"I know, Aunt Luella, but I wanted you to have the refusal of it," answered Ralph. "Now, then, here's the other way out. Supposing I make it over to you, and you have the rental money, and then sell it to Mr. Robbins when he is able to take it over. You'd have the good of it then."
"That's the best way, Mother," Piney spoke up. "They have all been so nice to us, and it's just as Ralph says. They do love it."
"You could come back east every now and then and visit if you did make up your mind to live out at Saskatoon."
"Land alive, the boy speaks of journeying thousands of miles as if he was driving up to Norwich. I went to Providence once after I was married, and that's the only long trip I've ever taken from home."
"Then it will take you a whole year to get ready," laughed Ralph. "Honey and I will be back for you next summer, and Piney shall have the best pony I've got all for her own to make up for Princess."
The night before their departure Mrs. Robbins gave a dinner for them, with Cousin Roxana and Mr. and Mrs. Collins from the Center church. Piney was rather morose and indignant at the fate that had made the first Hancock child a girl and the second one a boy.
"Honey'll like the horses and the traveling, but what does he know about land and learning about everything? He's only fourteen."
But Honey did not appear to be worrying. He sat between Ralph and Helen, and really looked like another boy in his new suit of clothes with his hair cut properly. Helen was quite gracious to him, and Jean gave him a second helping of walnut cream cake.
"We're going to miss you, Ralph," Mrs. Robbins said, smiling over at him. She had heard the new business arrangement whereby Greenacres was to become really the nest. It had been her suggestion first that Ralph give the place to Mrs. Hancock, but since she had decided she would rather have the sale price instead, a wave of relief had swept over the Motherbird. The roomy old mansion had been a haven of refuge to her and her brood during the storm stress, and now that fair weather was with them, she found herself greatly attached to it.
Ralph colored boyishly. He could not bring himself even to try and express just what it had meant to him, this long summer sojourn with them at Greenacres. He had come east a stranger, seeking the fields that had known his mother's people, and had found the warmest kind of welcome from the newcomers in the old home. He looked around at them tonight, and thought how much he felt at home there, and how dear every single face had grown.