Table Of Content

1. A Telephone Call 2. Troubled Days Ahead 3. Becky Steps In 4. Pulling Together 5. Busy Days Ahead 6. Pulling Up Stakes 7. Country Bound 8. The House on the Hill 9. Fateful Moment 10. New Home, New Friends The Project Gutenberg eBook of Jean Craig Grows Up, by Kay Lyttleton This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: Jean Craig Grows Up Author: Kay Lyttleton Release Date: May 23, 2021 [eBook #65427] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 Produced by: Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JEAN CRAIG GROWS UP *** Jean Craig Grows Up There were three speckled bobwhite eggs. JEAN CRAIG GROWS UP by KAY LYTTLETON FALCON BOOKS THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK Falcon Books are published by THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY 2231 West 110th Street · Cleveland 2 · Ohio W2 COPYRIGHT 1948 BY THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Contents 9 21 29 40 49 57 69 81 93 102 11. Jean Makes a Discovery 12. The Craigs Plan a Barbecue 13. Swing Your Partner 14. Kit to the Rescue 15. The Haunted House 16. Unexpected Visitor 17. A Ghost Is Uncovered 18. Kit and Buzzy Devise a Scheme 19. Rebecca’s Romance 20. Jean and Ralph 9 10 11 114 128 137 146 152 164 176 188 195 206 JEAN CRAIG GROWS UP 1. A Telephone Call “It does seem to me, kids,” said Kit in exasperation, “that when someone is trying to write, you might be a little quiet.” The three at the end of the room paid no attention. Tommy was so absorbed in trying to see over Doris’ shoulder that he didn’t realize he was losing his balance. Perched on the back of the chair, he suddenly toppled over and landed squarely in Doris’ lap. With all the dignity of the eleven-year-old that he was, he picked himself up and resumed his perch. “Cut it out, will you?” protested Doris. “You practically killed me.” “Aw, I wasn’t doing anything.” Jean was making plans for a party. The list of names lay before her, and she tapped her pencil on her nose thoughtfully as she eyed it. “Now, listen, Jean,” Doris proposed. “I’ve got an idea. Why not roll up the living room rug and push the furniture back out of the way, so that we can play records and dance. We can ask all the kids who have records to bring a few with them. That way we won’t have to keep playing our same old records over and over. Don’t you think that would be fun?” “OK. If we have plenty of cokes, potato chips, and pretzels on hand, we won’t need much else for refreshments, do you think? Or should we have hamburgers later, too?” “We can get along without hamburgers, although those boys will eat all they can get their hands on,” replied Doris. “How many do you have on your list?” asked Kit. “Ten. With the four of us, that should be plenty for a party. I still wonder if it’s really wise to have one with Mother bringing Dad home.” The rest were silent. Kit, sitting at her mother’s desk beside the wide bay window, looked up and frowned at the falling snow that was obscuring the view of the Sound. A pearly grayness seemed to be settling around the big house as if it were being cut off from the rest of the world by a thick, soft curtain. “Hope Dad’s feeling better by now,” Kit said suddenly, pushing 12 13 her dark bangs back from her forehead restlessly. “They said they would be leaving the hospital the eighth. Wasn’t it the eighth, Jean?” “Oh, they’ll be home in plenty of time,” Jean exclaimed. “Here we all sit, looking like small, black storm clouds when he’s better. Mother said positively in her last letter that he had improved wonderfully during the week.” Doris stared at the long, low couch on one side of the open fireplace. It was over four weeks since her father had lain on it. Early the previous fall he had come home after two and a half years in the Army. During those years Mrs. Craig had managed to hold her family together although it hadn’t been easy with four children. When they had received word that Major Thomas Craig had been wounded in the Pacific, they had all been worried. Later, he was well enough to return to the States, and it was comforting to have him nearer home. Finally, the Army Hospital in Philadelphia had discharged him and he returned to his family at last. Through the winter there had been a steady decline in his health until it was necessary for him to return to the Army Hospital for possible further treatment. Somehow Doris could not help wondering whether the future would get any brighter. She rose quickly, shaking her head defiantly at the thought, as any thirteen-year-old girl would. “Let’s not worry, kids. If we’re all blue when he comes, he’ll have a relapse.” Then Jean spoke, anxiously, tenderly, her big dark eyes questioning Kit. “What about Mother?” “We’re all worried about Mother, Jeannie. You’re not the only one,” Kit snapped. “But you can be aching with love inside, and still not go moping around with a long face like that!” “Like what?” demanded Jean haughtily. “Quit it, kids, don’t fight,” Tommy said, just as if he were the eldest instead of the youngest. “Gosh, you two argue much more than Doris and I do.” “Well, I think,” said Doris firmly, “that we ought to remember Mom just as Jean says. She’s almost sick herself worrying over Dad, and there she is, away down in Philadelphia with nobody to share her troubles.” Jean smiled rather forlornly. She had assumed most of the responsibility since they had been left alone. Rebecca, their cousin, had arrived only a few days before Mrs. Craig had left, and it had not been easy to assume a mother’s place suddenly and run the home. “Everything seems to be coming at once,” she said. “The party and Kit’s minor masterpiece for Lincoln’s Birthday.” “Class symposium on ‘Lincoln: The Man—The President—The Liberator’—” Kit ran it off proudly. “Little classics of three hundred words each. You should see Billie Warren’s, Jean. He’s been boiling it down for a week from two thousand words, and every day Barbie King asks him how he’s getting along. And you know how Billie talks. This morning he just glowered and told her, ‘It’s still just sap!’ What a character.” “Kit, don’t,” laughed Jean in spite of herself. “If you get ink spots 14 15 16 on Mother’s desk, you’ll have a nice mess on your hands.” Kit moved the inkwell farther back as a small concession, and suggested once more that the rest of the family try to keep conversation down to a roar about their old party while she finished her symposium. “You know,” Doris began with a far-off look in her eyes, “I think we’re awfully selfish, and I mean all of us, not just Kit—” “That’s nice. I love company,” murmured Kit. “Here’s Dad coming back home after five weeks’ absence, and we don’t know really whether he’s better or worse—” “Doris, don’t even let yourself think that he’s anything but better,” pleaded Jean. “But it’s perfectly true. He needs rest above everything else, so the doctor told Mother. And here we are planning a party for the day he gets home.” “Dad always insists that we go ahead and not upset our plans. He says he feels better knowing we’re happy,” replied Jean. Kit stared out of the window again, thinking. At fifteen she was far more energetic than Jean at seventeen. Her agile mind easily found its way in and out of difficulty. With her curly hair cut short, she seemed more like another boy in the family. She, more than the others, even Tommy, resembled their father in many ways, lighthearted, gay, carefree. Secretly, Kit felt far more able to take the lead than did Jean, now that the family was facing a crisis. “Anyway, I’ve called all the kids and Mother knows we’re going to have the party because I wrote her all about it. She wrote back that she didn’t mind a bit if Becky didn’t.” “But did you ask Becky, Jean?” “You ask her. She’d say yes to anything you asked, Doris.” Doris thawed at once. It seemed as if their elderly cousin had come down from her calm and well-ordered seclusion at Elmhurst, Connecticut, just when they needed her most. Usually she contented herself with sending the family useful and proper gifts on birthdays and at Christmas, but they seldom saw her. She was forty-seven, plump, serene, and still good-looking, with her blonde hair just beginning to look a trifle silvery, and a fine network of wrinkles showing around the corners of her eyes and mouth. “Land alive, Margaret Ann,” she had told Mrs. Craig happily the moment she set foot inside the wide entrance hall at Sandy Cove, “didn’t I know you needed me?” And she laughed. “I didn’t plan to descend on you so sudden, but it looked as if you needed someone, Tom down sick and you worn out taking care of him. Don’t you worry at all about my being put out. I’ll stay here with the children and take care of things till you get back home.” And Mrs. Craig had agreed thankfully. After a three months’ siege with her husband through his nervous breakdown, she was glad indeed to welcome the strong assistance of Rebecca. “Let’s put it up to her right now,” Kit exclaimed. “I’d just as soon 17 18 19 ask her if Doris is afraid.” Before the others could hold her back, she had slipped out of the living room and was racing up the stairs, two at a time, into the large sunny room at the south end of the house where one could look out over Long Island Sound. But at the door Kit stopped short. Over at the window stood Becky, energetically wiping her eyes with a generous-sized plain linen handkerchief, and the end of her nose was red from weeping. “Come in, my dear, come right in,” she said hastily, as Kit backed away. “I’m glad you happened up. Come here to your old second cousin and comfort her. I feel as if all the waves in the Sound had washed over me.” Kit hurried over, put her hand on Becky’s arm, and squeezed it reassuringly. “What’s the matter? Anything about Dad?” demanded Kit, swift to catch the connection between her cousin’s tears and words. “Did you get a letter?” “No,” answered Rebecca, “your mother just telephoned me from Philadelphia. Your father is worse and the doctors think he would be better off at home. They will be home in three days. You know, Kit, they’d never do that if the doctors could do anything more.” There was a break in Rebecca’s voice. “I just wish I had him up home safe in the room he used to have when he was a boy. He had measles the same time I did when my mother was alive. That’s your Aunt Charlotte, Kit, she that was Charlotte Peabody from Boston. But I always seemed to take after the Craig side instead of the Peabody, they said, and Tom was just like my own brother. I wish I had him away from doctors and trained nurses and Army hospitals, and had old Doctor Gallup tending him instead. I’ve seen him march right up to Charon’s ferryboat and haul out somebody he didn’t think was through living.” Kit stood with her hands clasped behind her head, looking down at the pines, their branches lightly crystalled with snow and ice. Somehow it didn’t seem as if God could let her father slip out of the world after He had allowed him to come home from the war. And just when they all needed him so much. During all the months of illness, the girls and Tommy had not grasped the seriousness of it. He only seemed weak and not himself. They knew he had not gone back to work in his office in New York after he left the Army, but they had taken these things lightly. Perhaps only Jean had really gleaned the meaning of her mother’s anxious face, the steady daily visits of the nerve specialist, and, last of all, the decision to return to the Army Hospital in Philadelphia. Kit closed her eyes and wrinkled her face as if with a twinge of sharp pain. “It’s going to be awful,” she said softly, “just awful for Mom.” Rebecca squared her ample shoulders unconsciously, and lifted her double chin in challenge to the worry that the next few days might hold. “It’s worse for you children and Tom. We women are given special strength to bear just such trials. We’ve got to be strong,” she said. But the tears came slowly, miserably to Kit’s brown eyes. She pulled the curtains back, and looked out as the blue waters of the Sound were turning purple and violet in the gathering gloom of the late afternoon. The land looked desolate, and yet it was but a light snowfall. Down close to the water some gulls rose and swept in a big half circle toward the other side of the inlet. Bob Phelps, 20 21 22 running along the sidewalk toward home, waved a big bunch of pussy willows at her. “Spring’s coming, Kit,” he yelled. “Just found some and they’re ’most out!” Kit waved back mechanically. Of course she must not break down and cry. Even Tommy wouldn’t, and she and Jean must be strong and brace up the two younger ones so they all could help their mother. Still the tears came. What was the use of spring if— “Kit, aren’t you ever coming down?” called Jean from the foot of the stairs. “Right now,” Kit answered. “You come too, please, Becky. We need you awfully. To tell us what to do next.” “No, you don’t,” said Rebecca calmly. “You don’t need me anymore than the earth needs me to tell it this snow’s going away and the flowers will soon be blossoming. The first thing you must do is learn how to meet your father with a smile.” 2. Troubled Days Ahead The next three days were anxious ones. All plans for the party had been cancelled, and after school the girls and Tommy hung around Rebecca feeling that she alone could help them bear the suspense. Jean occasionally stole away to her mother’s room and looked around to be sure that everything was as she liked it best, and when she came out into the wide upper hall she usually met Kit and Doris stealing from their father’s room, their eyes red from crying. Tommy hid himself in dark corners, rather like a small puppy trying to run away from his fears. Kit declared there wasn’t a dry pillow in the house. “How about your own self?” Doris asked. “I cry too, but not all the time. I said before that I don’t intend to mope around. We’ve got to keep a stiff upper lip if we don’t want to go to pieces. We must represent the beyondness in feminine efficiency.” “What does that mean, Kit?” asked Tommy. Kit gave Tommy a good-natured shove. “Means that we’ve got to keep calm no matter what happens.” Jean said little. Ever since she could remember, her mother had said to her, “You know I rely on you most, dear. You give me reassurance when I need it most.” It was a thought that always gave her fresh strength, to know how much her mother needed her. She was smaller than Kit, slender and with dark eyes, with a soft look about them. “Jeannie, you’ve got such sympathetic, interested, mellow eyes.” “Eyes can’t be mellow, Dorrie, try something else.” “Well, they are mellow just the same—tender and nice, aren’t they, Tommy?” 23 24 25 And Tommy would always agree that they were. But they were full of trouble now, as Jean hurried around the house, following Rebecca’s direction. Rebecca really did herself proud as chief of operations. Mr. Craig’s rooms were immaculate and as clear of nonessentials as the deck of a battleship. Under her orders the girls worked hard, Tommy ran all the errands she demanded, while Lydia, the Hungarian maid who came in by the day, regarded her with silent, wide-eyed admiration. “We’d never have managed without you, Rebecca,” Jean declared when the final day arrived, and they all gathered in the long living room, listening for the hum of the car up the drive. Doris and Tommy were curled up on the wide window seat. Kit paced back and forth restlessly, and Jean sat with her legs dangling over the arm of her father’s lounge chair before the open fireplace. She was watching the curling flames. “Land, child, I don’t see what you want to burn open fires for when you run a good furnace,” Rebecca had demurred. “I know it isn’t necessary,” Jean answered, getting up from the chair to poke at the fire already blazing steadily, “but it’s consoling to watch an open fire. Don’t you think so, Becky?” Rebecca sat in the old-fashioned pine rocker, placidly knitting on a sweater she was making for Tommy. “We must all hope for the best,” she said, beaming at the anxious faces. “Doris, for pity’s sake stop that silent drizzling. If your father were to walk in now, he’d certainly be discouraged to look at you. I feel just as badly as any of you.” She took off her glasses, that were always balanced halfway down her nose, and reminisced, “Land, didn’t I live with him for years after his mother died? That was your own grandmother, Doris Craig. I’ve still got her spinning wheel up home in the attic. But I always did say we made too much woe of the passing over of our dear ones. And for heaven’s sake, your father not gone yet. Smile, even if your hearts do ache, and cheer him up. Don’t meet him with tears and fears. Jean, run and tell Lydia to keep an eye on that beef tea while I’m here. It has to keep simmering. Kit, can’t you keep still for a minute, or does it ease your mind to keep pacing?” So she encouraged and cheered them, and when the car came up the driveway to the porch steps with Mr. and Mrs. Craig, the four children did their best to look happy. Mr. Craig, wrapped well in the automobile robe, waved to them, his lean, handsome face showing an eagerness to be with them once more. “Hello, my dears,” he called to them. “Becky, God bless you, give me a hand. I’m still rather shaky.” They were all trying to kiss him at once, and Tommy held one of his thin white hands in his strong ones. It did not require the look in their mother’s eyes to warn them about being careful. Slender and tall, she stood behind him smiling at them all. “Why, he doesn’t look nearly so bad as I expected,” Rebecca told her, kissing her in a motherly way. Somehow it seemed quite natural for all to pet and comfort Mom. It had been the same when their father had been in the service; now, more than ever, when the past three months had shown them the possibilities of trouble and sorrow. “You mustn’t tire him, girls,” she told them. “Tommy, help your father upstairs.” He and Becky between them helped Mr. Craig go up, one step at a time, then a rest before the next. “He must have a chance to recover from the trip.” 26 27 28 “Land,” Rebecca called back, “I’m so relieved that you didn’t have to bring him back on a stretcher I can hardly catch my breath.” “I’m hopeful since he stood the trip so well,” answered Mrs. Craig. She leaned her head against the back of the big, cushioned chair. Jean slipped off her coat and Doris took her gloves. Tommy came downstairs and put a fresh log on the fire and Kit hurried out to the kitchen after a cup of tea. They all hovered over her, each eager to make her comfortable. Then suddenly, unable to hold back any longer, she burst into tears. Jean rushed to her side and pulled her close into her arms. “Mother darling,” she begged. “Don’t, don’t cry so. Why, you’re home, and we’re all going to look after him, and help you as much as we can.” Doris raced out of the room and up the stairs after Rebecca, and presently she came bustling downstairs, flushed and efficient. “Why, Margaret Ann,” she cried, smoothing back her hair just as if she had been one of the children. “Don’t give way just when your strength is needed most.” “Please call me Margie,” protested Mrs. Craig, smiling a little. “It sounds so formal for you to call me Margaret Ann. It always makes me feel like squaring my shoulders, Becky.” “So you should, child,” Rebecca declared cheerily. “Margie’s so sort of gay to my way of thinking and there’s stability to Margaret Ann. Lord knows, you’re going to need a lot of stability before you find the way out of this.” “I know I am.” As she spoke she held her family close to her, Doris and Tommy kneeling beside her and Jean and Kit on each side. She leaned back and smiled at them. “That’s better,” Becky said. “Now you children let her go up to her room. I have to tend my broth and see how Tom’s coming along. Looks to me like rest and quiet will carry him through if anything will.” “Becky!” There was a note of panic in their Mother’s voice. Nobody but the same unemotional Becky knew how she longed to put her head right down on that ample bosom and have a good old-fashioned cry. “Becky, the doctors at the hospital say he’ll never be any better.” “Stuff and nonsense!” exclaimed Becky indignantly, with a toss of her head. “Lots they know about it. I never take any stock in those doctors at all, Margie. Give me castor oil, some quinine and calomel, and maybe a little arnica salve for emergencies, and I’ll undertake to help anybody hang on to themselves a little bit longer. They can keep their penicillin and sulfa powder and other fancy drugs.” “But things seem so near a crisis now.” “Let them.” Rebecca stood with her hands on her hips, as if she were hurling defiance at somebody, and the family fairly hung on her words. “Buck up, Margie Craig. As for you, Jean and Kit and Doris and Tommy, if I find any of you looking doleful, I declare I’ll stick clothespins on your noses and fasten a smile to your lips with adhesive tape.” Even without this advice the children were determined to look cheerful and to keep their father carefree and happy. 29 30 31 3. Becky Steps In Saturday came and went without the party. Once, and sometimes twice a day the doctor’s car turned into the broad pebbled driveway and the children went around with subdued voices and anxious faces. Even Lydia, down in her kitchen domain, looked foreboding, and told Rebecca that she had dreamed three times of three blackbirds perching on the chimneys, which was a sure sign of death, anyone could tell you, in her own country. “Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,” Becky laughed back. “If I were you, Lydia, I’d take something for my liver and go to bed a little earlier at night.” All the same, her own face looked worried when she entered the sick room and looked down at Mr. Craig’s face on the pillows. “It seems ridiculous for me to be lying here, Becky,” he would say to her, with the whimsical boyish smile she loved. “Why, there isn’t anything the matter with me only I’m tired out. Machinery’s out of whack is all.” “No, nothing special only that you can’t eat or walk or sit up without keeling over.” Her keen hazel eyes were amused as she looked at him. “You know, Tom Craig, if it wasn’t for Margie, the girls, and Tommy, I’d take you straight home with me.” He looked from her to the window. Jean had just brought in a bunch of daffodils in a slender glass vase and had set them in the sunlight. “You’re not going soon, are you, Becky?” Rebecca seated herself in the chair beside his bed. As she would have put it, there was a time for all things, and this seemed an opportune one for her to get something off her mind. “I’ll have to pretty soon. It looks like an early spring, Tom, and there’s a heap of work waiting for me up there. Of course Matt knows how things go as well as I do, but I’ve been away over a month now, and I like to have the oversight of things. Men are only boys, after all, and you can’t expect too much from them. I want to get the barn shingled, and some more hen runs set out before the chicks begin to hatch, and all my berry patches need clearing out. You know that mass of blackberries along the stone wall in the clover patch below the lane—what’s the matter, Tom?” She glanced at him in alarm. He had closed his eyes as if in pain, and his hand closed suddenly over her own as it lay on the blanket. “It makes me homesick to hear you talk, Becky.” Their glances met in a long look of sympathetic remembrance of the old days at Maple Grove. “If it were not for the children,” he went on slowly. “They are all at an age now when they need the advantages of being near the city.” “Well, I’m not so sure of that,” answered Becky dubiously. “I suppose you feel that you can do more for them down here, Tom, and it is a beautiful place to live, but you did pretty well yourself up at the old Green District, didn’t you?” He smiled and nodded his head. 32 33 34 “I wonder what Margie would say to the Green District schoolhouse?” he asked. A vision of it arose out of the memories of the past, the little red schoolhouse that stood at the crossroads, with rocky pastures rising high behind it, and the long white dusty road curving before it. He had been just a country boy, born and bred within a few miles of Maple Grove at the old Craig homestead. He knew every cow path through the woods around Elmhurst, every big chestnut and hickory tree for five miles around, every fork and bend in the course of the wild little river that cut through the valley meadows. Somehow, in these days of weakness and fear that he was losing his grip on life, there had grown a great yearning to be home again, to find himself back in the shelter of the protecting hills. They had always been the hills of rest to him as a boy. He had often turned his thoughts to them longingly while he sloshed through jungles in the Pacific, but now they beckoned to him even more urgently to come back to peace and health. “She isn’t country-bred, is she, Tom?” The question called him to reality from his dreams. “No,” he answered gently, “no, Margie’s from California. I believe her people went out originally from New York State, but she herself was born in San Diego. Later, she lived on her father’s ranch for a while in the Coronado Valley, but she was educated in the city. She doesn’t know anything about farm life as we do.” Rebecca looked nonplussed. California might just as well be Borneo, so far as her knowledge of it was concerned. It did seem rather too bad that Margie had come from such far-off stock, but still, she thought, a great deal could be excused in her on account of it, since it wasn’t given to everybody to be born in New England. “Would she mind it just for a summer, do you suppose?” “It would have to be for a longer time than one summer, Becky.” Something in his voice made her suspicious. Mrs. Craig had walked out to meet the girls on their way home from the movies. A lone adventurous fly crept up the window curtain and Rebecca promptly slapped him with a ready hand. “Pesky thing, doesn’t it know it’s not time for them to start pestering us,” she said. “What did you say, Tom?” “I said that it would have to be for a longer time than just one summer. Things have not gone well with me for the past year. I haven’t got the guts to break the news to Margie now.” “You should have,” said Becky promptly. “It isn’t fair to her not to share your sorrows with her as well as your joys.” “Margie had enough to worry about in the years I was away when she was managing alone to keep the family together. I don’t want to have her worrying about money now.” “Just like a man. So now you’ve backed yourself up against a stone wall and can’t see a way out. Can I help you? How much money do you need to tide you over?” He laughed unsteadily. “Dear old Becky. You’d give anyone your left ear if they needed it, wouldn’t you? You don’t understand how we live. It takes nearly every cent I get from the government to cover our current expenses. We’ve already made a large hole in our savings in order to get medicine and things. I’m wondering what we are going to do, and I dread even mentioning it to Margie.” 35 36 37 “Then let me do it,” said Miss Craig promptly. “I’d love to. Better yet, talk it over with the whole family if you’re strong enough. How long can you hold out here?” “I’m not certain.” He looked weary and harassed. “We only rent the place and the lease is up the first of May.” “I’ll wager you can rent a good farm up home for what you pay here, Tom—house, barns, pasture, hay fields, wood lots and all,” said Rebecca thoughtfully. “It’s a nice place here, but the cost of living is so high.” She looked out at the clean park-like territory around the large modern house. Winding drives swept in and out. Each residence stood in its own spacious grounds. There was an artificial pond where the children skated in winter, and the country club crowned the hill with a golf course sloping away to the shore on the north. Down in the ravine stood the gray stone railroad station matching the real estate office over the way, and farther along were the village stores, the new high school of brick and concrete, and the two churches. Back and forth along the smooth highway slipped a never-ending line of cars and trucks coming and going like ants over an ant hill. Becky turned her head toward the bed once more and asked, “Would you rather stay here than go up home with me?” “It isn’t what I’d rather do. It’s what we may have to do unless I gain my old strength.” “You’ll never get a bit better lying there worrying over unpaid bills and new ones stacking up. I’m going to talk to Margie.” He shook his head with a little smile of doubt. “But it would never be fair to take them away from this sort of thing, Becky. You don’t understand. Their friends are all here. And Jean has been taking up a course in applied design and ceramics, and Doris has her music. Kit’s deep in schoolwork and belongs to about five clubs outside of that. Even Tommy has a swimming class keeping him busy after school two days a week. Margie’s on more committees and things than I can count, and she believes we owe it to the children to give them the best social environment that we can. Perhaps we can get along in some way. There’s a little left at the bank.” “How much?” demanded Rebecca uncompromisingly. “I mean, after you’ve paid up everything. I’ll bet there isn’t five thousand left.” “Five thousand! I doubt much whether there is one thousand. Don’t tell Margie that. I still have a few securities I might sell and realize something on.” “And you think that you’ve been a good husband to her. Land alive, what are men made of! Here she stands a chance of being left alone in the world with four children to bring up and you’ve never bothered her about your business. The sooner you get to it the better, I think.” Rebecca stood up and adjusted her glasses resolutely. She had seen what he could not, Margie coming leisurely up the walk, a loose cluster of pussy willows in her arms, and the girls following, all except Kit. “There they come now. I won’t say anything till you do, Tom.” Just then Kit’s voice sounded at the door. Her short curls were rumpled and unbrushed, her eyes wide with excitement, as she hugged a heating pad to her face. 38 39 40 41 “I’ve heard almost every word you said,” she burst out. “I had an earache and stayed home this afternoon, and I’ve been asleep in there on the couch. Please don’t worry, Dad. I think it would be glorious for us all to go up into the country.” She stopped as the front door banged and Tommy came crashing upstairs completely out of breath from a strenuous game of baseball. “Well, child, keep your mouth shut till we know where we’re at,” warned Becky quickly. “Go back and lie down. Here they come.” But Kit stood her ground, and Jean and Doris seemed to catch from her the fact that something was up as they came in behind their mother. “It was a lovely walk,” said Mrs. Craig, removing her gloves as she sat down beside the bed and smiled at the patient. “We went past the Dunderdale place, Tom. It is simply lovely there. I never saw so many shrubs and trees and such beautiful landscaping. It made me think of the homes out in California. You’d enjoy the garden so this summer, and there is a screened-in porch across the back of the house. The garage is small, but it will do if we don’t get a new car this year.” Right here Rebecca sniffed, a real, unmistakable sniff. She was a believer in quick action. If you had anything to do, the quicker you did it and got over it the better, she always said. So now she raised her head as they looked at her, and set them all back on their heels. “You won’t get a new car this year, Margie, my dear, and you’re not going to move to any expensive house, either. I’m going to take the whole lot of you to Elmhurst, and see if Tom can’t get his health back up in that peaceful countryside.” 4. Pulling Together A queer silence hung over all of them in the room. Mrs. Craig looked down at the tired face lying back on the white pillows with a startled expression in her usually calm eyes. Instinctively both her hands reached for his and held them fast, while Jean laid her own two down on her mother’s shoulders as if she would have given her strength for this new problem. “You mean for a little visit, don’t you, Becky?” she asked eagerly. “No, I don’t, Jeannie. I mean for good and all, or at least until your father has time to get well, and that can’t be done in a few days.” “But Doctor Martin says he’s gaining every day,” Mrs. Craig said. She waited for some reassuring answer, her eyes almost begging for one, but Rebecca held her ground. “Tom, tell what the doctor said to us this morning. Not that I take much stock in him, but he may be on the right track.” “Nothing special,” said Mr. Craig as he smiled back at them, “only it appears that I am to be laid up in dry dock for repairs for a long time, and the sinews of war won’t stand the vacation expenses if we stay where we are now.” 42 43 44 “I wouldn’t try to talk about it, dear, before the children,” began Mrs. Craig, quick to avoid anything that sounded like trouble or anxiety. “We must not worry. There will be some way out of it.” “There is,” Becky went on serenely. “I say you’d better move right out of this kind of a place where expenses are high and you can’t afford anything at all. This is a real crisis, Margaret Ann.” She spoke with more decision as she saw Jean pat her mother comfortingly. “It has got to be met with common sense. When the breadwinner can’t work and there’s a houseful of youngsters to bring up and feed and clothe, it’s time to sit up and take notice, and count all of your resources.” “How would it do for you to take Dad up home with you for a rest, Becky?” Jean suggested, stepping into the awkward breach as she always did. “Then we could let Lydia go and manage alone. And when he came back we’d have all the moving over, and it would be the prettiest time of the year along in late August.” Mrs. Craig’s face brightened at the suggestion. “Or we might even renew the lease here, Tom. The house is very pleasant after all, and we could get along with it if it were all done over this spring.” Mr. Craig looked up at Rebecca’s face helplessly, and she answered the appeal. “Now, look here,” she said with decision and finality. “You’d better get the idea of staying here right out of your head, Margie. Circumstances have made it entirely out of the question. If you’re the kind of woman I think you are, you’ll start making plans to move where it’s less expensive. I think your way lies over the hills to Elmhurst. You can pay all your bills here, sell off a lot of heavy furniture, and move up there this spring. For you can’t stay here. There’s hardly enough money to see you through as it is. I’m going to help you along a bit until you get your new start.” “Not money enough!” said Mrs. Craig as though she could not believe it. “But we couldn’t think of going up there and all living with you, Becky.” “You’re not going to,” answered Rebecca. “Thank the Lord, I live in a land where houses and food are comparatively cheap and there’s room for everybody. We don’t tack a brass doorplate on a rock pile like I saw there in New York, Margie, and call it a home at about ten dollars a minute to breathe. I’ve been telling Tom you’d better rent a farm near me, and settle down on it.” “But Becky—” Mrs. Craig hesitated. “Oh, Mom, do it, do it,” came in a quick outburst from Kit, standing back against the wall. “It would be swell for all of us and would do wonders for Dad!” “We wouldn’t mind a bit. We’d love it, wouldn’t we, Tommy?” Doris squeezed Tommy’s hand to be sure he would answer in the affirmative. “We’d all help you.” Tommy was silent, still too bewildered at the idea to express an opinion. “I shouldn’t mind for myself, but we must think of the children— their schooling and what environment means to teen-agers. I suppose Jean could be left at school.” “Thought she was all through school,” interrupted Rebecca. 45 46 “I am, only I’ve been taking lessons in town this winter in a special course, arts and crafts, you know, and next fall I was going into the regular classes at the National Academy of Design.” “What for, dear?” Becky’s gray eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “Going to be an artist?” “Not exactly pictures,” Jean answered with dignity. “Textile design.” “Well, whatever it is, I guess it will hold over for a year while you go up to the country and learn to keep house. Kit here can go to high school. It’s seven miles away, but there’s a school bus that picks up those who live too far away to walk. It’s real handy.” Kit’s eyes signaled to Jean, and Jean’s to Doris and Tommy. A fleeting vision of that “handy” trip to high school in the dead of winter appeared before them. “What do you think of it, dear?” asked Mr. Craig, looking longingly up at the face of his wife. “It would be a great comfort and relief to me to get back to those old hills, but it doesn’t seem fair to you or the children. The sacrifice is too great. They do need the right kind of environment, as you say. Suppose we left Jean where she could keep up her studies, and perhaps put Kit into a private school. Then I might go up home with Becky, and you and the two younger ones could go out to California to Benita Ranch —” But Mrs. Craig laid her fingers on his lips. “You’re not going to banish us to Benita Ranch. If you think it is the best thing to do, Tom, we’ll all go with you. Wherever you go, I’m going.” Doris laid her hand over Jean’s, and they stepped out softly. Their mother, they saw, needed to be alone with their father. They fled downstairs to the study back of the living room and were followed by Kit and Tommy who were already deep in an argument about the entire situation. “I don’t think it’s right to move up there,” Doris said, judicially. “We may not like it at all, and there we’d be just the same, stuck in a rut, and maybe we never could get out of it, and we’d grow old and look just like Becky and talk like her and everything.” “Take it easy, kid, be careful of what you say,” Kit said sharply. “Becky is odd in some ways but she influences a lot of people in her home town. And here too. I wish I had half her common sense.” “I hate common sense,” Jean cried passionately. “I suppose it’s the only thing to do but did you see Mom’s face? It was utterly tragic. Dad’s been a country boy, and he’s going back home where he knows all about everything and loves it, but Mother’s so different.” “I think Mom’s a darling, but she’s adaptable too, and she’ll go, you see if she doesn’t. And it won’t kill any of us. The really great mind should rise superior to its environment.” “Let’s tell Kit that the first time she gripes about dishwashing,” Doris said. “I didn’t hear anything about Lydia going along, did you, Jean?” “You’ll do your share all right, Kathleen, and when the gray dawn is breaking at that,” laughed Jean. “Farm life’s no snap and really, while I wouldn’t disagree with Dad and Becky about it, I think that 47 48 49 those who have special gifts—” “Meaning you?” asked Kit. “Meaning me—should not waste their time doing what is not their forte. It takes away the work from those who can’t do the other things.” Jean’s eyes twinkled and she smiled slightly, but Kit took her seriously and shook her head. “You’re going to walk the straight and narrow path up at Elmhurst under Becky’s eagle eye just the same, Jean. It’s no use kicking. I don’t mind so much leaving this place, but we’ll miss the kids like crazy.” “And the roller skating,” added Doris, who went to the neighborhood skating rink with a gang of boys and girls every Friday night. “I’m going to miss that. I wonder if there is a roller rink up there.” “I see where Kit steps off the basketball team and learns how to run a lawn mower,” Kit remarked. “Also there will be no Wednesday evening dancing class, Doris, where you can polish your jitterbug steps.” “I wish we could all move back to town and see if we couldn’t do something to earn money,” Jean said. “One of the girls in the art class found a job designing wallpaper the other day, and another one is making ceramics. When the fortunes of the Victorian family suddenly crashed, the humble but still genteel family usually took in paying guests, didn’t they?” “Yes, but it went out of style ages ago, Jeannie,” Kit kicked off her shoes and stared at her blue angora socks. “We’ll not take in any boarders at all. I see myself waiting on table this summer at some hillside farm retreat for aged and respectable females. If we’ve got to work, let’s pitch in and help at home first.” “And if it has to be, let’s not fuss and make things harder for Mom,” Doris put in. “How about Dad?” Kit demanded. “Seems to me that he’s got the hardest part to bear. It’s bad enough lying there sick all the time, without feeling that you’re dragging the whole family after you and exiling them to Elmhurst.” “It’s a riot, kids,” Jean said all at once, her eyes softening and her dimples showing again. “Just the minute any one of us takes Dad’s part, someone springs up and gives a yell for Mother, and vice versa. We won’t be lonesome up there so long as we have ourselves—you know we won’t—and if things are slow, then we’ll start something.” “Will we? Oh, won’t we?” Kit cried. She got up, walked across the study, and put a stack of records on the phonograph. In a few seconds Begin the Beguine blared out and Kit did a few dance steps back to her seat. “That’s better,” Jean said with a sigh of relief. “We’ve got to pull all together, and make the best of things. Dad’s sick, and Mother’s worried to death. Let’s promise ourselves to be as much help as possible and otherwise not get in the way.” 5. Busy Days Ahead

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Preview Jean Craig Grows Up by Kay Lyttleton

1. A Telephone Call 2. Troubled Days Ahead 3. Becky Steps In 4. Pulling Together 5. Busy Days Ahead 6. Pulling Up Stakes 7. Country Bound 8. The House on the Hill 9. Fateful Moment 10. New Home, New Friends The Project Gutenberg eBook of Jean Craig Grows Up, by Kay Lyttleton This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: Jean Craig Grows Up Author: Kay Lyttleton Release Date: May 23, 2021 [eBook #65427] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 Produced by: Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JEAN CRAIG GROWS UP *** Jean Craig Grows Up There were three speckled bobwhite eggs. JEAN CRAIG GROWS UP by KAY LYTTLETON FALCON BOOKS THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK Falcon Books are published by THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY 2231 West 110th Street · Cleveland 2 · Ohio W2 COPYRIGHT 1948 BY THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Contents 9 21 29 40 49 57 69 81 93 102 11. Jean Makes a Discovery 12. The Craigs Plan a Barbecue 13. Swing Your Partner 14. Kit to the Rescue 15. The Haunted House 16. Unexpected Visitor 17. A Ghost Is Uncovered 18. Kit and Buzzy Devise a Scheme 19. Rebecca’s Romance 20. Jean and Ralph 9 10 11 114 128 137 146 152 164 176 188 195 206 JEAN CRAIG GROWS UP 1. A Telephone Call “It does seem to me, kids,” said Kit in exasperation, “that when someone is trying to write, you might be a little quiet.” The three at the end of the room paid no attention. Tommy was so absorbed in trying to see over Doris’ shoulder that he didn’t realize he was losing his balance. Perched on the back of the chair, he suddenly toppled over and landed squarely in Doris’ lap. With all the dignity of the eleven-year-old that he was, he picked himself up and resumed his perch. “Cut it out, will you?” protested Doris. “You practically killed me.” “Aw, I wasn’t doing anything.” Jean was making plans for a party. The list of names lay before her, and she tapped her pencil on her nose thoughtfully as she eyed it. “Now, listen, Jean,” Doris proposed. “I’ve got an idea. Why not roll up the living room rug and push the furniture back out of the way, so that we can play records and dance. We can ask all the kids who have records to bring a few with them. That way we won’t have to keep playing our same old records over and over. Don’t you think that would be fun?” “OK. If we have plenty of cokes, potato chips, and pretzels on hand, we won’t need much else for refreshments, do you think? Or should we have hamburgers later, too?” “We can get along without hamburgers, although those boys will eat all they can get their hands on,” replied Doris. “How many do you have on your list?” asked Kit. “Ten. With the four of us, that should be plenty for a party. I still wonder if it’s really wise to have one with Mother bringing Dad home.” The rest were silent. Kit, sitting at her mother’s desk beside the wide bay window, looked up and frowned at the falling snow that was obscuring the view of the Sound. A pearly grayness seemed to be settling around the big house as if it were being cut off from the rest of the world by a thick, soft curtain. “Hope Dad’s feeling better by now,” Kit said suddenly, pushing 12 13 her dark bangs back from her forehead restlessly. “They said they would be leaving the hospital the eighth. Wasn’t it the eighth, Jean?” “Oh, they’ll be home in plenty of time,” Jean exclaimed. “Here we all sit, looking like small, black storm clouds when he’s better. Mother said positively in her last letter that he had improved wonderfully during the week.” Doris stared at the long, low couch on one side of the open fireplace. It was over four weeks since her father had lain on it. Early the previous fall he had come home after two and a half years in the Army. During those years Mrs. Craig had managed to hold her family together although it hadn’t been easy with four children. When they had received word that Major Thomas Craig had been wounded in the Pacific, they had all been worried. Later, he was well enough to return to the States, and it was comforting to have him nearer home. Finally, the Army Hospital in Philadelphia had discharged him and he returned to his family at last. Through the winter there had been a steady decline in his health until it was necessary for him to return to the Army Hospital for possible further treatment. Somehow Doris could not help wondering whether the future would get any brighter. She rose quickly, shaking her head defiantly at the thought, as any thirteen-year-old girl would. “Let’s not worry, kids. If we’re all blue when he comes, he’ll have a relapse.” Then Jean spoke, anxiously, tenderly, her big dark eyes questioning Kit. “What about Mother?” “We’re all worried about Mother, Jeannie. You’re not the only one,” Kit snapped. “But you can be aching with love inside, and still not go moping around with a long face like that!” “Like what?” demanded Jean haughtily. “Quit it, kids, don’t fight,” Tommy said, just as if he were the eldest instead of the youngest. “Gosh, you two argue much more than Doris and I do.” “Well, I think,” said Doris firmly, “that we ought to remember Mom just as Jean says. She’s almost sick herself worrying over Dad, and there she is, away down in Philadelphia with nobody to share her troubles.” Jean smiled rather forlornly. She had assumed most of the responsibility since they had been left alone. Rebecca, their cousin, had arrived only a few days before Mrs. Craig had left, and it had not been easy to assume a mother’s place suddenly and run the home. “Everything seems to be coming at once,” she said. “The party and Kit’s minor masterpiece for Lincoln’s Birthday.” “Class symposium on ‘Lincoln: The Man—The President—The Liberator’—” Kit ran it off proudly. “Little classics of three hundred words each. You should see Billie Warren’s, Jean. He’s been boiling it down for a week from two thousand words, and every day Barbie King asks him how he’s getting along. And you know how Billie talks. This morning he just glowered and told her, ‘It’s still just sap!’ What a character.” “Kit, don’t,” laughed Jean in spite of herself. “If you get ink spots 14 15 16 on Mother’s desk, you’ll have a nice mess on your hands.” Kit moved the inkwell farther back as a small concession, and suggested once more that the rest of the family try to keep conversation down to a roar about their old party while she finished her symposium. “You know,” Doris began with a far-off look in her eyes, “I think we’re awfully selfish, and I mean all of us, not just Kit—” “That’s nice. I love company,” murmured Kit. “Here’s Dad coming back home after five weeks’ absence, and we don’t know really whether he’s better or worse—” “Doris, don’t even let yourself think that he’s anything but better,” pleaded Jean. “But it’s perfectly true. He needs rest above everything else, so the doctor told Mother. And here we are planning a party for the day he gets home.” “Dad always insists that we go ahead and not upset our plans. He says he feels better knowing we’re happy,” replied Jean. Kit stared out of the window again, thinking. At fifteen she was far more energetic than Jean at seventeen. Her agile mind easily found its way in and out of difficulty. With her curly hair cut short, she seemed more like another boy in the family. She, more than the others, even Tommy, resembled their father in many ways, lighthearted, gay, carefree. Secretly, Kit felt far more able to take the lead than did Jean, now that the family was facing a crisis. “Anyway, I’ve called all the kids and Mother knows we’re going to have the party because I wrote her all about it. She wrote back that she didn’t mind a bit if Becky didn’t.” “But did you ask Becky, Jean?” “You ask her. She’d say yes to anything you asked, Doris.” Doris thawed at once. It seemed as if their elderly cousin had come down from her calm and well-ordered seclusion at Elmhurst, Connecticut, just when they needed her most. Usually she contented herself with sending the family useful and proper gifts on birthdays and at Christmas, but they seldom saw her. She was forty-seven, plump, serene, and still good-looking, with her blonde hair just beginning to look a trifle silvery, and a fine network of wrinkles showing around the corners of her eyes and mouth. “Land alive, Margaret Ann,” she had told Mrs. Craig happily the moment she set foot inside the wide entrance hall at Sandy Cove, “didn’t I know you needed me?” And she laughed. “I didn’t plan to descend on you so sudden, but it looked as if you needed someone, Tom down sick and you worn out taking care of him. Don’t you worry at all about my being put out. I’ll stay here with the children and take care of things till you get back home.” And Mrs. Craig had agreed thankfully. After a three months’ siege with her husband through his nervous breakdown, she was glad indeed to welcome the strong assistance of Rebecca. “Let’s put it up to her right now,” Kit exclaimed. “I’d just as soon 17 18 19 ask her if Doris is afraid.” Before the others could hold her back, she had slipped out of the living room and was racing up the stairs, two at a time, into the large sunny room at the south end of the house where one could look out over Long Island Sound. But at the door Kit stopped short. Over at the window stood Becky, energetically wiping her eyes with a generous-sized plain linen handkerchief, and the end of her nose was red from weeping. “Come in, my dear, come right in,” she said hastily, as Kit backed away. “I’m glad you happened up. Come here to your old second cousin and comfort her. I feel as if all the waves in the Sound had washed over me.” Kit hurried over, put her hand on Becky’s arm, and squeezed it reassuringly. “What’s the matter? Anything about Dad?” demanded Kit, swift to catch the connection between her cousin’s tears and words. “Did you get a letter?” “No,” answered Rebecca, “your mother just telephoned me from Philadelphia. Your father is worse and the doctors think he would be better off at home. They will be home in three days. You know, Kit, they’d never do that if the doctors could do anything more.” There was a break in Rebecca’s voice. “I just wish I had him up home safe in the room he used to have when he was a boy. He had measles the same time I did when my mother was alive. That’s your Aunt Charlotte, Kit, she that was Charlotte Peabody from Boston. But I always seemed to take after the Craig side instead of the Peabody, they said, and Tom was just like my own brother. I wish I had him away from doctors and trained nurses and Army hospitals, and had old Doctor Gallup tending him instead. I’ve seen him march right up to Charon’s ferryboat and haul out somebody he didn’t think was through living.” Kit stood with her hands clasped behind her head, looking down at the pines, their branches lightly crystalled with snow and ice. Somehow it didn’t seem as if God could let her father slip out of the world after He had allowed him to come home from the war. And just when they all needed him so much. During all the months of illness, the girls and Tommy had not grasped the seriousness of it. He only seemed weak and not himself. They knew he had not gone back to work in his office in New York after he left the Army, but they had taken these things lightly. Perhaps only Jean had really gleaned the meaning of her mother’s anxious face, the steady daily visits of the nerve specialist, and, last of all, the decision to return to the Army Hospital in Philadelphia. Kit closed her eyes and wrinkled her face as if with a twinge of sharp pain. “It’s going to be awful,” she said softly, “just awful for Mom.” Rebecca squared her ample shoulders unconsciously, and lifted her double chin in challenge to the worry that the next few days might hold. “It’s worse for you children and Tom. We women are given special strength to bear just such trials. We’ve got to be strong,” she said. But the tears came slowly, miserably to Kit’s brown eyes. She pulled the curtains back, and looked out as the blue waters of the Sound were turning purple and violet in the gathering gloom of the late afternoon. The land looked desolate, and yet it was but a light snowfall. Down close to the water some gulls rose and swept in a big half circle toward the other side of the inlet. Bob Phelps, 20 21 22 running along the sidewalk toward home, waved a big bunch of pussy willows at her. “Spring’s coming, Kit,” he yelled. “Just found some and they’re ’most out!” Kit waved back mechanically. Of course she must not break down and cry. Even Tommy wouldn’t, and she and Jean must be strong and brace up the two younger ones so they all could help their mother. Still the tears came. What was the use of spring if— “Kit, aren’t you ever coming down?” called Jean from the foot of the stairs. “Right now,” Kit answered. “You come too, please, Becky. We need you awfully. To tell us what to do next.” “No, you don’t,” said Rebecca calmly. “You don’t need me anymore than the earth needs me to tell it this snow’s going away and the flowers will soon be blossoming. The first thing you must do is learn how to meet your father with a smile.” 2. Troubled Days Ahead The next three days were anxious ones. All plans for the party had been cancelled, and after school the girls and Tommy hung around Rebecca feeling that she alone could help them bear the suspense. Jean occasionally stole away to her mother’s room and looked around to be sure that everything was as she liked it best, and when she came out into the wide upper hall she usually met Kit and Doris stealing from their father’s room, their eyes red from crying. Tommy hid himself in dark corners, rather like a small puppy trying to run away from his fears. Kit declared there wasn’t a dry pillow in the house. “How about your own self?” Doris asked. “I cry too, but not all the time. I said before that I don’t intend to mope around. We’ve got to keep a stiff upper lip if we don’t want to go to pieces. We must represent the beyondness in feminine efficiency.” “What does that mean, Kit?” asked Tommy. Kit gave Tommy a good-natured shove. “Means that we’ve got to keep calm no matter what happens.” Jean said little. Ever since she could remember, her mother had said to her, “You know I rely on you most, dear. You give me reassurance when I need it most.” It was a thought that always gave her fresh strength, to know how much her mother needed her. She was smaller than Kit, slender and with dark eyes, with a soft look about them. “Jeannie, you’ve got such sympathetic, interested, mellow eyes.” “Eyes can’t be mellow, Dorrie, try something else.” “Well, they are mellow just the same—tender and nice, aren’t they, Tommy?” 23 24 25 And Tommy would always agree that they were. But they were full of trouble now, as Jean hurried around the house, following Rebecca’s direction. Rebecca really did herself proud as chief of operations. Mr. Craig’s rooms were immaculate and as clear of nonessentials as the deck of a battleship. Under her orders the girls worked hard, Tommy ran all the errands she demanded, while Lydia, the Hungarian maid who came in by the day, regarded her with silent, wide-eyed admiration. “We’d never have managed without you, Rebecca,” Jean declared when the final day arrived, and they all gathered in the long living room, listening for the hum of the car up the drive. Doris and Tommy were curled up on the wide window seat. Kit paced back and forth restlessly, and Jean sat with her legs dangling over the arm of her father’s lounge chair before the open fireplace. She was watching the curling flames. “Land, child, I don’t see what you want to burn open fires for when you run a good furnace,” Rebecca had demurred. “I know it isn’t necessary,” Jean answered, getting up from the chair to poke at the fire already blazing steadily, “but it’s consoling to watch an open fire. Don’t you think so, Becky?” Rebecca sat in the old-fashioned pine rocker, placidly knitting on a sweater she was making for Tommy. “We must all hope for the best,” she said, beaming at the anxious faces. “Doris, for pity’s sake stop that silent drizzling. If your father were to walk in now, he’d certainly be discouraged to look at you. I feel just as badly as any of you.” She took off her glasses, that were always balanced halfway down her nose, and reminisced, “Land, didn’t I live with him for years after his mother died? That was your own grandmother, Doris Craig. I’ve still got her spinning wheel up home in the attic. But I always did say we made too much woe of the passing over of our dear ones. And for heaven’s sake, your father not gone yet. Smile, even if your hearts do ache, and cheer him up. Don’t meet him with tears and fears. Jean, run and tell Lydia to keep an eye on that beef tea while I’m here. It has to keep simmering. Kit, can’t you keep still for a minute, or does it ease your mind to keep pacing?” So she encouraged and cheered them, and when the car came up the driveway to the porch steps with Mr. and Mrs. Craig, the four children did their best to look happy. Mr. Craig, wrapped well in the automobile robe, waved to them, his lean, handsome face showing an eagerness to be with them once more. “Hello, my dears,” he called to them. “Becky, God bless you, give me a hand. I’m still rather shaky.” They were all trying to kiss him at once, and Tommy held one of his thin white hands in his strong ones. It did not require the look in their mother’s eyes to warn them about being careful. Slender and tall, she stood behind him smiling at them all. “Why, he doesn’t look nearly so bad as I expected,” Rebecca told her, kissing her in a motherly way. Somehow it seemed quite natural for all to pet and comfort Mom. It had been the same when their father had been in the service; now, more than ever, when the past three months had shown them the possibilities of trouble and sorrow. “You mustn’t tire him, girls,” she told them. “Tommy, help your father upstairs.” He and Becky between them helped Mr. Craig go up, one step at a time, then a rest before the next. “He must have a chance to recover from the trip.” 26 27 28 “Land,” Rebecca called back, “I’m so relieved that you didn’t have to bring him back on a stretcher I can hardly catch my breath.” “I’m hopeful since he stood the trip so well,” answered Mrs. Craig. She leaned her head against the back of the big, cushioned chair. Jean slipped off her coat and Doris took her gloves. Tommy came downstairs and put a fresh log on the fire and Kit hurried out to the kitchen after a cup of tea. They all hovered over her, each eager to make her comfortable. Then suddenly, unable to hold back any longer, she burst into tears. Jean rushed to her side and pulled her close into her arms. “Mother darling,” she begged. “Don’t, don’t cry so. Why, you’re home, and we’re all going to look after him, and help you as much as we can.” Doris raced out of the room and up the stairs after Rebecca, and presently she came bustling downstairs, flushed and efficient. “Why, Margaret Ann,” she cried, smoothing back her hair just as if she had been one of the children. “Don’t give way just when your strength is needed most.” “Please call me Margie,” protested Mrs. Craig, smiling a little. “It sounds so formal for you to call me Margaret Ann. It always makes me feel like squaring my shoulders, Becky.” “So you should, child,” Rebecca declared cheerily. “Margie’s so sort of gay to my way of thinking and there’s stability to Margaret Ann. Lord knows, you’re going to need a lot of stability before you find the way out of this.” “I know I am.” As she spoke she held her family close to her, Doris and Tommy kneeling beside her and Jean and Kit on each side. She leaned back and smiled at them. “That’s better,” Becky said. “Now you children let her go up to her room. I have to tend my broth and see how Tom’s coming along. Looks to me like rest and quiet will carry him through if anything will.” “Becky!” There was a note of panic in their Mother’s voice. Nobody but the same unemotional Becky knew how she longed to put her head right down on that ample bosom and have a good old-fashioned cry. “Becky, the doctors at the hospital say he’ll never be any better.” “Stuff and nonsense!” exclaimed Becky indignantly, with a toss of her head. “Lots they know about it. I never take any stock in those doctors at all, Margie. Give me castor oil, some quinine and calomel, and maybe a little arnica salve for emergencies, and I’ll undertake to help anybody hang on to themselves a little bit longer. They can keep their penicillin and sulfa powder and other fancy drugs.” “But things seem so near a crisis now.” “Let them.” Rebecca stood with her hands on her hips, as if she were hurling defiance at somebody, and the family fairly hung on her words. “Buck up, Margie Craig. As for you, Jean and Kit and Doris and Tommy, if I find any of you looking doleful, I declare I’ll stick clothespins on your noses and fasten a smile to your lips with adhesive tape.” Even without this advice the children were determined to look cheerful and to keep their father carefree and happy. 29 30 31 3. Becky Steps In Saturday came and went without the party. Once, and sometimes twice a day the doctor’s car turned into the broad pebbled driveway and the children went around with subdued voices and anxious faces. Even Lydia, down in her kitchen domain, looked foreboding, and told Rebecca that she had dreamed three times of three blackbirds perching on the chimneys, which was a sure sign of death, anyone could tell you, in her own country. “Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,” Becky laughed back. “If I were you, Lydia, I’d take something for my liver and go to bed a little earlier at night.” All the same, her own face looked worried when she entered the sick room and looked down at Mr. Craig’s face on the pillows. “It seems ridiculous for me to be lying here, Becky,” he would say to her, with the whimsical boyish smile she loved. “Why, there isn’t anything the matter with me only I’m tired out. Machinery’s out of whack is all.” “No, nothing special only that you can’t eat or walk or sit up without keeling over.” Her keen hazel eyes were amused as she looked at him. “You know, Tom Craig, if it wasn’t for Margie, the girls, and Tommy, I’d take you straight home with me.” He looked from her to the window. Jean had just brought in a bunch of daffodils in a slender glass vase and had set them in the sunlight. “You’re not going soon, are you, Becky?” Rebecca seated herself in the chair beside his bed. As she would have put it, there was a time for all things, and this seemed an opportune one for her to get something off her mind. “I’ll have to pretty soon. It looks like an early spring, Tom, and there’s a heap of work waiting for me up there. Of course Matt knows how things go as well as I do, but I’ve been away over a month now, and I like to have the oversight of things. Men are only boys, after all, and you can’t expect too much from them. I want to get the barn shingled, and some more hen runs set out before the chicks begin to hatch, and all my berry patches need clearing out. You know that mass of blackberries along the stone wall in the clover patch below the lane—what’s the matter, Tom?” She glanced at him in alarm. He had closed his eyes as if in pain, and his hand closed suddenly over her own as it lay on the blanket. “It makes me homesick to hear you talk, Becky.” Their glances met in a long look of sympathetic remembrance of the old days at Maple Grove. “If it were not for the children,” he went on slowly. “They are all at an age now when they need the advantages of being near the city.” “Well, I’m not so sure of that,” answered Becky dubiously. “I suppose you feel that you can do more for them down here, Tom, and it is a beautiful place to live, but you did pretty well yourself up at the old Green District, didn’t you?” He smiled and nodded his head. 32 33 34 “I wonder what Margie would say to the Green District schoolhouse?” he asked. A vision of it arose out of the memories of the past, the little red schoolhouse that stood at the crossroads, with rocky pastures rising high behind it, and the long white dusty road curving before it. He had been just a country boy, born and bred within a few miles of Maple Grove at the old Craig homestead. He knew every cow path through the woods around Elmhurst, every big chestnut and hickory tree for five miles around, every fork and bend in the course of the wild little river that cut through the valley meadows. Somehow, in these days of weakness and fear that he was losing his grip on life, there had grown a great yearning to be home again, to find himself back in the shelter of the protecting hills. They had always been the hills of rest to him as a boy. He had often turned his thoughts to them longingly while he sloshed through jungles in the Pacific, but now they beckoned to him even more urgently to come back to peace and health. “She isn’t country-bred, is she, Tom?” The question called him to reality from his dreams. “No,” he answered gently, “no, Margie’s from California. I believe her people went out originally from New York State, but she herself was born in San Diego. Later, she lived on her father’s ranch for a while in the Coronado Valley, but she was educated in the city. She doesn’t know anything about farm life as we do.” Rebecca looked nonplussed. California might just as well be Borneo, so far as her knowledge of it was concerned. It did seem rather too bad that Margie had come from such far-off stock, but still, she thought, a great deal could be excused in her on account of it, since it wasn’t given to everybody to be born in New England. “Would she mind it just for a summer, do you suppose?” “It would have to be for a longer time than one summer, Becky.” Something in his voice made her suspicious. Mrs. Craig had walked out to meet the girls on their way home from the movies. A lone adventurous fly crept up the window curtain and Rebecca promptly slapped him with a ready hand. “Pesky thing, doesn’t it know it’s not time for them to start pestering us,” she said. “What did you say, Tom?” “I said that it would have to be for a longer time than just one summer. Things have not gone well with me for the past year. I haven’t got the guts to break the news to Margie now.” “You should have,” said Becky promptly. “It isn’t fair to her not to share your sorrows with her as well as your joys.” “Margie had enough to worry about in the years I was away when she was managing alone to keep the family together. I don’t want to have her worrying about money now.” “Just like a man. So now you’ve backed yourself up against a stone wall and can’t see a way out. Can I help you? How much money do you need to tide you over?” He laughed unsteadily. “Dear old Becky. You’d give anyone your left ear if they needed it, wouldn’t you? You don’t understand how we live. It takes nearly every cent I get from the government to cover our current expenses. We’ve already made a large hole in our savings in order to get medicine and things. I’m wondering what we are going to do, and I dread even mentioning it to Margie.” 35 36 37 “Then let me do it,” said Miss Craig promptly. “I’d love to. Better yet, talk it over with the whole family if you’re strong enough. How long can you hold out here?” “I’m not certain.” He looked weary and harassed. “We only rent the place and the lease is up the first of May.” “I’ll wager you can rent a good farm up home for what you pay here, Tom—house, barns, pasture, hay fields, wood lots and all,” said Rebecca thoughtfully. “It’s a nice place here, but the cost of living is so high.” She looked out at the clean park-like territory around the large modern house. Winding drives swept in and out. Each residence stood in its own spacious grounds. There was an artificial pond where the children skated in winter, and the country club crowned the hill with a golf course sloping away to the shore on the north. Down in the ravine stood the gray stone railroad station matching the real estate office over the way, and farther along were the village stores, the new high school of brick and concrete, and the two churches. Back and forth along the smooth highway slipped a never-ending line of cars and trucks coming and going like ants over an ant hill. Becky turned her head toward the bed once more and asked, “Would you rather stay here than go up home with me?” “It isn’t what I’d rather do. It’s what we may have to do unless I gain my old strength.” “You’ll never get a bit better lying there worrying over unpaid bills and new ones stacking up. I’m going to talk to Margie.” He shook his head with a little smile of doubt. “But it would never be fair to take them away from this sort of thing, Becky. You don’t understand. Their friends are all here. And Jean has been taking up a course in applied design and ceramics, and Doris has her music. Kit’s deep in schoolwork and belongs to about five clubs outside of that. Even Tommy has a swimming class keeping him busy after school two days a week. Margie’s on more committees and things than I can count, and she believes we owe it to the children to give them the best social environment that we can. Perhaps we can get along in some way. There’s a little left at the bank.” “How much?” demanded Rebecca uncompromisingly. “I mean, after you’ve paid up everything. I’ll bet there isn’t five thousand left.” “Five thousand! I doubt much whether there is one thousand. Don’t tell Margie that. I still have a few securities I might sell and realize something on.” “And you think that you’ve been a good husband to her. Land alive, what are men made of! Here she stands a chance of being left alone in the world with four children to bring up and you’ve never bothered her about your business. The sooner you get to it the better, I think.” Rebecca stood up and adjusted her glasses resolutely. She had seen what he could not, Margie coming leisurely up the walk, a loose cluster of pussy willows in her arms, and the girls following, all except Kit. “There they come now. I won’t say anything till you do, Tom.” Just then Kit’s voice sounded at the door. Her short curls were rumpled and unbrushed, her eyes wide with excitement, as she hugged a heating pad to her face. 38 39 40 41 “I’ve heard almost every word you said,” she burst out. “I had an earache and stayed home this afternoon, and I’ve been asleep in there on the couch. Please don’t worry, Dad. I think it would be glorious for us all to go up into the country.” She stopped as the front door banged and Tommy came crashing upstairs completely out of breath from a strenuous game of baseball. “Well, child, keep your mouth shut till we know where we’re at,” warned Becky quickly. “Go back and lie down. Here they come.” But Kit stood her ground, and Jean and Doris seemed to catch from her the fact that something was up as they came in behind their mother. “It was a lovely walk,” said Mrs. Craig, removing her gloves as she sat down beside the bed and smiled at the patient. “We went past the Dunderdale place, Tom. It is simply lovely there. I never saw so many shrubs and trees and such beautiful landscaping. It made me think of the homes out in California. You’d enjoy the garden so this summer, and there is a screened-in porch across the back of the house. The garage is small, but it will do if we don’t get a new car this year.” Right here Rebecca sniffed, a real, unmistakable sniff. She was a believer in quick action. If you had anything to do, the quicker you did it and got over it the better, she always said. So now she raised her head as they looked at her, and set them all back on their heels. “You won’t get a new car this year, Margie, my dear, and you’re not going to move to any expensive house, either. I’m going to take the whole lot of you to Elmhurst, and see if Tom can’t get his health back up in that peaceful countryside.” 4. Pulling Together A queer silence hung over all of them in the room. Mrs. Craig looked down at the tired face lying back on the white pillows with a startled expression in her usually calm eyes. Instinctively both her hands reached for his and held them fast, while Jean laid her own two down on her mother’s shoulders as if she would have given her strength for this new problem. “You mean for a little visit, don’t you, Becky?” she asked eagerly. “No, I don’t, Jeannie. I mean for good and all, or at least until your father has time to get well, and that can’t be done in a few days.” “But Doctor Martin says he’s gaining every day,” Mrs. Craig said. She waited for some reassuring answer, her eyes almost begging for one, but Rebecca held her ground. “Tom, tell what the doctor said to us this morning. Not that I take much stock in him, but he may be on the right track.” “Nothing special,” said Mr. Craig as he smiled back at them, “only it appears that I am to be laid up in dry dock for repairs for a long time, and the sinews of war won’t stand the vacation expenses if we stay where we are now.” 42 43 44 “I wouldn’t try to talk about it, dear, before the children,” began Mrs. Craig, quick to avoid anything that sounded like trouble or anxiety. “We must not worry. There will be some way out of it.” “There is,” Becky went on serenely. “I say you’d better move right out of this kind of a place where expenses are high and you can’t afford anything at all. This is a real crisis, Margaret Ann.” She spoke with more decision as she saw Jean pat her mother comfortingly. “It has got to be met with common sense. When the breadwinner can’t work and there’s a houseful of youngsters to bring up and feed and clothe, it’s time to sit up and take notice, and count all of your resources.” “How would it do for you to take Dad up home with you for a rest, Becky?” Jean suggested, stepping into the awkward breach as she always did. “Then we could let Lydia go and manage alone. And when he came back we’d have all the moving over, and it would be the prettiest time of the year along in late August.” Mrs. Craig’s face brightened at the suggestion. “Or we might even renew the lease here, Tom. The house is very pleasant after all, and we could get along with it if it were all done over this spring.” Mr. Craig looked up at Rebecca’s face helplessly, and she answered the appeal. “Now, look here,” she said with decision and finality. “You’d better get the idea of staying here right out of your head, Margie. Circumstances have made it entirely out of the question. If you’re the kind of woman I think you are, you’ll start making plans to move where it’s less expensive. I think your way lies over the hills to Elmhurst. You can pay all your bills here, sell off a lot of heavy furniture, and move up there this spring. For you can’t stay here. There’s hardly enough money to see you through as it is. I’m going to help you along a bit until you get your new start.” “Not money enough!” said Mrs. Craig as though she could not believe it. “But we couldn’t think of going up there and all living with you, Becky.” “You’re not going to,” answered Rebecca. “Thank the Lord, I live in a land where houses and food are comparatively cheap and there’s room for everybody. We don’t tack a brass doorplate on a rock pile like I saw there in New York, Margie, and call it a home at about ten dollars a minute to breathe. I’ve been telling Tom you’d better rent a farm near me, and settle down on it.” “But Becky—” Mrs. Craig hesitated. “Oh, Mom, do it, do it,” came in a quick outburst from Kit, standing back against the wall. “It would be swell for all of us and would do wonders for Dad!” “We wouldn’t mind a bit. We’d love it, wouldn’t we, Tommy?” Doris squeezed Tommy’s hand to be sure he would answer in the affirmative. “We’d all help you.” Tommy was silent, still too bewildered at the idea to express an opinion. “I shouldn’t mind for myself, but we must think of the children— their schooling and what environment means to teen-agers. I suppose Jean could be left at school.” “Thought she was all through school,” interrupted Rebecca. 45 46 “I am, only I’ve been taking lessons in town this winter in a special course, arts and crafts, you know, and next fall I was going into the regular classes at the National Academy of Design.” “What for, dear?” Becky’s gray eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “Going to be an artist?” “Not exactly pictures,” Jean answered with dignity. “Textile design.” “Well, whatever it is, I guess it will hold over for a year while you go up to the country and learn to keep house. Kit here can go to high school. It’s seven miles away, but there’s a school bus that picks up those who live too far away to walk. It’s real handy.” Kit’s eyes signaled to Jean, and Jean’s to Doris and Tommy. A fleeting vision of that “handy” trip to high school in the dead of winter appeared before them. “What do you think of it, dear?” asked Mr. Craig, looking longingly up at the face of his wife. “It would be a great comfort and relief to me to get back to those old hills, but it doesn’t seem fair to you or the children. The sacrifice is too great. They do need the right kind of environment, as you say. Suppose we left Jean where she could keep up her studies, and perhaps put Kit into a private school. Then I might go up home with Becky, and you and the two younger ones could go out to California to Benita Ranch —” But Mrs. Craig laid her fingers on his lips. “You’re not going to banish us to Benita Ranch. If you think it is the best thing to do, Tom, we’ll all go with you. Wherever you go, I’m going.” Doris laid her hand over Jean’s, and they stepped out softly. Their mother, they saw, needed to be alone with their father. They fled downstairs to the study back of the living room and were followed by Kit and Tommy who were already deep in an argument about the entire situation. “I don’t think it’s right to move up there,” Doris said, judicially. “We may not like it at all, and there we’d be just the same, stuck in a rut, and maybe we never could get out of it, and we’d grow old and look just like Becky and talk like her and everything.” “Take it easy, kid, be careful of what you say,” Kit said sharply. “Becky is odd in some ways but she influences a lot of people in her home town. And here too. I wish I had half her common sense.” “I hate common sense,” Jean cried passionately. “I suppose it’s the only thing to do but did you see Mom’s face? It was utterly tragic. Dad’s been a country boy, and he’s going back home where he knows all about everything and loves it, but Mother’s so different.” “I think Mom’s a darling, but she’s adaptable too, and she’ll go, you see if she doesn’t. And it won’t kill any of us. The really great mind should rise superior to its environment.” “Let’s tell Kit that the first time she gripes about dishwashing,” Doris said. “I didn’t hear anything about Lydia going along, did you, Jean?” “You’ll do your share all right, Kathleen, and when the gray dawn is breaking at that,” laughed Jean. “Farm life’s no snap and really, while I wouldn’t disagree with Dad and Becky about it, I think that 47 48 49 those who have special gifts—” “Meaning you?” asked Kit. “Meaning me—should not waste their time doing what is not their forte. It takes away the work from those who can’t do the other things.” Jean’s eyes twinkled and she smiled slightly, but Kit took her seriously and shook her head. “You’re going to walk the straight and narrow path up at Elmhurst under Becky’s eagle eye just the same, Jean. It’s no use kicking. I don’t mind so much leaving this place, but we’ll miss the kids like crazy.” “And the roller skating,” added Doris, who went to the neighborhood skating rink with a gang of boys and girls every Friday night. “I’m going to miss that. I wonder if there is a roller rink up there.” “I see where Kit steps off the basketball team and learns how to run a lawn mower,” Kit remarked. “Also there will be no Wednesday evening dancing class, Doris, where you can polish your jitterbug steps.” “I wish we could all move back to town and see if we couldn’t do something to earn money,” Jean said. “One of the girls in the art class found a job designing wallpaper the other day, and another one is making ceramics. When the fortunes of the Victorian family suddenly crashed, the humble but still genteel family usually took in paying guests, didn’t they?” “Yes, but it went out of style ages ago, Jeannie,” Kit kicked off her shoes and stared at her blue angora socks. “We’ll not take in any boarders at all. I see myself waiting on table this summer at some hillside farm retreat for aged and respectable females. If we’ve got to work, let’s pitch in and help at home first.” “And if it has to be, let’s not fuss and make things harder for Mom,” Doris put in. “How about Dad?” Kit demanded. “Seems to me that he’s got the hardest part to bear. It’s bad enough lying there sick all the time, without feeling that you’re dragging the whole family after you and exiling them to Elmhurst.” “It’s a riot, kids,” Jean said all at once, her eyes softening and her dimples showing again. “Just the minute any one of us takes Dad’s part, someone springs up and gives a yell for Mother, and vice versa. We won’t be lonesome up there so long as we have ourselves—you know we won’t—and if things are slow, then we’ll start something.” “Will we? Oh, won’t we?” Kit cried. She got up, walked across the study, and put a stack of records on the phonograph. In a few seconds Begin the Beguine blared out and Kit did a few dance steps back to her seat. “That’s better,” Jean said with a sigh of relief. “We’ve got to pull all together, and make the best of things. Dad’s sick, and Mother’s worried to death. Let’s promise ourselves to be as much help as possible and otherwise not get in the way.” 5. Busy Days Ahead

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