"How would May till November do?"

"Still better. The idea of your expecting me to get along without you,
the very first summer I live in a place big enough for anybody to visit
me in! You can go off to your fashionable resorts in the winter, if you
want to--I can spare you better, then. But this summer! Jo, think of the
moonlight nights, with the odour of mignonette coming up to the porch
from the garden--"

"I don't think the odour of the mignonette would carry so far."

"We can walk within range, then. And the evenings on the porch, with Mr.
Ferry and his sister over--and his sister's friend--"

"I didn't know he had a sister--or that the sister had a friend."

"She's been in Germany the last two years, living with an aunt, and
studying music--the piano. The friend has a voice. Oh, we'll have the
jolliest times--you can't think. And in July will be the haying. Jo,
we'll have larks during haying--real country larks--and a barn dance.
You _can't_ go away anywhere--not even for a week-end house party! Say
you won't!"

"You artful schemer--I don't see how I can," and Josephine looked as if
she couldn't. "But see here, Sally. I couldn't come and visit you here
and leave mother alone. You know she would go with me, if it were to the
mountains or to the sea-side."

"I'd love to have her come too," said Sally, quickly, "if she would care
to. How I wish she would. Then I shouldn't have to bother Mrs. Ferry to
come over every time we had the young people all here. If I could just
furnish the west wing for you--"

"Why not let us furnish it?" Josephine jumped at her opportunity.
Somehow, during the last few minutes she had become firmly convinced
that she could not think of spending the summer months anywhere but at
the farm. All sorts of pictures had leaped into her mind at Sally's
outlines of what the summer was to be. The stage seemed set for
happenings of extraordinary interest, from which she did not want to be
left out. There would be other things going on at the old place besides
ploughings and plantings, harvestings and threshings--or perhaps it might
be that these very terms in the vegetable kingdom might come to be used
significantly of doings in the human sphere of action.

Sally looked up with a flash of protest in her eyes. "Let you furnish
it!" she exclaimed. "Oh, but I couldn't--I know what your furnishing it
would mean. Persian rugs and silk hangings, Satsuma jars and cut-glass
bowls filled with ro