“Piney says if it’s too rough to get home, she stays overnight with Mrs. Parmalee. You remember, Mother dear, Ma Parmalee from whom we bought the chickens. I could stay too. Cousin Roxy says you mustn’t just make a virtue of Necessity, sometimes you have to take her into the bosom of the family.”
Accordingly, Kit rode in good weather, a trim, lithe figure in her brown corduroy cross saddle skirt, pongee silk waist, and brown tie. After she reached Central Village, and Princess was stabled, she could button up her skirt and feel just as properly garbed as any of the girls. And the ride over the rounded hills in the late fall months was a wonderful tonic. Mrs. Robbins would often stand out on the wide porch of an early morning and watch the setting forth of her brood, Helen and Doris turning to wave back to her at the entrance gates, Kit swinging her last salute at the turn of the hill road, where Princess got her first wind after her starting gallop.
“I think they’re wonderfully plucky,” she said one morning to Jean. “If they had been country girls, born and bred, it would be different, but stepping right out of Long Island shore life into these hills, you have all managed splendidly.”
“We’d have been a fine lot of quitters if we hadn’t,” Jean answered. “I think it’s been much harder for you than for us girls, Mother darling.”
And then the oddest, most unexpected thing had happened, something that had strengthened the bond between them and made Jean’s way easier. The Motherbird had turned, with a certain quick grace she had, seemingly as girlish and impulsive as any of her daughters, and had met Jean’s glance with a tell-tale flush on her cheeks and a certain whimsical glint in her eyes.
“Jean, do you never suspect me?” she had asked, half laughingly. “I know just exactly what a struggle you have gone through, and how you miss all that lies back yonder. I do too. If we could just divide up the time, and live part of the year here and the other part back at the Cove. I wouldn’t dare tell Cousin Roxy that I had ever ‘repined’ as she would say, but there are days when the silence and the loneliness up here seem to crush so strongly in on one.”
“Oh, Mother! I never thought that you minded it.” Jean’s arms were around her in a moment. “I’ve been horribly selfish, just thinking of myself. But now that Father’s getting strong again, you can go away, can’t you, for a little visit anyway?”
“Not without him,” she said decidedly. “Perhaps by next summer we can, I don’t know. I don’t want to suggest it until he feels the need of a change too. But I’ve been thinking about you, Jean, and if Babbie writes again for you to come, I want you to go for a week or two anyway. I’ll get Shad’s sister to help me with the housework, and you must go. Beth and I had a talk together before she left, and I felt proud of my first nestling’s ambitions after I heard her speak of your work. She says the greatest worry on her mind is that Elliott has no definite ambition, no aim. He has always had everything that they could give him, and she begins now to realize it was all wrong. He expects everything to come to him without any effort of his own.”
“But, Mother, how can I go and leave you—”
“I want you to, Jean. You have been a great help to me. Don’t think I haven’t noticed everything you have done to save me worry, because I have.”