Greenacre Girls. Forrester Izola Louise

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СКАЧАТЬ tell Kit that the first time she scraps over dishwashing," Doris said. "I didn't hear anything about Tekla going along, did you, Jean?"

      Kit turned around and drummed out a gay strain of martial music on the piano keys, while she sang:

      "Oh, it has to be done, and it's got to be done,

      If I have to do it myself."

      "You'll do your share all right, Kathleen Mavourneen, and when the gray dawn is breaking at that," laughed Jean. "Farm life's no joke, and really, while I wouldn't disagree with Dad and Cousin Roxy about it, I think that those who have special gifts-"

      "Meaning our darling eldest sister," quoth Kit.

      " – Should not waste their time doing what is not their forte. It takes away the work from those who can't do the other things."

      Jean's pointed chin was raised a bit higher in her earnestness, but Kit shook her head.

      "You're going to walk the straight and narrow path up at Gilead Center under Cousin Roxy's eagle eye just the same, Jean. It's no good kicking against the pricks. I don't mind so much leaving this place, but we'll miss the girls awfully."

      "And the church," added Helen, who was in the Auxiliary Girls' Choir. "We're going to miss that. I wonder if there is a church up there."

      "I see where Kit steps off the basket ball team and learns how to run a lawn mower," Kit remarked. "Also, there will be no Wednesday evening dancing class, Helenita, for your princesslike toes to trip at."

      "I wish we could all move back to town and see if we couldn't do something there to earn money," Jean said. "One of the girls in the art class found a position designing wall paper the other day, and another one decorates lacquered boxes and trays. When the fortunes of the house suddenly crash, the humble but still genteel family usually take in paying guests, or do ecclesiastical embroidery, don't they?"

      "Don't be morbid, Jean," Kit wagged an admonishing finger at her from the stool where she presided, "We'll not take in any boarders at all. I see myself waiting on table this summer at some hillside farm retreat for aged, and respectable females. If we've got to work, let's work for ourselves in the Robbins' commonwealth."

      "And if it has to be, let's not fuss and make things harder for Mother," Doris put in.

      "How about Dad?" Kit demanded. "Seems to me that he's got the hardest part to bear. It's bad enough lying there sick all the time, without feeling that you're dragging the whole family after you and exiling them to Gilead Center."

      "It's too funny, girls," Jean said all at once, her eyes softening and her dimples showing again. "Just the minute anyone of us takes Dad's part, some one springs up and gives a yell for Mother, and vice versa. I think we're the nicest, fairest, most loyal old crowd, don't you? We won't be lonesome up there so long as we have ourselves, – you know we won't, – and if things are slow, then we'll start something."

      "Will we? Oh, won't we?" Kit cried. She twirled around to the keys again, and started up an old darky melody.

      "Crept to de chicken coop on my knees,

      Ain't going ter work any more.

      Thought Ah heard a chicken sneeze,

      Ain't going ter work any more.

      "Balm of Gilead! Balm of Gilead!

      Balm, Balm, Balm, Balm,

      Ain't going ter work any more, Ah tole yer.

      Balm of Gilead! Balm of Gilead!

      Balm, Balm, Balm, Balm,

      Ah ain't going ter work any more."

      "That's better," Jean said, with a sigh of relief. "We've got to pull all together, and make the best of things. Dad's sick, and the Queen Mother's worried to death. Let's be the Queen's Privy Council and act accordingly."

      CHAPTER V

      KIT REBELS

      Cousin Roxy departed for Gilead Center, Connecticut, the following Monday.

      "I'd take you with me, Jerry, and the nurse too, if it were spring," she said, "but the first of March we get some pretty bad spells of weather, and it's uncertain for anybody in poor health. You stay here and cheer up and get stronger, and gradually break camp. If you need any help, let me know."

      It was harder breaking camp than any of them realized. They had lived six years at Shady Cove, near Great Neck on Long Island. Before that time, there had been an apartment in New York on Columbia Heights. As Kit described it with her usual graphic touch: "Bird's-eye Castle, eight stories up. Fine view of the adjacent clouds and the Palisades. With an opera glass on clear days, you could also see the tops of the Riverside 'buses."

      It had seemed almost like real country to the girls when they had left the city behind them and moved to Shady Cove. Doris had the measles that year, and the doctor had ordered fresh air and an outdoor life for her, so the whole family had benefited, which was very thoughtful and considerate of Dorrie, the rest said.

      But now came the problem of winnowing out what Cousin Roxana would have called the essential things from the luxuries.

      "Dear me, I had no idea we had so many of the pomps and vanities of this wicked world," Jean said regretfully, one day. There were sixteen rooms in the big home, all well furnished. Reception-room, library, music-room, and dining-room, with Tekla's domain at the back. Upstairs was a big living-room and plenty of bedrooms, with three maids' rooms in the third story.

      At the top of the broad staircase over the sun-parlor was a wide sleeping-porch. In the cold weather this was enclosed and heated, and the girls loved it. Broad cushioned seats like cabin lockers surrounded it on three sides, and here they could sit and talk with the sun fairly pelting them with warmth and light. Here they sat overhauling and sorting out hampers and bags and bureau drawers of "non-essentials."

      "I can't find anything more of mine that I'm willing to throw away," said Doris flatly, stuffing back some long strips of art denim into a box. "I want that for a border to something, and I'll need it fearfully one of these days. What's a luxury anyway?"

      "Makes me think of Buster Phelps," Helen remarked. "Last night when I went over to tell Mrs. Phelps that we couldn't be in the Easter festival, Buster was just having his dinner, and he wanted more of the fig souflé. His mother told him he mustn't gorge on delicacies. So Buster asked what a delicacy was anyway, and he said some day he was going to have a whole meal made of delicacies. Isn't that lovely?"

      "Don't throw away any pieces at all, girls," Jean warned. "Cousin Roxy says we'll need them all for rag carpets."

      "You can buy rag rugs and carpets anywhere now," said Helen.

      "Yes, oh, Princess, and at lovely prices too. We folks who are going to live at Gilead Center, will cut and sew our own, roll them in nice fat balls, and hand them over to old Pa Carpenter up at Moosup, to be woven into the real thing at fifteen cents a yard. It'll last for years, Cousin Roxy says. When you get tired of it, you boil it up in some dye, and have a new effect. I like the old hit-and-miss best."

      Kit regarded her elder sister in speechless delight.

      "Jean Robbins, you're getting it!" she gasped. "You're talking exactly like Cousin Roxy."

      "I don't care if I am," answered Jean blithely. "It's common sense. Save the pieces."

      "She who erstwhile fluttered her lily white hands СКАЧАТЬ