Part 7

“Land alive, Margaret,” she exclaimed, “don’t crush anything that looks like budding initiative in your children. I’d let them put cabins all over the place until it blossomed like the wilderness. There’s a stack of old furniture up in the attic at Maple Grove and over at our place, too, and they’re welcome to it. Get some cans of paint and go to work, Kit.”

Kit acted immediately on the suggestion and drove up with Tommy and Jack to look over the collection of discarded furniture. What she liked best of all were the three-drawer, old-fashioned chests and handmade wooden chairs. There were several old single bedsteads, too.

“We’re going to paint them all over, Mom, and Tommy and Jack promised to put up any shelves or things like that we may need.”

“Don’t forget that they’ll have to eat sometime,” Becky reminded. “Get some two-burner oil stoves and folding tables. Lay in a stock of candles and lamps. I’d make them bring up their own bedding if I were you, because that would be the only nuisance you’d have to contend with.”

“It’s too bad,” Kit said, “that we’re so far away from any kind of stores. There are eight cabins altogether, and there’ll be ever so many things people will want to buy. Do you suppose, Mother, that Mr. Peckham would let Lucy manage anything like that up here? She’s just dying to do something besides housework all her life.”

“But where would you put her, dear?”

“I’ll bet the boys down there at the mill could throw together a perfectly swell little shack. They could either have it down by the mill or put it right here at the crossroads. Lucy could put in all kinds of supplies, films for cameras and post cards and candy.”

“Better put in a few canned goods, too, and staples,” add Becky. “I declare, I’d kind of like to have a hand in that myself. Kit, I do believe you’ve started something that may wake this town up.”

Kit herself attacked the problem of winning over the Peckhams to her idea of Lucy’s taking charge of a little store at the crossroads. Lucy sat with wide anxious eyes on the extreme edge of her chair, while her mother said over and over again it was utterly impossible.

“Why, I couldn’t get along without Lucy, especially in the summer, with all the fruit to put up and the young ones home from school.”

“But, Mrs. Peckham,” pleaded Kit, “when you were our age, wasn’t there ever anything that you wanted to do or be with all your heart and soul? Didn’t you ever just want to get away from what you had been doing for years, and start something new?”

“Well, come to think of it now,” smiled Mrs. Peckham, “I’d have given my eye-teeth to have left home and gone to be a teacher in some town.”

“Then please let Lucy do this. Becky says she’s willing to keep an eye on everything, and one of us girls will probably be helping her out most of the time, too. It would only be until the middle of September, and Anne’s fifteen and Charlotte’s twelve. Why, it isn’t fair to them to let them think all Lucy’s good for is to stay at home and do housework. You will let her go, won’t you, Mrs. Peckham?”

Mrs. Peckham sighed and smiled. “You’re a fearfully good pleader. I don’t suppose it would hurt the other girls any to take hold and help. I’m willing, and if her father is, why, she can go. Seems to me you are starting something you can’t finish, but maybe you can.”

The first part of April was unusually mild. A sort of balmy hush seemed to lie over the barren land, as though spring had chosen to steal upon it sleeping. On one of these warm spring days Kit, Doris, Tommy, and Jack went out to inspect the cabins to see if they needed repairing. Matt had promised to help them mend any leaking roofs and replace rotten boards, but except for two of them, they seemed to be in excellent condition. The furniture had all been scraped and painted and almost daily something was added to the store of supplies for the summer venture. The next problem to be solved was finding the occupants for the cabins, and here it was Jean who helped out.

“You don’t want to get a lot of people,” she wrote, “who will be expecting all the comforts of a typical summer resort, so I suggest my spreading the word among the art students here. They are sure to pass it along to their friends.”

When Jean came home to stay the end of May, the first thing she asked was, “Who do you suppose wants to rent one of our cabins for the whole summer?”

“Ralph McRae,” Kit replied immediately.

“But how did you know?” asked Jean. She had thought it would be a surprise.

“I knew he would be back this summer to see you,” she replied knowingly. “Besides, Buzzy wrote me the news last week, and I’ve reserved the pick of the cabins for him. You know the one down by the river just above the Falls? And Becky told me yesterday that she was positive Billie and Frank would come down for a while in July or August.”

“That’s wonderful,” Jean said, enthusiastically.

“But that isn’t all,” Kit went on. “I had a letter from Uncle Bart. And do you know what he said? He received a substantial sum of money from the Archeological Research Foundation for his work in deciphering the contents of the Amenotaph urn. He doesn’t need the money, he says, and because I helped him open the urn, he sent it to me.”

“Golly, what will you do with it?” Jean asked.

“I wrote him last winter, just after I returned, about our plans for running a camp this summer and he was terribly interested in it. He wants me to pay Dad back the amount he gave us for repairing the cabins and the paint and other things we had to buy. I did and now the camp is really our own business venture. If we don’t make a go of it, it will be our loss and not Dad’s.”

16. Visiting Celebrities

The first campers were due to arrive the second week in June, but everything was in complete readiness long before that time. The girls never wearied of making their tours of inspection to be sure nothing had been overlooked, and each time it seemed as if they added a few more finishing touches.

Becky declared it was all so inviting that she felt like closing up the big house and coaxing the Judge to camp out with her.

Kit and Doris were in one of the cabins that was on a little jutting point of land near the Peckham mill. Here, the river swept out in a wide U-shaped curve that was crowned with gray rocks and pines. The music of the falls reached it, and the road was only about a quarter of a mile across the fields to the north, but apparently it was completely isolated.

All at once Tommy came tearing around the rock path, his eyes wide with excitement, his whole manner full of mystery.

“There’s a car just stopped in the road,” he exclaimed, “and the man in it asked me who lived in the cabin over here.”

“I never supposed anyone could see that cabin from the road.” Kit’s tone held a distinct note of disappointment. “What did he want to sell us, Tommy, lightning rods or sewing machines?”

“Aw, Kit, quit it,” pleaded Tommy. “He’s really in earnest, and he’s coming over here right now. I told him all about everything, and he thinks he might want to rent one.”

Kit’s face brightened up at this. “Lead me, Tommy, to this first paying guest. Doris, don’t you dare to say anything to spoil the inviting picture which I shall give him. I don’t see what more he could want.” She hesitated a moment, surveying the river, almost directly below the sloping rock. “Why, he could almost sit up in bed in the morning and haul in his fishing line from that river with a fine catch for breakfast on it.”

“Oh, hurry, Kit, and stop wasting time,” Tommy begged. “He’s really awfully nice, and he’s in earnest, I know he is.”

So Kit followed Tommy across the fields to the road where the automobile was waiting. The man must have been about forty years old, but with his closely cut dark hair and alert smile he appeared much younger. He wore no hat, and was deeply tanned. It seemed to Kit at first glance as though she had never seen eyes so full of keen curiosity and genial friendliness.

“Hello,” he called as soon as she came within hearing distance. “Are you the young lady in charge of renting these cabins which I see?”

Kit admitted that she was. He nodded his head approvingly and smiled, a broad pleasant smile which seemed to include the entire landscape.

“I like it here,” he announced with emphasis. “It is sequestered and silent. I have not met a single car on the road for miles.”

“Oh, that happens often,” said Kit eagerly. “There are days when nobody passes at all except the mailman.”

“It suits me,” he exclaimed buoyantly. “I must have quiet and perfect relaxation. I will rent one of your cabins and occupy it at once. I have been touring this part of the country looking for a spot which appealed to me.”

“We have one on the hill over there,” Kit suggested. He seemed rather peculiar, and perhaps it would be just as well to have him as far off as possible. “It is right on the edge of the pines, and faces the west. The sunsets are beautiful from there.”

“No, no,” he repeated. “I like the sound of water. I hear falls below here. I will take that cabin I see over there.”

So the first cabin dweller came to Woodhow. Kit had still been in doubt, and taking no chances on strangers within the gates, she had guided Mr. Ormond up to her father to make the closing arrangements on renting the waterfall cabin. The most amazing part was that he left a check that first day for full rental for ten weeks.

“I must not be interrupted or bothered by little things,” he told Mr. Craig. “I must have perfect isolation or I cannot do my work.”

He arrived promptly the following day and arranged to put up the car in their garage. Tommy and Jack helped him move his things into the cabin.

“Gosh, we’ve lugged down all his belongings to the cabin,” Jack said when they were finished, “and I can’t find out what in the heck his business is. He had a lot of heavy bundles, and we asked him a few questions about them, but he didn’t seem to take kindly to it, so we let him alone.”

“Lucy says he’s made arrangements to buy eggs and chickens from them,” said Kit, “so I see where our paying guests are going to scatter prosperity around the neighborhood.”

Ralph McRae arrived the seventeenth of June and took the Turtle Cove Cabin. The Craigs saw quite a good deal of him, for he was always dropping in on them. Doris suspected a budding romance, but she contented herself with watching Jean and investing her with the glamor of all her favorite heroines.

The first fruits of Jean’s efforts to colonize the cabins came with a letter from Peg Moffat.

“You’re going to have four of the girls through July anyway, and August if they like it. I’ve told them the scenery is perfectly gorgeous and they can draw wherever they like, so be sure and give them the cabins with the best view.”

The next surprise was a letter from Billie. He could not reach home before the middle of July, as he was going on another trip with Frank, but there were five of the boys from his class who wanted to come up and camp.

“I’ve told them the fishing is swell around there, and they’re going to make the trip from here in Jeff Saunders’s car. Jeff’s from Georgia, and most of the guys have never been north. We’re going to join them later on, so if you’ve got a bunch of cabins together, you better save us three.”

“We’ll put them all over in the glen, where they can do just as they please,” Kit decided. “They won’t interfere with high art or our mysterious stranger.”

Lucy opened her general store the first of June. It stood exactly at the crossroads, beside Woodhow. Her brothers had erected a little slab shack, and Lucy had planted wild cucumber and morning glory vines thickly around the outside, the last week in April, so that by June they had climbed halfway up.

Inside the store there were two counters, one on either side as you entered, and these had been Mr. Peckham’s contribution to the good cause. At first the stocking up of the store had been a problem, but Becky helped out with the business plan, and by this time nearly everyone in Elmhurst was taking a keen, personal interest in the venture.

It was Ma Parmalee who first suggested that Lucy sell on the commission plan. “I’ve got thirty-five jars of the best kind of preserves and canned goods in Elmhurst,” she announced one day, when she had stopped on her way by the crossroads to look over the new establishment. “Most of them are pints, and besides I’ve got--land, I don’t know how many glasses of jelly and jam. I’d be willing to give you a good share of whatever you could make on them, if you could sell them off for me down here.”

Lucy agreed gladly, and the fruit made a splendid showing along the upper shelves behind the counters. Not only that, but it began to sell at once. Mr. Ormond bought up all of the canned peaches after sampling one jar, and Ralph said he was willing to become responsible for some of the strawberry jam and spiced pears. Before long, Lucy was looking around for more supplies.

One morning, just after Tommy had gone whistling out to the barn, Doris spied a familiar figure coming along the drive toward the house, and leaned out of the dining room window, calling with all her heart, “Hi, Billie!”

Billie waved back and came up to the back steps where he found the other girls. “The camp’s immense,” he said. “We got in late last night and I knew the way down, so we didn’t disturb anybody. Even found the old boat in the same place, Doris.”

“Well, you wouldn’t have if I hadn’t hauled it there, where I knew you could lay your hands on it.”

Billie laughed. He knew from past experience that Doris’s scoldings didn’t amount to much. He and Frank had brought up a load of supplies with them but huckleberry pancakes with honey lured them both up for breakfast that first morning. And even Kit was silent as Frank related all of his adventures during the year. It seemed to her that she had never really looked at him before, that is, to get the best impression, without prejudice. Now, she realized he was quite good-looking and she noted for the first time his curly yellow hair, and long, half-closed blue eyes, that always seemed to be laughing at you. He had dimples, too, and these Kit resented.

“I can’t abide dimples in a boy’s face,” she declared privately to Jean, when the latter was dwelling on Frank’s good looks.

“But, Kit, Buzzy has dimples, and you always thought he was such a swell guy.”

“Well, he’s different,” Kit said lamely. “I don’t think I like blond, curly hair, either.”

They had walked down to the Peckham mill after supper to get some supplies that Danny Peckham had promised to bring up from Nantic. Just as they came to the turn of the road there came a strange sound from the direction of the waterfall cabin, deep, rich strains of music, almost as low-pitched and thrilling as the sound of the water itself. Both girls stood still listening, until Jean whispered, “It must be Mr. Ormond. He’s playing on a cello, isn’t he?”

“Then, that’s what he does,” Kit’s tone held a touch of admiring awe as she listened. “And we thought he might be anything from a counterfeiter to an escaped convict hiding away up here. Oh, Jeannie, why do you suppose he keeps away from everyone?”

“Probably got a hidden sorrow,” Jean answered. “Still he’s got a terrific appetite. Mrs. Gorham says she doesn’t see how he ever puts away the amount of food he does. He buys whole roast chickens and eats them all himself.”

Just then the music ceased suddenly. The door opened and Mr. Ormond spoke into the twilight gloom.

“Is that you, Tommy?”

“No, it’s just us girls,” answered Kit. “We’re going down to the mill.”

“Would you mind so very much asking if anyone has telephoned a telegram up for me from the station? I’m expecting one.”

“There, you see,” Jean said, dubiously, as they went on down the road. “We just get rid of one mystery, and he hands us another to solve. Who would he be getting a telegram from?”

Kit laughed and said, “You’re getting just as bad as everyone else in Elmhurst, Jean. I thought only Mr. Ricketts took an interest in telegrams and post cards.”

Nevertheless, when Lucy told them that there had been a message phoned up from Nantic, even Kit showed quick interest.

It was signed “Concetta,” and the message read, “Arrive Nantic, ten-two. Contract signed. All love and tenderness.”

The girls returned after delivering the message, brimful of the news, but Mr. Craig laughed at them.

“Why, my goodness,” he said, “I could have told you long ago all about Bryan Ormond. He’s one of the greatest cellists we have, and is married to Madame Concetta Doria, the opera singer. He told me when he first took the cabin for the summer, but as he was composing a new opera, he wanted absolute solitude up here and asked me not to let anyone know who he was.”

“Talk about entertaining an angel unawares,” Jean exclaimed. “Now, Doris, you’ll have your chance, if you can only get acquainted with her. I can see you perched on their threshold drinking in trills and quavers the rest of the summer.”

Doris only smiled happily. It was she who had begged the hardest to bring the piano with them when they moved to Elmhurst. She really played quite well and had a pleasing voice.

“Have you ever heard her sing, Mother?” she asked.

“Yes, many times. She has a lovely voice and you will like her.”

“And just to think of her coming to live in a cabin at Woodhow,” Doris said, almost in a whisper. “It seems as if we ought to offer them the best room in the house.”

“If you did, they would run away. That’s just what they have come here to escape from, all the fuss and publicity.”

Jean, too, was eagerly expecting Madame Ormond. While not one of the girls could have explained just exactly how they thought she would look, still they held a blurred picture of someone unusual, who would probably dress more or less eccentrically.

Kit was in the kitchen making sandwiches for lunch, when a shadow fell across the doorway. Jean sat on the edge of the table by the window picking over blackberries, and the two stared at the intruder. She was about the same age as Mr. Ormond, a large buoyant type of woman with a mass of curly ash-blonde hair, sparkling black eyes, and a wonderful complexion. Perhaps it was her smile that charmed the girls most, though, at that first glance. It was such a radiant smile of good fellowship when she peered into the shadowy interior of the kitchen.

“Good morning. I have come for butter and eggs and milk.” She spied the two-quart pail of berries on the table, and gave a little cry of interest. “Where do you find those, my dear?”

Jean told her politely that they came from the rock pasture on the hill behind the house.

“Will you come down to the cabin this afternoon and take me there? My husband is very, very busy working on his new opera, and I must be away and let him write in peace, so you and I will have to explore the woods together, yes?” She smiled down into Jean’s face, and just at that moment there came from the living room, where Doris was dusting, a clear, sweet soprano voice.

Madame Ormond laid her finger on her lips and listened, her eyes bright with attention and interest. “It is still another one of you?” she asked softly, when the song died away. “You shall bring her down to the cabin to me and let my husband try her voice with the cello. It is his big baby, that cello, but it is very wise, it never gives the wrong decision on a voice, and she has a very beautiful one.”

“Well,” Kit declared with a deep sigh, after Madame Ormond had gone on down toward the road with her butter, eggs, and milk, “we’ve always believed we were an exceptional family. We’ll have to begin our song of triumph pretty soon. I’ll bet she’ll go up there in the pasture every day and do her vocal practicing out of hearing of the cello, and Doris will sit on the nearest rock and play echo.”

Jean was telling Ralph about it that evening while they were sitting in the cool high air on the front porch as they did almost every evening. Although the others, with the exception of her mother and father, didn’t know it yet, Jean was going to be engaged that summer.

Not long after Ralph had come in June he had asked Jean if she had reached a decision on her art career. “Are you going to go ahead and get a job in that field and make it your career?” He asked a little anxiously, after Jean had finished an enthusiastic description of her previous year’s work in New York.

“I’ve pretty much decided against it, Ralph. I know you’ll be pleased because you never really wanted me to go through with it, I realize now. I realize something else, too, and that is how much I really love the country. How I missed it last winter. The noise of the city got on my nerves so, that I could hardly wait to get on the train when I was coming home weekends. Although I never told Mother, I almost dreaded having to go back when Sunday came.”

“Then you mean you wouldn’t mind living on the Canadian prairie?” Ralph asked, eagerly. “Are you quite sure that is what you really want?”

“Oh, of course, I’ll want to visit the city once in a while. I don’t want to forego the opportunities of city life altogether--the plays and concerts and exhibitions, I mean. As far as my career is concerned, art is only a hobby, I think, and I’d like my real career to be with you.”

Ralph kissed her tenderly, and together the next day they told Mr. and Mrs. Craig of their plans.

Jean’s mother and father were very pleased at the news, but were rather relieved to know that the two did not plan to be married until Jean was older.

“It will take me quite a long time to get used to the idea of being parted from my oldest daughter,” remarked Mrs. Craig. “I’m glad you’re being sensible about it and are going to wait. You’re not completely grown up yet, Jeannie.”

17. Frank to the Rescue

The first week in August, Jean, who had acted as treasurer of the cabin fund, announced that it had proved a solid financial success. Every cabin was full and booked up to the middle of September. The girls from the Art School had persuaded two more batches to come, and Billie’s boy friends had turned their cabins into headquarters for the club they belonged to at school.

Jeff Saunders had used his car back and forth until Kit declared she was dizzy. “Jeff tears down to Richmond and takes back a couple of boys, lays off himself for a couple of weeks, and then the car comes back with three new ones, but I must say that they’re the best behaved lot of boys I ever saw. You’d hardly know they were around at all, except for the portable radios going at night. And they certainly have kept us supplied with fish ever since they came. I think it’s done Dad a world of good going away with them and kind of turning into a boy again. Frank said the other day they were going out fishing all night just as soon as the bass were running.”

Mrs. Gorham was setting the table for lunch and stopped at the last words, one hand on her hip, and a look of anxiety in her eyes.

“They ain’t calculatin’ to fish over there beyond the dam, are they? That’s where the Gaskell boy come near drowning a year ago, when his boat upset. It’s just full of sunken snags for half a mile up the river above the island.”

“I guess that’s where they’re going just the same. Billie Ellis thinks that he knows every foot of space on that upper lake and river just because he’s poled around on it for years with that old leaky, flat-bottomed boat of his.”

“Well, it’s all right in the daytime,” Mrs. Gorham replied, “but I wouldn’t give two cents for their safety fishing for bass on a dark night among those snags.”