"Well, when the time comes for me 'to read my title clear to mansions in the skies,' I may be happier than I was that moment, but I doubt it. I don't see how it could be possible. And when I got it through my bewildered brain that it was Green Acres that was meant by all the queer measurements and descriptions in the deed, I lost my head altogether, and Phil had the satisfaction of seeing that his surprise was absolute, supreme and overpowering. It seemed too good to be true.
"Green Acres is just across the road from Oaklea. The grounds don't make you think of a big, stately park as Oaklea does. It is more countrified. But it is the dearest, most homelike, inviting old place that one can imagine. I had been there several times with Lloyd and Mrs. Sherman, and remembered it as a real picture-book sort of house, with its low gables and quaint casement windows. I remembered that it had a garden gay as Grandmother Ware's, with its holly-hocks and prince's feathers, its marigolds and yellow roses; and that it had mint and sage and all sorts of spicy, savory things in some of its borders. But I didn't know half of its charms. Now, after two months, I am just beginning to discover the extent of them.
"When a family has owned a place for three generations, as the Wyckliffes did Green Acres, and have spent their time making it livable and lovable, the result leaves little more to be wished for. The hillside that slopes down from the back of the house has a small orchard on part of it and a smaller vineyard on the other, but both quite ample for our needs. Down at the bottom a little brook trickles along from a cold spring, and watercress and forget-me-nots grow along its edges. The apple trees are in bloom now. This morning I spent a whole hour up in the gnarly crotch of one of them, doing nothing but enjoying to the fullest the sweetness of their white and pink glory.
"When we came only the early wildflowers were out, but all the knoll between the gate and the house looked as if there had been a snowfall of anemones and spring beauties. It isn't possible to put into black and white the joy of that first home-coming. We walked up from the station, and when we went through the great gate and heard it click behind us, shutting us in on our own grounds, we turned and looked at each other and laughed like delighted children. It was as if we had reached that land that we used to sing about, where
"'Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green.'
No wonder they named the place Green Acres!
"We left the wide driveway that winds around the hill to the house, and took the little path that leads straight up to it under the trees. The footpath to peace, Phil calls it.
"There was smoke coming out of the kitchen chimney, for Lloyd and Mrs. Sherman had been in the secret and had helped Phil as industriously as the two genii of the Bottle to get everything ready. He had bought some of the furniture with the house, some they had helped him choose and some they waited for me to select myself. But there was enough to make the place livable right away, and there wasn't a room in the house that didn't look comfortable and inviting.
"And there was May Lily installed in the kitchen as temporary cook, and perfectly willing to stay if I wanted her. As if there could be any question as to that! If there was anything needed to make it seem more homelike than it already was, I found it when we started out to explore the back premises. A fussy old hen, with her feathers all fluffed out importantly, was clucking and scratching for a brood of downy yellow chickens, just out of the shell. Old Mom Beck had sent them over as a wedding present, May Lily said.
"When we had been all through the orchard and down to the spring, and had discovered the rows of currant and gooseberry bushes at the end of the garden, Phil said in a careless off-hand way that we might as well take a look through the barn. By this time I had exhausted my whole stock of exclamations, so I hadn't another word left when he led me up to a stall, where stood one of the prettiest bay saddle horses I ever saw in my whole life. That was Father Tremont's present to me.