"I don't know any other," said Gretta with a grateful smile of acknowledgment to Bob for his including her in family plans, "but this house looks perfectly beautiful to me. There isn't any other around here half so pretty as you have made this one. And I don't believe I could be happy long away from Crestville. No matter what fine things I looked at I'm sure my eyes would ache for a sight of those mountains."
She turned towards the window as she spoke, and her eyes brightened lovingly as they rested on the mountain peaks, just visible above the trees. Then she turned back to the friends who had cheered her lonely life, and smiled brightly, brushing away a tear or two that glistened on her lashes.
"Don't you worry about me, dear folks," she said. "You have made me rich already, and the house doesn't matter." Then she fairly ran away, embarrassed by her unwonted betrayal of feeling.
Miss Bradbury took Don Dolor and one of the Scollards and drove about cross-examining every old man or woman who might know something definite of Mrs. Bittenbender's will. But in every instance she failed in getting more than an unanimous testimony to the misfortune which Gretta's grandmother's second marriage had been, and to the fact that she had intended willing everything tight and fast to her son and his child, out of the reach of the Bittenbender grasping fingers. That she had done so nobody could prove, and it was certain that the son, Gretta's father, had died some months before his mother. To be sure, there were those who declared that they had heard Mrs. Bittenbender say, not that she would make this will, but that she had made it. Still, the will itself was not in evidence, and finally Miss Bradbury gave up the investigation, baffled, still uneasy in her mind, but unable to see that it was her duty to give up the farm.
For justice, to be wise and efficacious, must include justice to oneself. The farm had come to Miss Bradbury in payment of a debt; she could not prove that it had come to her from other than its legal owner. And her plans for the future made it well for all concerned that the Ark should belong to upright, big-hearted Keren-happuch Bradbury. The matter resolved itself into letting everything go on as it was, holding the farm in readiness to give it up, should proof arise that it was not Miss Bradbury's, except by the wrong-doing of the late Bittenbender, and in the meantime trying more than ever to make up to Gretta for her hard fate.
While the question was under discussion, and was the uppermost interest in the Ark, the weeks of August slipped by into the first week of September, and the letter for which the Scollards were eagerly looking came from Margery, announcing her return.
A breath of fresh air seemed to blow through the Ark on the opening of that letter. All the inmates revived as they did when the strong September winds swept down the mountains, driving off the August heaviness.
Happie fell to garnishing her room for Margery to return to, re-covering chair cushions, washing and furbishing the lace of the pin cushion. Laura began at once the composition of a Song of Welcome, the first musical feat that she had essayed since the disastrous Fourth.
Polly began to sew for dear life on a new gown for Phyllis Lovelocks, that she might be suitably attired to greet her traveled aunt. Even little Penny cleaned her doll house, and weeded industriously the tiny garden which had been given her, and in which the weeds so far exceeded the flowers that the marigold which had survived the choking process fatal to Penny's other seeds, stood out, looking conspicuously out of place among its ragged comrades.
Bob went about whistling, putting fine touches on handsome Don Dolor's glossy coat and harness, and getting the place into better condition than ever, though all summer the garden had been a credit to an inexperienced boy. Miss Bradbury did not say much, but she watched, and fully appreciated the manly lad who had shouldered his disagreeable and unaccustomed tasks without a murmur, and had performed them so well that the farm—"and the cows and calves and the horse," Happie said—blossomed like the tropics.