Jean Craig In New York

FALCON

BOOKS

Jean Craig In New York

BY KAY LYTTLETON

When lovely Jean Craig moved with her family to Woodhow farm in Connecticut, she thought she was giving up her art lessons forever. And then suddenly the opportunity came to go to New York to study, and she went to live with her cousin Beth in the suburbs of New York. These months were an exciting interlude in her life. She loved seeing her old friends again, going to parties, and meeting new people, among them Aldo Thomas, an artist from Italy.

Jean Craig in New York tells of Jean’s adventures in the city, but it is also the story of the Craigs who meet life’s adventures with gaiety and courage.

Other FALCON BOOKS for Girls:

JEAN CRAIG GROWS UP
JEAN CRAIG FINDS ROMANCE
PATTY AND JO, DETECTIVES

There sat a robust, middle-aged newcomer.

JEAN CRAIG
IN NEW YORK

by KAY LYTTLETON

THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK

Falcon Books
are published by THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
2231 West 110th Street · Cleveland 2 · Ohio

W 2

COPYRIGHT 1948 BY THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contents

JEAN CRAIG IN NEW YORK

1. Jean Finds a Stranger

It was just five days before Christmas when a pink express card arrived in the noon mail. The Craigs knew there must be something unusual in the mail, for Mr. Ricketts, the rural free delivery carrier, had lingered at the end of the drive.

Jean, the oldest of the four children, slipped into a coat and stadium boots and ran down the drive to see what he wanted.

“There’s something for you folks at the express office, I guess. If it’s anything heavy I suggest you go down and get it today. Looks like we’d have some snow before nightfall.” He waited while Jean glanced at the card. “Know what it is?”

“Why, no, I don’t believe I do,” she answered. “We’ve gotten all our Christmas packages. Maybe they’re books for Dad.”

“Like enough,” said Mr. Ricketts. “I didn’t know. I always feel a little bit interested, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” laughed Jean, as he started his truck. She hurried back to the house, her head down against the wind. The front door banged as Kit, fifteen and two years younger than Jean, let her in, her hands floury from baking.

“For Pete’s sake, why do you stand talking all day to that old gossip? Any mail from the West?”

The previous spring, the Craig family had moved to Elmhurst, Connecticut, because of Mr. Craig’s health. Due to a war injury, he had required a complete rest. At the suggestion of his cousin Rebecca, the family had left Long Island to live on a farm. Rural living was far different from anything Jean, Kit, thirteen-year-old Doris, and eleven-year-old Tommy were used to, but they grew to love it more and more as they made new friends and discovered the never-ending surprises that the country held for them.

As told in Jean Craig Grows Up, the family met their landlord, Ralph McRae, a young good-looking boy of twenty-four, from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, who was immediately attracted to Jean. When he returned to his western ranch, he took Buzzy Hancock, his cousin and Kit’s best friend, back with him. Now, Jean was finding it hard to wait for the summer to come when Ralph and Buzzy would return.

With a letter from Ralph in her hand, Jean answered Kit’s questions hurriedly. “Mr. Ricketts only wanted to know about an express package, whether it was heavy or light, where it came from, and if we expected it.” She piled the rest of the mail on the dining room table. “There is no mail from Saskatoon for you, Kit, only for me.”

“Oh, I thought maybe Buzzy might have written to me. The mug, he promised to send me a silver fox skin for Christmas, if he could find one. I’m going to give up waiting for it. With Christmas five days away, he surely would have sent it by now.”

Kit’s face was perfectly serious. Buzzy had asked her before he left Elmhurst what she would like best, and she had told him. The others laughed at her, but she held firmly to the idea that if it were possible, Buzzy would get it for her.

Jean was engrossed in a five-page letter from Ralph and had paid no attention to Kit’s remarks. She finished reading the letter, full of Christmas wishes and regret for having to be away from her, especially during the holiday season, and opened another from one of the students at the Academy back in New York. The previous winter, Jean had studied art there and had been sorry to give it up.

“Peg Moffat is taking up impressionism.” Jean turned back to the first page of the letter she had been reading. “She says she never fully realized before that art is only the highest form of expressing your ideals to the world at large.”

“Tell her she’s all wrong.” Kit looked up from her seed catalogues. “Becky told me the other day she believes schools were first invented for the relief of distressed parents just to give them a breathing spell, and not for kids at all.”

“Still, if Peg’s hit a new trail of interest, it will make her think she’s really working. Things have come to her so easily, she doesn’t appreciate them. Perhaps she can express herself now.”

“Express herself? For gosh sakes, Jeannie, tell her to come up here, and we’ll let her express herself all over the place. Gee! Just smell my mince pies this minute. Isn’t cooking an expression of individual art too?” And Kit made a beeline for the oven in time to rescue four mince pies.

“Who’s going to drive down after the package?” asked Mrs. Craig from the doorway. “I want to send an order for groceries too and you’ll want to be back before dark.”

“I’m terribly sorry, Mom,” called Kit from the kitchen, “but Lucy and some of the girls are coming over and I promised them I’d go after evergreen and Princess pine. We’re getting it for wreaths and stars to decorate the church.”

“Tommy and I’ll go. I love the drive.” Jean handed Peg’s letter over to Kit to read, and gave just a bit of a sigh. Nobody could possibly have sustained any inward melancholy at Woodhow. There was too much to be done every minute of the day. Still, Peg’s letter did bring back vividly memories of last winter at the Art Academy. Perhaps the students did take themselves and their aims too seriously, yet it had all been wonderful and interesting. Even in the peaceful countryside, Jean missed the companionship of girls her own age, with the same tastes and interests as herself.

She called to Tommy, who was down in the basement making a model airplane, and told him to come with her to the express office. He came upstairs under protest, his face smeared with dirt.

“Gosh, Tommy, you look a sight. If you’re going to come with me, you’ll have to wash first. Look at your hands.”

“Gee, whiz,” he grumbled, “what’s the use in washing all the time. A guy only gets dirty again, anyway.” But he leisurely went upstairs and came down again after what seemed to Jean an unnecessarily long time.

“What took you so long, anyway? Hurry up. I don’t want to be driving after dark.”

“OK, OK, I’m coming.” And the two went out the back door to the garage.

It was only a drive of seven miles to Nantic, but the children never tired of the ride. It was so still and dreamlike with the early winter silence on the land. At the mill house, Lucy Peckham waved to them. Along the riverside meadows they saw the two little Peckham boys driving sheep with Shep, their black and white dog, barking madly at the foot of a tall hickory tree.

“Look, Tommy, see those red berries in that thicket overhanging the rail fence? Will you get out and pick me some?” Jean stopped the car and Tommy jumped out. A car passed going the other way while Jean was waiting, and she recognized the driver as the stationmaster’s son.

“Somebody is coming home for Christmas, I guess,” she remarked to Tommy when he came back.

Jean drove on with her chin up, cheeks rosy and eyes alert. When they drove up in front of the express office, Tommy didn’t want to wait in the car, so they walked up the steps of the office together. Just as they opened the door, they caught the voice of Mr. Briggs, the agent, not pleasant and sociable as it usually was, but sharp and high-pitched.

“Well, you can’t loaf around here, son, I tell you that right now. The minute I spied you hiding behind that stack of ties down the track, I knew you’d run away from some place, and I’m going to find out all about you and let your family know you’re caught.”

“I ain’t got any family,” came back a boy’s voice hopefully. “I’m my own boss and can go where I please.”

“Did you hear that, Jean?” exclaimed Mr. Briggs, turning around at the opening of the door. “Just size him up, will you. He says he’s his own boss, and he’s no bigger than a pint of cider. Where did you come from?”

“Off a freight train.”

Mr. Briggs leaned his hands on his knees and bent down to get his face on a level with the boy’s.

“Isn’t he slick, though? Can’t get a bit of real information out of him except that he liked the looks of Nantic and dropped off the slow freight when she was shunting back and forth up yonder. What’s your name?”

“Jack. Jack Davis.” He didn’t look at Mr. Briggs, but off at the hills, windswept and bare except for their patches of green pines. There was a curious expression in his eyes, Jean thought, not loneliness, but a dumb fatalism. As Becky might have said, it was as if he had known nothing but trouble and didn’t expect anything better.

“How old are you?”

“’Bout nine or ten.”

“What made you drop off that freight here?”

Jack was silent and seemed embarrassed. Tommy, who had been eyeing him curiously, responded instantly.

“Because you like it best, isn’t that why?” he suggested eagerly. Jack’s face brightened up at that.

“I liked the looks of the hills, but when I saw all them mills, I—I thought I’d get some work maybe.”

“You’re too little,” Mr. Briggs cut in. “I’m going to hand you right over to the proper authorities, and you’ll land up in the State Home for Boys if you haven’t got any folks of your own.”

Jack met the shrewd gray eyes doubtfully. His own filled with tears that rose slowly and dropped on his worn short coat. He put his hand up to his shirt collar and held on to it tightly as if he would have kept back the ache there, and Jean’s heart could stand it no longer.

“I think he belongs up at Woodhow, please, Mr. Briggs,” she said quickly. “I know Mother and Dad will take him up there if he hasn’t any place to go, and we’ll look after him. I’m sure of it. He can drive back with us.”

“But you don’t know where he came from nor anything about him, Jean. I tell you he’s just a little tramp. You can see that, or he wouldn’t be hitching on to freight trains. That’s no way to do if you’re decent God-fearing folks, riding freights and dodging trainmen.”

“Let me take him home with me now, anyway,” pleaded Jean. “We can find out about him, later. It’s Christmas Friday, remember, Mr. Briggs.”

There was no resisting the appeal that underlay her words, and Mr. Briggs relented gracefully, although he maintained the county school was the proper receptacle for all such human rubbish.

Jean laughed at him happily, as he stood with his feet wide apart, his hands thrust into his coat pockets.

“It’s your own affair, Jean,” he returned dubiously. “I wouldn’t stand in your way so long as you see fit to take him along. But he’s just human rubbish. Want to go, Jack?”

And Jack rose, wiping his eyes with his coat sleeve, and glared resentfully back at Mr. Briggs. He took the smaller package, Tommy the other, and the three left the office.

“Guess we can all squeeze into the front seat,” Jean said. “We’re going down to the store, and then home.”

2. New York Cousins

Doris caught the sound of the squeaking snow under the tires of the car as it came up the drive about four o’clock. It was nearly dark. She was standing in the living room lighting the Christmas candles in the windows, and she ran to the front door.

“Hi,” called Jean when she saw Doris in the doorway, “we’re back.”

Tommy jumped out of the car at the back door and took Jack by the hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. He was shivering, but Tommy pulled him into the kitchen where Kit was getting supper. Over in a corner lay the pile of evergreens and pine that she and the other girls had gathered that afternoon.

“Look, Kit,” Tommy cried, quite as if Jack had been some wonderful gift instead of a dusty, tired, limp little derelict of fate and circumstance. “This is Jack and he’s come to stay with us. Where’s Mom?”

One quick look at Jack’s face checked all mirthfulness in Kit. There were times when it was better to say nothing. She was always intuitive, quick to catch moods in others and understand. This case needed her mother. Jack was fairly blue from the cold, and there was a pinched, hungry look around his mouth and nose that made Kit leave her currant biscuits.

“Upstairs with Dad. Beat it up there fast and call her, Tommy.” She smiled at Jack, a radiant, comradely smile that endeared Kit to all she met. “We’re so glad you’ve come home,” she said, drawing him over to the stove. “You sit up on that stool and get warm.” She slipped into the pantry and dipped out a mug of rich, creamy milk, then cut a wide slice of warm gingerbread. “There now. See how that tastes. You know, it’s the funniest thing how wishes come true. I was just longing for somebody to sample my cake and tell me if it was good. Is it?”

Jack drank nearly the whole glass of milk before he spoke, looking over the rim at her with very sleepy eyes.

“It’s awful good,” he said. “I ain’t had anything to eat since yesterday morning.”

“Oh, dear,” cried Kit. This was beyond her. She turned with relief at Mrs. Craig’s quick light step in the hall.

“Yes, dear, I know. Jeannie told me.” She went straight over to the stool. And she did just the one right thing. That was the marvel of Mrs. Craig, she always seemed to know naturally what a person needed most and gave it to them. She took Jack in her arms, his head on her shoulder, patting him while he began to cry chokingly.

“Never mind, child, now,” she told him. “You’re home.” She lifted him to her lap and started to untie his worn sodden shoes. “Tommy, get your slippers, dear, and a pair of wool socks. Warm the milk, Kit, it’s better that way. And you cuddle down on the couch by the living room fire, Jack, and rest.”

Mrs. Craig had gone into the living room and found a gray woolen blanket in the wall closet off the little side hall. From the chest of drawers she took some of Tommy’s outgrown winter underwear. Supper was nearly ready, but Jack was to have a warm bath and be clad in clean fresh clothing. Tucking him under one wing, as Kit said, she left the kitchen, and Jean told the rest how she had rescued him from Mr. Briggs’s righteous indignation and charitable intentions.

“Got a good face and looks you square in the eye,” said Doris. “I’d take a chance on him any day, and he can help around the place a lot, splitting kindlings and shifting stall bedding and what not. He and Tommy seem to be good friends already.”

The telephone bell rang and Jean answered. Rambling up through the hills from Norwich was the party line, two lone wires stretching from telephone pole to telephone pole. Its tingling call was a welcome sound. This time it was Rebecca at the other end. After her marriage to Judge Ellis, they had taken the long-deferred wedding trip up to Boston, visiting relatives there, and returning in time for a splendid old-fashioned Thanksgiving celebration at the Ellis home. Maple Grove, Becky’s former home, was closed for the winter but Matt, the hired man, decided to stay on there indefinitely and work the farm on shares for Miss Becky, as he still called her.

“And like enough,” Becky said comfortably, when she heard of his intentions, “he’s going to marry somebody himself. I wouldn’t put it past him a bit. I wish he’d choose Cindy Anson. There she is living alone down in that little bit of a house, running a home bakery when she’s born to fuss over a man. I told Matt when I left, if I were he I’d buy all my pies and cake from Cindy, and then when I drove by Cindy’s I just dropped a passing word about how badly I felt at leaving such a fine man as Matt to shift for himself up at the house, so she said she’d keep an eye on him.”

Over the telephone now came her voice, vibrant and cheery, and Jean answered the call.

“Hello, yes, this is Jean. Mother’s right in the living room. Who? Oh, wait till I tell the kids.” She turned her head, her brown eyes sparkling. “New York cousins over at the Judge’s. Who did you say they are, Becky? Yes? Beth and Elliott Newell. I’ll tell Dad right away. Tomorrow morning early? That’s swell. ’Bye.”

Before the others could stop her, she was on her way upstairs. The largest, sunniest room had been given over to her father. The months of relaxation and rest up in the hills had worked wonders in Mr. Craig’s health. As old Dr. Gallup was apt to say when Kit rebelled at the slowness of recovery, “Can’t expect to do everything in a minute. Even the Lord took six days to fix things the way he liked them.”

Instead of spending two-thirds of his time in bed or on the couch now, he would sit up for hours and could walk around the wide porch, or even along the garden paths before the cold weather set in. But there still swept over him without warning the great fatigue and weakness, the dizziness and exhaustion which had followed as one of the lesser ills in his nervous breakdown.

He sat before the open fire now, reading from one of his favorite news magazines, with Miss Tilly purring on his knees. Tommy had found Miss Tilly one day late in October, loafing along the barren stretch of road going over to Gayhead school. She was a yellow kitten with white nose and paws. Tommy, forever adopting stray animals, had tucked her up in his arms and taken her home. Becky had looked at the yellow kitten with instant recognition.

“That’s a Scarborough kitten. Sally Scarborough’s raised yellow kittens with white paws ever since I can remember.”

“Had I better take it back?” asked Tommy anxiously.

“Land, no, child. It’s a barn-cat. You can tell that, it’s so frisky. Ain’t got a bit of repose or common sense. Like enough Mrs. Scarborough’d be real glad if it had a good home. Give it a name, and feed it well, and it’ll slick right up.”

So Miss Tilly had remained, but not out in the barn. Somehow she had found her way up to Mr. Craig’s room and its peace must have appealed to her, for she would stay there for hours, dozing with half-closed jade-green eyes and incurved paws.

“Dad!” Jean exclaimed, entering the quiet room like an autumn flurry of wind. “What do you think? Becky just phoned, and she wants me to tell you two New York cousins are there. Beth and Elliott Newell. Do you remember them?”

“Of course,” smiled Mr. Craig. “It must be little Cousin Beth and her boy. I used to visit at her old home when I was a little boy. She wanted to be an artist, I know.”

“Oh, Dad, an artist? And did she study and succeed?”

“I think so. I remember she lived abroad for some time and married there. Her maiden name was Lowell, Beth Lowell.”

“Did she marry an artist too?” Jean leaned forward from her low chair facing him, her eyes bright with romance, but Mr. Craig laughed.

“No, indeed, she married a schoolmate from New York. He went after her, for I suppose he tired of waiting for Beth’s career to come true. They had a very happy life together and I think Beth misses him very much since he died about two years ago. Listen a minute.”

Up from the lower part of the house floated strains of music. Surely there had never issued such music from a mouth organ. The tune was a mournful blues that had a haunting melody.

“It must be Jack,” Jean said, smiling mischievously up at her father, for he had not yet met Jack. She ran out to the head of the stairs.

“Can Jack come up, Mom?”

Up he came, fresh from a tubbing, wearing a shirt and a pair of overalls that belonged to Tommy. His straight blond hair fairly glistened from its recent brushing and his face shone, but it was Jack’s eyes that won him friends at the start. Mixed in color they were, like a moss agate, with long dark lashes, and just now they were filled with contentment.

“They wanted me to play for them downstairs,” he said gravely, stopping beside Mr. Craig’s chair. “I can play lots of tunes. My mother gave me this last Christmas.”

This was the first time he had mentioned his mother and Jean followed up the clue gently.

“Where, Jack?”

He looked down at the floor, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Over in Providence. She got sick and they took her to the hospital and she never came back.”

“Not at all?”

He shook his head. “Then afterwards—” much was comprised in that one word and Jack’s tone, “afterwards we started off together, my Dad and me. He said he’d try and get a job on some farm with me, but nobody wanted him this time of year, and with me too. And he said one morning he wished he didn’t have me bothering around. When I woke up on the freight yesterday morning, he wasn’t there. Guess he must have dropped off. Maybe he can get a job now.”

So it slipped out, Jack’s personal history, and the father and daughter wondered at his sturdy acceptance of life’s discipline. Only nine, but already he faced the world as his own master, fearless and optimistic. All through that first evening he sat in the kitchen on the high stool, playing tunes he had learned from his father. Tommy was entranced and begged him to teach him how to play.

After supper the girls and Tommy drew up their chairs around the dining room table as usual. Here every night the three younger ones prepared their lessons for the next day. Jean generally read or sat with her father awhile, but tonight she answered Peg Moffat’s letter. It was read over twice, the letter that blended in so curiously with the coming of the cousins from New York.

Ever since Jean could remember she had drawn pictures. No one guessed how she loved the paintings in New York’s art galleries. They had seemed so real to her, the face of a Millet peasant lad crossing a stubble field at dawn; a Breton girl knitting as she walked homeward behind some straying sheep; one of Frans Hals’ Flemish boys, his chin pressed close to his violin, his deep eyes looking at you from under the brim of his hat.

Once she had read of Albrecht Dürer, painting his masterpieces while he starved. How the people whispered after his death that he had used his heart’s blood to mix with his wonderful pigments. Of course it was only a story, but Jean remembered it. When she saw a picture that seemed to hold one and speak its message of beauty, she would say to herself, “There is Dürer’s secret.”

And some day, if she ever could put on canvas the dreams that came to her, she meant to use the same secret.

“I do think Socrates was an old bore,” said Kit, yawning and stretching her arms, after a struggle with her homework. “Always mixing in and contradicting everybody and starting something. No wonder his wife was cranky.”

“He died beautifully,” Doris replied. “Something about a sunset and all his friends around him.”

“If you’ve finished your homework, why don’t you go to bed?” Jean told them. She finished her letter alone. It was not easy to write it. Peg wanted her to come down for the spring term. She could board with her if she liked. Expenses were very light.

Any expense would be heavy if piled on the monthly budget of Woodhow. Jean knew that. So she wrote back with a heartache behind the plucky refusal, and stepped out on the moonlit porch for a minute. It was clear and cold after the light snowfall. The stars were very faint. From the river came the sound of the waterfall.

“You stand steady, Jean Craig,” she said, between her teeth. “Don’t you dare be a quitter. You’ve got to see this winter straight through.”

3. Exhibit A

After her marriage to Judge Ellis, Becky had taken Ella Lou, her big collie dog, from Maple Grove over to the large white house behind its towering elms.

“I’ve had that dog for ten years and never saw another one like her for intelligence,” she would say, her head held a little bit high, her glasses halfway down her nose. “I told the Judge if he wanted me he’d have to take Ella Lou too.”

So it was Ella Lou’s familiar black nose that poked around the door the following morning when the New York cousins came over to get acquainted.

Jean never forgot her introduction to Beth Newell. She was about forty-seven then, with her son Elliott fully five inches taller than herself, but she looked about twenty-seven. Her feathery brown hair, her wide gray eyes, and quick, sweet laughter, endeared her to Jean right away.

Elliott was about fifteen, not one single bit like his mother, but broad-shouldered and blond and sturdy. It was so much fun, Kit said, to watch him take care of his mother.

“Where’s your high school out here?” he asked. “I’m at prep school specializing in math.”

“And how any son of mine can adore mathematics is beyond me,” Beth laughed. “I suppose it’s reaction. Do you like math, Jean?” She put her arm around the slender figure nearest her.

“I should say not,” Jean answered immediately, and then all at once, out popped her heart’s desire before she could check the words. Anybody’s heart’s desire would pop out with Beth’s eyes coaxing it. “I—I want to be an artist.”

“Keep on wishing and working then, dear, and as Becky says, if it is to be it will be.”

While the others talked of New England farms, these two sat together on the couch, Jean listening eagerly and wistfully while her cousin told of her own girlhood aims and how she carried them out.

“We didn’t have much money, so I knew I had to win out for myself. There were two boys to help bring up, and Mother was not well, but I used to sketch every spare moment I could, and I read everything on art I could find, even articles from old magazines in the attic. But most of all I sketched anything and everything, studying form and composition. When I was eighteen, I taught school for two terms in the country. Dad had said if I earned the money myself, I could go abroad, and how I worked to get that first nest egg.”

“How much did you get a week?”

“Twelve dollars, but my board was only three and a half in the country, and I saved all I could. Of course, at that time, it was cheaper to go abroad—and easier, too. I wouldn’t recommend your trying to go to Europe right now, but there are plenty of good schools and teachers in this country. If you really do want work and kind of hunt a groove you’re fitted for, you’ll always find something to do.”

Jean was leaning forward, her chin propped on her hands. “Yes, I know,” she said. “Do go on, please.”

“Ellen Brainerd, the teacher I studied under in Boston at one time, was one of New England’s marvelous spinsters with the far vision and cash enough to make a few of her dreams come true. Every year she used to take a group of art students to Europe, and with her encouragement I went the third year, helping her with a few of the younger ones, and paying part of my tuition that way. And oh,” Beth’s eyes were sparkling as she recalled her student days, “we set up our easels in the fountain square in Barcelona and hunted Dante types in Florence. We trailed through Flanders and Holland and lived for a time in Paris.”

“And you painted all those places?” exclaimed Jean. “I’ve wanted so much to go.”

“Well, I tried to,” Beth looked ruefully into the open fire. “Yes, I tried to paint like all the old masters and new masters, from Rembrandt to Degas. I did everything except try to develop a technique of my own.”

“But isn’t it important to study the techniques of the masters?”

“Yes, of course it is, but it was long after I came back home that I realized this. After David came over and stopped my career by marrying me I came back home. We lived out near New Rochelle and I began painting things of everyday life just as I saw them, the things I loved. It was our old apple tree out by the well, steeped in full May bloom, that brought me my first prize.”

“Gee, after Paris and all the rest!”

“Yes. And the next year they accepted our red barn in a snowstorm. I painted it from our kitchen window. Another was a water color of our Jersey calves standing knee deep in the brook in June. That is the kind of picture I have succeeded with. I think because, as I say, they are part of the home life and scenes I love best and so I have put a part of myself into them.”

Dürer’s heart’s blood, Jean thought to herself. “You’ve helped me so much, Beth,” she said aloud. “I was just longing to go back to the art school right now, and throw up everything here that I ought to do.”

“Keep on sketching every spare moment you can. Learn form and color and composition. Things are only beautiful according to the measure of our own minds. I’d like you to come to New York and study there. You could stay with me and share my studio when you weren’t in classes.”

“I’d love to come when Mother can spare me.” Jean’s eyes sparkled at this prospect.

“Well, do so, my dear,” Becky’s hands were laid on her shoulders from behind. “It’s a poor family that can’t support one genius.” She laughed in her full-hearted, joyous way. “Now, listen, all of you. I’ve come to invite you to have Christmas dinner with us.”

“But, Becky,” began Mrs. Craig, “there are so many of us—”

“Not half enough to fill the big old house. Some day after all the children are married and there are plenty of grandchildren, then we can talk about there being too many, though I doubt it. There’s always as much house room as there is heart room, if you only think so. Bring along the little one too.” She smiled over her shoulder at Jack, sitting in his favorite corner in the kitchen working industriously on one of Tommy’s model airplanes, and he gave a funny little one-sided grin back in shy return. “Billie’s going away to school after New Year’s, did I tell you?”

“Oh, golly,” cried Doris, so abruptly that everyone laughed at her. “Doesn’t it seem as if boys get all of the adventures of life just naturally.” Billie was the Judge’s grandson and Doris’s pal. He was two years older than Doris but they liked the same things and had been great friends ever since Doris first found his secret hide-out.

“He’s had adventures enough, but he does need the friendship of boys his own age. I don’t want him to be tied down with a couple of old folks like the Judge and myself. You’re never young but once. Besides, I always did want to go to these college football games and have a boy of mine in the huddle.”

“Gol—lee!” Doris exclaimed after the front door had closed on the last glimpse of Ella Lou’s plumed tail going out to the car. “Doesn’t it seem as if Becky leaves behind her a big sort of glow? She can say more nice things in a few minutes than anybody I ever heard. Except about Billie’s going away. I wonder why he didn’t come down and tell me himself.”

“Well, you know, Doris,” Kit remarked, “you haven’t a mortgage on Billie.”

“Oh, I don’t care if he goes away. It isn’t that,” Doris answered easily. “I wouldn’t like a boy that couldn’t hold his own with the other guys. Jean, did you realize the full significance of Becky’s invitation? No baking or cooking. No working our fingers to the bone for dinner on Christmas Day. I think she’s simply wonderful.”

Jean laughed and slipped up the back stairs to her own room. She felt around in her desk until she found her folio of sketches. The dining room was deserted excepting for Doris watering the rows of geraniums in the bay window, so Jean sat down to look over her old art work. Doris went upstairs to see her father, and Kit appeared with a frown on her face, puzzling over a knitting book.

“I hate the last days before Christmas,” she said savagely. “What on earth can we concoct at this last minute for Beth? I think I’ll knit her a pair of white cable-stitch gloves. If I can’t finish them in time I’ll give her one with the promise of the other. What can I give to Judge Ellis?”

“Something useful,” Jean answered.

“I can’t bear useful things for Christmas presents. Abby Tucker says she never gets any winter clothes till Christmas and then all the family unload useful things on her. I’m going to send her a bottle of perfume in a green leather case. I’ve had it for months and never touched it and she’ll adore it. I wish I could think of something for Billie too, something he’s never had and always wanted.”

“He’s going away,” Jean mused. “Why don’t you fix up a book of snapshots taken all around here. We took some marvelous ones this summer.”

“A boy wouldn’t like that.”

“He will when he’s homesick.” Jean opened her folio and began turning over her art school studies, mostly conventionalized designs from her beginnings in textile design. After her talk with Beth they only dissatisfied her. Suddenly she glanced up at the figure across the table, Kit with rumpled short curls, her bangs in disarray, and an utterly relaxed posture, elbows on the table, her feet sprawled in front of her. Jean’s pencil began to move over the back of her drawing pad. She was pleased to see how easy it was to catch Kit’s expression. It wasn’t so hard, the ruffled hair, the half-averted face. Kit’s face was such an odd mixture of whimsicality and determination. The rough sketch grew and all at once Kit glanced up and caught on to what was going on.

“Oh, it’s me, isn’t it, Jean? I wish you’d conventionalized me and embellished me. I’d like to look glamorous and sophisticated. That’s lovely, specially with the nose screwed up that way and my forehead wrinkled. I like that, it’s so subtle. Anyone getting one good look at the helpless frenzy in that downcast gaze—”

“Oh, Kit, be good,” laughed Jean. She held the sketch away from her critically. “Looks just like you.”

“OK, hang it up as ‘Exhibit A.’ I don’t mind. There’s a look of genius to it at that.”

“Naturally, I had to include that too,” replied Jean teasingly. Just then Mrs. Craig came into the room.

“Mom, look what my sister has done to me,” Kit cried tragically. Jean said nothing, only the color rose slowly in her cheeks as her mother stood looking at it.

“It’s the first since I left school,” she said, half-ashamed of the effort and all it implied.

“Finish it up, dear, and let me have it.”

“Oh, would you really like it, Mom?”

“Love it,” answered her mother promptly. “And don’t give up hope. Perhaps we may be able to squeeze in the spring term after all.”

4. Christmas at the Ellis Place

It took two trips in the car to transport the Christmas guests and gifts from Woodhow over to the Ellis place. It was one of the few pretentious houses in Elmhurst. For seven generations it had been in the Ellis family. The old house sat far back from the road with a double drive curving like a big U around it. Huge elms stood protectingly before it, and behind lay a succession of buildings from the old forge, no longer used, to the smokehouse. One barn stood across the road and another at the top of the lane.

Doris and Tommy were the first to run up the steps and into the center hall, almost bumping into Billie as he ran to meet them. Behind him came Mrs. Ellis in a soft gray suit. Her white blouse was fastened at the throat with a cameo pin. “Come right in, all of you,” she called happily. “Do stop jumping up and down, Tommy, you make me nervous. Merry Christmas.”

Up the long colonial staircase she led the way into the big guest room. Down in the library, Beth was playing softly on the big square piano, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem. The air was filled with the scent of pine and hemlock, and enticing odors of things cooking stole up the back stairs.

Doris and Billie retreated to a corner with the latter’s book supply, with Tommy and Jack peering over Billie’s shoulder to get a look too. It was hard to realize that this was really Billie, the Huckleberry Finn of the summer before. All of the old self-consciousness and shy abstraction had gone. Even the easy comradely manner in which he leaned over the Judge’s chair showed the good understanding and sure confidence between the two.

“Yes, he does show up real proud,” Becky agreed warmly with Mrs. Craig when they were all downstairs before the glowing fire. “Of course, we’re going to miss him when he goes away to school, but he’s getting along splendidly. I want him to go where he’ll associate with plenty of other boys. He’s lived alone with the ants and bees and rabbits long enough.”

As the others went in to dinner Jean lingered behind a minute to glance about the pleasant room. The fire crackled down in the deep old rock hearth. In each of the windows a white candle was burning brightly. Festoons of ground pine and evergreen draped the mantelpiece. Jean gazed out at the somber, frost-touched garden. There wasn’t one bit of peace in her heart, even while she fairly ached with the longing to be like the others.

“You’re a coward, Jean Craig, a deliberate coward,” she told herself. “You don’t like the country one bit. You love the city where everybody’s doing something, and it’s just a rat race for all. You’re longing for everything you can’t have, and you’re afraid to face the winter up here. You might just as well tell yourself the truth. You hate to be poor.”

There came a burst of laughter from the dining room and Kit calling to her to hurry up. It appeared that Doris, the tender-hearted, had said pathetically when Mrs. Gorham, the housekeeper, brought in the great roast turkey, “Poor old General Putnam!”

“That isn’t the General,” Billie called from his place. “The General ran away yesterday. First off, he lit up in the apple trees. Then as soon as he saw Ben was high enough, off he flopped and made for the corncrib. Just as he caught up with him there, he chose the wagon sheds and perched on the rafters, and when he’d almost got hold of his tail feathers, if he didn’t try the barn and all his flock after him, mind you. So he thought he’d let him roost till dark, and when he stole in after supper, the old codger had gone, bag and baggage. He’ll come back as soon as he knows our minds aren’t set on wishbones.”

“Then who is this?” asked Kit, quite as if it were some personage who rested in state on the big willow platter.

“That is some unnamed patriot who died for his country’s good,” said the Judge solemnly. “Who says white meat and who says dark?”

“For pity’s sake, child, what are you crying about?” exclaimed Becky after dinner while they were all sitting around the table talking leisurely.

Jack sobbed sleepily, “I—I don’t know.”

“He’s lonely for his own family,” Doris spoke up.

“I ain’t neither,” groaned Jack, “it’s too much mince pie.”

So under Becky’s directions, Billie took him up to his room, and administered “good hot water and soda.”

“Too bad, ’cause he missed seeing all the things taken off the tree,” said Becky, laying aside Jack’s presents for him, a long warm knit muffler from herself, a fine knife from the Judge with a pocket chain on it, a package of Billie’s books that he had had as a child, and ice skates from the Craigs. After much figuring over the balance left from their Christmas money they had gone together on the skates for him, knowing he would have more fun and exercise out of them than anything, and he needed something to bring back the sparkle to his eyes and the color to his cheeks.

“Put them all up on the bed beside him, and he’ll find them in the morning,” Billie suggested. “If you’ll let him stay, Mrs. Craig, I’ll bring him over.”

Tommy was the most excited over his Christmas presents. Kit and Jean had given him a hockey stick and puck to use on the river when it was frozen over, his mother and father a ping pong set that he was bursting to set up in the basement, a model airplane kit from Doris, and a pair of argyle socks and Norwegian sweater from the Judge and Becky. But Billie had given him his most coveted present, his own tame crow, Moki. “Where’d you get the name from, Billie?” he asked.

Billie stroked the smooth glossy back of the crow fondly. “I found him one day over in the pine woods on the hill. He was just a little thing then. The nest was in a dead pine, and somebody’d shot it all to pieces. The rest of the family had gone, but I found him fluttering around on the ground, scared to death with a broken wing. Ben helped me fix it, and he told me to call him Moki. You know he’s read everything, and he can talk some Indian, Pequod mostly, he says. He isn’t sure but what there may be some Pequod in him way back, he can talk it so well, and Moki means ‘watch out’ in Pequod. I call him that because I used to put him on my shoulder and he’d go anywhere with me through the woods, and call out when he thought I was in danger.”

“How do you know what he thought?”

“After you get acquainted with him, you’ll know what he thinks too,” answered Billie.

Always living in a little world of make-believe all her own, Doris received mostly fairy tales and what Kit called “princess stories.” Saved from the old home at Sandy Cove, her mother and father gave her two glass lamps for her bureau and Jean had made the shades herself, out of starched white dotted swiss. Becky had knit each of the girls soft angora socks and mittens in matching pastels, and Beth gave them old silver spoons that had been part of their great great-grandmother Peabody’s wedding silver.

“When you come to New York,” she told Jean, “I’ll show you many of her things.”

Jean nodded, remembering her longing to go away earlier in the evening. But the look in her father’s face made her realize more than anything that had happened in the long months of trial in the country, how worthwhile was the sacrifice that had brought him back into his home country for healing and happiness.

5. New York Dreams Come True

Christmas week had already passed when the surprise came. As Kit said the charm of the unexpected was always catching you unaware when you lived on the edge of nowhere.

Beth and Elliott had departed two days after Christmas for New York. Somehow even Tommy could not get really acquainted with this new boy cousin. Billie, once won, was a friend forever, but Elliott was a smiling, confident boy, quiet and resourceful, with little to say.

By this time, Jean had settled down contentedly to the winter regime. She was giving Doris piano lessons, and taking over more of the household duties with Kit back at school. School had been one of the problems to be solved that first year. Doris and Tommy went to the District schoolhouse at the crossroads, a one-story, red frame building. Doris had despised it thoroughly until she heard that her father had gone there in his boyhood, and she had found his old desk with his initials carved on it.

Kit was in high school, and the nearest one was over the hills six miles away. Every morning, she caught the school bus at the end of the drive. Mrs. Craig would often stand out on the wide porch in the early morning and watch the three go off.

“I think they’re wonderfully plucky,” she said one morning to Jean. “If they had been country girls, born and bred, it would be different, but stepping right out of Long Island shore life into these hills, you have all managed splendidly.”

“We’d have been a fine lot of quitters if we hadn’t,” Jean answered. “I think it’s been much harder for you than for us, Mom.”

And then the oddest, most unexpected thing had happened, something that strengthened the bond between them and made Jean’s way easier. Her mother had turned and had met Jean’s glance with a telltale flush on her cheeks and a certain whimsical glint in her eyes.

“Jean, do you never suspect me?” she had asked, half laughingly. “I know just exactly what a struggle you have gone through, and how you miss all that lies back in New York. I do too. If we could just divide up the time, and live part of the year here and the other part back at the Cove. I wouldn’t dare tell Becky that I had ever regretted, but there are days when the silence and the loneliness up here seem to crush so strongly in on one.”

“Oh, Mom! I never knew you felt like that.” Jean leaned her head against her shoulder. “I’ve been horribly selfish, just thinking of myself. But now that Dad’s getting strong again, you can go away, can’t you, for a little visit anyway?”

“Not without him,” Mrs. Craig said decidedly. “Perhaps by next summer we can, I don’t know. I don’t want to suggest it until he feels the need of a change too. But I’ve been thinking about you, Jean, and I want you to go to school in New York for a little while anyway. Beth and I had a talk together before she left, and I felt proud of you, when I heard her speak of your work. She says the greatest worry on her mind is that Elliott has no definite ambition, no aim. He has always had everything that they could give him, and she begins now to realize it was all wrong.”

“But, Mother, how can I go and leave you?”

“I want you to, Jean. You have been a great help to me. Don’t think I haven’t noticed everything you have done to save me worry, because I have.”

“Well, you had Dad to care for—”

“I know, and he’s so much better now that I haven’t any dread left.”

Peg Moffat wrote after receiving her Christmas box from Jean. Jean had gathered pine cones, ground pine, sprays of red berries, and little winter ferns. It was one of several she had sent to friends in the city for whom she felt she could not afford expensive presents.

Peg had caught the real spirit of it, and had written back urgently. “You must run down if only for a few days, Jean. I put the pines and other greens around the studio for decorations at Christmas and they just talk at me about you all the time. Never mind about new clothes. Come along.”

It was these same new clothes that secretly worried Jean all the same, but with some new ribbon for two of her formals, her brown wool suit cleaned, and a new feather for her hat, she felt she could make the trip if it were only possible.

It was the letter that arrived the following day that really caused a stir in the family. Beth wrote to Jean that there was a special course beginning the following week at the Academy in textile designing. It was only a two-months’ course so it wouldn’t be very expensive and Jean could stay with her, eliminating the problem of board. “I really think if you can possibly be spared from home at this time, it would be a wise thing for you to enroll in the course. It is in the field you’re interested in and you will learn both valuable and practical things from it. Please write me immediately and say you’ll come.”

When Jean showed the letter to her mother, her answer was swift and decisive. “An opportunity such as this cannot be ignored. Of course you will go.”

The winter sunshine had barely clambered to the crests of the hills the following morning when Becky drove up with Ella Lou.

“Thought I’d get an early start so I could sit awhile with you,” she called breezily. “The Judge had to go to court at Putnam. Real sad case, too. Some of our neighborhood boys in trouble. I told him not to dare send them up to any State homes or reformatories, but to put them on probation and make their families pay the fines.”

Kit was just putting on her stadium boots. “Oh, what is it, Becky?” she called from the kitchen. “What’s the news?”

“Well, I guess it’s pretty exciting for the poor mothers.” Mrs. Ellis put her feet up on the stool. “There’s been considerable things stolen lately, just odds and ends of harness and bicycle supplies from the store, and three hams from Miss Bugbee’s cellar, and so on; a little here and a little there, hardly no more’n a real smart magpie could make away with. But the men set out to catch whoever it might be, and if they didn’t land three of our own boys. It makes every mother in town shiver.”

“None that we know, are there?” asked Doris, with wide eyes.

“I guess not, unless maybe Abby Tucker’s brother Martin. There his poor mother scrimped and saved for weeks to buy him a bicycle out of her butter-and-egg money, and it just landed him in mischief. Off he kited, first here and then there with the two Lonergan boys, and they had a camp up toward Cynthy Allan’s place, where they played they were cave robbers or something. I had the Judge up and promise he’d let them off on probation. There isn’t one of them over fifteen, and Elmhurst can’t afford to let her boys go to prison. And I shall drive over this afternoon and give their mothers some good advice.”

“Why not the fathers too?” asked Jean. “Seems as if mothers get all the blame when boys go wrong.”

“No, it isn’t that exactly. I knew the two fathers when they were youngsters too. Fred Lonergan was as nice and obliging a lad as ever you did see, but he always liked cider too well, and that made him lax. I used to tell him when he couldn’t get it any other way, he’d squeeze the dried winter apples hanging still on the wild trees. He’ll have to pay the money damage, but the real sorrow of the heart will fall on Emily, his wife. She used to be our minister’s daughter, and she knows what’s right. And the Tucker boy never did have any sense or his father before him, but his mother’s the best quilter we’ve got. If I’d been in her shoes I’d have put Philemon Tucker right straight out of the house just as soon as he began to squander and hang around the grocery store swapping stories with men just like him. It’s her house from her father, and I shall put her right up to making Philemon walk a chalk line after this, and do his duty as a father.”

“Oh, you’re a glorious peacemaker,” exclaimed Mrs. Craig. “Hurry, children, you’ll be late for school.” She hurriedly put the last touches to three hearty lunches, and followed them out to the front porch and watched them out of sight.

“Lovely morning,” said Becky, fervently. “The ice on the trees makes the country look like fairyland.”

“And here I’ve been shivering ever since I got out of bed,” Jean cried, laughingly. “It seemed so bleak and cheerless. You find something beautiful in everything, Becky.”

“Well, happiness is a sort of habit, I guess, Jeannie. Come tell me, now, how you are fixed about going away? That’s why I came down.”

“You mean—”

“I mean in clothes. Don’t mind my speaking right out, because I know that Beth will want to take you places, and you must look right. And don’t you say one word against it, Margaret,” as Mrs. Craig started to speak. “The child must have her chance. Makes me think, Jean, of my first silk dress. Nobody knew how much I wanted one, and I was about fourteen, skinny and overgrown, with pigtails down my back. A well-to-do aunt in Boston sent a silk dress to my little sister Susan who died. I can see it now, just as plain as can be, a sort of dark bottle-green with a little spray of violets here and there. Susan was sort of pining anyway, and green made her look too pale, so the dress was set aside for me. Mother said she’d let the hem down and face it when she had time. But there was a picnic and my heart hungered for that silk dress to wear. I managed somehow to squeeze into it, and slip away with the other girls before Mother noticed me.”

“But did it fit you?” asked Jean.

“Fit me?” Becky laughed. “Fit me like an acorn cap would a bullfrog. I let the hem down as far as I could, but didn’t stop to hem it or face it, and there it hung, six inches below my petticoat, with the sun shining through as nice as could be. My Sunday School teacher took me to one side and said severely, ‘Rebecca Craig, does your mother know that you’ve let that hem down without fixing it properly?’ Well, it did take away my hankering for a silk dress. Now, run along upstairs and get out all your wardrobe so we can look it over.”

Jean obeyed for somehow Becky swept away objections before her airily. And the wardrobe was at a low ebb.

Becky dragged her chair over beside the couch now, and took inventory of the pile of clothing Jean laid there.

“You’ll want a good knockabout sport coat like the other girls are wearing. Then a couple of new sweaters and skirts for school. Now, what about date dresses?”

Here Jean felt quite proud as she laid out her assortment. She and Kit had always gone out a good deal at the Cove, and she had a number of well-chosen, expensive dresses.

“They look all right to me, but I guess Beth will know what to do to them, with a touch here and there. Well, if I were you, I’d just bundle all I wanted to take along in the way of pretty things into the trunk and let Beth tell you what to do with them. I’ll give you the money to buy the other things you’ll need in New York. Their stores have more selection than what we’ve got around here. Good heavens, child, you’ll squeeze the breath out of me,” as Jean gave her a hug of thanks. “I must be going along.”

6. Leaving Home

Thursday of that week was set for Jean’s departure. This gave very little time for preparations, and Kit plunged into them with a zest and vigor that made Jean laugh.

“Well, so little ever happens up here we just have to make the most of goings and comings,” said Kit exuberantly. “And besides, I’m rather fond of you, in an offhand sort of way.”

“Of course, we’re all glad for you,” Doris put in seriously. “It’s an opportunity, Mom says, and I suppose we’ll all get one in time.”

Jean glanced up as they sat around the last evening, planning and talking. Out in the side hall stood her trunk, packed, locked, and strapped, ready for the early trip in the morning. Tommy was trying his best to nurse a frost-bitten chicken back to life out by the kitchen stove, where Jack was mending Doris’s skates. Kit and Doris were freely giving her advice.

“Enjoy yourself all you can, but think of us left at home and don’t stay too long,” advised Doris.

“Yes, and learn all about designing things for people. Personally I don’t want to make things for people,” Kit said emphatically. “I want to soar alone. I’m going with Sally to live on the top of a mountain. But, gosh, I do envy you, Jean, after all. You must write and tell us every single thing that happens, for we’ll love to hear it all. Don’t be afraid it won’t be interesting. I wish you’d even keep a diary. Buzzy told me once that his grandmother did, every day from the time she was fourteen, and they had a perfectly awful time getting rid of them when she died. Imagine burning barrels full of diaries.”

Tommy came out of the kitchen to tell them to be quiet. “I’ve just this minute got that chicken to sleep. They’re such light sleepers, but I think it will get well. It only had its poor toes frostbitten. Jack found it on the ground this morning, crowded off the perch. Chickens look so civilized, and they’re not. They’re regular savages.”

There flashed across Jean’s mind a picture of the evenings ahead without the home circle, without the familiar living room, and the other room upstairs where at this time her mother would be brushing out her soft hair, and listening to some choice bit of reading Mr. Craig had run across during the day and saved for her.

“I just wish I had a chance to go West like Sally,” Kit said suddenly. “When I’m old enough, I’m going to take up a homestead claim and live on it with a wonderful horse and some dogs, wolf dogs. I wish Sally’d wait till we were both old enough, and had finished school. She could be a forest ranger and I’d raise—”

“Ginseng,” Jean suggested mischievously. “Dopey. It takes far more courage than that just to stick it out on one of these old barren farms, all run-down and fairly begging for somebody to take them in hand. What do you want to hunt a western claim for? Besides, I don’t think there are any left anymore.”

“Space,” Kit answered with feeling. “I don’t want to see my neighbors’ chimney pots sticking up all around me through the trees. I want to gaze off at a hundred hilltops, and not see somebody’s scarecrow waggling empty sleeves at me. Sally and I have the spirits of eagles.”

“Isn’t that nice,” said Doris pleasantly. “It’ll make such a good place to spend our vacations, kids. While Sally and Kit are out soaring, we can fish and ride and have really swell times.”

“Cut it out,” Jean whispered, as Kit’s ire started to rise. “It’s getting late, really, and I have to get up while it is still night, you know. Good night all.”

The start next morning was made at seven, before the sun was up. The tears were wet on Jean’s cheeks as she climbed into the seat beside Kit, and turned to wave goodbye to the group on the porch. She had not realized before what this first trip away from home meant.

“Write us everything,” called Doris, waving both hands to her.

“Come back soon,” yelled Tommy.

But her mother went back into the house in silence, away from the living room into the study where Jean had kept her own bookcase, desk, and a few choice pictures. A few old paintbrushes lay beside Jean’s worn pigskin gloves on the table. Mrs. Craig picked up both, laid her cheek against the gloves and closed her eyes. The years were racing by so fast, so fast, she thought, and mothers must be wide-eyed and generous and fearless, when the children suddenly begin to top heads with one, and feel impatient to be out on their own.

Ready to try it alone, she thought. If it had been Kit now, she would not have felt this curious little pang. Kit was self-sufficient and full of buoyancy that was bound to carry her over obstacles, but Jean was sensitive and dependent on her environment for spur and stimulation. She heard a step behind her and turned eagerly as Mr. Craig came into the room, looking for her. He saw the brushes and the gloves in her hand, and the look in her eyes uplifted to his own. Very gently he folded his arms around her, his cheek pressed close to her brown hair.

“She’s only seventeen,” whispered Mrs. Craig.

“Eighteen in April,” he answered, “and dear, she isn’t trusting to her own strength for the flight. Don’t you know this quiet little girl of ours is mounted on Pegasus, and riding him handily in her upward trend?”

But there was no winged horse or genius in view to Jean’s blurred sight as she watched the road unroll before her, and looking back, saw only the curling smoke from Woodhow’s white chimneys.

7. Aldo from Italy

“This is truly beautiful,” Jean said, in breathless admiration, as she laid aside her coat and hat, and stood in the big living room in Hastings. The beautiful home not far from New York had been a revelation to her. Overlooking the Hudson River, the view, although totally different, reminded her a little of her former home at Sandy Cove.

The center hall had a blazing fire in the big old rock fireplace, and Victoria, a prize-winning Angora, opened her wide blue eyes at the newcomer but did not stir. In the living room was another open fire. Influence of an artist’s hand was quite evident in the details of the room. There were flowering plants at the windows, and fresh roses on the table in gracefully studied arrangements.

“You know, or maybe you don’t know,” said Beth, “that we have one hobby here, raising flowers, and especially roses. We exhibit every year, and you’ll grow to know them and love the special varieties just as I do. You have no idea, Jean, of the thrill when you find a new bloom different from all the rest.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised to find out anything new and wonderful about this place.” Jean laughed, leaning back in the deep-seated chair. Like the rest of the room’s furniture it was slipcovered in chintz, deep cream, cross-barred in dull green, with splashy pink roses scattered here and there. Two large white Polar rugs lay on the polished floor.

“If those were not members of the Peabody family, old and venerated, they never would be allowed to bask before my fire,” Beth said. “But way back there was an Abner Peabody who sailed the northern seas, and used to bring back trophies and bestow them on members of his family as future heirlooms. Consequently, we fall over these bears in the dark, and bless Abner’s precious memory.”

After she was thoroughly warmed up and had drunk a cup of scalding tea, Jean found her way up to the room that was to be hers during her visit. It was the sunniest kind of a retreat in daffodil yellow and rich brown. The furniture was all in warm, deep-toned ivory, and there were springlike bouquets of daffodils everywhere.

“Gee, I think this is just darling,” Jean gasped, standing in the middle of the floor and gazing around happily. “It’s just as if spring were already here.”

“I put a drawing board here for you too,” Beth told her. “Of course you’ll use my studio any time you like, but it’s handy to have a corner all your own at odd times. I forgot to mention it before, but we’re going to have a guest for the weekend. A boy whose parents I knew in Sorrento years ago. His name is Aldo Thomas. His father was an American sculptor who married an Italian Contessa. Aldo is also studying art here in New York this winter and lives with his aunt. He has inherited his father’s artistic talent so I know you will find much in common. And I also think you’ll do each other a world of good.”

“How?”

“Well, you’re thoroughly an American girl, Jean, and Aldo is half Italian. You’ll understand what I mean when you see him. He is high-strung and temperamental, and you are so steady-nerved and well-balanced.”

Jean thought over this last when she was alone, and smiled to herself. Why on earth did one have to give outward signs of temperament, she wondered, before people believed one had sensitive feelings or responsive emotions? Must she wear her heart on her sleeve for a sort of personal barometer? Peg Moffat was high-strung and temperamental too. So was Kit. They both indulged now and then in mental fireworks, but nobody took them seriously, or considered it a mark of genius. She felt just a shade of half-amused tolerance toward this Aldo person who was to get any balance or poise out of her own nature.

“If Beth knew for one minute,” she told the face in the oval mirror of the dressing table, “what kind of a person you really are, she’d never trust you to balance anybody’s temperament.”

But the following day brought a trim car to the door, and out stepped Aldo. And Jean, coming down the wide center staircase, saw Beth before the fire with a tall, thin figure, whose clothes seemed to hang on him carelessly as if he wore them as a concession to convention.

“This is my cousin Jean,” said Mrs. Newell in her pleasant way. Aldo extended his hand diffidently. “I want you two to be very good friends.”

“But I know, surely, we shall be,” Aldo said easily. And at the sound of his voice Jean’s prejudices melted. He had very dark eyes with lids that drooped slightly at the outer corners. His thin face emphasized his prominent cheekbones and his skin was fair in spite of his Italian heritage.

“Now, you won’t be treated one bit as guests,” Beth told them. “You must come and go as you like, and have the freedom of the house. I keep my own study hours and like to be alone then. Do as you like and be happy. Run along, both of you.”

“She is wonderful, isn’t she?” Aldo said as they walked out to the cliff above the river. “She makes me feel always as if I were a ship waiting with loose sails, and all at once—a breeze—and I am on my way again. You have not been to Sorrento, have you? You can see the little fisher boats from our terraces. It is all so beautiful, but now the villa is quite shabby and parts of it are gone. It was bombed during the war and there are no materials to rebuild it. But it is still beautiful.”

Jean was strangely charmed by him. He was so different from anyone she had ever known. None of the boys she knew would have talked so poetically, even if they had known the right words and phrases to use. That would be sissy stuff.

“I wonder if you ever knew Peg Moffat. She’s a Long Island girl from the Cove where I used to live, and she lived abroad every year until the war came, for two or three months with her mother. She is an artist.”

“I don’t know her,” Aldo shook his head doubtfully. “You see over there, while we entertained a great deal, I was away at school in Milan or Rome and scarcely met anyone excepting in the summertime, and then we went to my aunt’s villa up on Lake Maggiore. Ah, but that is the most beautiful spot of all. There is one island there called Isola Bella. I wish I could carry it right over here with me and set it down for you to see. It is all terraces and splendid old statuary, and when you see it at sunrise it is like a jewel, it glows so with color.”

Jean stood looking down at the river, listening. There was always a lingering love in her heart for the beauty and romance of Europe, and especially of Italy. “I’d love to go there,” she said, with a little sigh.

“And that is what I was always saying when I was there, and my father told me of this country. I wanted to see it so. He would tell me of the great gray hills that climb to the north, and the craggy broken shoreline up through Maine, and the little handful of amethyst isles that lie all along it. He was born in New Hampshire, at Portsmouth. We are going up to see the house some day, but I know just what it looks like. It stands close down by the water’s edge in the old part of the town, and there is a big rambling garden with flagged walks. His grandfather was a shipbuilder and sent his ships out all over the world. And he had just one daughter. There was an artist who came up from the south in one of his ships, and he was taken very ill. So they took him in as a guest, and the daughter cared for him. And when he was well, what do you think?”

“They married.”

“But more than that,” he said warmly. “He carved the most wonderful figureheads for my great grandfather’s ships. All over the world they were famous. His son was my father.”

It was indescribable, the tone in which he said the last. It told more than anything else how much he admired this sculptor father of his. That night Jean wrote to Ralph.