There were tramps through forests of fir and pine where their feet sank into the soft cushion of needles and they climbed until they came out on the rugged tops of hills where, resting in weariness, they drank deep of the pure air and feasted their eyes upon the pleasing prospect below them.
Tired and weary but happy beyond relief, they would return in the evening and, catching sight of Aunt Kate waiting upon the porch, greet her with gay shouts and, both speaking at once, relate stirring adventures of field and flood with cows and frogs and sheep and dogs.
Jolly feasts these three women had when sore muscles rested after the day’s effort. Never were such vegetables grown as came from the garden back of the barn. Where else, pray tell, could such desserts be found as Aunt Kate made? Or what could be more delicious than those big bowls of raspberries or blueberries afloat in Cowslip’s rich, thick contribution to the feast?
Afterwards, Virginia would write letters until too soon a nodding head and leaden eyelids would force her to bed. Her correspondence was large in those days. She wrote to Mrs. Henderson and Serena and Joe Curtis; but more often she wrote to her father, telling him all that she did.
Regularly to her, came letters from him. They were formal, precise epistles in a style which might be described as having commercial tendencies and obviously prepared by Mr. Jones at the dictation of Obadiah.
As the weeks passed “V,” as Helen nicknamed her cousin, developed muscle and flesh and grew amazingly, and the coat of tan she acquired would have been a scandalous thing in any beauty parlor in the land.
CHAPTER XVII
A FRIEND IN NEED
A weatherworn, disreputable hammock swung lazily between two big fruit laden apple trees beside Aunt Kate’s home. Time was when it had been a gaudy, betasseled thing taken into the house each night. But familiarity breeds contempt for choice possessions as well as friends. Now the hammock hung unwatched from June until October. No longer a cherished chattel, it was left to face the ravages of time and weather and man.
Yet, in its ripe old age, it had achieved the goal of all good hammocks. It had found its place, not, of course, in the sun–that not being the custom of hammocks–but in Aunt Kate’s household. It had become a place of conference, of discussion, aye, even of mutual confession for Helen and her cousin Virginia.