Winnie folded up a pair of stockings and dropped them into the capacious bag which hung on the arm of her chair.
"It beats me," she said conversationally, "where Sarah runs to every afternoon. It's been going on now for three weeks and she shuts up like a clam when I ask her any questions."
Winnie and Mrs. Willis were seated in the cool, shaded living-room with their mending. It was an intensely warm afternoon and several degrees cooler inside the house than on the porch. Winnie insisted on helping with the darning—she would have felt hurt had she been denied the task of mating and sorting and mending the stockings and socks for the family each week—and she took pride in assisting Mrs. Willis to keep Doctor Hugh's belongings in perfect order.
"Mother!" Rosemary hurried in, her hair a tangle of waves and ringlets dampened from heat and perspiration, her cheeks like scarlet poppies and her eyes glowing with enthusiasm. "Mother, I've thought of something!"
"Rosemary leads an exciting life," Jack Welles had once declared in Mrs. Willis' hearing. "She can get all worked up about anything she happens to be thinking about."
Rosemary's mother remembered this speech now, smiling a little at the recollection.
"Richard and Warren are down in the tomato field, working their heads off in this broiling sun," said Rosemary more picturesquely than accurately. "And Mother, couldn't I make lemonade and take it down to them?"
"We have lemons," put in Winnie.
Mrs. Willis nodded approval.
"Make plenty, dear," she said cordially. "Don't put in too much sugar, for the boys don't like it so sweet; but why not wait an hour until it is cooler?"
"Oh, Mother, let me do it now—they'll like it when they're working hard. Where's Shirley? She could carry the cups," and Rosemary paused in her flight kitchenwards.
"Shirley is asleep—don't wake her," cautioned the mother. "Ask Sarah to help you, dear; she is out in the barn. And do keep out of the sun as much as you can, dear."
"Yes'm," promised Rosemary obediently, disappearing.
"I'll go crack the ice," said Winnie, rising. "There's no use in making the kitchen look like Niagara Falls, if a little forethought can prevent it."
Rosemary was a quick worker and a neat one, when she didn't have to chop ice, and she soon had a shiny white enamel pail half filled with delicious cold lemonade. She poured out two generous glasses for her mother and Winnie and carried them in with her compliments and then set off expeditiously, carrying pail, dipper and three cups, a feat that required her closest attention.
"Sarah!" she called when she reached the barn.
"What?" called back Sarah, not very graciously.
"Please come help me take some lemonade to the boys?"
Sarah put her head out of the barn door and eyed the pail thirstily.
"Let me have some?" she begged.
"If you'll help me carry these things," said Rosemary. "I brought three cups and there's enough lemonade for everyone."
"Well—all right, I'll help you," decided Sarah, "but I'm thirsty now."
"The ice will melt if you're going to talk all day," said Rosemary, the blazing sun making her more impatient than usual. "Come help me first and drink your lemonade after we get down to the tomato field."
Sarah darted back into the barn and reappeared in a moment with Bony, the pig, under her arm.
"Sarah Willis! You can't carry that filthy pig and help me lug this pail, too—put him down," scolded Rosemary.
"Bony isn't filthy—he's had a bath this morning!" flared Sarah. "He's just as clean as any person, so there. And I want to show Richard and Warren what he can do."
"You know what Hugh would say if he saw you fussing with a pig and then coming around food without washing your hands," Rosemary reminded her. "If there is one thing Hugh won't stand, it's to have you handle pets and then come to the table without scrubbing your hands. You know that, Sarah."
"I'm not coming to any table," insisted Sarah. "Besides Bony is clean, I tell you. If I can't bring him I won't come at all."
The walk down to the tomato field was long and hot, and Rosemary could not hurry unless she had someone to share the weight of the pail which would, she knew, grow heavier at each step. She capitulated.
"But keep Bony on the other side of you," she commanded Sarah. "I don't see why he can't walk; do you carry him everywhere he goes?"
Sarah tucked the pig under one arm and gave the other hand to the handle of the pail.
"Bony can walk, but I am saving his strength," she remarked with a dignity worthy of Winnie. "You wait till you see what a smart pig he is, Rosemary; no one appreciates him except me."
Warren and Richard, bending over the long rows of tomatoes, straightened up in surprise as Rosemary's clear call came down to them.
"Stay up by the fence—you'll get your dress stained!" shouted Warren. "We'll come over."
"Ye gods, lemonade!" ejaculated Richard when he was near enough to hear the inviting tinkle of ice.
"And a pig!" grinned Warren. "Isn't Bony too heavy to cart around on a day like this, Sarah?"
Sarah shook her head in negation, but remained silent.
"You must be baked!" Rosemary looked with sympathy at the two flushed faces.
Both boys looked warm and tired, but they averred stoutly that no one minded the heat "after they were used to it." They declared that nothing had ever tasted as good as the lemonade.
"What made you think of bringing us it?" asked Warren, sitting down on an overturned crate after his second cup and mopping his face with his handkerchief.
"Oh, last winter Jack Welles and the high school boys were shoveling snow, we took them hot coffee and doughnuts," said Rosemary carelessly. "I suppose I must have remembered how much they liked something warm to drink—and you like something cold just as much, don't you?"
"We sure do," agreed Richard warmly. "This Jack Welles is coming up next week, isn't he? Mr. Hildreth is counting on him for two weeks."
Rosemary moved the pail beyond the reach of Sarah who seemed to have developed an excessive thirst.
"Jack and Hugh are both coming next Sunday," she answered. "You'll like Jack, Warren, and so will you, Richard. He lives next door to us, you know."
"Well, I only hope he's used to hard work," said Richard. "How old is he, Rosemary? Almost sixteen? I don't suppose he has ever picked tomatoes from sunup to sundown, but the cannery opens next week and we'll be picking steadily until it closes. Mr. Hildreth is shipping some crates to-day, but the real picking starts when the cannery opens. We're counting on Jack to make a third hand."
"He'll want to go fishing," declared Sarah.
"Jack doesn't care how much he hurts the poor fish, jabbing hooks into them."
Sarah and Jack had had more than one violent argument over this question.
"It isn't cruel to go fishing," said Rosemary impatiently, thinking how tired Warren looked.
"I haven't been this year," announced Richard, "though they say there are several good streams near here. Sundays I seem to lack ambition and during the week, of course, there isn't time."
Sarah edged a little nearer the pail.
"You wouldn't catch fish would you, Warren?" she asked coaxingly.
Warren looked at her and grinned.
"Not only would I catch them," he told her, "but I'd eat them; if we are to have fish to eat, Sarah, someone must catch them for us. The same way with roast chicken for Sunday dinner and roast pork, you know; they don't grow on bushes."
Sarah's eyes turned to Bony, now lying comfortably sprawled across her lap. She was sitting on the ground and Rosemary beside her.
"I never would eat Bony!" she said in horror-stricken tone.
"No, of course not," Richard put in quickly, "but you'd eat a pig you were not acquainted with, wouldn't you?"
Sarah was most uncomfortable. She liked roast pork and in winter was fond of little sausages. And now here was Richard telling her that pigs—like Bony—had to be killed before one could have roast pork to eat.
"Never mind, Sarah," said Rosemary, taking pity on her sister. "You don't have to think about what you eat—just don't try to make everyone see your way and don't argue so much and eat what Winnie gives you and you'll have nothing to worry about."
Warren laughed and held out his cup as Rosemary lifted the dipper invitingly.
"In other words, Sarah," he counseled, "don't be so valiant a reformer."
"What's a reformer?" demanded Sarah, eyeing the pail anxiously.
"You're one when you try to stop your friends from going fishing," Warren informed her. "That's the whole trouble with reform—no one is willing to improve himself and let his neighbor alone; for all you know, Sarah, you drive Jack Welles fishing in self-defense. Perhaps, if you let him alone, he wouldn't go at all."
Sarah stared, but Rosemary nodded.
"I don't know about Jack," said Rosemary, "but I do know that as soon as someone says it isn't right to do such and such a thing, I always want to do it. And it may be something I never thought of before."
"Like coasting down hill backward," contributed Sarah.
Rosemary dimpled and Warren, who had been uneasily thinking they ought to go back to the vines, resolved to wait a few minutes longer.
"Did you coast backward?" asked Richard with interest. "What happened?"
"Oh, I ran into another sled and cut my wrists and nearly broke the legs of the two boys on the other sled," Rosemary recited. "The trouble was I never would have thought of it, if it hadn't been for Miss Johnson. She's a woman who lives in Eastshore and she's forever scolding about girls—the way they 'carry on,' she calls it. I happened to hear her say that no nice, well-brought up girl would make herself conspicuous on a coasting hill."
"So you thought up the most conspicuous way of getting down the hill and did it?" suggested Richard.
"Well, it turned out more conspicuous than I intended," Rosemary acknowledged. "I never intended to tangle up three or four sleds and have the news get around that there had been an accident on the hill. Mother was so frightened when she heard of it—remember, Sarah?"
Sarah remembered. But she was more interested in the lemonade.
"There's some left, Rosemary," she tactfully declared.
"You've had enough," said Rosemary.
Richard rose to his feet at a significant glance from Warren. It was pleasant to rest a few moments, but the driving force of waiting work had not relaxed, merely slowed down.
"I wish I could help you," said Rosemary, simply and sincerely.
"What do you call it you've just been doing?" answered Warren. "Picking tomatoes isn't so hard, but it is monotonous; giving us a little break in the day is something that counts big, Rosemary."
"Well, anyway, Jack will be here to-morrow to help you," said Rosemary. "Then perhaps you won't have to work so hard—many hands make light work, Winnie says."
"Now what," said Richard thoughtfully, "should you say was troubling the small Sarah at this moment?"
Sarah, cut off from the supply of lemonade, had turned her back on the others and was busily disgorging an assortment of articles from her blouse. When she whirled around upon the astonished group it was apparent that she had secreted upon her small person a pair of baby shoes, a doll's dress and a small parasol. In these her pig, Bony, was now arrayed.
"You want to look at my pig!" she announced in clarion tones. "He can do tricks!"
"Tricks!" echoed Richard, while Rosemary rapidly identified the dress as belonging to Shirley's largest doll, ditto the parasol, and the shoes as a pair of Sarah's own carefully treasured for years by Winnie.
"What kind of tricks?" demanded Warren.
"You wait and see—" Sarah was so excited her voice trembled. "I taught him lots of things. I've been teaching him every afternoon in the barn—he is a naturally bright pig."
Her audience was inclined to share her opinion, after watching Bony perform. The pig walked up and down before them in the absurd costume, twirling the parasol and bowing to each in turn as he passed.
He danced, very mincingly, to a tune Sarah played for him on the harmonica—Rosemary wondered how many other treasures Sarah's blouse could hold—and though Richard said that no pig, no matter how highly educated, could hope to identify that tune, it was admitted that Bony was a graceful dancer.
"He can wear spectacles and read a book, too," declared Sarah proudly, "but I couldn't bring them!"
Like all managers of celebrities she had begun to experience the tyranny of the "props."
"Well, you must have had a heap of patience," commented Warren admiringly. "Can he do anything else, Sarah?"
"Jump through a hoop," enumerated Sarah, "push a doll carriage and walk around carrying a doll like a baby—I broke two of Shirley's china dolls, teaching him that trick, but she doesn't know it yet. And, oh, yes, he can sweep—with a toy broom—and play a toy piano."
"So that's where all Shirley's toys have gone to!" Rosemary tried to speak severely, but she ended by laughing. "Shirley has been missing her playthings, one after the other," Rosemary explained to the boys. "And we thought she took them outdoors to play with and forgot where she left them."
"After supper to-night," said Sarah, calmly ignoring this disclosure, "I'll give an exhibition in the barn."
Sarah was as good as her word. She not only assembled the entire Rainbow Hill family in the barn that evening and put Bony through his paces, but she continued to give "exhibitions" whenever and wherever she could assemble an audience of one or more. Eventually she took Bony over to the Gay farm and delighted the children there who thought he was absolutely the most clever pig they had ever seen and Sarah the most wonderful trainer.
The fame of Bony spread abroad and gradually Sarah's family grew accustomed to having a horse and wagon drive in, usually with a couple of empty milk cans rattling around in the back showing that the driver was on his way home from the daily trip to the creamery; and to hearing a knock at the door, followed by a voice asking, "Is the little girl in—the one with the pig?"
Answered in the affirmative, the inevitable request would be: "Do you think she would mind letting me see him do tricks? They tell me, down to the creamery" (or at the store or the postoffice) "that he is sure a smart pig."
These requests pleased Sarah immensely. She, would sally forth importantly and rout Bony out of his comfortable box, present him as one would introduce a famous artist and put him through his program. The audience never failed to be pleased and grateful and to be generous with praises. Warren declared that there was small danger of Bony ever forgetting his accomplishments for hardly a day passed that he wasn't "billed to appear."
But before Bony attained this place in the limelight, Doctor Hugh and Jack Welles arrived for their promised two weeks' visit and vacation. Even her marvelous pig could not hope to compete with these arrivals and Sarah's interest in Bony slackened slightly though she kept him rigorously in training.
The doctor and Jack came in the former's car. It was difficult to say whose disappointment was keenest when Jack announced that he intended to sleep at the bungalow and eat at Mr. Hildreth's table—Mrs. Willis, Winnie and Rosemary were equally dismayed.
"Jack dear, I thought of course you'd live with us," protested Mrs. Willis. "You know we'll love to have you and I'm afraid you won't be comfortable at the bungalow."
"It won't be any kind of a vacation for you," declared Rosemary. "You'll have to get up at five o'clock because they have breakfast at six; and Mrs. Hildreth won't let you put a book or a paper out of place—Richard says so."
"I'm not saying anything against her cooking," pronounced Winnie, through the screen door, where she had been drawn by the argument. "But I tell you this in all honesty, Jack Welles; Mrs. Hildreth puts too much salt in her oatmeal, to my way of thinking, and she skimps on the shortening in her pie crust."
Jack glanced across the porch at Doctor Hugh, who was seated in the swing with Rosemary.
"This isn't a vacation, you know," said Jack mildly. "I've hired out, at wages, and I'm to go to work to-morrow morning. And it is in the agreement that Mr. Hildreth is to 'board and lodge' me."
"Well, you can work for him and live here with us, too," suggested Rosemary comfortably. "Can't he, Mother?"
"It's ever so nice of you to want me," said Jack, "but you see, I've figured out that I want the complete experience; I want to get up when the other hired men do and eat breakfast when they do—Winnie wouldn't like to get me a six o'clock breakfast for the next two weeks—and I wouldn't let her, if she did."
"Richard doesn't think you'll stick it out for the whole two weeks," offered the placid Sarah, looking up from the book she was sharing with Shirley on the grass rug. "He said so."
Jack flushed, Doctor Hugh looked annoyed and Mrs. Willis sighed. Sarah's remarks usually aroused varied emotions.
"I think Jack is quite right," said the doctor firmly, before anyone could speak. "He wants to see this thing through and while he knows I'd like first rate to have him stay here at the house, I think he'd be handicapped from the start. There'll be the evenings left him, anyway, and Sundays—two of them at least."
"You must come to us for Sunday dinner," planned Mrs. Willis instantly. "I'll ask Richard and Warren, too; Winnie has wanted me to for some time, but there never seemed to be a mutually convenient time."
So Jack took his suit case over to the bungalow and was introduced to the little room next to the one shared by Warren and Richard. He had met Mr. and Mrs. Hildreth on one of his trips to Rainbow Hill with Doctor Hugh, but he had not seen Warren and Richard till this afternoon.
The three boys shook hands pleasantly. Jack was the youngest by a couple of years and not so deeply tanned; though, being an active lad and fond of outdoor sports, he had acquired a coat of brown since the closing of school. But he felt, looking at the other two, that he lacked their muscular advantage and a certain hardness that bespoke sturdy endurance.
"I'm ready to go to work," said Jack, in response to a question from Mr. Hildreth. "I've brought overalls and I'm said to be willing and obliging."
Richard grinned and Warren's gray eyes smiled.
"Well, I hope you'll tumble up early in the morning," observed the farmer, his mind busy already with the next day's work. "We're going to start picking tomatoes for the cannery."
There wasn't much thrill about the persistent ringing of the alarm clock the next morning and Jack turned over with a groan. The dial said five o'clock, though he was sure he had not been asleep longer than two hours.
"Morning," was Mr. Hildreth's brief greeting when he met his new hand at the back door. "Glad to see you made it. Warren's your boss—he knows what has to be done. You'll find him out in the barn, milking."
Even a careless observer—and Jack was not that—would have been struck with the dewy freshness of the grass and shrubbery and the magnificent splendor of the Eastern sky; and Jack, on his way to the barn, drew a deep breath of something like contentment.
"Not so bad," he thought, beginning to whistle. "Not so bad, after all."
Warren glanced up from his milking, his eyes cordial, his busy hands continuing their task.
"Mr. Hildreth said you're my boss," said Jack directly. "What do you want me to do?"
"You can't milk, can you?" replied Warren. "No, of course, you haven't been around cows. Richard is feeding and cleaning the horses—you might help him."
Jack was inclined to remember the remark Sarah had attributed to Richard, but five minutes spent in that cheerful youth's company were enough to dispel any faint resentment he might feel. Richard liked to chatter and he liked to sing and whistle; and while he showed Jack what constituted a proper breakfast for a horse and how these useful beasts should be groomed, he kept up a running fire of comment and good-natured musical effort that made up in volume what it lacked in depth. By the time Warren's pails were full and the barn work done, the three boys were on a friendly footing and they marched into breakfast to the tune of "There Were Three Crows Sat in a Tree."
Jack could have found it in his heart to wish that Mrs. Hildreth might think less of time and more of passing comfort. The dining-room of the bungalow was fully furnished, but the farmer's wife used it only on state occasions. It made less work, she said, to eat in the kitchen and she could "get through" a meal more rapidly and take fewer steps when those to be served were close to the stove.
It fell to the lot of Jack to be close to the stove this morning and he gave a momentary sigh for the coolness and order and daintiness that he knew would give atmosphere to the breakfast in Mrs. Willis' household. Not that he minded eating in the kitchen—he and his mother often did that when his father was away and thought it a lark; but he did mind the heat and the haste and the silence in which this, his first meal with the Hildreths, was consumed.
"Ready?" said Warren briefly, when they had finished, leading the way to the barn.
They had been working in the barnyard and vegetable garden for an hour and were on their way to the tomato field—it was necessary to wait for the heavy dew to dry before they began to work among the vines—when the Willis family gathered for their breakfast at the round table set on the porch this warm morning in Doctor Hugh's honor.
"Hugh, will you come watch me wade in the brook?" asked Shirley, eating her cereal as though hypnotized and quite forgetting to protest that she didn't see why she had to drink milk.
"You wait till you see Bony, Hugh," Sarah told him. "He's the best pig you ever saw. He's bright."
"I wish, if you have time, Hugh," said Rosemary, "you'd show me what is the matter with the camera. Every picture I take is overexposed."
"For mercy's sake, let your brother rest," Winnie admonished them, bringing in a plate of fresh Parker House rolls. "He only gets a bit of a breathing spell and he doesn't want to race from one end of this farm to the other. Take that large brown one, Hughie."
Mrs. Willis, behind the silver coffee pot, smiled at her son.
"Best rolls I ever ate, Winnie," he said appreciatively. "I'll bet if Mr. Greggs' wife could make rolls like these he'd be a sweeter-tempered carpenter. I'm going to have the finest of vacations and rest thoroughly by going everywhere with everybody. I'll watch you wade, Shirley; and I'll give Sarah my opinion of this remarkable pig; Rosemary and I will 'snap' the whole farm. But I wish it distinctly understood that Mother and I have an unbreakable engagement to take a drive every afternoon, or just after dinner, as she prefers."
"And won't you have to go see any sick people at all?" demanded Shirley, almost upsetting her glass of milk in the excitement of having a brother with time to spare.
"I left word with Mrs. Welles that I'd answer emergency calls, of course," explained Doctor Hugh, answering his mother's unspoken question. "I've arranged it so I won't have to go the hospital and, barring the unforeseen, I can count on a free fortnight. So we'll hope there won't be any sick people to go see, Shirley."
"Where are you going, Rosemary?" the doctor hailed her as she and Sarah started down the lawn after breakfast was over.
"We thought we'd go down and see Jack," called Rosemary.
Doctor Hugh pushed open the screen door and came down the steps.
"Let Jack get his bearings first," he advised. "There is bound to be a number of new experiences for him this initial day and I think it will be kinder to let him get adjusted to his job. He'll be up this evening and you and Mother can play for him and cheer him up generally."
"Why—why—will he need cheering up?" Rosemary looked so startled that her brother laughed.
"Not precisely cheering up, perhaps," he said, "but a mental and physical rest. Jack is bound to have sore muscles, after a long day bending over tomato crates; he thinks he knows what it means to work, but he has never worked in his life as he will now. And I don't know, but I suspect, he may have a sore mind; Jack has never worked for anyone and he must learn to be 'bossed.' All in all, Rosemary, I'd put off going down to the tomato field till to-morrow."
"Well—all right," agreed Rosemary reluctantly. "I do think he might have stayed with us and then he would have had a better time."
"If we're not going down to the field, I'll go get Bony and take him down to the brook," said Sarah, quick to seize her advantage. "I can wash him while Shirley goes wading."
They spent the morning down at the brook. Shirley was enchanted to be allowed to help build a dam—the height of his ambition, Doctor Hugh whimsically told them. Shirley paddled around in the brook and brought him stones and he laid them in a chain that made a crude dam, both getting very warm and very wet and having a thoroughly enjoyable time of it.
Rosemary had brought the camera and snapped a dozen poses of the sunny-haired Shirley as she gamboled about with her skirts tucked up to her waist, looking like a particularly chubby elf. Doctor Hugh had done something to the camera that would, Rosemary was sure, correct her tendency to overexpose a film and the results fully justified her faith; whether it was due to his manipulation of the "innards" of the camera or his instructions to her, the prints were exceptionally good and clear.
Sarah, of course, devoted her morning to scrubbing the pig. The doctor's shouts of laughter could not persuade her to curtail the ceremony in the slightest detail. She had brought soap and towels and brush with her and she gravely scrubbed and rinsed and dried Bony and put him out in the sun to dry.
"He'll bake," protested Doctor Hugh, when, the pig's bath finished, Sarah arranged him on a dry towel in the sun. "You'll have roast pork, Sarah, if you're not careful."
"No I won't," answered Sarah confidently, straightening the pig's legs for him since he did not offer to move.
"Can't he even grunt?" demanded Doctor Hugh who had never seen an animal so willing to be waited upon.
"Of course he can grunt—" Sarah was indignant. "He can do anything."
"When the sun dries him on that side, she'll turn him over on the other," whispered Rosemary. "You'll see."
The dam was built, the roll of films used up and Bony dry and immaculate by the time Winnie rang the bell to tell them that lunch was ready.
"We must have a picnic," said Doctor Hugh as they went up to the house, he carrying Shirley, who objected to putting on her socks and sandals, and Sarah carrying the pig with almost as much care. "I haven't been to a picnic in years."
That afternoon he carried his mother off for a drive in the car, and the three girls were left to their own devices. Rosemary's natural inclination was to find Jack and ask him how his day was going, but mindful of her brother's advice, she resolved to wait. She was playing jack stones with Shirley and Sarah when Mrs. Hildreth came hurrying across the lawn.
"Rosemary," she said, fanning her flushed face with her apron, "I wonder if you'd do me a favor. All the men are busy and I couldn't ask them to drop their work for such a trifle; and I have to grease the chickens for lice, so I can't go myself."
Mrs. Hildreth always seemed to choose the hottest days for the most unlovely tasks, reflected Rosemary, but Sarah held a different opinion.
"I'll come hold 'em for you, Mrs. Hildreth," she offered, rising in such haste that she almost knocked Shirley off the step. "I love to see you grease chickens!"
"All right, I do need somebody to help me," said Mrs. Hildreth gratefully. "Rosemary, Miss Clinton telephoned me this morning she wanted a dozen fresh eggs—why do they always say 'fresh eggs'?" she broke off irritably. "'Tisn't likely I'd go out and get her a dozen stale eggs, even if I could find 'em. Well, she wants them this afternoon and I hate to disappoint her. She's kind of used to getting what she wants and everybody feels sorry for her. I know you like to walk and when I saw your mother and brother going off in the car, I says, 'Maybe she won't mind walking over there for me, having nothing else to do.'"
"I'll go," said Rosemary pleasantly, "but where does this Miss Clinton live?"
Mrs. Hildreth gave minute directions for finding the house. It was close to the road, the same road that went past the Gay farm, but in the opposite direction. It wasn't over a quarter of a mile and Rosemary was to knock on the door and when someone called "Come in" to lift the latch and enter.
"I'll take Shirley with me," said Rosemary, "and you'll tell Winnie, won't you, Mrs. Hildreth? She went down to the mail box at the cross-roads to mail a letter and she'll wonder where we are when she comes back."
Mrs. Hildreth promised to tell Winnie and she and Sarah departed to begin their war on the chicken pests while Rosemary and Shirley set off to follow the back road to the little yellow house where Miss Clinton lived.
They found it without difficulty, knocked and heard someone call "Come in," just as Mrs. Hildreth had predicted.
"How do you do?" said the same voice when they stepped directly into a large square room. "I'm very glad to see you."
A very tiny old lady sat in a wheel chair in the center of the room. Her skin was almost as yellow as the paint on the house and considerably more wrinkled. She had bright black eyes that reminded Rosemary of a bird and little, eager claw-like hands that were strangely bird-like, too. She beamed at the girls, plainly delighted to have company.
"I'm glad you came," she said when Rosemary had given her the eggs and explained they were from Rainbow Hill. "Mrs. Hildreth told me the Hammonds rented their house this summer. Sit down and we'll talk. Let the little girl play with the toys in the cabinet—she won't hurt 'em."
The cabinet stood in one corner of the room and was well stocked with toys, some new, some well-worn. Shirley sat down on the floor and amused herself contentedly while Miss Clinton kept up a running fire of comment till Rosemary's wrist watch showed half-past four.
"I wish you'd come see me again," said the old lady wistfully. "I get lonesome for someone to talk to. I get around pretty good in this chair and I have lots of books and papers to read; but I like to talk and summers everyone is so busy they don't think to drop in."
"I'll drop in," promised Rosemary impulsively. "Mother would come to see you, too, but she couldn't walk this far; perhaps Hugh, my brother, will bring her some day."
"Let me have my knitting, if you're really going," said Miss Clinton regretfully. "It's there in that basket beside you. That's my sixth bedspread, or will be, when I get it finished."
"What beautiful work!" exclaimed Rosemary as the old lady spread the knitted square over her knee. "How fine it is—isn't it very difficult?"
"Not a bit," Miss Clinton assured her. "I do it when my eyes get tired of reading print. I'll teach you how to make a spread, if you'll come see me now and then," she offered quickly. "They tell me they're worth seventy-five dollars apiece but I never sell mine; I give them to relatives and friends."
Rosemary and Shirley said good by and were half way down the path when the door was opened and Miss Clinton called after them:
"Bring the little girl with you, too; I'll get her something new to play with when she gets tired of the cabinet toys."
"Rosemary," said Shirley, skipping happily—she seldom walked, her brother said, but ran or hopped her way along—"Rosemary, what is there?"
"Where?" said Rosemary, puzzled.
"There," insisted Shirley, pointing behind her.
"Why, nothing—except Miss Clinton's house—you know that, Shirley," replied Rosemary.
"No, not Miss Clinton's house," said Shirley, shaking her head. "Next to that, Rosemary."
"You mean around the curve?" asked Rosemary, for the road curved sharply beyond the big maples that marked the line of Miss Clinton's property.
Shirley nodded.
"What is there?" she repeated.
"I don't know, dear," Rosemary admitted. "I've never been that far. Do you want to go and see? We have time, I think."
Shirley slipped a small hand into her sister's.
"Let's go," she said eagerly.
Rosemary had often felt a curiosity to know what was beyond a bend in a road, but she never remembered making a deliberate attempt to gratify that feeling. Shirley, having been made curious, had no mind to go away unsatisfied.
They turned and walked back, Rosemary hoping the little old lady might not see them. But she was nowhere in sight and was, in all probability, absorbed in her knitting.
"Maybe the three bears live around the corner," suggested Shirley, beginning to regret her curiosity as they neared the turn.
"The Big Bear and the Middle Bear and the Little Bear?" said Rosemary. "I wonder if they do? In a cunning little house, Shirley, with three beds and three porridge bowls—wouldn't that be fun?"
Shirley pressed closer. She preferred to hear about the three bears, rather than meet them face to face.
A few minutes' walk brought them to the curve and around it—and there was a vegetable stand; almost a small market, with fruits and garden produce attractively displayed and a number of boldly painted signs announcing that fresh eggs and dressed poultry were for sale on specified days of the week.
"Is it a store?" asked Shirley, much interested.
"It's like a store," Rosemary told her. "I remember Hugh was telling Mother something about this plan the other night. He said that down on the shore road he saw lots and lots of stands, when he spent his summers at Seapoint. And he was wondering why some of the farmers inland didn't do this—sell to people who have automobiles."
"Do people come and buy?" asked Shirley, staring at the tomatoes as though she had never seen that homely vegetable before.
"Yes, they come out in their cars, from Bennington and further away, I suppose," said Rosemary. "And they buy all this stuff fresh and take it home with them. I wonder who takes care of the stand?"
A sharp, thin, freckled face rose slowly from behind the tiers of baskets and a reedy voice announced, "I do—want to buy anything?"
Rosemary jumped. She had not known there was anyone near. Now she saw the owner of the freckled face was a girl, a few years older than herself.
"Do you take care of the stand?" Rosemary asked, smiling her friendly smile.
The freckle-faced one nodded.
"That's my job summers," she confided. "Winters I'm studying. I'm going to be a school teacher. What are you going to be?"
Rosemary pulled Shirley back from a contemplated investigation of a basket of early pears.
"Why—I don't believe I know," she answered the question. "I've thought of being a nurse—my brother Hugh is a doctor; or I might be a music teacher."
"I'm going to teach school," the other girl declared again. "I'm going to have some pretty dresses and go to the city every Saturday, if I have a mind to. What's your name?"
"Rosemary Willis," Rosemary answered meekly. "This is my sister, Shirley."
"I'm Edith Barrow," the girl announced. "I don't live here, except in summer. I help Mr. and Mrs. Mains—know them?"
Rosemary shook her head.
"We're here for the summer," she replied.
"Renters," said Edith Barrow as though that catalogued the Willis family as perhaps it did. "Well, when I'm going to school I live with my aunt. She boards students. I don't suppose you're in high school yet?"
"Don't touch those onions, Shirley," Rosemary warned. "No, I'm not in high school—not for a year. In June I'll graduate from the Eastshore grammar school," she explained.
"Do you like keeping store?" asked Shirley, who had kept still longer than usual. She may have thought it was her turn to ask questions.
"This isn't a store—it's a stand," Edith corrected her. "Yes, I like it well enough. I took in twelve dollars yesterday. You have to be good at arithmetic to make change; that's why Mr. Mains likes me to be out here. Mrs. Mains can't tell how much money to give back when she gets a bill from a customer."
"Have you any candy?" was Shirley's next query.
"Not a bit," Edith Barrow answered. "Only things that are good for you to eat. Candy makes you sick. Did you know that?"
Rosemary couldn't help thinking that, young as she was, Edith already talked like a school teacher.
"Like the fussy kind," Rosemary emended to herself.
"Here comes a car now," said the young saleswoman suddenly. "They're going to stop—I know them. I hope they'll want tomatoes today. We haven't much else."
"We'll have to go," Rosemary declared hastily. "Good by—say good by, Shirley."
"She isn't looking at me," complained Shirley and indeed Edith was centering her attention on the coming car and her thoughts were evidently all for the approaching sale.
"Jack would say she was chasing success," Rosemary told herself smiling as she took Shirley's hand and led her away.
Doctor Hugh and his mother were on the porch when Rosemary and Shirley reached the house, but Sarah was nowhere in sight. When a few minutes later she walked out among them, radiantly clean, attired in fresh tan linen, her shining dark hair neatly brushed, her family welcomed her with delighted surprise.
"How nice you look!" said her mother appreciatively.
"I wish you could have seen her half an hour ago," announced Winnie from the doorway.
Her words were in direct opposition to her desire, for she went on to say that she had met Sarah as the latter came from the chicken yard.
"She was grease from head to foot," pronounced Winnie, while Sarah sat down on the rug and looked innocent. "You'd have thought, to look at her, that Mrs. Hildreth had been greasing her and not the chickens; there were feathers in her hair and dirt ground into her face and hands, and she must have been sitting in the dust pile where the chickens scratch. I had to give her a bath and change every stitch of her clothes, because I was afraid you wouldn't know her. And if dinner is late to-night, you can thank Sarah Baton Willis."
"I'll come set the table." offered Rosemary, jumping up.
As she laid the knives and forks, she told Winnie about her visit to Miss Clinton.
"I know her," declared Winnie, slicing bread—she had fastened back the communicating door between the kitchen and the dining-room. "At least I know of her; Mrs. Hildreth was telling me the other day. She's a woman who likes company—that's all she wants and all she doesn't get, summer times at least. I never saw a neighborhood like this one—I don't believe any of the farmers dare die in July or August for fear their friends couldn't stop farming long enough to come to the funeral."
Rosemary giggled.
"Is she poor, Winnie?" she asked with frank curiosity.
"My, no, not that I have heard tell of," answered Winnie. "She has an income of her own and plenty of relatives, scattered hereabouts. I believe a niece comes and stays with her during the winter months—her brother's daughter. Mrs. Hildreth was telling me that she writes hundreds of letters—though I guess she can't write as many as that—and she wheels herself out to the mail box and back in that chair and washes dishes and everything, sitting in it. But summers she gets fearfully lonesome. The neighbors run in a good deal in the winter and hold sewing-circle meetings there, but they haven't time to bother in the growing season."
"She had toys in a cabinet—Shirley played with them and she said she'd get her some more if she tired of those," said Rosemary, placing the chairs. "Do many children go see her, Winnie?"
"Mrs. Hildreth told me she keeps those toys to amuse the children who may come visiting with their mothers," explained Winnie. "Miss Clinton figured that if the children had something to play with they wouldn't be in a hurry to go home. Downright pathetic, I call it, to be so hungry for someone to talk to that you try to bribe people to stay a little longer."
"I'm going to see her," Rosemary said, as she filled the water glasses. "I told her I'd come—it isn't far to go and I have plenty of time. Can I do anything more, Winnie?"
"Nothing except to tell your mother dinner is ready," was Winnie's grateful reply. "You are the handiest child, sometimes, Rosemary, and I declare I don't know how I should have got dinner on the table to-night without a bit of a lift. I hate to be late, too, when Hughie is here."
"I hope Jack comes up to talk to-night," said Rosemary as they sat down at the table. "I want to know if it is fun to earn your own living. I'm going to try it myself some day."