“Guess if you hunt around, you might find some quinces too, and plenty of berries and currants,” Rebecca said. “It’s been let go to waste the past few years, and it’ll take a year or more to get it back into shape. You’d better write out West and get a three-year lease, with option of purchase.”
“We couldn’t think of buying it, even with a GI loan from the government,” Mrs. Craig demurred, “but we might try the three-year lease. What do you think, dear?”
“I should write tonight,” Mr. Craig told her confidently. “Even if I should gain my health completely, we could still stay up here summers, and you all would enjoy it, I know. Look at Tommy’s red cheeks, and Jean looks like another girl. If I keep on much longer on Becky’s cooking, I expect to be mowing hay in the lower meadows by July.”
So the letter was written, the wonderful letter freighted with so many hopes. All the youngsters escorted Mrs. Craig down to the mailbox at the crossroads the next noon. It was truly a fateful moment, as Kit remarked solemnly. So much depended upon the nature of the answer from far-off Saskatoon. Perched on the fence rail Tommy began to whistle loudly.
“Ralph McRae,” Jean answered for her mother.
“You know, really, Tommy,” protested Doris, “if you could just see how ridiculous you look on that fence rail, you’d come down.”
But Tommy ignored her and kept to the rail all the same, whistling. Even Kit felt the inspiration of the moment.
“Oh, I love these April mornings! You can smell everything that’s sweet and new in the air, can’t you, Mom? And I found arbutus buds down in the pines too, and an old crow’s nest, and the crocuses are up.”
Mrs. Craig lifted her face to the blue sky with its great white clouds that drifted up from the south and sighed contentedly.
“There comes the mailman down the wildwood way,” Jean called from the curve of the road.
Already they had grown to watch for mail as the one real event of the day. Mr. Ricketts, the rural free delivery carrier, was a typical product of a small community, with his cap pushed back on his head, a smile of perpetual well-being on his face.
“Looks like we’d get a spell of fine weather,” he called. “Tell Miss Craig I noticed a postcard for her about her subscription being up for her floral monthly, and if she ain’t going to renew hers, I’ll send in my own for this year.”