Last of all, Ralph looked down at Jean at his side. Jean, almost eighteen, already a replica of her mother in her quick tenderness and her looks. His eyes lingered on her. She was very sweet, he thought, the sweetest of them all. He was going to miss Jean very much.
Tommy trailed Ralph into the living room after the others that evening and told him over and over again to send him a tame bear, one that he could bring up by hand and train.
“Well, I guess you’ll have your hands full, Ralph,” Rebecca exclaimed, “if you fill all these commissions. I declare it seems as if you belonged to all of us.”
Jean and Kit drove Ralph and Buzzy to the station the next day. The boys had already made their goodbyes to the others at home, for Mrs. Hancock had preferred it that way. She declared she would cry at the station and would rather say goodbye to her son and nephew at home, where she could weep in privacy.
As the train puffed its way around the hillside bend of the track, Jean remembered when she had once before waited for the same train to arrive. The day which now seemed so long ago, when she was meeting the family arriving from Sandy Cove. That time she had thought the train would never come. Now, all too fast, it was making its way into the station.
“You promise to write to us now, Buzzy,” reminded Kit.
“I’ll be back next summer, Jeannie,” said Ralph, looking deep into her eyes. “And you’ll be surprised how fast the days will fly by in the meantime. Goodbye, dear.”
“Goodbye.” Jean was suddenly overcome by the meaning of their farewell and added, “Oh, Ralph, I shall miss you so very much.”
As she and Kit walked back to the car, Jean thought over what Ralph had said last. Would the next year go so fast as he had said? He seemed so positive. Yet Jean wondered.
Jean had no need to worry. Her adventures at an art school in New York, told in _JEAN CRAIG IN NEW YORK_ proved that Ralph was right.
[1]_Night and Day_ by Cole Porter, published by Harms, Inc., c. 1932.
When Tom Craig came home from the Pacific, wounded, the Craig family found there wasn’t enough money to maintain their beautiful home and send Tom to the country to regain his health. So the family moved to a farm in Elmhurst. Lovely Jean, only seventeen, was a staff of courage for her family in their new life. But it wasn’t all hard work. There were picnics, new friends and there was Ralph McRae, the young and handsome landlord.