"Kit, dear old goose," Jean interposed, "we're not park swans or any such thing. We're just robins, and robins are robins whether they build in a park catalpa or a country rock maple. We'll just migrate, build a new nest, and behave ourselves. Not because we like to, but because it's our nature to, being, as I said before, just robins."
It had been decided to leave Kit and Jean behind to finish their schooling. They could board at the Phelpses' home next to Shady Cove along the shore road, but both girls begged to go with the family.
"Why don't you stay?" advised Helen. "You'll escape all of the moving and settling and ploughing."
"We don't want to escape anything," said Kit firmly. "It isn't any fun being left behind with the charred remains."
"Oh, Kit, don't call them that; it's grewsome," begged Doris.
"I don't care. I feel grewsome when I think of being left behind. How do you suppose we'd feel to walk past the Cove and not see any of the rest of you around."
"It's better than being cut right bang off in the middle of everything," replied Helen, with one of her rare explosions. Whenever wrath decided to perch for a minute on her flaxen hair, it always delighted the other girls. Kit said it was precisely like watching a kitten arch its back and scold. "Everything," she repeated tragically. "I can't finish a single thing and I know I'll never pass, being switched off to goodness knows what sort of a school."
"Let's not grouch anyway," counseled Jean. "Mother's getting thinner every day. As long as it's got to be, tighten your belts and face the enemy. Right about face! Forward! March!"
"I do wish that Kit wouldn't be so happy about things that make you just miserable."
Kit danced away down the hallway warbling sweetly:
"Gondolier, row, row! Gondolier, row, row! 'Tis a pretty air I do declare, But it haunts a body so."
"You're an old tease, Kit," Jean admonished in her very best big-sister style. "Please keep away from that crate of perishable matter. Mother's just promised me that we can go with the rest, only I'm going up first with Dad and Miss Patterson."
It had been decided to send Mr. Robbins up before the moving, so he could have a week or two of rest at Maple Lawn, Cousin Roxana's home. The latter was diligently sending down descriptions of adjacent farms and all sorts of home possibilities, but none seemed to fit the bill, as she said. Either there was too much land, or not enough, or it was too far from the village or not far enough, or too much room, or not room enough.