Jake Shale drove slowly up the hill. The young people talked incessantly, and all together. Miss Bradbury listened in a pleased silence that betrayed itself in her eyes, for her lips were unbending. She saw that already the effect of her transplanting the Scollards showed; they were blossoming out like the season under the warmth of freedom from anxiety.
Miss Bradbury found to her surprise that she herself was glad to get home, and thought of her coming in those terms. Down in the bottom of her staunch old heart, the good woman had not looked forward to a summer in the Ark with less than dread.
The children took Ralph out at once to display to him all the interesting points of Miss Bradbury's estate, leaving its owner to their mother, and to form the acquaintance of Rose Gruber, "the Dove," whose olive branch was waxing greener in the eyes of all the "Archeologists," as Bob called the inmates of the Ark. Though Happie said that she thought they "were more like Architects, for the dictionary said they made, built, planned, contrived, and that was a full description of the Scollards."
"The creek is high," Rosie called after Bob and Happie, as they followed Margery and Ralph out the side door.
"We are going over to it on our way back," Happie answered over her shoulder. "It does seem to me a pity to call a beautiful trout brook 'a crick,' just as if it were a sort of rheumatism! Brooks sound like lovely things, but cricks!" She ended her supplementary remarks to her companions with a tiny shudder.
"Books are in running brooks; is that why you like them?" suggested Ralph. "Or is it because they chatter, chatter as they flow--fellow feeling, you know?" He glanced slyly at Happie. "Creeks ought to chatter even more than brooks, being an American variety."
There was an old grist mill half a mile away from the Ark, turned, when it did turn, by a beautiful stream, a trout brook made up of many mountain springs, rising far up in the hills, and rushing through Madison County to the river, which should bear them on to the sea. Clear and brown were the waters of this brook, its bottom paved with stones, its banks, rising steep on the one side, and gently sloping on the other, grown with ferns, luxuriant with rhododendrons, and surmounted with pines, spruce and giant maples. It was an enchanted region to the Scollards, city bred, and "Patty-Pan" set hitherto. They were delighted to take Ralph to the brook and show him that if the Ark were shabby, the country was perfect--they discovered a strong sense of proud proprietorship in their breasts as they introduced Ralph to their haunts, and it dawned upon them that they must be beginning to feel at home.