However, after thanks and good-byes were said to old François, the girls started on their tour of the little house. Evidently it had belonged to real farmer people who must have worked some of the land of the countess. Doubtless the men had gone to war and the women found employment elsewhere.
The farmhouse was only one story and a half high, with the kitchen and dining room below, but above there were four small bedrooms with a single window each and sloping ceilings. But the charming thing was that the walls were of rough plaster painted in beautiful colors—one rose, one blue, one yellow and the other lavender.
So the girls chose each the color she most loved—Barbara the blue, Nona the pink, Mildred the lavender, and Eugenia, professing not to care, the yellow.
It was just about dusk when they finally came outdoors again for a better view of the house itself. They had scarcely done more than glanced at it on entering.
The farmhouse was built of wood which had once been white but was now a light gray with the most wonderful turquoise blue door and shutters.
Indeed, the girls were to find out later that the little place was known in the neighborhood roundabout as “The House with the Blue Front Door.”
But though the house was so delightful that the girls had almost forgotten the sadness of their errand to the country, the landscape was far less cheerful.
A row of poplar trees, already half stripped of their leaves, formed a windbreak at one side of the house. Growing close on the farther side were a dozen pine trees, suggesting gloomy sentinels left to guard the deserted place.
There were no other houses in sight.
“I wonder where the chateau is?” Barbara asked a trifle wistfully. “I suppose if our services are not required at the hospital at once we might go in the morning to call on the Countess to thank her for her kindness.”