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.