“As you haven’t a particle of judgment—­”

“Experience, you mean.  No, I haven’t experience, but I consider that I have judgment, and I sowed the seeds according to that.  In June I will pick you a gorgeous bunch of them.”

“In June—­if I’m not away somewhere.  In which case you can send them to me in a paste-board box.”

“Joey Burnside!” Sally picked up a rake lying in the path and brandished it fiercely.  “Don’t you dare to go away—­anywhere.  You’re to come and visit me—­from June till September.”

“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.