Produced by Al Haines.
*GREENACRE GIRLS*
BY
IZOLA L. FORRESTER
THE WORLD SYNDICATE PUBLISHING CO. CLEVELAND, O. NEW YORK, N.Y.
_Copyright, 1915, by George W. Jacobs & Company All rights reserved_
_Printed in the United States of America_
*CONTENTS*
CHAPTER
I The Finger of ProvidenceII The Motherbird and Her RobinsIII Breakers AheadIV The Queen's Privy CouncilV Kit RebelsVI White HyacinthsVII The Land o' RestVIII Spying the Promised LandIX The Lady Managers Choose a NameX Settling the NestXI Ma Parmelee's ChicksXII Gilead's Girl NeighborsXIII Cousin Roxy to the RescueXIV The Lawn FeteXV Kit Pulls AnchorXVI Guests and GhostsXVII Billie Meets TrespassersXVIII Harvesting HopesXIX Ralph and Honey Take the Long TrailXX Roxana's Romance
*GREENACRE GIRLS*
*CHAPTER I*
*THE FINGER OF PROVIDENCE*
"It does seem to me, folkses," said Kit warmly, "that when anyone istrying to write, you might be a little quiet."
The three at the end of the room heeded not the admonition. Doris wasso interested that she had almost succeeded in reclining like a Romanmaiden on the library table, trying to see over Helen's shoulder. Jeanwas drawing up the plan for action. The list of names lay before her,and she tapped her pencil on her nose meditatively as she eyed it.
"Now, listen, Jean," Helen proposed. "This would really be a novelty.Let's have a Cupid for postman and not give out our valentines untilafter the games. And just when we've got them all seated for supperhave the bell ring, and a real postman's whistle blow, and enter Cupid!"
"It's too cold for wings," Doris interposed mildly.
"Oh, Dorrie, you goose. He'd be all dressed up beautifully. BusterPhelps is going to be Cupid, only we were going to have him sit in frontof a Valentine box and just hand them out. We'll put a little white suiton him with red hearts dangling all over him, and curl his hairangelically."
"You'd better have red heart favors too, Helen," Jean added; "somethingthat opens and shuts, with something else inside for a surprise. Andwe'll put red crepe shades on all the electric bulbs. Could we getthose, do you think, girls?"
"We can get anything if Dad and Mother are home by that time," answeredHelen. The rest were silent. Kit, sitting at her mother's desk besidethe wide bay window, looked up and frowned at the stuffed goldenpheasant on top of the nearest bookcase. Outside snow was fallinglightly. The view of the Sound was obscured. A pearly grayness seemedto be settling around the big house as if it were being cut off from therest of the world by some magic spell.
"Hope Dad's feeling all right by now," Kit said suddenly, pushing backher thick, dark curls restlessly. "They sail from Sanibel Island the8th. Wasn't it the 8th, Jean?"
"Oh, they'll be home in plenty of time," Jean exclaimed. "Here we allsit, having the silent mullygrumps when he's better. Mother saidpositively in her last letter that he had improved wonderfully theprevious week."
Helen stared at the long leather couch on one side of the openfireplace. It was over four weeks since her father had lain on it.Throughout the winter there had been day after day of unremittingweakness following his breakdown, and somehow she could not helpwondering whether the future held the same. She rose quickly, shakingher head with defiance at the thought.
"Let's not worry, girls. If we all are blue when he comes, he'll have arelapse."
Then Jean spoke, anxiously, tenderly,--her big dark eyes questioningKit.
"What about Mother?"
"We're all worried about Mother, Jean. It isn't just you at all," Kitspluttered. "But you can be just boiling inside with love andhelpfulness, and still not go around with a face like that!"
"Like what?" demanded Jean haughtily.
"Don't fight, children, don't fight," Doris counseled, just as if shewere the eldest instead of the youngest. "Remember what Cousin Roxysays about the tongue starting more fires than the heart can put out.You two scrap much more than Helen and I do."
"Well, I think," said Helen sedately, "that we ought to remember Motherjust as Jean says. She's almost sick herself worrying over Dad, andthere she is, away down in Florida with just the White Hen to talk to."
Jean smiled, thinking of the plump little trained nurse, Miss Patterson,so spick and span and placid that the girls had declared they expectedher to cluck at any moment. They had nicknamed her the White Hen, andit surely suited her. Even though no Chantecler had arrived yet toclaim her, she was the White Hen,--good-tempered, cheerful, attendingstrictly to business always, but not just what one might call a lovablecompanion.
"She's too chirpy for anyone who has responsibilities," Jean said.
"Note Jean when she has responsibilities," Kit proclaimed. "Jean's beenplaying Mrs. Atlas and carrying the rest of us around on her shoulders.And look at her! Where is the merry smile of old, fair sister?"
Jean smiled rather forlornly. It was true that she had shouldered mostof the responsibility since they had been left alone. Cousin Roxana hadarrived only a few days previous to the departure of Mrs. Robbins, andit had been rather a formidable task suddenly to assume a mother's placeand run the home.
"Oh, I'm all right," she said. "It's only that everything seems to becoming at once. The valentine party and Kit's special effusion forLincoln's Birthday."
"Class symposium on 'Lincoln--the Man--the President--the Liberator'--"Kit ran it off proudly. "Little classics of three hundred words each.You just ought to see Billie Dunbar's, Jean. He's been boiling it downfor a week from two thousand words, and every day Babbie Kane asks himhow he's getting along. And you know how Billie talks! He just glowersand glooms and this morning he told her, 'It's still just sap.' He's ascream."
"Kit, don't," laughed Jean in spite of herself. "If you get ink spots onMother's best suede desk pad, you'll find yourself a little classic."
Kit moved the ink well farther back as a slight concession, andsuggested once more that the rest of the family try their level best tokeep still about their old party while she finished her symposium.
"You know," Helen began with a far-off look in her eyes, "I think we'reawfully selfish, and I mean all of us, not just Kit--"
"Thanking your royal highness," murmured Kit.
"Here's Dad coming back home after five weeks' absence, and we don'tknow really whether he's better or worse--"
"Helen, don't be a raven quothing things at us," pleaded Jean.
"But it's perfectly true. He needs rest above everything else, MissPatterson told me so; and here we're planning for a party the minute hegets home."
"Dad says always to go right ahead and have a good time, that it makeshim happier to know we are happy."
Kit frowned again. She had straight dark brows set above wide grayeyes, and her frown was somewhat portentous. At fifteen she was farmore energetic than Jean at seventeen. No matter what fate mightdeliver to her she would always find a quick antidote for any manner oftrouble. With her short curly hair, she seemed more like the boy of thefamily, like her father himself, cheery, optimistic, fond of all outdoorlife. It was a saying in the Robbins family that Kit might neglect theweeds a bit in her special garden of life, but the general landscapeeffect would always be artistic and beautiful.
Privately, now that the family were facing a crisis, Kit felt far morecompetent to act as the head pro tem. than did Jean. The main troublewas,
as Helen had said, that Kathleen needed a brake to check herofficial impetus.
"Anyway, the invitations are all out now and Mother knows we're going tohave the party because I wrote her all about it, and she sent back wordthat she didn't mind a bit so long as we had Cousin Roxy to steer ussafely."
"But did you ask Cousin Roxy, Jean?"
"You ask her," said Jean. "She'd fly around the morning star if youasked her to, Helenita."
Helen thawed at once. The thought of their elderly and stately CousinRoxana sailing blithesomely around in the early dawn circling themorning star, brought about an immediate resumption of friendlyrelations. It was the prerogative of sisters to scrap, Kit always held.Sometimes it was quite a satisfaction to say just what you thought inthe bosom of your family, get it all off your mind, and know that thefamily loved you just the same. Under these circumstances, Kit was wontto chant feelingly:
"Oh, what was love made for, if 'twere not the same Through joy and through torment, through sorrow and shame. I know not, I ask not, if guilt's in that heart, But I know that I love thee, whatever thou art."
Therefore the mere mention of Cousin Roxana brought harmony and mirthinto the strained atmosphere of the library.
It seemed as if a special dispensation of Fate had brought their elderlycousin down from her calm and well-ordered seclusion at Gilead Center,Connecticut, just when they needed her most.
Usually she contented herself with sending the family useful and propergifts on birthdays and at Christmas, but otherwise she did not manifestherself.
She was forty-seven, plump, serene, and still good to look upon, withher fluffy flaxen hair just beginning to look a trifle silvery, and afine network of wrinkles showing around the corners of her eyes andmouth.
"Land alive, Elizabeth Ann," she had told Mrs. Robbins happily themoment she set foot inside the wide entrance hall at Shady Cove, "didn'tI know you needed me?" And she laughed wholesomely. "I didn't plan todescend on you so sudden, but it looked as if it was the finger ofProvidence pointing the way, with Jerry down sick and you so sort ofpindling yourself. Don't you fret a mite about my being put out. I'llstay here with the children and take care of things till you get backhome."
And lovely Elizabeth Ann, she who had been Betty all through hergirlhood and graceful matronhood, had agreed thankfully. After a threemonths' siege of nursing her husband through a nervous breakdown, shewas glad indeed to welcome the hearty assistance of Cousin Roxy.
"Let's put it right up to her now," Kit exclaimed. "I'd just as soonask her if Helen's afraid."
Before the others could hold her back, she had slipped out of thelibrary and was running up the stairs, two at a time, into the largesunny room at the south end of the house which Cousin Roxy had chosenbecause from its windows she could look out over Long Island Sound. Butat the door Kit stopped short. Over at the window stood Cousin Roxy,energetically wiping her eyes with a generous-sized plain linenhandkerchief, and the end of her nose was red from weeping.
"Come in, child, come right in," she said hastily, as Kit backed away."I'm glad you happened up. Come here to your old second cousin andcomfort her. I feel as if all the waves and billows of David had washedover me."
Kit hurried over and wrapped her arms around the tall, self-sufficientfigure.
"There, there, save the bones," laughed Cousin Roxana, through hertears. "You're just like your father; oh, dear me, Kit, your dearsplendid father."
"What's the matter with Dad?" demanded Kit, swift to catch theconnection between her cousin's tears and words. "Did you get aletter?"
In silence Cousin Roxana handed over a telegram. It was from MissPatterson at Palm Beach. They were to stop there after leaving SanibelIsland on the west coast. Kit read it breathlessly:
"Mr. Robbins worse. Sailing 2nd."
"You know, Kit, they'd never do that if there hadn't been a turn for theworse." There was a break in Cousin Roxana's voice as she reached forthe telegram. "I just wish that I had him up home safe in the room heused to have when he was a boy. He had measles the same time I did whenmy mother was alive. That's your Aunt Charlotte, Kit, she that wasCharlotte Peabody from Boston. But I always seemed to take after theRobbins' side 'stid of the Peabody, they said, and Jerry was just likeown brother to me. I wish I had him away from doctors and trainednurses, and old Doctor Gallup tending him. I've seen him march right upto Charon's ferryboat and haul out somebody he didn't think was throughliving."
Kit stood with her hands clasped behind her head, looking down at thepines, their branches lightly crystalled with snow and ice. Somehow itdidn't seem as if God could let her big, splendid father slip out of theworld just when they all needed him so much. During all the months ofillness, the girls had not grasped the seriousness of it. He onlyseemed weak and not himself. They knew he had had to give up his worktemporarily, that he never went to the office in New York any more, thatit was even an effort for him to give orders over the telephone, butthey had taken these things as of little moment.
Perhaps only Jean had really gleaned the real import of her mother'sanxious face, the steady daily visits of the nerve specialist, and, lastof all, the consultation two days before they had left for the South.
Kit closed her eyes and wrinkled her face as if with a twinge of sharppain. "It's going to be awful," she said softly, "just awful forMother."
Cousin Roxana squared her ample shoulders unconsciously, and lifted herdouble chin in challenge to the worry that the next few days might hold.
"It's more awful for you poor children and Jerry. We women folks aregiven special strength to bear just such trials; we've _got_ to bestrong."
But the tears came slowly, miserably to Kit's gray eyes. She pulled thecurtains back, and looked out of the window to where the blue waters ofManhasset Bay were turning purple and violet in the gathering gloom ofthe late afternoon. The land looked desolate, and yet it was but a lightsnowfall. Down close to the bay some gulls rose and swept in a big halfcircle towards the other side of the inlet. Buster Phelps, runningalong the sidewalk towards home, waved up at her a big bunch of pussywillows.
"Spring's coming, Kit," he called riotously. "Just found some andthey're 'most out!"
Kit waved back mechanically. Of course she must not break down and cry.Doris might do that, but she and Jean must be strong and brace up thetwo younger ones so they all could help their mother. Still the tearscame. What was the use of spring if--
"Kit, aren't you ever coming down?" called Jean from the foot of thestairs.
"Right now," Kit answered. "You come too, please, Cousin Roxy. We needyou fearfully to tell us what to do next."
"No, you don't," said Cousin Roxana calmly. "You don't need me any morethan the earth needs me to tell it this snow's going away and theflowers will soon be blossoming. Just trust in the Lord, child. 'Itmay not be my way, and it may not be thy way, but yet in His own way,the Lord will provide.' It's one thing to stand in the choir and singthat, and it's another to live up to it. The first thing you girls mustdo is learn how to meet your father with a smile."