It was the middle of April, yet the drifts still blocked the ravines, and great patches of snow lay scattered thickly on the northern and eastern slopes of the mountains.
Not a bud had thought of swelling; not a fern dared to raise its downy ball above the sodden leaves. Day after day a keen wind from the north chased dark clouds across a watery blue sky, and now and then a solitary crow flapped disconsolately over the upland pastures and into the woods.
But in the farmhouse on the mountain, every Blossom was a-quiver with excitement, for the "live Valentine" was to arrive that day.
According to what Doctor Heath had written first, Mrs. Blossom had expected Hazel to come the middle of March. She had told the children about it a week before that date, and ever since, wild and varied and continuous had been the speculations concerning the new member of the family.
Both father and mother were much amused at the different ways in which each one accepted the fact, and commented upon it. At the same time they were slightly anxious as to the outcome of such a combination.
"They 'll work it out for themselves, Mary," said Mr. Blossom, when his wife was expressing her fears on account of the attitude of March and Cherry.
"I hope with all my heart they will, without friction or unpleasantness for the poor child," replied his wife, thoughtfully, for March's looks and words returned to her, and they foreboded trouble.
Her husband smiled. "Perhaps the 'poor child' will have her ways of looking at things up here, which may cause a pretty hard rub now and then for our children. But let them take it; it will do them good, and show us what stuff is in them for the future."
Mrs. Blossom tried to think so, but March's words on that afternoon she had told the children came back to her.
They were dumb at first through sheer surprise. Then Rose spoke, flinging aside her Virgil she had been studying by the failing light at the window.
"Oh, mother! we 've been so happy--just by ourselves."
"Will you be less happy, Rose, in trying to make some one else share our happiness?"
Rose said nothing, but leaned her forehead against the pane, and the tears trickled adown it and froze halfway.
Mrs. Blossom proceeded, in the silence that followed, to tell them something of Hazel's life. Then Budd spoke up like a man.
"I 'm awful sorry for her; she 's a little brick to be willing to come away from her father and live with folks she don't know. I 'd be a darned coward about leaving my Popsey."
There was no tablecloth handy to hide the squeeze he wanted to give his mother's hand, and Mrs. Blossom, knowing how he hated any public demonstration of affection, reserved her approving kiss for the dark and bedtime. But she looked at him in a way that sent Budd whistling, "I won't play in your back-yard," over to the kitchen stove, where he stared inanely at his own reflection in the polished pipe.
For the first time in her life, Cherry did not echo her twin's sentiment. She was already insanely jealous of the new-comer who seemed to claim so much of her mother's sympathy and affection. And she was n't even here! What would it be when she was here for good and all?
At this miserable thought, and all that it appeared to involve, Cherry began to cry.
Now to see Cherry Blossom cry generally afforded great fun for the whole family; for there never was a girl of ten who could cry in quite such a unique manner as this same round-faced, pug-nosed, brown-eyed Cherry, whose red hair curled as tightly as corkscrews all over her head, and bobbed and danced and quivered and shook with every motion and emotion.
First, her nose grew very red at the tip; then, her small mouth screwed itself around by her left ear; gradually, her round face wrinkled till it resembled a withered crabapple; and finally, if one listened intently and watched closely, one could hear small sniffs and see two infinitesimal drops of water issue from the nearly closed and wrinkled eyes.
But to-day no one noticed, and Cherry sat down in her mother's lap, and mumbled out her woe between sniffs.
"I can't help it if Budd does want her; _I_ don't, Martie. Budd will play with her, and you 'll kiss her just as you do us, and it won't be comfy any more."
"That does not sound like mother's Cherry Blossom," said Mrs. Blossom, smiling in spite of herself. "I think I 'll tell you all why it comes to mother and father as a blessing."
Then Mrs. Blossom told them of the mortgage on the farm; how it had been made necessary, and what it meant, and how it was her duty to accept what had been sent to her as a means of paying it off.
Rose came over from the window. "Oh, why did n't you tell us before, Martie," she cried, sobbing outright this time, "and let us help you to earn something towards it during all this dreadful year? To think you have been bearing all this, and just going about the same, smiling and cheer--oh, dear!" Rose sat down on the hearth-rug at her mother's feet, and her sobs mingled with Cherry's sniffs.
March, who had listened thus far in silence, rose from the settle where he had flung himself in disgust, and, going over to his mother, stood straight and tall before her. His gray eyes flashed.
"I 've been a fool, mother, not to see it all before this. You ought to have told _me_. I 'm your eldest son, and come next after father in 'home things.'" And with this assertion he made a mighty resolve, then and there to put away boyish things and be more of a man. His mother, looking at him, felt the change, and tears of thankfulness filled her eyes.
"What could you do, children? You were too young to have your lives burdened with work."
"I 'd have found something to do, mother, if you had only told me.
About the girl--" he hesitated--"of course I 'll look at it from the money side, but it 'll never be the same after she comes--never!" And with that he went off into the barn.
His mother sighed, for March was looking at the matter in the very way which, to her, was abhorrent.
"Don't sigh so, Martie," cried Rose; "I 'll take back what I said, and do everything I can to help you by making it pleasant for her. Budd has made me ashamed of myself."
"That's my own daughter Rose," said Mrs. Blossom, leaning over to kiss her parting, for Cherry was awkwardly in the way.
"Did you hear Rose, Cherry?" whispered her mother.
"Ye-es," sniffed Cherry.
"And won't you try to help mother, and make Hazel happy?"
"N-o," said Cherry, still obdurate.
"Very well; then I must depend on Rose and Budd and little May," replied her mother, putting her down from her knee. By which Cherry knew she was out of favor, and, not having Budd to flee to for sympathy, ran blindly out into the woodshed and straight into Chi, who was bringing in two twelve-quart milk pails filled to overflowing with their creamy contents.
"Hi there! Cherry Bounce! Steady, steady--without you want to mop up this woodshed."
"O Chi! I 'm just as miser'ble; a new little girl's coming to live with us always, and we 'll have no more good times."
"That's queer," said Chi, balancing the pails deftly as Cherry fluttered about, rather uncertain as to where she should betake herself in the cold. "I should think it would be the more, the merrier. When's she comin'?"
"This very month," said Cherry, opening her eyes a little wider, and forgetting to sniff in her delight at telling some news. "She 's a rich little girl, but very poor, too, mother says, and she's been sick and is coming here to get well. I suppose she 's lost all her flesh while she 's been sick, like Aunt Tryphosa; don't you? That's why she 's so poor."
"Hm!--rich 'n' poor too; that's bad for children," said Chi, soberly.
"Why?" asked Cherry, surprised into drying her small tears and forgetting to sniff.
"Coz 't is. You see, all you children are rich 'n' poor too; so she 'll keep you comp'ny, as she 's poor where you 're rich as Croesus, 'n' you 're poor as Job's turkey where she's rich."
"Why, what do you mean, Chi?"
"You wait awhile, 'n' you 'll find out." And with that, Cherry had to be content.
As the woodshed was too cold to be long comfortably mournful in,--Cherry decided to go inside and set the table for tea, wondering, meanwhile, what Chi meant. Ordinarily she would have gone straight to her mother to find out; but just to-night Cherry felt there was an abyss separating them, and she hated the very thought of the newcomer having caused this break between her adored Martie and herself before having stepped foot in the house.
But Hazel's arrival had been delayed a whole month: first, on account of the unusually cold weather of March, and then on account of the Doctor's pressing engagements. To-night, however, this long waiting was to be at an end.
Mr. Blossom had harnessed Bess and Bob into the two-seated wagon, and driven down three miles for them to the "Mill Settlement;" and there he was to meet the stage from Barton's River, the nearest railway station.
As the time approached for the light of the lantern on the wagon to glimmer on the lower mountain road, which ran in view of the house, the excitement of Budd and Cherry grew intense. March intended to be indifferent, yet tolerant, but even he went twice to the door to listen.