Cousin Roxy stood at the screened pantry window, mixing pie crust. She leaned down and called some last advice as Jean climbed up and took the reins.
"Hitch her to that white post above the express office, Jeanie. There's a couple freights come in right after that 3:30 train, and they set her crazy shuffling back and forth. And have the girls sit on the back seat 'cause them springs are kinder giving way, and your Mother's nervous. And bring up a wick for the student lamp from the Mill Company Store. No, never mind," just as Ella Lou started to prance, "'cause they don't keep that kind, come to think of it. Good-bye. If you don't remember the turnings, just slack up the reins and she'll find the right road."
Jean laughed and waved her hand. It was her first attempt at driving alone, but Ella Lou seemed to appreciate just how she felt, and swung out around the triangle of grass that marked the entrance to the private driveway.
Maple Lawn stood just at the crossroads, a white comfortable-looking house, one story and a half high, with a long low "ell" hitched on to the back, and a white woodshed leaning up against it for company.
Four great rock maples grew before its spacious lawn like a row of Titan sentinels, in summertime, garbed in Lincoln green like Robin Hood's merry men. Then too, Baltimore orioles and robins nested in them and contended with the chipmunks for squatter rights.
The house stood on a hill that faced the sunset. Down from the orchard sloped corn fields and rye fields. Below the winding white road was a deep ravine where a brook ran helterskelter by hilly pastures until it slipped away into the cool shade of a quiet glen, sweet scented with hemlock and spruce.
In the distance, hill after hill rose in mellowed beauty, each seeming to lean in sisterly fashion against the next taller one. From the sitting-room window Cousin Roxana declared she had seen "the power and the glory" unfold in rapturous vision when the sun spread its alchemy over old Gilead township.
The course of Little River could be traced down through the valley by its fringe of willows and alders. For perhaps fifteen miles it rambled, winding in and out around little islands, dodging old submerged trees that lifted skeleton arms in protest, spreading out above some old rock dam into a tiny lake, then dashing like some chased wild thing through a mill run and out again into low, moist meadows, thick with flag and rushes.
At a point about a mile below the house stood the old Barlow lumber mill. Ella Lou caught the first hum of it and quickened her pace until she came to its watering trough, half toppling over at one side of the road, its sides all green with moss.
Jean let her take her own way. Once she shied at a shadowy brown shape that skitted across the road under her feet, and Jean wondered whether it was a rabbit or a muskrat. Already she was catching the country spirit. Little objects of everyday life held a meaning for her and she found herself watching eagerly for new surprises as she drove along the old river road. How the girls would love it all, she thought, with a little tightening of her throat. It might be a little lonesome at first, but surely it was, as Cousin Roxana always said, "the land o' rest."