The Windy Hill

by Cornelia Meigs

In the end the cottage was never finished, only the main portion, a tiny dwelling, was completed without the two broad wings with which Howard Brighton had meant to enlarge it and which he did not live to build. When their father had gone from them his children found that he had left everything he had to Ralph, since the laws of seventy-five years ago made some difficulty over property being held by those who were not of age.

"Ralph has a wise head on his young shoulders and will know how to take good care of the younger ones," was the comment of busy tongues.

Perhaps Ralph heard them, with the result that he felt older and wiser than he really was, but of that no one can be sure.

It was on a clear, warm day of mid-July when they moved from the airless street of the town to their new, wind-swept dwelling on the hill.

"It looks like home already," Barbara said as they came up to the door, for, with its wide, low roof, its broad windows, and its swinging half doors that let in the sunshine and the fresh breezes, it seemed indeed a place in which to forget their sadness and to find a new, happy life. The rustling voice of the oak tree above seemed to be bidding them welcome, and a tall clump of hollyhocks by the door-stone, shell pink and white, seemed to have come into bloom that very day just for their home-coming.

Barbara ran from room to room, exclaiming in delight over the new freedom, while the two brothers sat on the doorstep to look down over their new domain and to talk of the future. Their father had planned to turn the meadow below into an orchard, and had even managed to set out the first half of the little trees, slim, tiny saplings that dotted the sloping green.

"We will put in the others next autumn and spring," Felix said, "and I will be building new cupboards and shelves for old Chloe in the kitchen, I will mend the press in Barbara's room and I will finish off the garret chamber under the eaves for myself, and there I can play the fiddle to my heart's content and never disturb you at all. I think that life will be very pleasant here."

So their lives swung into the new channel, with Chloe, Barbara's old nurse, to cook for them and with Felix to tend the apple trees and the little garden, to saw and hammer and whistle all day at the task of setting the new place in order.

"It's a pity you haven't a proper, handsome house, with long windows from the ceiling to the floor and a high roof and a carved front door and with black marble chimneypieces instead of these rough stone fireplaces," Chloe would sigh, for she thought that the elegance of that time was none too good for the people she loved. It may be that Ralph sighed with her, but Felix and Barbara were frankly delighted with the painted floors, the casement windows, and the low, big-beamed rooms. In the evenings, as the two would sit on the wide doorstep, the voice of Felix's violin would mingle with the voice of the wind in the oak, while Barbara listened, entranced, for her brother was a real master of his instrument. It would laugh and sing and sigh, while Barbara pressed closer and closer to his knee while the stars came out and the evening breeze stirred the hollyhocks and the great branches of the oak tree. Ralph rode every day to the town to labor over heavy account books in his cramped little office and he always brought home a sheaf of papers under his arm. He would sit at the table inside the window in the candlelight and, as the music rose outside, singing to the child and the flowers and the stars, he would scowl and fidget and tap irritably on the table with the point of his pen, for he did not love his brother's playing.

"There is too much time spent on it," he would say, "when you might be doing useful things."