The hour before closing at the factory became a time of acute torture. He who usually stayed till the last minute, engrossed in winding up the affairs of the day, now seemed perfectly willing to trust their completion to any one who would undertake it. The instant the whistle blew he was off like a shot, out of the factory yard, clinging to the platform of a crowded trolley, catching an interurban car, plunging through a thicket, down an old lane, and emerging into Paradise.
The Rannys were having the adventure of their lives with the secret farm, an adventure shared with equal enthusiasm by their co-conspirators. "Valley Mead" was proving the most marvelous of forbidden playthings, and was doing for Randolph Bartlett what doctors and sanitariums and tears and threats had failed to do. The old place had been overhauled, the house made habitable, and now that furnishing was in progress, each day brought new and fascinating developments.
Eleanor had arrived from school just in time to fling herself heart and soul into the enterprise. By a happy chance she had been allowed to spend the week with the Randolph Bartletts, only reporting to her grandmother from time to time for consultations regarding summer clothes. Her strange indifference to this usually all-important question, together with her insistent plea to remain in Kentucky all summer, might have aroused the old lady's suspicion had she not long ago decided that the explanation of all Eleanor's motives was perversity.
Every morning Eleanor and Mrs. Ranny went out to the farm, and worked with enthusiasm. Each piece of furniture that was taken out of the crate was hailed with delight and dragged from one place to another to try its effect. The hanging of curtains was suspended while they rushed out to see the newly arrived rabbits with their meek eyes and tremulous pink mouths, or dashed out to the poultry-yard to have another look at the downy little fluffs of yellow that were pretending to be chickens.
But the real excitement of the day was when the workmen had departed, and Mr. Ranny came out with his machine laden with priceless treasures from the ten-cent store, or later when Quin Graham dashed up the lane with anything from a garden-spade to a bird-house in his hands, and with an enthusiasm and energy in his soul that communicated themselves to all concerned. Then everybody would talk at once, and everybody insist upon showing everybody else what had been done since morning, and there was more hanging of pictures and changing of furniture, and so much chatter and laughter that it was a wonder anything was accomplished.