the morning after the fire found the family at breakfast over with the judge's family. it was impossible as yet for the girls to feel the full reaction over their loss. as the judge remarked, youth responds to change and variety quicker than any new interest, and they were already planning a wonderful reconstruction period. kit and billy rode down on horseback to look at the ruins, and came back with an encouraging report. the back of the house was badly damaged, but the main building stood intact, though the charred clapboards and wide vacant windows looked desolate enough.
"thank goodness the wind was from the south, and blew the flames away from the pines," said kit, dropping into her chair, hungrily. "doesn't it seem good to get some of cousin roxy's huckleberry pancakes again, girls? oh yes, we met my prisoner—i should say, my erstwhile prisoner—on the road. he was tapping chestnut trees over on peck's hill like a woodpecker. you needn't laugh, doris, 'cause billie saw him too, didn't you, bill? and he's got a sweet forgiving nature. he doffed his hat to me and i smiled back just as though i'd never caught him in our berry patch, and had shad lock him up in the corn-crib."
"was he heading this way?" the judge asked. "i want him to look at my peach trees and tell me what in tunket ails them."
"why, judge, i'm surprised at you, and before the children, too." cousin roxy's eyes twinkled with mirth at having caught the judge in a lapse.
"i only said tunket, roxy," he began, but cousin roxy cut him short.
"tunket's been good connecticut for tophet ever since i was knee high to a toadstool, and we won't say anything more about that. jerry will be glad to go up with you to the peach orchard, and you can take the youngsters with you. i want jean and kit to drive over with us and help fix maple lawn."
but before a week was out, all of the carefully laid plans for housing the "robins" before snow fell were knocked higher than a kite. kit said that one of the most delightful things about country life, anyway, was its uncertainty. you went ahead and laid a lot of plans on the lap of the norns, and then the old ladies stood up and scattered everything helter-skelter. the beauty of it was, though, that they usually turned around and handed you unexpected gifts so much better than anything you had hoped for, that you were left without a chance for argument.
the family had taken up its new quarters at maple lawn, and two of the local carpenters, mr. peleg weaver, philemon's brother, and mr. delaplaine, had been persuaded to devote a portion of their valuable time to rehabilitating greenacre farm. it took tact and persuasion to induce the aforesaid gentlemen to desert their favorite chairs on the little stoop in front of byers' grocery store, and approach anything resembling daily toil. there had been a squire in the weaver family three generations back, and peleg held firmly to established precedent. he might be landed gentry, but he was no tiller of the soil, and he secretly looked down on his elder brother for personally cultivating the family acres.
mr. delaplaine was likewise addicted to reverie and historic retrospect. nothing delighted billie and kit so much as to ride down to the store and get a chance to converse with both of the old men on local history and family "trees." mr. delaplaine's mail, which consisted mostly of catalogues, came addressed to n.b. delaplaine, esq., and even the little french canadian kiddies tumbling around the gardens of the mill houses down in nantic knew what that n.b. stood for, but to gilead he was just "bony" delaplaine.
every day that first week found the girls down at the farm prying around the ruins for any lost treasures. stanley howard struck up a friendship with both the judge and mr. bobbins, and usually drove by on his way from the village. he would stop and chat for a few moments with them, but kit was elusive. vaguely, she felt that the proper thing for her to do was to offer an apology, for even considering him an unlawful trespasser. when stanley would drive away, jean would laugh at her teasingly.
"oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud, sister mine? he seems a very sightly young man, even if he does 'chase caterpillars for a living.' i never did see any one except you, kit, who hated to acknowledge herself in the wrong. the rest of us all have the most peaceful, forgiving sort of dispositions, but you can be a regular porcupine when you want to be."
"it could come from uncle cassius," retorted kit. "did you hear them all talking about him over at elmwood while we were there? let's sit here under the pines a minute until the mailman goes by. i'm awfully tired poking over cinders. cousin roxy said he was the only notable in our family. dean cassius cato peabody. we ought to tell 'bony' that."
"don't you call him 'bony' so he'll hear you," whispered jean. "it would hurt his feelings." she glanced back over her shoulder to where mr. delaplaine worked, taking off the outer layer of charred clapboards from the front of the house.
"still it is nice to own a dean, almost as good as a squire," repeated kit, placidly. "there were only seven original ones here in gilead; and his grandfather was one of those. let's see, jean, he would have been our great-great-great-grandfather, wouldn't he? great-uncle cassius is named for him, cassius cato peabody. just think of him, jean, with a name like that when he was a little boy, in a braided jacket and those funny high waisted breeches you see in the little painted woodcuts in cousin roxy's childhood books."
"i didn't pay much attention to what they were saying about him," said jean, dreamily. "is he still alive?"
"he is, but i guess he might as well be dead as far as the rest of the family is concerned. cousin roxy said he'd never married, and he lived with his old maiden lady sister out west somewhere. not the real west, either; i mean the interesting west like saskatchewan and saskatoon and—and california; you know what i mean, jean?"
"i didn't even hear where they lived. i'm afraid i wasn't interested. aren't you glad the fire didn't bum the cupola? i almost wish they could leave the house that lovely weathered brown tone, instead of painting it white with green blinds again. dad would like it that way, too. i suppose everybody would say it was flying in the face of tradition, after the trowbridge place has been white two hundred years."
"there comes the mail," called jean, starting up and running down the drive like a young deer, as the little cart hove in sight. the carrier waved a newspaper and letter at them.
"nothin' for you girls, to-day, only a letter for your pa, and weekly newspaper for hiram. i'll leave it up at the old place as i go by." he added as a happy afterthought to relieve any possible anxiety on their part, "it's from delphi, mich."
kit stood transfixed with wonder, as he passed on up the hill.
"jean," she said, slowly, "there's something awfully queer about me. i heard cousin roxy say once, i was born with a veil, and ought to be able to prognosticate. that letter was from uncle cassius cato peabody."
"well, what if it is?" asked jean, shaking the needles from her serge skirt as she rose leisurely.
kit drew on her freshman knowledge of ancient history, and quoted:
"last night the eagles circled over rome,
and cæsar's destiny——"
jean laughed and pointed to a line of crows rising leisurely from a clump of pine woods.
"what does it mean when the crows circle over gilead?"
kit jammed her velvet "tam" down over one ear adventurously, and started towards the gateway, finishing the quotation as she went:
"—crowned him thrice king!"
