*CHAPTER XVIII*
*HARVESTING HOPES*
It was noon before they reached Ponchas, although they might have goneever so much faster if every new flower by the way had not coaxed themto linger. Then they came to a big mill in the heart of the woods,where the men were cutting out chestnut trees for ties. Then ShilohValley was so pretty it was hard to leave it. There was a little whitechurch, with a square steeple and green blinds, standing on a largechurch green, a dot of a schoolhouse opposite, one lone store, and aboutnine houses. But each house was set in its own little domainindependent and aloof, with its barn and granary, tool house and smokehouse, woodshed and corn crib, and one had a silo and a forge besides.
The only person they saw was a little girl coming out of the store, andshe stood and watched them out of sight, with wide surprised eyes, justas if, Doris said, they were a circus.
"I suppose we're the most interesting sight she's seen in weeks. Wish Icould run back and coax her to go with us."
But Ponchas beckoned to them in the distance, a violet tinted cone ofrock, and they kept steadily on until, as the shadows pointed north,they camped for luncheon at its base. Helen and Ingeborg went huntingthe Cavalier's grave, but Hedda found it when she brought water from thespring house that had been built over a live spring gushing out at thebase of the rock. Nearby was a heap of gray moss-covered rock piled intoa cairn, with a rugged rock cross at the head twined with wildconvolvulus. On it were cut the words:
"He succored us The Cavalier 1679."
"Well, I do think they might have told us more than that," Jean said,when the other girls came to look at it. "Perhaps, though, this wouldhave pleased him better. Let's name him, girls."
"Sir John Lovelace," said Helen.
"Oh, no, give him something sturdy; call him Modred or Gregory," Kitprotested. "Gregory Grimshaw."
They stood for a few moments in silence gazing at the quiet restingplace, wondering what the real story was of the stranger it sheltered.
"I think his servant could have told if he had so wished," Etoile saidwisely. "I will ask my father about him. He knows many of the oldstories of the places around here. He came here from Canada when he wasa very little boy. There were gray wolves around in the winter time, andthe spring came earlier then. He has found arbutus the first week inMarch."
"What kind of wild animals are here now?" asked Doris anxiously."Nothing that's dangerous, is there?"
"Wild cats sometimes," Astrid said. "Deer, foxes, 'coons, muskrats,woodchucks, otters, rabbits, squirrels. What else, Ingeborg?"
"I can tell you of something that really happened over where I live,"Abby interrupted. Under the excitement of the trip and its novelty, Abbyhad fairly bloomed. From a listless, rather unhappy girl she had becomea sturdy, cheerful hiker. Kit had taken her under her wing from thestart.
"It's fun getting hold of somebody so awfully hopeless," she had said,"and trying to make her see the sun shining and the flowers growingright under her nose. Abby's going to be happy. She's like some littlehalf-drowned kitten."
It was because nobody had ever taken any interest in her before. Herfather was the blacksmith, a silent, rather morose man who had quarreledwith his own brothers and never spoke to them. Her mother was a frail,nervous woman, so used to being yelled at that she jumped the momentanyone spoke to her. Jean had driven over there one day to get Princessa new set of shoes, and Mrs. Tucker had come out from the kitchen door,a thin, flat-chested woman with straggly hair and vacant eyes.
"How be ye," she said wistfully, looking up at the pretty new neighbor."How's your Ma? And Pa? Sickly, ain't he? I suffer something fearfulall the time. Sometimes my head feels as if it was where my feet are,and my feet feel as if they were where my head is. I can't seem to makeany doctor understand what I mean, but that's exactly the way I feel,and it's fearful confusing."
Then Abby had come out and sort of shooed her mother back into the houseas one would a fretful hen.
"There was a circus up at Norwich," said Abby now. "And a real livepanther escaped and the hunters said they found his tracks down our way.Then one night when I was in bed, they knocked on our door and said thetracks led right into our woodshed. And my father got out his shotgunand went with them, but I went down in the kitchen with Ma, becauseshe's nervous, and when I started up the back stairs I saw its eyesshining at me right under my bed."
"How could you see your bed on the back stairs?" asked Piney doubtfully.
"I left my door open and when I got on the middle stair I could seeright in under my bed, and there it was."
"Abby Tucker! What did you do?" exclaimed Hedda. "You never told me."
"What do you suppose I did? I fell right downstairs. Guess you wouldhave too, if you thought you saw a live panther under your bed. But itwasn't. It scooted out past me and it was our big tiger cat Franklin."
"Did they find the real one?" asked Etoile.
"He is not anywhere around now, is he, Abby?"
"Oh, land, no," laughed Abby. "They got it over in the pine woods andit was half starved and cold. It went back to the circus."
"Well," exclaimed Kit, with a sigh. "I used to think things weremonotonous in the country, but I've changed my mind. There's somethingnew happening here every minute."
Just then Doris gave a little squeal of dismay, and jumped up.
"Something bit my hand," she said. The girls searched in the grass andfound the breaker of the peace. It was a shiny pinching beetle.
"Don't kill it," Abby warned. "They bury the dead birds, Ma says.They're the sextons of the woods."
"Maybe it thought I needed to be buried too," said Doris ruefully. "Itnipped me good and plenty."
When they started back they sang along the road, first old songs thatall of them knew, and then Hedda sang two strange Icelandic songs hermother had taught her, lullabies with a low minor strain running throughthem.
"Day has barred her window close and goes with quiet feet, Night wrapped in a cloak of gray, Comes softly down the street, Mother's heart's a guiding star, Tender, strong and true, Lullaby and lulla-loo, sleep, lammie, now."
The other was about the reindeer that would surely come and carry thebaby away if it didn't go to sleep. She had a strong, sweet voice, andsang with much feeling. After hearing the other girls, Jean said theyought to have a glee club, even if they met only once a month.
"Just for music. Mother says that music is the universal language thateveryone understands. Let's meet at our house next week, and give theafternoon to it."
"I think we ought to meet somewhere else, not all the time at your home,Jean," Etoile demurred in her courteous French way. "We would be veryglad to have you with us any time."
"Then we will come, won't we, girls?" Jean agreed. "And Sally willenjoy that because she can sing too, and it will be near home for her.I think we are organizing splendidly."
But the next few weeks were filled with home activities and it was hardto squeeze in time for all that they had outlined. There were berriesto can and preserve, and Mr. McRae prolonged his stay, but only oncondition that he be allowed to take hold of the farm, with Honey'shelp, and manage the haying and cultivating for them.
"I had no idea a man could be so handy," Kit declared. "He's mended thesink so we don't have to cart out all the waste water, and he's burnedup the rubbish at the end of the lane, and he put new roofing on the henhouses, and he climbed up into the big elm and put up Doris's swing forher. I think he's a perfect darling."
"Kit, dear, don't be so positive and so extreme," Mrs. Robbins warnedgently. "It's very kind indeed of Ralph to help us, but don't let yourspeech run away with you."
"I wish he belonged right in the family. I've always thought that everyfamily should have a carpenter and a gardener in it. Mother dear, tosee him climb down the well, r
ight down into that thirty-foot black holeand fish out the bucket after Helen had dropped it in, was a sight formen and angels."
"He's very capable," Mrs. Robbins agreed laughingly. "I think by thetime he goes we will have everything on the place mended and repaired.I never saw a landlord like him."
"He's a good doctor too, a doctor of the soul," Jean said soberly."Dad's been fifty per cent. better since he came. I wish when he goesback to Saskatoon that he'd take Honey with him. Piney's able to helpher mother, and Honey's heart is set on going West. They're own cousinsand it would be splendid for him."
"Honey's only fourteen, girlie. I think he's rather young to leave theMother wings, don't you?"
Jean pondered.
"I don't know, Mother. Mothers are wonderful people and darlings, but Ido think that every boy needs a good father and if he can't get afather, then the next best man who can talk to him and teach himthe--what would you call it?"
"The code of manliness?".
"That's it. And Ralph seems so manly, don't you think so?"
"Do you call him Ralph, dear?"
"Well, he asked me to, mother, and I didn't want to refuse and hurt hisfeelings. I suppose it made him feel more at home. And Cousin Roxysays he's only twenty-four. I don't think that's old at all."
It took three days to cut the hay on the Greenacre land, and the girlshad a regular Greek festival over it. They all went down and followedthe big rake and helped pitch the hay up on the wagon. Then Helen gother kodak and took pictures of them pitching, and riding on the load upthe long lane, and of the big sleepy-eyed yoke of oxen.
"You know," Jean said, "it looks like some scene from away back in thecolonial days. I love to watch the oxen come along that lane with thetop of the load brushing the mulberry tree branches."
"I'm so glad that you found out what those trees were," Kit teased."Ever since we came here, you and Helen have been watching for apples togrow on them. I told you they were mulberry trees."
"It's so nice," Helen said dreamily, "to have one in the family who isalways right."
Kit quickly fired a bunch of hay at her, but she dodged it and ran.
"Going to cut about nine ton or more," Honey said, coming up with a pailof spring water. "That ain't counting bedding neither. You can getfifteen a ton for bedding."
"What's bedding?" asked Kit.
"Oh, all sorts of stuff, pollypods and swamp grass and such. Say, ifyou go down where Ralph's cutting now, you'll see a Bob White's nest andspeckled eggs. Don't take any, though."
"Isn't it lovely out here, Kit?" Jean wound her arm around Kit's waistas they crossed the meadow land. "I was lonesome at first but now Ithink I'd be more lonesome for this if I were away from it long."
"I love it too, but wait until the north wind doth blow. What will allthe poor Robbins do then, poor things?"
"We'll pull through," Jean said pluckily. "I don't feel afraid ofanything that can happen since Dad really is getting better."
"Isn't it funny, Jean, how we're forgetting all about the Cove and thethings we did there?" Kit pushed back her hair briskly. She was warmand getting "frecklier," as Doris said, every minute. "I wonder whenfall comes, if we won't miss it all more than we do now."
"All what?"
"Places to go, mostly, and people who help us instead of us alwayshelping them. Mother's turned into a regular Lady Bountiful since wecame out here."
"I think they've all helped us just as much as we've helped them," Jeansaid slowly. "We're getting bigger every minute. You know what I mean.Broader minded. At home we went along in the same little groove all thetime. I think work is splendid."
"Well, you always did have the faculty, you know, Jean, for staringblack right in the face and declaring it was a beautiful delicate creamcolor. I suppose that's the stuff that martyrs are made of. Now, don'tget huffy. You're a perfect angel of a martyr. I like it out here andI think the work is doing us good, but I'm like Helen, I don't want tostay here all my life, nor even a quarter of it. Mother said she wantedto let one of us older girls go back with Gwennie Phelps."
"Back with her?" repeated Jean in dismay. "You haven't asked her up herethis summer, have you, Kit?"
"I didn't. Helen did before we came away. Mother said she might. Youknow Mother's always had the happiness of the Phelps family on hermind."
"But Gwennie! I wouldn't mind Frances so much."
"Frances does not stand in need of missionary work. Gwennie does.Anyway, she's coming up the first week in August, and Mother says thateither you or I can go back with her for two weeks before school opens.Do you want to go, Jean? Because I really and truly don't give a rapabout it. I'm afraid to go for fear I'll like it and won't want to comeback. I'm just dead afraid of the schools up here this winter." Kit'stone was tragic. "This year means so much to me in my work. I wasgetting along gloriously, you know that, Jean, and from what the girlshere tell me, the schools can't touch ours in finish."
"How are they in beginnings?" Jean asked laughingly. "You poor oldlong-sufferer, I know what you mean. Why don't you ask Dad and Motherto let you board down at the Cove with the Phelpses, and keep up yourold class work right there until you finish High School anyway?"
"Seems like a desertion," said Kit. "We're here and we should stick itout. I think you'd better go back with Gwennie."
"We ought to talk it over with Mother thoroughly. She thinks she'sgiving us a week of extra pleasure, probably, and to us it's atemptation that we're afraid we can't withstand, isn't that it?"
"Well, I feel like this, it's like taking a soldier out of the trenchesand throwing him into a seaside week end."
"Kit, you always exaggerate fearfully. You're a regular Donna Quixote,tilting at windmills."
"But are you willing to go back?"
"I think we'll let Helen go. She will enjoy it and not take it a bitseriously. Helen's poise will carry her through any crisistriumphantly."
Kit agreed that the thought of Helen was really a stroke of diplomaticgenius. The waves and billows of circumstance only buoyed Helen up,lighter than ever. They never went over her or disarranged her curls aparticle. Whenever Kit had one of her customary "brain storms" oversomething and Helen suggested that she was "fussy," Kit alwaysretaliated with the statement that she was the only member of the familywith any temperament. Jean had imagination, and Doris gave promise ofmuch sentiment, but when it came to real temperament Kit believed thatshe had the full Robbins allowance.
"You can call it what you like, Kit. I'd leave off the last twosyllables, though," Helen would say serenely.
"There you are," Kit always answered. "Only geniuses have anytemperament and when you've got one in the family you deny it. You'llbe sorry some day, Helenita. When you are darning stockings with afancy stitch for your great grandchildren I shall face admiring throngsall listening for pearls of wisdom to fall from my lips."
"What do you think you're going to be anyway?"
"Haven't made up my mind yet, but something fearfully extraordinary andspecial, Ladybird."
So now when the proposition was made after supper that Helen return fora visit to the Cove with Gwen Phelps, Helen agreed placidly that itwould be rather nice, and Jean and Kit looked at each other with a smileof deep diplomacy.