“By gum!” he said, jubilantly, “I guess I sit out on that roof all night long, slapping sparks with a wet mop, but it didn’t get ahead of me.”
Sally and Kit ran a sort of pony express, riding horseback from house to house, carrying food and coffee over to the men who were scattered nearly four miles around the fire-swept area. Ralph and Piney ran their own rescue work at the north end of town. Honey had been put on the mail team with Mr. Ricketts’ eldest boy, while the former gave his services on the volunteer fire corps. The end of the third day Jean was driving back from Nantic station, after she had taken Carlota down to catch the local train to Providence. The Contessa had sent her maid to meet her there, and take her on to Boston. It had been a wonderful visit, Carlota said, and already she was planning for Jean’s promised trip to the home villa in Italy.
Visions of that visit were flitting through Jean’s mind as she drove along the old river road, and she hardly noticed the beat of hoofs behind her, until Ralph drew rein on Mollie beside her. They had hardly seen each other to talk to, since her return from Boston.
“The fire’s all out,” he said. “We have left some of the boys on guard yet, in case it may be smouldering in the underbrush. I have just been telling Rudemeir and the other men, if they’d learn to pile their brush the way we do up home, they would be able to control these little fires in no time. You girls must be awfully tired out. You did splendid work.”
“Kit and Sally did, you mean,” answered Jean. “All I did was to help cook.” She laughed. “I never dreamt that men and boys could eat so many doughnuts and cup cakes. Cousin Roxy says she sent over twenty-two loaves of gingerbread, not counting all the other stuff. Was any one hurt, at all?”
“You mean eating too much?” asked Ralph, teasingly. Then more seriously, he added, “A few of the men were burnt a little bit, but nothing to speak of. How beautiful your springtime is down here in New England. It makes me want to take off my coat and go to work right here, reclaiming some of these old worked out acres, and making them show the good that still lies in them if they are plowed deep enough.”
Jean sighed, quickly.
“Do you really think one could ever make any money here?” she asked. “Sometimes I get awfully discouraged, Mr. McRae. Of course, we didn’t come up here with the idea of being farmers. It was Dad’s health that brought us, but once we were here, we couldn’t help but see the chance of making Greenacres pay our way a little. Cousin Roxy has told us we’re in mighty good luck to even get our vegetables and fruit out of it this last year, and it isn’t the past year I am thinking of; it’s the next year, and the next one and the next. One of the most appalling things about Gilead is, that you get absolutely contented up here, and you go around singing blissfully, ‘I’ve reached the land of corn and wine, and all its blessings freely mine.’ Old Daddy Higginson who taught our art class down in New York always said that contentment was fatal to progress, and I believe it. Father is really a brilliant man, and he’s getting his full strength back. And while I have a full sense of gratitude towards the healing powers of these old green hills, still I have a horror of Dad stagnating here.”
Ralph turned his head to watch her face, giving Mollie her own way, with slack rein.
“Has he said anything himself about wanting to go back to his work?” he asked.