Part 4

Kit passed down the stairs completely covered with the burden which she bore.

"I've got all the portieres, table covers, couch covers, scarfs and doilies," she called. "We may have to turn the attic into a cosy corner before we get through. It's all in the effect, isn't it, Mumsie?"

"I'm sorry that Dad sold the machine, that's all," Helen remarked. Helen was the far-sighted one of the family. "Talbot Pearson says he knows we could have gotten fifteen hundred for it just as easy as not. His mother told him it was worth every penny of fifteen hundred, and Dad let it go for eight hundred just because he liked the Phelpses."

"Helen, dear, eight hundred cash is worth more than fifteen hundred promised," Mrs. Robbins said, smiling over at her. "And the machine is last year's model. I'm glad with all my heart that Mr. Phelps bought it, because they've been wanting one very much, and the children will get so much enjoyment out of it."

The girls looked down at her admiringly, almost gloatingly, as she sat back contentedly in the low wicker arm-chair in the sunny bay-window.

"Mother, you're a regular darling, truly you are," Kit exclaimed. "You're so big and fine and sympathetic that you make us feel like two cents sometimes when we've been selfish. Why do you look so happy when everything's going six ways for Sunday?"

Mrs. Robbins held up a letter that Doris had just brought upstairs to her.

"Cousin Roxana writes that Father stood the trip well and has slept every night since they reached Maple Lawn. Isn't that worth all the automobiles in the world?"

The eight hundred dollars in cash had been a helpful addition to their bank account. During the past few weeks, the girls had learned what it meant to consider money, something they had never given a thought to before. While they had never been rich, there had always been an abundance of everything they wanted, with never a suggestion of retrenching on expenses until now. Once they understood the situation, however, they all seemed to enjoy helping to solve the family problem. For several days Doris had appeared to have something on her mind. Finally, she came in smiling, and opened her hand, disclosing a ten dollar bill. Kit fell gracefully over into a chair.

"Dorrie, you mustn't give your poor old sister sudden shocks like that in these days," she exclaimed. "Where did you find that?"

"I sold Jiggers to Talbot Pearson," Doris replied, her eyes shining like stars. "He's been asking and asking for him ever since I got him, and now I've done it. There's ten dollars I got all by myself to help Dad."

Neither Kit nor Helen spoke, but they regarded the youngest robin with the deepest pride and affection. Jiggers was a Boston bull puppy, the special property of Doris, and they knew just what a heart-wrench it had been to part with him. Mrs. Robbins took the crisp green bill from Doris's hand, while the tears slowly gathered on her lashes.

"It's perfectly splendid of you, dear," she said.

Doris beamed and danced around on tiptoe like a captive butterfly, but the family noticed she kept away from the spot where Jiggers' little kennel had stood. There are some things the heart cannot quite bear.

Much debating was held over the piano. The girls loved it and declared it could not be true economy to part with it. It was an Empire baby grand that had descended to them from the Riverside apartment days in town. Helen said she always expected to see it pick up its skirts and pirouette like Columbine, it was so gay and pretty in its gold case all decorated in trailing flower garlands and little oval panels with Watteau figures treading gaysome measures in blossomy dells.

"Listen, Mother darling," Kit said finally, "you know what I told you about white hyacinths. That precious old piano is a white hyacinth and we'll starve our inmost souls if we try to live without it. Why, we've loved it and pounded it for years."

So it was boxed and shipped to Gilead Center as a white hyacinth, together with many another disguised "necessity."

"They've turned into arrant smugglers," Mrs. Robbins wrote her husband. "And I cannot blame them, because I catch myself doing the same thing, packing things I should not, and making myself believe they are essential. I'm sure I don't see where we are ever to put everything in a farm-house."

Cousin Roxana brightened up and smiled when that portion of the letter was read aloud to her. She was sitting in a straight-backed, split-bottomed chair by the south window in the sitting-room, sorting out morning-glory and nasturtium seeds and putting them into baking powder boxes.

"Guess Betty'll hearten up some when she sees the Mansion House," she said.

*CHAPTER VII*

*THE LAND O' REST*

While some of the Long Island farms had begun to look faintly green by the end of March, not a blade or a leaf was unfurled anywhere around Gilead Center. Pussy willows and reddening maple twigs held the only promise of spring so far.

Jean drew on a pair of heavy driving gloves, and waited at the side "stoop" for Hiram to drive around from the barn with Ella Lou and the double seated democrat. Hiram was Cousin Roxana's hired help, smooth faced and lean, somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty. He took care of three horses and two cows and worked the farm with outside help in busy seasons.

Some folks in Gilead Center held that Roxy Robbins could have got along with one horse, but Roxana kept her pair of handsome Percherons just the same, and let Hiram haul wood all winter with them.

Ella Lou was a black mare with white shoes and stockings and a white star on her forehead. It really did seem as if she knew all about the family's affairs. She was aware of every road in the township. Not a tree could be cut down along the road, not a cord of piled wood added or taken away, that Ella Lou did not take note of the fact at her next passing by.

To-day when Hiram drove up with her to the three stone steps by the white lilacs, she acted as wise and knowing as could be, turning her head around to look at Jean just as if she could have said, "We're going after them at last, aren't we?"

Cousin Roxy stood at the screened pantry window, mixing pie crust. She leaned down and called some last advice as Jean climbed up and took the reins.

"Hitch her to that white post above the express office, Jeanie. There's a couple freights come in right after that 3:30 train, and they set her crazy shuffling back and forth. And have the girls sit on the back seat 'cause them springs are kinder giving way, and your Mother's nervous. And bring up a wick for the student lamp from the Mill Company Store. No, never mind," just as Ella Lou started to prance, "'cause they don't keep that kind, come to think of it. Good-bye. If you don't remember the turnings, just slack up the reins and she'll find the right road."

Jean laughed and waved her hand. It was her first attempt at driving alone, but Ella Lou seemed to appreciate just how she felt, and swung out around the triangle of grass that marked the entrance to the private driveway.

Maple Lawn stood just at the crossroads, a white comfortable-looking house, one story and a half high, with a long low "ell" hitched on to the back, and a white woodshed leaning up against it for company.

Four great rock maples grew before its spacious lawn like a row of Titan sentinels, in summertime, garbed in Lincoln green like Robin Hood's merry men. Then too, Baltimore orioles and robins nested in them and contended with the chipmunks for squatter rights.

The house stood on a hill that faced the sunset. Down from the orchard sloped corn fields and rye fields. Below the winding white road was a deep ravine where a brook ran helterskelter by hilly pastures until it slipped away into the cool shade of a quiet glen, sweet scented with hemlock and spruce.

In the distance, hill after hill rose in mellowed beauty, each seeming to lean in sisterly fashion against the next taller one. From the sitting-room window Cousin Roxana declared she had seen "the power and the glory" unfold in rapturous vision when the sun spread its alchemy over old Gilead township.

The course of Little River could be traced down through the valley by its fringe of willows and alders. For perhaps fifteen miles it rambled, winding in and out around little islands, dodging old submerged trees that lifted skeleton arms in protest, spreading out above some old rock dam into a tiny lake, then dashing like some chased wild thing through a mill run and out again into low, moist meadows, thick with flag and rushes.

At a point about a mile below the house stood the old Barlow lumber mill. Ella Lou caught the first hum of it and quickened her pace until she came to its watering trough, half toppling over at one side of the road, its sides all green with moss.

Jean let her take her own way. Once she shied at a shadowy brown shape that skitted across the road under her feet, and Jean wondered whether it was a rabbit or a muskrat. Already she was catching the country spirit. Little objects of everyday life held a meaning for her and she found herself watching eagerly for new surprises as she drove along the old river road. How the girls would love it all, she thought, with a little tightening of her throat. It might be a little lonesome at first, but surely it was, as Cousin Roxana always said, "the land o' rest."

The final decision on the new home site was to be left to her mother. Several places had been selected with a leaning towards the Mansion House, but, as Roxy said again, in her cheery, buoyant way, Betty must be left unbiased to form her own opinion, although according to her way of thinking, no sensible person with half their wits could pass over the merits of the Mansion House, or the wonderful opportunities it presented.

"It's going to rack and ruin, and it fairly cries out for somebody to take hold of it and love it," she had said. "I don't know but what I'd drive by it if I were you, Jeanie, on your way back from the station, even if it is a mite out of your way, just to see the look on your Mother's face when she sees it. There's a Providence in all things, of course, and I ain't gainsaying it, but I do like to jog it along a bit now and then."

It was a drive of seven miles down to Nantic, the nearest railroad station. Ella Lou made it in good time and now stood complacently hitched to the white post above the express office. Already, it appeared, Mr. Briggs, the station master knew Jean, and smiled over at the trim, city-like figure pacing up and down on the platform waiting for the Willimantic train. This was the side line up to Providence that connected with the Boston express from New York.

"Expecting some of your folks up?" asked Mr. Briggs pleasantly. Nobody could say that friendly interest in strangers and their affairs was not evinced around Nantic. It was part of the joy of life to Mr. Briggs to locate their general intentions.

"My Mother and sisters," Jean answered happily.

"Figure on staying a while, do they?"

She nodded rather proudly. "We're going to live here. We're Miss Robbins' cousins. You'll have the freight car up with our goods this week."

"Like enough," said Mr. Briggs encouragingly. "Yes, I knew you belonged to Roxy. I've known Roxy herself since she was knee high to a toadstool. There comes your local."

Around the hillside bend of track came the train. It seemed to Jean as if seconds turned to minutes then. The dear blessed train that was bearing Mother and Helen and Kit and Doris up out of the world of uncertainty and trouble into this haven of blossoming hopes. She wanted to stretch out both her arms to it as it slowed down and puffed, but there on the last car she caught a glimpse of Kit, one foot all ready to drop off, waving one hand and hanging on with the other.

"Oh, Mother darling," Jean cried, joyously, once she had them all safe on the platform. "It's so beautiful up here, and Dad's looking better every day. He sits up for a while now, and the old doctor told us the only thing that ailed him was a little distemper. Isn't that fun? Where are your trunks, girls?"

But this was Mr. Briggs's cue to come forward, hat in hand, and be introduced, so he took the baggage under his own personal supervision. It appeared that you never could tell anything about when trunks were liable to show up once they got started for Nantic, but the likelihood was, barring accidents, that they'd come up on the six o'clock train, and there wasn't a bit of use putting any reliance on that either, 'cause they might not show up till the milk train next morning.

"Hope you'll like it up here," was his parting salute, as they drove up the hill road, and Kit called back that they liked it already, much to Mr. Briggs's enjoyment.

Mrs. Robbins sat on the front seat, both as the place of honor, and in remembrance of Cousin Roxana's warning against the back springs. At the top of the hill Jean rested Ella Lou, so the girls could look back at the little town. There was the huge one story stone mill, covering acres of ground, with immense ventilators looking like those on steamships or like strange uprearing heads of prehistoric reptiles.

The little crooked main street could be traced by its lines of buildings, and back in a mass of trees stood the old French convent. Scattered everywhere were the houses of the mill workers, all of a uniform pattern, painted white with green blinds, and a patch of green yard to each. Jean, flushed and proud of her responsibility, turned Ella Lou's head towards home and made quick time. The maple buds were swelling and looked rosy red against the thickets of dark shiny green laurel. Behind them rose slim lines of white birches. Doris named them the "White Ladyes," after the gentle lady ghost in "The Monastery."

"How far is it, Jeanie?" asked Helen. Just then the road came out on the hilltop overlooking the big reservoir. "Oh, look, look, girls," she cried. "Isn't it like a bit of out West, Motherie? All those rocks and pines."

"I'd rather have these dear old hills than all the mountains going," Kit declared with her usual forcefulness. "We seem to be going up higher and higher all the time."

"So we are," Jean told her. "It's a steady rise from New London to Norwich, then up to our own Quinnebaug hills. Are you warm enough, Mumsie?"

"Plenty," said Mrs. Robbins, happily. "Though it is ever so much cooler here than on Long Island, isn't it, girls?"

"We've got an open log fire in your room all ready for you," Jean replied. "You can just sit and toast and toast away to your heart's content, Queen Motherkin."

"For pity's sake, who ever had the courage to carry all the rocks for these stone walls?" asked Kit. "Jean, what do you say to this? Let's buy barrels of cement, and mix it up with sand and water, and make a lot of lovely old garden seats and grottoes and pergolas. I'm going to make a sun dial."

"Why not get a Roman seat mold," Jean proposed, "and just pour in cement and turn out a lot of them and whenever we come to a particularly fine view, put a seat there."

"Oh, you castle builders," laughed Mrs. Robbins. "When we haven't even a home yet. You'd think there was a baronial estate waiting for us."

"There is," Jean answered mysteriously. "Cousin Roxy and I think that we've found the right place. Father hasn't seen it, of course, but I found it, and Cousin Roxy said we couldn't get it because somebody'd died, and it had gone to people out West."

"Which gave our precious old Jean a chance to delve into mystery," Kit suggested. "Yes, yes, go on, sister mine. You interest us amazingly. What didst do then?"

"Oh, I found him," said Jean, enthusiastically. "He lives away out West in Saskatoon, and has never even seen this place, so he's willing to sell it for almost nothing, $2,500, and even that includes the water power."

Kit shook her head deploringly.

"Listen to the poor child, Mother dear. She chats of thousands as if they were split peas and she was making a pudding."

"Hush, Kit. He'll rent it too for a hundred dollars a year, timber rights reserved excepting for our own use, and we can sell the hay."

"How many rooms, dear?" asked Mrs. Robbins.

"Seventeen," replied Jean, blithely. "Oh, it isn't a country cottage or a farm-house at all. They call it the Mansion House out here, and it's so big that nobody wants it for a gift."

"Do you want a castle or an inn?" asked Kit.

"Where is it?" Helen inquired cautiously.

"When can we move in?" Doris asked practically.

"Well, you can see the cupola, I think, as soon as we get up to the top of Peck's Hill. I'll stop then. It's fearfully lonesome, and perhaps you'd rather be in the village. Cousin Roxy says that some folks do say--"

"Stop her, stop her," Kit exclaimed. "Jean, you're talking exactly like Cousin Roxy. Isn't she, Mother?"

"Never mind, dear. Go right on," comforted Mrs. Robbins, smiling at the eager young face beside her. Three weeks at Maple Lawn had surely taken a lot of the spread out of Jean's sails.

"I don't think we'd be one bit lonely. It's about a mile from Maple Lawn, and half a mile from Mr. Peck's place down the valley, and the mail goes right by the door. And there's an old ruined stone mill on an island, and a waterfall, and a bridge, and big pines along the terrace in the front yard. It does need painting, I suppose, and shingling in spots, and the veranda lops a little bit where it needs shoring up, Hiram told me--"

"Specify Hiram," Helen asked mildly. "We don't know a thing about Hiram, Jeanie."

"He's the hired man, and he can do anything."

"But, dear," interrupted Mrs. Robbins, "can't you realize that there must be something wrong with it or it never would be rented for such a sum.

"Oh, there is," Jean replied promptly. "It's too far from the railroad or village, and the mill burned down six years ago, and the owner died from the shock of losing everything he had, and there it stands, going to rack and ruin, Cousin Roxy says, waiting for the Robbinses to appear and turn it into a nest."

"How about school?" asked Kit suddenly.

Jean waved her long whip grandly.

"Who wants a school out here? The groves were God's first temples. There's a school, though, over at the Gayhead crossroads. We're going to have a horse and drive you over to the trolley so you can catch it to the High School."

"Jean has us all moved and settled already," Mrs. Robbins said, "I'm sure I'd like to be near where Roxana lives."

"Well, there it is," Jean exclaimed happily. Ella Lou pricked up her ears, and quickened her pace, down one little hill, up another, over a culvert, and suddenly there appeared white chimneys rising above an apple orchard at the top of the hill.

"There it is," she said, pointing to it with her whip. "Seven miles from nowhere, but right next door to Heart's Content."

*CHAPTER VIII*

*SPYING THE PROMISED LAND*

The following morning Miss Robbins said she thought she would drive down to the Mansion House with Elizabeth Ann herself, and they'd look it over.

"If you girls feel like coming down, you can take the short cut through the woods. Like enough you'll find some blood root out by now and saxifrage too. Don't be like Jean, though. The other day she came up from the brook and said she'd found a calla lily, and it was just skunk cabbage."

So the girls took the short cut through the woods. They were just beginning to show signs of spring. The trees were bare, but under the dry leaves they found the new life springing. It was all new and interesting to them. Down at the Cove they had been in a beautiful part of Long Island but it was all restricted property. Here the woods and meadows spread for miles on every hand. Every pasture bar seemed to invite one to climb over it and explore the "Beyond," as Doris called it. And where the woods ended in rocky pastures and wide spreading fields, they came out to a spot where they overlooked the Mansion House and its grounds.

Cousin Roxana and Mrs. Robbins were there before them. The side door stood hospitably open, and Ella Lou was hitched to the post just as though she belonged there. It was a curiously interesting old place. First of all, a rock wall enclosed the grounds, with rock columns at the two entrance gates. These were wide, for the drive entered on one side, wound around the house, and came out on the other road, as the house stood at a corner.

The house itself looked like a glorified farmhouse. It wasn't at all like a bungalow, Kit declared. In fact it was hard to place it in the history of architecture.

"I think perhaps it started out to be Mid-Victorian with that general squareness and the veranda," said Mrs. Robbins.

"That isn't Mid-Victorian, Mother darling," Jean interposed. "That's the Reaction Period in New England. First of all none of the Puritan women had any time to sit out on porches or verandas, so all the houses were made plain faced. Then after the war they began to turn their minds to lighter things, so they stuck a cupola up here, and tacked on a little porch there, and gave the windows fancy eyebrows, and little scalloped wooden lace ruffles along the edges of the eaves. Isn't that so, Cousin Roxy?"

"Well, I declare, Jeanie," laughed Miss Robbins, "maybe you're right. I'd say, though, it was mostly a hankering after titivation. I don't set much store by it myself, so long as I've got plenty of flowering bushes 'round a house, and climbing vines. That makes me think, you've got a sight of them here, flowering quince and almond, and 'pinies,' and all sorts of hardy annuals. There used to be a big border of them, I remember, at the back of the house, and behind it was an old-fashioned rose garden."

"A rose garden!" Kit and Helen gasped.

"Wish I had my sun dial under my arm this minute," added Jean. "Come on, girls."

Back they went to find it, and after hunting diligently through hazel bushes and upspringing weeds, they found where one terrace dipped into a sunken space walled in once upon a time, though now the tumbled gray rocks had half fallen down, and some were sunken in the earth. But still they found some old rose canes, and several large bushes that looked hopeful. There was a flagged walk with myrtle growing up between the stones, and a tumble-down arbor that Doris declared looked exactly like a shipwrecked pilot house off some boat.

"Let's call it our pilot house. We may need piloting before we get through," said Helen, sitting down on the broad front steps, her chin on her palms, listening to the music of falling water in the distance and the wind overhead in the great, slumbrous pines. There were four of these, two on each side of the long terrace, with rock maples down near the rock wall, and several pear and cherry trees. Along the terrace were old-time flower beds, three on each one, outlined with clam shells.

"Miss Trowbridge used to have gladiolus set out in those beds, with pansies and sweet alyssum set 'round the edges, and outside again, old-hen-and-her-chickens. They looked real sightly."

"Who was Miss Trowbridge, Cousin Roxy?" asked Mrs. Robbins. She sat beside Jean, her hands clasped lightly in her lap, her hat lying beside her. There was a look of concent on her face that had been a stranger there for many months. Doris dropped a spray of half blossomed cherry twigs in her lap, and ran away again.