"Aren't you ever going to get up?" demanded Sarah.
Rosemary sat up and regarded her sister sleepily.
"Did you hear the violin?" she asked.
"What violin?" Sarah's surprise was an answer in itself.
While she dressed, hurried by the impatient younger girls, for Shirley soon joined Sarah, Rosemary told of the music she had heard the night before.
"Mother heard it, too; we both saw the old man," she asserted when they were inclined to be skeptical and scoffed that she had been dreaming.
Winnie had evidently risen "with the larks" as she was fond of declaring (though when pressed by Sarah, intent on the habits and traits of larks, she had been forced to admit that she had never seen one) for the windows on the first floor were unlocked and open to the fresh morning air and the upper half of the Dutch door folded back to let in a flood of sunshine.
"Breakfast will be ready in ten minutes," Winnie greeted the girls. "Ten minutes, no more, no less; and you're not to set foot out of the house until you've eaten, because I don't intend to spend my time fishing Sarah out of the well and pulling Shirley from under a hay stack while the muffins are getting cold."
Mrs. Willis, coming downstairs, cool and sweet in a blue linen gown, laughed at this arraignment but she, too, insisted that the farm should be seen after breakfast.
"And do be careful about hindering Mr. and Mrs. Hildreth," she cautioned them as they sat down at the table. "They are very busy folk, I know, and you mustn't expect them to answer too many questions. Richard and Warren will have their work laid out for them and can't be distracted—you will have weeks to explore Rainbow Hill and I don't want you to feel that you must be shown everything in one day."
"I'll help you, Mother," promised Rosemary. "Sarah and Shirley can go out and play, but I'll help you and Winnie unpack."
However, when Sarah and Shirley dashed out of the house a few minutes later, Rosemary was with them. Mrs. Willis had explained that her eldest daughter could help her more by "looking after" the impetuous Shirley and that unknown quantity, Sarah, than by remaining in the house to open the trunks and boxes.
"I am going to do just as much as I can and then stop," the mother said, smilingly. "I promised Hugh and Winnie to be temperate and not tire myself needlessly. Hugh will probably call up this morning and I want to be here when he does. You run along with Sarah and Shirley, Rosemary—Mother feels safe about them when she knows you are with them."
Rosemary flushed with pleasure and resolved to be worthy of the confidence. She would be more patient than she had ever been before.
"It's just like Rosemary, to offer to stay in and help," said Winnie, watching the three girls cut across the lawn in the direction of the barns, "you could see plain she was crazy to go out and look around, but she never grabs what she wants—that child was born unselfish."
Rainbow Hill was what, in the farming parlance, is known as "an all around" place. That meant the owner, Mr. Hammond, believed in general farming as distinguished from the specialized type such as truck farming or dairying. Some oats and wheat were grown at Rainbow Hill, several acres of tomatoes raised yearly for the cannery, a good crop of hay harvested; there would be one "field crop" raised for marketing, generally potatoes or cabbage. The milk from a small herd of cows was sold at the local creamery and all food for the animals on the place was grown on the farm. How much hard work was bound up in the tilling of the well-ordered fields, the cultivation of the thrifty orchard and the healthy aspect presented by the live stock was something the three Willis girls could not be expected to grasp at once. Everything was beautifully neat, from the freshly swept barn floor to the white-washed chicken houses; not a weed showed its head in the large vegetable garden and a town-bred girl might easily make the mistake of thinking that this state of affairs was always to be found on every farm—something to be taken for granted, like fresh eggs or new milk.
It was in the vegetable garden that they found Warren Baker. He was dressed in a clean blue shirt and dark blue overalls and he was on his knees beside a long row of thin green spikes.
"Good morning," he greeted the visitors politely. "Out seeing the sights? But didn't you forget your hats?"
Warren wore an immense straw hat that shaded the back of his neck as effectively as his face.
"Oh, we don't want to bother with hats," said Rosemary carelessly. "Aren't those onions you're weeding?"
"They're onions," answered Warren, "but I'm not weeding them; I'm thinning them. If you stayed in one place in the sun as long as I do, a hat would feel pretty good."
Sarah asked why he was "thinning" the onions and he explained that he pulled out some to give those left more room to grow.
"This the first time you've been on a farm?" he asked her.
"The first time I ever stayed on a farm," said Sarah with precision. "I've been to different farms with Hugh—that's my brother; but we only stayed a little while. I think, when I grow up, I'll have a farm and be an animal doctor."
"Sarah loves animals," Rosemary explained. "We've seen the horses in the barn and the chickens and the pigs; but we didn't see a cow yet."
"Rich turns them into the lane as soon as he finishes milking," said Warren, rising from the onion row. "I'll go down and let them into the pasture now and you can come and see them, if you like."
"Well—you're sure it won't be a trouble?" hesitated Rosemary.
"Mother says we mustn't bother you," added Shirley primly, speaking for the first time.
"You can't bother me," said the boy so heartily that he reminded Rosemary of Jack Welles.
"Then don't you have to work, only when you want to?" suggested Sarah who unconsciously then and there outlined her ideals of labor.
Warren, leading the way out of the vegetable garden, laughed.
"Sure I have to work," he said good-naturedly. "If you knew Mr. Hildreth, you wouldn't ask a question like that; he does two men's work every day of his life and encourages everyone else to follow his example. But you see, I can talk and work, too; it's all right to talk, if you don't stop work to do it."
"Is it?" queried Sarah doubtfully.
"Not a question about it," declared Warren, taking down two bars for the girls to go through into a green lane fenced in on either side with a heavy wire fence. "Talk and work, mixed, are all right, but all talk and no work makes Jack a poor hired man—haven't you ever heard that proverb?"
Sarah puzzled over this until they came up with the cows and then she forgot it promptly. There were ten of the sleek, cream-colored bossies, gentle, affectionate creatures who pressed their deep noses trustingly into Warren's hands and begged him to open the wide gate that kept them from the shady pasture.
He swung the gate back and they moved slowly forward, beginning to crop the grass before they were half way through.
"There's a brook," cried Shirley, catching sight of the water. "I want to go wading—come on!"
"Not now," said Rosemary, catching Shirley by her frock as though she feared that small girl might plunge into the stream head-first, "after lunch, dear, if Mother is willing."
"We want to do a lot of other things first," Sarah reminded her. "We haven't been up to the top of the windmill yet."
Warren turned and looked at her, a twinkle in his eyes.
"You wouldn't like it if you got up there and your sash caught on the wheel," he told her. "Think how you would look going round and round like a pinwheel. Folks would come to look at you instead of the circus."
"I wouldn't catch my sash," said Sarah positively. "There's a little platform up there and I could stand on that. And I saw the little iron stairs that go up inside like a lighthouse."
The twinkle went out of Warren Baker's eyes and his pleasant voice was serious when he spoke.
"There are just two places on this farm from which you are barred," he said, his glance including the attentive three before him. "One is the windmill; the door is usually locked and I don't know how it came to be left open this morning. But locked or not, keep out of it—it is no place for anyone unless a mechanic wants to oil or repair the machinery.
"The other place is the tool house. Mr. Hildreth has a bunch of fine tools and they're the apple of his eye—apples, would be more accurate, perhaps. The tool house is usually locked, too, and there are only three keys; but if you do find it unlocked some fine morning, take my advice and stay outside. Or, if you must go in, don't touch a tool. The rest of the farm is open to you and the four winds—with reasonable restrictions, I ought to add."
Three pairs of eyes stared at him so solemnly, that he felt uncomfortable.
"I'm not laying down the law in my own name," he said earnestly. "Mr. Hildreth is mighty particular about how things are run at Rainbow Hill and I thought I could save you future trouble by warning you. Of course I only work for him—'hired man' is my title—and very much at your service."
There was so much boyish honesty in the speech, so much genuine good will and an utter absence of attempt to strike a pose, not unmixed with worth-while pride and a desire that his position should be clear to them from the start, that even Sarah, who was quick to resent real or fancied efforts to "boss" her, answered his smile with her own characteristic grin.
"Of course we won't go where we shouldn't," said Rosemary warmly. "At least not now, when there is no excuse for not knowing."
But Warren, noting that Sarah became absorbed in the antics of a beetle crossing her shoe, registered a resolve to see that the windmill door was kept locked.
"There's your brother," said Shirley, pointing to a figure coming down the lane.
"Rich isn't my brother—he's my pal," replied Warren. "And Mr. Hildreth is with him, so you'll have a chance to meet a real farmer and a good one."
"Then I can ask him about the insides of cats," was Sarah's rather disconcerting response.
"You're the doctor's sisters," declared Mr. Hildreth when he was within earshot. Then, to Warren, "That row of onions isn't done."
Mr. Hildreth, the girls were to learn speedily, made statements. He did not ask questions. And usually his declarations stood unchallenged.
He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a rather grim, weather-beaten face and shrewd blue eyes. A hard worker, his neighbors said, and accustomed to demanding, and receiving, the best from his helpers. He was intolerant of laziness—"shiftlessness" the country phrase ran—but he had the reputation of being a just taskmaster and he could be very kind.
"I'm going back and finish the onions now," said Warren. "I came down to let the cows out."
"Rich was late this morning," asserted Rich's employer, "because he wasted time at the creamery. We're going to fix the line fence."
Rosemary looked at Richard Gilbert who carried a box of tools. He did not seem to mind the accusation brought against him—though, as a matter of fact, he had waited to get a piece of ice for Winnie and this had delayed him at the creamery—but then Richard was not easily offended. He was inclined to be easy going and was much less apt to "fire up" than Warren.
"I'm going with Warren," announced Sarah, who liked her new friend very much and saw no reason for leaving him in doubt of her feelings.
Mr. Hildreth stalked toward the brook, followed by Richard and Warren, and Sarah started up the lane. Rosemary, picking a buttercup for Shirley, was surprised to hear a sudden shout.
"Mr. Hildreth!" yelled Sarah—there is no other word for it—"Mr. Hildreth! Can you make violin strings from a cat's insides?"
The farmer, knee-deep in the brook, looked up, startled. Rosemary stared and Shirley looked interested. As for Richard and Warren, they laughed immoderately.
"A girl in school said you could," went on Sarah, still shouting. "Violin strings, she said—can you?"
"Sure—haven't you heard cats sing at night?" called back Mr. Hildreth, having recovered his breath. "Any cat that's a good singer, will make good violin strings. Miss—er—what's her name?" he questioned Richard who was holding up one end of the sagging wire.
"That's Sarah," said Richard.
"You ask Warren, Sarah," called the farmer. "He'll tell you."
And as Warren walked on, Sarah, tagging after him, began an exhaustive and relentless study of cats and violin strings.
Richard held the wire carefully, but his dancing brown eyes suggested that he was not too busy to talk.
"There was an old man playing the violin last night," said Rosemary. "Did you hear him?"
Richard nodded.
"Old Fiddlestrings," he answered. "You'll probably hear him every moonlight night. Winter and summer he goes up and down the road playing his one tune."
"It was the 'Serenade,'" said Rosemary. "Does he always play that? Where does he live? Is he poor?"
"Not so poor as he is crazy," declared Richard sententiously. "He has enough money so he never has to work. He lives in a crazy little cabin on the other side of the hill and has a garden where he raises herbs and sells them—they say he does a big business with the city drugstores."
"Guess you'd call it work, digging in that yard of his," observed Mr. Hildreth drily.
"Well—what I mean is, he doesn't have to go out and work by the week," explained Richard.
"And his music?" asked Rosemary, pulling Shirley back as the investigating toe of her sandal threatened to dip into the water.
"He only plays when there is a moon," said Richard, his merry face sobering. "Seems like he can't rest on a moonlight night. Sometimes he walks up and down the road for hours and sometimes he sits out in his yard and plays; but they say he never goes to bed and he never lays his violin down till morning."
"He's a good fiddler," said Mr. Hildreth.
"His music was wonderful," glowed Rosemary. "Mother and I couldn't go to bed as long as he played. I'd give anything if I could play like that!"
"You play the piano just as nice!" chirped Shirley loyally.
"Say, there is a piano in the house, isn't there!" Richard almost dropped the wire. "Can you play?"
"Not as well as my mother," said Rosemary, "but I've studied several years."
"Can you play 'Old Black Joe'?" demanded Richard. "That's a song I always liked."
The contrast between his cheerful, open face and his melancholy taste in music was so great that Rosemary could not help laughing. But she said she could play "Old Black Joe" and promised to play it for him at the first opportunity.
Those early days at Rainbow Hill were not long enough. That was the general complaint. Mrs. Willis and Winnie, busy in the house, said evening came before the delightful tasks were half started or the more prosaic duties completed. There was the garden to be visited, the flower vases to be filled, the porch made cool and clean and comfortable, every morning; Winnie reveled in her kitchen, hung over the great pans of milk in the speckless pantry and gloated as she skimmed the heavy cream. Sarah said she saved all the cream till Hugh was expected and then served it up to him, whipped stiff in the largest bowl she could find, with fresh, hot gingerbread, the doctor's favorite dessert.
The girls roamed the place from one end to the other and knew every inch of the farm as well as the Hildreths did, in a week's time. They came in only to sleep, Winnie declared, but Mrs. Willis insisted, with a gentle firmness that was effective even with the determined Sarah, that the most strenuous day should end at five o'clock. Then, freshly bathed and dressed, they rested quietly till dinner and spent the short evening on the porch or in the pleasant living-room.
That living-room proved a magnet to Richard and Warren. As soon as the lamp was lighted and Rosemary or her mother sat down at the piano, the boys seemed irresistibly drawn to the little white house. Their evenings with the Hildreths had been dreary in the extreme—both the farmer and his hard-working wife practised and preached that "early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise"—and they either sat silently in the twilight until nine o'clock when they went to bed and set the alarm clock for five, or lit a single lamp in the kitchen and read agricultural papers by its uncertain rays.
"I hope I can be as good a farmer as Joe Hildreth," Warren once confided to Mrs. Willis, "but I think I'll have one less cultivator on my farm and a couple more lights in my farmhouse."
No wonder that the shaded lights of that other living-room, which cast a soft and rosy glow over the simple wicker furniture and cretonne cushions, the books and magazines and the always open piano, spelled comfort and cheer to the lonely young fellows miles distant from relatives and old friends. Richard Gilbert said it was the books that drew him, while Warren thought the music lured him. In reality, it was the gracious, lovely presence of the mother, gentle Mrs. Willis who never raised her voice above its soft, even level, who moved noiselessly about the house and whose step was so light on the stair that one might easily not hear her cross the hall and enter a room. But she could not leave it that her absence was not noted and her low laughter missed.
No wonder that twenty times a day the cry, "Where's Mother?" sounded through the house. No wonder that Doctor Hugh called up every morning and "ran in" as often as his busy schedule would allow, or bore her off with him to inspect the progress of the building at the Eastshore house. No wonder the nervous, driving energy of Mrs. Hildreth's nature was turned into channels that flowed back to the little lady in the white house bearing gifts of the garden and dairy. And no wonder at all that two boys, who had never known their own mothers, found no words with which to tell her what her interest and friendship meant to them.
In time there came to exist a tacit agreement between Richard and Warren that Mrs. Willis was not to be "worried" and in the effort to spare her they assumed, unconsciously, a brotherly guardianship over the three girls for which their mother was silently grateful. It was obvious that she could not tramp the fields with them and equally apparent that they would go wherever their healthy young active curiosity might lead. Richard and Warren took upon themselves the duties of friendly counselors—and had their hands full from the start.
"Country life may be healthy," said Winnie one Saturday when Doctor Hugh was spending the week-end at Rainbow Hill, "but I don't know as I'd call it exactly beautifying. Rosemary has a crop of freckles on her nose that will probably last all winter and Sarah is about as black as the automobile curtains. As for Shirley, between the briar scratches and the bruises on her hands and arms, she looks more like a strawberry plant, than a natural, human child."
Winnie was genuinely grieved at the girls' indifference to their looks, especially Rosemary of whom she was very proud, but Doctor Hugh declared that he liked to see folk look as though they lived outdoors.
"They live outdoors all right," Winnie informed him, a trifle tartly, "in fact I don't see why you didn't lug up a couple of tents and turn 'em loose inside. Rosemary is going to be blown out of the window some fine night and, to my way of thinking, it's better to start sleeping on the ground than to land there sudden like, right in a sound sleep."
Rosemary laughed. She was sitting on the arm of her brother's chair and, despite the freckles across her nose, presented a charming picture of a pretty girl in a dull rose frock.
"Fresh air is good for you, isn't it, Hugh?" she demanded. "Winnie is always saying I ought to sleep in the 'Cave of the Winds.'"
"I wouldn't say a word, if you'd be reasonable," said Winnie, setting the table as she talked. "But it can rain or blow great guns and you never as much rise up to put the window down; you might think it was nailed up. Last night the rain poured in and soaked through to the hall ceiling and what Mrs. Hammond is going to say when she sees that, I don't know."
"We must have it repapered for her," said the doctor lazily. "Shirley lamb, there seems to be something wrong with your dress—what is that oozing out of your pocket?"
Winnie glanced at the discomfited Shirley.
"It's an egg—a fresh egg," she said resignedly. "I sent her out to get me one for the French toast and I suppose she forgot to give it to me. Never mind, Shirley, it's nothing to sit on an egg, dearie; the mother hen does it every day. For goodness' sake, what are you laughing at, Hughie?"
When Doctor Hugh went back to the Eastshore house Sunday night, in order to be ready for an early Monday morning appointment, he took his mother with him. There were several things which their brief residence at Rainbow Hill had demonstrated would be immediately required, noticeably more frocks for Sarah. That small girl tore and wore out and soiled an amazing number of dresses within a day. Winnie, too, had a list of necessities and Mrs. Willis had proposed that she go in with Hugh and gather frocks and utensils; then Hugh would bring them back in the car and her, too.
"You'll be alone only one night," Mrs. Willis said to Winnie. "And if you are the least bit nervous, I'm sure one of the boys will come up and sleep in the house."
"Now don't you worry about us," was Winnie's reply. "I guess I can take care of things all right. There's nothing to be afraid of—and anyway I don't see that two women in a house makes it any safer than one."
Winnie, though she would have been the last to admit it, had been slightly timid at first about the sleeping arrangements. She had never lived in the country in her life and she privately thought the farm a lonely place, especially at night when, to quote her own words, "there was nothing nearer than the moon." As a matter of fact Rainbow Hill was not an isolated place at all, there were telephone connections to the outside world and a private system of communication with the tenant house. No one ever locked the house doors in that section and gradually Winnie's unexpressed fears wore away.
Mrs. Willis, in her wholesome nature, was seldom frightened and to her the country meant peace and seclusion. All the girls had been trained from babyhood to regard the dark as "kind to tired people" and each had been taught to go to bed alone as a matter of course. They had never been terrified by foolish stories and silly myths and so were not afraid. Rosemary could lock up a house as competently as the doctor and thought nothing of going downstairs after the lights were out for the night to see if a window catch had been fastened.
When bed-time came the night following the morning of Mrs. Willis' departure, Winnie was too proud to ask Warren or Richard to spend the night in the house. It is quite probable that either or both might have offered to stay, but they had returned late from a trip to Bennington and, driving into the barn at nine o'clock, had decided to go to bed early.
"Are you going to lock the doors?" asked Rosemary, turning on the piano bench in surprise as Winnie shut the front door with a bang and slid the heavy bolt and chain.
"I am that," said Winnie with emphasis. "I'm responsible for the rented stuff in this house and I don't aim to have any of Mrs. Hammond's furniture being carried off."
"Why Winnie, no one will take anything," remonstrated Rosemary. "Warren says doors are never locked in any of the farmhouses around here. There hasn't been a tramp seen this summer."
"And I don't intend to have the record broken—not by me," said Winnie, shutting the living-room windows with a bang and turning the catches. "I'm going out in the kitchen now and bolt that door."
Sarah and Shirley had been in bed for an hour and there was only Rosemary to accompany the determined Winnie on her rounds. They made a thorough job of the locking up—Winnie by preference, Rosemary by compulsion—and then snapped off the lights and went upstairs together.
"I'll leave my door open to-night, Winnie," said Rosemary. "Then if you should want anything, you could call me."
"It's going to rain," replied Winnie absently. "The wind is rising, too. Don't let the ceiling get soaked again."
Rosemary kissed her good night—Winnie's arms had been the first to hold Rosemary when she was born—and went into her own pretty room.
She did not hurry over undressing and even attempted to read as she brushed her hair. Of course neither pleasure nor task went forward very smoothly, but Rosemary enjoyed the sensation of dawdling. She was not sleepy and it was pleasant to play that she was a lady of leisure. Then, before she was ready for bed, she must needs try her hair a new way and turn on all the lights in the room to get the effect.
"It will be so exciting," said Rosemary, staring with naive satisfaction at the pink-cheeked girl in the white kimono who stared back at her from the glass, "it will be so exciting to go to dances and parties. If I ever get to high school, I'll be thankful, for then there is always something happening. I hope there's a dancing school that's some good in Eastshore this winter."
At last Rosemary was ready for bed. She pattered over and felt of the floor under the two screened windows—quite dry, so the rain, if there had been rain, had not beat in.
"But it isn't raining," said Rosemary to herself, snapping off the lights and trying to see out into the darkness. "When it rains we can hear it on the tin roof of the porch; it is only cloudy and windy."
Mindful of her promise to Winnie, she opened her door—though as a rule the Willis family slept with individual bedroom doors closed—and listened for a moment, peering into the shadowy hall. There was not a sound and no light shone under Winnie's door—it must be open and she was asleep.
"How the wind does blow!" said Rosemary, safe in bed, wondering if she ought to get up and pin the muslin curtains back for they fluttered madly.
Before she could act on this thought, she was asleep. How long she slept she did not know, but she woke to find Winnie standing beside the bed.
"Rosemary!" she whispered. "Rosemary! There's the most awful racket you ever heard!"
Rosemary sat up in bed and drew the blanket around her.
"What—what's the matter?" she stammered.
"Hush—don't wake up Shirley and start her crying," warned Winnie who looked taller than ever in the scant gray dressing gown she had pulled tightly about her. "Sarah wouldn't wake if the house caved in—there, do you hear that?"
Rosemary listened intently. She shook her head.
"I don't hear anything," she said.
"Then come out in the hall and you will," advised Winnie, stalking toward the door.
Rosemary followed sleepily. She didn't want to listen to noises and she couldn't help wishing that Winnie had been a little harder of hearing.
"There—hear that?" Winnie's tone was almost triumphant.
Through the whole house sounded a wail that rose as they listened and mounted to a shriek. In spite of her desire to remain cool and calm, Rosemary shivered.
"It woke me up," whispered Winnie fearfully. "I never, in all my born days, heard anything like it."
"What—what makes it?" said Rosemary.
"I don't know, but I'm going to find out," declared Winnie. "I'm not afraid of anything, once I know what it is; but when I don't know the cause, I can be scared as well as the next one."
Winnie was perfectly sincere in this statement. She might have added that no matter how badly frightened she was, she could not be kept from making her investigations. Now she prepared to go downstairs by pressing the button that lighted both halls.
"Don't go down, Winnie," begged Rosemary. "I don't believe it's anything but the wind."
"We had a high wind one night when your mother was home and nothing made this kind of racket," was Winnie's retort. "You sit at the top of the stairs, Rosemary, and you can see me all the time and you won't feel alone; there's no use in you prowling around just because I do."
"Hark—it's raining!" Rosemary had heard the sound of drops on the tin roof of the porch "I'm coming down with you, Winnie—wouldn't it be nice if only Hugh were here!"
The wail sounded again, low and hesitating, then it began to rise. As Winnie and Rosemary reached the level of the first floor hall the peak of the shriek sounded in their ears.
"Oh, don't go out in the kitchen!" Rosemary's voice shook with nervousness. "Winnie, don't go fussing around; come back in my room and sleep with me. We can't hear anything there."
"I aim to find out what—" began Winnie, then stopped suddenly.
Someone was coming up the narrow flagged walk, someone who was whistling softly.
"Hello!" came a low-voiced hail. "Hello—don't be frightened—this is Warren and Rich. Anything the matter?"
Rosemary promptly turned and fled and then, the second floor gained, turned and hung over the railing to watch Winnie unchain and unbolt and unlock the front door and then admit two dripping, but cheerful figures, in yellow oilskins.
"Raining and blowing great guns," said Warren's voice. "We got up to close one of the windows and saw your house lighted—thought maybe someone was sick."
"You're the best boys who ever breathed," the grateful Winnie informed them. "Nothing's the matter except I'm trying to find out what makes—that! Listen!"
"You've left the upstair doors open," said Richard promptly. "There's something about the way this house is constructed that does it. Whenever there's a wind of any account, all the second story doors have to be closed; it's the one drawback. I suppose Mrs. Hildreth didn't think to tell you."
"We left our doors open to-night, because we're lonely without Mrs. Willis," was Winnie's simple explanation. "Rosemary was down with me, but she left when she heard you—I daresay she's listening up in the hall now."
"Of course I am," said Rosemary. "Ask Warren and Richard to stay, Winnie; there is the guest room all ready."
"You go up and go to bed this minute," commanded Winnie, whose invitations, like the queen's, usually brooked no refusal. "Now I know the wind makes that howl, I'm not the least bit nervous, but I'd rather have someone around to ask in case something else turns up."
Nothing more of a disturbing nature "turned up" that night and the household settled down and slept peacefully, secure in the knowledge that very real protection, in the persons of the two husky lads, was close at hand. Winnie summoned them at five o'clock the next morning—knowing that Mr. Hildreth would not easily forgive a delayed morning start—and actually had coffee and her famous waffles ready for them at that hour.
"Send for us any time," grinned Warren when he saw the table set.
"Any time you need aid, Winnie—or plan to serve waffles."
"Do you have to work all the time?" asked Sarah plaintively.
She sat on the top of a fence rail and, her feet hooked around the next bar, was placidly, if precariously, watching Richard Gilbert tinkering with a cultivator that had developed a sudden "kink."
"Well, summer is the time to work, on a farm," Richard answered good-naturedly. "You have to cultivate the corn when there is corn to cultivate, Sarah."
Sarah nodded, her eyes on the horse which stood patiently waiting.
"He's shivering," she said. "Look—see him shiver, Rich. And it is just as hot!"
"That isn't shivering," replied Richard, glancing up from the wheel in his hand. "Solomon is twitching to shake a fly off—that's all."
"Did he shake it off?" demanded Sarah with interest.
"I suppose so," answered Richard absently, searching for a screw he had dropped in the dirt.
"I could get the fly batter and swat flies for Solomon," suggested Sarah. "He'd like that, wouldn't he? I could ride on his back and hit all the flies, Rich."
"Yes, that sounds like a good scheme," admitted Richard cautiously, "but something tells me it wouldn't work. If you didn't frighten Solomon into fits, or start him galloping, or fall off and break your neck, you'd be sure to distract me from the work in hand and then Mr. Hildreth would want to know why I hadn't finished the corn. I'm afraid, Sarah, Sol will have to worry along in the same old way. The flies aren't bad to-day, anyway."
"Yes they are, he's twitching again," said Sarah. "He ought to wear a window screen—or something."
She was secretly relieved that her swatter plan had not been accepted, for she had a marked aversion to killing flies. Indeed many a royal battle had she waged with Winnie over the matter of killing flies that found their way into the house; Sarah, left alone, would slowly and painfully have captured each fly alive and unharmed and given him his freedom via the front door.
"Horses sometimes wear nets—or they used to when they were used for driving," explained Richard, beginning to pound the wheel in place. "As a horse ran or trotted, the net hobbled up and down and was supposed to keep the flies off; that wouldn't be any use when a horse is walking slowly around a field. A blanket would keep them away from Solomon, of course, but he'd die with the heat."
"I'll invent something for him," said Sarah comfortably.
"Where are the other girls?" asked Richard hastily.
A few weeks' acquaintance with Sarah had already taught him the expediency of keeping her in action. Sarah on the move might do some very startling things but a contemplative Sarah presented possibilities that were limitless.
"Hugh came and took Rosemary and Shirley with him," answered the small girl balancing on the fence. "I didn't want to go. I don't like automobiles much. When I grow up, I'm going to have a hundred horses and pigs and cows and everything."
"That'll be fine," Richard approved. "There now, I think that will work. Have to be moving on, Sarah; you going to wait for me to come round again?"
"No, that isn't any fun," said Sarah with more frankness than politeness. "Guess I'll go out to the orchard."
"Don't go through the upper field," commanded Richard, gathering up the lines.
Sarah scrambled down from the fence and reached for Solomon's glossy black tail.
"Why not?" she asked suspiciously.
"Because Mr. Hildreth turned the old ram out to pasture there this morning, that's why," said Richard. "Here, what are you trying to do?"
Sarah had grasped a handful of the horse's tail and was pulling on it wildly. Old Solomon turned his head around and stared at her reproachfully.
"I want to get enough hairs to make a ring," explained Sarah. "The washwoman is going to show me how next time she comes, but she said I had to get the hair."
"How many do you think you need?" said Richard, laughing as he released the tail from the covetous clutch of the small fingers. "You won't want more than half a dozen as long as these; Solomon thought you meant to pull his tail out by the roots, didn't you, Boy?"
"I didn't mean to hurt him," apologized the somewhat abashed Sarah. "What's a ram?"
"His other name is Mr. Sheep," said Richard, handing her half a dozen long black wiry hairs. "And he's old and cross and has been known to butt people. I don't think he'd hurt you, but he might frighten you."
"I wouldn't be afraid," boasted Sarah, stuffing her horse hairs carefully into the pocket of her middy blouse. "Shirley might, but I wouldn't. Shall I bring you a sweet apple, Rich?"
"If you find any," he said, swinging the cultivator back into place and clucking to Solomon to go ahead. "I can't eat green rocks, you know, and you shouldn't."
Sarah, in spite of warnings and orders, insisted on trying to eat everything in the shape of an apple that tumbled to the ground under the orchard trees. No fruit was too green for her palate, no round, bullet-like sphere too hard for her small white teeth.
She crawled through the fence now, waved a farewell to Richard, who was well on his way to the corner of the cornfield, and trotted off to search the orchard for spoils.
Sarah amused herself without much trouble—"though as much can't be said for the rest of us," Winnie had once remarked when Sarah's efforts to entertain herself had involved the entire family in explanations with nervous neighbors who objected to tame white mice—and the life at Rainbow Hill suited her exactly. She not only visited the horses and cows and pigs regularly, made friends with the flock of sheep and claimed to know every fowl in the poultry yard by name and sight, but she had a tender word for every bug, spider and grasshopper she met. Little water snakes were Sarah's delight and not even the ants and worms were beneath her notice and affection. Truly, as Doctor Hugh said, Sarah was certainly intended to live in the country.
"I'd like to see a ram," she said to herself as she scrambled up the bank to the orchard. "I never saw one. It wouldn't do any harm to go around the upper pasture and look in."
But she had a number of things to do in the orchard first. Sarah was noted for her thoroughness in whatever she undertook and now her heart was set on finding an apple soft enough for Richard Gilbert to eat—and just a plain apple for Miss Sarah Willis. Alas, Mrs. Hildreth had been out earlier in the day and had carefully picked up every windfall. She and Winnie were adepts at making delicious apple sauce and the first summer apples were scarce enough to be carefully hunted for.
So, though Sarah went the rounds of every tree and even shook one or two cautiously (Mr. Hildreth had intimated that he would "shake" anyone detected trying to knock down green apples or pears and Sarah had a wholesome respect for his mandates, so far) but she was forced to go appleless.
"I think I'd better go look at my apple seed I planted," said Sarah aloud.
She had borrowed the coal shovel from Winnie a few days previous and with much effort and earnestness, had planted a plump seed from an apple in a sunny, open space in the orchard. The apple was exceedingly green, but aside from doubtful fertility, the seed was doomed never to sprout because of the overwhelming curiosity of its small planter. Sarah had "looked" at that seed each day since planting it.
"If all these trees didn't grow any faster than my seed," mourned Sarah, scratching around in the soil with an oyster shell, the shovel having been confiscated by Winnie, "I don't see how people get any apples to eat."
Then a large—a very large—black ant hurrying up the trunk of a young pear tree, caught her eye and she stopped to study him. She thought for a moment of writing her name and address on a piece of paper and tying it to him so that at some distant date, say a hundred years ahead, another little girl might find the ant and read that Sarah had also known him.
"If a turtle lives sixty years, why can't an ant live a hundred?" Sarah asked the black crow who sat on a branch and stared at her. "Only, I haven't any paper or pencil or thread to tie it on with—so I'll wait."
With this sensible conclusion she turned her attention to the swing Warren had put up for her and Shirley on a conveniently low limb of an apple tree. Sarah did not swing sedately—she must do that as she did everything else, fast and furiously. She took out the notched board that served as a seat and stood up in the loop, jerking herself forward and backward until she attained the desired speed. Swooping down in one of these mad rushes, she caught sight of something moving in the next field.
"There's the ram!" she thought. "I'll go see what he looks like"; and jumping out of the swing she ran over to the wire fence that enclosed the orchard on three sides.
"He doesn't look cross—you're not, are you?" said Sarah, addressing the Roman-nosed wooly creature that stood gravely regarding her.
The flock of sheep were up at the other end of the field and the ram stood alone. Perhaps he had glimpsed the flashing of Sarah's frock through the trees as she swung and had come down to see what made the fluttering. Sarah was quite enchanted with him and thought he looked lonely.
She dropped to her knees and crawled through the fence, holding back the heavy wire strands with difficulty, and sat down on the grass to pull up her socks, brush her hair out of her eyes and tuck in a handful of gathers at her waistline where her skirt had torn loose from the band.
Having made herself neat for the introduction, Sarah advanced fearlessly to greet the ram. To her surprise he came toward her with lowered head, and something in his wicked little eyes made her uneasy. The next thing she knew, she felt a terrific impact against her legs and down she went with a thud. She had presence enough of mind to roll over and she kept rolling, in a frantic instinct to get out of the way of that powerful head. Dizzy and shaken—for she had fallen heavily—she scrambled to her feet and began to run, the ram coming after her valiantly.
"Rosemary! Mother! Rich—Rich! Warren!" screamed poor Sarah, running as she had never run before, "Rich! Rich!"
It was Warren who heard her and reached her first. He had been working in the tomato field which was near the orchard and he had no horse to consider—Richard could not abandon Solomon in the middle of the cornfield. Warren ran in the direction of the cries and, leaping the dividing fence, came to the rescue. The ram stopped short as soon as he saw him and Sarah fled straight into Warren's protecting arms.
"There, there, you're all right—you couldn't run like that if you were hurt," he soothed her. "Don't cry, Sarah—see, here comes your Mother; you've frightened her. And Winnie, too! Look up and smile and wave your hand—don't let your mother be frightened, Sarah."
Mrs. Willis had heard Sarah's shrieks and now she was running across the field, Winnie imploring her to walk at every step.
"She isn't hurt!" called Warren, trying to relieve the mother's anxiety at once. "She's all right, Mrs. Willis."
And then Sarah gained her vocal powers of which, till this minute, she had been deprived. Fright and running had taken her breath and she almost choked with the effort to articulate. Lifted high in Warren's arms, the tears running down her face, Sarah managed to put her chief sorrow into words that reached her mother and Winnie half way across the pasture and Richard just breathlessly rounding the orchard.
"I lost my horse hairs!" screamed Sarah.