"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?"
