20. Jean and Ralph
The last week in July saw the end of Ralph McRae’s visit at Woodhow. He had been East nearly two months and Buzzy was to go back with him. It was impossible to measure or even to estimate Buzzy’s inward joy over the decision, for there had been born in him the spirit of those who long for travel and adventure. He had listened to the distant whistle of the trains that slipped through the Quinnebaug valley, and longed to be on them going anywhere at all.
“I wish I were going too,” said Sally. “I wish all of us were going. I’d love to have a ranch out there and work it myself.”
“Oh, dear child, what strange notions you do have.” Mrs. Hancock sighed. “I never thought of such things when I was your age. I wanted to be a teacher, that was all.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Well, your grandfather said I was needed at home, and so I stayed on until I met your father when I was eighteen. Then I married.”
“And maybe if he’d let you be a teacher, you wouldn’t have wanted to get married. I want to study all about trees and forestry and conservation, and I want to ride over miles and miles of forests that are all mine. I’m going to, too, some day.”
“How old are you now, Sally?” asked Ralph.
“Practically sixteen. Fifteen and a half, anyway.”
“Maybe next year when I bring Buzzy home, we can coax Aunt Luella to take a trip out with you. How’s that?”
Mrs. Hancock flushed delicately, and smiled up at her tall nephew. “How you talk, Ralph. That would cost a sight of money.”
“Well, I tell you, Aunt Luella,” said Ralph, his hands deep in his pockets as he leaned back against the high mantelpiece in the living room. “I want to hand over Woodhow to you and the children. I haven’t any feeling for it like you have, and it seems to me, after talking it over with Mr. Craig, that it rightfully belongs to you. He’d like to buy it, he says, inside of two or three years. They like it over there, and plan to stay in Elmhurst, but if you want to take it over, I’m willing to transfer it before I go West.”
“Ralph, you don’t mean you’d give up the place yourself? Why, whatever would I do with it? I love every inch of ground there and every blade of grass, but you see how it is. Buzzy’s set on going West and Sally wants to go to college and I don’t know what all. I couldn’t live on there alone, and they haven’t got the feeling for it that I have. The younger generation seems to have rooted itself up out of the soil. I wouldn’t know what to do with it after I’d got it, and I wouldn’t take it away from the Craigs for anything. Why, they love it almost as much as I do.”
“I know, Aunt Luella, but I wanted you to have the opportunity to say yes or no,” answered Ralph. “Now, then, here’s the other way out. Supposing I make it over to you, and you have the rental money, and then sell it to Mr. Craig when he is able to take it over. You’d have the good of it then.”
“That’s the best way, Mom,” Sally spoke up. “They have all been so nice to us, and it’s just as Ralph says. They do love it.”
“You could come back East every now and then and visit if you did make up your mind to live out in Saskatoon.”
“Land, you speak of journeying thousands of miles as if you were driving up to Norwich. I went to Providence once after I was married, and that’s the only long trip I’ve ever made.”
“Then it will take you a whole year to get ready,” laughed Ralph. “Buzzy and I will be back for you and Sally next summer.”
The night before their departure Mrs. Craig gave a dinner for them, with Rebecca and her new husband, Judge Ellis. Ralph and Buzzy sat between Kit and Jean at the table. Both girls were sad to think of their friends leaving.
“We’re going to miss you, Ralph,” said Jean rather shyly. Her mother had told her about the new business arrangement whereby Woodhow was to become really their home.
Ralph colored slightly. He could not bring himself even to try and express just what it had meant to him, this long summer visit with them. He had come East a stranger, and had found the warmest kind of welcome from the newcomers in the old home. He looked around at them tonight, and thought how much he felt at home there.
First, there was Mr. Craig, with his thin, scholarly face, high forehead, and curly dark hair just touched with gray, his keen hazel eyes behind rimless glasses, and finely modeled chin. Then Mrs. Craig, surely the most gracious woman he had ever known excepting his own mother. Just the mere sound of her soft, engaging laugh made trouble seem very unimportant. And Kit, imperious, argumentative Kit, so full of energy that she was like a Roman candle. He would best remember her as she had stepped out of the shadows into the moonlight to welcome him. Doris beamed on him from her place across the table. To Doris he was like a knight that had come along the highway and, if possible, she would have had him in crimson hose and plumed cap. And Tommy, fun-loving, constantly chattering, full of odd knowledge that boys of eleven seemed to pick up, and always asking questions.
Last of all, Ralph looked down at Jean at his side. Jean, almost eighteen, already a replica of her mother in her quick tenderness and her looks. His eyes lingered on her. She was very sweet, he thought, the sweetest of them all. He was going to miss Jean very much.
Tommy trailed Ralph into the living room after the others that evening and told him over and over again to send him a tame bear, one that he could bring up by hand and train.
“Well, I guess you’ll have your hands full, Ralph,” Rebecca exclaimed, “if you fill all these commissions. I declare it seems as if you belonged to all of us.”
Jean and Kit drove Ralph and Buzzy to the station the next day. The boys had already made their goodbyes to the others at home, for Mrs. Hancock had preferred it that way. She declared she would cry at the station and would rather say goodbye to her son and nephew at home, where she could weep in privacy.
As the train puffed its way around the hillside bend of the track, Jean remembered when she had once before waited for the same train to arrive. The day which now seemed so long ago, when she was meeting the family arriving from Sandy Cove. That time she had thought the train would never come. Now, all too fast, it was making its way into the station.
“You promise to write to us now, Buzzy,” reminded Kit.
“Sure thing.”
“I’ll be back next summer, Jeannie,” said Ralph, looking deep into her eyes. “And you’ll be surprised how fast the days will fly by in the meantime. Goodbye, dear.”
“Goodbye.” Jean was suddenly overcome by the meaning of their farewell and added, “Oh, Ralph, I shall miss you so very much.”
As she and Kit walked back to the car, Jean thought over what Ralph had said last. Would the next year go so fast as he had said? He seemed so positive. Yet Jean wondered.
Jean had no need to worry. Her adventures at an art school in New York, told in JEAN CRAIG IN NEW YORK proved that Ralph was right.