It was a week later and Beatrice, with a landscape of blue mountains and green forest showing beyond her through the open door, was standing on the threshold in her riding clothes.
“I have finished my share of the housework and I am off for a ride,” she said to Nancy.
Her sister smiled broadly over her dusting.
“I would never have thought,” she declared, “that you could curry a horse and split the kindling before breakfast and that I could scrub floors and wash dishes every day and that we both of us would like it. There must be something strange in this mountain air.”
They had begun to feel as settled as though they had been at their housekeeping in the cabin for months. The cottage itself was a different place, an entrancingly pleasant and comfortable one. Hester Herrick, with whom they were now great friends, was always bringing them things—some big black andirons for the great fireplace, a collection of soft pine pillows, and the thick bearskin rug that lay before the hearth.
“Roddy said you were to have it. He shot the bear himself last winter,” she said when the girls protested that this last gift was too great a one.
Sam also had brought a bashfully presented offering, the pelt of a mountain lion which now served as Aunt Anna’s bedside rug. Nancy had put up white blue-bordered curtains at the little square windows and had set on the wide sills pots of red berries, boxes of ferns, and bowls of bright-faced pansies.
With the fresh wind fluttering the curtains and the sunshine lying in patches on the white scrubbed floor, the little cabin was as gay and homelike a place as heart could desire.
Christina, in spite of Thorvik’s interdiction, still came every day. This morning she arrived earlier than usual, with their marketing in a big basket and the mail; for it was not, even yet, a good thing for the girls to go often to the village. She took some letters in to their Aunt Anna and remained for some time, since Aunt Anna appeared to be asking her questions.
“No,” the girls heard Christina say, through the door, “there is no one of your name hereabouts. But Olaf and I have only lived in this valley ten years, so it might have been before.”
Beatrice looked up, startled. What had her aunt been asking and why should there be any one of their name living in this far-off place? She remembered her former wonder concerning that brother of whom they never heard anything at home. But Christina came out and closed the door, the bright morning was calling, and Beatrice forgot her curiosity in looking forward to her ride.