“Father’s coming back in June, for a few weeks. I didn’t write about it because he didn’t want me to tell you until he was quite sure. He’ll be busy most of the time but he’ll be able to get up here for a little while anyway.”
“He is? Oh, grand! And Kay’s sold a book. What do you think of that?”
“You’re not fooling? Kay, let me look at you! Tell me about it.”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow. There’s too much else to think about now. Penny, we have missed you so!”
“If you ask me you’ve done remarkably well without me!” Penny looked happily round on the familiar room in which her mind had lived for so much of the time that she was away.
“But Penny, those letters!” Garry suddenly remembered. “How on earth . . .”
The old guilty expression came over their mother’s face, what they always used to call “Penny’s auction look.”
“Well, you see ... I didn’t want to tell you what I was doing because I knew you’d be worried. So I wrote all those letters ahead and gave them to Margaret—I told you she is down there with Peggy now?—and I numbered them all and told her to mail one every four days. And I had her forward yours to me along the road so I’d know you were all right.”
“Worried! Do you know you had us crazy?” demanded Garry. “We thought you were having a nervous breakdown or something, from those letters, and didn’t want to tell us. They were so absolutely unlike you. Some day I’m going to make you read them over, every one, and you’ll see!”
“Well, it’s awfully hard to make up letters ahead of time that way, but I did think I’d done them pretty well. And then I got to the point where I simply had to write you postcards, but I didn’t dare mail them so I had to put them by, and today I dumped the whole lot in the mailbox in some little New York town I came through. You’ll get them tomorrow, all in one bunch. When that postmaster sorts the mail I guess he’ll think someone was crazy.”
“He wouldn’t be far wrong, either. Now we know where the strain comes from in this family!”
“Sheer guilty conscience,” Penny confessed. “I felt so selfish, having a perfectly good time all by myself without you knowing. It was the first time in years I’ve ever done exactly as I pleased, with no one to consider. I could stop when I chose and go on when I chose. I slept in any odd tourist camp I took a fancy to. I didn’t have to stop and eat unless I felt like it and I didn’t have to talk to a single soul unless I chose. I had a perfectly marvelous time.”
Garry nodded. She, more than anyone else, knew exactly how Penny had felt. This growing-up business—perhaps it didn’t after all make so much difference as one thought. Or did anyone really grow up at all?
“Well, I guess we’ll forgive you. Only next time . . .”
“There won’t be a next time,” Penny sighed happily. “I’m going to stay put, now.”
“We were going to have everything fixed up to welcome you, and here we’re still at sixes and sevens and your curtains aren’t hung and your bed isn’t made and all that’s ready is Caroline’s dish garden,” Kay laughed. “If she hasn’t just un-fixed it all over again!”
“I didn’t. It’s right here. I’m going to get fresh violets tomorrow.”
Caroline looked with self-satisfaction at the little bowl of moss and flowers on the table at Penny’s elbow, over which she had labored so persistently.
“Do we have to go to school tomorrow?” Martin asked.
“No, you don’t, but you have to go to bed tonight.” Penny jumped up. “Do you realize it’s tomorrow now, and I haven’t even got my suitcase out of the car!”
“I’ll fetch the flashlight.”
They stood in the doorway looking out over the quiet hillside. The night air was damp and mild, filled with the smell of earth and of springtime; from down in the valley came the glad minor chorus of the peepers in the swamp. Across the road the lantern in the Rowes’ kitchen gleamed faintly through the tangled apple boughs. There was a light in an upper room too, that only Kay’s eyes saw and rested on, before she turned to slip her arm round Penny’s waist with a little sigh of contentment.
“It’s good to have you back!”
“It’s good to be back.”
Garry stretched her arms, waiting for Martin to bring the suitcase. It was more than a gesture; she had a feeling as though something had slipped from her shoulders. It was a little like the feeling she had had that night when she woke up in the darkness and knew all at once that the cold snap had broken; a sense of something different in the air, a feeling of security and comfort, that everything, now, was going to be all right.
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Margery Williams Bianco, Winterbound
(Series: # )
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