the car and adjusted the rear view mirror.
“Park beside the express office, Jeannie. There’s usually plenty of room to park there. And have the girls and Tommy sit on the back seat ’cause them springs are kind of giving way, and your Mother’s nervous. And bring up a bulb for the hall light from the Mill Company Store. No, never mind,” just as Jean stepped on the starter, “’cause they don’t carry them, come to think of it. Goodbye. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding the way. Just keep on the main highway and you’ll get there.”
Jean laughed and waved her hand. It was the first time she had driven since she had come to Elmhurst and Becky was a little apprehensive about letting her go alone.
Maple Grove stood just at the crossroads, a white comfortable-looking house, one-and-a-half stories high, with a long low “ell” hitched on to the back, and a white woodshed leaning up against it for company.
Four great rock maples grew before its spacious lawn like a row of Titan sentinels. The Baltimore orioles and robins nested in them and contended with the chipmunks for squatter’s rights.
The house stood on a hill that faced the sunset. Down from the orchard sloped corn fields and rye fields. Below the winding white road was a deep ravine where a brook ran helter-skelter by hilly pastures until it slipped away into the cool shade of a quiet glen, sweet-scented with hemlock and spruce.
In the distance, hill after hill rose in mellowed beauty, each seeming to lean in sisterly fashion against the next taller one. The course of Little River could be traced down through the valley by its fringe of willows and alders. For perhaps fifteen miles it rambled, winding in and out around little islands, dodging old submerged trees that lifted skeleton arms in protest, spreading out above some old rock dam into a tiny lake, then dashing like some wild thing being chased through a mill run and out again into low, moist meadows, thick with flag and rushes.
At a point about a mile below the house stood the old Barlow lumber mill. Ella Lou barked at a dog as they passed by. Jean drove leisurely, knowing she had plenty of time. Once she put on the brakes suddenly when she saw a shadowy brown shape that skitted across the road in front of the car. She wondered whether it was a rabbit or a muskrat. Already she was catching the country spirit. Little objects of everyday life held a meaning for her and she found herself watching eagerly for new surprises as she drove along the old river road. How the kids would love it all, she thought, with a little tightening of her throat. It might be a little lonesome at first, but surely it was, as Becky said, a peaceful countryside.
The final decision on the new home site was to be left to her mother. Several places had been selected with a leaning toward Woodhow, but, as Becky suggested, Margie must be left unbiased to form her own opinion, although according to her way of thinking, no sensible person with half their wits could pass over the merits of Woodhow, or the wonderful opportunities it presented.
“It’s going to rack and ruin and it fairly cries out for somebody to take hold of it and get it in shape,” she had said. “I don’t know but what I’d drive by it if I were you, Jeannie, on your way back from the station, even if it is a little out of your way, just to see the look on your mother’s face when she sees it.”
It was a drive of seven miles down to Nantic, the nearest railroad station. Jean made it in good time and parked beside the express office, as Becky had suggested. Already, it appeared, Mr. Briggs, the station master, knew Jean, and smiled over at the trim, city-like figure pacing up and down on the platform waiting for the Willimantic train. This was the side line up to Providence that connected with the Boston express from New York.
“Expecting some of your family up?” asked Mr. Briggs pleasantly. Nobody could say that friendly interest in strangers and their affairs was not evinced around Nantic. It was part of the joy of life to Mr. Briggs to locate their general intentions.
“My mother and sisters and brother,” Jean answered happily.
“Figure on staying awhile, do they?”
She nodded rather proudly. “We’re going to live here. We’re Miss Craig’s cousins. You’ll have the freight car up with our goods this week.”
“Like enough,” said Mr. Briggs encouragingly. “Yes, I knew you belonged to Becky. I’ve known Becky herself since she was knee-high to a toadstool. There comes your local.”
Around the hillside bend of track came the train, the wonderful train that was bringing Mother and Doris and Kit and Tommy up out of the world of uncertainty and trouble into this haven of blossoming hopes. It seemed to Jean as if seconds turned to minutes. She wanted to stretch out both her arms to it as it slowed down and puffed, but there on the last car she caught a glimpse of Kit, one foot all ready to hop off, waving one hand and hanging on with the other.
“Oh, Mom darling,” Jean cried joyously, once she had them all safe on the platform. “It’s so beautiful up here, and Dad’s looking better every day. He sits up for a while now, and the old doctor told us the only thing that ailed him was a little distemper. Isn’t that a riot? Where are your trunks?”
But this was Mr. Brigg’s cue to come forward, hat in hand, and be introduced, so he took the baggage under his own personal supervision. It appeared that you never could tell anything about when trunks were liable to show up once they got started for Nantic, but, barring accidents, they’d come up on the six o’clock train, and there wasn’t a bit of use putting any reliance on that either, ’cause they might not show up till the milk train next morning.
“Hope you’ll like it up here,” was his parting remark, as they drove up the hill road, and Kit called back that they liked it already, much to Mr. Brigg’s delight.
Mrs. Craig sat on the front seat, both as the place of honor and in remembrance of Rebecca’s warning against the back springs. At the top of the hill Jean stopped the car, so they could look back at the little town. There was the huge one-story stone mill, covering acres of ground, with immense ventilators looking like those on steamships or like strange uprearing heads of prehistoric reptiles.
The little crooked main street could be traced by its lines of buildings, and back in a mass of trees stood the old French convent. Scattered everywhere were the houses of the mill workers, all of a uniform pattern, painted white with green blinds, and a patch of green yard to each.
Jean, flushed and proud of her responsibility, turned to pat Ella Lou’s head, then started the car and headed for home. The maple buds were swelling and looked rosy red against the thickets of dark shiny green laurel. Behind them rose slim lines of white birches.
“How far is it, Jeannie?” asked Doris. Just then the road came out on another hilltop overlooking the big reservoir. “Oh, look, look, kids,” she cried. “Isn’t it like a bit of out West, Mom? All those rocks and pines.”
“I’d rather have these gorgeous hills than all the mountains going,” Kit declared with her usual forcefulness. “We seem to be going up higher and higher all the time.”
“So we are,” Jean told her. “It’s a steady rise from New London to Norwich, then up to our own Quinnebaug hills. Are you warm enough, Mom?”
“Plenty,” said Mrs. Craig happily. “Though it is ever so much cooler here than on Long Island, isn’t it?”
“We’ve got an open log fire in your room all ready for you,” Jean replied. “You can just sit and toast away to your heart’s content.”
“For gosh sake, who ever had the courage to carry all the rocks for these stone walls?” asked Kit.
“Those are the stones that were ploughed up when the land was cultivated,” answered Jean. “The land here is particularly stony, so instead of wooden fences, the farmers use the stones they uncover for marking off their boundaries. Our house will probably have them too.”
“Oh, how you talk, dear,” laughed Mrs. Craig. “When we haven’t even a home yet. You’d think there was a baronial estate waiting for us.”
“There is,” Jean answered mysteriously. “Becky and I think that we’ve found the right place. Dad hasn’t seen it, of course, but I found it, and Becky said we couldn’t get it because somebody’d died, and it had gone to people out West.”
“Which gave our precious old Jean a chance to delve into mystery,” Kit suggested. “Yes, yes, go on, kid. You’re killing us with suspense. What did you find out?”
“Oh, I found him,” said Jean, enthusiastically. “He lives away out West in Saskatoon, and has never even seen this place, so he’s willing to sell it for almost nothing, $4,000, and even that includes the water power.”
Kit shook her head deploringly.
“Listen to the poor child, Mom. She chats of thousands as if they were split peas and she was making soup.”
“Shut up, Kit. He’ll rent it for sixty-five dollars a month, timber rights reserved excepting for our own use, and we can sell the hay.”
“How many rooms, dear?” asked Mrs. Craig.
“Seven,” replied Jean. “They call it Woodhow and I think it’s a beautiful name.”
“Where is it?” Doris inquired cautiously.
“When can we move in?” Tommy asked practically.
“Well, you can see the roof, I think, as soon as we get up to the top of Peck’s Hill. I’ll stop then. It’s fearfully lonesome, and maybe you’d rather be in the village. Becky says that some people do say—”
“Make her shut up,” Kit exclaimed. “Jean, you’re talking exactly like Becky. Isn’t she, Mother?”
“Never mind, dear. Go right on,” comforted Mrs. Craig, smiling at the eager young face beside her. Three weeks at Maple Grove had surely taken a lot of the spread out of Jean’s sails.
“I don’t think we’d be one bit lonely. It’s about a mile from Maple Grove, and half a mile from Mr. Peck’s place down the valley, and the mail goes right by the door. And there’s an old ruined stone mill on an island, and a waterfall, and a bridge, and big pines along the terrace in the front yard. It does need painting, I suppose, and shingling in spots, and the porch lops a little bit where it needs shoring up, Matt told me—” Jean stopped for breath.
“Specify Matt,” Doris asked mildly. “We don’t know a thing about Matt, Jeannie.”
“He’s the hired man, and he can do anything.”
“But, dear,” interrupted Mrs. Craig, “can’t you realize that there must be something wrong with it or it never would be rented for such a sum.”