Joe looked around at them with his old confident smile.

“See?” he said. “I told you I was coming back.”

“And you’re going to stay too,” replied Jean, thankfully. “I’m so glad you’re not under the snow, Joe. You’d better run down and get in that kindling for Shad.”

This took real pluck, but Joe rose bravely, and went out, and Shad’s heart must have thawed a little too, for he came in later whistling and said the little skeezicks was doing well.

Jean laughed and sank back in the big red rocker with happy weariness.

“And Bab said this country was monotonous,” she exclaimed. “If anything else happens for a day or so, I’m going to find a woodchuck hole and crawl into it to rest up.”

The night of the entertainment down at the Town Hall finally arrived. Doris said it was one of the specially nice things about Gilead, things really did happen if you just waited long enough. There was not room enough for all the family in the buggy or democrat with only one horse, so the Judge sent Ben down to drive Mrs. Gorham over and the two youngest. Shad took the rest with Princess. All along the road they met teams coming from various side roads, and the occupants sent out friendly hails as they passed. It was too dark to recognize faces, but Kit seemed to know the voices.

“That’s Sally Peckham and her father,” she said. “And Billy’s on the back seat with the boys. I heard him laugh. There’s Abby Tucker and her father. I hope her shoes won’t pinch her the way they did at our lawn party last year. And Astrid and Ingeborg from the old Ames place on the hill. Hello, girls! And that last one is Mr. Ricketts and his family.”

“Goodness, Kit,” Jean cried. “You’re getting to be just like Cousin Roxy on family history. I could never remember them all if I lived out here a thousand years.”

“ ‘An I should live a thousand years, I ne’er should forget it,’ ” chanted Kit, gaily. “Oh, I do hope there’ll be music tonight. Cousin Roxy says she’s tried to hire some splendid old fellow, Cady Graves. Isn’t that a queer name for a fiddler? He’s very peculiar, she says, but he calls out wonderfully. He’s got his own burial plot all picked out and his tombstone erected with his name and date of birth on it, and all the decorations he likes best. Cousin Roxy says it’s square, and on one side he’s got his pet cow sculptured with the record of milk it gave, and on the other is his own face in bas relief.”

“It’s original anyway,” said Jean. “I suppose there is a lot of satisfaction in fixing up your own last resting place the way you want it to be.”

“Yes, but after he’d sat for the bas relief, there it was with a full beard, and now he’s clean shaven, and Cousin Roxy says if he didn’t get the stone cutter over to give the bas relief a shave too.”

Down Huckleberry Hill they drove with all its hollows and bumps and “thank-ye-ma’ams.” These were the curved rises where the road ran over a hidden culvert. Gilead Center lay in a valley, a scattered lot of white houses set back from the road in gardens with the little church, country store and Town Hall in the middle of it. The carriage sheds were already filled with teams, so the horses were blanketed and left hitched outside with a lot of others. Inside, the little hall was filled with people, the boys perched up on the windowsills where they could get a good view of the long curtained-off platform that was used as a stage.

Cousin Roxy was busy at her end of the room, preparing the supper behind a partition, with Mrs. Peckham and Mrs. Gorham to help. Around the two great drum stoves clustered the men and older boys, and the Judge seemed to loom quite naturally above these as leader. Savory odors came from the corner, and stray tuning up sounds from another corner, where Mr. Graves sat, the center of an admiring group of youngsters. Flags were draped and crossed over doorways and windows, and bunting festooned over the top of the stage.

Jean took charge behind the curtain, getting the children ready for their different parts in the tableaux. Then she went down to the old tinkling, yellow keyed piano and everybody stood up to sing “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.”

“Land alive, it does grip the heartstrings, doesn’t it?” Cousin Roxy exclaimed, once that was over. “I often wish I’d done something in my life to give folks a happy holiday every time my birthday came ’round.”

Then the Judge rose and took the platform, so tall that his head just missed the red, white and blue bunting overhead. And he spoke of Lincoln until it seemed as if even the smallest children in the front rows must have seen and known him too. Jean and Kit always enjoyed one of the Judge’s speeches, not so much for what he said, as for the pleasure of watching Cousin Roxy’s face. She sat on the end of a seat towards the back now, all in her favorite gray silk, her spectacles half way down her nose, her face upraised and smiling as she watched her sweetheart deliver his speech.

“When you look at her you know what it means in the Bible by people’s faces shining, don’t you?” whispered Kit, as the Judge finished in a pounding applause in which hands, feet and chair legs all played their part.

Next came the tableaux amid much excitement both before the curtain and behind. First of all the curtain was an erratic and whimsical affair, not to be relied on with a one-man power, so two of the older boys volunteered to stand at either end and assist it to rise and fall at the proper time in case it should fail to respond to the efforts of the official curtain raiser, Freddie Herrick. But Fred’s mind was on the next ten minutes when he was to portray the twelve-year-old schoolboy Abe, and the crank failed to work, so the curtain went up with the pulley lines instead, and showed the interior of the little cabin with Dug Moffat industriously learning to read at Jean’s knee. And a very fair, young Nancy she made too, with her dark hair arranged by Cousin Roxy in puffs over her ears, and the plain stuff gown with its white kerchief crossed in front. On the wall were stretched ’possum and squirrel pelts, and an old spinning wheel stood beside the fireplace.

“You looked dear, Jean,” Helen whispered when the curtain fell. “Your eyes were just like Mother’s. Is my hair all right?”

Jean gave it a few last touches, and then hurried to help with the music that went in between the scenes. The school room scene was a great success. Benches and an old desk made a good showing, with some old maps hung around, and a resurrected ancient globe of the Judge’s.

Mr. Ricketts appeared in all his glory, with stock, skirted coat, and tight trousers. And Fred, lean and lanky, his black forelock dangling over his eyes as he bent over his books, made a dandy schoolboy Lincoln. So they went on, each picture showing some phase in the life of the Liberator. But the hit of the evening was Doris pleading for the life of her sentinel brother. She had said she would surely cry real tears, and she did. Kneeling beside the tall figure of the President, her little old red fringed shawl around her, she did look so woe begone and pathetic that Cousin Roxy said softly,

“Land sakes, how the child does take it to heart.”

Last of all came the tableau of the North and South being reunited by Columbia, and Kit looked very stern and judicial as she joined their reluctant hands, and gave the South back her red, white and blue banner.

It was all surprisingly good considering how few things they had had to do with in the way of properties and scenery, but Cousin Roxy sprang a last surprise before the dancing began. Up on the platform walked three old men, Philly Weaver first, in his veteran suit, old Grandpa Bide Tucker, Abby’s grandfather, and Ezra Hicks, the “boy” of seventy. Solemn faced and self conscious they took their places, and there was the old Gilead fife and drum corps back again.

“Oh, bless their dear old hearts,” cried Kit, her eyes filled with sudden tears as the old hands coaxed out “The Girl I Left Behind Me.”

There was hardly a dry eye in the Town Hall by the time the trio had finished their medley of war tunes. Many were there who could remember far back when the little village band of boys in blue had marched away with that same trio at its head, young Bide and Ezra at the drums, and Philly at the fife. When it was over and the stoop-shouldered old fellows went back to their benches, Cousin Roxy whispered to the Judge, and he rose.

“Just one word more, friends and neighbors,” he said. “Mrs. Ellis reminds me. A chicken dinner will be served after the dancing.”

The floor was cleared for dancing now, and Cady Graves took command. No words could quite do justice to Cady’s manner at this point. He was about sixty-four, a short, slender, active little man, with a perpetual smile on his clean shaven face, and a rolling cadence to his voice that was really thrilling, Helen said.

It was the girls’ first experience at a country dance. They sat around Cousin Roxy watching the preparations, but not for long. Even Doris found herself with Fred filling in to make up a set. When the floor was full Cady walked around like a ringmaster, critically surveying them, and finally, toe up, heel down hard ready to tap, fiddle and bow poised, he gave the word of command.

“Sa-lute your partners!”

Jean thought she knew how to dance a plain quadrille before that night, but by the time Cady had finished his last ringing call, she was reduced to a laughing automaton, swung at will by her partner, tall young Andy Gallup, the doctor’s son. Cady never remained on the platform. He strolled back and forth among the couples, sometimes dancing himself where he found them slowing down, singing his “calling out” melodiously, quaintly, throwing in all manner of interpolated suggestions, smiling at them all like some old-time master of the revels.

“Cousin Roxy, do you know he’s wonderful,” said Kit, sitting down and fanning herself vigorously.

“Who? Cady?” Cousin Roxy laughed heartily. She had stepped off with the Judge just as lightly as the girls. “Well, he has got a way with him, hasn’t he? Cady’s more than a person up here. He’s an institution. I like to think when he passes over the Lord will find a pleasant place for him, he has given so much real happiness to everyone.”

Last of all came the chicken supper, served at long tables around the sides of the hall. All of the girls were pressed into service as waitresses, with Cousin Roxy presiding over the feast like a beaming spirit of plenty.

“Land, do have some more, Mis’ Ricketts,” she would say, bustling around behind the guests. “Just a mite of white meat, plenty of it. Mr. Weaver, do have some more gravy. I shall think I missed making it right if you don’t. There’s a nice drumstick, Dug.”

“Had two already, Mis’ Ellis,” Dug piped up honestly.

“Well, they’re good for you. Eat two more and maybe you’ll run like a squirrel, who knows,” laughed Cousin Roxy.

“Kit,” Helen said once, as they rested a moment near the little kitchen corner, “what a good time we’re having, and think of the difference between this and an entertainment at home. Why is it?”

“Cousin Roxy,” answered Kit promptly. “Put her down there and she’d bring people together and make them have a good time just as she does here. Doesn’t Jean look pretty tonight? I don’t believe in praising the family, of course, far be it from me,” she laughed, her eyes watching Jean. “But I think my elder sister in her Nancy get-up looks perfectly dear. She’s growing up, Helenita.”

Helen nodded her head in the old wise fashion she had, studying Jean’s appearance judicially.

“Well, I don’t think she’ll ever be really beautiful,” she said, gently, “but she’s got a wonderful way with her like Mother. I heard Cousin Beth tell Father she had charm. What is charm, Kit?”

“Charm?” repeated Kit, thoughtfully. “I don’t know exactly. But Jean and Mother and Doris have it, and you and I, Helenita, have only our looks.”

After the entertainment there followed a siege of cold weather that pretty well “froze up everybody,” as Shad said. A still coldness without wind settled over the hills. No horses could stand up on the icy roads. Mr. Ricketts was held up with the mail cart for three days, and when the road committee started out to remedy matters, they got as far as Judge Ellis’s and turned back. None of the girls could get to school, so they made the best of it. Even the telephone refused to respond to calls. On the fourth day Mr. Peckham managed to break through the roads with his big wood sled, and riding on it was Sally muffled to the eyebrows.

“Unwind before you try to talk,” Kit exclaimed, taking one end of the long knit muffler. “How on earth did you get through?”

“It isn’t so bad,” Sally replied in her matter-of-fact way, warming her hands over the kitchen fire. “And our hill is fine for coasting. The boys have been using it. Father’s going to break the road through for the mail cart, and on his way back we can all get on and ride back. You don’t need any sleds. We’ve got a big bob.”

Jean and Helen hesitated. Winter at the Cove had never meant this, but Doris pleaded for them all to go, and Kit was frankly rebellious against this spirit in the family.

“Jean Robbins,” she said, “do you really think it is beneath your dignity to slide down hill on a bobsled? You won’t meet one of Bab Crane’s crowd. Come along.”

“It’s so cold,” Helen demurred, from her seat by the sitting-room fire with a book to read as usual.

“Cold? You’re a couple of cats, curled up by the fire. Bundle up and let’s have some fun.”

“Do you all a pile of good,” Mrs. Gorham said placidly. “You just sit around and toast yourselves ’stid of getting used to the cold. Get out and stir around. Look at Sally’s red cheeks.”

So laughing together, they all wrapped up warmly and went out to get on the wood sled when it came back. The hill over by the sawmill was not so steep, but it swept in long, undulating sections, as it were, clear from the top of Woodchuck Hill down to the bridge at Little River. The Peckham boys had been sliding for a couple of days, and had worn a fair sized track over the snow and ice.

“There’ll be fine skating when the snow clears off a bit,” Billy called out. “We’ve got a skating club, and you’ll have to join. Piney’s the best girl skater. Jiminy, you ought to see her spin ahead. We skate on the river when it’s like this and you can keep on going for miles.”

“Do you know, girls,” Jean said on the way back, “I think we stay in the house too much and coddle ourselves just as Mrs. Gorham says. I feel simply dandy now. Who’s for the skating club?”

Even Helen joined in. It seemed to take the edge off the loneliness, this co-operation of outdoor fun and sport. The end of the week found the river clear and ready for skating. Jean never forgot her first experience there. It was not a straight river. It slipped unexpectedly around bends and dipping hillsides, curving in and out as if it played hide-and-seek with itself, Doris said, like the sea serpent that met its own tail half way around the seven seas.

Up near the Greenacre bridge Astrid and Ingeborg met them with Hedda. Helen, the fanciful, whispered to Jean how splendid it was to have real daughters of the northland with them, but Jean laughed at her.

“Cousin Roxy would say ‘fiddlesticks’ to that. I’m sure they were all born right on this side of the briny deep, you little romancer.”

“It doesn’t matter where they were born,” answered Helen, loftily. “They are the daughters of vikings somewhere back. Just look at their hair and eyes.”

It really was a good argument, Jean thought. They had the bluest eyes and the most golden hair she had ever seen. Sally skated up close to her and began to talk.

“Father says when his father was a boy, there were gray wolves used to come down in wintertime from Massachusetts, and they’ve been chased by them on this river when they were skating.”

“My father tells of wolves too,” Astrid said in her slow, wide-eyed way. “Back in Sweden. He says he was in a camp in the forest on the side of a great mountain, and the men told him to watch the fires while they were hunting. While he was there alone there came a pack of wolves after the freshly killed game. He stood with his back to the fire and threw blazing pine knots at them to keep them back. While the fire kept up they were afraid to come close, but he could see the gleam of their eyes in the darkness all around him, and hear them snap and snarl to get at him. Then the men and dogs returned and fought them. He was only thirteen.”

“Oh, and his name should have been Eric the Bold, son of Sigfried, son of Leofric.” Kit skated in circles around them, her muff up to her face as she talked. “You’ve got such a dandy name, Astrid, know it?”

“It is my grandmother’s name,” Astrid answered in her grave unsmiling way.

“But it means a star, the same as Stella or Estelle or Astarte or Ishtar. We’ve been studying the meanings of proper names at school, and it’s so fascinating. I wish I had been named something like Astrid. I’d love to be Brunhilde.”

Jean watched them amusedly. Kit and Helen had always been the two who had loved to make believe they were “somebody else,” as Helen called it. “Let’s play we’re somebody else,” had been their unfailing slogan for diversion and variety, but Jean lived in the world of reality. She was Jean Robbins, living today, not Melisande in an enchanted forest, nor Berengaria, not even Kit’s favorite warrior maid, Jeanne D’Arc. Helen could do up the supper dishes all by herself, and forget the sordid details entirely making believe she was the Lady of Tripoli waiting for Rudel’s barque to appear, but Jean experienced all of the deadly sameness in everyday life. She could not sweep and dust a room and make believe she was at the spring exhibitions. She could not face a basket of inevitable mending, and imagine herself in a castle garden clad in clinging green velvet with stag hounds pacing at her heels.

When they had first come to the country to live, it had been comical, this difference in the girls’ temperaments. Mrs. Robbins had wanted a certain book in her room upstairs, after dark, and had asked Helen to run up after it. And Helen had hesitated, plainly distressed.

“For pity’s sake, Helenita, run along,” Jean had said laughingly. “You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?”

“I don’t know,” Helen had answered, doubtfully. “Maybe I am. I’m the only one in the family with imagination.”

Sometimes Jean almost envied the two their complete self-absorption. She was never satisfied with herself or her relation to her environment. Seeing so many needs, she felt a certain lack in herself when she shrank from the little duties that crowded on her, and stole away her time. She had brought up from New York a fair supply of material for study, and had laid out work ahead for the winter evenings, but the days were slipping by, and time was short. Her pads of drawing paper lay untouched in her desk drawer. Not a single new pencil had been used, not a stick of crayon touched. The memory of Daddy Higginson driving his herd of cattle cheered her more than anything when she felt discouraged. And after all, when she thought of the California trip and what a benefit it would be to her father, that thought alone made her put every regret from her, and face tomorrow pluckily.

“I’m half frozen,” Doris said suddenly, just as they swung around a bend of the river, and faced long levels of snow-covered meadows. “Oh, girls, look there.” She stopped short, the rest halting too. Crossing over the frozen land daintily, following a big antlered leader, were five deer. Straight down to the river edge they came, only three fields from the girls.

“They’ve got a path to their drinking place,” said Sally. “Don’t move, any of you.”

“Oh, I wonder if ours is there,” Doris whispered. “He hasn’t been with the cows since the storm passed, but I know I could tell him from the rest. He had a dark patch of brown on his shoulder.”

“There’s only one with antlers,” Sally answered. “I hope the hunters won’t find them. I never could bear hunters. Maybe if we had to depend on them for food it would be different, but when they just come up here and kill for fun, well, my mother says she just hopes some day it’ll all come back to them good and plenty.”

“Yes, and who eats squirrel pie with the rest of us,” her brother teased. “And partridge too. She’s only talking.”

“Don’t fight,” Helen told them softly. “Isn’t that a house over there where the smoke is?”

“It’s Cynthy Allan’s house,” Ingeborg looked around warningly as she spoke the name. “I’m not allowed to go there. She’s queer.”

“Isn’t that interesting,” Kit cried. “I love queer people. Let’s all go over and call on Cynthy. How old is she, Ingeborg?”

“Oh, very old, over seventy. But she thinks she is only about seventeen, and she’s always doing flighty things. She’s lived out in the woods all summer, and she ran away from her family.”

“She won’t hurt you, I suppose,” Sally explained. “Mother says she just worked herself crazy. Once she started to make doughnuts and they found her hanging them on nails all over her kitchen, the round doughnuts, I mean. Lots of them. So folks have been afraid of her ever since.”

“Just because she made a lot of doughnuts and hung them around her kitchen? I think that’s lovely,” Kit cried. “What fun she must have had. Maybe she just did it to nonplus people.”

“I don’t know,” Sally said doubtfully. “She took to the woods after that, and now she lives in the house along with about fourteen cats.”

“I shall call on Cynthy today, won’t you, Jean?”

“I’d like to get warmed up before we skate back,” Jean agreed. “I don’t suppose she’d mind. If you don’t want to, Ingeborg, you could wait for us.”

Ingeborg thought waiting the wiser plan, but the rest of them took off their skates, and started up over the fields towards the little grey house in the snow. There were bare rose bushes around the front door and lilacs at the back. Several cats scudded away at their approach and took refuge in the woodshed, and at the side window there appeared a face, a long, haggard, old face, supported on one old, thin hand that incessantly moved to hide the trembling of the lips. Kit, on the impulse of the moment, waved to her, and smiled.

“Gee, I hope she’s been cooking some of those doughnuts today,” said one of the Peckham boys.

Jean tapped at the door. It was several minutes before it opened. Cynthy looked them over first from the window before she took any chances, and even when she did deign to lift her latch, the door only opened a few inches.

“Could we please come in and get warm?” asked Jean in her friendliest way.

“What did you stick out in the cold and get all froze up for?” asked Cynthy tartly. But the door opened wider, and they all trooped into the kitchen. Out of every rush bottomed chair there leaped a startled cat. The kitchen was poorly furnished, only an old-fashioned painted dresser, a wood stove, a maple table, and some chairs, but the braided rugs on the floor made little oases of comfort, and the fire crackled cheerfully, throwing sparkles from the copper tea kettle.

“Ain’t had nobody to draw me no well water today,” Cynthy remarked apologetically. “Else I wouldn’t mind making you a cup of tea, such as it is. Warm you up a mite anyhow.”

Steve Peckham grabbed the water pail and hustled out to the well, and his brother made for the woodshed to add to the scanty supply in the woodbox.

“Ain’t had nobody to cut me no wood for a spell nuther,” Cynthy acknowledged. “You won’t find much out there ’ceptin’ birch and chips. Sit right down close to the fire, girls.” She looked them all over in a dazed but interested sort of way. “Don’t suppose—” she hesitated, and Kit flashed a telepathic glance at Jean. It wasn’t possible Cynthy was still in the doughnut making business, she thought. But the old lady went on, “Don’t suppose you’d all like some of my doughnuts, would ye? They’re real good and tasty.”

Would they? They drew up around the old maple table while Cynthy spread a red tablecloth over it, and set out a big milkpan filled with golden brown doughnuts. Jean found a chance to say softly, she hoped Miss Allan would come up to Greenacres soon, and sample some of their cooking too.

“Ain’t got any hat to wear,” Cynthy answered briefly. “Never go anywheres at all, never see anybody. Might just as well be dead and buried. Anyhow, it’s over two and a half miles to your place, ain’t it? Used to be the old Trowbridge place, only you put a fancy name on it, I heard from the fishman. Don’t know what I’d do if it wasn’t for him coming ’round once a week. I never buy anything, but he likes to have a few doughnuts, and I like to hear all the news. I’d like to see how you’ve fixed up the old house. When nobody lived there, I used to go down and pick red raspberries. Fearful good ones over in that side lot by the barn.”

“We made jam of them last year,” Kit exclaimed, eagerly. “I’ll bring some down to you, sure.”

“Wish I did have a hat to wear,” went on Cynthy, irrelevantly. “Wish I had a hat with a red rose on it. I had one once when I was a girl, and it was so becoming to me. Wish I had another just like it.”

“There’s a red silk rose at home among some of Mother’s things. I know she’d love you to have it. She’ll be home soon, and I’ll bring it down to you when I find the rose.”

The very last thing that Cynthy called from the door as they all trooped down the path, was the injunction to Kit not to forget the rose.

“Isn’t it wonderful,” she said enthusiastically to Jean, as they skated home. “She must be seventy or eighty, Jean, but she longs for a red rose. I don’t believe age amounts to a thing, really and truly, except for wrinkles and rheumatism. I’ll bet two cents when I’m as old as Cynthy is, I’ll be hankering after pink satin slippers and a breakfast cap with rosebuds.”

Jean laughed happily. The outing had brought the bright color to her cheeks, and it seemed as if she felt a premonition of good tidings even before they reached the house up on the pine-crowned hill. She was singing with Doris as they turned in at the gateway and went up the winding drive, but Kit’s eagle eye discovered signs of fresh tracks in the snow.

“There’s been a team or a sleigh in here since we went out,” she called back to them, and all at once Doris gave an excited little squeal of joy, and dashed ahead, waving to somebody who stood at the side window, the big, sunny bay window where the plant stand stood. Then Kit ran, and after her Helen, and Jean too, all speeding along the drive to the wide front steps and into the spacious doors, where the Motherbird stood waiting to clasp them in her arms.

It was after supper that night when the younger ones were in bed that Jean had a chance to talk alone with her mother, one of those intimate heart to heart talks she dearly loved. Mr. Robbins was so much improved in health that it really seemed as if he were his old self once more. The girls had hung around him all the evening, delighted at the change for the better.

“It’s worth everything to see him looking so well,” Helen had said in her grave, grown-up way. “All the winter of trials and Mrs. Gorham, and the pump breaking.”

“Yes, and to think,” Jean said to her mother, as the girls made ready for the procession upstairs to bed, “to think that Uncle Hal got well too.”

“I think it was half an excuse to coax us west, his illness,” laughed Mrs. Robbins, “and I told him so. But, oh, my chicks, if you could only see the ranch and live out there for a while. It took me back so to my girlhood, the freedom and sweep of it all. There is something about the west and its mountains you never get out of your system once you have known and loved them. I want you all to go out there some day.”

“Isn’t it a pity that one of us isn’t a boy,” said Kit meditatively. “Just because we are all girls, we can’t go in for that sort of a life, and I’d love it. At least for a little while. I’d like my life to be a whole lot of experiences, one after the other.”

“Piney says she’s going to live in the wilds anyway, whether she’s a girl or not,” Helen put in, leaning her chin on her palms on the edge of the table, her feet up in the big old red rocker. “She’s going to study forestry and be a government expert, and maybe take up a big claim herself. She says she’s bound she’ll live on a mountain top.”

“Well, she can if she likes,” Jean said. “I like Mother Nature’s cosy corners, don’t you, Motherie? When you get up as high as you can on any old mountain top, what’s the use? You only realize how much you need wings.”

“Go on to bed, all of you,” ordered Kit, briskly. “Jean, don’t you dare talk Mother to death now.”

“Let me brush your hair,” coaxed Jean after it was all quiet. So they sat downstairs together in the quiet living-room, the fire burning low, Mrs. Robbins in the low willow rocker, her long brown hair unbound, falling in heavy ripples below her waist. She looked almost girlish sitting there in the half light, the folds of her pretty grey crepe kimono close about her like a twilight cloud, Jean thought, and the glow of the fire on her face. Jean remembered that hour often in the weeks that followed. After she had brushed out her hair and braided it in soft, wide plaits, she sat on the hassock at her feet and talked of the trip west and all the things that had happened at Greenacres during that time.

“One thing I really have learned, Mother dear,” she finished. “Nothing is nearly as bad as you expect it to be. It was very discouraging when the pump was frozen, and Mrs. Gorham got lonesome, but Cousin Roxy came down and I declare, she seemed to thaw out everything. We got a plumber up from Nantic, and Cousin Roxy took Mrs. Gorham over to a meeting of the Ladies’ Aid Society, and it was over in no time.”

“Remember the old king who offered half of his kingdom to whoever would give him a saying that would always banish fear and care? And the one that he chose was this, ‘This too shall pass away.’ ”

“It’s comforting, isn’t it,” agreed Jean. “But another thing, Mother, you know I’ve never been very patient. I mean with little things. You’ll never know how I longed to stay down in New York with Bab this winter and go to art school. I can tell you now, because it’s all over, and the winter has done me good. But I was honestly rebellious.”

Mrs. Robbins’ hand rested tenderly on the smooth dark head beside her knee. Kit always said that Jean’s head make her think of a nice, sleek brown partridge’s crest, it was so smooth and glossy.

“I know what you mean,” she said, this Motherbird who somehow never failed to understand the trials of her brood. “Responsibility is one of the best gifts that life brings to us. I’ve always evaded it myself, Jean, so I know the fight you have had. You know how easy everything was made for me before we came here to live in these blessed old hills. There was always plenty of money, plenty of servants. I never worried one particle over the realities of life until that day when Cousin Roxy taught me what it meant to be a helpmate as well as a wife. So you see, it was only this last year that I learned the lesson which has come to you girls early in life.”

“Oh, I know,” as Jean glanced up quickly to object, “you’re not a child, but you seem just a kiddie to me, Jean. It was fearfully hard for me to give up our home at the Cove, and all the little luxuries I had been accustomed to. Most of all I dreaded the change for you girls, but now, I know, it was the very best thing that could have happened to us. Do you remember what Cousin Roxy says she always puts into her prayers? ‘Give me an understanding heart, O Lord.’ I guess that is what we all lacked, and me especially, an understanding heart.”

“Doesn’t Cousin Roxy seem awfully well acquainted with God, Motherie,” said Jean thoughtfully. “I don’t mean that irreverently, but it really is true. Why, I’ve been going to our church for years and hearing the service over and over until I know it all by heart, but when she gets up at prayer meeting at the little white church, it seems as if really and truly, He is there in the midst of them.”

“She’s an angel in a gingham apron,” laughed Mrs. Robbins. “Now, you must go to bed, dear. It’s getting chilly. Did you see how glad Joe was to have us back? Dear little fellow. I’m glad he had the courage to come back to us. I called up Roxy as soon as we arrived at the station, and she will be over in the morning early to plan about your trip to Weston.”

“Oh, but—you can’t spare me yet, can you?” exclaimed Jean. “It’s still so cold, and I wouldn’t be one bit happy thinking of you managing alone here.”

“I’ll keep Mrs. Gorham until you get back. It’s only twelve a month for her, and that can come out of my own little income, so we shall manage all right. I want you to go, Jean.” She held the slender figure close in her arms, her cheek pressed to Jean’s, and added softly, “The first to fly from the nest.”

Jean felt curiously uplifted and comforted after that talk. It was cold in her own room upstairs. She raised the curtain and looked out at Greenacres flooded with winter moonlight. They were surely Whiteacres tonight. It was the very end of February and no sign of spring yet. She knew over in Long Island the pussy willow buds would be out and the air growing mild from the salt sea breezes, but here in the hills it was still bleak and frost bound.

What would it be like at Weston? Elliott was away at a boys’ school. She felt as if Fate were lending her to a fairy godmother for a while, and she had liked Cousin Beth. There was something about her,—a curious, indefinable, intimate charm of personality that attracted one to her. Cousin Roxy was breezy and courageous, a very tower of strength, a Flying Victory standing on one of Connecticut’s bare old hills and defying fate or circumstance to ruffle her feathers, but Cousin Beth was full of little happy chuckles and confidences. Her merry eyes, with lids that drooped at the outer corners, fairly invited you to tell her anything you longed to, and in spite of her forty odd years, she still seemed like a girl.

Snuggled down under the big soft home-made comforters, Jean fell asleep, still “cogitating” as Cousin Roxy would have called it, on the immediate future, wondering how she could turn this visit into ultimate good for the whole family. There was one disadvantage in being born a Robbins. Your sympathies and destiny were linked so indissolubly to all the other Robbinses that you felt personally responsible for their happiness and welfare. So Jean dozed away thinking how with Cousin Beth’s help she would find a way of making money so as to lighten the load at home and give Kit a chance as the next one to fly.

The winter sunshine had barely clambered to the crests of the hills the following morning when Cousin Roxy drove up, with Ella Lou’s black coat sparkling with frost.

“Thought I’d get an early start so I could sit awhile with you,” she called breezily. “The Judge had to go to court at Putnam. Real sad case, too. Some of our home boys in trouble. I told him not to dare send them up to any State homes or reformatories, but to put them on probation and make their families pay the fines.”

Kit was just getting into her school rig, ready for her long drive down to catch the trolley car to High School.

“Oh, what is it, Cousin Roxy?” she called from the side entry. “Do tell us some exciting news.”

“Well, I guess it is pretty exciting for the poor mothers.” Mrs. Ellis got out of the carriage and hitched Ella Lou deftly, then came into the house. “There’s been considerable things stolen lately, just odds and ends of harness and bicycle supplies from the store, and three hams from Miss Bugbee’s cellar, and so on; a little here and a little there, hardly no more’n a real smart magpie could make away with. But the men folks set out to catch whoever it might be, and if they didn’t land three of our own home boys. It makes every mother in town shiver.”

“None that we know, are there?” asked Helen, with wide eyes.

“I guess not, unless it may be Abby Tucker’s brother Martin. There his poor mother scrimped and saved for weeks to buy him a wheel out of her butter and egg money, and it just landed him in mischief. Off he kited, first here and then there with the two Lonergan boys from North Center, and they had a camp up towards Cynthy Allan’s place, where they played they were cave robbers or something, just boy fashion. I had the Judge up and promise he’d let them off on probation. There isn’t one of them over fifteen, and Gilead can’t afford to let her boys go to prison. And I shall drive over this afternoon and give their mothers some good advice.”

“Why not the fathers too?” asked Jean. “Seems as if mothers get all the blame when boys go wrong.”

“No, it isn’t that exactly.” Cousin Roxy put her feet up on the nickel fender of the big wood stove, and took off her wool lined Arctics, loosened the wide brown veil she always wore tied around her crocheted gray winter bonnet, and let Doris take off her heavy shawl and gray and red knit “hug-me-tight.” It was quite a task to get her out of her winter cocoon. “I knew the two fathers when they were youngsters too. Fred Lonergan was as nice and obliging a lad as ever you did see, but he always liked cider too well, and that made him lax. I used to tell him when he couldn’t get it any other way, he’d squeeze the dried winter apples hanging still on the wild trees. He’ll have to pay the money damage, but the real sorrow of the heart will fall on Emily, his wife. She used to be our minister’s daughter, and she knows what’s right. And the Tucker boy never did have any sense or his father before him, but his mother’s the best quilter we’ve got. If I’d been in her shoes I’d have put Philemon Tucker right straight out of my house just as soon as he began to squander and hang around the grocery store swapping horse stories with men folks just like him. It’s her house from her father, and I shall put her right up to making Philemon walk a chalk line after this, and do his duty as a father.”

“Oh, you glorious peacemaker,” exclaimed Mrs. Robbins, laughingly. “You ought to be the selectwoman out here, Roxy.”

“Well,” smiled Cousin Roxy comfortably, “The Judge is selectman, and that’s next best thing. He always takes my advice. If the boys don’t behave themselves now, I shall see that they are squitched good and proper.”

“What’s ‘squitched,’ Cousin Roxy?” asked Doris, anxiously.

“A good stiff birch laid on by a man’s hand. I stand for moral persuasion up to a certain point, but there does come a time when human nature fairly begs to be straightened out, and there’s nothing like a birch squitching to make a boy mind his p’s and q’s.”

“Hurry, girls, you’ll be late for school,” called the Motherbird, as she hurriedly put the last touches to three dainty lunches. Then she followed them out to the side door where Shad waited with the team, and watched them out of sight.

“Lovely morning,” said Cousin Roxy, fervently. “Ice just beginning to melt a bit in the road puddles, and little patches of brown showing in the hollows under the hills. We’ll have arbutus in six weeks.”

“And here I’ve been shivering ever since I got out of bed,” Jean cried, laughingly. “It seemed so bleak and cheerless. You find something beautiful in everything, Cousin Roxy.”

“Well, Happiness is a sort of habit, I guess, Jeanie. Come tell me, now, how are you fixed about going away? That’s why I came down.”

“You mean—”

“I mean in clothes. Don’t mind my speaking right out, because I know that Bethiah will want to trot you around, and you must look right. And don’t you say one word against it, Elizabeth,” as Mrs. Robbins started to speak. “Your trip out west has been an expense, and the child must have her chance. Makes me think, Jean, of my first silk dress. Nobody knew how much I wanted one, and I was about fourteen, skinny and overgrown, with pigtails down my back. Cousin Beth’s mother, our well-to-do aunt in Boston, sent a silk dress to my little sister Susan who died. I can see it now, just as plain as can be, a sort of dark bottle green with a little spray of violets here and there. Susan was sort of pining anyway, and green made her look too pale, so the dress was set aside for me. Mother said she’d let the hem down and face it when she had time but there was a picnic, and my heart hungered for that silk dress to wear. I managed somehow to squeeze into it, and slip away with the other girls before Mother noticed me.”

“But did it fit you?” asked Jean.

“Fit me?” Cousin Roxy laughed heartily. “Fit me like an acorn cap would a bullfrog. I let the hem down as far as I could, but didn’t stop to hem it or face it, and there it hung, six inches below my petticoats, with the sun shining through as nice as could be. My Sunday School teacher took me to one side and said severely, ‘Roxana Letitia Robbins, does your mother know that you’ve let that hem down six ways for Sunday?’ Well, it did take away my hankering for a silk dress. Now, run along upstairs and get out all your wardrobe so we can look it over.”

Jean obeyed. Somehow Cousin Roxy had a way of sweeping objections away before her airily. And the wardrobe was at a low ebb, when it came to recent styles. In Gilead Center, anything later than the time of the mutton leg sleeve was regarded as just a bit too previous, as Deacon Farley’s wife said when Cousin Roxy laid away her great aunt’s Paisley shawl after she married the Judge.

She dragged her rocking chair over beside the sofa now, and took inventory of the pile of clothing Jean laid there.

“You’ll want a good knockabout sport coat like the other girls are wearing, and a pretty mid-season hat to match. Then a real girlish sort of a silk sweater for the warm spring days that are coming, and a good skirt for mornings. Bethiah likes to play tennis, and she’ll have you out at daybreak. Better get a pleated blue serge. Now, what about party gowns?”

Here Jean felt quite proud as she laid out her assortment. The girls had always gone out a good deal at the Cove, and she had a number of well chosen, expensive dresses.

“They look all right to me, but I guess Bethiah’ll know what to do to them, with a touch here and there. Real lace on them, oh, Elizabeth!” She shook her head reprovingly at Mrs. Robbins, just sitting down with a pan of apples to pare.

“I’d rather go without than not have the real,” Jean said quickly, trying to spare the Motherbird’s feelings, but Gilead had indeed been a balm to pride. She laughed happily.

“I know, Roxy, it was foolish. But see how handy it comes in now. We’ve hardly had to buy any new clothes since we moved out here, and the girls have done wonderfully well making over their old dresses.”

“Especially Helen,” Jean put in. “Helen would garb us all in faded velvets and silks, princesses wearing out their old court robes in exile.”

“Well, if I were you, I’d just bundle all I wanted to take along in the way of pretty things into the trunk and let Bethiah tell you what to do with them. She knows just what’s what in the latest styles, and you’ll be like a lily of the field. I’ll get you the coat and sweater and serge skirt, and all the shoes and stockings you’ll need to match. Go long, child, you’ll squeeze the breath out of me,” as Jean gave her a royal hug. “I must be trotting along.” She rose, and started to bundle up, but gave an exclamation as she glanced out of the window. “For pity’s sake, what’s Cynthy Allan doing way off up here?”

Sure enough, hobbling along from the garden gate was Cynthy herself, one hand holding fast to an old cane, the other drawing around her frail figure an old-fashioned black silk dolman, its knotted fringe fluttering in the breeze.

Straight up the walk she came, determined and self possessed, with a certain air of dignity which neither poverty nor years of isolation could take from her.

Cousin Roxy watched her with reminiscent eyes, quoting softly: