John Westley wished that he had read more and worked less hard at making cement-mixers; so much had been printed in books about this reaching out of youth that he might repeat now, if he knew it all, to the little mother. Instead he found himself telling her of his own three nieces. Then quite casually Mrs. Travis remarked:
"Some very pleasant people have opened Cobble House over on Cobble Mountain—Mr. and Mrs. Will Allan. I met her at church. She's—well, I knew in an instant that I was going to like her and that she'd help me about Jerry. I——"
"Allan—Will Allan? Why, bless my soul, that's Penelope Everett, the finest woman I ever knew! They come from my town." He sprang to his feet in delight. "I never dreamed I was anywhere near them! I'll get Mr. Chubb to take me there to-morrow. Of course you'll like her. She's—well, she's just like you!"
CHAPTER III
ON THE ROAD TO COBBLE
The next day Mr. Toby Chubb's "Fly-by-day," as Dr. Travis called the one automobile that Miller's Notch boasted, chugged busily over the mountain roads. John Westley started out very early to find his friends at Cobble; then he had to drive back to Wayside to appease a distraught manager and half a dozen angry guides and also to pack his belongings; for the Allans would not let him stay anywhere else but with them at Cobble. Then, after he had been comfortably established in the freshly painted and papered guest-room of the old stone house which the Allans had been remodeling, he coaxed Mrs. Allan to drive back to Sunnyside that she might, before the day passed, get better acquainted with Jerry and Jerry's mother.
"I couldn't feel more excited if I'd found a gold mine there on the side of Kettle!" John Westley had told his friends. Mrs. Allan, an attractive young woman, who was accustomed to many congenial friends about her, had been wondering, deep in her heart, if she was not going to find Cobble just the least little bit lonely at times, so she listened with deep interest to John Westley's account of Jerry and Sunnyside.
"I can't just describe why the girl seems so different—it's that she's so confoundedly natural! There's a freshness about her that's like one of these clean, cool mountain winds whipping through you."
Mrs. Allan laughed at his awkward attempt to explain Jerry. She was used to girls—she loved them, she understood just what he was trying to say. He went on: "And here she is growing up, tucked away on the side of that mountain with a mother who's more like a sister, I guess—says she skates and skis and does everything with the child. And the most curious father—don't believe he's been further away from Kettle than Waytown more'n three or four times in his life; sits there with his books when he isn't jogging off on his horse to see some sick mountaineer, and the kindest, gentlest soul that ever breathed. There's an atmosphere in that house that is different, upon my word—makes one think of the old stories of kings and queens who disguised themselves as peasants—simple meal, everything sort of shabby but you couldn't give all that a thought, there was such a feeling of peace and happiness everywhere." John Westley actually had to stop for breath. But he was too eager and too much in earnest to mind the glint of amusement in Mrs. Allan's eyes. "When I went to bed didn't that big, amber-eyed cat of Jerry's follow me upstairs and into the room and stretch herself across my bed just as though that was what I'd expect! I never in my life before slept with a cat in the room, but I felt as though it would be the height of rudeness to chuck her off the bed! And I haven't slept as soundly, since I've been sick, as I did in that little room. I think it was the piney smell about everything. Miss Jerry wakened me at an unearthly hour by throwing a rose through my window. It hit me square in the nose. The little rascal was standing down there in the sunshine, in her absurd trousers, with a basket of berries in her hand—she'd been off up the trail after them."