“You seem to be in great trouble,” she said. “Is this your house?”
“It was!” said the woman, bitterly. “You can see what’s left of it! What are you—picnickers? Be off with you! Don’t come around here gloating over the misfortunes of hard working people!”
“How can you think we’d do that?” said Eleanor, with tears in her eyes. “We can see that things look very bad for you. Have you any place to go—any home?”
“You can see it!” said the woman, ungraciously.
Eleanor looked at her and at the ruined farm for a minute very thoughtfully. Then she made up her mind.
“Well, if you’ve got to start all over again,” she said, “you are going to need a lot of help, and I don’t see why we can’t be the first to help you! Girls, we won’t go any further now. We’ll stay here and help these poor people to get started!”
“What can people like you do to help us?” asked the woman, scornfully. “This isn’t a joke—’t ain’t like a quiltin’ party!”
“Just you watch us, and see if we can’t help,” said Eleanor, sturdily. “We’re not as useless as we look, I can tell you that! And the first thing we’re going to do is to cook a fine dinner, and you are all going to sit right down on the ground and help us eat it. You’ll be glad of a meal you don’t have to cook yourselves, I’m sure. Where is your well, or your spring for drinking water? Show us that, and we’ll do the rest!”
Only half convinced of Eleanor’s really friendly intentions, the woman sullenly pointed out the well, and in a few moments Eleanor had set the girls to work.
“The poor things!” she said to Margery, sympathetically. “What they need most of all is courage to pick up again, now that everything seems to have come to an end for them, and make a new start. And I can’t imagine anything harder than that!”