She laughed serenely, with a broad sense of humor over the family venture, yet with a full realization of its risk. Vickers marvelled at her strong faith in Steve, in the future, in life. As he had said to Isabelle, this was Woman, one who had learned the deeper lessons of life from her children, from her birth-pangs.
She took him into the vegetable garden which she and the children had planted. "We are truck-farmers," she explained. "I have the potatoes, little Steve the corn, Ezra the peas, and so on to Tot, who looks after the carrots and beets because they are close to the ground and don't need much attention. The family is cultivating on shares."
They walked through the rows of green vegetables that were growing lustily in the June weather, and then turned back to the house. Alice stopped to fasten up a riotous branch of woodbine that had poked its way through a screen.
"If the worst comes to the worst, I shall turn farmer in earnest and raise vegetables for my wealthy neighbors. And there is the orchard! We have been poor so much of the time that we know what it means…. I have no doubt it will come out all right,—and we don't worry, Steve and I. We aren't ambitious enough to worry."
It was a pleasant place, the Price farm, tucked away in a fold of gentle hills, at the end of a grassy lane. The bees hummed in the apple trees, and the June breeze swayed through the house, where all the windows and doors were open. Vickers, looking at the calm, healthy woman sitting beside him on the porch, did not pity the Johnstons, nor fear for them. Alice, surely, was the kind that no great misfortune could live with long.
"I am really a farmer,—it's all the blood in my veins," Alice remarked. "And when I get back here summers, the soil seems to speak to me. I've known horses and cows and pigs and crops and seasons for centuries. It's only skin deep, the city coating, and is easily scraped off…. Your father, Vickers, was a wise man. He gave me the exact thing that was best for me when he died,—this old farm of my people. Just as he had given me the best thing in my life,—my education. If he had done more, I should be less able to get along now."
They had dinner, a noisy meal at which the children served in turns, Alice sitting like a queen bee at the head of the table, governing the brood. Vickers liked these midday meals with the chattering, chirping youngsters.
"And how has it been with the music?" Alice asked. "Have you been able to work? You spent most of the winter up here, didn't you?"
"I have done some things," Vickers said; "not much. I am not at home yet, and what seems familiar is this, the past. But I shall get broken in, no doubt. And," he added thoughtfully, "I have come to see that this is the place for me—for the present."
"I am glad," she said softly.