There were other great storms before the winter was over, and spring was very late that year, but when it did come it seemed to the children as if the world had never been so beautiful. This was the joy of living in New England. There was no monotony about the seasons. After a winter with banks and banks of snow, and coasting enough to satisfy one’s wildest dreams, the snow vanished; and the brown earth soon became ready for planting; the same miracle began again, of green points poking their heads up to the light.

And if other springs had been delightful, this was so thrilling Peggy wanted to dance and shout with joy—for her own dearly beloved Henrietta Cox was sitting on a dozen eggs, and one day some downy, fluffy chickens were hatched out. Yes, actually, these tiny creatures—living, moving, breathing creatures, all of them Peggy’s very own—were chipping their shells, and making their entrance into this wonderful world. Alice took the chickens more calmly, but she was greatly interested in them in her quiet way.

“Oh, mother, I do hope grandmother likes chickens,” Peggy said, when Mrs. Owen told the children that she had a letter from their grandmother, fixing the time of her annual spring visit.

“Peggy, you never seem to be able to think of but one thing at a time,” said her mother. “What difference will it make whether your grandmother likes chickens? She won’t have to do anything about them.”

The children were very much interested in helping arrange the spare room for their grandmother. Alice got out the prettiest bureau cover from the linen closet, and the children helped their mother wash the china for the washstand. It was pretty china, covered with small pink roses, with green leaves. And there was a pincushion, that was white over pink, on the bureau. Peggy went out and picked some of the hemlock and put that in a green vase on the table.

It was a pleasant excitement to have their grandmother come. She always brought them presents. She was a quiet, dignified woman, and she had brown eyes very like Alice’s, but her hair, that was once brown, was now snow-white. They all went down to the station to meet her, and they rode back with her in the taxi, and that was great fun.

Their grandmother was not a person who expressed a great deal, so, when she came into the house and said, “Mary, how pleasant you have made this little house look,” they were all very much pleased.

The children could hardly wait for her trunk to be unpacked, for they were eager to see what she had brought. They did not venture to go into her room; she liked to have her room to herself. She was tired, and it was almost supper-time before she came down. She had some things in her hands.

“I have some blue gingham here for a dress for Peggy, and some pink for Alice,” she said. “I have brought some material for new white dresses, too.”

The children were delighted with the thought of their new frocks. Their grandmother brought them each a book besides.

Lady Janet wandered into the parlor.

“You have the same cat, I see,” said their grandmother.

“Oh, no, grandmother, she’s different,” Alice said. “Don’t you see how different she is? She’s her daughter. She hasn’t so many stripes on her tail, and she’s a lighter gray. And she’s got a different character.”

“Has she?” said their grandmother, as pussy began to sharpen her claws on the sofa. “It seems to me her nature is very much the same. Do you let her come into the parlor?”

“Sometimes,” said Mrs. Owen. “If the children see that she doesn’t go up into the bedrooms and make small footmarks on the bed quilts—that is all I ask.”

“You don’t like cats very well, do you, grandmother?” said Peggy.

“Yes, I like them in their proper place.”

“What is their proper place?” Peggy asked.

“I like to see a cat sitting patiently in front of a mouse-hole, or lying on the bricks in front of the kitchen stove; but I don’t like to see it scratching the parlor furniture.”

“Neither do I,” said Mrs. Owen. “Put Lady Janet out into the kitchen, Alice.”

They all went out to supper, and again the older Mrs. Owen praised the dainty appearance of the table.

“Mary, I don’t know how you have done it, but you have made this tiny house just as attractive as your large one.”

“All the paper and paint are new and fresh here, and I got rid of all my ugly furniture and have only kept the old pieces.”

“I wish you would come and do my house over for me. And, by the way, I am hoping you and the children will come and spend three months with me this summer. I am sure the sea air will do the children good.”

She did not notice how their faces clouded over. The mere suggestion filled them with despair. Leave her beloved Rhode Island Reds, Peggy was thinking, just as Henrietta had hatched out twelve downy, fluffy balls? Why, they would be big chickens when they came back. Leave Lady Janet? was Alice’s thought. No sea-bathing and boating could make up for the loss of her friendly little face.

“Could I take Lady Janet with me, grandmother?” Alice asked.

“I hardly think so. A cat does not like to be moved.”

“It is very kind of you to think of it,” said Mrs. Owen, “but I am afraid I shall have to stay right here by my garden and my hens.”

“Oh, have you hens?” Mrs. Owen asked.

“Yes, grandmother, seven of them and a cock,” Peggy said; “and twelve teenty, tinety chickens, the dearest, cunningest things. Don’t you remember,” she added, reproachfully, “how I wrote and told you we had a birthday surprise party of hens for mother?”

“I do remember it now.”

Peggy said no more about the hens. How terrible it was to be so old that the idea of seven hens and a cock and twelve chickens made no more impression on one than that! And yet, Miss Betsy Porter must be nearly as old as her grandmother, and Miss Betsy was deeply interested in hens. After all, it was the kind of person you were, and not the age.

Two or three days later, as Mrs. Owen was writing letters, she heard Peggy say to Alice, “I like it better when grandmother isn’t here.”

“So do I,” said Alice. “I wonder when she is going home?”

Mrs. Owen looked up from her writing. “She is going to stay ten days longer, and then, if I can persuade her, she will come back to us for the whole summer.”

Mrs. Owen turned to look at her little girls. Their faces wore a discontented, rebellious look.

“Did it ever occur to you that it is of no importance whether you like the way things are or not?” she asked. “You are two very small, unimportant people. Did you ever stop to think what your grandmother has had to bear?”

They had never thought anything about it. Their minds had been entirely taken up with their own affairs.

“Your father was your grandmother’s only child,” Mrs. Owen went on, and her voice was unsteady. “She owned the big house we used to live in, and every summer they came to it, so that your father and your Uncle William and I played together when we were children. When your father became a doctor and married me and settled down here, she gave us the house for a wedding present. Think, Peggy, for a minute, of what it meant to you to lose your father. But you had only known him a few short years, and you and Alice are so young you have a whole rich life before you. But your grandmother is not young; she had had him all his life, and he was her only child.”

There were tears in her mother’s eyes. Peggy had seldom seen them there. She slipped down from her chair and went over to her mother, putting an arm about her waist. It was not of her grandmother that she was thinking, but of her mother, who had lost so much, and yet was so brave.

Mrs. Owen dried her eyes and was silent for a minute.

Then she said: “Your grandmother is a very lonely person.”

“But she lives in the city where there are lots and lots of people,” said Alice.

“Yes, and she has many friends and acquaintances, but that does not prevent her being lonely. We are the only near relations she has. You remember how she wanted to take Peggy and bring her up. I could not consent to that. Then she wanted us all to spend the summer with her, and we all of us like better to be at home. But I think she would really like to spend the summer with us. Now, Peggy, the better one knows people, the more one finds to like in them, if they are good people; and it is just a question of what we are looking out for most in this world, whether it is to be happy ourselves, or to try to make other people happy. If we are trying to be happy ourselves, all kinds of things turn up that we did not expect, to spoil our fun. After all, it is not so very important, whether we are happy or not.”

“I think it is very important,” said Peggy. “And I guess you thought so when you were a little girl, mother.”

“You are right, Peggy, I did. But now the question is, will you children try to make your grandmother happy?”

“I’ll try,” said Peggy; “but I just can’t stand it if she doesn’t care about my dear Rhode Island Reds.”

But her grandmother did grow to appreciate them, to Peggy’s great surprise. One morning she went out with Peggy when she fed the chickens. It was a sunny morning, with a soft blue sky and fleecy clouds.

“To think of my being here all these days and not having seen your hens,” said Mrs. Owen.

“I thought, if you waited until you wanted to see them, it would be more of a treat,” said Peggy.

“Who put that idea into your head, your mother?”

“No, I don’t want people to see them unless it is a treat.”

Peggy’s grandmother looked at the little girl’s eager, upturned face.

“Do you like them so much, Peggy?” she asked.

Peggy hesitated. It was one of the great decisions of her life. On her answer depended the success or failure of her intercourse with her grandmother. If she said, “I like them well enough,” they would remain just seven Rhode Island hens and a cock, so far as her grandmother was concerned. She looked up at her grandmother, inquiringly. Her grandmother smiled down at her pleasantly.

“I just love them!” said Peggy.

“What a handsome cock!” said her grandmother.

This compliment to her favorite pleased Peggy. “Isn’t he a beauty?” she said.

“He certainly is,” said her grandmother warmly.

“His name is Mr. Henry Cox,” said Peggy, in a burst of confidence.

“What a nice name,” said her grandmother.

And so it was that the elder Mrs. Owen became interested in feeding the hens and chickens and helping hunt for eggs, and when she went home, at the end of the visit, they were all glad to think that she was to spend the summer with them.

“I am glad she is coming back,” said Peggy to Alice. “Do you know, Alice, I think when she comes back, we’ll teach her the geography game.”

“I don’t think she’s got a very nice name,” said Alice. “I’m glad they didn’t call me Rebecca, for her. And she can only live in one State.”

“Yes,” said Peggy, “but it is such a nice State. She could live in Rhode Island, with all my dear Rhode Island Reds.”

THE END