The Fortunes of Springfield Read Online Free Page B

smile. “Frost again this morning.”
    “Yes, quite a sharp one. I thought you would like these.”
    He had a basket of fresh eggs and a large jug of cream.
    “Yes, I certainly would,” smiled Caroline. “Those children look as if they could do with some cream.”
    “They are the thin and wiry kind,” said David, “but I don’t imagine they have been getting v e ry good food.” He handed the basket and jug over to her. “Don’t economize with them. There is plenty more where that came from.”
    “Thank you very much,” said Caroline.
    “I’m trying to make a good impression,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye.
    “I think you’ve succeeded,” she smiled. “When are you coming in to breakfast, Mr. Springfield?”
    “Right away, if that’s all right.”
    “I’ll go and cook it at once.”
    Caroline carried her eggs and cream to the kitchen, and cooked breakfast for David. He came in, washed his hands and sat down at the table.
    “It smells delicious,” he said.
    Caroline set the food before him.
    “I hope I have cooked enough,” she said. “I am used to the appetites of old ladies. But you have been working out in the frosty morning.”
    David laughed.
    “Well, if I eat all this, I shan’t be able to work for the rest of the day. But we’ll see what we can do to it . ”
    “I think you have everything you need. If you want me, I shall be upstairs.”
    Caroline went away to make the beds and tidy the bedrooms. Mrs. Davis had arrived and begun an onslaught on the scullery. It was Caroline’s i ntention to go through the house this day, and make a schedule of the work to be done, and the order of its importance. It would take weeks to get the place clean; and after that, when Mr. Springfield was less busy and could see to it, there should be some new paint about the place. Curtains and carpets must go to be cleaned, cupboards and drawers, some of them now crammed to overflowing, must be sorted out, furniture long neglected must be restored and cared for. And all this must be done while the day-to-day routine of looking after the children, cooking for the family and sewing for them went on. Caroline saw some busy weeks ahead of her.
    When she returned to the kitchen, David had gone again. If the house was likely to provide Caroline with a full-time occupation, the same could be said of the farm and David; and Caroline thought the farm would never have reached its present state if David had been running it instead of Gerald. For David was charged with energy and was confident, determined and concentrated. He even spoke in a brisk, clipped fashion that matched the rest of him, and the two farm hands had been stimulated by his manner and had pulled themselves together to work under him. He was out from early morning until nightfall, and because the dark came early in these February days, he spent the evenings in the room which Gerald had converted to office use, sorting out hi s brother’s papers, dealing with the farm correspondence and forms, and beginning to restore order here, as elsewhere. So that Caroline saw him only at meals, when she set his breakfast before him after the children had left for school, at lunch-time and at supper. He did not stop for tea, and Caroline had hers with the children.
    It was when they were seated at tea in the warm kitchen one day, that Caroline’s first caller appeared. The kitchen had been greatly improved since the day when David discovered Miss Church there. It was clean, tidy and shining; the red-tiled floor well-polished and warm rugs brought in from other rooms. This was the place in which the children spent most of their time, so that Caroline had thought it well worth while to put down warm rugs for them to play on, and to take down the faded, dingy curtains and replace them with others of bright cretonne from a spare room. Copper bowls and jugs had been discovered piled in one corner of the scullery, no doubt put there by one of the housekeepers who