But this was Mr. Briggs's cue to come forward, hat in hand, and be introduced, so he took the baggage under his own personal supervision. It appeared that you never could tell anything about when trunks were liable to show up once they got started for Nantic, but the likelihood was, barring accidents, that they'd come up on the six o'clock train, and there wasn't a bit of use putting any reliance on that either, 'cause they might not show up till the milk train next morning.
"Hope you'll like it up here," was his parting salute, as they drove up the hill road, and Kit called back that they liked it already, much to Mr. Briggs's enjoyment.
Mrs. Robbins sat on the front seat, both as the place of honor, and in remembrance of Cousin Roxana's warning against the back springs. At the top of the hill Jean rested Ella Lou, so the girls could look back at the little town. There was the huge one story stone mill, covering acres of ground, with immense ventilators looking like those on steamships or like strange uprearing heads of prehistoric reptiles.
The little crooked main street could be traced by its lines of buildings, and back in a mass of trees stood the old French convent. Scattered everywhere were the houses of the mill workers, all of a uniform pattern, painted white with green blinds, and a patch of green yard to each. Jean, flushed and proud of her responsibility, turned Ella Lou's head towards home and made quick time. The maple buds were swelling and looked rosy red against the thickets of dark shiny green laurel. Behind them rose slim lines of white birches. Doris named them the "White Ladyes," after the gentle lady ghost in "The Monastery."
"How far is it, Jeanie?" asked Helen. Just then the road came out on the hilltop overlooking the big reservoir. "Oh, look, look, girls," she cried. "Isn't it like a bit of out West, Motherie? All those rocks and pines."
"I'd rather have these dear old hills than all the mountains going," Kit declared with her usual forcefulness. "We seem to be going up higher and higher all the time."
"So we are," Jean told her. "It's a steady rise from New London to Norwich, then up to our own Quinnebaug hills. Are you warm enough, Mumsie?"
"Plenty," said Mrs. Robbins, happily. "Though it is ever so much cooler here than on Long Island, isn't it, girls?"
"We've got an open log fire in your room all ready for you," Jean replied. "You can just sit and toast and toast away to your heart's content, Queen Motherkin."
"For pity's sake, who ever had the courage to carry all the rocks for these stone walls?" asked Kit. "Jean, what do you say to this? Let's buy barrels of cement, and mix it up with sand and water, and make a lot of lovely old garden seats and grottoes and pergolas. I'm going to make a sun dial."