“Take it easy, old fella,” said Bill. “We won’t leave you behind.”
“Chee—chee,” said Butch, as if he meant: “With this scatterbrain family, I’m taking no chances.”
A little after five o’clock Daddy came down the drive with a bright yellow trailer attached to the car, and for the next half an hour everyone worked like a beaver. Daddy superintended the loading, and Mom checked and rechecked the house and garage, the lights, the faucets, the windows, and the doors. At last everything was ready, and they rolled down the driveway and into the street. They passed through the shopping center and over the river and up the hill to the county buildings.
The stop light turned green and they turned out on the road that led to Oak Lake. The distance was only about twenty-five miles, and they usually whisked out there in no time, but with their heavy load they traveled along at a leisurely rate, singing as they went.
The Murrays always sang as they drove. They sang as easily as the birds on the telephone wires, going from one old favorite to the other. They liked to sing rounds, like “Three Blind Mice” and “O The Bull Frog on the Bank.” Someone always started “The Quilting Party,” and Daddy could be counted on for “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” While they warbled along the highway Butch carefully untied Jane’s hair ribbon, and placed it on Billy’s head.
Now they were coming to a hill that the Murray children always waited for, because far down at the left was a small lake rimmed with cattails and spruce trees.
Once, long ago, Janie had seen a heron, startled, fly off on his great brown wings, and sometimes in spring it was the resting place for northern bound flocks of loudly crying wild geese. Tonight it lay there, rose colored in the evening light, like a fallen maple leaf. “Our little lake,” said Janie, softly. “I wonder if it has a name.”
Every foot of the way was familiar. The fox farm, the barn they had seen collapse the night of the big wind, the farm that always had such fat little pigs, and then one more hill and the road turned off to the lake.
Daddy drove carefully off the main highway onto the graveled road. They passed the haunted house and turned at the canal, went around the curve and there sparkling in the sunset, lay beautiful Oak Lake.
The planks of the short bridge at the canal rattled under them, and from there they could see the cottage. There was an iron fence with large stone posts at the gate, and as the car stopped all the children seemed to escape at once.