6. Leaving Home
Thursday of that week was set for Jean’s departure. This gave very little time for preparations, and Kit plunged into them with a zest and vigor that made Jean laugh.
“Well, so little ever happens up here we just have to make the most of goings and comings,” said Kit exuberantly. “And besides, I’m rather fond of you, in an offhand sort of way.”
“Of course, we’re all glad for you,” Doris put in seriously. “It’s an opportunity, Mom says, and I suppose we’ll all get one in time.”
Jean glanced up as they sat around the last evening, planning and talking. Out in the side hall stood her trunk, packed, locked, and strapped, ready for the early trip in the morning. Tommy was trying his best to nurse a frost-bitten chicken back to life out by the kitchen stove, where Jack was mending Doris’s skates. Kit and Doris were freely giving her advice.
“Enjoy yourself all you can, but think of us left at home and don’t stay too long,” advised Doris.
“Yes, and learn all about designing things for people. Personally I don’t want to make things for people,” Kit said emphatically. “I want to soar alone. I’m going with Sally to live on the top of a mountain. But, gosh, I do envy you, Jean, after all. You must write and tell us every single thing that happens, for we’ll love to hear it all. Don’t be afraid it won’t be interesting. I wish you’d even keep a diary. Buzzy told me once that his grandmother did, every day from the time she was fourteen, and they had a perfectly awful time getting rid of them when she died. Imagine burning barrels full of diaries.”
Tommy came out of the kitchen to tell them to be quiet. “I’ve just this minute got that chicken to sleep. They’re such light sleepers, but I think it will get well. It only had its poor toes frostbitten. Jack found it on the ground this morning, crowded off the perch. Chickens look so civilized, and they’re not. They’re regular savages.”
There flashed across Jean’s mind a picture of the evenings ahead without the home circle, without the familiar living room, and the other room upstairs where at this time her mother would be brushing out her soft hair, and listening to some choice bit of reading Mr. Craig had run across during the day and saved for her.