“What will we do about a car?” asked Billy. “You’ll need the car every day in town, won’t you?”
“That’s true,” said his father, “but if Grandma and Aunt Claire come out for the summer we can use their car. You’ll need a car for shopping and for going to church on Sunday, although how you’ll all squeeze into Aunt Claire’s car, I don’t know.”
“I’ll sit on Grandma’s lap,” said Davey. “I always used to, and I still could.”
“I’ll hang on the rear tire,” said Bill darting a look at Mom who said nothing, but her answering glance said as plain as day, “Oh no, you won’t.”
They talked and talked, and then Daddy pushed back his chair. “Will you youngsters please finish clearing off the table? There are some roses I want your mother to see.”
James and Bill cleared the table while Janie washed the glasses and the silverware. It was Davey’s job to dry the knives, forks, and spoons, and put them away. He was a good-natured little boy and he sang while he worked. If the song was lively he hurried in time with the music, but if the melody was slow and dreamy, so were his actions. Janie watched him dawdling through “Old Black Joe.”
“Try ‘Coming ’Round The Mountain’,” she advised, “or you’ll be here all night.”
The boys clattered along at their own rate, stopping every so often to argue or explain but in spite of it they finished and Jane stacked the plates while the boys ran out into the back yard to play ball.
A curving, enclosed stairway ran from the kitchen to the second floor. The oak treads were worn from the tired tread of maid-servants of the past, but Janie’s limber young legs flew up to the second floor two steps at a time, and then down the hall to her room. Pulling and tugging, she managed to open the bottom drawer of the built-in dresser way at the back of her clothes closet. There they were, her lake clothes. She tried on some of them. They felt small and light after wearing the heavy sweaters and woolen skirts during a Wisconsin spring. She stretched out across her bed and listened to the gentle evening sounds of Springhill. “This turned out to be a very nice day after all,” she thought. “Tomorrow I must ask Mom about some new playsuits. I’ll need some blue jeans for fishing down at the dam with the boys. I wonder if that old pickerel is still there; this year I’ll surely catch him.” Billy came pounding up the front stairs to his room looking for a catching mitt, and she called,
“Billy, let’s go on an all day boat trip down the canal this summer and really explore it.”