Greenacre Girls

Jean pondered over that and finally tucked it away for the consultation hour with the Motherbird, as being too deep for her to settle.

It had been a very profitable afternoon, and after she had taken Piney home, she drove into the home yard, feeling as if she really had a line on Gilead Center girls. Doris came running down to meet her as she jumped out, while Honey came to take care of Princess. Doris's eyes were shining with excitement.

"Jean Robbins, what do you suppose has happened?"

"Something's sprouted," Jean guessed laughingly. Doris spent most of her time watching to see if any of the seeds had started to sprout.

"No. It isn't that. Gypsy's got little chickens. She marched into the barnyard with ten of them, as proud as anything. And nobody knows where she hatched them at all. Isn't she a darling to attend to it all by herself?"

Jean had to go immediately to see the new brood. Gypsy had cuddled them around her in the barn on a pile of hay and steadfastly refused to be removed. If ever a hen looked nonchalant she did, quite as if she would have said, "I can do it just as well as any of these ridiculous nesters that you're so proud of, and my chicks are twice as perfect as theirs."

"They're wonderful babies, Gypsy," Jean told her. "Be careful of them now. Mothers have to behave themselves, you know. No more gallivanting off to the wildwood."

"She probably will. I'm going to have Honey put them into a little coop tomorrow and her too, and let's change her name, Jeanie. Let's call her something tender and motherly. Call her Cordelia, after the Roman Mother with the jewels, that Mother was telling us about."

So Cordelia she was, and Gypsy seemed to acclimate herself both to maternity and to her new cognomen. It only proved, as Kit remarked, what children would do for a flighty and light-minded person, and she trusted that some day Doris would have twins to occupy her mind.

Jean changed her dress and ran down into the kitchen to help get supper and tell her experiences of the day, which proved so entertaining and comical that Mrs. Robbins finally came out and asked if they were ever to have anything to eat.

"Dad's tray is all ready, Mother mine," Jean replied, sitting up on the tall wood box behind the stove, "I'm just waiting for the scones to bake, and Kit's fixing a beautiful jelly omelette. Mother, dear, you never saw anything so funny as these precious inhabitants, but they're all gold, just the same, and I like them. And we're going to have a lawn party here and invite all the warring factions. Isn't that nice? All the folks that aren't on speaking terms with each other we've asked to serve on the committee, so they'll have to come here for tea and chat sociably and neighborlike with each other."

CHAPTER XIII

COUSIN ROXY TO THE RESCUE

"We've forgotten to write Mr. McRae and tell him how much we like the house," Helen said a few days later.

"He doesn't know anything about the house, or care either," protested Kit, struggling with some raspberry canes that needed disentangling and tying back against the woodshed boards. "He's never even seen it. Do you suppose he has the least bit of sentiment for it the way we have or Piney has? I wouldn't bother to write to him."

"Oh, I would," Helen answered serenely. She was down on her knees in the clover diligently hunting four-leaved ones. "It isn't his fault that he's never seen the place. Maybe we could coax him back."

"We don't want to coax him back. It must be our one endeavor to keep him right out there in Saskatoon forever. We must tell him the cellar's damp and the roof leaks and the whole place has gone to rack. If we don't he may come East and take it away from us, and we want to save up and buy it and give it back to Piney and her Mother and Honey."

"What's Honey's real name?" asked Doris irrelevantly. "I never thought to ask him. Somehow it does seem to suit him, doesn't it?"

"He wants to study electrical engineering or else be a rancher," Kit said. "I never asked him what his real name is. You're awfully inquisitive, Dorrie."

"What do all boys see in ranches, I wonder. Back at the Cove, Otis Phelps always wanted to be a cowboy and he's got to be a lawyer, his father says."

"Maybe he'll escape West some day and be whatever he likes. I think one of the very worst things in life is to have to be something you don't want to be." Kit surveyed her work admiringly. "Of course, in the ups and downs and uncertainties, as Cousin Roxy would remark, we must be prepared for all things, but if you can dig inside of yourself and find out what you're best fitted for, then you ought to aim everything at that mark. If Honey wants to be an electrical engineer, he ought to get books now, and swallow them whole, and if he wants to be a rancher, he ought to go West-"

A voice came from midair apparently, overhead on the woodshed roof which Honey was patching with waterproof paint and tar. It was a mild and cheerful voice and showed plainly that Honey was personally interested in the conversation.

"I can't go West just now, Mother needs me; but I'm going as soon as I can."

The three girls stared up at him with laughing faces.

"Honey Hancock," exclaimed Doris, "why didn't you sing out to us before?"

"Wanted to hear what you had to say," said Honey simply. "Thought maybe I'd get some good advice. And my first name's Guilford. The whole thing's Guilford Trowbridge Hancock. I'm named for my grandfather. Piney called me Honey when I was a little shaver, so I suppose I'll be that all my life."

"Piney and Honey," repeated Helen musingly, "when you're really Proserpine and Guilford. Nicknames are queer, aren't they? I think that babies should all be called pet names till they're old enough to choose their own. Still Guilford's a good name. It's a name to grow up to, Honey. You ought to be stout and dignified, don't you know, like Mr. Pickwick."

"Guess I don't know him, do I?" asked Honey. "Piney wants to be something too, but girls can't do that. She wants to be a builder and look after land. She wants to go to the State Agricultural College too, and take the forestry course. Do you know what she does? She read some place that the chestnut trees were dying out, so she takes a pocketful of sound chestnuts with her whenever she goes out for a walk in the woods, and every once in a while she sticks her finger in the ground and plants a chestnut. What do you think of that?"

Kit drew in a deep breath.

"I think she's wonderful. We'll do that too. And acorns and walnuts. I don't see why she can't go to the State College if she likes, or why she can't take the forestry course. It isn't whether you're a boy or a girl that matters in such things. It's just whether you can do the work that counts."

"She can shut her eyes and walk through the woods and tell the name of every tree just by feeling its leaves."

Jean appeared on the back porch and called down to them to come up and wash for dinner. This noon-time wash-up was really a function after one had been working and grubbing in the garden all the morning. Honey would bring in a fresh pail of well water first. Some day Kit intended demanding water piped into the house from Mr. McRae, but now they used the well.

Just as Honey came into the summer kitchen with the pail of water, Ella Lou's white nose showed outside the door by the hitching post and Cousin Roxana's voice called to them.

"No, thanks, I can't stop," she called. "I want Betty and Jean."

Mrs. Robbins came downstairs from her husband's room, cool and charming in her black and white lawn, with her hair piled high on her head, and little close curls framing in her face.

"Why, Roxy, come in and have dinner with us," she exclaimed.

"Don't talk to me about things to eat, Betty," answered Cousin Roxana briskly. "Never had such a set-to in my life. Why, I'm so turned over I can hardly talk. The poor thing, all alone up there on that hill with nothing but woods around her. Enough to make anybody lose heart, I declare it is. Get your bonnet right on, Betty. We can't stop for anything. I wouldn't eat dinner with King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba."

"What is it? Please tell us," Jean pleaded, and all three girls crowded around the carriage.

"Don't waste time, Jean. Get your hat on. She may be dead by now. It's that little Finnish woman up on the Parmelee place where you bought your chickens. Her husband's only been dead a little while, took sick on the ship coming over and died at Ellis Island, I heard. And she's pined and pined with four children on her hands, and this morning she just tied- Oh, my land, I can't talk about it. Do come along. Thank the Lord the water wasn't very deep in the well and they've got her out. And we call ourselves church folks and Christians."

"Had I better take anything with me, Roxy?" asked Mrs. Robbins, hurrying down the porch steps with a motor cloak thrown around her. "Medicine, do you think?"

"No, I've got everything. Always keep emergency things on hand. You never can tell up around here what's going to happen. Bennie Peckham ran a big wooden splinter through his palm the other day, and didn't I have to get it out for him? And Hiram stepped square bang on a piece of glass and cut his foot so he's still going around like old Limpy-go-fetch-it. Have to be prepared for anything when you live out here. This morning Hiram stood his fishing pole up against the side of the house and the line got loose, and one of my best ducks swallowed the bait. I got it out, though. Go long there, Ella Lou, pick up your feet."

Ella Lou started away as if she knew what lay ahead. Jean sat between her mother and Cousin Roxana, listening with wide eyes as the latter's tongue rambled on. It was a beautiful day. The air was heavy with fragrance. Bluebirds preened and fluttered on nearly every fence rail, and robins hopped along the meadows, chirping mate calls. In the roadside thickets the swamp apples were all in radiant pink blossom, whole bouquets of rare color, with overhead the white dogwood flowers and wild crab-apple.

"It seems fearful that anyone should want to die a day like this," said Mrs. Robbins. "How old is she, Roxy?"

"Old enough to know better, to my way of thinking, with all those children dependent on her for love and care and upbringing," said Roxana promptly. "But that's neither here nor there. We mustn't judge another because we don't know how we'd act in their place. There are four children and her brother. The brother's been around peddling vegetables, potatoes and apples, but everybody's got all they need around here, and he didn't have the gumption to drive fourteen miles to town with them. If I'd been his sister, I'd have hitched up and taken them myself. Men folks are all right in a way and I suppose if the proper one had come along, I'd have married the same as the rest of women folks, but from what I can tell of them at a distance, they're fearful trying and uncertain."

The hill dipped into a deep valley mottled with cloud shadows. When they came in sight of the old Parmelee place, there were the four children grouped forlornly around the barn door as if the presence of tragedy at the house had frightened them away from it. Cousin Roxy waved to them and smiled.

"Come here," she called. "Yes, that tallest boy. 'Most twelve, aren't you, son? Old enough to hitch a horse. What's your name?"

"Yahn," answered the boy shyly.

"Yahn? Guess that's Johnnie in plain American, isn't it?" She jumped to the ground as nimbly as any girl, and handed him the hitch rope. "Doctor got over yet?"

Johnnie shook his head sadly, and the youngest girl broke suddenly into frantic, half-stifled sobbing.

"There's your work cut out for you, Jean," Roxana said briskly. "You amuse these children while your Mother and I go into the house."

So Jean took the three youngest for a walk over into the woods, and told them stories until the frightened, blank look left their eyes and they clung around her confidingly. Yahn and Maryanna, Peter and Rika. From Yahn, who could speak a little English, she found out that the family had only been in the wonderful new land a year, that their mother had been sad for weeks, and would never smile.

"She says she don't know nobody and nobody want to know her. Too many woods all around, too."

"Never mind, she's going to know everyone now," Jean promised hopefully.

Over in the house Cousin Roxy was promising about the same thing to the discouraged little Finnish settler. Weak and listless, she lay on the bed in the room. A morning glory vine rambled up the window casing, and framed in a view of the orchard in full bloom. Pink and white petals drifted from their boughs like fairy snow. Mrs. Robbins looked at them wistfully and remorsefully. She had only lost in worldly goods. This woman had lost husband and hope and happiness, and the old well back in the orchard had been her solution of life's problem. If little Yahn had not seen her fall into it, she would have been dead now. When her eyes opened, and Cousin Roxy questioned her, she only shook her head, and whispered: "Too tired."

"Upon my heart, Betty, I think I'll just bundle her up and take her home with me for a while to rest and feed up, and you can take a couple of the children down with you. Maybe Johnnie and the other boy could stay here with the uncle. Anyway, we'll pull her through."

When the old doctor came he agreed it was the very best thing to do. The Finnish brother had stood helplessly around in the kitchen, getting hot water ready when he was told to and eyeing the form on the bed with perplexity.

"She haf plenty to eat," he kept saying, until Cousin Roxana took him by the shoulder and almost shook him.

"Don't be so silly," she exclaimed. "Man can not live by bread alone, and neither can a woman. She needs to be heartened up once in a while. And put a cover on your old well."

Helen, Kit, and Doris were all watching for the return, and when Jean handed them out Maryanna and Rika, the two little Finns, Kit gasped.

"It's our first chance at what Mother's been telling us about," Jean declared, flushed and enthusiastic, as she turned her two charges out to play with Doris. "It doesn't matter whether your neighbor happens to be a Finn or a Feejee. He's your neighbor and it won't do to let him or his sister take tumbles into old wells because they're strangers in a strange land."

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAWN FÊTE

For two weeks the little Finns remained at Greenacres, getting rosy and happy. The girls hunted up their old toys; Rika rambled around with a little red express wagon, and Maryanna hugged a big doll to her heart all day long and slept with it at night.

Up at Maple Lawn the tired mother grew steadily better, partly from Dr. Gallup's medicine, partly from Cousin Roxy's persistent infusion of hope, womanly courage, and endurance into her mind. As she grew stronger she began to help Cousin Roxy around the house, and Hiram in caring for the cows. This was odd for a woman, it seemed to Miss Robbins, but Karinya told her it was what she had always done in the homeland when she was a girl, dairy work on a farm, and she liked it best. And out of this grew a plan that Mrs. Robbins helped with. There were three good Holstein cows over at the Finnish home, and when Ella Lou took back the Mother and two kiddies, Cousin Roxana put up a business proposition to the brother and sister. They were to make butter, the very best butter they could, and Mrs. Robbins would get customers for them back at the Cove in Long Island. Homemade butter up here in the hills ranged from ten to twelve cents below the city market price, and was better in every way. So prosperity began to dawn for the little woman who had been too tired to live, and Cousin Roxana kept an eye on the upland farm all summer long, with Jean to help with the children.

After the children went home, the girls turned their attention heart and soul to the lawn party. The first thing to be sure of was a full moon. This came along the last week in June, so they made their arrangements accordingly.

The committee meeting turned out a success in every way. Saturday afternoon Mrs. Robbins and the girls set the dark green willow chairs and table under one of the pines on the lower terrace, and prepared to conquer. The three ministers arrived, each one surprised to find the other two present, but all very gracious and pleasant.

"Why, they were almost cordial before they left," Kit declared after it was over. "I think the prospect of having anyone besides Cousin Roxy make an effort for a good time inspired them. I'm to have charge of a fishpond, and Helen will sell flowers with fortunes attached to them, and Dorrie can help with the ice cream. I know that will suit her."

"I'm to be gypsy fortune teller," Jean announced. "Mother, dear, may I have your Oriental silk mantel scarf, please, and the gold bead fringe off the little boudoir lamp in your room?"

"You may have anything to help the cause along," Mrs. Robbins answered happily. "I've sent down to New York for Chinese lanterns to decorate the grounds with, and Hiram's going to play the violin for us. I'm sure it will be very sociable and just what they need up here."

Honey and Piney took almost as much interest in the affair as the girls themselves. All that day, when it finally did arrive, they worked, putting wires around the trees out on the lawn, and hanging up the many-colored lanterns. Two tents were erected, one for Jean as the gypsy, and the other for lemonade, made in two big new tubs. Helen said she had cut and squeezed lemons until her whole mouth was puckered up, and her finger nails felt pickled. Kit was everywhere at once, it seemed. She inspired the two ministers to join hands in brotherly ardor and erect long plank tables for refreshments. She showed Honey how to twist young birches together and make an inviting arch over the entrance posts at the end of each drive. She beguiled Hiram, who had come down from Maple Lawn to help around a bit, into moving the piano out on the front veranda.

"When you're tired of playing the violin for them, Mother or one of us girls will play the piano. Music sounds ever so nice at night."

It did seem as if all Gilead Center, Gilead Green, and Gilead Proper had turned out to show its neighborly spirit. There were teams hitched along the road, and teams hitched in the barnyard and the front yard and everywhere. The Chinese lanterns made the grounds look wonderfully enticing and Hiram sat up on the veranda in a kitchen chair tipped back against the wall, and played bewitchingly, so Helen said.

"I shouldn't wonder, Miss Robbins, if we had as many as a hundred folks here tonight," said Mr. Lampton.

"More likely two hundred, Mr. Lampton. It only goes to show what really lies back in our hearts and needs digging up-sociability. Bless their hearts, how I do love to see them all enjoying themselves." Cousin Roxana moved her glasses half an inch higher up on her nose and surveyed the scene. Miss Titheradge was helping Mr. Collins pass the ice cream, and the two were chatting happily together.

Up on the veranda Mrs. Robbins hovered between the Morris chair, where Mr. Robbins sat, and her various guests, welcoming each in her own charming way, and blending the different social elements together with tact and understanding.

Helen and Kit followed Jean's lead. First Jean rounded up the girls whom she had met on the drive with Piney and introduced them to the other Greenacre girls. Doris could not be located from one minute to another. She was like a firefly, bobbing around with a big orange colored Chinese lantern on the end of a long mop handle. But Helen and Kit led the other girls over to the refreshment tent and had them all don little white aprons and help serve ice cream and cake. It was much better than standing around, shy and silent, not knowing what to do next. Kit found one girl, Abby Tucker, leaning disconsolately against a pear tree at the side of the drive. Her white dress was too short for her, and her hair was cut short to her neck and tied with a bow on top very tightly. She looked lonely and rather indignant too.

"Don't you want to come over and help us with the ice cream?" asked Kit.

"No, I don't," said Abby flatly. "They always ask me to help pass things to eat at the church suppers. I want to have a good time myself tonight. Though we aren't going to have a good time."

Kit looked at her doubtfully. She thoroughly realized the state of mind that will not let itself be happy, that in fact, finds its happiness in being unhappy, but Abby's moroseness baffled her.

"Don't you like it here?" she asked.

Abby nodded.

"Don't you know anyone?"

"Know most of them. My father's a blacksmith and they all come over to get shod."

"Then what is it?" Kit laid her arm around the stooped shoulders and at the touch of real human sympathy, Abby's reserve melted.

"My new shoes pinch awful," she exploded.

Kit never stayed upon the order of her going. She took her straight up to the house to her own room, and ransacked closets and shoe boxes until she found a pair of low shoes to fit Abby, and the latter came down again smiling and radiant, ready to serve ice cream, or make herself agreeable in any way she could.

Piney came up to the veranda where Mrs. Robbins sat, personally conducting her mother to meet her. She was a tall, fair-haired woman with deep dimples, like the children's, and a happy face. Seated in a willow rocker on the veranda with the roses and honeysuckle shedding a perfume around, she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Seems so nice to sit up here again, Mrs. Robbins," she said. "Piney's told me all about how you've fixed the place up till it seemed as if I couldn't wait to see it. I used to drive over once in a while after Father died, and get some slips of flowering quince and rose bushes to set out. You know I love every blade of grass in the garden and every pine cone on those trees."

"It's too bad you and the children could not have had it."

"Well, I don't know. I never fret much over what has to be. Maybe this boy Ralph is all right. He's my nephew, but I've never seen him. His father was a claim settler out in Oregon first off, when Cousin France married him. We called her that. Her name was Francelia. Good stock, I guess. I wish Honey could know him, he's so set on being a rancher. I suppose settling and ranching's about the same thing?"

"Not quite," Mrs. Robbins told her. Then came a chat about her own father's ranch in California, and when Piney came back after her mother, she found her all animated and interested over Honey's future.

Kit and Etoile were arranging a dancing class for alternate Saturday afternoons, the ones between to be given up to lawn tennis and basket ball. Ingeborg and Astrid and Hedda Hagerstrom stood listening and agreeing with shining eyes and eager faces, but silent shy tongues. Hedda was short and strong looking, with the bluest eyes possible and heavy blond braids. She stared at Kit with wide-eyed wonder, Kit, radiant and joyous in her prettiest summery dress, with sprays of flowering almond around her head like a pink blossomy crown.

"You'll come, won't you, Hedda?" she asked. "And bring any other girls over your way."

"There's only Abby over my way. We live on the same road."

"Then bring Abby, but tell her to wear old shoes. We ought to find enough girls to make up a good team out here."

"Do you like hikes?" asked Sally Peckham. "I think it would be fun to have a hike club, and each week tramp away off somewhere. There's ever so many places I want to see."

"It's a good idea, Sally," Piney exclaimed. "First rate. We could call ourselves the Pere-pere-what's that word that means meandering around, Jean, don't you now?"

"Peregrinating?"

"That's it. Peregrinating Gileadites."

"I think 'Greenacre Hikers' would be better," said Ingeborg. "I'd love to go along, wouldn't you, 'Trid?"

Astrid was sure she would. So while Hiram played "Good-night, Ladies," and the three ministers smiled and shook hands together and with their hostess and host, the girls of Gilead planned their first campaign for summer outings.

It was after twelve before the last team had driven away. Hiram and Kit went around with a couple of chairs, mounting them to reach the lanterns and blow out the candles inside. Doris was found sound asleep in the library on the couch. Jean and Helen hunted in the grass for lost spoons and ice cream saucers.