“But, Mom, our own neighborhood up here means a radius of about ten miles.”
“Even so. Rebecca’s old doctor covers twenty miles and has been doing it for forty years. He knows all of the families as if he were a census taker.”
Jean thought for a minute. They were going up a long hill and she shifted into second. “There seem to be so few real American girls up here, Mother,” Jean began slowly. “I thought we’d find ever so many, but while I lived up at Maple Grove I rode around a good deal, and you’d be surprised how many foreigners are up here. Becky told me the reason. The old families die out, or the younger generation moves away to the towns, and the foreigners buy up the old homesteads cheaply.”
“Well, dear?”
“But, Mother, you don’t understand. There are all sorts. French Canadians, and a Swedish family, and a Polish family, and the old miller up the valley from us used to be a Prussian sailor. Then there are the real old families, of course—”
“Are you thinking of confining your circle of acquaintances to the old families, Jeannie?”
Jean laughed at the amusement in her mother’s voice.
“Of course not, Mom. Still I suppose we must be careful just moving into a new place like this. We don’t want to get intimate with everybody. You’ll like some of the old families.”
“I think I’ll like some of the new ones too. Have you noticed, Jean, in driving around, that the houses which are mostly unpainted and rather run-down-looking belong to the old timers, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, probably of first settlers?”
“Oh, Mother, there are some of the most interesting stories about them too, how they came out—walked, actually walked most of them—from the Massachusetts Bay Colony when there was some sort of a breakup, and a few dropped off here, and a few there, and they settled in villages wherever they happened to stop. I found a cemetery in the woods near Becky’s, with old slate gravestones, and dates away back to 1717.”