Another spring found the members of the Jenkins Syndicate still banking
regularly and flourishing in their various walks in life. The Boarder
had received a "raise"; Lily Rose was spending her leisure time in
fashioning tiny garments which she told Cory were for a doll baby; Iry
was wearing his first trousers cut over from a pair discarded by Bud;
and Amarilly was acquiring book lore with an ease and rapidity which
delighted Miss Varley and Derry. Through the medium of Mr. Vedder the
attention of the manager of a high class vaudeville had been drawn to
Bud, and he was now singing every night with a salary that made the
neighbors declare that "them Jenkinses was getting to be reg'ler
Rockyfellers."
Amarilly coming home one Monday evening found the family grouped about
the long table listening with bulging eyes and hectic cheeks to the
Boarder, who had before him a sheet of figures. Amarilly was at once
alert, although somewhat resentful of this encroachment upon her
particular province.
"Oh, come and hear, Amarilly!" "Amarilly, we've bought a farm!"
"Amarilly, we air agoin' to live in the country!"
"Let me explain," said the Boarder, usually slow and easy going, but now
alert and enthusiastic of mien and speech. "We've got a chance,
Amarilly, to sell this place and make quite a profit. That new factory
that's agoin' up acrost the alley has sent real estate scootin'. With
what we git fer it, we kin make a big payment on a farm. I took a run
down yesterday to look at one we kin git cheap, cause the folks on it
hez gotter go west fer the man's health. What we hev all saved up sence
we bought the place will keep us agoin' till we git in our fust summer
crops."
"Tell her about the house," prompted Mrs. Jenkins, her quick, maternal
eye noting the bewilderment and disapproval in her daughter's expressive
eyes.
"It's all green meaders and orcherds and lanes," said the Boarder with
the volubility of one repeating an oft-told and well-loved tale, while
the young Jenkinses with the rapt, intense gaze of moving picture
beholders sat in pleased expectancy, "and the house sets on a little
rise of ground. It's a white house with a big chimbley and two stoops,
and thar's a big barn with two white hosses in it, and a cow and an
animal in the paster lot. A big pen of pigs, fifty hens in the henhouse,
and a few sheep. Thar's a piece of woods and the river."