"Was he heading this way?" the Judge asked. "I want him to look at my
peach trees and tell me what in tunket ails them."

"Why, Judge, I'm surprised at you, and before the children, too." Cousin
Roxy's eyes twinkled with mirth at having caught the Judge in a lapse.

"I only said tunket, Roxy," he began, but Cousin Roxy cut him short.

"Tunket's been good Connecticut for Tophet ever since I was knee high to a
toadstool, and we won't say anything more about that. Jerry will be glad
to go up with you to the peach orchard, and you can take the youngsters
with you. I want Jean and Kit to drive over with us and help fix Maple
Lawn."

But before a week was out, all of the carefully laid plans for housing the
"robins" before snow fell were knocked higher than a kite. Kit said that
one of the most delightful things about country life, anyway, was its
uncertainty. You went ahead and laid a lot of plans on the lap of the
Norns, and then the old ladies stood up and scattered everything
helter-skelter. The beauty of it was, though, that they usually turned
around and handed you unexpected gifts so much better than anything you
had hoped for, that you were left without a chance for argument.

The family had taken up its new quarters at Maple Lawn, and two of the
local carpenters, Mr. Peleg Weaver, Philemon's brother, and Mr.
Delaplaine, had been persuaded to devote a portion of their valuable time
to rehabilitating Greenacre Farm. It took tact and persuasion to induce
the aforesaid gentlemen to desert their favorite chairs on the little
stoop in front of Byers' Grocery Store, and approach anything resembling
daily toil. There had been a Squire in the Weaver family three generations