“But, Cousin Roxy,” Jean had objected, “that’s match-making.”
“Maybe ’tis so,” smiled Roxy placidly. “But I always did hold to it that Cupid and Providence both needed a sight of jogging along to keep them stirring.”
Over the telephone now came her voice, vibrant and cheery, and Jean answered the call.
“Hello, yes, this is Jean. Mother’s right in the sitting room. Who? Oh, wait till I tell the girls.” She turned her head; her brown eyes sparkling. “Boston cousins over at the Judge’s. Who did you say they are, Cousin Roxy? Yes? Cousin Beth and Elliott Newell. I’ll tell Father right away. Tomorrow morning early? That’s splendid. Goodbye.”
Before the girls could stop her, she was on her way upstairs. The largest sunniest chamber had been turned into the special retiring place of the king, as Helen called her father.
“All kings and emperors had some place where they could escape from formality and rest up,” she had declared. “And Plato loved to hide away in his olive grove, so that is Dad’s. Somebody else, I think it’s Emerson, says we ought to keep an upper chamber in our souls, well swept and garnished, with windows wide.”
“Not too wide this kind of weather, Helenita,” Jean interrupted, for Helen’s wings of poetry were apt to flutter while she forgot to shake her duster. Still, it was true, and one of the charms of the old Mansion House was its spaciousness. There were many rooms, but the pleasantest of all was the “king’s thinking place.”
The months of relaxation and rest up in the hills had worked wonders in Mr. Robbins’ health. As old Dr. Gallup was apt to say when Kit rebelled at the slowness of recovery,
“Can’t expect to do everything in a minute. Even the Lord took six days to fix things the way he liked them.”
Instead of spending two-thirds of his time in bed or on the couch now, he would sit up for hours and walk around the wide porch, or even along the garden paths before the cold weather set in. But there still swept over him without warning the great fatigue and weakness, the dizziness and exhaustion which had followed as one of the lesser ills in his nervous breakdown.