That living-room proved a magnet to Richard and Warren. As soon as the lamp was lighted and Rosemary or her mother sat down at the piano, the boys seemed irresistibly drawn to the little white house. Their evenings with the Hildreths had been dreary in the extreme—both the farmer and his hard-working wife practised and preached that "early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise"—and they either sat silently in the twilight until nine o'clock when they went to bed and set the alarm clock for five, or lit a single lamp in the kitchen and read agricultural papers by its uncertain rays.
"I hope I can be as good a farmer as Joe Hildreth," Warren once confided to Mrs. Willis, "but I think I'll have one less cultivator on my farm and a couple more lights in my farmhouse."
No wonder that the shaded lights of that other living-room, which cast a soft and rosy glow over the simple wicker furniture and cretonne cushions, the books and magazines and the always open piano, spelled comfort and cheer to the lonely young fellows miles distant from relatives and old friends. Richard Gilbert said it was the books that drew him, while Warren thought the music lured him. In reality, it was the gracious, lovely presence of the mother, gentle Mrs. Willis who never raised her voice above its soft, even level, who moved noiselessly about the house and whose step was so light on the stair that one might easily not hear her cross the hall and enter a room. But she could not leave it that her absence was not noted and her low laughter missed.
No wonder that twenty times a day the cry, "Where's Mother?" sounded through the house. No wonder that Doctor Hugh called up every morning and "ran in" as often as his busy schedule would allow, or bore her off with him to inspect the progress of the building at the Eastshore house. No wonder the nervous, driving energy of Mrs. Hildreth's nature was turned into channels that flowed back to the little lady in the white house bearing gifts of the garden and dairy. And no wonder at all that two boys, who had never known their own mothers, found no words with which to tell her what her interest and friendship meant to them.
In time there came to exist a tacit agreement between Richard and Warren that Mrs. Willis was not to be "worried" and in the effort to spare her they assumed, unconsciously, a brotherly guardianship over the three girls for which their mother was silently grateful. It was obvious that she could not tramp the fields with them and equally apparent that they would go wherever their healthy young active curiosity might lead. Richard and Warren took upon themselves the duties of friendly counselors—and had their hands full from the start.
"Country life may be healthy," said Winnie one Saturday when Doctor Hugh was spending the week-end at Rainbow Hill, "but I don't know as I'd call it exactly beautifying. Rosemary has a crop of freckles on her nose that will probably last all winter and Sarah is about as black as the automobile curtains. As for Shirley, between the briar scratches and the bruises on her hands and arms, she looks more like a strawberry plant, than a natural, human child."
Winnie was genuinely grieved at the girls' indifference to their looks, especially Rosemary of whom she was very proud, but Doctor Hugh declared that he liked to see folk look as though they lived outdoors.
"They live outdoors all right," Winnie informed him, a trifle tartly, "in fact I don't see why you didn't lug up a couple of tents and turn 'em loose inside. Rosemary is going to be blown out of the window some fine night and, to my way of thinking, it's better to start sleeping on the ground than to land there sudden like, right in a sound sleep."
Rosemary laughed. She was sitting on the arm of her brother's chair and, despite the freckles across her nose, presented a charming picture of a pretty girl in a dull rose frock.
"Fresh air is good for you, isn't it, Hugh?" she demanded. "Winnie is always saying I ought to sleep in the 'Cave of the Winds.'"