Kit of Greenacre Farm by Izola Forrester

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KIT OF GREENACRE FARM

by

IZOLA FORRESTER

The World Syndicate Publishing Co.
Cleveland, O. New York, N.Y.
George W. Jacobs & Company

1919

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. "NO TRESPASSING"

II. MRS. GORHAM SMELLS SMOKE

III. KIT RISES TO PROPHESY

IV. THE ORACLE AT DELPHI

V. SHEPHERD SWEETINGS

VI. EXPECTING "KIT"

VII. PERSONALLY CONDUCTED

VIII. AT THE SIGN OF THE MUMMY

IX. ALL SANDY'S FAULT

X. THE DEAN'S OUTPOSTS

XI. "KEEP OUT"

XII. KIT LOCATES A "FOUNDER"

XIII. ENTER THE ROYAL MUMMIES

XIV. IN HONOR OF MARCELLE

XV. THE FAMILY ADVISES

XVI. SHOPPING FOR SHAKESPEARE

XVII. HOPE'S PRIMROSE PATH

XVIII. STANLEY APOLOGIZES

XIX. THE COURT OF APPEAL

XX. HOGS AND HORACE

XXI. THE CIRCLE OF RA

XXII. HEADED FOR GILEAD

XXIII. THE DEAN SEES THE STAR

XXIV. THE TENTS OF GREENACRES

XXV. COAXING THE WILDERNESS

XXVI. PAYING GUESTS

XXVII. HELENITA'S SONG-BIRD

XXVIII. STANLEY PAYS AN OLD SCORE

XXIX. KIT GIVES HER BLESSING

XXX. FACING REALITY

CHAPTER I

"NO TRESPASSING"

Kit was on lookout duty, and had been for the past hour and a half. The
cupola room, with its six windows, commanded a panoramic view of the
countryside, and from here she had done sentry duty over the huckleberry
patch.

It lay to the northeast of the house, a great, rambling, rocky, ten acre
lot that straggled unevenly from the wood road down to the river. To the
casual onlooker, it seemed just a patch of underbrush. There were
half-grown birches all over it, and now and then a little dwarf spruce
tree or cluster of hazel bushes. But to the girls of Greenacres, that ten
acre lot represented a treasure trove in the month of August when
huckleberries and blueberries were ripe. Shad said knowing the proper time
to pick huckleberries was just born in one, so the girls had guarded the
old pasture from any marauding youngsters or wayside peddlers.

"You've got to keep a good eye out for them this year," Shad warned them.
"Last year wasn't good for huckleberries, apples or nuts, but this is
going to be a regular jubilee harvest. Them bushes up there are hanging so
full that you can put up quarts and quarts and quarts of them and send
huckleberry pies to the heathen all winter if you want to."

And he had likewise warned them that that particular berry patch had been
famous throughout the countryside ever since the days when Greenacres had
belonged to the Trowbridges. Several times when it had happened to be a
good year for the huckleberry crop, raiders had swept down and culled the
best of the harvest. Not from around the near-by villages had they come,
but from the small towns, ten or fifteen miles away.

"Them mill boys and girls," Shad declared, "just think that the Lord grows
things in the country for anybody to come along and pick. They don't pay
no more attention to a 'No Trespassing' sign than they would to a
woodchuck's tracks. The only thing to do is watch, and when you see 'em
turn in through the bars off the main road, you come down and let me know,
and telephone over for Hannibal Hicks to come and ketch 'em. Hannibal
ain't doin' nothin' to earn his fifteen dollars a year as constable 'round
here, and we ought to help him out if we can."

So to-day, it was Kit's turn to watch the huckleberry patch from the
cupola room, and along towards three o'clock she beheld a trig-looking
red-wheeled, black-bodied wagon, drawn unmistakably by a livery horse,
pull up at the pasture bars, and its driver calmly and shamelessly hitch
there. He took out of the wagon not a burlap bag, but a tan leather hand
bag of generous size, and also something else that looked like a capacious
box with a handle to it.

"Camouflage," said Kit to herself, scornfully. "He's going to fill them
with our berries, and then make believe he's selling books."

Down-stairs she sped with the news. Doris was out at the barn negotiating
peace terms with a half-grown calf that she had been trying to tame for
days, and which still persisted in butting its head every time she came
near it with friendly overtures. Jean and Helen had gone up to Norwich
with Mrs. Robbins for the day, and her father was out in the apple orchard
with Philemon Weaver, spraying the trees against the attacks of the gypsy
moths. Leastwise, Philemon held to spraying, but Mr. Robbins was anxious
to experiment with some of the newer methods advocated by the government.

All unconscious of Kit's intentions or Shad's eagerness to abet them, the
two rambled off towards the upland orchards. Kit had started Shad after
the trespasser, while she went back to telephone to Mr. Hicks. The very
last thing she had said to Shad was to put the vandal in the corn-crib and
stand guard over him until Mr. Hicks came.

"Don't you worry one bit, Miss Kit," the constable of Gilead Township
assured her over the wire. "I'll be there in my car in less than twenty
minutes. You folks ain't the only ones that's suffering this year from
fruit thieves, and it's time we taught these high fliers from town that
they can't light anywhere they like and pick what they like. I'll take him
right down to the judge this afternoon."

Kit sat by the open window and fanned herself with a feeling of triumphant
indignation. If Jean or Helen had been home, she knew perfectly well they
would have been soft-hearted and lenient, but every berry on every bush
was precious to Kit, and she felt that now was the appointed hour, as
Cousin Roxy would have said.

Inside of a few minutes, Shad came back, perspiring and red faced, but
filled with unholy glee. He dipped a tin bucket into the water pail.

"I've got him," he said, happily, "safe and sound in the corn-crib, and
it's hotter than all get out in there. He can't escape unless he slips
through a crack in the floor. I just caught him red handed as he was
bending down right over the bushes, and what do you suppose he tried to
tell me, Miss Kit? He said he was looking for caterpillars." Shad laughed
riotously at the recollection. "Did you call up Han Hicks?"

Kit nodded, looking out at the corn-crib. The midsummer sun beat down upon
it pitilessly, at the end of the lane behind the barn.

"Do you suppose he'll survive, Shad? I'll bet a cookie it's a hundred and
six inside there."

"Do him good," retorted Shad. "Probably it's the only chance he's ever had
to meditate on his misdoings. Don't you fret about him. He's just as husky
as I be, and twice as hefty. It was all I could do to ketch a good holt on
him."

"Oh, Shad," exclaimed Kit. "I didn't want you to touch him, you know."

"I didn't," Shad laughed. "I just gave him a bit of sound scripture
reasoning, aided by fist persuasion when he was inclined to put up an
argument. I'll stand guard over him until Han comes along, and takes him
quietly off our hands. I reckon he didn't think we had any majesty of the
law here in Gilead."

Kit looked after his retreating figure somewhat dubiously. It was one
thing to act on the impulse of the moment and quite another to face the
consequences. Now that the prisoner was safe in the corn-crib, she
wondered somewhat uneasily just what her father would say when he found
out what she had done to protect the berry patch. But just now he was safe
in the upper orchard with old Mr. Weaver, deep in apple culture, and she
thought she could get rid of the trespasser before he returned.

Mrs. Gorham was in the kitchen putting up peaches. Her voice came with
droning, old-fashioned sweetness through the screen door.

"When I can read my title dear
To mansions in the skies,
I'll bid farewell to every fear,
And wipe my weeping eyes."

Kit slipped around the side drive behind the house out to the hill road.
Mr. Hicks would have to come from Gilead Green in this direction, and here
she sat on one of the high entrance posts, waiting and cogitating.

The woodbine that clambered over the two high, white posts was still
green, but scrambling along the ground were wild blackberry runners just
turning a rich brown crimson.

The minutes passed and still Mr. Hicks failed to appear. If Kit could have
visualized his journey hither, she might have beheld him, lingering here
and there along the country roads, stopping to tell the news to any
neighbor who might be working out his road tax in the lull of the season
between haying and harvest time. Beside him sat Elvira, his youngest,
drinking in every word with tense appreciation of the novelty. It was the
first chance Mr. Hicks had had to make an arrest during his term of
office, and as a special test and reward of diligence, Elvira had been
permitted to come along and behold the climax with her own eyes. But the
twenty minutes stretched out into nearly an hour's time and more, and
Kit's heart sank when she beheld her father strolling leisurely down the
orchard path, just as Mr. Hicks hove in sight.

Mr. Weaver hobbled beside him, smiling contentedly.

"Well, I guess we've got 'em licked this time, Jerry," he chuckled. "If
there's a bug or a moth that can stand that leetle dose of mine, I'll eat
the whole apple crop myself."

"Still, I'll feel better satisfied when Howard gets here, and gives an
expert opinion," Mr. Robbins rejoined. "He wrote he expected to be here
to-day without fail."

"Well, of course you're entitled to your opinion, Jerry," Mr. Weaver
replied doubtfully. "But I never did set any store at all by these here
government chaps with their little satchels and tree doctor books. I'd
just as soon walk up to an apple tree and hand it a blue pill or a shin
plaster."

Kit slid hastily down from the post as Mr. Hicks' black and white horse
turned in from the road.

"Hello," he called out, cheerily. "How be you, Jerry? Howdy, Philemon?
Miss Kit here tells me you've been harboring a fruit thief, and you've
caught him."

Kit's cheeks were bright red as she laid one hand on her father's
shoulder.

"Shad's got him right over in the corn-crib, Mr. Hicks. I haven't told
father yet, because it might worry him. It isn't anything at all, Dad,"
she added, hurriedly. "We girls have been keeping a watch on the berry
patch, you know, and to-day it was my turn to stand guard up in the
cupola. I just happened to see somebody over there after the berries, so I
told Shad to go and get him, and I called up Mr. Hicks."

Mr. Robbins shook his head with a little smile.

"I'm afraid Kit has been overzealous, Hannibal," he said. "I don't know
anything about this, but we'll go over to the corn-crib and find out what
it's all about."

Kit and Evie secured a good point of vantage up on the porch while the
others skirted around the garden over to the old corn-crib where Shad
stood sentinel duty.

"My, I like your place over here," Evie exclaimed, wistfully. "You've got
so many ornaments out-of-doors. Ma says she can't even grow a nasturtium
on our place without the hens scratching it up."

Kit nodded, but could not answer. Already she had what Cynthy Allen called
a "premonition" that all was not as it should be at the corn-crib. She saw
Shad stealthily and cautiously put back the wide wooden bars that held the
door, then Mr. Hicks, fully on the defensive with a stout hickory cane
held in readiness for any unseemly onslaught on the part of the culprit,
advanced into the corn-crib. Evie drew closer, her little freckled face
full of curiosity.

"Ain't Pop brave?" she whispered, "and he never made but two arrests
before in all his life. One was over at Miss Hornaby's when she wouldn't
let Minnie and Myron go to school 'cause their shoes were all out on the
ground, and the other time he got that French weaver over at Beacon Hill
for selling cider."

Still Kit had no answer, for over at the corn-crib she beheld the
strangest scene. Out stepped the prisoner as fearlessly and blithely as
possible, spoke to her father, and the two of them instantly clasped
hands, while Shad, Mr. Hicks and Philemon stared with all their might. The
next the girls knew, the whole party came strolling back leisurely, and
Kit could see the stranger was regaling her father with a humorous view of
the whole affair. Shad tried to signal to her behind his back some
mysterious warning, and even Mr. Hicks looked jocular.

Kit leaned both hands on the railing, and stared hard at the trespasser.
He was a young man, dressed in a light gray suit with high sport boots. He
was, as Mrs. Gorham expressed it later, "light complected" and tanned so
deeply that his blonde, curly hair seemed even lighter. He lifted his hat
to Kit, with one foot on the lower step, while Mr. Robbins called up:

"Mr. Howard, my dear, our fruit expert from Washington, whom I was
expecting."

And Kit bowed, blushing furiously and wishing with all her heart she might
have silenced Evie's audible and disappointed ejaculation:

"Didn't he hook huckleberries after all?"

CHAPTER II

MRS. GORHAM SMELLS SMOKE

"I was perfectly positive that if we went away and left you in charge for
one single day, Kit, you would manage to get into some kind of
misadventure," Jean said, reproachfully, that evening. "If you only
wouldn't act on the impulse of the moment. Why on earth didn't you tell
father, and ask his advice before you telephoned to Mr. Hicks?"

"That's a sensible thing for you to say," retorted Kit, hotly, "after
you've all warned me not to worry Dad about anything. And I did not act
upon the impulse of the moment," very haughtily. "I made certain logical
deductions from certain facts. How was I to know he was hunting gypsy
moths and other winged beasts when I saw him bending over bushes in our
berry patch? Anyhow it would simplify matters if Dad would let us know
when he expected illustrious visitors. Did you see old Hannibal's face and
Evie's, too? They were so disappointed at not having a prisoner in tow to
exhibit to the Gilead populace on the way over to the jail."

Mrs. Gorham glanced up over her spectacles at the circle of faces around
the sitting-room table. The girls had volunteered to help her pick over
berries for canning the following day. It was a sacrifice to make, too,
with the midsummer evening calling to them in all its varied orchestral
tones: Katydids and peep frogs, the swish of the wind through the big
Norway pines on the terraces, and the scrape of Shad's old fiddle from the
back porch. It was Friday evening, and Mr. and Mrs. Robbins had driven
over to the Judge's to attend a community meeting, the latter being one of
Cousin Roxy's innovations in Gilead.

"Land alive," she had been wont to say. "Here we are all living on the
same hills and valleys and never meeting 'cept on Sundays when we have to,
or now and again when there happens to be a funeral. I declare if I
didn't drive about all the time behind Ella Lou, I'd never know how folks
were getting on. So every two weeks the Judge and I are going to hold an
old-time social, only we call it a community meeting so as to try to give
it the new spirit. It's just as well for us to remember that we ain't all
dead yet by a long shot, 'though I do think there's a whole lot that ain't
got any more get up and get to them than Noah's old gray mule that had to
be shoved off the Ark."

Mr. Robbins had invited the erstwhile prisoner to accompany them, but he
had decided instead to keep on his way to the old Inn on the hill above
the village, much to Jean and Helen's disappointment.

Helen had discovered that his first name was Stanley, which relieved her
mind considerably.

"If it had been Abijah or Silas, I know I could never have forgiven him
for getting in the berry patch," she said, "but there is something
promising about Stanley. Seems as if he lit like Mercury just when there
wasn't anything happening here at all."

"Wonder if I turned out that oil stove," Mrs. Gorham said thoughtfully.
"Seems like I smell something. Shad," raising her voice, "do you get up
and go out in that 'ell' room and see if I turned out that fire under the
syrup. I smell smoke."

"Oh, Lord," groaned Shad, laying aside his cherished instrument. "You
could smell ice if you half tried."

He got up lumberingly and sauntered out through the kitchen into the long
lean-to addition, that was used as a summer kitchen now, and the moment he
opened the door there poured out a thick volume of black smoke and flying
soot. The old-fashioned oil stove had a way of letting its wicks "work
up," as Shad said, if left too long to its own devices.

There was a spurt of flame from the woodwork behind the stove, and Shad
slammed the door to, and ran for the water bucket.

It seemed incredible how fast the flames spread. Summoned by his outcry,
the girls formed a bucket brigade from the well to the kitchen door, while
Shad, his mouth bound around in a drenched Turkish towel, fought the blaze
single handed.

Mrs. Gorham made straight for the telephone, calling up the Judge, and two
or three of the nearest neighbors for help. The Peckham boys from the
sawmill were the first to respond, and five minutes later Hiram was on the
spot, having seen the rising smoke and flare in the sky from Maple Lawn.

"You'll never save the place," old Mr. Peckham told them flatly. "The
well's low and everything is dry as tinder. Better start carrying things
out, girls, because the best we men-folks can do is to keep the roofs wet
down and try to save the barn."

While the fire was confined to the "ell" kitchen, the two older Peckham
boys set to work up-stairs, under Jean's direction. Kit had made for her
father's room the first thing. When Jean opened the door she found her
piling the contents of the desk and chiffonier drawers helter-skelter
into blankets.

"It's all right, Jean," she called. "I'm not missing a thing. You tie the
corners up and have the boys carry these down-stairs and bring back the
clothes-basket and a couple of tubs for the books. Tell Helen to take the
canaries out."

"Doris has them, and Gladsome, too," answered Jean. "And Mrs. Gorham is
getting all of the preserves out of the cellar, and Mr. Peckham says he's
sure they'll save the piano and most of the best furniture, but, oh, Kit,
just think of how father and mother will feel when they see the flames in
the sky, and know it's Greenacres burning."

"You'd better start in at mother's room and stop cogitating, or we'll be
sliding down a lightning rod to get out of here."

Nobody quite noticed Helen in the excitement, but later when all was over,
it was found that she had rescued all the treasures possible, the pictures
and bric-a-brac, the sofa pillows and all the linen and family silver
that had been packed away in the bottom of the sideboard.

As the rising glow of the flames lighted up the sky help began to arrive
from all quarters. Mrs. Gorham's thoughtfulness in telephoning immediately
brought the Judge first, with all of the neighbors that had been present
at the community meeting. Cousin Roxy was bareheaded, little curly wisps
of hair fluttering around her face.

"I made your father stay up at our place," she told the girls. "You'll all
probably have to come back with me anyhow and excitement isn't good for
him. Besides, he wouldn't be a bit of good around here. Seems like they're
getting the fire under pretty good control. I don't believe all the house
will go. It was fearful old anyway, and it needed to be rebuilt if you
ever expect your great-grandchildren to live here."

Kit noticed an entirely new and unsuspected trait in Cousin Roxy on this
night of excitement. It was the only time when she had not seen her take
command of the situation. But to-night she helped Mrs. Gorham pack all
the necessary household supplies into the back of the wagon for Shad to
drive up to Maple Lawn. As soon as she had seen the extent of the damage
she had said immediately that the robin's nest must be moved up the hill
to her own old home, where she had lived before her marriage to Judge
Ellis.

"It won't take but a couple of days to put it into shape for you, and
Hiram's right up there to look after things. You'll be back here before
snow flies, with a few modern improvements put in, and all of you the
better for the change. Helen, go bring the family treasures from under
that pine tree, and put them in the back of our car."

"You know, Cousin Roxy," Kit exclaimed, "I thought the minute you showed
up down here to-night you'd be the chief of the fire department."

Cousin Roxy laughed heartily.

"Did you, child? Well, I've always held that there are times and seasons
when you ought to let the men-folks alone. After you've lived a lifetime
in these parts, you'll know that every boy born and bred around here is
taught how to fight fire from the time he can tote a water bucket. Did you
save all the chickens, Shad?"

"Ain't lost even a guinea hen!" Shad assured her. "The barn ain't touched,
and so I'm going to sleep over the harness room and watch out for the
stock."

It was always a secret joy to the girls to hear the way Shad would roll
out about the Greenacre "stock."

"Just as if," Jean said, "we had all the cattle upon a thousand hills and
racers and thoroughbreds into the bargain, instead of Bonnibel and Lady
Bountiful, with Princess and the hens. I think Helen put him up to it. She
always thinks in royal terms of affluence."

CHAPTER III

KIT RISES TO PROPHESY

The morning after the fire found the family at breakfast over with the
Judge's family. It was impossible as yet for the girls to feel the full
reaction over their loss. As the Judge remarked, youth responds to change
and variety quicker than any new interest, and they were already planning
a wonderful reconstruction period. Kit and Billy rode down on horseback to
look at the ruins, and came back with an encouraging report. The back of
the house was badly damaged, but the main building stood intact, though
the charred clapboards and wide vacant windows looked desolate enough.

"Thank goodness the wind was from the south, and blew the flames away from
the pines," said Kit, dropping into her chair, hungrily. "Doesn't it seem
good to get some of Cousin Roxy's huckleberry pancakes again, girls? Oh
yes, we met my prisoner--I should say, my erstwhile prisoner--on the road.
He was tapping chestnut trees over on Peck's Hill like a woodpecker. You
needn't laugh, Doris, 'cause Billie saw him too, didn't you, Bill? And
he's got a sweet forgiving nature. He doffed his hat to me and I smiled
back just as though I'd never caught him in our berry patch, and had Shad
lock him up in the corn-crib."

"Was he heading this way?" the Judge asked. "I want him to look at my
peach trees and tell me what in tunket ails them."

"Why, Judge, I'm surprised at you, and before the children, too." Cousin
Roxy's eyes twinkled with mirth at having caught the Judge in a lapse.

"I only said tunket, Roxy," he began, but Cousin Roxy cut him short.

"Tunket's been good Connecticut for Tophet ever since I was knee high to a
toadstool, and we won't say anything more about that. Jerry will be glad
to go up with you to the peach orchard, and you can take the youngsters
with you. I want Jean and Kit to drive over with us and help fix Maple
Lawn."

But before a week was out, all of the carefully laid plans for housing the
"robins" before snow fell were knocked higher than a kite. Kit said that
one of the most delightful things about country life, anyway, was its
uncertainty. You went ahead and laid a lot of plans on the lap of the
Norns, and then the old ladies stood up and scattered everything
helter-skelter. The beauty of it was, though, that they usually turned
around and handed you unexpected gifts so much better than anything you
had hoped for, that you were left without a chance for argument.

The family had taken up its new quarters at Maple Lawn, and two of the
local carpenters, Mr. Peleg Weaver, Philemon's brother, and Mr.
Delaplaine, had been persuaded to devote a portion of their valuable time
to rehabilitating Greenacre Farm. It took tact and persuasion to induce
the aforesaid gentlemen to desert their favorite chairs on the little
stoop in front of Byers' Grocery Store, and approach anything resembling
daily toil. There had been a Squire in the Weaver family three generations
back, and Peleg held firmly to established precedent. He might be landed
gentry, but he was no tiller of the soil, and he secretly looked down on
his elder brother for personally cultivating the family acres.

Mr. Delaplaine was likewise addicted to reverie and historic retrospect.
Nothing delighted Billie and Kit so much as to ride down to the store and
get a chance to converse with both of the old men on local history and
family "trees." Mr. Delaplaine's mail, which consisted mostly of
catalogues, came addressed to N.B. Delaplaine, Esq., and even the little
French Canadian kiddies tumbling around the gardens of the mill houses
down in Nantic knew what that N.B. stood for, but to Gilead he was just
"Bony" Delaplaine.

Every day that first week found the girls down at the Farm prying around
the ruins for any lost treasures. Stanley Howard struck up a friendship
with both the Judge and Mr. Bobbins, and usually drove by on his way from
the village. He would stop and chat for a few moments with them, but Kit
was elusive. Vaguely, she felt that the proper thing for her to do was to
offer an apology, for even considering him an unlawful trespasser. When
Stanley would drive away, Jean would laugh at her teasingly.

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