CHAPTER ONE
ITS CHILDREN
"I am going to cut that grass—try to cut it, I mean—before I'm an hour older," said Roberta Grey, drawing on an old pair of her father's dog-skin gloves with a do-or-die-in-the-attempt air that was at once inspiring and convincing. "This whole place looks like an illustrated edition of 'How Plants Grow'—Grey. We've got to cut the grass or put up a sign: To Find the House Walk Northward Through the Prairie. Signed, Sylvester Grey. Will you help, Wythie and Prue?"
Oswyth, the eldest daughter, a year the senior of sixteen-year-old Roberta, looked up with her pleasant smile. "Help walk northward through the prairie, help find the house, or help cut the grass, Rob?" she asked.
"Help cut the grass, and the rest won't be necessary," laughed Rob. "Come on! I've borrowed Aunt Azraella's lawn-mower, though I truly believe I might as well have borrowed the cheese-scoop—that grass is too old and tough to bow down to a mere lawn-mower."
Prue, being but fourteen, jumped up with alacrity to accept Rob's invitation, but Oswyth laid down her sewing and arose with a reluctant sigh—she was not fond of violent exercise, and the afternoon sun was still warm.
The three girls stood a few moments on the low door-step, letting the breeze pleasantly flutter their gingham dresses and lift their ribbons, before setting to their difficult task. The same breeze blew the tall grass which Roberta longed to lay low in undulating ripples like those in the blue and pink fabrics, which drifted into the picture like cornflowers and poppies. The feathery sprays of the millet and red-top, the wands of the timothy were so pretty as they bowed and swayed that, although they were so lawless and rank, it seemed almost a pity to cut them. Oswyth thought so, but Roberta felt no misgivings—except of her own strength.
The little grey house stood well back from the street under splendid trees, set in the midst of a place so wholly disproportioned to its size that it looked in the present unkempt condition of the grounds not unlike a little island of grey rock, entirely surrounded by turbulent and billowy green water.
Everybody called it "the little grey house," and the name was doubly appropriate, since it did not matter whether one capitalized and emphasized the adjective, and spoke of it as "the little Grey house," or left to the adjective its natural function, and spoke of the tiny home as "the little grey house." For, as to color, it could not well have been greyer. It had once—not recently—been painted grey, but wind and weather had stripped it of its artificial greyness while tinting its clapboards into soft, indelible tints even more conformable to its title.
And, for the rest, Sylvester Grey lived there, as had his forebears for three generations preceding him—all Greys from the beginning. People said that it was "a good thing that Sylvester Grey had had a home left him, for he never could have earned one."
It was true that Mr. Grey had never been able to make much money, nor to keep what little he did make. "He was as good a man as ever lived," people said again, "but he had no faculty." And to lack "faculty" was, indeed, to lack much.