Over the covered bridge and into Longmeadow Street the Ford panted, where the limousine some time before had silently and sumptuously rolled. But in Longmeadow Street Jacqueline’s way parted from Caroline’s. Before they reached the Gildersleeve place they turned to the left into a road of trodden dirt. Soon they had left the well-kept village houses, with their trim lawns and flower-beds, behind them. They drove now through vast level fields which were green with the tops of onions. In the distance were mountains, such as Caroline was studying from her north window. Overhead the blue sky was losing some of its hard brilliance, as the sun jogged downward toward the western hills.
Along the dirt road were strung a few farms, wide apart, with clusters of buildings, houses, barns, and sheds. Around each farmhouse grew trees, beeches and elms and nut-trees. But the road itself was shadeless, running straight as a builder’s line between the green and pungent-smelling fields of onions.
“My, but it’s hot!” panted Jacqueline.
“You just wait till winter,” boasted Nellie. “The wind comes just a-whooping down from the north, and the snow is that high. Last winter I got in a drift up to my waist, going to school. Ralph, he hauls me on my sled but——”
“Tell Caroline about the blizzard later,” Aunt Martha interrupted. “Here we are now, and she’s got other things to think about.”
They turned from the road into a dirt track. On the right was a square old white house, badly in need of paint, with huge bushes of lilac that hid its front door from the road, and elms that towered above the weather-worn dark roof. At the left was untidy grass where red hens scratched among rusty croquet wickets; poplar trees, with a shabby hammock hung between two of them; a swing that lacked a seat, drooping from a butternut tree. Then the car stopped in the irregular plot of trodden dirt at the side-door of the house. A great slab of granite was the doorstone, and round it grew bachelor’s buttons and phlox, fenced high with wire to keep out the chickens.
Jacqueline noticed that if they drove on, they would land in a barn, with a wide open door, and beside the barn was a lane, which ran off toward the western mountains, and there was an orchard, and sheds, and a fenced, small cow-yard. She didn’t have time for more than a fleeting glimpse.
“Here’s Grandma, Caroline,” Aunt Martha claimed her attention.
Jacqueline turned her head and saw an old lady come briskly out upon the doorstone. She was weather-brown and small and spry, as they say in New England. She had very dark eyes and a thin, delicate nose, and she was as neat as wax, in a gray alpaca dress, and a big white apron. A little tow-headed boy in blue overalls, who must be Freddie, came trotting at her side, but as soon as he saw Jacqueline, he clutched at Grandma’s skirts and hid his head in their folds.
Jacqueline opened the door of the Ford and jumped out.