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Ken had proclaimed the day a half-holiday for himself, but Kirk was to go with him on the morning trip, and Phil, too, if she wanted to go. She did want, so Applegate Farm was locked up, and three radiant Sturgises walked the warm, white ribbon of Winterbottom Road to the Dutchman. Kirk was allowed to steer the boat, under constant orders from Ken, who compared the wake to an inebriated corkscrew.
"That it is!" said Ken, reaching with a forked stick for the handle of the galvanized iron pail which sat upon the fire. Nobody ever heard of boiling eggs in a galvanized iron pail but that is exactly what the Sturgises did. The pail, in an excellent state of preservation, had been found in the woodshed.
The talk ran on the awakening of Applegate Farm, the rose-bush, lessons in the orchard, many details of the management of this new and exciting life, which the Maestro's quiet questioning drew unconsciously from the eager Sturgises. "We've been talking about nothing but ourselves, I'm afraid," Felicia said at last, with pink cheeks. She rose to go, but Kirk pulled her sleeve.
Eventually, came a table, and the Sturgises set their posied plates upon it, and lighted their two candles stuck in saucers, and proclaimed themselves ready to entertain. "And," thought Felicia, pausing at the kitchen door, "what a difference it does make!" Firelight and candle-light wrought together their gracious spell on the old room.
For the Sturgises were interested in all their labors, even the "chores" of Applegate Farm. It goes without saying that Kirk's music which was the hardest sort of work absorbed him completely; he lived in a new world.
"A fit shrine for devotion," murmured the Maestro, looking across at him, and then, turning, busied himself vigorously with the carving. It was a quite wonderful supper banquet would have been a more fitting name for it, the Sturgises thought. For such food was not seen on the little table at Applegate Farm.
Now, when fire and candle-light shone out in the living room, it looked indeed like a room in which to live so thought the Sturgises, who asked little. "Come out here, Phil," Ken whispered plucking his sister by the sleeve, one evening just before supper. Mystified, she followed him out into the soft April twilight; he drew her away from the door a little and bade her look back.
He took Kirk's hand, offered his arm gallantly to Felicia, and they all entered the high-studded hall, where the firelight, reaching rosy shafts from the library, played catch-as-catch-can with the shadows. Supper, a little later, was served in the dining-room the first meal that the Sturgises had eaten there.
"Then the permission is granted?" Quite naturally, Ken granted it, with what he thought ill-worded thanks, and the Sturgises walked home across the meadow without knowing on what they trod. "A real author!" Felicia said. "I told you that wasn't a pome, when I first heard it."
But Ken roared so gleefully over the ridiculous idea of his small brother's remotely resembling Beethoven, that Phil suddenly thought herself very silly, and lapsed into somewhat humiliated silence. It was some time before the cares of a household permitted the Sturgises to do very much exploring.
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