“Oh, I’d like to take care of the incubator chickens. May I, please?” begged Tommy instantly. “I think one of the saddest things in life is to be hatched without a mother.”
“Sympathetic Tommy,” laughed Kit, catching him down on the grass and rolling him over. “He’s going to adopt all the chickens and gosh knows what else.”
“I’m going to keep bees,” Doris announced dramatically, yet with a certain aloofness in her manner. “I want a garden and bees that bring me home the honey from the clover fields.”
“Lovely,” Jean exclaimed, hugging her knees, and rocking to and fro contentedly. “You always select such royal occupations, Doris. I shall be the middleman of the farm. I am going to find markets for all you raise. I’ll make the farm pay expenses. We’ll need a trailer to attach to the rear bumper of the car to hold the produce. I think we ought to go into the village soon and see about getting one. I want the place, don’t you Mother?”
“I think I shall love it,” said Mrs. Craig, lifting her face to the swaying pine boughs overhead. “I wish that I could stay here now and not have to go away at all.”
“We’d better get started,” said Becky. She rose from the porch step. “Ella Lou’s begun to get restless and that’s to let me know it’s almost noon. She can always tell the time when the sun gets high.”
“I feel sure Mom wants the place, don’t you, Jean?” Kit asked as they went up through the woods towards home. “All the time we were going through the house I could see every bit of our furniture in the right places there. And there’s so much room that Dad will hardly know the difference between this place and the old one at the Cove. He could have that room overlooking the valley on the second floor. You can see the big brown stone dam from there and the ruins of the mill, and hear the falling water. I wish we had time to climb out over the old dam to the mill.”
“It’s better than living right in a village,” Jean answered, pushing aside the young birches that crowded the way. “I rather dreaded that somehow. Everybody’d want to know all about us right off, and why we came up, and what ailed Dad, and everything else. I hope, though, Mother won’t be lonely here. You know, kids, it’s lonely for a woman like her, where Becky doesn’t mind it.”
“We’ll have to pitch in and make up to her for everything she’s left behind,” said Doris solemnly.
“Dear old Dorrie.” Kit put her arm around her sister and squeezed her affectionately.