*CHAPTER IX*
*THE LADY MANAGERS CHOOSE A NAME*
That very night a council was held of what Mr. Robbins termed "the Boardof Lady Managers."
"I think I need Hiram in here for support," he said laughingly, from hisfavorite resting place, the old fashioned high-backed davenport in thesitting-room.
There were no such things at Maple Lawn as a library, a reception room,or a den. There was a front entry and a side entry and a well-room atthe back of the kitchen. There was a parlor and a front bed-room, aside bed-room and a big sunny sitting-room that was dining-room also,and finally the old kitchen with its Dutch oven, and hooks in theceiling for hanging up smoked beef and bacon sides.
Not that Cousin Roxy ever used the Dutch oven nowadays excepting tostore things away in. She had instead a fine shiny, water-back steelrange, over which she hovered like a sorceress from five A.M. to elevenA.M., producing such marvels of cookery as held the girls spellbound:raised doughnuts with jam inside and powdered sugar outside; appleturnovers made with Peck's Pleasants and rich Baldwins; ginger cookies,large as saucers with scalloped edges, soft and rich as butter scotch;and pies, with rich, flaky crust and delectable filling in endlessvarieties. Jean declared that she had learned more about cooking in thefew weeks she had lived at Maple Lawn than in all her life before.
"Well, there's cooking and cooking, girls," Cousin Roxana had repliedplacidly, fishing for brown doughnuts with her long, hand-wrought ironfork. "It's one thing to cook when you've got everything to do with,and quite another when you are eternally figuring out how to make bothends meet. Of course, I don't have to do that. Land knows there'splenty to eat and more to, praise the Lord, but it's all plain food, andyou've got to learn how to toss vegetables around in forty differentways out here if you want any variety."
That evening it was when the Board of Lady Managers discussed everythingthat lay ahead of them from the said vegetables to chickens, cows,horses, and farm implements.
Mr. Robbins had seemed relieved when he was sure that the Motherbirdapproved of the Mansion House. It was near Maple Lawn and Roxana, hesaid, and they would surely need both many times during their firstexperimental year in the country. Also, it was on the mail route, andnot too large a place in acreage for them to handle. There was a goodapple orchard, somewhat run down, but it would be all right with pruningand proper care. Besides, there were four good pear trees, two largecherry trees, white hearts and red, and three crabapple trees.
"Guess if you hunt around, you might find some quinces too, and plentyof berries and currants," Cousin Roxana said. "It's been let go towaste the past few years, and it'll take a year or more to get it backinto shape. You'd better write out West and get a three-year lease,with option of purchase."
"We couldn't think of buying it, even with water rights and all," Mrs.Robbins demurred, "but we might try the three-year lease. What do youthink, dear?"
"I should write tonight," Mr. Robbins told her, confidently. "Even if Ishould gain my health completely"--how cheerily he said it, the girlsthought--"we could still stay up here summers, and you all would enjoyit, I know. Look at Dorrie's pink cheeks, and Jean looks like anothergirl. If I keep on much longer on Roxy's cooking, I expect to be mowinghay in the lower meadows by July."
So the letter was written, the wonderful letter freighted with so manyhopes. All four girls escorted Mrs. Robbins down to the mailbox at thecrossroads the next noon. It was truly a fateful moment, as Kitremarked solemnly. So much depended upon the nature of the answer fromfar-off Saskatoon. Perched on the fence rail Dorrie began to composepoetry to fit the occasion.
"Kit, beat time for me, will you?" she called happily, teetering on therail like a young bluebird. "Here it goes now:
"Oh, Saskatoon, Please answer soon! Sweet Saskatoon, We ask this boon--
What's his name, Mumsie?"
"Ralph McRae," Jean answered for her mother.
"You know, really, Dorrie," protested Helen, "if you could just seeyourself on that rail fence chanting doggerel to the spring breezes,you'd come down."
But Doris kept to the rail all the same, and sang with her fair hairblowing around her little face, already showing freckles. Even Kit feltthe inspiration of the moment.
"Oh, I love these April mornings! You can smell everything that's sweetand new in the air, can't you, Motherkin? And I found arbutus buds downin the pines too, and an old crow's nest, and the crocuses are up."
Mrs. Robbins lifted her face to the blue sky, with its great whiteclouds that drifted up from the south in an endless argosy of beauty,and quoted softly:
"When Spring comes down the wildwood way, A crocus in her hair--"
"There comes the mail wagon down the wildwood way," Jean called from thecurve of the road.
Already they had grown to watch for it as the one real event of the day.Mrs. Robbins said it reminded her of the little milk wagons in theSouth. It had a white oblong body with a projection at the back, a"lean-to" as Cousin Roxana called it, for parcel post packages. The topcame forward over the front seat in a canopy effect to shield Mr.Ricketts, the rural free delivery carrier, from the sun. Finally, therewas a plump white horse that matched the whole turnout exactly, and Mr.Ricketts, his cap pushed back on his head, a smile of perpetualwell-being on his face.
"Looks like we'd get a spell of fine weather," he called. "Tell MissRobbins I noticed a postcard for her about her subscription being up forher floral monthly, and if she ain't going to renew hers, I'll send inmy own for this year."
"Now just hear that," exclaimed Cousin Roxy when she was given themessage. "He's read my floral monthly regularly coming along the route.Well, I don't know as I mind. He's a real good mail carrier anyhow, andall men have failings. Hewers of wood and drawers of water, the goodBook calls them, and I'd like to know what else the pesky things arefor. That doesn't mean you at all, Jerry. You were always a good boy.Tom Ricketts knows better than to read my floral monthly without so muchas by your leave, ma'am. But I'll renew it."
"He must have read the postcard too," said Helen.
"Read it?" Cousin Roxy sniffed audibly. "I'd like to see anything get bythem down at that post office. They know a sight more about you thanyou do yourself. Postmaster Willets could sit down single-handed andwrite a history of the local inhabitants of this town just from memoryand postcards, I don't doubt a mite."
The very next day the girls went again to the Mansion House. The keyswere at Mr. Weaver's, the next house down the road from Maple Lawn. Itwas a regular gray mouse of a house sitting far back from the road andfacing the western hills. Philemon Weaver lived there alone. He wasninety-one and had had six wives, Cousin Roxana told them.
"Though mercy knows, nobody holds that against him. It was a complimentto the sex, I suppose, if he could get them. And Uncle Philly's buriedthem all reverently and properly."
They found the old fellow working at a carpenter's bench out in thewoodshed. His hair was gray and curly and his upper lip clean shaven.Doris said he looked just like the pictures of Uncle Sam. He was talland lean and stoop-shouldered, but his blue eyes were full of twinklesand he had the finest set of false teeth, Kit remarked soberly, thatshe'd ever seen, and the most winsome smile.
"Winsome? Philly Weaver winsome?" laughed Cousin Roxana when she heardit. "Well, I must say, Kit, that is the greatest yet. Winsome!"
"But he is," Kit protested, "really winsome. He gave us each a drinkfrom his well and showed Jean his Dutch tile stove and his grandfather'sclock. And he's got the dearest old chest out in that side hall, CousinRoxy. I asked him how much he'd take for it, and he said no, he guessedhe'd better not, though it was worth as much as two dollars and a half,but it had been his great-grandmother's setting-out chest. Wasn't thatdear of him?"
Armed with the key and waving good-bye to the old man at the top of thehill, they started down to the crossroads. Already they called thehouse home
. It was so satisfying, Kit said, just to wander about therooms and plan. There was one large southeast room that must be theliving-room and library combined. Back of this, opening out on a wideside porch, was the dining-room. On the opposite side of the fronthallway was a sitting-room with a glass-enclosed extension for flowers,and between it and the kitchen was a good-sized hallway lined withshelves and long handy drawers beneath them.
It was the kitchen and garret, though, that the girls lingered overmost. The former extended across the entire back of the house and Helencounted eleven doors opening out of it. The floor was made of oakenplanks worn smooth as satin, some of them over two feet wide. Behindthe sheet iron partition, they found a huge old-fashioned rock fireplacewith the crane still hanging in it. Helen and Doris could easily standinside the aperture and there was a jutting out of the walls on eachside that formed the cosiest kind of an inglenook.
"It seemed from this they e'en must be, Each other's own best companie,"
quoted Kit, from "The Hanging of the Crane." "Where are you, Jeanie?You're missing thrills of discovery."
But Jean was getting her own thrills. She had gathered her skirtsaround her, and ventured down the old winding cellar steps, gropedaround in the dark until she found the outside doors and removed the bigwooden bar that held them. The stone steps outside were green withmoss, and an indignant toad hopped back out of the sunlight when shethrew open the doors.
"We'll get the mouldy smell out of the cellar in a few days," she toldthe others, rolling up her sleeves and sitting down in the sunshine onthe top step. "And there's a furnace down there, too. It looks old andrusty, but it's there. No wonder they called it the Mansion House witha real furnace in the cellar and running water in the kitchen sink. Buthow funny and New Englandy, girls, to call it that, doubling up onmansion and house. Let's name it something else, something piney."
"Valley View," suggested Helen.
"Sounds too slippery," Kit said. "How's Heart's Content? Toosentimental? Well then, Piney Crest. It is on a sort of crest or mountup here above the valley and the pines make it seem solemn."
"Well, they won't after we once get here," Doris declared. "Let's callit something happy."
Kit stood with arms akimbo, looking up at the tall tapering pines. Theywere splendid old lords of the conifers, towering as high as the cupolaitself. Their branches spread out like great hoopskirts of green.Underneath was a thick silky carpet of russet needles, layer on layerfrom many seasons of growth. Beyond the limits of the garden lay thestrip of white road, and across that came wide fields that seemed tofall in long waves to meet the river. On all sides they slipped awayfrom the old mansion, their square borders outlined with the gray rockwalls, each with its brave showing of springtime green, where everyclambering vine had sent forth leafy tendrils, and even the moss hadfreshened up under the April showers.
"In a couple of weeks more they'll all be green," said Jean, her darkeyes bright with anticipation. "And we'll plough them and sow them, andthey'll grow and grow, girls, and turn a real golden harvest over to usby fall. Blessed green acres of promise!"
"There you are," exclaimed Kit triumphantly, wheeling around on them."Greenacres. It just fits the place, and it's full of the country andmakes you think of good things to eat. Greenacres. All in favor of thatname please signify in the usual manner."
Whereupon Doris picked up her skirts and made a low curtesy, and Helendid the same, and lastly Jean and Kit swept each other an elaboratecourt bow, showing that the vote was entirely unanimous.
Therefore, Greenacres was the new name given to the old Mansion House,and the girls felt that in the bestowal of the name, they held aguarantee with Fate of happy augury.