Part 5

“But he is,” Kit protested, “really winsome. He gave us each a drink from his well and showed Jean his Dutch tile stove and his grandfather’s clock. And he’s got the cutest old chest out in that side hall, Rebecca. I asked him how much he’d take for it, and he said no, he guessed he’d better not, though it was worth as much as two dollars and a half, but it had been his great-grandmother’s hope chest. Wasn’t that amusing?”

Armed with the key and waving goodbye to the old man at the top of the hill, they started down to the crossroads. Already they called the house home. It was so satisfying, Kit said, just to wander about the rooms and plan. There was one large southeast room that must be the living room. Back of this, opening out on a wide side porch, was the dining room. On the opposite side of the front hallway was a small room they could use for a study. Between it and the kitchen was a good-sized hallway lined with shelves and long handy drawers beneath them.

It was the kitchen and attic, though, that the girls lingered over most. The former extended across the entire back of the house and Doris said there was room enough to hold a dance in it.

“Where are you, Jeannie?” Kit called. “You’re missing thrills of discovery.”

But Jean was getting her own thrills. She had rolled up the legs of her blue jeans and ventured down the old winding cellar steps, groped around in the dark until she found the outside doors and removed the big wooden bar that held them. The stone steps outside were green with moss, and an indignant toad hopped back out of the sunlight when she threw open the doors.

“We’ll get the moldy smell out of the cellar in a few days,” she told the others, rolling up her sleeves and sitting down in the sunshine on the top step. “And there’s a furnace down there, too. It looks old and rusty, but it’s there.”

Kit stood with her hands clasped behind her back, looking up at the tall tapering pines. They were splendid old trees, towering as high as the house itself. Their branches spread out like great hoopskirts of green. Underneath was a thick silky carpet of russet needles, layer on layer from many seasons of growth. Beyond the limits of the garden lay the strip of white road, and across that came wide fields that seemed to fall in long waves to meet the river. On all sides they slipped away from the old house, their square borders outlined with the gray rock walls, each with its brave showing of springtime green, where every clambering vine had sent forth leafy tendrils, and even the moss had freshened up under the April showers.

“In a couple of weeks more they’ll all be green,” said Jean, her dark eyes bright with anticipation. “And we’ll plough them and sow them, and they’ll grow and grow, kids, and turn a real golden harvest over to us by fall.”

10. New Home, New Friends

“Goods have come,” called Mr. Ricketts from the mailbox one morning. The pink freight card lay on top, and he seemed as pleased as anyone to find it there. “Letter from out West too, I noticed, so I presume you folks will be settled pretty soon.”

“I almost feel as if I ought to let him read what Mr. McRae says,” Mrs. Craig said amusedly. “He’s so friendly and interested.”

As she opened the letter, the girls gathered around her chair, eager-eyed and curious to see what it contained. Jean declared that she liked the handwriting because it was firm and plain without any flourishes. Kit was sure he used a stub pen and was rather morose and dignified. Doris asked if she might keep the postage stamp for a memento.

“You read it, dear. I’d much rather you did,” their mother said, handing it over to Mr. Craig.

Rebecca was out in the buttery singing softly to herself about some day when the mists had rolled in splendor from the beauty of the hills, so there was just their own family together as they listened anxiously for the verdict. The letter ran:

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, April 4th

Mr. Thomas Craig, Elmhurst, Connecticut

Dear Mr. Craig: Your letter of March 28th received. I should be very glad to rent the old house down at Stony Eddy on a lease, but do not want to let it go out of the family. Miss Craig can tell you the conditions under which it came into my possession and why I am not at liberty to part with it. If you care to rent it at $65 a month, it is yours. Any necessary repairs it may need I am willing to make. I have never seen the property myself, but whatever Miss Craig says about it will be satisfactory to me, as she was my Aunt Trowbridge’s dearest friend.

Hoping if you decide to take the place, you may be happy there, I am,

Yours sincerely, RALPH McRAE.

“It’s ours,” Jean breathed thankfully.

“I always felt that it was, somehow,” Mrs. Craig smiled happily around at her family. “And I know you’ll like it, Tom.”

“Oh, I know the place, I remember admiring it as a boy. Besides, I’d like anything up here. Why, I could live out yonder in Becky’s corncrib very comfortably this summer if she’d only let me,” teased the invalid. “Better send a check out at once for the rent, Margie, and get into it as soon as possible.”

It was the third week in April when they drove down in relays from Maple Grove and took possession of the new home. There had been considerable repairing to be done—painting and papering, mending the water pipes and furnace, and cleaning out the chimneys.

The goods had been brought up from Nantic by Matt in the big hay wagon in four trips. Mrs. Craig had wanted to hire a truck from Norwich, but Rebecca said it was all nonsense with two big horses standing idle in the barn just aching for work, and Matt fussing around over frost still being in the ground so he couldn’t do any deep ploughing. So the goods came up and were packed into the big front room downstairs while the girls and Mrs. Craig went back and forth settling.

Matt’s younger brother came to do the papering and painting. He looked exactly like a young rooster, Kit declared, all neck and legs, and he was fearfully shy. She found immediate diversion in appearing before him suddenly in her most abrupt manner to ask his opinion anxiously on something, whereupon Shad would blush intensely to the roots of his taffy-colored hair, and splash paste blindly.

His name was Shadrach Farnum, but Shad suited him to perfection. As Rebecca said, he did sort of run to bone. But he could paint and paper well, and gradually the rooms began to look different. The big living room was covered with a soft gray that harmonized well with their dark green and chartreuse upholstered furniture. The bookcases were painted the same shade of gray. Window seats were built around the two bay windows, and the girls worked hard making new chartreuse cushions and crisp white curtains for the windows.

“It looks so warm and friendly, doesn’t it?” Doris exclaimed when the big round table was brought in and the copper lamp placed in the center. The copper lamp was really an institution in the Craig family. The girls had given it personal conduct from the Cove on Long Island to Nantic. Jean had found it in an old copper and brass shop in New York at a wonderful reduction, and had carted it home herself in triumph. The bowl was broad and low and squat, shaped a good deal like a summer squash. The parchment shade was perforated by hand with exquisite artistry into strange Muscovite designs, through which the light shone softly. When it was lighted the first evening in the new home, Doris said she felt that everything was complete.

The day after they really moved in, Rebecca drove down with Ella Lou and some good advice, a large brown crock of freshly baked beans and a loaf of brown bread.

“You need a good safe horse that you all can ride and also use for work,” she said. “Sam Willetts has a brown mare that seems just about the ticket. I telephoned over to him this morning and he’ll sell her for $75, which isn’t bad at all. If you like, Margie, I’ll call him up again as soon as I get back and Buzzy Hancock can bring her over. Buzzy’s working for Mr. Willetts now, and the mare used to belong to the Hancocks. She was a regular pet, Sally said.”

Mrs. Craig was sure it was a good plan and Rebecca was instructed to close the bargain. So it was thus Woodhow made the acquaintance of Buzzy Hancock, destined to be a close friend before summer was over, and always a family standby.

It was a little while after supper when Buzzy rode up leading the mare behind his own horse, and they all went out to look at her. Buzzy was about seventeen and tall. He had rosy cheeks, blue eyes, curly brown hair, and dimples so deep that Doris said it was a burning shame to waste them on a boy.

He stood at the mare’s head, patting her slender, glossy neck and combing her mane with his fingers, telling the girls and Tommy her history, how she had belonged to Molly Bawn, their old mare, and how his father had broken her to harness himself.

“But she never had to be really broken in. Sally and I started riding her bareback when she was out in pasture and she was just as tame as a kitten. She understands anything you say to her. Mother hated to sell her to Mr. Willetts, but we had to, and as I was working for him, why, she didn’t know any difference. She’s used to a good deal of petting—”

“Oh, we’ll all pet her,” Jean promised. “We must get a saddle and harness. Do you know where we can get some?”

“Down at Mr. Butterick’s,” said Buzzy. “He’s the man who handles all sorts of riding equipment.”

“You have wonderful people up here,” Doris said fervently. “It seems as if whenever you want a certain kind of a person, there he is waiting for you. Where does Mr. Butterick live?”

“Down in Rocky Glen. Second house past the basket weaver, Mr. Tompkins.”

“Suppose we go over there tomorrow, kids,” Jean suggested. “Or do you have to take the mare over, Buzzy, and let Mr. Butterick sort of fit her with a harness and saddle? I wish I could put her in the barn right now.”

“Better get somebody to take care of her first,” Doris said practically. “We’d feed her fish cakes and doughnuts.”

Buzzy shifted his weight from one foot to the other uneasily.

“Don’t suppose you folks think of taking anybody on regularly, do you? Mother said I was to ask, and say if you wanted me I might come up. It’s nearer home than Mr. Willetts’ and there’s only Sally and Mom at home, and they need me to do the chores after I get home at night.”

Jean hastily glanced at Kit for fear she wouldn’t remember all that Rebecca had told them about Buzzy Hancock and his sister. But just then Mrs. Craig stepped out on the side porch and smiled at Buzzy until he turned red and grinned.

“I could come for about ten a month, Mother thought,” he added with much embarrassment.

Mrs. Craig thought ten was about right too, and Buzzy rode away in the spring twilight. All the way up the hill they heard him whistling _Stardust_. Although the deal had been closed over the brown mare, and the check reposed in Buzzy’s overalls’ pocket, he took her back with him, and promised to ride her over in the morning so the Craigs should not have the care of her overnight.

“I asked him what her name was,” Tommy said, “and he told me they just called her Molly’s Baby. We must think up a better name than that. You know, Mom, she looked over at me so wistfully when Buzzy said she would have to go back overnight. I know she wanted to stay with us.”

The next addition to the place was the lot of chickens. It had been agreed the first year that no large expenditures should be made for anything, because it was all more or less experimental.

“We want to take care of Dad, and make him well this first year,” Jean told the others up in their room one night.

At first the housework had proved to be the great stumbling block in the way of perfect peace and daily comfort.

“I tell you, Mom, if you’ll just say what you want done, we’ll do our best to oblige,” Jean had promised at the very beginning, but the girls had found themselves tangled up in less than two days, treading on each other’s heels and losing their tempers, too.

Mrs. Craig laughed at them when she happened in and found them all bickering.

“You’ll have to learn teamwork,” she explained. “You must learn that when you put your bread to rise it doesn’t shape itself into loaves and hop into the pans and walk over to the oven.” Here Kit blushed hotly, remembering how her first batch had risen to the occasion beyond all expectations, and rambled during the night all over the edge of the pan and the arm of the chair she had set it on. “And, Tommy, darling, if you catch mice in traps alive, and then decide to tame them, we’ll have mice all over the place.”

Tommy had discovered a nice little brown prisoner under the pantry shelf, had taken him out into the rose garden and there let him go, all in a spirit of pity that left Kit and Jean speechless.

Also, sundry noises having issued from his room at night, the girls had started down the dark hall to investigate, and had stepped on turtles which Tommy had found sunning themselves on logs in the pond, and had put into empty tomato cans and smuggled up to his room for future humanitarian reference.

“OK, Mom,” said Jean in a subdued voice, “we’ll try to make fewer mistakes. With patience maybe we’ll learn how to do housework with one hand. I told Kit to fix the bread a dozen times, but she wouldn’t listen.”

Just then Buzzy came to the kitchen door, bare-headed and smiling.

“Sally said for me to tell you folks that she heard Ma Parmelee had some good Plymouth Rocks for sale. They’re about as reliable a hen as you can get. Ma’s going to sell off everything and go to live with her son down in Nantic. It’s near toward where I live, if you’d like to drive over that way.”

Mrs. Craig thought it was a good idea, and that Jean could drive her over. Jean went into the living room to get the keys for the car from the desk and came back. She and Buzzy walked out to the garage for the car together.

As they walked along, Jean said, “I wish spring would hurry up and make up its mind to stay awhile.” Letters had come from some of the girls back at the Cove that day and she felt a wave of loneliness and half panic at what they had undertaken.

After Jean had backed the car out of the garage, Buzzy helped her to attach the new trailer. At the back door Jean tooted the horn and waited for her mother to join them. While they were waiting Buzzy loaded some burlap sacks into the trailer for the hens.

“Better tie them to something when you start off,” he advised. “They always flop around a lot in sacks.”

It was a drive of about two and a half miles, up through the hills. Each new road seemed to lead them straight up to the edge of the world and then to dip again and leave the clouds behind. The woods held a haze of green now that hung over the distant hills like a mist. Once a row of young quail blinked dizzily from a pasture bar and fled at the noise of the approaching car. And all at once there came the quick thud of hoofs from a lane at the right of them, and a young girl riding horseback waved for them to stop. She was about as old as Kit, with friendly blue eyes and brown hair brushed back from her face and fastened with a silver clasp at the nape of her neck.

“How do you do,” she said, blushing in a way that seemed familiar to them, for it reminded them of Buzzy. “I’m Sally Hancock.”

11. Jean Makes a Discovery

“Oh, we’re ever so glad to know you, Sally,” Jean said at once. “Buzzy’s told us all about you until we felt that we really did know you.”

Sally blushed deeper than ever, just as Buzzy did, and brushed a fly off her horse’s neck. She sat her horse well, in a pair of navy-blue riding breeches and a man’s shirt open at the throat. Altogether both Mrs. Craig and Jean approved of her at sight, for she seemed like a girl edition of Buzzy himself.

Sally told them they were on the right road, and to keep to the left after they passed the cemetery.

“I’m going down the other way or I’d ride along and show you where it is.”

“You must come down to see us when you can, please. We’re rather lonesome, since we’re quite new around here. Are there many boys and girls?”

“Quite a few,” said Sally. “And luckily there are just about as many girls as boys. The Swedish girls over on the old Ames place, and there are two French girls near us. Their father’s the carpenter, Mr. Chappelle. Etoile’s the older one and the little on they call Tony. I’ll be over to see you one of these days.”

“Isn’t she a darling, Mother?” Jean exclaimed when they drove on. “I do hope she’ll come down. Kit would be crazy about her.”

“Anybody would be,” agreed Mrs. Craig, still smiling. “You know, Jean, I think that you youngsters are going to find a special work up here that only you can do. A work among these boys and girls of our own neighborhood.”

“But, Mom, our own neighborhood up here means a radius of about ten miles.”

“Even so. Rebecca’s old doctor covers twenty miles and has been doing it for forty years. He knows all of the families as if he were a census taker.”

Jean thought for a minute. They were going up a long hill and she shifted into second. “There seem to be so few real American girls up here, Mother,” Jean began slowly. “I thought we’d find ever so many, but while I lived up at Maple Grove I rode around a good deal, and you’d be surprised how many foreigners are up here. Becky told me the reason. The old families die out, or the younger generation moves away to the towns, and the foreigners buy up the old homesteads cheaply.”

“Well, dear?”

“But, Mother, you don’t understand. There are all sorts. French Canadians, and a Swedish family, and a Polish family, and the old miller up the valley from us used to be a Prussian sailor. Then there are the real old families, of course—”

“Are you thinking of confining your circle of acquaintances to the old families, Jeannie?”

Jean laughed at the amusement in her mother’s voice.

“Of course not, Mom. Still I suppose we must be careful just moving into a new place like this. We don’t want to get intimate with everybody. You’ll like _some_ of the old families.”

“I think I’ll like some of the new ones too. Have you noticed, Jean, in driving around, that the houses which are mostly unpainted and rather run-down-looking belong to the old timers, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, probably of first settlers?”

“Oh, Mother, there are some of the most interesting stories about them too, how they came out—walked, actually walked most of them—from the Massachusetts Bay Colony when there was some sort of a breakup, and a few dropped off here, and a few there, and they settled in villages wherever they happened to stop. I found a cemetery in the woods near Becky’s, with old slate gravestones, and dates away back to 1717.”

“I’d like to see them, dear, but at the same time they were foreigners too, or children of foreigners, immigrants from a far land. Can’t you understand what I mean? These newer families are like new blood to the country. It takes only a couple of generations to blend them in, Jean, and they bring new strength to us. Think what we get from the different nations. I remember out in California I had a wonderful girl friend whose people had been Polish exiles. That was a strange group of exiles who sought a haven in our land. There was Sienkiewicz, the great novelist, and many whose names I forget. Wanda was my girl friend’s name and my mother and aunts didn’t like me to be so friendly toward her because she was a foreigner, completely forgetting that they themselves had come from foreign extraction. I think that you children are very fortunate to be born in an age when these queer old earth lines, these race barriers, are being torn down and the idea of one world is coming forth. Up here in our lonely hills, we are going to face this same problem that all nations are coping with, and we in our small way can help open the gates of the future.”

“Why, Mother, I never heard you talk this way before,” Jean exclaimed. “You always seemed just sweet and feminine. I—why, somehow I never felt you were interested in such things.”

“If we mothers are not interested in them, who should be?” she asked, her eyes full of a beautiful tenderness and compassion. “And you are going to do your share right here in Elmhurst, making a circle that shall join together the hands of all these boys and girls from different races. We’ll give a party soon and get acquainted with them all. Now let’s pay attention to chickens, for I think this must be the house.”

Jean turned into a side drive leading around to a house that stood well back from the road. As Jean said afterwards, the house looked as if it had been outdoors all its life, it was so weatherbeaten and gray. “Ma” Parmelee bustled out to meet them, plump and busy as one of her own Plymouth Rocks.

“Twelve pullets and one rooster you want?” she said. “Well, I guess I can fix you up. I heard you folks had moved in down yonder.” She led the way out to the big barn, followed by the chickens. The great doors were wide open, and the barn floor was covered lightly with wisps of hay. “Ma” scattered a measure of grain over this, and let the hens scratch for it.

“I have to work hard for what I get, and they ought to, too,” she said pleasantly. “Now, we’ll take any that you like and put them into bags. I’m going to sell you my very best rooster. His name’s Jim Dandy and he’s all of that. He’s pure Rhode Island Red, and two years old. You don’t have to worry about hawks when he’s around.”

After the chickens were all safely in the bags and put into the trailer, “Ma” waved goodbye and told them not to forget the Finnish family that was moving into her house.

“I’m going to live with my married daughter, and these poor things don’t know a living soul up here. Do drive over and speak to them as neighbors. There’s a man and his widowed sister and her children. All God’s folks, you know.”

“Finns,” murmured Jean speculatively, as they drove away. “There’s a new blend to our community, Mom. I’ve always wanted to know someone from the Scandinavian countries and Sally told me there is a Swedish family here too.”

Spring seemed to descend on the land all at once in the next few days, as if she had quite made up her mind to come and sit awhile, Becky said. One day the earth still looked windswept and bare, and the next there seemed to be a green sheen over the land and the woods looked hazy and lacy with the delicate budding leaves.

One night as Doris was out shutting up the hen houses and filling the pigeons’ pan with water, she stopped short, her head upraised eagerly like a fawn, listening to a new sound away off along the edges of the woods and deep down in the lower meadow where the brook flowed. It sounded keenest and sweetest over where the waters of the lake above the old dam moved with soft low lapping among the reeds and water grasses. Here it became a curiously shrill trilling noise, subdued and yet insistent like the strumming of muffled strings on a million tiny harps.

“It’s the peep frogs,” called Buzzy, coming up from the barn with Buttercup’s creamy contribution to the family. “They’re just waking up. That means it’s spring for sure.”

“Isn’t it cute of them to try to tell us all about it,” Doris cried delightedly, and away she ran to the house to insist that Kit and Jean and Tommy come out and listen too. In the twilight they walked around the terraces below the porch. Once Doris stopped below their father’s window to call up to him.