"Oh, Nan," wailed Jack, "don't scare me any more than I was scared. The pig's little wicked eyes looked at me so fierce and he grunted and grunted and tossed up his nose."
"Like Tiny in the song Aunt Sarah sings. Never mind, dear, I was only quoting 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and you mustn't be scared. Piggy Wee shan't eat little Jack Corner. Jump, jump, jump, froggy. There you go. Splash about and I'll run home for some dry things while you are soaking off the worst."
It was pleasant and warm in the sun and Jack splashed about manfully, rather enjoying it, until Nan returned with the dry clothes in which she was invested after being stripped of the foul garments and washing herself well in the pool into which Nan poured a quantity of ammonia.
"Now you are clothed in the King's robes," said Nan, continuing her simile of the pilgrim. "I think you'll do. We'll leave these earth-stained garments to sweeten in the sun and you can tell me how it all happened."
"I wanted to help Piggy Wee to get some parings that had fallen outside. I was climbing up and throwing them over when I slipped and fell in and he didn't like it," said Jack, mournfully. "It was real ungrateful of him, too, for I was doing it for his sake and he squealed and did his ears funny and looked like he wanted to gobble me up."
"Somebody will gobble him up some day," said Nan, comfortingly, "for he will have to be killed in the fall and made into sausage meat for ground-hog day. Now let me tell you something perfectly lovely that will make you forget all about pigs. Come, Jean! Ah, Jean!" for this one of the twins had wandered further up the brookside.
With one of the little girls each side of her, Nan poured forth her news as they sat by the purling little stream. She had two absorbed listeners who at first thought she was telling them a make-believe story, but she ended by assuring them that it was every word true and concluded by saying: "So now, my sweet pilgrims, we shall soon be going to the Delectable Land where there will be no pig-pen to fall in and where we can sit under orange trees and eat oranges all day."
For a time, the children gave themselves up to pleasant dreams. Overhead the leaves softly whispered, at their feet sang the little brook; in the distance Unc' Landy was crooning an old camp-meeting hymn. "I'm sure, after all, it's pleasant enough here," said Jack, breaking the silence.
Nan raised her eyes to the charred ruins of Uplands' house rearing themselves upon the hill opposite. She drew a long breath. "If as much happens next year as has happened this," she said, "I don't know what I shall do. I feel as if I had grown three feet and that all the little shelves in my brain where I store away things were piling up so fast that it will be necessary to build an extra room pretty soon."
Jack laughed. "You do say such funny things, Nan."
"So do you," returned Nan. "There come Mary Lee and the boys. Let's go meet them."
They passed by the little gardens where the boys had lent a hand in spading and hoeing. The young green of shoots appeared above the brown earth; green peas were filling in their pods, beans were climbing their poles; even the asparagus bed was started, and on the currant bushes hung bunches of green currants. Giant Pumpkin Head had begun to stretch his lusty limbs outside Place o' Pines. To Nan's fancy, he was guardian of the place.
"I am glad we aren't going away in summer," she said, observing all the familiar things. "I'm glad, too," she went on, "that the boys have to be here several years longer, so it isn't as if we shouldn't come back to just the same things."
"We shan't come back to the old fence," said Jean; "that's gone."
"And a good riddance that was. Aunt Helen says next thing the house must be painted, but I don't know that I want it to be," said Nan half regretfully; "it won't seem like our own old dingy dear home. I don't like spick and span things always."
"I am sure the sofa looks fine in its new cover," said Jean.
"Yes, but you have to keep your feet off it," said Jack, resentfully.
There was a sober look on Ran's face as he came up with the other two boys and Mary Lee.
"What do you think of our good news?" said Nan.
"I don't think it is very good news," he replied.
"You don't? Why not?" asked Nan, opening wide her eyes.
"Because we shall miss you all so awfully when we come back next year, and the house is going to be painted, too, so it won't seem a bit the same."
"That's just what I've been saying," Nan told him. "Oh, well," she added, philosophically, "I suppose we shall get used to it, and will forget that the house ever was no color. You'll get used to doing without us, too, and think what a lot we shall have to tell when we get back."
Ran still looked gloomy. It did not add to the pleasure of his thoughts to feel that the girls would outdo him in experiences. "I mean to go to Europe when I finish college," he said.
"But first," said Nan, "you're going home, so I don't see but that we are the first ones to be left behind, Mr. Longface. Cheer up, cheer up, we've a whole week yet before the holidays begin. Let's all go for a ride up the mountain; it's just the day for it."
An hour later the seven had turned their faces toward the steadfast mountains upon which no changes were ever wrought.