Chapter VI: Part 6

It was because nobody had ever taken any interest in her before. Her father was the blacksmith, a silent, rather morose man who had quarreled with his own brothers and never spoke to them. Her mother was a frail, nervous woman, so used to being yelled at that she jumped the moment anyone spoke to her. Jean had driven over there one day to get Princess a new set of shoes, and Mrs. Tucker had come out from the kitchen door, a thin, flat-chested woman with straggly hair and vacant eyes.

"How be ye," she said wistfully, looking up at the pretty new neighbor. "How's your Ma? And Pa? Sickly, ain't he? I suffer something fearful all the time. Sometimes my head feels as if it was where my feet are, and my feet feel as if they were where my head is. I can't seem to make any doctor understand what I mean, but that's exactly the way I feel, and it's fearful confusing."

Then Abby had come out and sort of shooed her mother back into the house as one would a fretful hen.

"There was a circus up at Norwich," said Abby now. "And a real live panther escaped and the hunters said they found his tracks down our way. Then one night when I was in bed, they knocked on our door and said the tracks led right into our woodshed. And my father got out his shotgun and went with them, but I went down in the kitchen with Ma, because she's nervous, and when I started up the back stairs I saw its eyes shining at me right under my bed."

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

"I left my door open and when I got on the middle stair I could see right in under my bed, and there it was."

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

"What do you suppose I did? I fell right downstairs. Guess you would have too, if you thought you saw a live panther under your bed. But it wasn't. It scooted out past me and it was our big tiger cat Franklin."

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

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

"Oh, land, no," laughed Abby. "They got it over in the pine woods and it was half starved and cold. It went back to the circus."

"Well," exclaimed Kit, with a sigh. "I used to think things were monotonous in the country, but I've changed my mind. There's something new happening here every minute."

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

"Something bit my hand," she said. The girls searched in the grass and found the breaker of the peace. It was a shiny pinching beetle.

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

"Maybe it thought I needed to be buried too," said Doris ruefully. "It nipped me good and plenty."

When they started back they sang along the road, first old songs that all of them knew, and then Hedda sang two strange Icelandic songs her mother had taught her, lullabies with a low minor strain running through them.

"Day has barred her window close and goes with quiet feet,
Night wrapped in a cloak of gray,
Comes softly down the street,
Mother's heart's a guiding star,
Tender, strong and true,
Lullaby and lulla-loo, sleep, lammie, now."

The other was about the reindeer that would surely come and carry the baby away if it didn't go to sleep. She had a strong, sweet voice, and sang with much feeling. After hearing the other girls, Jean said they ought to have a glee club, even if they met only once a month.

"Just for music. Mother says that music is the universal language that everyone understands. Let's meet at our house next week, and give the afternoon to it."

"I think we ought to meet somewhere else, not all the time at your home, Jean," Etoile demurred in her courteous French way. "We would be very glad to have you with us any time."

"Then we will come, won't we, girls?" Jean agreed. "And Sally will enjoy that because she can sing too, and it will be near home for her. I think we are organizing splendidly."

But the next few weeks were filled with home activities and it was hard to squeeze in time for all that they had outlined. There were berries to can and preserve, and Mr. McRae prolonged his stay, but only on condition that he be allowed to take hold of the farm, with Honey's help, and manage the haying and cultivating for them.

"I had no idea a man could be so handy," Kit declared. "He's mended the sink so we don't have to cart out all the waste water, and he's burned up the rubbish at the end of the lane, and he put new roofing on the hen houses, and he climbed up into the big elm and put up Doris's swing for her. I think he's a perfect darling."

"Kit, dear, don't be so positive and so extreme," Mrs. Robbins warned gently. "It's very kind indeed of Ralph to help us, but don't let your speech run away with you."

"I wish he belonged right in the family. I've always thought that every family should have a carpenter and a gardener in it. Mother dear, to see him climb down the well, right down into that thirty-foot black hole and fish out the bucket after Helen had dropped it in, was a sight for men and angels."

"He's very capable," Mrs. Robbins agreed laughingly. "I think by the time he goes we will have everything on the place mended and repaired. I never saw a landlord like him."

"He's a good doctor too, a doctor of the soul," Jean said soberly. "Dad's been fifty per cent. better since he came. I wish when he goes back to Saskatoon that he'd take Honey with him. Piney's able to help her mother, and Honey's heart is set on going West. They're own cousins and it would be splendid for him."

"Honey's only fourteen, girlie. I think he's rather young to leave the Mother wings, don't you?"

Jean pondered.

"I don't know, Mother. Mothers are wonderful people and darlings, but I do think that every boy needs a good father and if he can't get a father, then the next best man who can talk to him and teach him the--what would you call it?"

"The code of manliness?".

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

"Do you call him Ralph, dear?"

"Well, he asked me to, mother, and I didn't want to refuse and hurt his feelings. I suppose it made him feel more at home. And Cousin Roxy says he's only twenty-four. I don't think that's old at all."

It took three days to cut the hay on the Greenacre land, and the girls had a regular Greek festival over it. They all went down and followed the big rake and helped pitch the hay up on the wagon. Then Helen got her kodak and took pictures of them pitching, and riding on the load up the long lane, and of the big sleepy-eyed yoke of oxen.

"You know," Jean said, "it looks like some scene from away back in the colonial days. I love to watch the oxen come along that lane with the top of the load brushing the mulberry tree branches."

"I'm so glad that you found out what those trees were," Kit teased. "Ever since we came here, you and Helen have been watching for apples to grow on them. I told you they were mulberry trees."

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

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

"Going to cut about nine ton or more," Honey said, coming up with a pail of spring water. "That ain't counting bedding neither. You can get fifteen a ton for bedding."

"What's bedding?" asked Kit.

"Oh, all sorts of stuff, pollypods and swamp grass and such. Say, if you go down where Ralph's cutting now, you'll see a Bob White's nest and speckled eggs. Don't take any, though."

"Isn't it lovely out here, Kit?" Jean wound her arm around Kit's waist as they crossed the meadow land. "I was lonesome at first but now I think I'd be more lonesome for this if I were away from it long."

"I love it too, but wait until the north wind doth blow. What will all the poor Robbins do then, poor things?"

"We'll pull through," Jean said pluckily. "I don't feel afraid of anything that can happen since Dad really is getting better."

"Isn't it funny, Jean, how we're forgetting all about the Cove and the things we did there?" Kit pushed back her hair briskly. She was warm and getting "frecklier," as Doris said, every minute. "I wonder when fall comes, if we won't miss it all more than we do now."

"All what?"

"Places to go, mostly, and people who help us instead of us always helping them. Mother's turned into a regular Lady Bountiful since we came out here."

"I think they've all helped us just as much as we've helped them," Jean said slowly. "We're getting bigger every minute. You know what I mean. Broader minded. At home we went along in the same little groove all the time. I think work is splendid."

"Well, you always did have the faculty, you know, Jean, for staring black right in the face and declaring it was a beautiful delicate cream color. I suppose that's the stuff that martyrs are made of. Now, don't get huffy. You're a perfect angel of a martyr. I like it out here and I think the work is doing us good, but I'm like Helen, I don't want to stay here all my life, nor even a quarter of it. Mother said she wanted to let one of us older girls go back with Gwennie Phelps."

"Back with her?" repeated Jean in dismay. "You haven't asked her up here this summer, have you, Kit?"

"I didn't. Helen did before we came away. Mother said she might. You know Mother's always had the happiness of the Phelps family on her mind."

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

"Frances does not stand in need of missionary work. Gwennie does. Anyway, she's coming up the first week in August, and Mother says that either you or I can go back with her for two weeks before school opens. Do you want to go, Jean? Because I really and truly don't give a rap about it. I'm afraid to go for fear I'll like it and won't want to come back. I'm just dead afraid of the schools up here this winter." Kit's tone was tragic. "This year means so much to me in my work. I was getting along gloriously, you know that, Jean, and from what the girls here tell me, the schools can't touch ours in finish."

"How are they in beginnings?" Jean asked laughingly. "You poor old long-sufferer, I know what you mean. Why don't you ask Dad and Mother to let you board down at the Cove with the Phelpses, and keep up your old class work right there until you finish High School anyway?"

"Seems like a desertion," said Kit. "We're here and we should stick it out. I think you'd better go back with Gwennie."

"We ought to talk it over with Mother thoroughly. She thinks she's giving us a week of extra pleasure, probably, and to us it's a temptation that we're afraid we can't withstand, isn't that it?"

"Well, I feel like this, it's like taking a soldier out of the trenches and throwing him into a seaside week end."

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

"But are you willing to go back?"

"I think we'll let Helen go. She will enjoy it and not take it a bit seriously. Helen's poise will carry her through any crisis triumphantly."

Kit agreed that the thought of Helen was really a stroke of diplomatic genius. The waves and billows of circumstance only buoyed Helen up, lighter than ever. They never went over her or disarranged her curls a particle. Whenever Kit had one of her customary "brain storms" over something and Helen suggested that she was "fussy," Kit always retaliated with the statement that she was the only member of the family with any temperament. Jean had imagination, and Doris gave promise of much sentiment, but when it came to real temperament Kit believed that she had the full Robbins allowance.

"You can call it what you like, Kit. I'd leave off the last two syllables, though," Helen would say serenely.

"There you are," Kit always answered. "Only geniuses have any temperament and when you've got one in the family you deny it. You'll be sorry some day, Helenita. When you are darning stockings with a fancy stitch for your great grandchildren I shall face admiring throngs all listening for pearls of wisdom to fall from my lips."

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

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

So now when the proposition was made after supper that Helen return for a visit to the Cove with Gwen Phelps, Helen agreed placidly that it would be rather nice, and Jean and Kit looked at each other with a smile of deep diplomacy.

*CHAPTER XIX*

*RALPH AND HONEY TAKE THE LONG TRAIL*

The last week in July saw the end of Ralph McRae's visit at Greenacres. He had been East nearly two months and Honey was to go back with him. It was impossible to measure or even to estimate the inward joy of Honey over the decision. Through some odd twist of heredity there had been born in him the spirit of those who long for travel and adventure. Every winding road dipping over a hillcrest had always held an invitation for him to follow it. He had listened often to the distant whistle of the trains that slipped through the Quinnebaug valley, and longed to be on them going anywhere at all. At home in the little parlor there were some old seashells that a seafaring great-grandfather had brought back with him, and Honey loved to hold them against his ear, listening to the murmur within. He had never looked upon the sea. To do so was a promise he had made to himself. Some day he would go and see it, and now Ralph told him that they would go part way by sea, up from Boston to Nova Scotia, and around to the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and up it to Lake Ontario, and on through the Great Lakes, and so up to the ranch in the Northwest.

"I wish I were going too," said Piney. "I wish you were going, Mother, and both of us youngsters. I'd love to take up a claim out there and work it."

"Oh, dear child, what strange notions you do have for a girl," Mrs. Hancock sighed. "I never thought of such things when I was your age. I wanted to be a teacher, that was all."

"Why didn't you?"

"Well, your grandfather said I was needed at home, and so I stayed on until I met your father when I was eighteen. Then I married."

"And maybe if he'd let you be a teacher, you wouldn't have wanted to get married. I want to study all about trees and forestry and conservation, and I want to ride over miles and miles of forests that are all mine. I'm going to, too, some day."

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

"Going on sixteen."

"Maybe next year when I bring Honey home, we can coax Aunt Luella to take a trip out with you. How's that?"

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

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

"Well, I tell you, Aunt Luella," said Ralph, his hands deep in his pockets, as he leaned back against the high mantelpiece in the sitting-room, "I want to hand over Greenacres to you and the children. I haven't any feeling for it like you have, and it seems to me, after talking it over with Mr. Robbins, that it rightfully belongs to you. He would like to buy it, he says, inside of two or three years. They like it over there, and propose to stay here in Gilead, but if you want to take it over, I'm willing to transfer it before I go west."

It was said quietly and cheerfully, quite as if he were offering her a basket of fruit that she was partial to, and Luella Trowbridge Hancock sat back in her rocking-chair, staring up at him as if she could hardly believe her ears.

"Ralph, you don't mean you'd give up the place yourself? Why, whatever would I do with it? I love every inch of ground there and every blade of grass, but you see how it is. Honey's set on going west and Piney wants to go to college and I don't know what all. I couldn't live on there alone, and they haven't got the feeling for it that I have. The younger generation seems to have rooted itself up out of the soil somehow. I wouldn't know what to do with it after I'd got it, and I wouldn't take it away from Mrs. Robbins and the girls for anything. Why, they love it 'most as well as I do."

"I know, Aunt Luella, but I wanted you to have the refusal of it," answered Ralph. "Now, then, here's the other way out. Supposing I make it over to you, and you have the rental money, and then sell it to Mr. Robbins when he is able to take it over. You'd have the good of it then."

"That's the best way, Mother," Piney spoke up. "They have all been so nice to us, and it's just as Ralph says. They do love it."

"You could come back east every now and then and visit if you did make up your mind to live out at Saskatoon."

"Land alive, the boy speaks of journeying thousands of miles as if he was driving up to Norwich. I went to Providence once after I was married, and that's the only long trip I've ever taken from home."

"Then it will take you a whole year to get ready," laughed Ralph. "Honey and I will be back for you next summer, and Piney shall have the best pony I've got all for her own to make up for Princess."

The night before their departure Mrs. Robbins gave a dinner for them, with Cousin Roxana and Mr. and Mrs. Collins from the Center church. Piney was rather morose and indignant at the fate that had made the first Hancock child a girl and the second one a boy.

"Honey'll like the horses and the traveling, but what does he know about land and learning about everything? He's only fourteen."

But Honey did not appear to be worrying. He sat between Ralph and Helen, and really looked like another boy in his new suit of clothes with his hair cut properly. Helen was quite gracious to him, and Jean gave him a second helping of walnut cream cake.

"We're going to miss you, Ralph," Mrs. Robbins said, smiling over at him. She had heard the new business arrangement whereby Greenacres was to become really the nest. It had been her suggestion first that Ralph give the place to Mrs. Hancock, but since she had decided she would rather have the sale price instead, a wave of relief had swept over the Motherbird. The roomy old mansion had been a haven of refuge to her and her brood during the storm stress, and now that fair weather was with them, she found herself greatly attached to it.

Ralph colored boyishly. He could not bring himself even to try and express just what it had meant to him, this long summer sojourn with them at Greenacres. He had come east a stranger, seeking the fields that had known his mother's people, and had found the warmest kind of welcome from the newcomers in the old home. He looked around at them tonight, and thought how much he felt at home there, and how dear every single face had grown.

First there was Mr. Robbins's thin, scholarly one with the high forehead and curly dark hair just touched with gray, his keen hazel eyes behind rimless glasses, and finely modeled chin. Then the Motherbird, surely she was the most gracious woman he had ever known excepting his own mother. Her eyes were so full of sympathy and understanding that they sometimes made him feel about ten again, and as if he wanted to lean against her shoulder the way Doris did, and be comforted. Just the mere sound of her soft, engaging laugh made trouble seem a very unimportant thing in life. And Jean, almost seventeen, already a replica of her mother in her quick tenderness and her looks. Ralph's eyes lingered on her. She was a mighty sweet little princess royal, he thought. Then Kit, imperious, argumentative Kit, so full of energy that she was like a Roman candle.

It had been Kit's voice that had spoken the first words of welcome to him the night of his arrival. He thought he should always remember her best as she had stepped out of the shadows into the moonlight and given him her hand in comradely fashion.

Helen beamed on him from her place next her mother. He came as near being a knight errant as any that had come along the highway so far, and Helen would have had him in crimson hose and plumed cap if possible. To her Saskatoon meant nuggets and gold dust, and it did no good at all for Jean to tell her she would have to adventure along the trail farther north before she would find gold, and that the only gold where Ralph lived was the gold of ripening harvest fields, miles upon miles of them.

Doris snuggled against his shoulder after dinner and told him over and over again to send her a tame bear, one that she could bring up by hand and train.

"Well, I guess you'll have your hands full, Ralph," Cousin Roxana exclaimed, "if you fill all these commissions. I declare it seems as if you belonged to all of us."

The days that followed were very lonely ones without Honey and Ralph. Hedda's big brother came to work at Greenacres. He was a strong, big, silent boy named Eric. About the only information even Kit was able to glean from him was that he had gone barefooted in the snow in Iceland and often stood in the hay in the barn to get warm.

The first week of August brought Gwen Phelps, and that auspicious event should have satisfied anyone's craving for novelty.

"I don't know why it is that Gwen always riles me, as Cousin Roxy says," Kit told Jean after they were in bed the night of Gwen's arrival, "unless it is the way she acts. You know what I mean, Jeanie, as if she were the queen, and the queen could do no wrong. Helen kowtows to her until I could shake her. Did you hear her telling that she was going to Miss Anabel's School out at Larchmont-on-the-Sound? It's fifteen hundred for the term, and extras, and it's nearly all extras. I know a girl who went there--"

"Kit, you're getting to be as bad a gossip as Mrs. Ricketts," Jean declared merrily.

"Well, I don't care. It isn't the way to bring a girl up. What if her father were to lose everything like Dad, and she'd have to pitch in and work, what on earth could she do?"

"Solicit customers for Miss Anabel," laughed Jean. "Go to sleep, goose, and don't covet your neighbor's automobile nor his daughter's extras."

But before the week was over, Gwen was running around in a middy blouse, short linen skirt, and tennis shoes like the rest of them. She and Sally struck up a fast friendship. The sight of a girl hardly any older than herself handling most of the cooking and housework in a large family left a lasting impression on Gwen, and she respected Sally thoroughly.

"Why, she bakes the bread and cake and everything, and even does the washing," she told Helen. "And she says it isn't hard once you get the swing of it. Hasn't she wonderful hair, Helen? It's coppery gold in the sun. Think of her in dull green velvet with a golden chain around her waist like Melisande."

"Wouldn't it look cute over the wash machine?" Kit agreed beamingly. "Gwennie, you'll have to learn the fitness of things if you live out here."

"I think I'd like to live here," Gwen replied stoutly. "I like it better than the mountain resort where we went last summer down in North Carolina. But of course you couldn't stay up here in the winter time."

"We are going to, though," Kit said. "Right here, with five big fires going, and cord upon cord of wood going up in smoke. If you come up then, Gwen, we'll promise you some of the finest skating along Little River you ever had, and plenty of sleigh rides."

"You haven't a car now, have you?"

"Oh, but I could have shaken her for that," Kit said wrathfully, later on. "When she knew we had to sell ours to her father."

"But she didn't mean anything, Kit," Helen argued. "I think you're awfully quick tempered."

"I'm not. I'm sweet and bland in disposition. Don't mind me, Helenita darling. I'm only madly jealous because I want everything that money can buy for Mumsie and Dad and all of us. I do get so tired of doing the same thing day after day. I'll bet a cookie even Heaven would be monotonous if it were just some golden clouds and singing all the time. I hope there'll be work to do there."

Jean drove them down to the station, and when she returned the house seemed quite empty without Helen and Gwen. But she was soon too busy to miss them.

Kit had been lent to Cousin Roxana for a few days to help her with her canning and preserving. Doris had her hands full with a new calf, so only Jean was left to help her mother study out the problem of new fall dresses to be evolved from last year's left overs.

"When the royal family lose their throne and fortune they always have to wear out their old royal raiment before they can have anything new, Mother dear. One peculiar charm of living up here is that you are about five years ahead of Gilead styles. Kit will look perfectly stunning in that smoke gray corduroy of mine and she may have my old blue fox set too. I'm going to make my chinchilla coat do another winter, and fix over my hat till I defy anyone to recognize it. Hiram gave me a couple of beautiful white wings. I don't know whether they came off a goose or a swan--no, a swan's would be too large, wouldn't they? Anyhow, they are lovely and I shall wear them and feel like the Winged Victory."

Mrs. Robbins smiled happily at her eldest. They were in the sunny sitting-room, surrounded by patterns and pieces. The scent of camphor was in the room, for Jean had been unpacking furs and hanging them out to air.

"Clothes seem of such secondary importance in the country, probably as they were intended to be. Cousin Roxy said the other day the only fashion she ever bothered about was whether her crown of glory would be becoming to her, because she hadn't the slightest idea how to put on a halo and she'd probably get it on hind side before in the excitement of the moment. Isn't she comical, Jean? But her heart's as big as the world."

Jean sat on the floor straightening out patterns that had become crumpled in packing.

"I wonder why she never married, Mother. She's so efficient and cheery."

"She was engaged," answered Mrs. Robbins. "Your father has told me about it. To Judge Ellis."

"Judge Ellis?" Jean dropped her hands into her lap and looked up in amazement. "Why, the very idea!"

"Have you ever met him, dear?"

"No, not him, but his grandson Billie Ellis. We met him when we went on the hike over to Mount Ponchas. He must have married some one else then, didn't he?"

"I believe so. They had a dispute a few days before they were to have been married, and Cousin Roxana broke the engagement. They never spoke to each other afterwards. She wanted to go up to Boston on her wedding trip and on to Concord from there, and the Judge wanted to go to New York, as he had some business to settle there and he thought he could attend to it on the honeymoon trip. Roxana said if he couldn't take time away from his business long enough to be married, she wouldn't bother him to marry her at all. Even now it's rather hard deciding which one was right. I'm inclined to think the very fact that they could have a dispute about such a subject shows they were unfitted for each other. If they had really loved, she would not have cared where the honeymoon was held, and he would have granted any desire of her heart."

"Well, if that isn't the oddest romance! Won't Kit love it."

"I hardly think I would talk much about it, dear. Roxy has never even mentioned it to me and it might hurt her feelings. She's such a dear soul I wouldn't worry her for anything."

So when Kit returned home from Maple Lawn, Jean told her nothing, but Kit brought her own news with her.

"What do you suppose, Jeanie. We were rummaging in the garret after carpet rags and there are old chests up there, and Cousin Roxy told me I could look in them at the old linen sheets and things, and in one I found"--Kit paused for a good effect--"wedding clothes!"

"I know," Jean said.

"You know? Why didn't you tell me, then?"

"Mother thought I had better not."

"Humph. I found it out just the same, didn't I? But she wouldn't tell me who he was, and I coaxed and coaxed. I think he must have been a soldier who died in the Civil War."

"Oh, Kit, when Cousin Roxy's only fifty-two! Do figure better than that. You'll have her like the Dauphins, betrothed when they were about three years old."

"And another thing I found out. Who do you suppose comes to see her regularly? The Billie person. She lets him run all over the house, and likes him immensely. We got real well acquainted. He calls her Aunt Roxy, and if you could ever see the amount of doughnuts and cookies and apple pie and whipped cream that boy consumes, you'd wonder how he ever managed to get home! They must starve him over at the Judge's. Cousin Roxy says he's so stingy that he'd pinch a penny till the Indian squealed."

Jean was fairly aching to tell all she knew, but a promise was a promise, and she kept it. That night, though, she dreamt that the Judge and Cousin Roxy were being married and that she was chasing them around with large portions of apple pie and whipped cream. Kit heard her say in her sleep, very plaintively,

"Please take it."

"Take what, Jeanie?" she asked sleepily, but Jean slumbered on without revealing the secret.

*CHAPTER XX*

*ROXANA'S ROMANCE*

Two weeks before school opened Helen came home. She was not changed at bit, Doris said admiringly, just as if she had been gone a year.

"Oh, I like it here so much better than at the Cove," she told them. "I wouldn't give our precious Greenacres for all the North Shore. Only I do kind of wonder about school, Mother dear."

"Doris will go to the District school at the village and Kit and Helen can drive over to the High School together. It is only five miles, and they can arrange to put the horse up at one of the stables. In severe weather Eric will take them over."

Jean was silent for a few moments. Right ahead of them she could see the winter. It would take many cords of wood to heat the big house thoroughly. There would be plenty of potatoes and winter vegetables down in the cellar, plenty of jellies and preserves and pickles, but the running expenses were still to be considered, and Eric's wages, and feed for the pony and Buttercup.

"Mother," she said suddenly when they were alone, "have we really any money at all to depend on? Please don't mind my asking. I think about it so much."

"I don't mind, daughter. Aren't we all part of the dear home commonwealth? Nearly all that Father had saved has dwindled away during his illness. Stocks have depreciated badly the past year. Several that we depended on are not paying dividends at all, and may never recover. We have just about enough cash from the sale of the automobile and other things, Father's law books and some jewels that I had--"

"Mother!" Jean sprang to her side, and clasped her arms close around her. She knew how precious many of the old sets of jewelry had been, things that had come from her grandmother on her mother's side. "Not the old ones?"

"No. I saved those," the Motherbird smiled back bravely. "They are for you girlies. But I had my earrings and two rings which Father had given to me and I sold those. Oh, don't look so blue, childie." She framed Jean's anxious face in her two hands. "Jewelry doesn't amount to anything at all unless it has some dear associations. Do you know the old Eastern legend, how the Devas, the bright spirits, drove the dark evil spirits underground and in revenge they prepared gold and silver and precious stones to ensnare the souls of men? I was very glad indeed to turn those diamonds into Buttercup and Princess and many other things that have made our new home happier."

"Wouldn't it make a lovely fairy story," Jean exclaimed, smiling through her tears. "The beautiful queen with a magic wand touching her diamonds and turning them into a cow and a pony and household helps."

"Then," continued her mother, "you know I have a half interest in the ranch in California. That brings in a little, not much, because it isn't a rich ranch by any means, just a big happy-go-lucky one that Harry, my brother, runs. I hope that you girls will go there some time and meet him, for he is a splendid uncle for you all. I receive about a thousand a year from that. It isn't a cattle ranch. Harry raises horses. He is unmarried, and lives there alone with Ah Fun, a Chinese cook, and his men. I used to go out to the ranch summers when I was a girl. We lived near San Francisco."

"And now you're clear away over here on a Connecticut hilltop."

"Dear, I would not mind if it were a hilltop in Labrador, if there are any there, or Kamchatka either, so long as I was with your father. When you love completely, Jean, time and space and all those little limitations that we humans feel, seem to fall away from your soul."

It seemed to Jean as though her mother's face was almost illumined with love as she spoke, so radiant and tender it looked. She laid her cheek against the hand nearest to her.

"You make me think of something that John Burroughs wrote, precious Mother mine, something I always loved. It is called 'Waiting.' May I say it to you?"

She repeated softly and slowly:

"Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind or tide or sea;
I rave no more 'gainst time or tide,
For lo! my own shall come to me.

"I stay my haste, I make delays,
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.

"Asleep, awake, by night or day,
The friends I seek are seeking me.
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Or change the tide of destiny.

"What matter if I stand alone,
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it has sown,
And garner up its fruit of tears.

"The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder height;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delight.

"The stars come nightly to the sky,
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high
Can keep my own away from me."

"Whoa, Ella Lou!" came Cousin Roxy's voice out at the hitching post. "Anybody home?"

Kit sprang out of the Bartlett pear tree and Helen emerged from the vegetable garden as if by magic. The Billie person sat beside Cousin Roxy as big as life, as she would have said, and looked at the girls in friendly fashion.

"The Judge is very sick," Miss Robbins began without preamble. "I'm going down there with Billie, and I may have to stay over night. He's pretty low, I understand, and wants me, so I suppose I'll have to go. Good-bye. If you've got any tansy in the garden, Betty, I'd like to take it down."

Jean hurried to get a bunch of the desired herb, and Mrs. Robbins stepped out beside the carriage.

"Is he very sick, really, Roxy?" she asked.

"Can't tell a thing about it till I see him, and then maybe not. A man's a worrisome creetur at best and when he's sick he's worse than a sick turkey. I suppose it's acute indigestion. Dick Ellis always did think he could eat anything he wanted to and do anything he wanted to, and the Lord would grant him a special dispensation to get away with it because he was Dick Ellis. I guess from all accounts he hasn't changed much. I'll get a good hot mustard plaster outside, and calomel and castor oil inside, and tansy tea to quiet him, and I guess he'll live awhile yet. Go 'long, Ella Lou."

"Well, of all things, Mother," Jean exclaimed, laughing as she dropped into the nearest porch chair. "And they haven't spoken to each other in over thirty years. I think that's the funniest thing that's happened since we came here. I want to go and tell Dad. He'll love that."

"What is it?" Kit teased. "I think you might tell us too. I didn't know that Cousin Roxy knew the Judge."

"They were engaged years ago, dear," Mrs. Robbins explained, "and quarrelled. That is all. Now he thinks he is dying and has sent for her. And I suppose underneath all her odd ways, that she loves him after all."

It was the first romance that had blossomed at Gilead Center and the girls felt as eager over it as though the participants had been twenty instead of fifty years of age. They waited eagerly for Ella Lou's white nose to show around the turn of the drive, but night came on and passed, and it was well into the next afternoon before Billie drove in alone.

"Grandfather'd like to have Mr. Robbins come down and draw up his will. Cousin Roxy says he's been a lawyer, and there isn't another one anywhere around."

"But, Billie, he isn't strong enough," began Mrs. Robbins. She was sitting out on the broad veranda, a basket of mending on her lap, and in the big steamer chair beside her was Mr. Robbins. "Is the Judge worse?"

"Oh, no, he's better. Aunt Roxy fixed him right up. He'd just eaten too much, she said."

"I think I should like to go, dear," said Mr. Robbins. "You could go with me, or Jean, and I should like to meet him again. I knew him when I was a boy up here."

It was his first trip away from the house since they had moved there, but now that the time had come, it seemed an easy thing to do, as if the strength had been granted to him to meet just such a crisis. Mrs. Robbins accompanied him, and they drove over through the village and up two miles beyond until they came to the Judge's home, a large square colonial residence on a hill, surrounded by tall elms and rock maples. The green blinds were all carefully closed excepting in the south chamber where Roxy held supreme sway now. She sat by his bedside, wielding a large palm leaf fan, spick and span in her dress of white linen, and there was a bunch of dahlias on the table.

"Come in, come in, boy," the Judge said in his deep voice. He stretched out his hand to Mr. Robbins, and nodded his head. Such a fine old head it was, as it lay propped up on the big square feather pillows, a head like Victor Hugo's or Henri Rochefort's. The thick curly white hair grew in deep points about his temples, and his moustache and imperial were white and curly too. There was a look in his eyes that told of an indomitable will, but they softened when they rested on his visitor.

"Sit down, lad; no, the easy chair. Roxy, give him the easy one. So. Well, they try their best to get us, don't they? I thought last night would be my last."

"Oh, fiddlesticks," laughed Miss Robbins. "Just ate too much, and had a little attack of indigestion, Dick. You'll live to be eighty-nine and a half."

The Judge's eyes twinkled as he gazed at her.

"Still contrary as Adam's off ox, Roxy. Won't even let me have the satisfaction of thinking you saved my life, will you?"

"A good dose of peppermint and soda would have done just as well," answered Roxana serenely, turning to introduce Mrs. Robbins. "He says he wants to make his will, but I think it's only a notion, and he wants company. Still I guess we'll humor him. It seems that he was going to leave everything he had to me. And I just found him out in time. The very idea when he's got Billie, his own grandchild, flesh and blood, and such a darling boy too. He can leave me Billie if he likes, but he can't leave me anything else; so you make it that way, Jerry."

"Leave her Billie, Jerry," sighed the Judge, "leave her Billie, and me too, if she'll take us both."

"Wouldn't have you for a gift, Dick," she answered, cheerful and happy as a girl as she looked down at him. "You're a fussy, spoiled, selfish old man, just as you always was, and I couldn't be bothered with you. But I'll keep an eye on you so you don't kill yourself before your time with sweet corn and peach shortcake, though I suppose it's a pleasant sort of taking off at that. I'll take Billie and Betty with me around the garden while you and Jerry fix up that will, and mind you do it right. Billie's going to have all that belongs to him."

As the door closed behind her, the Judge winked solemnly at Mr. Robbins.

"Finest woman in seven counties. Ought to have been the mother of heroes and statesmen, but there she is, mothering Billie and bossing me to her heart's content. Do you think she'd marry me, Jerry?"

"I don't know, Judge," Mr. Robbins answered, smiling. "Roxy's odd."

"Well, maybe so. Go ahead and make the will as she says. Everything to Billie, and make her guardian. All except," he stopped and his eyes twinkled merrily, "the house in Boston. Jerry, lad, it's got all our wedding furniture still in it just as it was thirty years ago. I bought it and moved the stuff up there after she gave me the mitten, and it's waited for her to change her mind these many years. I married for spite, and my poor wife died after Billie's father was born. Served me right, I guess. Anyhow, the house is there and she can take it or leave it as she likes."

So the will was drawn up and Mrs. Gorham and Mrs. Robbins witnessed it. Billie, standing down in the garden, showing Miss Robbins the flowers, did not realize what was happening. He only knew that somehow the barriers of ice were lifted between himself and his grandfather, and that a new era had dawned for all of them.

He watched them drive away, and went back upstairs to the long corridor. Roxana heard his step and opened the door of the sickroom.

"Come in here, Billie dear," she said. It was the first time that Billie had ever been in his grandfather's room. He stood inside the door, a sturdy, manly figure, barefooted and tanned, with eyes oddly like those old ones that surveyed him from the pillow. He hesitated a moment, but the Judge put out his hand, a strong bony one, yellowed like old ivory, and Billie gripped it in his broad boyish one.

"I'm awfully glad you're better, Grandfather," he said, a bit shyly.

"So am I, Billie. Last night I thought my hour had come, but I guess it was only a warning. A meeting with the Button Moulder perhaps. Do you know about him? No? You must read 'Peer Gynt.' A boy of your age should be well up on such things."

"And when has he had any chance to get well up on anything, I'd like to know?" demanded Roxana, in swift defense of her favorite. "The boy finished the district school a year ago. Been learning everything he knows since then from Ben, your hired help. If the Lord has spared you for any purpose, Dick, it is to bring up Billie right and teach him all you know."

"Well, well, quit scolding me, Roxy. Do as you like with him. I'll supply the money." The Judge pressed Billie's hand almost with affection. "What do you want to be, lad?"

"A lawyer or a naturalist," said Billie promptly.

"Be both. They're good antidotes for each other. Talk it over with him, Roxy, and do as you think best."

He closed his eyes, and Billie took it as a signal to leave the room, but the Judge spoke again.

"Where you do sleep, Bill?"

Billie colored at this. It was the first time anyone had ever called him Bill. He felt two feet taller all at once.

"In the little bed-room over the east 'ell,' sir."

"Change your belongings to the room next this. It faces the south and has two bookcases in it filled with my books that I had at college. You will enjoy them."

Billie went out softly, down the circular staircase to the lower hall and, once outdoors, on a dead run for the barn. Ben was husking corn on the barn floor, sitting on a milking stool with the corn rising around him in billows, whistling and singing alternately.

Billie poured out his news breathlessly, and Ben took it all calmly.

"Well, I'm glad for ye. I always believed the Judge would come out of his trance some day and do the proper thing. That Miss Roxy's a sightly woman. Knows just how to take hold. Guess she could marry the Judge tomorrow if she wanted to. Mrs. Robbins is a fine woman too. I never see her before."

Somehow this didn't seem to fit in with Billie's mood, and he left the barn. All the world looked different to him. He was wanted, really wanted, now. He wasn't just somebody the Judge had taken in because they were related and he had to out of pride. He was to have the big south chamber right next the Judge's own room and study all he wanted to. Best of all, since he had grasped that yellow old hand in his, he knew that he could go to him with anything and that he really was going to be a grandfather to him.

It was nearly two miles over to Greenacres if he went cross lots, but he started. The goldenrod was high and in full bloom on every hand and purple asters crowded it for room. The apple trees held ripening fruit, and the fragrance of Shepherd Sweetings and Peck's Pleasants was in the air. It was the last week in August when all the summerland seemed to rest after a good work done, and the hush of harvest time was on the earth.

In the woods he startled a doe and two fawns and they leaped ahead of him through the brush. Farther along in the pines a partridge whirred up under his nose almost, and coaxed him away from her young. Some young stock, Jersey heifers and a few Holsteins, grazed in the woods, and lifted grave eyes to watch him pass. Usually he would notice them, but today all he thought of was the Judge's words, and the longing to talk them over with somebody.

"Why, there's Billie," Kit exclaimed, looking up from some apples she was paring for pies. Helen was reading on the circular seat that was built around one of the old elms back of the house. "Come over here and help."

Billie climbed the stone wall and came, flushed and triumphant. Throwing himself down on the grass beside Kit, he told what had happened, and she made up for all that Ben had lacked in enthusiasm and imagination.

"Billie Ellis," she cried, setting down the pan of apples, and hugging her knees ecstatically. "Isn't that wonderful? Why, you can be anything at all now that you want to be. Oh, I'm so glad for you!"

Billie looked at her peacefully.

"I knew you'd take it like that," he said. "I just wanted to tell somebody who would almost bump the stars over it, the way it made me feel. Kit, you're a good old pal, know it?"

"Thank you, kind sir, thank you." Kit spread out her blue chambray skirt and dropped a low curtsey. "When you come into your kingdom, forget not your humble handmaid, Prince Otto."

"Who was he?" demanded Billie hungrily. "Gee, I'm tired hearing of people all the time that I don't know about. I'm going to read my head off now."

"So do, child, so do," laughed Kit. "He was a king who left his throne to wander among his people and see how they lived."

"It must have been awfully hard to go back and stay on the throne. I want to study hard and be somebody that Grandfather will be proud of, but I like everyday folks mighty well."

Helen dropped her book and shook back her curls from her face. She had hardly ever noticed him before, but now he seemed more interesting. Still Kit was forever spending the largesse of her sympathy on anyone who needed it just as Doris did on animals and birds and chickens. So after a moment she went on with her book, "Handbook of Classical History," preparing for her entry into High School with Kit the following week. The joys and sorrows of the Billie person had small place in her mind.

But Kit took him into the kitchen and gave him a big square of gingerbread with whipped cream on it, and listened to him plan out the future without a single word of depreciation or discouragement. The world was golden, and Fortune had handed him a lighted flambeau and told him to take his place with the other Greek lads and race for the prize.

"I just know you'll win out, Billie," she told him confidently, when she said good-bye on the back steps. "Come down any time and we'll help you out on your studies."

Jean and Doris had gone to the village for some groceries. Cousin Roxy was coming to take supper with them. Kit set the table, with sprays of early asters in the center, singing softly to herself Cousin Roxy's favorite hymn.

"I've reached the land of corn and wine,
And all its riches freely mine,
Here shines undimmed one blissful day,
For all my night has passed away.
Oh, Beulah land, sweet Beulah land--"

"Does it seem like that to you, child?" asked her mother, coming lightly down the long staircase and into the dining-room, mellow with late afternoon sunlight.

"It's everything all rolled up in one," Kit answered happily. "It's Beulah Land and the Land of Heart's Desire and the Promised Land, it's the whole thing in one, Mother dear. Don't you feel that way too?"