Happie's face had brightened as she listened, while Rosie's had flushed and grown more cloudy. She turned away as she ceased speaking, drew the back of her hand across her eyes and said snappishly: "I can't fool away any more time, Happie. What's the use of gittin' up by dark and foolin' away the whole mornin' yet?"
Happie paid no attention to these last remarks. She got both arms around poor discouraged Rosie and held her fast, forcing her to look in her face.
"Rosie, listen!" she cried. "After we left you last night, and Polly and Penny were asleep, all we old folks sat around the fire rather late talking over our plans. Ralph and Snigs say that their mother would be glad to let us take back our apartment, if we would, for she doesn't need it any more, and Aunt Keren has found our room for the great experiment. So on the first of the month—no, that's Saturday,—but next week, the first week in December, we are all going back, we Scollards, to our Patty-Pans, and Aunt Keren to her house. It is really wonderful, when you think of it, that Gretta owns this farm, that we found the will, for though of course our plans would include her in any case, still having this she is able to do something in return for Aunt Keren—and through her for us—and that makes her a lot happier, and everything better all 'round. We all agreed last night that we had grown tremendously fond of the Ark, and that we should feel dreadfully not to come back to it. We've got to go back to New York, because, you see, we have to earn our living just as much as you have, but we are coming up here every summer, Aunt Keren and all of us—we Scollards. Aunt Keren says wild horses shouldn't drag her back to her hotel life summers since she has tasted the independence and privacy of her—or what was her—old farm. Of course we may not be able to come too, but that's the plan. We're going to open a tea-room—but you know all about that! We may not be able to leave town, but I guess we shall—in instalments, anyhow. Now don't you see, you dear, worrying Rosie you, that there will have to be some one here to take care of the Ark, 'put out the garden,' as you say up here, and farm the place, not to mention having the house open and the dear Ark dry and sweet and clean when we all come home in the summer? Aunt Keren—and Gretta, because it is her house and she had to consent—that's a joke, Rosie, because Gretta's half crazy with joy over the whole thing!" Happie interrupted herself to say hastily, lest Rosie be hurt—"Aunt Keren is going to ask you if you would be willing to stay on here at the same pay as now, taking care of the place summers and winters, with and without us; you and Mahlon too, of course. Then, if you really can sell your place, why I know Aunt Keren will get her business man to invest your money for you at the best interest, and you'll be better off than if we had not gone away—though I really don't see what you'll do with no children to bother you, for you won't have any excuse for so much cleaning! I suppose I ought to have left this for Aunt Keren to tell you, but I couldn't let you fret one moment longer, when a word would stop it—though I have said more than one word, now haven't I? Kiss me, Rosie, and tell me that you think you have good reason to keep Thanksgiving Day in its full meaning after all!" Happie ended her long, breathless speech with a gay little laugh into Rosie's face, as she thrust her own forward insinuatingly.
"I guess!" said Rosie, and she kissed Happie with a warmth that nothing had called forth in the lonely woman since the last little grave had been made in the Methodist churchyard. Then she turned away, unaccustomed to betrayal of feeling, and embarrassed by it.
"My days, Happie! look how light it's gittin'!" she said. "I don't hardly need that lamp. And if there don't come Mahlon back already! I told him I'd have his breakfast ready till he got through, and I hain't hardly started it. Why, you're all shiverin' cold, child! This kitchen hain't been as cold a mornin' this season as 'tis this one. You hain't used to bein' up so early. You go back to bed and take a nap; it wants two good hours till breakfast. Or would you rather go into the room and lie down? I'll make a fire there if you want me to."
"I couldn't go back to bed; I couldn't sleep much last night myself, but not because I was worrying like you; because I was so excited and happy," said Happie. "You needn't stop to make a fire for me; I'm so warm inside I don't feel the cold, even if I do shiver. So are you all warm and happy inside, aren't you, Rosie?" she added wishing to be fully assured of Rosie's holiday state of mind.
"I guess!" Rosie said again, but with a smile so cheerful that Happie was satisfied. "As to the fire," continued philosophic Rosie, "it's got to be made, so you might as well have the good of it as to wait around shiverin' for a particular time to be comfortable."
Right after breakfast the Scollards bore off Ralph and Snigs to the small skating pond which had been made by damming the brook. Gretta, who could skate far better than the Scollard girls, begged to be allowed to stay at home to help with the preparation of dinner. "If it's my house, and the boys are my first guests I think I belong here," she argued. And nobody could gainsay her argument.
The skaters came home cold and glowing and ravenously hungry from their sport, and from a walk over roughened fields and roads, in which alternate thawing and freezing had made ruts that lifted one foot up on a ridge while its mate came down emphatically in a hole that gave its owner a jarring surprise. But the air was so bright, the long vistas of country revealed by the bare trees so splendid that it was well worth while "tramping on the bias," as Ralph said.
How pretty the low-ceiled library looked as the party came into it! The fire crackled on the hearth, warming one through the sense of sight almost as much as through the sense of feeling. Pictures, pretty casts, books—which seemed to follow the inmates of the Ark into every room, like faithful favorites, not relegated to one special place—all contributed to make this a totally different room from the dreary, musty one into which Bob and Happie had despondently peered on that night of their arrival, half a year ago.