PROPHESY

The morning after the fire found the family at breakfast over with the
Judge's family. It was impossible as yet for the girls to feel the full
reaction over their loss. As the Judge remarked, youth responds to change
and variety quicker than any new interest, and they were already planning
a wonderful reconstruction period. Kit and Billy rode down on horseback to
look at the ruins, and came back with an encouraging report. The back of
the house was badly damaged, but the main building stood intact, though
the charred clapboards and wide vacant windows looked desolate enough.

"Thank goodness the wind was from the south, and blew the flames away from
the pines," said Kit, dropping into her chair, hungrily. "Doesn't it seem
good to get some of Cousin Roxy's huckleberry pancakes again, girls? Oh
yes, we met my prisoner--I should say, my erstwhile prisoner--on the road.
He was tapping chestnut trees over on Peck's Hill like a woodpecker. You
needn't laugh, Doris, 'cause Billie saw him too, didn't you, Bill? And
he's got a sweet forgiving nature. He doffed his hat to me and I smiled
back just as though I'd never caught him in our berry patch, and had Shad
lock him up in the corn-crib."

"Was he heading this way?" the Judge asked. "I want him to look at my
peach trees and tell me what in tunket ails them."

"Why, Judge, I'm surprised at you, and before the children, too." Cousin
Roxy's eyes twinkled with mirth at having caught the Judge in a lapse.

"I only said tunket, Roxy," he began, but Cousin Roxy cut him short.

"Tunket's been good Connecticut for Tophet ever since I was knee high to a
toadstool, and we won't say anything more about that. Jerry will be glad
to go up with you to the peach orchard, and you can take the youngsters
with you. I want Jean and Kit to drive over with us and help fix Maple
Lawn."

But before a week was out, all of the carefully laid plans for housing the
"robins" before snow fell were knocked higher than a kite. Kit said that
one of the most delightful things about country life, anyway, was its
uncertainty. You went ahead and laid a lot of plans on the lap of the
Norns, and then the old ladies stood up and scattered everything
helter-skelter. The beauty of it was, though, that they usually turned
around and handed you unexpected gifts so much better than anything you
had hoped for, that you were left without a chance for argument.

The family had taken up its new quarters at M