"She seems to have made such a good impression. I hate to have her spoil it by jumping back too soon. It's such a benefit for her."
Jean stopped polishing lamp chimneys and gazed out of the kitchen window towards the far-reaching fields, where none but the crows could find a living now. She was only able to run up from New York once a month, since she had taken a position of junior instructor at the Academy, and yet each time she found herself turning with a sigh of relief and safety from the city life to the peace of these everlasting hills.
"I don't blame her a bit if she wants to come back home before summer, mother dear. Money isn't everything."
"Oh, but Jean," sighed the Mother Bird, "it means so much in life. It's foolish to blind ourselves to all that it will do for us. I never try to deceive myself one bit, and I shall always miss the little luxuries and greater comforts of life that we had back at the Cove, before your father's health broke down, especially now that you girls are growing up so soon into womanhood. It isn't for myself I want it, but for you."
Jean laughed as she slipped her arms closer around her mother's neck.
"But you mustn't apprentice Kit to the Sign of the Dollar, just for the forlorn hope that Uncle Cassius and Aunt Daphne may send her home with a shower of gold. It seems to me if they were really and truly the right kind of family people, and cared for you and father, that they couldn't rest until they had handed over a splendid, generous slice of their money right now when it would do the most good."
"Oh, Jean, people never do that. But I do think they will leave something to you all."
"Leave something!" sniffed Jean, scornfully. "If there's anything in the world I thoroughly despise, it's old, mouldy, dead men's shoes. If I were you, I'd write and tell Kit that she could come home at the Christmas vacation if she wanted to."
But Cousin Roxy took an entirely different view of the matter when she was consulted.
"Fiddlesticks," she said. "No girl of Kit's age knows what she wants two minutes of the time. She's doing good missionary work out there, and she must not become weary in well doing or draw back her hand from the plow. You don't need her here at all, Elizabeth. Helen's getting plenty old enough to take hold and help."