“Why, no, I don’t believe I do,” she answered. “We’ve gotten all our Christmas packages. Maybe they’re books for Dad.”
“Like enough,” said Mr. Ricketts. “I didn’t know. I always feel a little bit interested, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” laughed Jean, as he started his truck. She hurried back to the house, her head down against the wind. The front door banged as Kit, fifteen and two years younger than Jean, let her in, her hands floury from baking.
“For Pete’s sake, why do you stand talking all day to that old gossip? Any mail from the West?”
The previous spring, the Craig family had moved to Elmhurst, Connecticut, because of Mr. Craig’s health. Due to a war injury, he had required a complete rest. At the suggestion of his cousin Rebecca, the family had left Long Island to live on a farm. Rural living was far different from anything Jean, Kit, thirteen-year-old Doris, and eleven-year-old Tommy were used to, but they grew to love it more and more as they made new friends and discovered the never-ending surprises that the country held for them.
As told in Jean Craig Grows Up, the family met their landlord, Ralph McRae, a young good-looking boy of twenty-four, from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, who was immediately attracted to Jean. When he returned to his western ranch, he took Buzzy Hancock, his cousin and Kit’s best friend, back with him. Now, Jean was finding it hard to wait for the summer to come when Ralph and Buzzy would return.
With a letter from Ralph in her hand, Jean answered Kit’s questions hurriedly. “Mr. Ricketts only wanted to know about an express package, whether it was heavy or light, where it came from, and if we expected it.” She piled the rest of the mail on the dining room table. “There is no mail from Saskatoon for you, Kit, only for me.”
“Oh, I thought maybe Buzzy might have written to me. The mug, he promised to send me a silver fox skin for Christmas, if he could find one. I’m going to give up waiting for it. With Christmas five days away, he surely would have sent it by now.”
Kit’s face was perfectly serious. Buzzy had asked her before he left Elmhurst what she would like best, and she had told him. The others laughed at her, but she held firmly to the idea that if it were possible, Buzzy would get it for her.
Jean was engrossed in a five-page letter from Ralph and had paid no attention to Kit’s remarks. She finished reading the letter, full of Christmas wishes and regret for having to be away from her, especially during the holiday season, and opened another from one of the students at the Academy back in New York. The previous winter, Jean had studied art there and had been sorry to give it up.