Part 9

“He’s very capable,” Kit agreed. “I think by the time he goes we will have everything on the place mended and repaired.”

“He’s a good doctor too,” replied Jean. “Dad’s been so much better since he came. I wish when he goes back to Saskatoon that he’d take Buzzy with him. He’s got his heart set on going West.”

“Yes,” agreed Kit, “it would be wonderful for Buzzy. Not having a father he should have the companionship of an older man.”

“What do you mean ‘an older man’?” said Jean indignantly. “To listen to you, a person would think Ralph was a decrepit old man of thirty-five. He’s only twenty-four.”

“How do you know how old he is? Did you ask him?”

“No. Becky told me. And I don’t think that’s old at all.”

It took three days to cut the hay, even with the girls and Tommy helping Buzzy and Ralph. One morning when Buzzy and Kit were working together apart from the others, Kit saw her opportunity to discuss her plan for Jean. Buzzy regarded the idea disdainfully at first, but Kit seemed so anxious he rather half-heartedly agreed to do what he could.

Buzzy had a brilliant if indefinite plan to offer. “Look, Kit,” he began. “It’s almost certain that Mom will let me go back to Saskatoon with Ralph. We’ve talked it over and Mother knows how much I want to learn about ranching. Maybe when we get out there, you and Jean could come out and visit us.”

“Wel-l,” Kit said dubiously, “it’s an awfully long way and the trip would cost too much. Besides, he’s here now. Can’t you think of something that would get results right away?”

“Gosh, what are you trying to do, marry her off or something?”

“Of course not, silly. What would I want to do that for? I’m going to miss you, Buzzy,” she added irrelevantly.

“I won’t be leaving until the end of July, so don’t get mournful, yet.”

Later that day, Kit’s confidence in Buzzy was restored, when he came up with a pail of spring water and remarked to Jean, “Say, if you go down where Ralph’s cutting now, you’ll see a bobwhite’s nest and speckled eggs. Don’t take any, though.” And Jean ran off to inspect the nest. “Is that what you meant, Kit?” he said, after Jean had gone.

“You’re getting the idea.”

Ralph was almost finished cutting the hay when Jean ran up. “Buzzy said you found a bird’s nest over here. I came to see it.”

“It’s over this way. Come on, I’ll show it to you,” Ralph said, taking her hand.

“Gee,” said Jean, when he had pointed out the nest with the three speckled eggs, “the country holds so many surprises. Where I used to live we never saw things like this, except in the educational movies they showed us at school. Even in the short time we’ve lived here, I’ve learned so much about the outdoors. Why, now I can name the birds I hear singing in the woods and recognize the wildflower plants even when they’re not in bloom. It’s really amazing.”

“I know,” said Ralph, looking down at her and smiling. “Even I have learned a good deal during my visit. It’s much different from the prairies that I’m used to.”

“Really?” said Jean, returning his gaze. “Tell me what the country out there is like. You haven’t said much about it, you know.”

So Ralph began telling her of his work on the ranch. “I wish you could see it, Jeannie, it’s really beautiful, those rolling prairies and the cattle roaming over the land.”

It was nearly time for supper, so the two walked back to the house together, leaving the others to bring in the wagonload of hay. Ralph went on to talk of other things and by the time they reached the house, Jean felt as though she had known him a long, long time instead of only a few short weeks.

19. Rebecca’s Romance

“Come back here, Ella Lou. No use in chasing rabbits when you never catch any of them,” came Becky’s voice from the driveway. “Anybody home?”

Kit sprang out of the porch swing and Doris emerged from the vegetable garden as if by magic. Billie Ellis sat beside Becky as big as life, as she would have said, and looked amiably at the girls.

“The Judge is very sick,” Miss Craig began abruptly. “I’m going down there with Billie, and I may have to stay overnight. He’s pretty low, I understand, and wants me, so I suppose I’ll have to go. Goodbye. If you’ve got any tansy in the garden, Margie, I’d like to take it down.”

Jean hurried to get a bunch of the herbs, and Mrs. Craig walked out to the car.

“Is he very sick, really, Becky?” she asked.

“Can’t tell a thing about it till I see him, and then maybe not. A man’s a plague at best and when he’s sick he’s worse. 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. Get back in the car, Ella Lou.”

“Well, of all things,” said Mrs. Craig, as the car backed out of the drive. “And they haven’t spoken to each other in over thirty years. I think that’s the best thing that’s happened since we came here.”

“What do you mean, Mom?” asked Jean. “I didn’t know that Rebecca knew the Judge.”

“They were engaged years ago, dear,” Mrs. Craig explained. “They quarreled a few days before they were to have been married, and Rebecca 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. Rebecca 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. Now he thinks he is dying and has sent for her. And I suppose, underneath all her odd ways, that she still loves him after all.”

The girls were quite intrigued with the story of Becky’s romance and waited eagerly for the sound of her car turning into the driveway on the return trip. 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. Craig come down and draw up his will. Becky says he’s been a lawyer, and there isn’t another one anywhere near here.”

“But, Billie, he isn’t strong enough,” began Mrs. Craig. She was sitting out on the porch, a basket of mending on her lap, and in the lounge chair beside her was Mr. Craig. “Is the Judge worse?”

“Gosh, no, he’s better. Aunt Becky fixed him right up. He’d just eaten too much, she said.”

“I think I’d like to go, dear,” said Mr. Craig. “You or Jean could come along, and I’d like to meet him again. I knew him when I was a boy.”

It was his first trip away from the house since they had moved there, but now that the time had come, it seemed an easy thing to do, as if the strength had been granted to him to meet just such a crisis. Mrs. Craig accompanied him, and they drove over through the village and up two miles beyond until they came to the Judge’s home, a large square colonial house on a hill, surrounded by tall elms and rock maples. The green blinds were all carefully closed except those in the south chamber where Becky held supreme sway now. She sat by his bedside, spick and span in a dress of green linen. There was a bunch of dahlias on the table.

“Come in, come in, boy,” the Judge said in his deep voice. He stretched out his hand to Mr. Craig and nodded his head. There was a look in his eyes that told of an indomitable will, but they softened when they rested on his visitor.

“Sit down, lad. No, the easy chair. Becky, give him the easy one. So. Well, they try their best to get us, don’t they? I thought last night would be my last.”

“Oh, nonsense,” laughed Miss Craig. “Just ate too much, and had a little attack of indigestion, Dick. You’ll live to be eighty-nine and a half.”

The judge’s eyes twinkled as he gazed at her.

“Still contrary as can be, Becky. Won’t even let me have the satisfaction of thinking you saved my life, will you?”

“A good dose of peppermint and soda would have done just as well,” answered Becky serenely, turning to introduce Mrs. Craig. “He says he wants to make his will, but I think it’s only a notion, and he wants company. Still I guess we’ll humor him. It seems that he was going to leave everything he had to me. And I just found him out in time. The very idea when he’s got Billie, his own grandchild, flesh and blood, and such a charming boy too. He can leave me Billie if he likes, but he can’t leave me anything else. So you make it that way, Tom.”

“Leave her Billie, Tom,” sighed the Judge, “leave her Billie, and me too, if she’ll take us both.”

“Wouldn’t have you for a gift, Dick,” she answered, cheerful and happy as a girl as she looked down at him. “You’re a fussy, spoiled, selfish old man, just as you always were, and I couldn’t be bothered with you. But I’ll keep an eye on you so you don’t kill yourself before your time with sweet corn and peach shortcake, though I suppose it’s a pleasant sort of taking off at that. I’ll take Billie and Margie around the garden while you and Tom fix up that will, and mind you do it right. Billie’s going to have all that belongs to him.”

As the door closed behind her, the Judge winked solemnly at Mr. Craig. “Finest woman in seven counties. Ought to have been the mother of heroes and statesmen, but there she is, mothering Billie and bossing me to her heart’s content. Do you think she’d marry me, Tom?”

“I don’t know, Judge,” Mr. Craig replied. “Becky’s odd.”

“Well, maybe so. Go ahead and make the will as she says. Everything to Billie, and make her guardian.”

So the will was drawn up and Mrs. Gorham, the housekeeper, and Mrs. Craig witnessed it. Billie, standing down in the garden with Miss Craig, did not realize what was happening. He only knew that somehow the barriers of ice were lifted between himself and his grandfather, and that a new era had dawned for all of them.

He watched the Craigs drive away, and went back upstairs to the long corridor. Becky heard his step and opened the door of the sickroom.

“Come in here, Billie,” she said. It was the first time that Billie had ever been in his grandfather’s room. He stood inside the door, a sturdy figure, barefooted and tanned, with eyes oddly like those that surveyed him from the pillow. He hesitated a moment, but the Judge put out his hand, a strong bony one, and Billie gripped it in his broad one.

“I’m awfully glad you’re better, Grandfather,” he said, a bit shyly.

“So am I, Billie, last night I thought my hour had come, but I guess it was only a warning. A meeting with the Button Molder perhaps. Do you know about him? No? You must read ‘Peer Gynt.’ A boy of your age should be well read.”

“And when has he had any chance to get well read, I’d like to know?” demanded Rebecca, in swift defense of her favorite. “The boy finished the district school a year ago. Been learning everything he knows since then from Ben, your hired help. If the Lord has spared you for any purpose, Dick, it is to bring up Billie right and teach him all you know.”

“Well, well, quit scolding me, Becky. Do as you like with him. I’ll supply the money.” The Judge pressed Billie’s hand almost with affection. “What do you want to be?”

“A lawyer or a naturalist,” was Billie’s prompt reply.

“Be both. They’re good antidotes for each other. Talk it over with him, Becky, and do as you think best.”

He closed his eyes, and Billie took it as a signal to leave the room, but the Judge spoke again.

“Where do you sleep, Bill?”

Billie colored at this. It was the first time anyone had ever called him Bill and he felt two feet taller all at once. “In the little bedroom over the east ell, sir.”

“Change your belongings to the room next to this. It faces the south and has two bookcases filled with my books that I had at college. You will enjoy them.”

Billie went out softly, down the circular staircase to the lower hall and, once outdoors, on a dead run for the barn. Ben was husking corn on the barn floor, sitting on a milking stool with the corn rising around him in billows, whistling and singing alternately.

Billie poured out his news breathlessly, and Ben took it all calmly.

“Well, I’m glad for you. I always believed the Judge would come out of his trance some day and do the proper thing. That Miss Becky’s a sightly woman. Knows just how to take hold. Guess she could marry the Judge tomorrow if she wanted to. Mrs. Craig is a fine woman too. I’ve never seen her before.”

Somehow this didn’t seem to fit in with Billie’s mood and he left the barn. All the world looked different to him. He was wanted, really wanted, now. He wasn’t just somebody the Judge had taken in because they were related and he had to out of pride. He was to have the big south chamber right next to the Judge’s own room and study all he wanted. Best of all, since he had grasped that bony hand in his, he knew that he could go to him with anything and that he really was going to be a grandfather to him.

It was nearly two miles over to Woodhow if he went cross lots, but he started. When he arrived he found Doris stoning cherries for pies. “Hi, Billie,” she called. “Come over here and help.”

Billie climbed the stone wall and came, flushed and triumphant. Throwing himself down on the grass beside Doris, he told what had happened, and she made up for all that Ben had lacked in enthusiasm and imagination.

“Isn’t that wonderful?” she cried, setting down the pan of cherries. “Why, you can be anything at all now you want to be.”

Billie looked at her peacefully. “I knew you’d take it like that,” he said. “I just wanted to tell somebody who would almost feel the way I did about it. You’re a swell pal, know it?”

“Thanks, Billie, that’s a real compliment. Come on into the kitchen and I’ll give you some gingerbread with whipped cream on it.” The two went into the house together and while Billie ate, Doris listened while he planned the future.

“I just know you’ll succeed, Billie,” she told him confidently, when she said goodbye on the back steps. “Come down any time and we’ll talk about it some more.”

Rebecca stopped by later that afternoon, chin up and smiling.

“He’s sound asleep,” she said. “Now that everything’s kind of quieted down, I don’t mind telling you something. After Billie had gone, the Judge and I talked things over and I don’t know but what I’ll have to move over there and take care of the two of them. Land knows they need it.”

“Oh, Becky, marry the Judge?” gasped Jean.

“Well, I might as well,” laughed Rebecca. “We’ve wasted thirty years now, and he’ll fret and fuss for thirty more if I don’t marry him. I’ll sell Maple Grove, or you Craigs can have it if you like, rent free.”

20. Jean and Ralph

The last week in July saw the end of Ralph McRae’s visit at Woodhow. He had been East nearly two months and Buzzy was to go back with him. It was impossible to measure or even to estimate Buzzy’s inward joy over the decision, for there had been born in him the spirit of those who long for travel and adventure. He had listened to the distant whistle of the trains that slipped through the Quinnebaug valley, and longed to be on them going anywhere at all.

“I wish I were going too,” said Sally. “I wish all of us were going. I’d love to have a ranch out there and work it myself.”

“Oh, dear child, what strange notions you do have.” 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, Sally?” asked Ralph.

“Practically sixteen. Fifteen and a half, anyway.”

“Maybe next year when I bring Buzzy 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 living room. “I want to hand over Woodhow 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. Craig, that it rightfully belongs to you. He’d like to buy it, he says, inside of two or three years. They like it over there, and plan to stay in Elmhurst, but if you want to take it over, I’m willing to transfer it before I go West.”

“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. Buzzy’s set on going West and Sally 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. I wouldn’t know what to do with it after I’d got it, and I wouldn’t take it away from the Craigs for anything. Why, they love it almost as much as I do.”

“I know, Aunt Luella, but I wanted you to have the opportunity to say yes or no,” 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. Craig when he is able to take it over. You’d have the good of it then.”

“That’s the best way, Mom,” Sally 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 in Saskatoon.”

“Land, you speak of journeying thousands of miles as if you were driving up to Norwich. I went to Providence once after I was married, and that’s the only long trip I’ve ever made.”

“Then it will take you a whole year to get ready,” laughed Ralph. “Buzzy and I will be back for you and Sally next summer.”

The night before their departure Mrs. Craig gave a dinner for them, with Rebecca and her new husband, Judge Ellis. Ralph and Buzzy sat between Kit and Jean at the table. Both girls were sad to think of their friends leaving.

“We’re going to miss you, Ralph,” said Jean rather shyly. Her mother had told her about the new business arrangement whereby Woodhow was to become really their home.

Ralph colored slightly. He could not bring himself even to try and express just what it had meant to him, this long summer visit with them. He had come East a stranger, 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.

First, there was Mr. Craig, with his thin, scholarly face, high forehead, and curly dark hair just touched with gray, his keen hazel eyes behind rimless glasses, and finely modeled chin. Then Mrs. Craig, surely the most gracious woman he had ever known excepting his own mother. Just the mere sound of her soft, engaging laugh made trouble seem very unimportant. And Kit, imperious, argumentative Kit, so full of energy that she was like a Roman candle. He would best remember her as she had stepped out of the shadows into the moonlight to welcome him. Doris beamed on him from her place across the table. To Doris he was like a knight that had come along the highway and, if possible, she would have had him in crimson hose and plumed cap. And Tommy, fun-loving, constantly chattering, full of odd knowledge that boys of eleven seemed to pick up, and always asking questions.

Last of all, Ralph looked down at Jean at his side. Jean, almost eighteen, already a replica of her mother in her quick tenderness and her looks. His eyes lingered on her. She was very sweet, he thought, the sweetest of them all. He was going to miss Jean very much.

Tommy trailed Ralph into the living room after the others that evening and told him over and over again to send him a tame bear, one that he could bring up by hand and train.

“Well, I guess you’ll have your hands full, Ralph,” Rebecca exclaimed, “if you fill all these commissions. I declare it seems as if you belonged to all of us.”

Jean and Kit drove Ralph and Buzzy to the station the next day. The boys had already made their goodbyes to the others at home, for Mrs. Hancock had preferred it that way. She declared she would cry at the station and would rather say goodbye to her son and nephew at home, where she could weep in privacy.

As the train puffed its way around the hillside bend of the track, Jean remembered when she had once before waited for the same train to arrive. The day which now seemed so long ago, when she was meeting the family arriving from Sandy Cove. That time she had thought the train would never come. Now, all too fast, it was making its way into the station.

“You promise to write to us now, Buzzy,” reminded Kit.

“Sure thing.”

“I’ll be back next summer, Jeannie,” said Ralph, looking deep into her eyes. “And you’ll be surprised how fast the days will fly by in the meantime. Goodbye, dear.”

“Goodbye.” Jean was suddenly overcome by the meaning of their farewell and added, “Oh, Ralph, I shall miss you so very much.”

As she and Kit walked back to the car, Jean thought over what Ralph had said last. Would the next year go so fast as he had said? He seemed so positive. Yet Jean wondered.

Jean had no need to worry. Her adventures at an art school in New York, told in _JEAN CRAIG IN NEW YORK_ proved that Ralph was right.

Footnotes

[1]_Night and Day_ by Cole Porter, published by Harms, Inc., c. 1932.

FALCON {FALCON BOOKS} BOOKS

_Jean Craig Grows Up_ BY KAY LYTTLETON

When Tom Craig came home from the Pacific, wounded, the Craig family found there wasn’t enough money to maintain their beautiful home and send Tom to the country to regain his health. So the family moved to a farm in Elmhurst. Lovely Jean, only seventeen, was a staff of courage for her family in their new life. But it wasn’t all hard work. There were picnics, new friends and there was Ralph McRae, the young and handsome landlord.

This is the heart-warming story of a family who met hardship with pluck and humor, and of Jean Craig, gay and lovable, whose courage surmounted all obstacles.

Other FALCON BOOKS for Girls: JEAN CRAIG IN NEW YORK JEAN CRAIG FINDS ROMANCE PATTY AND JO, DETECTIVES

Transcriber’s Notes

--Silently corrected a few typos.

--Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.

--In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.