[CHAPTER IX]
JUNE'S PERFECT DAYS
"Do you know we love the Ark?" said Happie to Margery, as they opened the back door to let in all the glorious outdoors June time, having at last succeeded in their ambition to get down one morning ahead of Rosie.
June had come softly, swiftly over the mountains, bringing all her wealth of beauty to the exiles from the lesser treasures of the city, a beautiful surprise in every hour. Robins were nesting in the gnarled apple trees; Happie looked into their homes every morning when she arose, sharing the happiness of the brooding mothers whose secrets she jealously guarded.
Grass and clover were beginning to blossom to be ready for harvesting on the fourth of July, cherries were reddening in the long sunshine of the perfect days, and nature generously seconded the efforts of the newcomers and of the carpenters in repairing and concealing damages to the neglected buildings of the new-old home.
Ralph and Bob were busy building chicken houses and tinkering on sheds. Miss Bradbury, in the innocence of her heart, had decided that it would be good to keep chickens, and they had been added to the stock of the Ark.
Rosie was most competent, slightly cross as quick workers are apt to be, but she took the direction and care of the household upon her shoulders, and Miss Bradbury was glad to overlook a snappishness which was, as Margery said, "merely the snapping of the crust; not one bit from her heart." It was worth while for the sake of being steered through the waters of her inexperience of farm life. They all felt that Penny was justified in her gravely uttered opinion that Rosie was "a lovely lady."
The family had discovered that Rosie had had her share of sorrow, represented by five child graves in the Methodist churchyard, and a living husband who occasionally called upon her. This Mahlon was working on a farm seven miles distant. Bob asked if he were employed as a scarecrow, for a more limp, lazy, incompetent creature was never seen outside The Wizard of Oz. He had a trick of standing on one leg, and swinging the other in unison with the arm on the same side which was an inexhaustible amusement to the children when he came to the farm. He talked in a high, monotonous whine which gave his long thin face the effect of a penny whistle emitting the sound—altogether a sharper contrast to energetic Rosie that he was would have been hard to imagine. The Scollards gathered that her struggle for existence when her children were coming, and quickly going to fill those little graves, had been harder than she said. They were glad for her sake, as well as their own, that she had closed her forlorn house, sent off her Mahlon to work in Zurich according to his ability, and had come to work for them according to her own, very different ability.
Competent as Rosie was, however, she was but one woman, and there was enough left for the girls to do to help her. Happie, on the whole and allowing for those days when the grasshopper is a burden, reveled in her tasks and sang about them all day long, getting brown and plump and prettier for her activity. Margery never reached the point of enjoying her share of the labor, which made it the more creditable that she quietly performed it each day, never complaining, still less shirking, for Margery had that fine conscientiousness which asks: "Should I?" and never: "Would I?"