Jean hastily glanced at Kit for fear she wouldn’t remember all that Rebecca had told them about Buzzy Hancock and his sister. But just then Mrs. Craig stepped out on the side porch and smiled at Buzzy until he turned red and grinned.
“I could come for about ten a month, Mother thought,” he added with much embarrassment.
Mrs. Craig thought ten was about right too, and Buzzy rode away in the spring twilight. All the way up the hill they heard him whistling Stardust. Although the deal had been closed over the brown mare, and the check reposed in Buzzy’s overalls’ pocket, he took her back with him, and promised to ride her over in the morning so the Craigs should not have the care of her overnight.
“I asked him what her name was,” Tommy said, “and he told me they just called her Molly’s Baby. We must think up a better name than that. You know, Mom, she looked over at me so wistfully when Buzzy said she would have to go back overnight. I know she wanted to stay with us.”
The next addition to the place was the lot of chickens. It had been agreed the first year that no large expenditures should be made for anything, because it was all more or less experimental.
“We want to take care of Dad, and make him well this first year,” Jean told the others up in their room one night.
At first the housework had proved to be the great stumbling block in the way of perfect peace and daily comfort.
“I tell you, Mom, if you’ll just say what you want done, we’ll do our best to oblige,” Jean had promised at the very beginning, but the girls had found themselves tangled up in less than two days, treading on each other’s heels and losing their tempers, too.
Mrs. Craig laughed at them when she happened in and found them all bickering.
“You’ll have to learn teamwork,” she explained. “You must learn that when you put your bread to rise it doesn’t shape itself into loaves and hop into the pans and walk over to the oven.” Here Kit blushed hotly, remembering how her first batch had risen to the occasion beyond all expectations, and rambled during the night all over the edge of the pan and the arm of the chair she had set it on. “And, Tommy, darling, if you catch mice in traps alive, and then decide to tame them, we’ll have mice all over the place.”