Hildegarde's harvest - of friendship and love, and kindnesses amply repaid - is laid out in this fifth and final installment of her story, begun in Queen Hildegarde, and continued through three more titles: Hildegarde's Holiday, Hildegarde's Home and Hildegarde's Neighbors. All the major characters of these earlier titles make cameo appearances here, from Dame and Farmer Hartley, in whose home Hildegarde first learned the true importance of kindness and respect, to Pinkrosia Chirk, once confined to her wheelchair, and now the happy wife of the doctor who helped her to walk again. New friends are made as well, as Hildegarde visits her long estranged Great Aunt Emily, a lonely old New York society lady, rich in materials things but poor in family love, into whose life she brings some joy. Finally, all the intimate circle of friends from Hildegarde's last few years, since she and her mother removed to the country - Colonel Ferrars and his long-absent violinist nephew Jack, the numerous and fun-loving Merryweather family, and Hildegarde's own beloved, Prof. Roger Merryweather - all gather for a Christmas celebration like no other...

I enjoyed reading Hildegarde's Harvest, and appreciated the snap-shot glimpses given, of so many characters from previous books. There was a definite feeling of story-lines coming together, and finding completion, and a sense that Hildegarde has come to the end of a journey of some kind. Colonel Ferrars' observation - that Hildegarde does so much good because she is a young woman who is content to be a young woman, one willing to "minister kindness and joy and affection to the people around her" - points to the kinds of ideals about femininity and young womanhood that Richards was clearly promoting, through her heroine's five-book transformation from a beautiful but shallow society girl, to a true lady. The observation of the transformation itself provided this reader with a great deal of pleasure, while the notions of gender and social structure behind the transformation were of interest to me as a scholar.

All that said, I did feel that the climactic narrative sequence here, in which little Hugh almost plummets to his death while sleep-walking, and must then be tenderly nursed back to health by a worried Hildegarde, was a disappointment, and detracted from my enjoyment of the conclusion of the story. It seemed to come out of nowhere, at the tail-end of the five books, and left almost no room for the concluding episode that really interested me: Hildegarde and Roger becoming engaged - something that is accomplished in less than a page, and feels rather anticlimactic, after the melodrama of the earlier incident. Also, the reappearance of Auntie - the Grahames' black cook, who speaks in the stereotypically broken English assigned to so many African-American characters in vintage children's fiction - gave the final section of the book a discordant note. Significant enough that they caused me to lower my rating - this would otherwise have been a four-star book for me - these unwelcome and/or poorly done elements didn't completely ruin the reading experience, although they made Hildegarde's Harvest a weaker conclusion to the series, than I would have liked to see.

Still, despite these issues, I did end the series with a sense of pleasure, and a desire to continue on with Laura E. Richards' work. I think I will read her related Margaret series next, beginning with a reread of Three Margarets...

**Please note: I see that the series listing for these books here on LibraryThing gives The Merryweathers as the final book in the series. This title actually brings together characters from both the Hildegarde and the Three Margarets series, and might be said to be the finale for both. ( )