“Anybody could. There’s some chance for imagination to work on an island, but what can you do with a farm in Elmhurst?” Kit looked pensive with her head on one side, eyes half closed in melancholy anticipation. “Darling, precious old Dad here doesn’t know a blessed thing about farming—”
“Now, Kit, go easy,” Mr. Craig chided. “After all, I was born and raised on a farm. I should have learned something about it, I expect.”
“We’ll all be scouring pots, Kathleen,” offered Jean. “It’s the Craigs’ destiny. You know, Dad, I thought all along that Lydia would go with us. I thought she’d feel hurt if we didn’t take her, after she’d been telling us all these fairy tales about her native land where she loved to milk twenty cows at three A. M. I thought she’d simply leap at the chance of rural delights, and now she isn’t going along with us at all. She says she won’t go anywhere unless there are streetcars, tall buildings, and movies. It’s going to be tough without her.”
“Oh, I don’t believe it’s going to be nearly as bad as we expect,” Mrs. Craig said happily, as she passed through the room with her favorite silver candlesticks in her hands. “We’re facing the summer, remember, and I can’t help thinking that Rebecca will be a regular bulwark of strength to all of us.”
By the second week in March word came from the family’s bulwark that she thought the weather was mild enough for Jean and Mr. Craig to attempt the trip. Accordingly, the first section of the caravan set out on its trip to the land of oblivion, as Kit called it.
“It does seem, Mom,” Jean said at the last minute, “as if Kit ought to go with Dad, and let me stay down here to help you close up things. Kit knows how to drive.”
“I’d rather have you with your father.” Mrs. Craig laid her hands tenderly on Jean’s slender shoulders. “If I can’t be with him, I’d rather have the little first mate. Remember how he used to call you that, when you were only Tommy’s size?”
“Well, I feel terribly grown up now, Mother. Seventeen is really the dividing line. You begin to think of everything in a more serious way, you know. When I look at Kit and Doris sometimes, it seems years and years since I felt the way they do, so sort of irresponsible.”
“Poor old grandma.” Mrs. Craig laughed as she kissed her.
Jean had to laugh too, seeing the comic side of her aged feeling, but it was true that she felt a new sense of responsibility when they left New York for Elmhurst. The Saturday following their departure, the first carload of household goods left Sandy Cove. It had been a difficult job, weeding out the necessities from the luxuries, as Kit expressed it. Many a semi-luxury was slipped in by the girls on the plea that Father might need it, or would miss it. Kit had managed to save all the furniture from the study on this excuse.