“Well, there’s cooking and cooking, girls,” Rebecca had replied placidly, fishing for brown doughnuts with her long, hand-wrought iron fork. “It’s one thing to cook when you’ve got everything to do with, and quite another when you are eternally figuring out how to make both ends meet. Of course, I don’t have to do that. Land knows there’s plenty to eat and more too, but it’s all plain food, and you’ve got to learn how to toss vegetables around in forty different ways out here if you want any variety.”
It was that evening that the Board of Amateur Experts discussed everything that lay ahead of them from the said vegetables to chickens, cows, horses, and farm implements.
Mr. Craig had seemed relieved when he was sure that his wife approved of Woodhow. It was near Maple Grove and Rebecca, he said, and they would surely need both many times during their first experimental year in the country. Also, it was on the mail route, and not too large a place in acreage for them to handle. There was a good apple orchard, a little run-down, but it would be all right with pruning and proper care. Besides, there were four good pear trees, two large cherry trees, white hearts and red, and three crabapple trees.
“Guess if you hunt around, you might find some quinces too, and plenty of berries and currants,” Rebecca said. “It’s been let go to waste the past few years, and it’ll take a year or more to get it back into shape. You’d better write out West and get a three-year lease, with option of purchase.”
“We couldn’t think of buying it, even with a GI loan from the government,” Mrs. Craig demurred, “but we might try the three-year lease. What do you think, dear?”
“I should write tonight,” Mr. Craig told her confidently. “Even if I should gain my health completely, we could still stay up here summers, and you all would enjoy it, I know. Look at Tommy’s red cheeks, and Jean looks like another girl. If I keep on much longer on Becky’s cooking, I expect to be mowing hay in the lower meadows by July.”
So the letter was written, the wonderful letter freighted with so many hopes. All the youngsters escorted Mrs. Craig down to the mailbox at the crossroads the next noon. It was truly a fateful moment, as Kit remarked solemnly. So much depended upon the nature of the answer from far-off Saskatoon. Perched on the fence rail Tommy began to whistle loudly.
“What’s his name, Mom?” asked Kit.
“Ralph McRae,” Jean answered for her mother.
“You know, really, Tommy,” protested Doris, “if you could just see how ridiculous you look on that fence rail, you’d come down.”