It was the beginning of April, and letters from Colonel Wheeler had already asked instructions about having the vegetable garden ploughed.  It was finally decided that the girls should leave their spring term of school unfinished, and that the family should move to Beulah during Gilbert’s Easter vacation.

Mother Carey gave due reflection to the interrupted studies, but concluded that for two girls like Nancy and Kathleen the making of a new home would be more instructive and inspiring, and more fruitful in its results, than weeks of book learning.

Youth delights in change, in the prospect of new scenes and fresh adventures, and as it is never troubled by any doubts as to the wisdom of its plans, the Carey children were full of vigor and energy just now.  Charlestown, the old house, the daily life, all had grown sad and dreary to them since father had gone.  Everything spoke of him.  Even mother longed for something to lift her thought out of the past and give it wings, so that it might fly into the future and find some hope and comfort there.  There was a continual bustle from morning till night, and a spirit of merriment that had long been absent.

The Scotch have a much prettier word than we for all this, and what we term moving they call “flitting.”  The word is not only prettier, but in this instance more appropriate.  It was such a buoyant, youthful affair, this Carey flitting.  Light forms darted up and down the stairs and past the windows, appearing now at the back, now at the front of the house, with a picture, or a postage stamp, or a dish, or a penwiper, or a pillow, or a basket, or a spool.  The chorus of “Where shall we put this, Muddy?” “Where will this go?” “May we throw this away?” would have distracted a less patient parent.  When Gilbert returned from school at four, the air was filled with sounds of hammering and sawing and filing, screwing and unscrewing, and it was joy unspeakable to be obliged (or at least almost obliged) to call in clarion tones to one another, across the din and fanfare, and to compel answers in a high key.  Peter took a constant succession of articles to the shed, where packing was going on, but his chief treasures were deposited in a basket at the front gate, with the idea that they would be transported as his personal baggage.  The pile grew and grew:  a woolly lamb, two Noah’s arks, bottles and marbles innumerable, a bag of pebbles, a broken steam engine, two china nest-eggs, an orange, a banana and some walnuts, a fishing line, a trowel, a ball of string.  These give an idea of the quality of Peter’s effects, but not of the quantity.