Jean liked to be called Giovanna. It gave her a curious feeling of belonging to that life Carlota told her of, in the terra cotta colored villa among the old terraces and rose gardens overlooking the sea. She remembered some of Browning’s short poems that she had always liked, the little fragment beginning, “Your ghost should walk, you lover of trees, In a wind swept gap of the Pyrenees.” “If you keep on day dreaming over possibilities, Jean Robbins,” she told herself in her mirror, “you’ll be quite as bad as Helen. You keep your two feet on the ground, and stop fluttering wings.” Whereupon for the remainder of the stay at Cousin Beth’s, she bent to study with a will, until Easter week loomed near, and it was time to think of starting for the hills once more. Carlota was going with her, and so excited and expectant over the trip that the Contessa declared she almost felt like accompanying them, just to discover this marvelous charm that seemed to enfold Greenacres and its girls. CHAPTER XVII BILLIE’S FIGHTING CHANCE It was the Friday before Easter when they arrived. Jean looked around eagerly as she jumped to the platform, wondering which of the family would drive down to meet them, but instead of Kit or Shad, Ralph McRae stepped up to her with outstretched hand. All the way from Saskatoon, she thought, and just the same as he was a year before. As Kit had said then, in describing him: “He doesn’t look as if he could be the hero, but he’d always be the hero’s best friend, like Mercutio was to Romeo, or Gratiano to Benvolio. If he couldn’t be Robin Hood, he’d be Will Scarlet, not Alan a Dale. I couldn’t imagine him ever singing serenades.” Jean introduced him to Carlota, who greeted him in her pretty, half foreign way, and Mr. Briggs waved a welcome as he trundled the express truck past them down the platform. “Looks a bit like rain. Good for the planters,” he called. Princess took the long curved hill from the station splendidly, and Jean lifted her head to it all, the long overlapping hill range that unfolded as they came to the first stretch of level road, the rich green of the pines gracing their slopes, and most of all the beautiful haze of young green that lay like a veil over the land from the first bursting leaf buds. “Oh, it’s good to be home,” she exclaimed. “Over at Cousin Beth’s the land seems so level, and I like hills.” “They were having some sort of Easter exercises at school, and the girls could not drive down,” Ralph said. “Honey and I arrived two days ago, and I asked for the privilege of coming down. Shad’s busy planting out his first lettuce and radishes in the hotbeds, and Mrs. Robbins is up at the Judge’s today. Billie’s pretty sick, I believe.” “Billie?” cried Jean. “Not Billie?”