"Still better. The idea of your expecting me to get along without you, the very first summer I live in a place big enough for anybody to visit me in! You can go off to your fashionable resorts in the winter, if you want to—I can spare you better, then. But this summer! Jo, think of the moonlight nights, with the odour of mignonette coming up to the porch from the garden—"
"I don't think the odour of the mignonette would carry so far."
"We can walk within range, then. And the evenings on the porch, with Mr.
Ferry and his sister over—and his sister's friend—"
"I didn't know he had a sister—or that the sister had a friend."
"She's been in Germany the last two years, living with an aunt, and studying music—the piano. The friend has a voice. Oh, we'll have the jolliest times—you can't think. And in July will be the haying. Jo, we'll have larks during haying—real country larks—and a barn dance. You can't go away anywhere—not even for a week-end house party! Say you won't!"
"You artful schemer—I don't see how I can," and Josephine looked as if she couldn't. "But see here, Sally. I couldn't come and visit you here and leave mother alone. You know she would go with me, if it were to the mountains or to the sea-side."
"I'd love to have her come too," said Sally, quickly, "if she would care to. How I wish she would. Then I shouldn't have to bother Mrs. Ferry to come over every time we had the young people all here. If I could just furnish the west wing for you—"
"Why not let us furnish it?" Josephine jumped at her opportunity. Somehow, during the last few minutes she had become firmly convinced that she could not think of spending the summer months anywhere but at the farm. All sorts of pictures had leaped into her mind at Sally's outlines of what the summer was to be. The stage seemed set for happenings of extraordinary interest, from which she did not want to be left out. There would be other things going on at the old place besides ploughings and plantings, harvestings and threshings—or perhaps it might be that these very terms in the vegetable kingdom might come to be used significantly of doings in the human sphere of action.
Sally looked up with a flash of protest in her eyes. "Let you furnish it!" she exclaimed. "Oh, but I couldn't—I know what your furnishing it would mean. Persian rugs and silk hangings, Satsuma jars and cut-glass bowls filled with roses. And on the other side of the hall our poor things would look"—she stopped short, and was silent for an instant. Then, "I'm an envious pig," she owned. "If you'll only come you may furnish it in teak wood and Chinese embroidery, and I'll be contented on my—bare floors."
But Josephine's affectionate arm was around her friend's shoulders. "Sally Lunn," said she, soothingly, "give us credit for better taste than that, entirely from the standpoint of harmony. In a summer home on a farm people of sense don't use Persian rugs or teak wood. We'd put plain white straw matting on the floors, hang muslin curtains at the windows, and use the simplest willow furniture to be had. The windows should be open every minute, and there would be bowls of roses about—only I'd rather it would be sweet-williams or clove-pinks. Sally, don't you adore the old-fashioned clove-pinks, with their dear, spicy smell? And the bowls themselves wouldn't be cut glass—I despise cut glass for old-fashioned flowers, and so do you. Now, will you let us come?"