Then with deep satisfaction the two set about preparing the building for its removal.
CHAPTER IX
Joyce had walked for three blocks in frantic haste with sinking heart before she saw any land that looked at all promising. They were all smug dwellings with beautiful lawns about them, and she had sense enough to know that people who lived in houses of that kind wanted their lawns to themselves, and could not be persuaded to sell or rent even a foot for any such sum as she could offer. But the turn of the next block brought in sight a row of neat stores and just beyond an old-fashioned house set back from the street built of field stone that looked as if it had stood there years before the little new town had ever been heard of. It was neat and trim with a wide piazza the length of the front, and tall spruce and hemlock trees standing in a friendly group about it. There was a street running across between it and the stores, and on this side yard there was a bright garden of flowers and a grassy place with two maple trees just far enough apart to let her little house in, and here Joyce paused and looked with longing eyes. If only she could get permission to put her house here. If she could have it between those maples, with the right to use the side gate! And there was an outside faucet with a hose attached. They might let her get water there—!
She stood for several minutes taking in the whole situation. It would be nice to have the protection of a house near by provided nice people lived there. It would be around at the back of the house so the owners would not need to feel they were losing any of their own front yard, or privacy, and it was near enough to the street so that she would feel she had a spot of her own.
It was like Joyce not to hunt up any land agent and try to find a place in the conventional way but to just fasten her eyes upon the desirable spot and then go after it.
Timidly she opened the gate and went in, choosing the side gate instead of the front. It was unusual to have a gate. That was because it was an old-fashioned house. She was glad there was a gate. It made her feel as if she would be more secure in a little house all by herself to have a gate shutting her in. But this was too much like a fairy tale. She must not get up her hopes. Of course these people wouldn’t hear to her request. They would think she was crazy perhaps to dare to ask.
There was some one in the diningroom setting the table. The door was open on a side porch, and she could see as she went up the steps that the table was long, and spread with a white cloth, and there were flowers in the middle in a glass bowl, blue violets, quantities of them. The door beyond was open through an airy pantry to a kitchen, and there was a savory odor of broiling meat. She sniffed it hungrily as she put out a timid hand to knock, and thought anxiously that it must be getting late if some one was getting dinner ready so early.
A pleasant-looking woman with her hair in crimping pins over her forehead and a long, plain gingham apron covering her dress came to the door with a tea towel and a glass in her hand, polishing as she came. Joyce almost lost her voice at the thought of her own audacity while she looked into the pleasant gray eyes of the elderly woman. This was just the kind of woman she would have chosen if the fairy tale were real. But she remembered that ten minutes of her hour were already gone, and she must hurry.
“I’ve just stopped in to see if there is any possibility that I could rent, or perhaps buy, a very few feet of your yard, here at the back. I have a little house and I want to put it somewhere right away.”
“A house!” said the woman astonished. “Why no, we don’t want to sell any land. This place has been in the family for four generations and it’ll go on to my son when he comes of age. He’s only in high school yet, but he’s fond of the old place, and we don’t want to give up any more land. We’ve just got about enough. My husband wouldn’t think of selling any, not even a foot.”