Part 12

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."