Tommy had discovered a nice little brown prisoner under the pantry shelf, had taken him out into the rose garden and there let him go, all in a spirit of pity that left Kit and Jean speechless.
Also, sundry noises having issued from his room at night, the girls had started down the dark hall to investigate, and had stepped on turtles which Tommy had found sunning themselves on logs in the pond, and had put into empty tomato cans and smuggled up to his room for future humanitarian reference.
“OK, Mom,” said Jean in a subdued voice, “we’ll try to make fewer mistakes. With patience maybe we’ll learn how to do housework with one hand. I told Kit to fix the bread a dozen times, but she wouldn’t listen.”
Just then Buzzy came to the kitchen door, bare-headed and smiling.
“Sally said for me to tell you folks that she heard Ma Parmelee had some good Plymouth Rocks for sale. They’re about as reliable a hen as you can get. Ma’s going to sell off everything and go to live with her son down in Nantic. It’s near toward where I live, if you’d like to drive over that way.”
Mrs. Craig thought it was a good idea, and that Jean could drive her over. Jean went into the living room to get the keys for the car from the desk and came back. She and Buzzy walked out to the garage for the car together.
As they walked along, Jean said, “I wish spring would hurry up and make up its mind to stay awhile.” Letters had come from some of the girls back at the Cove that day and she felt a wave of loneliness and half panic at what they had undertaken.
After Jean had backed the car out of the garage, Buzzy helped her to attach the new trailer. At the back door Jean tooted the horn and waited for her mother to join them. While they were waiting Buzzy loaded some burlap sacks into the trailer for the hens.
“Better tie them to something when you start off,” he advised. “They always flop around a lot in sacks.”
It was a drive of about two and a half miles, up through the hills. Each new road seemed to lead them straight up to the edge of the world and then to dip again and leave the clouds behind. The woods held a haze of green now that hung over the distant hills like a mist. Once a row of young quail blinked dizzily from a pasture bar and fled at the noise of the approaching car. And all at once there came the quick thud of hoofs from a lane at the right of them, and a young girl riding horseback waved for them to stop. She was about as old as Kit, with friendly blue eyes and brown hair brushed back from her face and fastened with a silver clasp at the nape of her neck.