“She would think you had other things to do, and she would be about right,” replied Jack, leaning back in his chair and stretching out his limbs with an air of luxurious enjoyment. “Leave off fussing round, Pam, and sit down for two minutes while we let this bit of news soak in. I don’t seem able to believe it yet, but I expect it is true. As for the house, if it is not clean enough to suit Mother, she will start at turning it inside out herself, and by the time she has done it she will feel quite at home, and she will wonder why she didn’t come back sooner. There is nothing like work for making people contented with their surroundings. That is why folks butter a cat’s toes when they take pussy to a fresh home; she has to be so busy at licking her feet clean, and it is such a pleasant occupation, that she forgets she ever lived anywhere else.”
Pam laughed. She was shrewd enough to see that Jack’s arguments were unanswerable. The house had been thoroughly cleaned for the wedding, but it had hardly been touched since, for every available minute had been spent out-of-doors. It was necessary to be always at work on the growing crops, pulling out the fern and grubbing up the willow shoots. Ripple had been a cleared farm for more than forty years, but if it had been left to lie without attention for six months of summer it would have lapsed back to forest again. The roots were there, and the seeds, and it was only the most careful and vigilant care and attention that kept the wilderness growth in check.
“It will be lovely to have Mother here.” Pam heaved a big sigh of pure happiness as she came to sit down in the rocking-chair near the open door. “We shall have a home again, Jack.”
“And a dinner every day, which is still more to the point!” he exclaimed, smacking his lips loudly, and screwing his face into such an aspect of absolute enjoyment that Pam had to laugh at him.
“Think of the berries the children will be able to gather! Why, there is enough fruit getting ripe on the bushes down by the creek to keep half a dozen families in pies and puddings. We can have jam made, and heaps of things. I have felt very bad because it was so impossible to get time to do things. When I am in the fields all day I have no energy left to gather fruit in the evening. But, Jack, if we leave the house dirty, we must have that field of potatoes weeded before Mother comes. The fern in some places is smothering the potatoes, and it looks so untidy, too.”
“I am going to bed,” said Jack, stumbling to his feet. “Perhaps when morning comes I may want to hoe potatoes; just now I don’t seem to care whether they are full of weeds or not.”
Jack had slept upstairs since the wedding, because it was less lonely for Pam to have him within call at night. She was ten minutes later than he was in coming upstairs, but as she passed his open door on her way to her room she heard his deep breathing. He was already asleep!
It was long before slumber came to her; she was too happy even to remember that she was tired. Her mother was coming, and her heavy responsibility would be at end. But how good it was to think she had been able to achieve so much!