“That’s the best way, Mom,” Sally spoke up. “They have all been so nice to us, and it’s just as Ralph says. They do love it.”
“You could come back East every now and then and visit if you did make up your mind to live out in Saskatoon.”
“Land, you speak of journeying thousands of miles as if you were driving up to Norwich. I went to Providence once after I was married, and that’s the only long trip I’ve ever made.”
“Then it will take you a whole year to get ready,” laughed Ralph. “Buzzy and I will be back for you and Sally next summer.”
The night before their departure Mrs. Craig gave a dinner for them, with Rebecca and her new husband, Judge Ellis. Ralph and Buzzy sat between Kit and Jean at the table. Both girls were sad to think of their friends leaving.
“We’re going to miss you, Ralph,” said Jean rather shyly. Her mother had told her about the new business arrangement whereby Woodhow was to become really their home.
Ralph colored slightly. He could not bring himself even to try and express just what it had meant to him, this long summer visit with them. He had come East a stranger, and had found the warmest kind of welcome from the newcomers in the old home. He looked around at them tonight, and thought how much he felt at home there.
First, there was Mr. Craig, with his thin, scholarly face, high forehead, and curly dark hair just touched with gray, his keen hazel eyes behind rimless glasses, and finely modeled chin. Then Mrs. Craig, surely the most gracious woman he had ever known excepting his own mother. Just the mere sound of her soft, engaging laugh made trouble seem very unimportant. And Kit, imperious, argumentative Kit, so full of energy that she was like a Roman candle. He would best remember her as she had stepped out of the shadows into the moonlight to welcome him. Doris beamed on him from her place across the table. To Doris he was like a knight that had come along the highway and, if possible, she would have had him in crimson hose and plumed cap. And Tommy, fun-loving, constantly chattering, full of odd knowledge that boys of eleven seemed to pick up, and always asking questions.
Last of all, Ralph looked down at Jean at his side. Jean, almost eighteen, already a replica of her mother in her quick tenderness and her looks. His eyes lingered on her. She was very sweet, he thought, the sweetest of them all. He was going to miss Jean very much.
Tommy trailed Ralph into the living room after the others that evening and told him over and over again to send him a tame bear, one that he could bring up by hand and train.