It was a fine life for the children, by the way. In summer they played and swam and fished and got wholesome lessons in practical democracy by mingling with the hired man’s children. In winter they went to an excellent private school two miles away. It was run by two very intelligent people, an expert in planned economy and his wife, an expert in child psychology, who between them were carrying on the most remarkable experiments in education.
Life in the country was really full of absorbing interests which city folk knew nothing about. For one thing, there was local politics, in which they had now become passionately involved. They attended all the town meetings, became hotly partisan over the question of a new floor for the bridge across the creek, took sides against old Abner Jones, the head selectman, and in general backed up the younger, more progressive element. Over week-ends, they had the most enchanting tales to tell their ciry friends about these town meetings. They were full of stories, too, about all the natives, and could make the most sophisticated visitor howl with laughter when, after coffee and brandy in the evening, the squire and his wife would go through their two-part recital of Seth Freeman’s involved squabble and lawsuit with Rob Perkins over a stone fence. One really got to know his neighbours in the country. It was a whole world in itself. Life here was simple, yet it was so good.
In this old farm-house they ate by candle-light at night. The pine panelling of the dining-room had been there more than two hundred years. They had not changed it. In fact, the whole front part of the house was just the same as it had always been. All they had added was the new wing for the children. Of course, they had had to do a great deal when they bought the place. It had fallen into shocking disrepair. The floors and sills were rotten and had had to be replaced. They had also built a concrete basement and installed an oil furnace. This had been costly, but it was worth the price. The people who had sold them the house were natives of the region who had gone to seed. The farm had been in that one family for five generations. It was incredible, though, to see what they had done to the house. The sitting-room had been covered with an oilcloth carpet. And in the dining-room, right beside the beautiful old revolutionary china chest, which they had persuaded the people to sell with the house, had been an atrocious gramophone with one of those old-fashioned horns. Could one imagine that?
Of course they had had to furnish the house anew from cellar to garret. Their city stuff just wouldn’t do at all. It had taken time and hard work, but by going quietly about the countryside and looking into farmers’ houses, they had managed to pick up very cheaply the most exquisite pieces, most of them dating back to revolutionary times, and now the whole place was in harmony at last. They even drank their beer from pewter mugs. Grace had discovered these, covered with cobwebs, in the cellar of an old man’s house. He was eighty-seven, he said, and the mugs had belonged to his father before him. He’d never had no use for ‘em himself, and if she wanted ‘em he calc’lated that twenty cents apiece would be all right. Wasn’t it delicious! And everyone agreed it was.
The seasons changed and melted into one another, and they observed the seasons. They would not like to live in places where no seasons were. The adventure of the seasons was always thrilling. There was the day in late summer when someone saw the first duck flying south, and they knew by this token that the autumn of the year had come. Then there was the first snowflake that melted as it fell to usher in the winter. But the most exciting of all was the day in early spring when someone discovered that the first snowdrop had opened or that the first starling had come. They kept a diary of the seasons, and they wrote splendid letters to their city friends:
“I think you would like it now. The whole place is simply frantic, with spring. I heard a thrush for the first time to-day. Overnight almost, our old apple-trees have burst into full bloom. If you wait another week, it will be too late. So do come, won’t you? You’ll love our orchard and our twisted, funny, dear old apple-trees. They’ve been here, most of them, I suspect, for eighty years. It’s not like modern orchards, with their little regiments of trees. We don’t get many apples. They are small and sharp and tart, and twisted like the trees themselves, and there are never too many of them but always just enough. Somehow we love them all the better for it. It’s so New England.”