"Well, upon my word, I like that," exclaimed Kit, as she threw the letter down on the table. "Any one would think that I didn't know how to treat people. Just the same, we'll put them all over in the glen, where they can do just as they please, and not interfere with high art or our mysterious stranger."

Sally opened her "General Emporium" the first of June. It stood exactly at the crossroads, beside Greenacre Hall. There was the waterfall, and the old bridge leading to the Scotland road. With Shad to superintend the work, the Peckham boys had erected a little slab shack, and Sally had planted wild cuc.u.mber and morning-glory vines thickly about the outside, the last week in April, so that by June they had clambered half-way up.

There were rustic window boxes of birch, filled with nasturtiums and Wandering Jew.

Inside the store there were two counters, one on either side as you entered, and these had been Mr. Peckham's contribution to the good cause.

Several old hickory armchairs from Cousin Roxy's helped to give the interior an inviting appearance, and Sally put up little, thin scrim curtains at the windows.

At first the stocking up of the store had been somewhat of a problem, but Cousin Roxy helped out with the business plan, and by this time nearly every one in Gilead was taking a keen, personal interest in the girls'

venture.

It was Ma Parmalee who first suggested Sally selling on the commission plan.

"I've got thirty-five jars of the best kind of preserves and canned goods in Gilead, though I say it as shouldn't," she announced, one day, when she had stopped on her way by the crossroads to look over the new establishment. "Most of them are pints, and besides I've got--land, I don't know how many gla.s.ses of jell. I'd be willing to give you a right good share of whatever you could make on 'em, if you could sell 'em off for me down here."

Sally agreed gladly, and the fruit made a splendid showing along the upper shelves behind the counters. Not only that, but it began to sell at once.

Mr. Ormond bought up all of the quince jelly after sampling one gla.s.s, and Ralph acknowledged that he and Honey were perfectly willing to become responsible for the strawberry preserves and spiced pears. By the time Frances Cunningham and the other girls from the Academy had arrived, Sally was already looking around for more supplies.

Then Cynthy Allen had come over with Cousin Roxy one day. Ever since her home had burned the year before she had been under the friendly roof up at Elmhurst, helping out according to her strength, and never fully realizing how the shelter of the old house kept her from the poor-farm down on the Plains. She came into the store with an old black lace veil fluttering as usual from her hat, and a brown bombazine dress that dated from the eighties.

"Well, you've got the place fixed up real sightly," she said. "I wonder--I don't suppose you'd have any sale for braided rag rugs, would you? I've got some awful pretty ones packed away in my chest, brand new, too. I've been sewing and winding all winter for Roxana, too, but I guess she plans to use them for carpets."

Sally accepted the suggestion instantly, and down came half a dozen oval rugs, braided in Cynthy's best style, that were snapped up at once by the tent dwellers. Frances bought three to put around in the tent which she had reserved for Miss Emery.

"Haven't you got some of that painted tinware, too, Sally?" she asked. "I don't know just what you call it, but I mean the black candlesticks and little trays with trailing vines on them. I'd like to put some of those around."

The very next day Helen started off with Piney on the trail of old candlesticks. They stopped at nearly every house they came to, and returned with a perfect treasure trove of old relics.

"Why, we found candlesticks stuck out in wood-sheds and corn-cribs, rusty as could be, but the real thing in colonial art, and mother," Helen added, almost lowering her voice with a touch of awe, "what on earth do you think Mrs. Parmalee had on her hen-house door? This!"

She held up an ancient bra.s.s knocker, a smiling faun's head encircled in wreathing vines.

"That doesn't look as if it ever belonged on a Puritan's front door," said Mrs. Robbins, laughingly. "I rather think it must have come from Merry Mount, where they held the first Maypole dance and shocked good Cotton Mather. I think I'll have to buy that from Sally myself."

There were several old lacquered trays and a couple of old gray stone dasher churns.

"We'll take those and fill them with yellow daisies," Piney said, admiringly, "and I'll bet a cookie they'll sell the first day to some of the artist crowd. I found them in the Bennetts' smoke-house covered with the dust of ages."

It was little things like these that made Sally's shop unusual and inviting, but Piney started a new venture herself accidentally. She and Sally had always been chums, and now she spent most of her time helping her. It became the order of the day for them to have a cup of tea about four o'clock. Piney would take a candle-stand by the west window and make it look so inviting with a little strip of homespun linen and a spray of flowering almond that no one could resist tea from the old blue ware which Mrs. Peckham had donated.

They were just having tea one afternoon when Miss Emery came in with the girls from the Academy in New York. There was Frances, and the two Farley sisters, Gwen and Elise. The other girl was Cecil Fanshawe. Kit had a way of summing up family history with a few brief, terse remarks, and she had all four indexed and filed, so to speak.

"Cecil's from Fanshawe Grange, somewhere in Middles.e.x, England. Father's a Major in France, mother's dead, got two aunts in New York. Gwen and Elise come from Ohio, got French blood from colonial days. Frances is old Knickerbocker stock, born on Washington Square, warranted sterling. I like Cecil best."

When they discovered the tea-table that afternoon, Miss Emery insisted that she would not leave until she had partaken also from the willow pattern cups, and Sally, all blushes and smiles, prepared her first guest tea.

After they had gone she looked at the seventy-five cents in her hand, as though it had fallen from the sky, but Piney took the cue from Fate.

"We will serve afternoon tea here from now on," she said, "and it's going to be twenty cents instead of fifteen. I know what we'll call this place, Sally. There are willow trees all around here, and along the river. This is the 'Sign of the Willow Tree.' We'll make it a stopping-off place for all good pilgrims."

CHAPTER XXVII

HELENITA'S SONG-BIRD

The tenth of July was always a momentous date in Gilead local history.

Every year on that day, down in the little church on the Plains, the grand old guard of '83 held their Carberry Reunion.

The girls had heard of it first through Cousin Roxy, who had been one of the pupils of Professor Carberry in the old days at the Gayhead schoolhouse.

"Land, girls, if we didn't have our reunion every year, we'd begin to feel some of us were growing old," she had said laughingly. "The Professor's cla.s.s has held that reunion every year since he had to give up the school in '89. There are a few empty places with the coming around of each July, but I guess we'll keep on holding them as long as the Professor holds out."

It was quite an exclusive affair in its way, so that this year, when they were both invited to attend with their mother, Jean and Kit felt the honor. Long afterwards, when she had attained her a.s.sured place in the world of art, Jean exhibited a painting which won her her first medal. It was only a shadowy interior of an old meetinghouse. The sunshine filtered through half-closed green blinds at the long windows. Up on the platform there sat Professor Carberry, a little, shrunken figure in black broadcloth, the lean, scholarly old face, blanched with the snows of eighty-odd years, filled with eagerness as he looked down on the little a.s.sembled remnant of the old guard.

Cousin Bethiah Newell always said that this picture was Jean's masterpiece, and she got the inspiration for it on this day. Kit sat very erect at her end of the pew, but even she, who prided herself on being unemotional, had tears on her lashes listening to these dear old-time scholars reciting the poetry out of their old fourth and fifth readers.

Judge Ellis rose with a radiant light in his eyes and spouted, "At midnight in his guarded tent, the Turk lay dreaming of the hour," and for an encore he rolled out "Old Ironsides."

"Ay, tear her tattered ensign down, Long has it waved on high."

Cousin Roxy obliged with "Woodman, spare that tree," but for an encore she gave a tender poem of old-time days, called "Twenty Years Ago." Its verses rang in Kit's head all the way home, and when she learned that Miss Daphne, too, had been one of the old Professor's scholars, she wrote them down and sent them west to her.

"I've wandered to the village, Tom, I've sat beneath the tree, Upon that schoolhouse playground, That sheltered you and me.

But few were there to greet me, Tom, And few were left we know, Who played with us upon the green, Just twenty years ago."

"I'll never forget it as long as I live, Cousin Roxy," Kit declared, fervently; "talk about the tw.a.n.ging of heart strings; why, it seemed to me as though I could just feel the way you all felt as you sat there. It was the queerest thing, because Mrs. Peckham is stout and getting gray, and yet when she got up to recite she actually looked like a plump little girl with her brown eyes and rosy cheeks. And Deacon Simmons was as boyish as could be, when he stood there blushing and reading his cla.s.s paper on 'Old Friendships.'"

"Well, child," said Mrs. Ellis, "I'm glad that you could see a little of the glory that gave light to us. You'll find out as you grow older and stand upon life's hills of rest that the days of childhood and going to school are the sweetest and best that life gives to you. I don't mind saying that I love every clapboard in the little old red schoolhouse, and when I read in a magazine the other day that such things were a thing of the past I wanted to call out that it wasn't any such thing. We had one right here at our crossroads over a hundred and thirty years old, and still turning out its hundred per cent. graduates."

The next morning, just after Shad had gone whistling up to the barn, Doris spied a familiar figure coming along the side drive towards the well sweep, and leaned out of the window, calling with all her heart:

"h.e.l.lo, Billie!"

Billie waved back with a cheery greeting that brought the other girls hurrying to the window, too.

"The camp's immense," he said. "We got in late last night and I knew the way down, so we didn't disturb anybody. Even found the old boat in the same place, Kit."

"Well, you wouldn't have if I hadn't hauled it there, where I knew you could lay your hand right on it. I rather thought it would be just like you to arrive by the light of the moon and try to swim over."

Billie chuckled. He knew from old, past experience that Kit's scoldings didn't amount to any more than the perturbed clucking of a hen. They had brought up a load of supplies with them, but huckleberry pancakes with honey lured them both up for breakfast that first morning. And even Kit was silent as Stanley related all of his adventures during the year. It seemed to her that she had never really looked at him before, that is, to get the best impression, without prejudice. Somehow, he looked younger and more boyish this year, anyway, in his camper's low-necked sport shirt and khaki riding breeches. Kit noted for the first time his crispy, curly yellow hair, and long, half-closed blue eyes, that always seemed to be laughing at you. He had dimples, too, and these Kit resented.

"I can't abide dimples in a boy or a man's face," she declared, privately, to Helen, when the latter was dwelling on Stanley's good looks.

"But, Kit, all of the Roman emperors had dimples in their chins."

"What if they did? They're a fine lot to judge by." Kit meditated for a moment and then added, "I don't think I like blonde, curly hair either."