Front matter (continued 3)

"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.

"How much do you suppose we made?" asked Mrs. Robbins. "I'm so proud of it, I had to tell our executive committee. Forty-five dollars and thirty-five cents. Isn't that good for Gilead?"

"Good land alive!" Cousin Roxana exclaimed, her shoulders shaking with laughter. "I didn't suppose you could ever find so much money around loose in Gilead. They're all of them tighter'n the bark to a tree. I do believe, Betty, they paid ten cents admission to the grounds just to see what you all looked like."

"I don't care if they did," Jean said happily. "We got acquainted with all our neighbors, and now I feel as if I could go ahead and organize something."

CHAPTER XV

KIT PULLS ANCHOR

The following Saturday had been set as the first day for the girls to meet at Greenacres. Sally was the first to arrive, as she lived nearest, and she brought with her Anne and Charlotte, who, in a process known in large families, had become Nan and Carlie.

Hedda and the two girls from the old Ames place, Ingeborg and Astrid, arrived together and helped Kit and Helen plan the tennis court. Below the terraces the lawn lay smooth and even out to the south wall, but it had been decided to sacrifice a slice of the hay field across the road rather than the garden, and Hiram had ploughed up a good sized oblong of land for them, harrowed it smooth, and then the girls had pondered over the problem of rolling it. It must be rolled flat, wet down, and rolled again until it was fit to use.

"We could fill a barrel with sand, and roll that," Doris suggested, thoughtfully.

"Got something better than that," Honey said. "Over at Mr. Peckham's they've got a road roller. Mr. Peckham's the road committee in Gilead township--"

Kit caught him up,

"The whole committee, Honey?"

"Ain't he enough? Ought to see him get out and clean up with those boys of his. He'll let us take it, I'm sure, and it will roll that court down as smooth as can be. I'll go after it this afternoon when I finish with the potato patch."

"Don't I wish we had the old garden hose," Helen said, after they had carried buckets of water from the well unremittingly for nearly an hour, and emptied them on the harrowed patch. "I'm half dead."

"Cheer up, sister mine," Kit told her briskly. "Think of the result. 'Finis coronat opus!' From dawn till dewy eve we will play out here."

"We've got a croquet set down at the house, but the boys are always using the mallets to pound something over at the mill, and the balls get lost. I like this best." Sally stood with arms on her hips, smiling happily. "What else are you going to do up here?"

"Next we're going to start weekly hikes," Kit told her. "You girls have lived here for years, haven't you--"

"We just came up a while ago," Ingeborg corrected.

"I know, and so did Hedda, but Etoile and Tony and Sally and the rest of you all grew right here, didn't you? Well, then. What do you know about the country for ten miles around?" Kit paused dramatically. "Do you know every wood road and cow path through the woods? Do ye ken each mountain peak and distant vale? Where does Little River rise? Have any of you followed the rock ledge up into the hills?"

"Nobody but the hunters go there, and they don't come till fall," said Hedda gravely. She hardly ever smiled, this transplanted little daughter of far-off Iceland. Her manner and expression always seemed to the girls to hold a certain aloofness. Up at her home, later on, they saw a finely carved model of a viking ship which her father had made back in the home island, and Jean declared after that she always pictured Hedda standing at its high prow, facing the gale of the northern seas, her fair hair blowing behind her like a golden pennant, her blue eyes fearless and eager.

"But we'll go. With something to eat and trusty staves. That makes me think, girls, we haven't seen many snakes. Aren't there any up here, Sally?"

"Lots. But mostly black snakes. They're ugly to look at, but they don't hurt you. And little garter snakes, and green grass snakes. I never think about them."

"Are you afraid of anything out here, Sally?" Doris asked, interestedly. She had eyed Sally admiringly from the first moment of their acquaintance, and privately Dorrie held many fears. It was all very well to say there wasn't anything to worry over, as Kit did; but one may step on toads in the dark, or hear noises in the garret that make one shiver even if they do turn out to be just chipmunks after corn and huts.

"Nothing that I know of," Sally replied serenely. "I never felt afraid in the dark. Just as soon go all over the house, up stairs and down, and into the cellar, as not. And I go all over the barn and garden at night. Guess the only thing I'm really afraid of is a bat."

"Everybody's afraid of something," Etoile said, her eyes wide with mystery. "I have the fear too, oh, but often. I am most afraid of those little mulberry worms, you know them? They come right down at you on little ropes they make all by themselves, and they curl up in the air and then they drop on you. Ugh!"

Kit fairly rolled with delight at this, over on the grass.

"How perfectly lovely," she laughed. "Tell some more, Etoile."

"We've got a haunted house on our road," Astrid said in a lowered voice. "The little spring house between the old mill and our place. It's been there years and years, my father says. He knows the old man at the mill, and he told him. As far back as they can remember it has always been haunted. First there lived an old watchmaker there. He had clocks and watches all over the house, and they ticked all the time."

"Maybe they kept him from being lonely," Helen suggested.

"He was very strange, and when he died, then two old Indian women came to live there. And there was a peddler used to go through and put up over night there, and he never was seen any more."

"You can see the grave in the cellar where they buried him," Ingeborg whispered. "Right down at the foot of the stairs. And at night he comes up and goes all around the house, rattling chains. Yes, he does. My brother went down with some of the boys and stayed there just to find out and they heard him."

"Let's go over there on our hike and stay over night, girls," Kit exclaimed. "I think it would be dandy."

"Don't you believe in ghosts, Kit?" asked Sally. "I don't like to believe in them, but I just thought they had to be believed in if they're really so."

"Remember in Dickens's 'Christmas Carol,'" Jean joined in, "hew old Scrooge insisted that he didn't believe in ghosts even when the ghost sat right beside him, and rattled his chains?"

"Oh, don't, Jeanie," Doris begged, arms close around the big sister's neck. "Don't talk about it."

"We'll stay over night at the spring house, girls," Kit promised happily. "It's a shame to have a real ghost around and not make it welcome. If there are any ghosts they must be the lonesomest creatures in all creation because nobody wants them around. Suppose we say that next Friday we'll walk up to the house and camp out for the night. Who's afraid?"

The girls looked at each other doubtfully.

"Can I bring our dog along?" asked Ingeborg. "Then I am not afraid, I don't think."

"Bring anything you like. I'm going to take an electric flashlight. Here comes our roller, now. We'd better finish the tennis court."

That night the girls talked it over themselves up in Jean's room. It was always the favorite council hour, when all the queen's hand-maidens combed their silken tresses, as Helen said.

Somehow it did seem as if you could think clearer and weigh matters better, after you were undressed, with a nightgown and kimono on, sitting cross-legged on the bed or couch. Mrs. Robbins always stopped on her way to bed to look in at either one room or the other, and chat for a while. She listened with an amused smile to the story Ingeborg had told.

"The fear of the dark, they say, comes from away back in the first dawn of the world," she said. "It is the old dread of the unknown the cave man felt when darkness fell over the land and wild beasts prowled near. But this other idea about the ghost is queer, isn't it, girls? Do you really want to stay over night there?"

"I think we'd better, Mother dear," Jean answered comfortably, "We'll be the warrior maidens, and slay the dragon Fear which hath most wickedly enthralled our fair land. That's a nice little house, and everyone's afraid to live in it."

"Ingeborg told me after you girls came up to the house, that there was one door in the sitting-room nobody could keep shut. It swung open all the time."

"Never mind, Helen," Kit said. "I'll take it off its hinges, and cart it right down cellar. Then I guess it will behave itself."

Cousin Roxana told the story of the old spring house when they saw her. She could remember Scotty McDougal, the old watchmaker who had lived there.

"Land, yes, I should say I could. He used to wear an old coonskin cap with the tail hanging down, and carried an old gun along with him wherever he went. After he died, two old women moved in from somewhere in the woods towards Dayville. They were Injun, I guess, or gypsy, real good-hearted folks so far as I could see. Used to weave carpet and rag rugs and make baskets. There was a story around that they could tell fortunes and see things in the future, but that's just talk. I never pay any attention to such things at all. The Lord never has seen fit to let His way be known excepting through His own messengers. Probably, if you could clear the house of its name, somebody'd be willing to live in it. It belongs to Judge Ellis."

"Who's Judge Ellis?" asked Kit, who always caught at a new name.

"Who is he?" Cousin Roxy laughed heartily. "Meanest man in seven counties, I guess. He ran for Senator years ago, and was beaten, and he took a solemn oath he'd never have anything to do with anybody in this township again, and I guess he's kept it. He lives in the biggest house here."

"All alone?" asked Doris.

"All alone excepting for a housekeeper and his grandson. He's just a fussy old miser, and the way he lets that boy run wild makes my heart ache."

"How old a boy is he, Roxy?" asked Mrs. Robbins, quick sympathy shining from her eyes.

"Oh, I should say about fifteen. Name's Billie. He's a case, I tell you. What he can't think of in five minutes isn't worth doing. Still, he's a good boy too, at that. Five of my cows strayed off from the pasture lot last summer and he found them after Hiram had run his legs off looking for them. And once we lost some turkeys, and he found them over in the pines roosting with the crows. He knows every foot of land for ten miles around here and more, I guess. You never know when he's going to bob out of the bushes and grin at you. The Judge don't pay any more attention to him than if he was a scarecrow. Seems that he had one son, Finley Ellis, and he was wild and the Judge turned him off years ago. And one day he got a letter, so Mr. Ricketts told me, from New York, and away he went, looking cross enough to chew tacks. When he came back he had Billie with him, and that's all Gilead ever found out. Billie says he's his grandfather, and the Judge says nothing."

"I'd like to see him," Jean exclaimed.

"Who? The Judge?"

"No, no. Billie, this boy. What does he look like?"

"Looks like all-get-out half the time, and never comes to church at all. You'll know him by his whistling. He can whistle like a bird. I've heard him sometimes in the early spring, and you couldn't tell his whistle from a real whip-poor-will. There is something about him that everybody likes."

"I hope he comes over this way," Mrs. Robbins said.

"Oh, he will. The Judge never lets him have any pocket money, so he's always trying to earn a little. He'll come and try to sell you a tame crow, most likely, or a trained caterpillar. I was driving over towards their place one day and I declare if I didn't find him lying flat in the middle of the road. Ella Lou stopped short and I asked him what he was doing. 'Don't drive in the middle of the road, Miss Robbins,' he said, ''cause I've got some ants here, taming them.' Real good looking boy he is too."

"My, but he sounds interesting," Kit remarked fervently. "I almost feel like hunting him up; don't you, Jean?"

Jean nodded her head. She was putting up currants and raspberries, and the day was very warm.

"Why do you keep a fire going in the house?" Miss Robbins asked her. "Put an old stove out in the back-yard, the way I do, and let it sizzle along. Good-bye, everybody. I hear all the ministers are still speaking to each other."

"Come down and play tennis with us," called Helen.

"Go 'long, child." Cousin Roxy chuckled. "How would I look hopping around like a katydid, slapping at those little balls! Get up there, Ella Lou."

"Well," Kit exclaimed, as the buggy drove away, "it seems as if every single day something new happens here, and we thought it would be so dull we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves."

"You mean Billie's something new?" asked Helen.

"Doesn't he sound interesting? I'm going out to ask Honey about him."

"You'd better help me finish these berries, Kathleen," Jean urged. So Kit gave up the quest temporarily, and sat on the edge of the kitchen table, stripping currants from their stems, and singing at the top of her clear young lungs:

"'Oh, where have you been, Billie Boy, Billie Boy,

Where have you been, charming Billie?'

'I've been to seek a wife, she's the comfort of my life,'

But she's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother.'

"'Did she bid you come in, Billie Boy, Billie Boy,

Did she bid you come, charming Billie?'

'Yes, she bid me come in, with a dimple in her chin,

But she's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother.'

"'Did she offer you a chair, Billie Boy, Billie Boy,

Did she offer you a chair, charming Billie?'

'Yes, she offered me a chair, with the ringlets in her hair,

But she's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.'

"'Can she make a cherry pie, Billie Boy, Billie Boy--'"

"Oh, Kit, do stop," begged Jean. "It's too hot to sing."

Kit looked out at the widespread view of Greenacres, rich with the uncut grass, billowing with every vagrant breeze, like distant waves. It was hot in the kitchen, hot and close.

"I'll bet he'd let her stay right in the kitchen keeling pots and making cherry pies, too," she said suddenly.

"Who?"

"Who?" wrathfully. "All the Billies of the world. They can ramble fields and whistle like whip-poor-wills, but we've just got to stay and make cherry pies forever and ever, amen."

"Why, Kit, dear--"

"Don't 'dear' me. I want to get out and tramp and live in a tent. I hate cooking. I don't see why anybody wants to eat this kind of weather. I'd nibble grass first."

"Yes, you would," laughed Helen. "You'll be the first at supper to lean over sweetly and ask for preserves and cake. I see you nibbling grass, Miss Nebuchanezzar."

But Kit had fled, out the back door and over to the pasture where Princess rambled.

"Kit's fretful, isn't she?"

"She's pulling on her anchor," answered Jean. "We all do. Some days I get really homesick for the girls back home and everything that we haven't got here,--the library and the art galleries and the lectures and the musicales and everything. I think we ought to write down and ask some of the girls to come up."

"I don't. Not until Dad's well."

Doris was out of hearing. Jean looked over at Helen, who in some way always seemed nearer her own age than Kit.

"Helen, honest and truly, do you think Dad's getting any better?" she asked in a low voice.

Helen hesitated, her face showing plainly how she dreaded acknowledging even to herself the possibility of his not improving.

"He eats better now, and he can sit up."

"But he looks awful. It fairly makes my heart ache to look at him sometimes. His eyes look as if they were gazing away off at some land we couldn't see."

"Jean Robbins, how can you say that?"

"Hush. Don't let Mother hear," cautioned Jean anxiously. "I had to tell somebody. I think of it all the time."

"Well, don't think of it. That's like sticking pins in a wax statue back in the Middle Ages, and saying, 'He's going to die, he's going to die,' all the time. He's getting better."

Jean was silent. She felt worried, but if Helen refused to listen to her, there was nobody left except Cousin Roxy. Somehow, at every emergency Cousin Roxy seemed to be the one hope these days, unfailing and unfearing. Dauntless and cheerful, she rode over every obstacle like some old warrior who had elected to rid the world of dragons.

But when Jean found an opportunity of speaking to her of her father, Cousin Roxana's face looked oddly passive.

"We're all in the Lord's hands, Jeanie," she said. "Trust and obey, you know. There are lots worse things than passing over Jordan, but we've just got that notion in our heads that we don't want to let any of our beloved ones take the voyage. Jerry's weak, I know, and he ain't mending so fast as I'd hoped for, but he's gained. That's something. You've been up here only a couple of months. It took years of overwork to break him down, and it may take years of peace and rest to build him up. Let's be patient. Dr. Gallup seems to think he's got a good deal more than a running chance."

Jean wound eager, loving arms around the plump figure, and laid her head down on Cousin Roxy's shoulder.

"You dear," she exclaimed. "You're the best angel in a gingham apron I ever saw. I feel a hundred times better now. I can go back and work."

"Well, so do, child, and comfort your mother. Hope springs eternal, you know, in the human breast, but it takes a sight of watering just the same to make it perk up."

CHAPTER XVI

GUESTS AND GHOSTS

It would never do to leave Piney out of any jaunts, Kit said, as the end of the week drew near again, and so Honey was commissioned as despatch bearer.

"Tell her we're going to walk from here over to Mount Ponchas, and back by way of the Spring House. We want to start at five Friday night."

"Ought to start at daybreak for a hike," Honey replied. "Never heard of starting near sundown. You'll fetch up by dark at the rock ridge and sleep in a deer hollow."

"Maybe we will," Kit responded hopefully. "I hadn't thought of that, Honey. It sounds awfully nice. If you could just get a peep at our lunch you'd want to hike too, no matter where we fetched up."

"I've camped out along the river. Not this river. The big one down at the station, the Quinnebaug. We boys go down there when the bass is running and fish for them nights. Eels too."

"Do you know a boy named Billie Ellis?" Kit asked suddenly. "Does he ever go along with you?"

"Billie Ellis? I should say not." Honey was very emphatic. "Judge Ellis wouldn't let him go along anywhere with the rest of us fellows. He caught a big white owl the other day over in the pines back of the Ellis burial ground."

"I wish he'd come over our way some time. I'd love to know him. He sounds so kind of--well, different, don't you know?"

"He's different all right," laughed Honey, good-naturedly. "I remember once three years ago it was awfully cold, and we boys had been skating and went into the blacksmith shop to get warm, Abby Tucker's father's shop. And who should come in but Billie Ellis without any hat on, and only an old sweater and a pair of corduroy knickers on, and shoes and stockings. We asked him how he ever kept warm such weather, and what do you suppose he said?"

"What?" Kit's face was eager with interest.

"Said he had seven cats he kept specially to keep him warm. Said the Judge wouldn't let him have any fire, so he trained the cats to cuddle around him and keep him warm all night! Good-night. I'll tell Piney you want her to go along with you."

Kit sat out on the terrace after he had passed up the hill road. Jean and Helen were upstairs with their father, and Doris was practising her music with her mother in the big living-room. Somehow, Mother's fingers made scales sound sweet. Honey had been gone about fifteen minutes when Kit heard the sound of a carriage coming along the level valley road. It couldn't be anyone for Greenacres, she thought; but just then the carriage turned in at the wide drive entrance and came up to the veranda steps.

"You had better wait," she heard a voice say, such a dandy voice, young and full of happy sounding. Then somebody bounded up the steps, three at a time, and crossed the veranda, with her sitting right there on the top terrace below the rose and honeysuckle vines. Kit was always precipitous in her conclusions. It flashed across her mind in one brilliant, intuitive wave that this was Ralph McRae, from Saskatoon. Doris's madcap verse ran riot through her brain:

"Oh, Saskatoon,

Don't come too soon--"

There was no door-bell or even knocker, and the double doors stood wide open, but the screen doors were locked, inside, so Kit stood up and called.

"Just a minute, please. I'm coming."

He waited for her, cap in hand and smiling. It was shadowy, but she saw his face and liked it. As she told the other girls later, it looked like all the faces you could imagine that had belonged to the real heroes' best friends, the Gratianos, and Mercutios, and Petroniuses of life.

"Is this Miss Robbins?" he asked, and Kit flushed at the tone. As if she didn't long seventeen hundred times a month to be the Miss Robbins like Jean.

"No. I'm only Kit," she answered. "You're our Mr. McRae, I think. How do you do?"

He took her proffered hand and shook it warmly, until there were little red lines around her rings, and Kit led him around to the side door and let him in while she lighted a lamp.

"Mother's in here," she said, leading the way into the living-room. Mrs. Robbins sat by the west window. She loved the quiet rest hour after sundown, and Doris was playing with the soft pedal down. "Mother, dear," Kit said. "Mr. McRae's come from Saskatoon."

"Just as if he'd stepped over the whole distance in about seven strides," Doris told later, after Mr. McRae had been safely disposed of in the guest chamber, and the family could discuss him safely. "I think he's awfully nice looking, don't you, Jean?"

"I can't think about his looks, Dorrie," Jean replied laughingly. "All I can do is wonder what he has come after. Does he want the house and farm? Or has his conscience troubled him so much about Piney and her mother and Honey that he's going to lay Greenacres on their front doorstep in restitution? Or did he just want to see what we all looked like?"

"Ask him," suggested Kit blandly. "He seems to be a very approachable young man so far as I can see."

"He wanted to go up to Cousin Roxy's for the night and Mother wouldn't let him. That shows that she likes him."

"Mother'd spread her wing over any lone wanderer after nightfall, Helenita. Wait and see what the morrow doth portend. We'll go for our hike just the same."

The next day Mr. Robbins sat out in a big steamer chair on the veranda with the stranger, and seemed to enjoy his company wonderfully.

"I do believe, Mumsie," Jean said, "that poor Dad has been smothered with too much coddling. Just look at him brace up and talk to Mr. McRae."

"I hope we can persuade him to stay with us while he is in Gilead."

"He doesn't act as if he needed much persuading. They've rambled all the way from salmon culture to Alaska politics and whether alfalfa would grow in Connecticut. Now they're settling Saskatoon's future. It appears that if no cyclones hit it, Saskatoon will be a booming town. I'm glad we don't need any cyclone cellars here."

"Jeanie, you tempt Providence with your jubilant crowing. Come and help me put up our lunch. Bacon and biscuit are going to be the staff of our existence, with gingerbread and cheese for the reserves."

It had been agreed that the girls should meet at Greenacres that afternoon. Honey had been sent up to Maple Lawn with a note announcing the arrival of Ralph McRae, and inviting Cousin Roxy down for tea. She drove down about four, fresh as a daisy in her black and white dimity and big black sun hat with sprays of white lilacs on it. Ralph helped her out and stood smilingly while she ran her fingers through his thick brown hair and patted his shoulder.

"Just the sort of boy I expected Francelia'd have," she said happily. "Well set up and manly too from all appearances. Going to stay around a while, Ralph, and get acquainted?"

"Why, I'd like to, Miss Roxy. It was rather lonesome out West with none of my own people there. I've always wanted to come back here and see all of you. Mother used to talk a lot about you all to me when I was little. She didn't have anybody else to tell things to."

"Like enough," Roxy responded rather soberly for her. "You must meet your cousins."

"I didn't know I had any."

Miss Robbins glanced over to the woodpile where Honey was sawing some chestnut tops for dry wood to mix in with the birch.

"Come over here, Honey," she called briskly. "This is the boy cousin and Piney's the girl, both children of your mother's own sister Luella. Guess we'll get this straightened out some time. Honey, this is Ralph McRae, your own blood cousin."

Ralph took the tanned, supple hand of the boy in his, and held it fast, looking down at Honey's cheery, freckled face.

"I think we're going to be pals, old man," he said, and Honey's heart warmed to him. Nobody had ever before called him that.

When Piney arrived with the other girls, she too was introduced, but she proved less pliable than Honey. Straight and tall, she faced her new cousin, every flash of her eyes telling him that she resented his having all while they had nothing, and Ralph could make no headway with that branch of the family.

At five they were ready to start. Sally could not go, nor Nan, Carlie, or Tony. But the older girls were all there, and at the last minute Abby Tucker came hurrying along the road with a large paper bag.

"Thought I'd never get here, but I did," she said triumphantly. "I made popcorn balls for all of you. And I've got some red pepper too. Going to throw it at the ghost."

"Why, you cold-blooded person," Kit exclaimed. "Red pepper at a poor harmless ghost! Shame on you."

But Abby only smiled mysteriously and gave the girls to understand that red pepper was the very latest weapon for vanquishing ghosts.

Jean had told each girl to bring a blanket. These were spread down and rolled up army-fashion until they looked like life buoys, then slung over the girls' shoulders. The commissary department consisted of Kit, Hedda and Ingeborg, who counted over their supplies almost gloatingly. Etoile had brought jam turnovers and deviled-egg sandwiches. Hedda had brought loaf cake and cheese,--cream cheese with sweet red peppers chopped up in it.

"So funny for Hedda to bring Italian stuff. You'd expect pickled walrus from her," Kit remarked.

"I like this," Hedda answered gravely. "I never tasted walrus."

Ingeborg and Astrid brought sandwiches, made of rye bread with home-cured roast ham. And Piney appeared with a big bag of cherries, white-hearts and deep red ox-hearts.

"There's a loaf of gingerbread too, with raisins in it," she said.

"You're equipped for a journey over Chilkoot Pass," Ralph told them teasingly. "How many weeks will you be gone?"

"We'll be home tomorrow about sundown, good sir," Kit retorted haughtily. "Should you see the distant light of a signal fire you may come after us."

"Piney can tell direction by the sun," Honey said. "You won't get lost with her along. Better keep out of the woods though. Mount Ponchas is due south."

The girls left the grounds of Greenacres and turned into the open road. At each clear point they paused to wave back to the group on the veranda, but Jean and Ingeborg led at a good pace and the rest fell into it, following the river road to the old spring house. Helen started to sing with Piney, and the others joined in. The first mile seemed to vanish before they knew it, and even by the time they reached the old red saw-mill, where Mr. Rudemeir lived, they were not tired. He was the old Prussian sailor Honey had told them of. They met him driving a couple of heavy Percheron horses along the river path, and he waved an old pipe in friendly fashion.

"He's mighty nice," Piney said fervently. "Last summer there were some girls boarding up the valley, and they couldn't swim. One went out beyond her depth and he saved her life."

"Bless his heart, let's give him a cheer," Kit proposed. "He needs encouragement."

So they gave a rousing cheer, and the old man looked back in surprise, grinned, and waved again to them.

"Wait a minute," Jean said suddenly. "We've forgotten matches. Run back and ask him for some, Dorrie, please."

"He asked where we were bound for," said Doris when she returned. "When I told him he said he guessed we'd have our hands full."

"It's getting a little dark." Etoile glanced back over the shadowy road behind them.

"We've got a lantern and some candles," Astrid said comfortably, "and Tip for sentinel. There isn't anything to be afraid of that I can see."

"'Speak for yourself, John,'" Kit quoted. "If we don't see or hear something I'm going to be awfully disappointed. And if we do hear anything coming slowly upstairs, don't flash the electric light right at it until it has a chance to show itself. I hope it will be a lovely pale green, like the ghost in Hamlet."

Etoile stopped short in the middle of the road, her eyes wide with dread.

"I think perhaps I'd better go right back now, girls."

But Kit and Ingeborg wound their arms around her waist and promised faithfully to guard her if she would only stick the night out. They went on up the long wood-road, past the falls above the mill, past Mud Hole where the boys fished for eels, past Otter Island where Hiram came to fish, and on to the old spring house. It was set far back from the road in a garden overgrown with weeds and tall timothy grass, and tiger lilies grew rankly in green clumps along the gray stone walls. The little wooden shelter over the well was knocked over and the boards that protected the windows had been pulled half off. Jean went to the kitchen door and found it unlocked. Only wasps and spiders were to be seen, and one stout old toad that backed hurriedly out of sight under the stone doorstep.

"Let's look it all over before it gets really dark," she said, and they went in and out of each bare room, upstairs and downstairs, into the old musty cellar, even into the low-roofed loft over the summer kitchen.

"Now, we know there's nothing here, don't we?" Kit said, after the tour of inspection was over, and they sat out on the grass near the well, with their lunch spread around them. "How perfectly wonderful things taste after you've tramped, don't they? More ginger cookies, please, Hedda."

"Which room are we going to sleep in?" asked Abby. "I'd just as soon sleep out here all night on blankets, wouldn't you, Etoile?"

"We don't care if you want to," Helen agreed. "Try it on the little side porch. Then you can watch the cellar entrance because the ghost may decide to come up that way."

It was getting quite dark by the time the supper remains were cleared away. Candles were lighted and set on the mantel in the front room and in the kitchen. Kit and Hedda had returned from a successful foraging expedition around the barn and corn house, and had brought back armfuls of hay to spread under their blankets on the floor. Tip, the brown water spaniel, took the whole affair very seriously and made the circuit of the grounds over and over again, chasing imaginary intruders.

"Well, girls, I guess we're all ready to go to bed, aren't we?" Kit called finally. "It's eight-thirty by Jean's watch, and we'll have to get an early start."

They agreed it was the best plan and went into the big living-room where the fireplace was. The nights were still very cool up in the hills, so Hedda and Doris had been appointed wood gatherers and a fine dry wood fire blazed on the stone hearth. After they were ready for the night, they sat around this in a semi-circle, eating popcorn balls and telling stories, until all at once there came a sound that silenced every one and left them wide-eyed and scared.

CHAPTER XVII

BILLIE MEETS TRESPASSERS

It was unlike any sound the girls had ever heard back at the Cove; almost like a human being in distress and yet like some animal cry too.

"It's a fox," whispered Astrid, getting nearer to her big sister.

"No, it isn't," said Abby. "That's a deer. They always yell like that when the moon's full."

"It was right near, I think, right outside." Kit sat up eager and tense. "Shall I flash the light, Jean?"

"Not yet. Wait until it comes again. I think it was only some night bird."

So they waited breathlessly. Every tiny creaking noise in the old house was intensified by the heavy silence. Jean rose and went to the window. The moon was not up yet, and it was hard to distinguish objects, but down in the garden she thought she saw something that looked like a cow lying down.

"I can't tell just what it is. It may be only a stray cow or horse," she said softly.

"Throw something at it," suggested Kit, hopefully. "Let's all throw something."

"Just to see whether it jumps or not," Astrid assented. She hunted around and found some loose half bricks in the chimney place.

"Where's Tip? He hasn't barked once," remarked Abby.

"Dogs are always frightened when they see ghosts. Let me fire away at it first, girls." Astrid took aim and the half brick flew down at the dark object with a deadly thud, but there was no stampede. She leaned far out the window, staring at it anxiously. "It seems to me I can see it move and it has horns and a sort of woolly tail, girls."

"Sounds like a yak," Kit chuckled. "I'm willing to do this much. I'll go to the door and open it, and you girls stay here with bricks to throw, and when I flash the light on it, if it jumps you can save me."

But before she could carry out the plan the sound came again, longer and more thrillingly penetrating than before. It was a wail and a challenge and a moan all in one, not just one cry, but a prolonged succession of them. As soon as it stopped Piney exclaimed:

"Now I know. That's an owl and it comes from the little garret over the 'ell' where we couldn't climb because there weren't any stairs. Don't you know, girls?"

"Sure, Piney?" Etoile's tone was almost trembling. "Never I hear such a cry."

"Oh, I have. It's an owl, I know it is, one of those big ones. Riding through the woods at night coming home from town I've been half scared to death by one of them. Sounds like seventeen ghosts all rolled into one. Come along, Kit. You and I'll go hunt it up."

The rest followed gingerly, a strange procession bearing candles, Kit leading with the flash, light. Tip stumbled up drowsily from the kitchen door and barked at them.

"Oh, yes, it's all very well for you to bark now," laughed Jean. "Why didn't you go after that noise?"

They reached the "ell" room and found a trapdoor in the ceiling. Abby remembered seeing a ladder out in the back entry behind the door and this was brought in.

"And see this, girls," she exclaimed, running her finger over it. "No dust on the rounds. That shows it's been used lately."

"Aren't we perfectly wonderful scouts? Abby, I love the way you never miss anything." Kit leaned the ladder up against the wall, and mounted it, with Piney close behind and the other girls at its base. "What if it shouldn't be an owl--"

She stopped with her palm against the trapdoor. Raising it about an inch she flashed the light, and there was a great fluttering and flopping overhead.

"What did I tell you!" Piney cried excitedly. "Do it again, Kit. It can't hurt you and the light blinds it."

So the trap-door was lifted again with the light of the electric hand lamp turned on full and Kit cautiously pulled herself up into the aperture. It was tent shaped and low, not more than four feet at its highest. But instead of being bare like the rest of the old house, there were certainly evidences of human occupancy. There was a tin can filled with fresh water, and a strip of rag carpet laid down on the floor. A box of fish hooks and neatly rolled lines lay on one side, and there was a small frying pan and a horn handled steel knife and fork. Rolled up in one corner was a pair of old overalls, and some books much the worse for wear lay beside them. Kit's glance took in everything, and last of all, backed into a corner and blinking hard, was the ghost itself,--a big white owl.

Piney pulled herself up too, and reached out after the books gently so as not to frighten the owl any more. With a couple in her hand, they lowered the door again, and joined the others.

"It's an owl and a hermit's nest," Kit told them excitedly. "Open the books, Piney. Is there any name inside?"

Piney read off the titles,

"'Treasure Island' and 'Peveril of the Peak.' He's got a nice collection, hasn't he, whoever he is? There isn't any name inside. There's a bookplate in each though."

"Let me see." Helen and Kit both tried to look at the same time. The bookplate was pasted in each, but it was a hard one to decipher. It looked like some cryptogram with its intertwined letter forms, and they gave it up for the night.

"Well, there was certainly fresh water in that tin," Kit said positively, "and that shows the haunted house is inhabited by something tangible, I mean something besides the owl. Let's go to bed very calmly and sleep. I'm sure we've laid the ghost."

It did seem as though they had, for the remainder of the night was peaceful and safe except for the owl crying out lonesomely at intervals until about four o'clock, when the dawn came. Rolled in their blankets, the girls slept soundly until the sunlight threw broad golden beams into their quarters.

There was no rope on the windlass at the well, so Ingeborg proposed that they go down to the river and wash there. It was lots of fun. They found that the dark and fearsome object they had heaved bricks at the night before was only a big gray rock half sunken in the ground.

Along the river margin turtles sunned themselves in rows on the half-submerged logs, and a muskrat scuttled clumsily for cover at sight of the invaders.

"I wish we could go right in," said Jean, looking up and down the winding course of the river as she parted the alders; "but it isn't really safe when you don't know the water. This looks full of unexpected holes and snags. Where does it run to?"

"Down past the two mills, and rises away up in the Quinnebaug Hills," Piney told her, kneeling on a flat rock and splashing herself well. "Did you see that black snake hustle out of the way then? They're awful cowards. Yes, Jean, this comes from Judge Ellis's place about two miles beyond here, three and a half by road."

"Judge Ellis? Billie's grandfather?"

"You talk just as if you knew him, Kit."

"Well, I feel as if I do, and when I do I'm going to take him right under my wing and be a mother to him," said Kit defiantly.

"Who? The Judge?"

"No. This Billie person. Or I'll trot him home to Mother and let her be nice to him."

"Here are some fishpoles, girls, hidden in the bushes," Doris called out. "Know what I think? There are boys around."

All at once upstream they heard somebody whistling. At first it sounded almost like a bird trilling high and clear, but birds do not sing "Marching Through Georgia," so the girls sat there on the bank, sheltered from view by the alders, and waited until a flat bottomed row-boat came into view. Standing at the stern, one bare foot on the back seat and one on the cross seat, with a long punting pole in his hands, was a boy of about fifteen. His head was bare and his overalls were rolled above his knees. Whistling recklessly, sure of himself and the solitude, he came down the river and guided the boat to shore near where the girls sat. He hauled it up half-way out of the water, dropped the pole into it, and started up the bank before he caught sight of them.

"That's Billie Ellis," Piney said quickly, and waved her hand to him in friendly greeting. "Hello, Billie."

"Hello," Billie returned. "Where'd you come from?"

"We came from Whence and are going Whither," Kit spoke up merrily. "Got some fish for breakfast?"

Billie hesitated, trying to appear nonchalant, but plainly very much rattled at these persons who had taken up squatter rights on his domain. He rolled down his overalls very slowly and deliberately to gain time, and this gave the girls a chance to see just what he looked like, this Billie person, as Kit had dubbed him. He was taller than Honey by a good deal, with short-cropped curly hair rather nondescript in color, and big brown eyes, eyes as startlingly frank and uncompromising in their gaze as those of a deer. He was tanned a nice healthy brown, and his smile was extremely satisfying if one were looking for friendliness. Altogether, the Greenacre girls approved of Billie at sight. To the others he was more or less familiar, even while none of them knew him well.

"Where you all going?" he asked.

"Just walking over the country," Abby told him. "Where are you going, Billie?"

Billie flushed at this direct query.

"Oh, I don't know," he answered lamely. "I come down the river a lot."

"We fed the owl," Kit said innocently. "Just some bread and ham. I suppose it thought it had a new kind of mouse."

Billie glanced at her with quick boyish indignation. They had not been satisfied with finding out his landing place and swimming hole. They had gone into the old house and discovered his secret den and the big white owl. He had always regarded girls as semi-dangerous, but this was worse than even he had expected. He turned to Piney as the one in the crowd that he knew best.

"What did you go into the house for?"

"Shelter for the night," Piney answered promptly. "The door was open and we went in. If folks don't want company they should keep their doors locked. Anyhow, nobody lives here and we didn't hurt a thing. We wanted to see the ghost."

Billie grinned at this admission, a quick mischievous grin that made his whole face light up and seem to sparkle with fun.

"Did he come up and rattle his chains for you?"

"No, he didn't, and I don't believe he ever did for anybody else."

"Maybe not," Billie agreed blandly. "How far up the river are you going?"

"To Mount Ponchas."

"That's only seven and a half miles. You can go along up the hill road from here, and when you come to the state road that has telegraph poles on it, you turn off and go west. It's three hills over and you pass through one village, Shiloh Valley. When you come to Ponchas don't forget to look for the grave of the Cavalier."

"Where's that?" asked Jean. "We haven't heard of it at all."

This was touching Billie's heart in the right spot. He knew every rod of land for miles around Gilead and loved its old historic lore. The girls did not know it then, but life was rather a dull affair over at the Judge's place. There were only the Judge himself; Mrs. Gorham, his housekeeper; Farley Riggs, his general business man; and Ben Brooks, the hired man. It was rather an unsympathetic household for a boy of fifteen, especially one who had been unwelcome; but he had made friends with Ben and had found him a treasure house of information.

There might be other sections of importance in the United States besides Gilead Center, Connecticut, but Ben held them in slight esteem. He had been born and brought up there and had never even wanted to go away. The sun had always risen and set for him beyond the encircling Quinnebaug Hills. He was about forty when Billie first came, genial, optimistic, rather good-looking, and an insatiable reader.

Billie's two favorite occupations were ranging the country on personal hikes of exploration and sitting up in Ben's room over the corn house in the evenings, looking at his books and magazines and listening to him talk on current topics and historic events. No topic was too intricate for Ben to tackle. No government ever evaded him when it came to diplomatic tricks or ways. He was on to them all, as he told Billie.

So now Billie remembered how Ben had told him about the mysterious stranger who had come to Gilead back in the earliest days of the settlement. The colonists had suffered much from Indian raids until there came into their midst a man whom they called the Cavalier. With his negro body-servant, he had lived amongst them and taught them defense against their savage foes, taught them the best way to win over the soil and reclaim the wilderness. Yet when he died they knew no more of him than on the first day when he rode into their village. His grave lay over on the south side of Mount Ponchas where he had wished it to be, near a rock where he had often held council with the Indians.

"Be sure to see it when you get there," Billie advised. "I wish I was going along with you."

"Come over to our place, won't you, Billie?" Kit asked in her most neighborly way. "I'd like to ask you about some arrow heads we found. Will you?"

Billie nodded his head nonchalantly. It was like giving a bird an invitation to call on you, or handing your card to a rabbit. But he watched them as they went up the hill road from the river, and when Doris turned and waved, he waved back. At least he was interested in his trespassers, even though he could not quite forgive them for having discovered his pet hiding place.

CHAPTER XVIII

HARVESTING HOPES

It was noon before they reached Ponchas, although they might have gone ever so much faster if every new flower by the way had not coaxed them to 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 Shiloh Valley was so pretty it was hard to leave it. There was a little white church, with a square steeple and green blinds, standing on a large church green, a dot of a schoolhouse opposite, one lone store, and about nine houses. But each house was set in its own little domain independent and aloof, with its barn and granary, tool house and smoke house, 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, and she stood and watched them out of sight, with wide surprised eyes, just as if, Doris said, they were a circus.

"I suppose we're the most interesting sight she's seen in weeks. Wish I could run back and coax her to go with us."

But Ponchas beckoned to them in the distance, a violet tinted cone of rock, and they kept steadily on until, as the shadows pointed north, they camped for luncheon at its base. Helen and Ingeborg went hunting the Cavalier's grave, but Hedda found it when she brought water from the spring house that had been built over a live spring gushing out at the base of the rock. Nearby was a heap of gray moss-covered rock piled into a cairn, with a rugged rock cross at the head twined with wild convolvulus. 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 would have pleased him better. Let's name him, girls."

"Sir John Lovelace," said Helen.

"Oh, no, give him something sturdy; call him Modred or Gregory," Kit protested. "Gregory Grimshaw."

They stood for a few moments in silence gazing at the quiet resting place, wondering what the real story was of the stranger it sheltered.

"I think his servant could have told if he had so wished," Etoile said wisely. "I will ask my father about him. He knows many of the old stories of the places around here. He came here from Canada when he was a very little boy. There were gray wolves around in the winter time, and the spring came earlier then. He has found arbutus the first week in March."

"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, Abby had fairly bloomed. From a listless, rather unhappy girl she had become a sturdy, cheerful hiker. Kit had taken her under her wing from the start.

"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 growing right under her nose. Abby's going to be happy. She's like some little half-drowned kitten."

It was because nobody had ever taken any interest in her before. Her father was the blacksmith, a silent, rather morose man who had quarreled with 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 moment anyone spoke to her. Jean had driven over there one day to get Princess a 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 fearful all 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 make any 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 house as one would a fretful hen.

"There was a circus up at Norwich," said Abby now. "And a real live panther 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 the tracks led right into our woodshed. And my father got out his shotgun and went with them, but I went down in the kitchen with Ma, because she's nervous, and when I started up the back stairs I saw its eyes shining 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 see right 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 would have too, if you thought you saw a live panther under your bed. But it wasn'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 and it was half starved and cold. It went back to the circus."

"Well," exclaimed Kit, with a sigh. "I used to think things were monotonous in the country, but I've changed my mind. There's something new 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 and found 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. "It nipped me good and plenty."

When they started back they sang along the road, first old songs that all of them knew, and then Hedda sang two strange Icelandic songs her mother had taught her, lullabies with a low minor strain running through them.

"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 the baby away if it didn't go to sleep. She had a strong, sweet voice, and sang with much feeling. After hearing the other girls, Jean said they ought to have a glee club, even if they met only once a month.

"Just for music. Mother says that music is the universal language that everyone understands. Let's meet at our house next week, and give the afternoon 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 very glad to have you with us any time."

"Then we will come, won't we, girls?" Jean agreed. "And Sally will enjoy 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 hard to squeeze in time for all that they had outlined. There were berries to can and preserve, and Mr. McRae prolonged his stay, but only on condition that he be allowed to take hold of the farm, with Honey's help, and manage the haying and cultivating for them.

"I had no idea a man could be so handy," Kit declared. "He's mended the sink so we don't have to cart out all the waste water, and he's burned up the rubbish at the end of the lane, and he put new roofing on the hen houses, and he climbed up into the big elm and put up Doris's swing for her. I think he's a perfect darling."

"Kit, dear, don't be so positive and so extreme," Mrs. Robbins warned gently. "It's very kind indeed of Ralph to help us, but don't let your speech run away with you."

"I wish he belonged right in the family. I've always thought that every family should have a carpenter and a gardener in it. Mother dear, to see him climb down the well, right down into that thirty-foot black hole and fish out the bucket after Helen had dropped it in, was a sight for men and angels."

"He's very capable," Mrs. Robbins agreed laughingly. "I think by the time 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 goes back to Saskatoon that he'd take Honey with him. Piney's able to help her mother, and Honey's heart is set on going West. They're own cousins and it would be splendid for him."

"Honey's only fourteen, girlie. I think he's rather young to leave the Mother wings, don't you?"

Jean pondered.

"I don't know, Mother. Mothers are wonderful people and darlings, but I do think that every boy needs a good father and if he can't get a father, then the next best man who can talk to him and teach him the--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 his feelings. I suppose it made him feel more at home. And Cousin Roxy says 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 girls had a regular Greek festival over it. They all went down and followed the big rake and helped pitch the hay up on the wagon. Then Helen got her kodak and took pictures of them pitching, and riding on the load up the long lane, and of the big sleepy-eyed yoke of oxen.

"You know," Jean said, "it looks like some scene from away back in the colonial days. I love to watch the oxen come along that lane with the top 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 to grow on them. I told you they were mulberry trees."

"It's so nice," Helen said dreamily, "to have one in the family who is always 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 pail of spring water. "That ain't counting bedding neither. You can get fifteen a ton for bedding."

"What's bedding?" asked Kit.

"Oh, all sorts of stuff, pollypods and swamp grass and such. Say, if you go down where Ralph's cutting now, you'll see a Bob White's nest and speckled eggs. Don't take any, though."

"Isn't it lovely out here, Kit?" Jean wound her arm around Kit's waist as they crossed the meadow land. "I was lonesome at first but now I think 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 all the poor Robbins do then, poor things?"

"We'll pull through," Jean said pluckily. "I don't feel afraid of anything that can happen since Dad really is getting better."

"Isn't it funny, Jean, how we're forgetting all about the Cove and the things we did there?" Kit pushed back her hair briskly. She was warm and getting "frecklier," as Doris said, every minute. "I wonder when fall 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 always helping them. Mother's turned into a regular Lady Bountiful since we came out here."

"I think they've all helped us just as much as we've helped them," Jean said 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 the time. I think work is splendid."

"Well, you always did have the faculty, you know, Jean, for staring black right in the face and declaring it was a beautiful delicate cream color. I suppose that's the stuff that martyrs are made of. Now, don't get huffy. You're a perfect angel of a martyr. I like it out here and I think the work is doing us good, but I'm like Helen, I don't want to stay here all my life, nor even a quarter of it. Mother said she wanted to let one of us older girls go back with Gwennie Phelps."

"Back with her?" repeated Jean in dismay. "You haven't asked her up here this summer, have you, Kit?"

"I didn't. Helen did before we came away. Mother said she might. You know Mother's always had the happiness of the Phelps family on her mind."

"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 that either 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 rap about it. I'm afraid to go for fear I'll like it and won't want to come back. I'm just dead afraid of the schools up here this winter." Kit's tone was tragic. "This year means so much to me in my work. I was getting along gloriously, you know that, Jean, and from what the girls here tell me, the schools can't touch ours in finish."

"How are they in beginnings?" Jean asked laughingly. "You poor old long-sufferer, I know what you mean. Why don't you ask Dad and Mother to let you board down at the Cove with the Phelpses, and keep up your old class work right there until you finish High School anyway?"

"Seems like a desertion," said Kit. "We're here and we should stick it out. I think you'd better go back with Gwennie."

"We ought to talk it over with Mother thoroughly. She thinks she's giving us a week of extra pleasure, probably, and to us it's a temptation 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 trenches and 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 bit seriously. Helen's poise will carry her through any crisis triumphantly."

Kit agreed that the thought of Helen was really a stroke of diplomatic genius. The waves and billows of circumstance only buoyed Helen up, lighter than ever. They never went over her or disarranged her curls a particle. Whenever Kit had one of her customary "brain storms" over something and Helen suggested that she was "fussy," Kit always retaliated with the statement that she was the only member of the family with any temperament. Jean had imagination, and Doris gave promise of much sentiment, but when it came to real temperament Kit believed that she had the full Robbins allowance.

"You can call it what you like, Kit. I'd leave off the last two syllables, though," Helen would say serenely.

"There you are," Kit always answered. "Only geniuses have any temperament and when you've got one in the family you deny it. You'll be sorry some day, Helenita. When you are darning stockings with a fancy stitch for your great grandchildren I shall face admiring throngs all 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 and special, Ladybird."

So now when the proposition was made after supper that Helen return for a visit to the Cove with Gwen Phelps, Helen agreed placidly that it would be rather nice, and Jean and Kit looked at each other with a smile of deep diplomacy.

CHAPTER XIX

RALPH AND HONEY TAKE THE LONG TRAIL

The last week in July saw the end of Ralph McRae's visit at Greenacres. He had been East nearly two months and Honey was to go back with him. It was impossible to measure or even to estimate the inward joy of Honey over the decision. Through some odd twist of heredity there had been born in him the spirit of those who long for travel and adventure. Every winding road dipping over a hillcrest had always held an invitation for him to follow it. He had listened often to the distant whistle of the trains that slipped through the Quinnebaug valley, and longed to be on them going anywhere at all. At home in the little parlor there were some old seashells that a seafaring great-grandfather had brought back with him, and Honey loved to hold them against his ear, listening to the murmur within. He had never looked upon the sea. To do so was a promise he had made to himself. Some day he would go and see it, and now Ralph told him that they would go part way by sea, up from Boston to Nova Scotia, and around to the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and up it to Lake Ontario, and on through the Great Lakes, and so up to the ranch in the Northwest.

"I wish I were going too," said Piney. "I wish you were going, Mother, and both of us youngsters. I'd love to take up a claim out there and work it."

"Oh, dear child, what strange notions you do have for a girl," 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, Piney?" asked Ralph.

"Going on sixteen."

"Maybe next year when I bring Honey 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 sitting-room, "I want to hand over Greenacres 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. Robbins, that it rightfully belongs to you. He would like to buy it, he says, inside of two or three years. They like it over there, and propose to stay here in Gilead, but if you want to take it over, I'm willing to transfer it before I go west."

It was said quietly and cheerfully, quite as if he were offering her a basket of fruit that she was partial to, and Luella Trowbridge Hancock sat back in her rocking-chair, staring up at him as if she could hardly believe her ears.

"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. Honey's set on going west and Piney 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 somehow. I wouldn't know what to do with it after I'd got it, and I wouldn't take it away from Mrs. Robbins and the girls for anything. Why, they love it 'most as well as I do."

"I know, Aunt Luella, but I wanted you to have the refusal of it," 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. Robbins when he is able to take it over. You'd have the good of it then."

"That's the best way, Mother," Piney 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 at Saskatoon."

"Land alive, the boy speaks of journeying thousands of miles as if he was driving up to Norwich. I went to Providence once after I was married, and that's the only long trip I've ever taken from home."

"Then it will take you a whole year to get ready," laughed Ralph. "Honey and I will be back for you next summer, and Piney shall have the best pony I've got all for her own to make up for Princess."

The night before their departure Mrs. Robbins gave a dinner for them, with Cousin Roxana and Mr. and Mrs. Collins from the Center church. Piney was rather morose and indignant at the fate that had made the first Hancock child a girl and the second one a boy.

"Honey'll like the horses and the traveling, but what does he know about land and learning about everything? He's only fourteen."