“Gosh, we’ve lugged down all his belongings to the cabin,” Jack said when they were finished, “and I can’t find out what in the heck his business is. He had a lot of heavy bundles, and we asked him a few questions about them, but he didn’t seem to take kindly to it, so we let him alone.”
“Lucy says he’s made arrangements to buy eggs and chickens from them,” said Kit, “so I see where our paying guests are going to scatter prosperity around the neighborhood.”
Ralph McRae arrived the seventeenth of June and took the Turtle Cove Cabin. The Craigs saw quite a good deal of him, for he was always dropping in on them. Doris suspected a budding romance, but she contented herself with watching Jean and investing her with the glamor of all her favorite heroines.
The first fruits of Jean’s efforts to colonize the cabins came with a letter from Peg Moffat.
“You’re going to have four of the girls through July anyway, and August if they like it. I’ve told them the scenery is perfectly gorgeous and they can draw wherever they like, so be sure and give them the cabins with the best view.”
The next surprise was a letter from Billie. He could not reach home before the middle of July, as he was going on another trip with Frank, but there were five of the boys from his class who wanted to come up and camp.
“I’ve told them the fishing is swell around there, and they’re going to make the trip from here in Jeff Saunders’s car. Jeff’s from Georgia, and most of the guys have never been north. We’re going to join them later on, so if you’ve got a bunch of cabins together, you better save us three.”
“We’ll put them all over in the glen, where they can do just as they please,” Kit decided. “They won’t interfere with high art or our mysterious stranger.”
Lucy opened her general store the first of June. It stood exactly at the crossroads, beside Woodhow. Her brothers had erected a little slab shack, and Lucy had planted wild cucumber and morning glory vines thickly around the outside, the last week in April, so that by June they had climbed halfway up.
Inside the store there were two counters, one on either side as you entered, and these had been Mr. Peckham’s contribution to the good cause. At first the stocking up of the store had been a problem, but Becky helped out with the business plan, and by this time nearly everyone in Elmhurst was taking a keen, personal interest in the venture.