Chapter 27

Another spring found the members of the Jenkins Syndicate still banking regularly and flourishing in their various walks in life. The Boarder had received a "raise"; Lily Rose was spending her leisure time in fashioning tiny garments which she told Cory were for a doll baby; Iry was wearing his first trousers cut over from a pair discarded by Bud; and Amarilly was acquiring book lore with an ease and rapidity which delighted Miss Varley and Derry. Through the medium of Mr. Vedder the attention of the manager of a high class vaudeville had been drawn to Bud, and he was now singing every night with a salary that made the neighbors declare that "them Jenkinses was getting to be reg'ler Rockyfellers."

Amarilly coming home one Monday evening found the family grouped about the long table listening with bulging eyes and hectic cheeks to the Boarder, who had before him a sheet of figures. Amarilly was at once alert, although somewhat resentful of this encroachment upon her particular province.

"Oh, come and hear, Amarilly!" "Amarilly, we've bought a farm!" "Amarilly, we air agoin' to live in the country!"

"Let me explain," said the Boarder, usually slow and easy going, but now alert and enthusiastic of mien and speech. "We've got a chance, Amarilly, to sell this place and make quite a profit. That new factory that's agoin' up acrost the alley has sent real estate scootin'. With what we git fer it, we kin make a big payment on a farm. I took a run down yesterday to look at one we kin git cheap, cause the folks on it hez gotter go west fer the man's health. What we hev all saved up sence we bought the place will keep us agoin' till we git in our fust summer crops."

"Tell her about the house," prompted Mrs. Jenkins, her quick, maternal eye noting the bewilderment and disapproval in her daughter's expressive eyes.

"It's all green meaders and orcherds and lanes," said the Boarder with the volubility of one repeating an oft-told and well-loved tale, while the young Jenkinses with the rapt, intense gaze of moving picture beholders sat in pleased expectancy, "and the house sets on a little rise of ground. It's a white house with a big chimbley and two stoops, and thar's a big barn with two white hosses in it, and a cow and an animal in the paster lot. A big pen of pigs, fifty hens in the henhouse, and a few sheep. Thar's a piece of woods and the river."

"I'm a little fearful of the river on Iry's account," said Mrs. Jenkins, "but we kin spank him up good as soon as we git thar, and then he'll understand he's to keep away."

"We kin git a good dog to keep track of Iry and the cattle," said the Boarder, and then he paused expectantly to listen to Amarilly's approbation. But she was strangely silent.

"It will be a fust class investment," he continued sagely.

"Why will it? We don't know anything about farming," objected Amarilly. "We'll have to hire someone to run it."

"I was brought up on a farm," replied the Boarder. "Thar ain't a thing I don't know about farm work."

"I was raised on a farm, too," said Mrs. Jenkins. "I can make good butter and I know all about raisin' chickens. I'll get some young turkeys and have them ready to sell for Thanksgiving, and I'll set out strawberries and celery plants."

"I kin larn, and I'll work hard and do just what he tells me to," said Flamingus, motioning toward the Boarder.

"I kin have my dairy all right, all right," said Gus joyfully. "I'll have a hull herd of cattle soon."

"I shall go in heavy on hens," said Milt importantly. "The grocer give me a book about raising them. There's money in hens."

"I choose to take keer of the sheep," cried Bobby.

"I'll help ma do the work in the house and the garden," volunteered Cory.

"And I'm strong enough to work outdoors now," said Lily Rose. "I shall help with the garden and with the housework."

"We'll all pitch in and work," said Flamingus authoritatively, "and we're all partners and we won't hire no help. It will be clear profit."

"Ain't it lovely, Amarilly?" asked the mother, apprehensive lest the little leader might blackball the project.

"We're all doing so well here, why change? Why not let well enough alone?" she asked.

There was a general and surprised protest at this statement. It was something new for Amarilly to be a kill-joy.

"Do you like to live in this alley when we kin hev all outdoors and git a chanst to be somebody?" demanded Flamingus, who was rapidly usurping his sister's place as head of the house.

"And think of the money we'll make!" reminded Milton.

"And the milk and butter and cream and good things to eat without buying them!" exclaimed Gus.

"And huntin' f'r eggs and swimmin' in the river and skatin' and gettin' hickory nuts and all the apples you kin eat," persuaded Bobby, who had evidently been listening to the Boarder's fancies of farm life.

"Thar's a school close by, and all the chillern kin go," said the mother anxiously. "Mebby you kin git to teach it after a while, Amarilly."

"Oh, Amarilly!" cried Lily Rose ecstatically, "to think of all the trees, and all the sky, and all the green grass and all the birds--oh, Amarilly!"

Words failed Lily Rose, but she sighed a far-seeing blissful sigh of exquisite happiness at her horoscope. The Boarder looked at her, his heart eloquent in his eyes, but he said nothing.

"Amarilly," cried Cory, "we kin hev real flowers fer nuthin' and pies and ice-cream, and we kin cuddle little chicks like ma told me, and make daisy chains, and hev picnics in the woods. Oh--"

Words also proved inadequate to Co's anticipations.

"Amawilly, we kin play wiv little lambs," lisped Iry.

"Bud, you haven't made your speech, yet," said Amarilly, wistfully, realizing that the majority was against her.

"Bud won't go till fall," said Mrs. Jenkins.

"Till fall!" cried Amarilly faintly. "Why, when are we going?"

"Next week," answered the Boarder jubilantly. "The folks want to leave right away, and we must get busy plantin'. I went to Vedder's friend, the real estate man, this mornin' as soon as I got back, and he says it's a real bargain."

"But why isn't Bud going?"

"This morning," informed Mrs. Jenkins proudly, "Bud had an offer. As soon as the theatre shuts down, Mr. Vedder is going to take Bud to a big resort and manage him for the season. He'll git lots of money. I wouldn't let Bud go off with no one else, but Mr. Vedder is so nice, and he says when Bud goes to the country in the fall he kin come into the city Saturday nights on the Interurban and sing in the choir Sundays and come back Monday. He kin stay with him, Mr. Vedder says. And the country air and the fresh milk and eggs, will make a diff'rent boy of him. It's what the doctor says he'd orter hev."

"Then, we'll go, of course," declared Amarilly resolutely.

"And, Amarilly," said the Boarder gravely, "your ma ain't said why she wanted to go, but think of the diff'rence it will make in her life. To be sure, she will have to work hard, but with you, Lily Rose, and Co to help her, it won't be so hard, and it'll be higher class work than slushing around in tubs and water, and she'll hev good feedin' and good air, and we'll all feel like we was folks and our own bosses."

"Ma, I was selfish!" cried Amarilly remorsefully. "I'll work like a hired man!"

Amarilly thereupon bravely assumed a cheerful mien and looked over the Boarder's figures, listening with apparently great enthusiasm to the plans and projects. But when she was upstairs in her own little bed and each and every other Jenkins was wrapt in happy slumber, she turned her face to the wall, and wept long, silently, and miserably. Far-away fields and pastures did not look alluring to this little daughter of the city who put bricks and mortar and lighted streets above trees and meadows, for Amarilly was entirely metropolitan; sky-scrapers were her birthright, and she loved every inch of her city.

"But it's best for them," she acknowledged.

A little pang came with the realization that they who had been so dependent upon her guardianship for guidance were entirely competent to act without her.

"It's Flam. He's growed up!" she sobbed, correctness of speech slipping from her in her grief. "And he don't know near so much as I do, only he's a man--or going to be--so what he says goes."

And with this bitter but inevitable recognition of the things that are, Amarilly sobbed herself to sleep.