"I like this ever so much better than the Cove," she called. "It is all so wild and free."
"It will be fun mixing things up and making a success out of it whether it wants to be or not--I mean the new home," Jean replied. "Only we're sure to get lonely sometimes for the people we liked down there. You know what I mean, don't you, Helen?"
"Indeed I do," Helen said fervently. "That's just what I told you. Think of our being buried up here in these woods for months and maybe years."
"Still, it is worse for Mother. It's sort of an adventure for us girls from which we'll escape some time, but it's the real thing for her, something that's going to last perhaps all through her life."
"No, it won't, Kit, because we'll grow up and rescue her if she doesn't like it."
"What about Dad?" asked Doris. "The doctors in the city say he'll never get any better, and the old doctor up here says he'll begin to get better at once if he just stops thinking about himself and gets out of doors."
"I'd believe a doctor that talked to me like that even if I was half afraid he might be wrong," Kit said soberly.
They paused at a spur of land that looked out over the long valley. Little River flowed in a winding course marked by alders and willows. Now that there was no foliage to obscure the view, they could catch a glimpse here and there of a red roof or a white chimney. There was the Smith mill, then the old white Murray homestead with its weather vane standing on a little hill like a big yardarm at large. Then came their own old ruined mill, half tumbling down, with empty window casings, all overgrown with woodbine and poison ivy. Farther up the valley one caught the hum of another mill, purring musically in a sort of crescendo scale until it broke off into a snappy zip! as the log broke.
Already Jean declared she knew the names and histories of all the people there, and which way the roads went, and where the nearest towns lay.
"I feel exactly as if I stood now on the crest of the Delectable Mountains," she said with a quiet; sigh. They had stood there some time in silence, looking at the widespread land of hills and valleys, upland meadows, warm and brown in the early spring sunshine, and sweeps of woodland, russet red with maple and ash, with here and there the dark sombre richness of laurel or pine. "Who was it did that, Christian in 'Pilgrim's Progress,' wasn't it?"