It was harder breaking camp than any of them realized. They had lived six years at Sandy Cove, near Great Neck on Long Island. Before that time, there had been an apartment in New York on Columbia Heights. As Kit described it with her usual graphic touch, “Bird’s-eye Castle, eight stories up. Fine view of adjacent clouds. With field glasses on clear days, you could also see the tops of the Riverside busses.”
It had seemed almost like real country to the girls and Tommy when they had left the city behind them and moved to Sandy Cove. Tommy had the measles that year, and the doctor had ordered fresh air and an outdoor life for him, so the whole family had benefited, which was very thoughtful and considerate of Tommy, the rest said.
But now came the problem of weeding out what Rebecca would have called the essential things from the luxuries.
“Dear me, I had no idea we had so many of the pomps and vanities of this wicked world,” Jean said regretfully one day. There were eight rooms in the big home, all well-furnished. Living room, dining room and study, with Lydia’s domain at the back. Upstairs were four bedrooms. Sitting on the bed and the floor of Jean’s room, the three girls and Tommy were sorting out their belongings and piling up nonessentials to be thrown away.
“I can’t find anything more of mine that I’m willing to part with,” said Tommy flatly, stuffing a catcher’s mitt into a box already jammed full. “I’ll need that to practice with. What’s a luxury anyway?”
“Makes me think of Bob Phelps,” Doris remarked. “Last night when I went over to tell Mrs. Phelps that we couldn’t be in the Easter play, Bob was just having his supper, and he wanted more of the prune whip. His mother told him he mustn’t gorge on delicacies. So Bob asked what a delicacy was anyway, and he said some day he was going to have a whole meal made of delicacies. Isn’t that a scream?”
“Don’t throw away any pieces at all, kids,” Jean warned. “Becky says we’ll need them all for rag carpets.”
“You can buy rag rugs and carpets anywhere now,” said Doris.
“Yes, and oh, brother, at what prices too. We people who are going to live at Elmhurst will cut and sew our own, roll them in nice fat balls, and hand them over to Mr. Carpenter up at Denton, to be woven into the real thing at fifteen cents a yard. It’ll last for years, Becky says. When you get tired of it, you boil it up in some dye, and have a new effect.”
Kit regarded her elder sister in speechless delight.