Christmas week had already passed when the surprise came. As Kit said the charm of the unexpected was always catching you unaware when you lived on the edge of nowhere.
Beth and Elliott had departed two days after Christmas for New York. Somehow even Tommy could not get really acquainted with this new boy cousin. Billie, once won, was a friend forever, but Elliott was a smiling, confident boy, quiet and resourceful, with little to say.
By this time, Jean had settled down contentedly to the winter regime. She was giving Doris piano lessons, and taking over more of the household duties with Kit back at school. School had been one of the problems to be solved that first year. Doris and Tommy went to the District schoolhouse at the crossroads, a one-story, red frame building. Doris had despised it thoroughly until she heard that her father had gone there in his boyhood, and she had found his old desk with his initials carved on it.
Kit was in high school, and the nearest one was over the hills six miles away. Every morning, she caught the school bus at the end of the drive. Mrs. Craig would often stand out on the wide porch in the early morning and watch the three go off.
“I think they’re wonderfully plucky,” she said one morning to Jean. “If they had been country girls, born and bred, it would be different, but stepping right out of Long Island shore life into these hills, you have all managed splendidly.”
“We’d have been a fine lot of quitters if we hadn’t,” Jean answered. “I think it’s been much harder for you than for us, Mom.”
And then the oddest, most unexpected thing had happened, something that strengthened the bond between them and made Jean’s way easier. Her mother had turned and had met Jean’s glance with a telltale flush on her cheeks and a certain whimsical glint in her eyes.
“Jean, do you never suspect me?” she had asked, half laughingly. “I know just exactly what a struggle you have gone through, and how you miss all that lies back in New York. I do too. If we could just divide up the time, and live part of the year here and the other part back at the Cove. I wouldn’t dare tell Becky that I had ever regretted, but there are days when the silence and the loneliness up here seem to crush so strongly in on one.”
“Oh, Mom! I never knew you felt like that.” Jean leaned her head against her shoulder. “I’ve been horribly selfish, just thinking of myself. But now that Dad’s getting strong again, you can go away, can’t you, for a little visit anyway?”
“Not without him,” Mrs. Craig said decidedly. “Perhaps by next summer we can, I don’t know. I don’t want to suggest it until he feels the need of a change too. But I’ve been thinking about you, Jean, and I want you to go to school in New York for a little while anyway. Beth and I had a talk together before she left, and I felt proud of you, when I heard her speak of your work. She says the greatest worry on her mind is that Elliott has no definite ambition, no aim. He has always had everything that they could give him, and she begins now to realize it was all wrong.”