Jack could have found it in his heart to wish that Mrs. Hildreth might think less of time and more of passing comfort. The dining-room of the bungalow was fully furnished, but the farmer's wife used it only on state occasions. It made less work, she said, to eat in the kitchen and she could "get through" a meal more rapidly and take fewer steps when those to be served were close to the stove.
It fell to the lot of Jack to be close to the stove this morning and he gave a momentary sigh for the coolness and order and daintiness that he knew would give atmosphere to the breakfast in Mrs. Willis' household. Not that he minded eating in the kitchen—he and his mother often did that when his father was away and thought it a lark; but he did mind the heat and the haste and the silence in which this, his first meal with the Hildreths, was consumed.
"Ready?" said Warren briefly, when they had finished, leading the way to the barn.
They had been working in the barnyard and vegetable garden for an hour and were on their way to the tomato field—it was necessary to wait for the heavy dew to dry before they began to work among the vines—when the Willis family gathered for their breakfast at the round table set on the porch this warm morning in Doctor Hugh's honor.
"Hugh, will you come watch me wade in the brook?" asked Shirley, eating her cereal as though hypnotized and quite forgetting to protest that she didn't see why she had to drink milk.
"You wait till you see Bony, Hugh," Sarah told him. "He's the best pig you ever saw. He's bright."
"I wish, if you have time, Hugh," said Rosemary, "you'd show me what is the matter with the camera. Every picture I take is overexposed."
"For mercy's sake, let your brother rest," Winnie admonished them, bringing in a plate of fresh Parker House rolls. "He only gets a bit of a breathing spell and he doesn't want to race from one end of this farm to the other. Take that large brown one, Hughie."
Mrs. Willis, behind the silver coffee pot, smiled at her son.
"Best rolls I ever ate, Winnie," he said appreciatively. "I'll bet if Mr. Greggs' wife could make rolls like these he'd be a sweeter-tempered carpenter. I'm going to have the finest of vacations and rest thoroughly by going everywhere with everybody. I'll watch you wade, Shirley; and I'll give Sarah my opinion of this remarkable pig; Rosemary and I will 'snap' the whole farm. But I wish it distinctly understood that Mother and I have an unbreakable engagement to take a drive every afternoon, or just after dinner, as she prefers."