Spring changed the whole world for Jo Bailey, and spring was here now; winter had gone. The soft dirt road sucked up under Jerry’s clumping feet and brooks ran in merry freshets through their deep gutters on either side of the road. So Jo swung the old plow horse into place beside the little station platform and whistled while he waited. The year’s fun would begin to-day. In the early spring he had helped his father plant, but that work was done and so was school, and he had long and pleasant days before him, when his chores could be finished before breakfast.
Jo never had seen the Seymour family and to-day he was going to find out what they were like. There were three of them coming with their father and mother and if they were as nice as their father they’d be all right. Mr. Seymour was a painter who had discovered the Bailey house last year while he was wandering along the Maine coast on a sketching trip. He had said that the Bailey farm was the most beautiful place he ever had seen.
Of course Jo liked hearing that, and he felt proud at knowing that an artist from Boston found the old farm so lovely, though exactly what the painter saw in the big ocean pounding against the foot of the tall broken cliff, the stretch of smooth meadow running down over the slope of the hill, and the dense pine woods reaching back for miles and miles, Jo couldn’t understand any better than the Seymours could comprehend his winter.
The Seymours were about his own age, Jo was thinking as he sat on a box on the station platform, whistling and waiting. The oldest was a girl, Ann, Mr. Seymour had told him last summer, and Jo was skeptical as to what he might expect from her. A little bit of a fraidcat, probably, always dressing up and particular about her clothes; but he could bear it, if only the boy was spry. “Spry” was a word that meant a great deal in Maine; in Jo’s opinion if a boy was “spry” he was all that a boy should be.
While Jo waited at the station, Ann Seymour was sitting impatiently in the train, looking forward to just such a place as Jo’s meadow to stretch her long legs in a good run. School and basket ball were very well in winter but she had grown as tired as Jo of the cold, and as soon as April weather brought out the buds on Boston Common, Ann grew restless and began to talk about Maine.
Ann was fourteen, just like Jo Bailey; her brother Ben was twelve, and Helen was ten. She was decidedly the baby of the family and one of the reasons for their all coming to Pine Ledge so early in the season. She had been dreadfully ill during the past year and Mr. Seymour had thought of Pine Ledge farm as the best place for Helen when they first talked about a summer vacation. So the plans were made and he had told the children about Jo—how he had no mother, and, because of this, they must share their own mother with him; how he lived bravely in the snow all winter and walked through the drifts to school; and how he knew all about the woods and the rocks and tides and went fishing, up-river and out to sea. He made Jo sound interesting, and the Seymours were waiting to see him quite as impatiently as he was waiting for them.
“Will there be Indians at Pine Ledge?” Helen’s round blue eyes were like saucers as she peered out of the car window into the woods and fields through which the train was sliding so rapidly. “Will there be real live Indians with feathers and paint on them?”
“Don’t be such a silly,” said Ben. He secretly hoped there were Indians but he wouldn’t have admitted it to any one. “Indians moved away from this country years ago, years and years ago, all except a few tame Indians. But perhaps there are bears out in those woods. Bears live where green bushes grow so thick. They hide in the bushes and jump out when you’re not looking.”
He was delighted to see Helen shiver in frightened excitement. It made him feel rather trembly, too, to think of bears as big as men that jumped out and growled.
“Have they big teeth?” asked Helen, as she pressed her small nose against the window glass, looking hard for a glimpse of a bear.