And when both Mr. Robbins and the Mother Bird tried to expostulate, the Dean only laughed at them, brushing their arguments aside.

"Why, if I were to turn over everything I own to the clan of Robbins, I could hardly pay back all that Kit has done for me. I'm a new man, Jerry.

Sometimes I feel like a prehistoric toad just released from a clay-bank and blinking in the sunlight. Not only has she taught me the joy of living, but through her ingenuity she brought about one of the greatest discoveries that has been made in years on ancient Egypt. I feel guilty in taking any credit for it whatsoever, for while I was groping blindly after the solution, she put her finger, as it were, on the whole source of the trouble."

After they had returned west, and Jean had gone back to New York, Kit found her opportunity of laying her summer plan before her mother and father.

"There are acres and acres here that we never use at all. All that wonderful land on both sides of the river up through the valley, and the two islands besides. What I thought we could do was this, if you could just let us girls manage it. Couldn't we start a regular tent colony? Jean was telling me before she left about an artists' colony up in the Catskills, where they have tents fitted up for light housekeeping, and I'm sure we could do it here."

It had taken much argument and figuring on paper before the consent of both was won, but Cousin Roxy approved of the scheme highly.

"Land alive, Elizabeth Ann," she exclaimed, heartily, "don't crush anything that looks like budding initiative in your girls. I'd let them put tents all over the place until it blossomed like the wilderness.

There's a stack of old furniture up in the garret at Maple Lawn and over at Elmhurst, too, and they're welcome to it. Get some pots of paint in and go to work, girls."

Kit acted immediately on the suggestion and drove up with Shad to look over the collection of discarded antiques in the two garrets. What she liked best of all were the three-drawer, old-fashioned chests and hand-made wooden chairs. There were ewer stands also, and several old single slat bedsteads.

"We're going to paint them all over, mother dear, in the loveliest yellows and grays, and Shad says that it won't be any trick at all for him to build the floors for us, and he says he can fix up little hanging-cupboards like they have in the tea-rooms, don't you know, to hold a few plates and dishes for light housekeeping."

"I don't see what else we're going to need," Helen put in, thoughtfully, "except the finishing touches, and I can add those. They'll need some jars for wild flowers and cushions and little things like that."

"Well, don't forget that they'll have to eat some time," Cousin Roxy remarked. "Get some two-burner oil stoves and folding tables and camp chairs, or if you want to be real rustic and quaint, have Shad here knock some white birch ones together, and probably the city folks will admire them more than anything you could buy. Lay in a stock of candles and bracket lamps. I'd make them bring up their own bedding if I were you, 'cause that would be the only nuisance you'd have to contend with."

"It's too bad," Kit said, reflectively, "that we're so far away from any kind of stores. I'm planning on eight tents all together, and there'll be ever so many things people will want to buy. Do you suppose, mother, that Mr. Peckham would let Sally manage anything like that up here? She's just dying to do something besides housework all her life."

"But where would you put her, dear?"

"Put her in another tent, if we couldn't do anything else, but I'll bet a cookie the boys down there at the mill could throw together a perfectly dandy little slab shack with birch tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. They could either have it down by the mill or put it right here at the crossroads. Sally could put in all kinds of supplies, kodaks and phonographs and post-cards and candy."

"Better put in a few canned goods, too, and staples," added Cousin Roxy.

"I declare, I'd kind of like to have a hand in that myself. I'd put Cynthy to work right away at home bakery goods. Kit, I do believe, child, you've started something that may waken Gilead out of its Rip Van Winkle slumber."

Kit thought so too before she had half started the winter's work. Shad became a tower of strength when it came to painting the old furniture.

They took one of the large upper chambers that was unoccupied, and set up a stove to keep it warm. Helen called it the atelier, but it was more like a paint shop before Shad finished.

Jean did her share by sending up some stencils she had designed herself for the backs of the chairs and panels in the chests and headboards.

"They look just exactly like the painted furniture you see in the New York shops," Cousin Roxy declared, the first time she inspected the results.

"When the Judge and I were down before Christmas, I saw a little dining-room set that looked kind of cute, although it wasn't anything but plain gray with a few morning-glory vines trailing over it. I think you've done splendidly, girls. You've set your hand to the plow and started some fine deep furrows. But just remember, it's a long way around a ten-acre lot, so faint not in the heat of the day."

Kit herself attacked the problem of winning over the Peckhams to her idea of Sally's taking charge of a little store at the crossroads. Sally herself sat with wide anxious eyes on the extreme edge of a black haircloth armchair, while her mother said over and over again it was utterly impossible.

"Why, I couldn't get along without Sally, especially in the summer, with all the fruit to put up and the young ones home from school."

"But, Mrs. Peckham," pleaded Kit, "when you were Sally's age, wasn't there ever anything that you wanted to do or be with all your heart and soul?

Didn't you ever just want to get away from what you had been doing for years, and start something new?"

"Well, come to think of it now," smiled Mrs. Peckham, "I'd have given my eye-teeth to have left home and gone to be a teacher in some town."

"Then please let Sally do this. Cousin Roxy says she's willing to keep an eye over everything, and one of us girls will probably be helping her out most of the time, too. It would only be until the middle of September, although if it wasn't too cold later on, we might be able to rent the tents and outfits to the hunters when they come up. Piney'll be home for vacation and Elvy and Sylvy can help you. They're eight years old now, and Anne's fifteen and Charlotte's twelve. Why, it isn't fair to them to let them think all Sally's good for is to stay at home and do housework. You will let her go, won't you, Mrs. Peckham?"

Mrs. Peckham sighed and smiled at the same time.

"You're a fearful good pleader. I don't suppose it would hurt the other girls any to take hold and help, but it's such a nuisance to have to teach them everything when Sally can go right ahead. Still, I'm willing, and if her father is, why, she can go. Seems as if you girls are starting something you can't finish, but mebbe you can."

Piney Hanc.o.c.k had boarded in Willimantic that winter for her third year in high school. So the girls had seen very little of her since the previous September, but Kit rounded up the old members of the Hiking Club, and welded them together into a sort of efficiency committee to help with the summer plan.

CHAPTER XXV

COAXING THE WILDERNESS

The first part of April was unusually mild. A sort of balmy hush seemed to lie over the barren land, as though spring had chosen to steal upon it sleeping. Doris brought in the first violets on the fifteenth, with a few wisps of saxifrage and ragged robin. Shad brought up a load of lumber from the mill the same day, and started to make the flooring for the tents.

Second-hand army tents had been secured, and almost daily something was added to the store of supplies for the summer venture. The next problem to be solved was finding the occupants for the tents, and here it was Jean who helped out.

"You don't want to get a lot of people," she wrote, "who will be expecting all the comforts of a typical summer resort or the excitement of the boardwalk. You want nature-lovers, the kind of people who really and truly want to rest and invite their souls. So I suggest my spreading the glad tidings among the art students here of Greenacre Farms. They are sure to pa.s.s it along to their friends. Make your prices, sisters mine, attractive and alluring, and I know the world will make a pathway to your door, as some famous hermit remarked. I am going to sketch a few wonderful placards announcing the golden opportunity."

The next surprise that came was a visit from Piney Hanc.o.c.k, one Sat.u.r.day afternoon in May. The girls had gone up after wild flowers into the wood-lot. Here Shad and Mr. Robbins had been cutting birches for nearly a week. Helen wandered through the violet-carpeted glades in a perfect day-dream. The warmth and glow had fallen on the land so unexpectedly after days of rain, and now the whole woodland was athrill with the songs of birds and the chirp and chatter of brooding things.

"I wonder just who Helen is making believe she is now," Doris said, reflectively, as she watched the sauntering figure in the misty distance.

"Probably Fair Rosamond, or Blanchefleur," Kit replied, down on her hands and knees after a little patch of flag-root that bordered the bed of a brook. "You know, this fall I'm going to take a whole sack of bulbs and come up here through these woods and plant whole clumps of crocus and narcissus and hyacinths broadcast. Just imagine poet's narcissus underneath those drooping hemlocks."

"I think there's a deer breaking through that path," Helen called to them softly, "with long, spreading antlers!"

The girls listened and caught the unmistakable sound of some large animal pushing its way through the overgrown cow path, but instead of an antlered head, Molly's white nose showed, and Piney called to them gaily from her perch on the old mare's back:

"I had to ride over the minute I got the letter. Who on earth do you suppose, girls, wants to rent one of your tents for the whole summer?"

She slipped off the saddle and held up an envelope, and every one of the three girls guessed the same name:

"Ralph MacRae!"

"Oh, dear, I thought it would be a surprise to you," Piney laughed, dropping down on a patch of green moss. "I had written out to Honey, and told him all about your tent colony. You know they had planned to come east the first of June anyway, and he wants to know whether you have one to spare along the river."

"It's the gem of the whole collection," Kit announced proudly. "Do you remember, Piney, the place where Billie and I had our birch tepee long ago? He used to call it Turtle Cove. There's a dandy sh.o.r.e there, and canoeing on the lake above the Falls. I'd much rather have Honey and Ralph there than strangers."

"Well, you'll probably have me, too," Piney announced, "because I'm just dying to go camping. It seems so queer, Kit, that none of us ever thought of it before. Here are these glorious woods and hills around us, with miles and miles of land as wild as you'd find anywhere, yet we all cling to the little farm spots. I hope somebody else will go ahead and put up tents the way you folks have done. I was telling a lot of the girls at high school about it, and they may take a tent for a couple of weeks."

"And Cousin Roxy told me yesterday that she was positive Billie and Mr.

Howard would come down for a while in July or August." Kit heaved a sigh of contentment, as she rose from the ground. "I see that my wilderness is going to blossom like the rose, Proserpine Hanc.o.c.k. Now, if you'll kindly tell me where all these tent dwellers of mine are going to get fresh water from when the brooks dry up, I'll be glad. They can't all trot way up to the house to our well."

"Trot it to them," Piney suggested instantly. "Charge them five cents a pail for it, and let one of the little Peckham boys handle that. I'll tell you one thing I bet you girls don't know. There's a never-failing spring about a mile up the road, and a lot of them could get water there. It's right near Cynthy Allen's old place."

Kit regarded her admiringly, as they all started back down the woodroad towards home, Molly trailing along behind leisurely.