



Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.







                            Strawberry Acres

                          By GRACE S. RICHMOND

                                  1911




TO THE OWNER OF "GRASSLANDS"




CONTENTS


PART I.--FIVE MILES OUT

CHAPTER

       I. Five Miles Out

      II. Everybody Explores

     III. The Apartment Overflows

      IV. Arguments and Answers

       V. Telephones and Tents

      VI. In the Pine Grove

     VII. Everybody is Satisfied

    VIII. Problems and Hearts

      IX. Max Compromises

       X. Jack-O'-Lantern


PART II.--THE LANES AND THE ACRES

       I. What's in a Name

      II. In the Old Garden

     III. Afternoon Tea

      IV. Two and Two

       V. On an August Evening

      VI. Time-Tables

     VII. The Southbound Limited

    VIII. From April North

      IX. Round the Corner

       X. Green Leaves




Strawberry Acres




PART I.--FIVE MILES OUT




CHAPTER I

FIVE MILES OUT


The four Lanes--Max, Sally, Alec and Robert--climbed the five flights of
stairs to their small flat with the agility of youth and the impetus of
high but subdued excitement. Uncle Timothy Rudd, following more slowly,
reached the outer door of the little suite of rooms in time to hear what
seemed to be the first outburst.

"Well, what do you think now?"

"Forty-two acres _and_ the house! Open the windows and give us air!"

"Acres run to seed, and the house tumbling down about its own ears! A
magnificent inheritance that!" Max cast his hat upon a chair as if he
flung it away with the inheritance.

"But who ever thought Uncle Maxwell Lane would ever leave his poor
relations anything?" This was Sally.

"Five miles out by road--a bit less by trolley. Let's go and see it
to-morrow afternoon. Thank goodness a half holiday is so near."

"Anybody been by the place lately?"

"I was, just the other day, on my wheel. I didn't think it looked so
awfully bad." This was Robert, the sixteen-year-old.

As Uncle Timothy entered the tiny sitting-room Sally was speaking. She
had thrown her black veil back over her hat, revealing masses of flaxen
hair, and deep blue eyes glowing with interest. Her delicate cheeks were
warmly flushed, partly with excitement, and partly because for two hours
now--during the journey from the flat to the lawyer's office, the period
spent therein listening to the reading of Uncle Maxwell Lane's will and
the business appertaining thereto, and the return trip home--she had
worn the veil closely drawn. Her simple mourning was to her a screen
behind which to shield herself from curious eyes, always attracted by
those masses of singularly fair hair and the unusual contours of the
young face beneath.

"I think it's a godsend, if ever anything was," she was saying. "Here's
Max, killing himself in the bank, and Alec growing pale and grouchy in
the office, and even Bob--" She was interrupted by a chorus of protests
against her terms of description.

"I'm not killing myself!"

"Pale and grouchy! I'm not a patch on--"

"What's the matter with Bob, Sally Lunn?"

"And Uncle Timmy," continued Sally, undisturbed by interpolations to
which she was quite accustomed, "pining for fresh air--."

"I walk in the park every day, my dear," Uncle Timothy felt obliged to
remind her.

"Yes, I know. But you've lived in a little city flat just as long as it's
good for you, and you need to be turned outdoors. So do we all. Oh, boys,
and Uncle Timmy!--I just sat there, crying and smiling under my veil in
that dreadful office--crying to think that I _couldn't_ cry for Uncle
Maxwell, because he was so cold and queer to us always, and yet he had
given us this property, after all--."

"And a mighty small fraction