“Now, why can’t you and Priscilla and I club together, rent a little house
somewhere in Kingsport, and board ourselves? It would be cheaper than any
other way. Of course, we would have to have a housekeeper and I have one
ready on the spot. You’ve heard me speak of Aunt Jamesina? She’s the sweetest
aunt that ever lived, in spite of her name. She can’t help that! She was called
Jamesina because her father, whose name was James, was drowned at sea a
month before she was born. I always call her Aunt Jimsie. Well, her only
daughter has recently married and gone to the foreign mission field. Aunt
Jamesina is left alone in a great big house, and she is horribly lonesome. She will
come to Kingsport and keep house for us if we want her, and I know you’ll both
love her. The more I think of the plan the more I like it. We could have such
good, independent times.
“Now, if you and Priscilla agree to it, wouldn’t it be a good idea for you, who
are on the spot, to look around and see if you can find a suitable house this
spring? That would be better than leaving it till the fall. If you could get a
furnished one so much the better, but if not, we can scare up a few sticks of
finiture between us and old family friends with attics. Anyhow, decide as soon
as you can and write me, so that Aunt Jamesina will know what plans to make
for next year.”
“I think it’s a good idea,” said Priscilla.
“So do I,” agreed Anne delightedly. “Of course, we have a nice
boardinghouse here, but, when all’s said and done, a boardinghouse isn’t home.
So let’s go house-hunting at once, before exams come on.”
“I’m afraid it will be hard enough to get a really suitable house,” warned
Priscilla. “Don’t expect too much, Anne. Nice houses in nice localities will
probably be away beyond our means. We’ll likely have to content ourselves with
a shabby little place on some street whereon live people whom to know is to be
unknown, and make life inside compensate for the outside.”
Accordingly they went house-hunting, but to find just what they wanted
proved even harder than Priscilla had feared. Houses there were galore,
furnished and unfurnished; but one was too big, another too small; this one too
expensive, that one too far from Redmond. Exams were on and over; the last
week of the term came and still their “house o’dreams,” as Anne called it,
remained a castle in the air.
“We shall have to give up and wait till the fall, I suppose,” said Priscilla
wearily, as they rambled through the park on one of April’s darling days of
breeze and blue, when the harbor was creaming and shimmering beneath the