“Well, isn’t that simply breathtaking, but I mean, simply divine? Wish we could tame some, don’t you?”
They all agreed.
Tommy ran along the path ahead of them. “I like this ever so much better than the Cove,” he called. “It’s all so wild and free.”
They paused at a spur of land that looked out over the long valley. Little River flowed in a winding course marked by alders and willows. Now that there was no foliage to obscure the view, they could catch a glimpse here and there of a red roof or a white chimney. There was the Smith mill, then the old white Murray homestead with its weather vane standing on a little hill like a big yardarm at large. Then came their own old ruined mill, half tumbling down, with empty window casings, all overgrown with woodbine and poison ivy. Farther up the valley one caught the hum of another mill, purring musically in a sort of crescendo scale ending in a snappy zip as the log broke.
As they neared Maple Grove, Jean exclaimed suddenly, “I just seem to have the feeling that we all belong here somehow! I know we’re going to love it.”
9. Fateful Moment
That very night a council was held of what Mr. Craig termed “the Board of Amateur Experts.”
“I think I need Matt in here for support,” he said laughingly from his favorite resting place, the old-fashioned, high-backed couch in the sitting room.
Maple Grove was a large, comfortable house. There was a front entrance, a side entrance and a well room at the back of the kitchen. There was a parlor and a front bedroom, a side bedroom and a big sunny sitting room that was dining room also, and finally the old kitchen with its Dutch oven and hooks in the ceiling for hanging up smoked beef and bacon sides.
Not that Becky ever used the Dutch oven nowadays except to store things away in. She had instead a fine modern electric stove over which she hovered like a sorceress from five A. M. to eleven A. M., producing such marvels of cookery that held the girls spellbound—raised doughnuts with jam inside and powdered sugar outside, apple turnovers made with Peck’s Pleasants and rich Baldwins, ginger cookies, large as saucers with scalloped edges, soft and rich as butterscotch, and pies, with rich, flaky crust and delectable filling in endless varieties. Jean declared that she had learned more about cooking in the few weeks she had lived at Maple Grove than in all her life before.