“Cousin Lizzie Somerville, of course. She always rings like the house was on fire.”
It was Miss Elizabeth Somerville, a second cousin of their father. She came into the library in rather unseemly haste for one of her usual dignity.
“Where is your father?” she demanded, without the ceremony of greeting the girls. “I must see him immediately. Your mother, too, of course, if she wants to come down, but I must see your father.”
“But he is gone!”
“Gone where? When will he return?”
“In about two months,” said Helen coolly. Helen was especially gifted in tackling Cousin Lizzie, who was of an overbearing nature thatneeded handling. “He and Mother have gone to Bermuda.”
“Bermuda in the summer! Nonsense! Tell me when I can see him, as it is of the greatest importance. I should think you could see that I am in trouble and not stand there teasing me,” and since it was to be a day of tears, Cousin Lizzie burst out crying, too.
“Oh, Cousin Lizzie, I am so sorry! I did not mean to tease. I am not teasing. Father is ill, you must have noticed how knocked up he has been looking lately, and the doctor has taken him with Mother to New York. They have just gone, and they are to sail on a slow steamer to Bermuda and Panama in the morning. Please let us help you if we can.”
“You help! A lot of silly girls! It is about my nephew Lewis!” and the poor lady wept anew.
“Lewis! What on earth can be the matter with him?” chorused the girls.
“Matter enough! He has been shipped!”
“Shipped? Oh, Cousin Lizzie, you can’t mean it!” exclaimed Douglas, drying her eyes as she began to realize that she was not the only miserable person in the world whose ambitions had gone awry.
“I am sure if he has been fired, it is from no fault of his own,” declared Nan, who was a loyal soul and always insisted that her friends and relatives were in the right until absolute proof to the contrary was established.
“Well, whether it was his fault or not, I am not prepared to say. ‘Where there is so much smoke there must be some fire.’”
The girls had to smile at this, as there wasnever a time when Cousin Lizzie did not have a proverb ready to suit the occasion.
“Yes, but the fire might not have been of his kindling,” insisted Nan.
“Please tell us what the trouble is, Cousin Lizzie, if you don’t mind talking about it,” begged Douglas. “Has Lewis really left West Point for good? I can’t believe it.”
“The trouble is: ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners.’ If Lewis had not been with the companions that he has chosen, he would not have gotten into this trouble. Surely Solomon was wise indeed when he said: ‘Whoso keepeth the law is a wise son, but he that is a companion of riotous men shameth his father.’ I am glad my poor brother is dead and not here to witness his son’s disgrace.”
“Cousin Lizzie, I do not believe that Lewis has done anything disgraceful,” insisted Nan, speaking almost quickly for once.
“Well, it is a disgrace in my mind for the son and grandson of Confederate soldiers to be dismissed from a Yankee institution, whether hewas in fault or not. ‘As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place.’ A Somerville’s place is in the South and it was always against my wishes that Lewis went to West Point.”
“Please tell us what the trouble is, what Lewis did or didn’t do at West Point,” said Helen in the determined voice that usually made Cousin Lizzie stop her proverbs long enough to give the information required.
“‘Hazing a plebe,’ is what he said. What a plebe is or what hazing is I do not know, but whatever it is, Lewis says he was not mixed up in it, but he, with eight other second classmen, were let out. The words are his, not mine. All I know is that he was discharged and is at my house now in a state of dejection bordering on insanity.”
“Poor boy! We are so sorry for him. What is he going to do now?” asked Douglas.
Here was another disappointment for Douglas. Her cousin, Lewis Somerville, was one of the dearest friends she had in the world. He wastwo years her senior and had made it his business since they were tiny tots to protect her and look after her on all occasions. They had had a plan for the following year that now, of course, had fallen through. She was to have come to West Point from Bryn Mawr to the finals. He would then have been a third classman and able to make her have a rip-roaring time, as he had expressed it.
Lewis in a state of dejection bordering on insanity! That was unbelievable. If there ever was a gayer, happier person than Lewis, she had never seen him.
“Do? Goodness knows!”
“Well, all I can say,” put in Nan, “is that Uncle Sam is a fool not to know that Lewis is a born soldier, and if he wants to prepare himself to defend his country, he should be allowed to do so. Oh, I don’t care what he has done—I just know he hasn’t done it!”
“I’m going to ’phone him this minute and tell him to come around here!” and Helen jumped up from her seat, thereby waking Lucy, who haddropped asleep on her shoulder, worn out with the stress of emotion.
“If you are, so am I—whatever it is,” declared Lucy, rubbing her eyes, as determined as ever to keep up with Helen or die in the attempt.
“Hello! is this you, Lewis?” as the connection was quickly made.
“Well,” in a tired, dreary voice. “What is it?”
“This is me, Lewis, Helen Carter! We are all sitting up here dressed in our best waiting for you to come to see us. Douglas says if you don’t hurry she, for one, is going to bed.”
“What’s that?” in a little brisker tone.
“Say, Lewis, we are in an awful lot of trouble. You know Father is ill and has had to go away and we don’t know what is to become of us. We need your advice terribly——”
“Be ’round in a jiffy,” and so he was.
“That was very tactful of you, Helen,” said Cousin Lizzie lugubriously. “You know ‘Misery loves company.’” But a peal from the front door bell interrupted further quotations andLewis Somerville came tearing into the house in answer to Helen’s S. O. S.
He did look as dejected as one of his make-up could. It is hard to be dejected very long when one is just twenty, in perfect health, with naturally high spirits and the strength to remove mountains tingling in the veins. A jury of women could not have shipped the young would-be soldier, and it must have taken very hard-hearted men, very determined on maintaining discipline, deliberately to have cut this young fellow’s career in two. Our army must be full of very fine young men if they can so lightly give up such a specimen as this Lewis Somerville. Imagine a young giant of noble proportions, as erect as an ash sapling that has had all the needed room in which to grow, a head like Antinous and frank blue eyes that could no more have harbored a lie than that well-cut, honest mouth could have spoken one.
“I didn’t do it and just to let me know that you don’t believe I did, you have got to kiss me all around.”
“Nonsense, Lewis! Helen and I are too old to kiss you even if you are a cousin,” and Douglas got behind Cousin Lizzie.
“Quite right, Douglas, ‘The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge.’ Lewis is not such very close kin, besides.”
“Why, Aunt Lizzie, I did not expect you to desert me.”
“‘It is not good to eat much honey, so for men to search their own glory is not glory.’”
“Well, Nan and Lucy will kiss me, anyhow. They believe I did not do it.”
“We are sure you are telling the truth,” said Douglas gravely. “We do not know yet what they say you did.”
“They say I helped a lot of fellows tie a plebe to a tree and drop ice down his back, making out it was red hot pennies, until the fellow fainted from his fancied injuries. I never did it, but if I had, it wouldn’t have been a patching on the things the second classmen did to me last year when I was a plebe, and wild horses would not have dragged a complaint from me. It was doneby some men who are my chums, but I declare I was not with the crowd.”
“We know it! we know it!” from all the girls.
“But I don’t want to talk about myself—I am so anxious to hear what is the matter with Cousin Robert. Let’s let up on me and talk about your trouble, and if I can help, please command me.”
“Father is very ill,” said Douglas soberly. “He has been working too hard for a long time and now his nerves have just given way and he has had to stop and go on a trip. Dr. Wright assures us that he has stopped in time and a sea trip and a year’s rest will completely restore him. It has come on us so suddenly that we have not had time to catch our breath even.”
“And who is this Dr. Wright?” asked Cousin Lizzie. “I thought Dr. Davis was your family physician. Some Yankee, I’ll be bound, with all kinds of new notions.”
“He is from Washington recently, but I believe he came originally from New York State.”
“Do you mean that you let a perfect strangerpick up your parents and send them off on a journey without consulting a soul?”
“But it was important to avoid all confusion and discussion. Dr. Wright has been lovely about it all. He even got a notary public so I could be given power of attorney to attend to any business that might come up. It so happened, though, that my being under age was a drawback and Father gave him power of attorney instead.”
“Douglas Carter! Do you mean to say that a strange young Yankee doctor that has only been living in Richmond a little while has the full power to sell your father out and do anything he chooses with his estate? Preposterous!”
“But there isn’t any estate,” objected Douglas, and Helen could not help a little gleam of satisfaction creeping into her eyes. She was not the only person who felt that Dr. Wright had been, to say the least, presumptuous.
“No estate! Why I thought Robert Carter was very well off. What has he done with his money, please?”
“We have just lived on it. We didn’t know,” sadly from Douglas.
“I never heard of such extravagance. ‘A fool and his money are soon parted.’”
“We have got just exactly eighty-three dollars and fifty-nine cents in the bank. Father owns this house and a side of a mountain in Albemarle, and that is all.”
“Mercy, child! I can’t believe it.”
“We have got to live somehow, and I believe we all feel that it would be very bad for Father to come back and find debts to be paid off. He has such a horror of debt that he has always paid the bills each month. What do you think we could do—something to make money, I mean? Father was in such a nervous state we could not consult him, and Mother, poor little Mother, of course she does not understand business at all.”
“Humph! I should say not! And what do you chits of girls know about it, either? Are you meaning to stay alone, all un-chaperoned, until this Yankee doctor thinks it is time to let your parents return? Just as like as not there is nothingthe matter with your father but a touch of malaria.”
“We had not thought of a chaperone, as we have been so miserable about Father we could not think of ourselves. If we are going to make a living, we won’t need chaperones, anyhow.”
“Make a living, indeed! You are to stay right here in your home and I will come stay with you, and you can curtail your expenses somewhat by dismissing one servant and giving up your car. Robert Carter is not the kind of man who would want his eighteen-year-old daughter and others even younger to go out into the world to make a living. He would rather die than have such a thing happen.”
“But we are not going to have him die,” broke in Helen. “I thought just as you do, Cousin Lizzie, until I saw him this afternoon and realized how worried he has been. We are going to do something and there are to be no debts awaiting him, either. What do you think of boarders? Do you think we could get any?”
“Who on earth would board with us, here inRichmond? Everybody knows what a trifling lot we are. If we have boarders, it will have to be on the side of the mountain in Albemarle,” said Nan, and as usual every one stopped to hear what she had to say. “Besides, a boarding house in summer shuts up shop in cities. Country board is the thing. Let’s rent our house furnished for a year and go to the mountains.”
“But there are nothing but trees and rocks on the side of the mountain in Albemarle,” objected Douglas; “not a piece of a house except a log cabin near the top built by the sick Englishman who used to live there.”
“No room for boarders in that, I know, as Father pointed it out to me once from the train when we were on our way to Wytheville. It had one room and maybe two. It must command a wonderful view. You could see it for miles and miles and when you get up there, there is no telling what you can see. It would make a great camp—Girls! Girls! Cousin Lizzie! Lewis! All of you! I’ve got a scheme! It just came to me!” and Helen jumped up and ran around and huggedeverybody, even the cousin she and Douglas had grown too big to kiss.
“Well, cough it up! We are just as anxious as can be to share your idea, or is it so big it got stuck on the way,” laughed Lewis, accepting the caress as it was meant.
“Let’s have a boarding camp, with Cousin Lizzie to chaperone us! I know just lots of girls who would simply die to go, and Albemarle is close enough for week-enders to pour in on us.”
“Hurrah! Hurrah! And I bid to be man-of-all work! I know rafts of fellows who would want to come.”
“Yes, and let’s call it Week End Camp,” said Nan. “Week to be spelled W-E-A-K. What do you think of the plan, Cousin Lizzie? If you are to be chaperone, it seems to me you should be consulted the first thing.”
“Don’t ask me, child. Things are moving too rapidly for me. We must go a little more slowly,” and truly the old lady did look dazed indeed. “‘More haste, less speed,’ is a very good adage.”
“Well, Cousin Lizzie, it does sound crazy in a way, but do you know, I believe we could really do it and do it very well,” said Douglas. “I consider Helen a genius to have thought of such a thing. I don’t think the outlay need be very great, and surely the living would be cheap when once we get there.”
“But, my dear, at my age I could not begin to eat out of doors. I have not done such a thing since I can remember but once, and then I went with the United Daughters of the Confederacy on a picnic. The undertaker went ahead with chairs and tables so everything was done in decency and order.”
Nan’s “Funeral baked meats!” made them all laugh, even Cousin Lizzie.
“I am going to have a short khaki suit with leggins coming way up,” declared Helen, who could not contemplate anything without seeing herself dressed to suit the occasion.
“Me, too,” sleepily from Lucy, who was trying to keep awake long enough to find out what it all meant.
“Aunt Lizzie, I wish you would consent. It all depends on you. You could eat in the cabin and sleep in the cabin and not camp out at all. I could go up right away and build the camp. I’d just love to have something to do. Bill Tinsley, from Charlottesville, got shipped with me and I’m pretty sure he’d join me. You’d like Bill, he’s so quaint. We are both of us great carpenters and could make a peach of a job of it. Do, please, Aunt Lizzie!”
Could this be the young man who, only ten minutes ago, she had described as being in a state of dejection bordering on insanity? This enthusiastic boy with his eyes dancing in joyful anticipation of manual labor to be plunged into? If she consented to go to the mountains, thereby no doubt making herself very uncomfortable, she might save her beloved nephew from doing the thing that she was dreading more than all others, dreading it so much that she had been afraid to give voice to it: going to France to fight with the Allies.
“Well, Lewis, if this plan means that you willfind occupation and happiness, I will consent. I can’t bear to think of your being idle. ‘Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.’”
“Oh, Cousin Lizzie, I think you are just splendid!” exclaimed Helen.
And, indeed, Miss Elizabeth Somerville was splendid in her way. She was offering herself on the altar of aunthood. It was a real sacrifice for her to consent to this wild plan of going to the mountains. She hated snakes, and while she did not confess that she hated Nature, she certainly had no love for her. Her summer outings had meant, heretofore, comfortable hotels at the springs or seashore, where bridge was the rule and Nature the exception. The promise of being allowed to sleep in the cabin and even eat in it was not any great inducement. A log cabin, built and lived in and finally, no doubt, died in, by a sick Englishman was not very pleasant to contemplate. Miss Lizzie was very old-fashioned in all her ideas with the exception of germs, and she was very up-to-date as to them. No modern scientist knew more about them or believed in themmore implicitly. Oh, well! She could take along plenty of C. N. and sulphur candles and crude carbolic. That would kill the germs. She would find out the latest cure for snake bite, and with a pack of cards for solitaire perhaps she could drag out an existence until Robert Carter and Annette got home from this mad trip. All she hoped was that nobody would wake her up to see the sun rise and that she would not be called on to admire the moon every time there was a moon.
“I hope we can get the daily paper,” she moaned feebly. “I hate to go too far from the daily paper.”
“We’ll get it if I have to build a flying machine and fly to Richmond for it,” declared Lewis.
“The place is not half a mile from the post office,” said Helen. “At least, that is the way it looks from the train. When can we get started? I don’t think it is worth while to go back to school any more. We can all of us just stop.”
“Oh, Helen, of course we can’t! Douglas is going to graduate, and Lucy and I have our exams next week. What would Father say at ourgiving up right now? You can quiturate all you’ve a mind to, but I intend to go on and graduate and go to college like Douglas,” said Nan.
“I am afraid I’ll have to give up college, but I am going to take my Bryn Mawr examinations just the same because I want Father to know I can stand them.” Douglas hoped sincerely that the tear she felt gathering would evaporate before it dropped.
“Give up college! Why, Douglas Carter, I don’t see what you mean. You have been full of it all winter,” exclaimed Helen.
“But Helen, you know perfectly well there is no more money.”
“Oh, I keep on forgetting!”
“There is one thing that I have forgotten, too, and I feel awfully bad about it after all his kindness,” said Douglas. “That is, we must make no decided plans until we consult Dr. Wright.”
“Consult Dr. Wright, indeed! I’d like to know what’s it to him,” said Helen wrathfully. “Can’t we even go on a summer trip without asking his permission?”
“Well, I think inasmuch as he has power of attorney and we can’t do anything without money that we shall have to consult him. He’ll be home to-morrow night and we can ask him immediately. I am pretty sure he will think it a good thing, though.”
“Maybe, but for goodness’ sake, don’t tell him it was my idea originally, as he hates me as much as I hate him, and ifhehad thought of it, I just know I’d never have consented or thought it a good plan.”
“Well, I know one thing,” said Miss Somerville, “I am dead tired and this child here is asleep. We had better go to bed and get all the rest we can if we are going to camp out for the summer.”
How different the night was from what the Carters had looked forward to! Sleepless misery was what they had been sure would be their lot, and instead, they went to their beds with their heads full of their week-end boarding camp. Father was to get well on his voyage and come back to join them in Albemarle. Instead of findingdebts piled on debts, their camp was to pay and he was to find his girls actually making a living.
“Cotton stockings will be the appropriate things to wear at camp,” was the last thought Helen had. “I don’t see how I could spend the summer in town after the oath I have taken. I couldn’t show my face, or rather my feet, on the street.”
“Helen, I actually slept all night.”
“So did I. If any one had told me I could sleep a wink, I would have been furious. I wish we could hear from Father. You saw Cousin Lizzie felt just exactly as I did about that Dr. Wright. He may be all right and he may be all wrong. If he is all wrong, couldn’t he make us dance, though? He could sell us out, lock, stock and barrel, pocket the proceeds and skidoo.”
“Oh, Helen, how can you even give such a horrid idea a moment’s lodgement in your mind? Dr. Wright is as good as he looks, I am sure. He certainly looks kind and honest.”
“Well, he ought to be honest he is so ugly.”
The girls were still in bed, which they had shared ever since they had been promoted from cradles. It was Saturday morning and the day before had been the one of trial.
“Father likes him a lot and trusts him.”
“Ye—s, I know—but then, you see——”
“Yes, I see he is a very fine young man who thought, and quite rightly, that we had been blindly selfish and heartless to let Father work so hard; and he let us know what he thought of us and it got your goat.”
“Is that the way you are going to express yourself in your B. M. exams? Because if it is, you will win a scholarship surely.”
“If I only could!... Come in!” in answer to a knock at the door.
“Telegraph fer you, Miss Douglas. I hope an’ trus’ ’tain’t no bad news ’bout yo’ maw and paw,” said the housemaid, bringing in a dreaded yellow envelope. “Uncle Oscar, he dreamed ’bout aigs las’ night an’ they was whole an’ entire, an’ all de dream books say dat it is a sho’ sign an’ symbol er trouble. De trouble is in de shell an’ time alone will hatch it out.”
“Well, this is good news, Susan,” laughed Douglas as she quickly scanned the message: “‘Your father and mother slept well and arenow enjoying breakfast at Pennsylvania Station. Will see you this evening. George Wright.’”
“Well, Glory be! It can’t be Mr. Carter what the bad luck is layin’ fer. I ’low it is dat lo’ down nigger Jim, Uncle Oscar’s sister’s step-son, what got stuck in de lonesome ribs by a frien’ at meetin’ las’ Sunday with one er these here unsafety razors,” and Susan took herself off to give out in the kitchen that no doubt Jim was going to die, since Mr. Carter was improving.
“Now, Helen, don’t you think Dr. Wright is very thoughtful? You just said you wished we could hear from Father.”
“He does seem to think of lots of things. I couldn’t help admiring him for the way he got the drawing room for them and put them on the train at the downtown station to keep them from having to see so many people. That night train is always full of people we know and they all of them get on at Elba. I bet you he got his telegram in ten words, though. I know he is economical and would die rather than spill over. Letme see it. Humph! Nineteen words. I wonder he didn’t send it collect.”
“Oh, Helen! How can you be so hard on the poor young man? I believe you are just pretending to hate him so. I am glad it is Saturday and no school. I think we had better go see real estate agents the first thing this morning and try to rent our house furnished for the summer. I am pretty sure Dr. Wright would approve of that. And also see about selling the car.”
“Selling the car! Why, Douglas, how on earth will we do without it?”
“Of course we must sell it. Helen Carter, I actually believe you think that if you give up wearing silk stockings for a year we can live on your resolution. Do you realize that the cash we have in bank would just about pay the chauffeur and keep us in gasoline for a month?”
“Oh, I am such a dunce! I am afraid my being poor has a kind of musical comedy effect in my mind so far. What are you going to do with me, Douglas?”
“Nothing, honey, but you must not get angrywith me when I call you down about money. I feel so responsible somehow.”
“Angry with you! Why, I think you are just splendid, and I am going to be so careful I just know you will never have to call me down.”
Douglas smiled, knowing very well that Helen and economy were not meant to dwell together.
“There is only one thing I am going to make all of you promise, that is NOT TO CHARGE,” with great emphasis.
“Oh, of course not after we get started, but how are we to get our outfits for the mountains? Our khaki skirts and leggins and things that are appropriate? And then the cotton stockings that I have sworn to wear until Father is well! I have to have a new set of them. Ugh! how I hate ’em!”
“But, Helen, we have our Camp-Fire outfits that are thoroughly suitable for what we are going to do. There are loads of middy blouses in the house, so I am sure we need buy no more of them. As for stockings—it seems to me you hadbetter wear out what stockings you have, even if they are silk, before you buy any more.”
“Never! You don’t seem to understand the significance of my oath. When a pilgrim of old swore to put on sackcloth and travel to some distant shrine, he didn’t say he would not go to the expense of sackcloth since he had plenty of velvet suits on hand, did he now? No! He went and bought some sackcloth if he didn’t happen to have any in the house and gave his velvet suits to the poor or had his hand-maidens pack them up in frankincense and myrrh or something until he got back——”
“All right! All right! But please don’t give away anything to the poor. If Cousin Lizzie should hear of your doing such a thing she would certainly say: ‘Charity begins at home.’”
“I won’t give them away if you think I shouldn’t, but I’d like to put temptation out of my reach. I hope we can get off to the mountains real soon as I am sure I have no desire to flaunt my penance in the face of the Richmond public. Don’t you think, Douglas, that I might have thefifty-nine cents that is in the bank so things will balance better, and with fifty-nine cents I can get three pair of sixteen-and-two-third-cent stockings? I’ll bring back the nine cents change.” Helen was quite solemn in her request, but Douglas was forced to laugh at her lugubrious countenance.
“Yes, dear, if you really feel so strongly about the cotton stockings. Haven’t you any money at all in your purse? I have a little, I believe.”
“Well, I never thought of that! Sure I have!” and Helen sprang out of bed, where they were still lolling while the above conversation was going on, and hunted wildly in a very much mussed drawer for her silver mesh bag. “Hurrah! Three paper dollars and a pile of chicken feed silver! I can get cotton stockings for a centipede with that much money.”
It was a very pretty room that Douglas and Helen Carter shared. Robert Carter had brought to bear all the experience he had gained in building other persons’ houses to make his own house perfect. It was not a very large house butevery detail had been thought out so not one brick was amiss. Convenience and Beauty were not sacrificed to one another but went hand in hand. The girls loved their room with its dainty pink paper and egg-shell paint. They had not been in the house long enough for the novelty to wear off, as it was only about a year old. As Douglas lay in her luxurious bed while Helen, being up in search of money, took first bath, she thought of the bitterness of having strangers occupy their room. How often she had lain in that soft, comfortable nest and fancied that it must be like the heart of a pink rose. And the charming private bath-room must be given up, too.
She could hear Helen splashing away, evidently enjoying her morning shower as she was singing with many trills and folderols, trying seemingly to hear herself above the noise of the running water.
“Poor Helen!” thought Douglas. “It is harder, somehow, for her than any of us. Lucy is young enough to learn the new trick of being poor very easily, and Nan is such a philosopher; and dearlittle Bobby won’t see the difference just so he can have plenty of mud to play in; and I—oh, well—I have got so much to do I can’t think about myself—I must get up and do it, too. Here I am selfishly lying in bed when I know Nan and Lucy want to hear the news from Father just as much as I did.” So, slipping on a kimono, she ran into the room across the hall, shared by the two younger girls.
They were up and almost dressed. “Lucy and I thought maybe we could help, so we hurried. I know you’ve lots to do,” said Nan.
“That was dear of you both. Of course we won’t have so much to do right now, as we have to wait for Dr. Wright to come home; and then if we can rent the house furnished, we must get everything in order. But first listen to the good news!” and she read the telegram.
“Isn’t that splendid and wasn’t it kind of Dr. Wright to send it to you?”
“I think so. If only Helen would not feel so unkindly to him! She utterly refuses to like him,” and Douglas sighed.
“I don’t intend to like him either, then!” exclaimed Lucy. “He shan’t boss me if he isn’t going to boss Helen.”
“How absurd you are,” laughed Nan. “You are so afraid that Helen will get something you don’t have that you won’t even let her have a private little dislike without wanting to have some, too. I bet if Helen got the smallpox you would think yourself abused if you didn’t get it, too.”
“And in your heart of hearts you know you do like him,” said Douglas with a severity that she felt such silliness warranted.
“Well, if I do—and—and—maybe I do, I’m not going to take anything off of him that Helen won’t.”
“Well, I reckon Dr. Wright will be glad to wash his hands of us, anyhow,” said Nan. “I can’t see that it would be any sweet boon to look after you and Helen or any of us, for that matter.”
“I should think not,” laughed Douglas; “but you see his having power of attorney from Fathermakes it necessary for us to consult with him about some things, selling the automobile, for instance, and renting the house.”
“Selling the car!” wailed Lucy. “I think it is foolishness to do that. I’d like to know how you are to occupy Dan, the chauffeur, if we haven’t a car to keep him busy.”
“Oh, you incorrigible girls! Of course we will have to let the chauffeur go immediately; and I’ve got to tell the servants to-day that we can’t keep them. I’ll give them all a week’s warning, of course.”
“I understand all that,” said Nan, “so please don’t bunch me in with the incorrigibles.”
“But, Douglas, Oscar has been with us since long before we were born. I don’t see how you can have the heart to dismiss him,” and Lucy looked resentfully at her older sister.
“Heart! I haven’t the heart to let any of them go, but it would be a great deal more heartless to have them work for us with no money to pay them with.”
“Now, Lucy Carter, you’ve pretty near madeDouglas cry. You sound like a half-wit to me. Heartless, indeed! If you had half of Douglas’s heart and one-fourth of her sense, you wouldn’t make such remarks,” and Nan put her arms around Douglas.
“No, she didn’t make me cry, but what does make me feel bad is that Lucy and Helen can’t even now realize the state of affairs. I hated to have to tell Helen she mustn’t charge anything more, no matter what it is she wants.”
“Charge! I should say not! I think I would walk on my uppers all the rest of my life before I’d put any more burden like that on Father,” declared Nan.
“But don’t people always charge when they haven’t got any money? What will we do when we need things?” asked Lucy.
“Do without,” said Douglas wearily. She saw it was going to take more than a few hours or a few days to make two of her sisters realize the necessity for reconstruction of their lives. “Helen and I are going right after breakfast tosee real estate agents about getting us a tenant, and Helen is going to purchase some cotton stockings. She still persists in sticking to the letter of her oath not to wear silk stockings until Daddy is home and well.”
“I’m going to wear cotton stockings, too, if Helen is.”
“So you are, so are all of us, but we are going to keep on with the ones we have until we go to the country. Helen is spending her own money, some she had, on these stockings and no one is buying them for her,” and Douglas went back to her room to dress and take up the burden of the day that was beginning to seem very heavy to her young shoulders. “If only Helen and Lucy could see without being knocked down and made to see,” she thought. “Poor Father, if he had only not been so unselfish how much better it would have been for all of us now that we have got to face life!”
True to their determination, Douglas and Helen went to several real estate agents. None of them were very encouraging about rentingduring the summer months to reliable tenants, but all of them promised to keep an eye open for the young ladies.
“Your father gone off sick?” asked one fatherly old agent. “Well, I saw him going to pieces. Why, Robert Carter did the work of three men. Just look at the small office force he kept and the work he turned out! That meant somebody did the drudgery, and that somebody was the boss. What do the fellows in his office think of this?”
“I—I—don’t know,” stammered Douglas. She couldn’t let the kind old man know that she had not even thought of informing the office of her father’s departure. How could she think of everything?
Before seeing any more agents, she and Helen betook themselves to their father’s office, a breezy apartment at the top of a great bank building. Two young men were busily engaged on some architectural drawings. They stopped work and came eagerly forward to inquire for Mr. Carter. Their consternation was great on hearingof his sudden departure and their grief and concern very evident.
“We will do all we can to keep things going,” said the elder of the two.
“You bet we will!” from the other, who had but recently been advanced from office boy.
“There is a big thing Mr. Carter has been working on for some time, a competitive design for a country club in North Carolina. It is about done and I will do my best to finish it as I think he would want it, and get it off. Did he leave power of attorney with any one? You see, Mr. Carter has two accounts, in different banks, one, his personal account, and one, his business one.”
“Yes, Dr. Wright, his physician, was given power of attorney. There was no time to let any of you know as it was important to have Father kept very quiet, with no excitement. Dr. Wright will come in to see you on Monday, I feel sure. He does not get back from New York until to-night.”
“More work and responsibility for the doctor,” thought Douglas.
“More power over us than we dreamed even,” was in Helen’s mind.
“We want to rent our house, furnished, for the summer, giving possession immediately, or almost immediately,” continued Douglas; “perhaps you may hear of some one who will be interested.”
“I know of some one right now,” eagerly put in Dick, the promoted office boy. “It is a family who have been driven from Paris by the war. They have been living there for years—got oodlums of money and no place to spend it now, poor things! They want a furnished house for six months with privilege of renewing the lease for a year.”
“Oh, please, could you send them to me or me to them right off?”
“Yes, Miss Carter, that’s easy! If you go home, I’ll have the folks up there in an hour.”
“How kind you are!”
“Not a bit of it! I’m so glad I happened toknow about them—and now you will be saved an agent’s fee.”
“How much do you think we should ask for our house?” said Douglas, appealing to both young men.
“Well, that house is as good a one as there is in Richmond for its size,” said Mr. Lane, the elder. “I know, because I helped on it. There is not one piece of defective material in the whole building. Even the nails were inspected. If it had been on Franklin Street, I’d say one hundred a month, unfurnished, with all the baths it has in it; but since it is not on Franklin, I believe one hundred, furnished, would be a fair price.”
“Oh, wouldn’t that be fine, Douglas?” spoke Helen for the first time. She had been very quiet while these business conferences had been going on. “That will be a whole lot of money. Now we need not feel so poverty stricken.”
“Certainly families do live on less,” and the young man smiled. “I think Mr. Carter usually takes out about six hundred a month for his household expenses—of course, that’s not countingwhen he buys a car. I know it is none of my business, but I am very much interested to know what you young ladies are going to do with yourselves. If I can be of any assistance, you must call on me.”
“Oh, we’ve got the grandest scheme! I thought of it myself, so I am vastly proud of it. We are going up to Albemarle County, where Father owns a tract of land right on the side of a mountain, and there we are going to spend the summer and take boarders and expect to make a whole lot of money.”
“Take boarders? Is there a house there? I understood from Mr. Carter that it was unimproved property.”
“So it is. That is the beauty of it. We intend to camp and all the boarders will camp, too.”
The young men could not contain themselves but burst out laughing. They had not seen much of their employer’s family but they well knew the luxurious lives they lived and their helplessness. It was funny to hear this pretty butterflyof a girl talking about taking boarders and making money at it.
“It does sound funny,” said Douglas when the laugh in which she and Helen had joined subsided, “but we are really going to do it—that is, I think we are,” remembering that the Power of Attorney had not yet been consulted and nothing could really be determined on until then. “I don’t know about our making lots of money, but we can certainly live much more cheaply camping than any other way.”
“That’s so!” agreed Mr. Lane. “Now maybe this is where Dick and I can help. Camps have to be built and we can get up some plans for you. There is a book of them just issued and we can get a working plan for you in short order.”
“That is splendid. We have a cousin, Lewis Somerville, who is home now and has nothing to do, and he is going up to Albemarle ahead of us and build the camp. I’ll tell him to come down and see you and you can tell him all about it.”
Then the girls, with many expressions of gratitude,hastened home to prepare for the poor rich people who had been driven from Paris and now had no place to spend their money.
They stopped on Broad Street long enough for Helen to spend one of her precious dollars for six sixteen-and-two-third-cent stockings.
“Do you think it would be very extravagant if I spent a dime in market for flowers?” asked Helen. “It would make the house look more cheerful and might make the poor rich people like it better.”
“Why, no, I don’t think that would be very extravagant,” laughed Douglas.
So they went over to the Sixth Street market, where the old colored women sit along the side-walk, and purchased a gay bunch of wild phlox for a dime. And then Helen could not resist squandering another nickel for a branch of dogwood. They jitneyed home, another extravagance. There was no tangible reason why they should not have ordered out their own car for this business trip they had been forced to take, but it had seemed to both of them a little incongruousto ride in a seven-seated touring car on the mission they had undertaken.
“It doesn’t gee with cotton stockings, somehow,” declared Helen, “to step out of a good car like ours. Jitneys are much more in keeping.”
The exiles from Paris came with the faithful Dick; liked the house; did not mind the price, although furnished houses during the summer months are somewhat a drug in the real estate market; and were ready to close the bargain just as soon as Dr. Wright should return.
The son, an æsthetic looking youth of seventeen, who was Dick’s acquaintance, was carried away with the wild phlox and went into ecstasies over the branch of dogwood which Helen had placed near a Japanese print in the library.
“Let’s take it, Mamma! It is perfect!” he exclaimed as he stood enraptured by the effect.
Helen always declared that the market flowers rented the house, and so they may have.
“Almost time for Dr. Wright!” exclaimed Douglas. “I believe I heard the R. F. & P. stop at Elba. I do wonder what he is going to say.”
“He is going to say we are a set of fools and lunatics and refuse to let us have any money to start the camp. Since we have been so extravagant and selfish for all these years, he’ll think we ought to go to the poor house, where we belong,” said Helen, frowning. “I can see him now looking through his eyebrows at me with the expression of a hairy wildman in a show.”
Dr. Wright came with good news of the travelers. He had not only seen them safely on board but had sailed with them, coming back with the pilot. He reported Mr. Carter as singularly calm and rested already and Mrs. Carter as making an excellent nurse. Evidently he was ratherastonished that that poor lady could make herself useful, and Helen, detecting his astonishment, was immediately on the defensive; but as Dr. Wright was addressing his remarks principally to Douglas, almost ignoring her, she had no chance to let him know what she thought of his daring even to think slightingly of poor little Mumsy.
“I have a scheme for you girls, too, if you won’t think I am presumptuous to be making suggestions,” he said, now including all four of the sisters.
Of course, Douglas and Nan assured him that they considered it very kind of him to think of them at all, but Helen tossed her head and said nothing. Lucy waited to see what Helen would do and did the same thing, but she could not help smiling at the young doctor when he laughed out-right at her ridiculous mimicry of Helen. He flushed, however, showing he was not quite so callous to Helen’s scorn and distrust as he would have liked to appear.
“I think the wisest thing for you to do wouldbe to rent this house, furnished, if you can find a tenant——”
“We’ve done it!” exclaimed Helen triumphantly.
“That is, we have got a tenant if you think it is best,” explained Douglas. “We were going to do nothing without your approval.”
“Oh, come now! I have no jurisdiction over you,” laughed the young man.
“Isn’t power of attorney jurisdiction?” asked Lucy. “Nan says I can’t have any more stockings until you permit me.”
“Well, well! I must be a terrible bugaboo to you! I don’t feel at all qualified to judge of your stockings, little girl, or anything else pertaining to the female attire. It was the merest accident that I was given power of attorney. I am not in the least an appropriate person to be having it. I only consented to have it wished on me when I saw your father was becoming excited and tired over the unexpected hitch when the notary spoke of Miss Douglas’s not being of age. I have transferred what cash your father has to yoursister’s account. I must find out from you whom you want to look after your affairs and consult that person——”
“But, Dr. Wright, we would lots rather have you, if you don’t mind!” exclaimed Douglas. “Any of our kinsmen that we might call on would insist upon our coming to live with them or make us go to some stuffy boarding house or something. They would not look at it as I believe you would at all. We have a scheme, too, but we want to hear yours first.”
“My scheme was, as I say, first to rent your house, furnished, and then all of you, with some suitable older person and some man whom you can trust, go and camp out on the side of the mountain in Albemarle. What do you say to it?” The girls burst out laughing, even Helen.
“Dr. Wright, this is absolutely uncanny!” exclaimed Douglas. “That is exactly what we were planning!”
“Only we were going you some better and were to have boarders,” drawled Nan.
“Boarders, eh, and what do you know about keeping boarders?” laughed the doctor.
“We know enough not to do the way we have been done by at summer boarding houses where we have been sometimes.”
“Well, all I can say is that I think you are a pretty spunky lot. Please tell me which one of you thought up this plan. There must surely have been a current of mental telepathy flowing from one of you girls to me. It was you, I fancy, Miss Douglas.”
“No, I am never so quick to see a way out. It was Helen.”
“Yes, Helen thought of it, but I came mighty near doing it,” declared Lucy. “I would have done it all the way but I went to sleep.”
Helen looked as though she did not at all relish having anything even so intangible as a current of mental telepathy connecting her with one whom she was still determined to look upon as an enemy. He was gazing at her with anything but the eyes of an enemy, however, and Nan’s remark about his eyes looking like blue flowers highup on a cliff that you must climb to reach, came back to her. She felt that those flowers were in easy reach for her now; that all she had to do to make this rugged young man her friend was to be decently polite. But her pride was still hurt from his former disapproval and while his present attitude was much better, she still could not bring herself to smile at him. She was very quiet while the other girls unfolded their plans for the camp. She did not take so much pleasure in it now that it was not altogether her scheme. To think that while she was working it up this bumptious young doctor was doing the same thing!
“The keeping boarders part of it was mine, though,” she comforted herself by thinking.
Dr. Wright was really astonished by the quickness with which these spoiled girls had acted and their eagerness to begin to be something besides the butterflies they had seemed. Douglas told him of the plans for the camp that the assistant in the office was to draw for them, and then showed him some of the advertisements of theirboarding camp that Nan had been working on all day.
“This is sure to draw a crowd of eager week-enders,” he declared. “In fact, I believe you will have more boarders than the mountain will hold.”
“I thought it best to have kind of catchy ads that would make people wonder what we were up to anyhow,” said Nan. “Now this one is sure to draw a crowd: ‘A week-end boarding camp, where one can have all of the discomforts of camping without the responsibility.’ Here is another: ‘Mountain air makes you hungry! Come to The Week-End Camp and let us feed you.’”
“Fine!” laughed the young man. “But please tell me how you plan to feed the hungry hordes that are sure to swarm to your camp. Do you know how to cook?”
“Helen can make angel’s food and I know how to make mayonnaise, but sometimes it goes back on me,” said Nan with the whimsical air that always drew a smile from Dr. Wright.
“I can make angel’s food, too,” declared Lucy.
“Well, angel’s food and mayonnaise will be enough surely for hungry hordes.”
“Of course, we are going to take some servants with us,” said Helen, breaking the vow of silence that she was trying to keep in Dr. Wright’s presence. “Old Oscar, our butler, and Susan, the housemaid, have both volunteered to go. I can make more things than angel’s food, and, besides, I am going to learn how to do all kinds of things before we go.”
“That’s so, you can make devil’s food,” teased Nan. “Somehow I didn’t like to mention it.”
“Cook is going to teach me to make all kinds of things. I am going to get dinner to-morrow and have already made up bread for breakfast. I am going to buy some of the cutest little bungalow aprons to cook in, pink and blue. I saw them down town this morning. They are what made me think of learning how to cook.”
“I’m going to learn how to cook, too, and I must have some aprons just like Helen’s.”
“All of us are Camp Fire Girls,” said Douglasto the doctor, “and of course we have learned some of the camping stunts, but we have not been as faithful as we might have been.”
“I am an old camper and can put you on to many things if you will let me.”
“We should be only too glad,” responded Douglas sincerely.
“One of the first things is canvas cots. Don’t try to sleep on all kinds of contrived beds. Get folding cots and insure comfortable nights. Another is, don’t depend altogether on camp fires for cooking. Kerosene stoves and fireless cookers come in mighty handy for steady meal getting. It will be another month at least before you go, won’t it?”
“Just about, I think, if we can manage it. We have school to finish and I have some college exams that I want to take, although I see no prospect of college yet. Another thing I want to discuss with you, Dr. Wright, is selling our car. I think that might bring in money enough for us to pay for all the camp fixtures and run us for awhile.”
“Certainly; I’ll see about that for you immediately.”
The young man took his departure with a much higher opinion of the Carter sisters than he had held twenty-four hours before. As for the Carter sisters: they felt so grateful to him for his kindness to their parents and to them that their opinion of him was perforce good. Helen still sniffed disdainfully when his name was mentioned, but she could not forget the expression of approval in his blue eyes when he found that the camping scheme was hers.
Bill Tinsley was as keen on the camp building plan as Lewis Somerville had said he would be.
“Sleeping on my arms,” was his telegram in answer to the letter he got from Lewis, a letter with R. S. V. P. P. D. Q. plainly marked on the envelope.
“Good old Bill! I almost knew he would tumble at the chance. All of you will like Bill, I know.”
“What does he mean by sleeping on his arms?” asked Lucy. “I should think it would make him awfully stiff.”
“Oh, that means ready to go at a moment’s notice. I bet his kit is packed now.”
Mr. Lane and Dick had worked hard on the plans for the camp and had them ready when the would-be builder called for them. Then Mr. Lane and Lewis made a flying trip to Greendaleto look into the lay of the land and to decide on a site for the dining pavilion. It was a spot about one hundred yards from the log cabin, built by the aforesaid sick Englishman, that seemed to them to be intended for just their purpose. It was a hollowed out place in the mountain side, not far from the summit, and four great pine trees formed an almost perfect rectangle of forty by twenty-five feet. In the centre stood a noble tulip poplar.
“Pity to sacrifice him,” said Bill Tinsley, whom they had picked up at Charlottesville on their way to Greendale. Bill was a youth of few words but of frequent mirth expressed in uncontrollable fits of laughter that nothing could stop, not even being shipped from West Point. It was this very laugh that had betrayed the hazers. If Bill had only been able to hold in that guffaw of his they would never have been caught. His laugh was unmistakable and through it the whole crowd of wrongdoers was nabbed, poor Lewis along with them although he was innocent.
“No more to blame for laughing than a lightningbug for shining,” he had declared to Lewis; “but I wish I had died before I got you into this, old fellow.”
“Well, it can’t be helped, but I bet you will be laughing on the other side of your face before you know it.”
The youths had remained fast friends and now that this chance had come for them to be of service and to use the surplus energy that was stored up in their splendidly developed muscles, they were happy at the prospect of being together again.
Mr. Lane took careful measurements and adapted his plans so as to utilize the four trees as natural posts and the great tulip poplar as a support for the roof. Under the pavilion the space was to be made into kitchen and store room. Some little excavating would be necessary for this as measurements showed that one edge of the pavilion would rest almost on the mountain side while the other stood ten feet from the ground.
“I am trying to spare you fellows all the excavating possible, as that is the tedious and uninterestingpart of building,” explained Mr. Lane.
“Oh, we can shovel that little pile of dirt away in no time,” declared Lewis, feeling his muscles twitch with joy at the prospect of removing mountains. Mr. Lane smiled, knowing full well that it was at least no mole hill they were to tackle.
Within a week after Mr. and Mrs. Carter had sailed on their health-seeking voyage, Lewis and his chum wereen routefor Greendale, all of the lumber for their undertaking ordered and their tools sent on ahead by freight. Bill had gone to Richmond, ostensibly to consult a dentist, but in reality to see the Carter girls, who had aroused in him a great curiosity.
“They must be some girls,” had been his laconic remark.
“So they are, the very best fun you ever saw,” Lewis had assured him. “They took this thing of waking up and finding themselves poor a great deal better than you and I did waking up and finding ourselves nothing but civilianswhen we had expected to be major generals, at least.”
The Carter girls had one and all liked Bill, when Lewis took him to call on them the evening of his arrival in Richmond.
“There is something so frank and open in his countenance,” said Helen.
“His mouth!” drawled Nan. “Did you ever see or hear such a laugh?”
“He is a great deal nicer than your old Dr. Wright, who looks as though it would take an operation on his risibles to get a laugh out of him.”
Bill had offered the services of a battered Ford car he had in Charlottesville as pack mule for the camp and it was joyfully accepted. He and Lewis stopped in Charlottesville on their way to Greendale and got the tried old car, making the last leg of their trip in it.
They had decided to sleep in the Englishman’s cabin, as the little log house that went with the property was always called, but Miss Somerville had made them promise to burn sulphur candlesbefore they went in and was deeply grieved because her beloved nephew refused to carry with him a quart bottle of crude carbolic acid that she felt was necessary to ward off germs.
It was late in the afternoon as the faithful Ford chugged its way up the mountain road to the site of the proposed camp. The boys had stopped at the station at Greendale and taken in all the tools they could stow away, determined to begin work at excavating the first thing in the morning.
“Let’s lay out the ground this afternoon,” proposed Lewis.
“There’s nothing to lay out since the four pine trees mark the corners. I, for one, am going to lay out myself and rest and try to decide which one of your cousins is the most beautiful.”
“Douglas, of course! The others can’t hold a candle to her, although Helen is some looker and Nan has certainly got something about her that makes a fellow kind of blink. And that Lucy is going to grow up to her long legs some day and maybe step ahead of all of them.”
“Well, I’m mighty glad you thought about giving me this job of working for such nice gals.” These young men always spoke of themselves as being in the employ of the Carter girls, and all the time they were building the camp they religiously kept themselves to certain hours as though any laxity would be cheating their bosses. Besides, the regular habits that two years at West Point had drilled into them would have been difficult to break.
“I don’t know how to loaf,” complained Lewis. “That’s the dickens of it.”
“Me, neither!”
“They say the Government makes machines of its men.”
“True! I am a perpetual motion machine.”
They were busily engaged on their first morning in the mountains, plying pick and shovel. They bent their brave young shoulders to the task with evident enjoyment in the work. When they did straighten up to get the kinks out of their backs, they looked out across a wonderful country which they fully appreciated as beingwonderful, but raving about landscapes and Nature was not in their line and they would quickly bend again to the task in a somewhat shamefaced way.
The orchards of Albemarle County in Virginia are noted and the green of an apple tree in May is something no one need be ashamed to admire openly, but all these boys would say on the subject was:
“Good apple year, I hope.”
“Yep! Albemarle pippins are sho’ good eats.”
Moving mountains was not quite so easy as they had expected it to be. They remembered what Mr. Lane had said about excavating when the sun showed it to be high noon and after five hours’ steady work they had made but little impression on the pile they were to dig away.
“Gee, we make no impression at all!” said Lewis. “I verily believe little Bobby Carter could have done as much as we have if he had been turned loose to play mud pies here.”
“Well, let’s stop and eat. I haven’t laughedfor an hour,” and Bill gave out one of his guffaws that echoed from peak to peak and started two rabbits out of the bushes and actually dislodged a great stone that went rolling down the side of the mountain into an abyss below. At least, his laugh seemed to be the cause but Bill declared it was somebody or something, and to be sure a little mountain boy came from behind a boulder, grinning from ear to ear.
“What be you uns a-doin’?”
“Crocheting a shawl for Aunty,” said Lewis solemnly.
“Well, we uns is got a mule an’ a scoop that could make a shawl fer Aunty quicker’n you uns.” This brought forth another mighty peal from Bill and another stone rolled down the mountain side.
“Good for you, son!” exclaimed Lewis. “Suppose you fetch the mule here this afternoon and we’ll have a sewing bee. What do you say, Bill? Do you believe we would ever in the world get this dirt moved?”
“Doubt it.”
“Do you uns want we uns to drive the critter? We uns mostly goes along ’thout no axtra chawge.”
“Sure we want you. What do you charge for the mule and driver?”
“Wal, time was when Josephus brought as much as fifty cents a day, but he ain’t to say so spry as onct, an’ now we uns will be satisfied to git thirty cents, with a feedin’ of oats.”
“Oats! Who has oats? Not I. The only critter we have eats gasoline. I tell you, son, you feed Josephus yourself and we will feed you and pay you fifty cents a day for your animal. I don’t believe a mule could work for thirty cents and keep his self-respect.”
“Wal, Josephus an’ we uns don’t want no money what we uns don’ arn,” and the little mountain boy flushed a dark red under his sunburned, freckled face.
He was a very ragged youngster of about twelve. His clothes smacked of the soil to such an extent that you could never have told what was their original color. What sleeves therewere left in his shirt certainly must once have been blue, but the body of that garment showed spots of candy pink calico, the kind you are sure to find on the shelves of any country store. His trousers, held up by twine, crossed over his wiry shoulders, were corduroy. They had originally been the color of the earth and time and weather had but deepened their tone. His eyes shone out very clear and blue in contrast to the general dinginess of his attire. His was certainly a very likable face and the young men were very much attracted to the boy, first because of his ready wit, shown from his first words, and then because of his quick resentment at the possibility of any one’s giving him or his mule money they had not earned.
“Of course, you are going to earn it,” reassured Lewis. “Now you go home and get your mule and as soon as we can cook some dinner for ourselves and satisfy our inner cravings, we will all get to work. You and Josephus can dig and Bill and I will begin to build.”
“Please, sir, wouldn’t you uns like Gwen tocook for you uns and wash the platters an’ sich? She is a great han’ at fixin’s.”
“Gwen! Who is Gwen?”
Another stone slipped from behind the boulder from which the boy had emerged and then a young girl came timidly forth.