The bang of the door, closed by the draught when ’Phemie had opened the way into the east wing,hadaroused Lyddy. She came to herself–to a consciousness of her strange surroundings–with a sharpness of apprehension that set every nerve in her body to tingling.
“’Phemie! what is it?” she whispered.
Then, rolling over on the rustling straw mattress, she reached for her sister’s hand. But ’Phemie was not there.
“’Phemie!” Lyddy cried loudly, sitting straight up in bed. She knew she was alone in the room, and hopped out of bed, shivering. She groped for her robe and her slippers. Then she sped swiftly into the kitchen.
She knew where the lamp and the match-box were. Quickly she had the lamp a-light and then swept the big room with a startled glance.
’Phemie had disappeared. The outside door was still locked. It seemed to Lyddy as though the echoing slam of the door that had awakened her was still ringing in her ears.
She ran to the hall door and opened it. Dark–and not a sound!
Where could ’Phemie have gone?
The older sister had never known ’Phemie to walk in her sleep. She had no tricks of somnambulism that Lyddy knew anything about.
And yet the older Bray girl was quite sure her sister had come this way. The lamplight, when the door was opened wide, illuminated the square hall quite well. Lyddy ran across it and pushed open the door of the long corridor.
There was no light in it, yet she could see outlined the huge pieces of furniture, and the ugly chairs. And at the very moment she opened this door, the door at the far end was flung wide and a white figure plunged toward her.
“’Phemie!” screamed the older sister.
“Lyddy!” wailed ’Phemie.
And in a moment they were in each other’s arms and Lyddy was dragging ’Phemie across the entrance hall into the lighted kitchen.
“What is it? Whatisit?” gasped Lyddy.
“Oh, oh, oh!” was all ’Phemie was able to say for the moment; then, as she realized how really terrified her sister was, she continued her series of “ohs” while she thought very quickly.
She knew very well what had scared her; but why add to Lyddy’s fright? She could not explainaway the voice she had heard. Of course, she knew very well it hadnotproceeded from the skeleton. But why terrify Lyddy by saying anything about that awful thing?
“What scared you so?” repeated Lyddy, shaking her a bit.
“I–I don’t know,” stammered ’Phemie–and she didn’t!
“But why did you get up?”
“I thought I heard something–voices–people talking–steps,” gasped ’Phemie, and now her teeth began to chatter so that she could scarcely speak.
“Foolish girl!” exclaimed Lyddy, rapidly recovering her own self-control. “You dreamed it. And now you’ve got a chill, wandering through this old house. Here! sit down there!”
She drove her into a low chair beside the hearth. She ran for an extra comforter to wrap around her. She raked the ashes off the coals of the fire, and set the tea-kettle right down upon the glowing bed.
In a minute it began to steam and gurgle, and Lyddy made her sister an old-fashioned brew of ginger tea. When the younger girl had swallowed half a bowlful of the scalding mixture she ceased shaking. And by that time, too, she had quite recovered her self-control.
“You’re a very foolish little girl,” declared Lyddy, warningly, “to get up alone and go wandering about this house. Why,Iwouldn’t do it for–for the whole farm!”
“I–I dropped my candle. It went out,” said ’Phemie, quietly. “I guess being in the dark scared me more than anything.”
“Now, that’s enough. Forget it! We’ll go to bed again and see if we can’t get some sleep. Why! it’s past eleven.”
So the sisters crept into bed again, and lay in each other’s arms, whispering a bit and finally, before either of them knew it, they were asleep. And neither ghosts, nor whispering voices, nor any other midnight sounds disturbed their slumbers for the remainder of that first night at Hillcrest.
They were awake betimes–and without the help of the alarm clock. It was pretty cold in the two rooms; but they threw kindling on the coals and soon the flames were playing tag through the interlacing sticks that ’Phemie heaped upon the fire.
The kettle was soon bubbling again, while Lyddy mixed batter cakes. A little bed of live coals was raked together in front of the main fire and on this a well greased griddle was set, where the cakes baked to a tender brown andwere skillfully lifted off by ’Phemie and buttered and sugared.
What if a black coal or twodidsnap over the cakes? And what if ’Phemie’s hairdidget smoked and “smelly?” Both girls declared cooking before an open fire to be great fun. They had yet, however, to learn a lot about “how our foremothers cooked.”
“I don’t for the life of me see how they ever used that brick oven,” said Lyddy, pointing to the door in the side of the chimney. “Surely, that hole in the bricks would never heat fromthisfire.”
“Ask Lucas,” advised ’Phemie, and as though in answer to that word, Lucas himself appeared, bearing offerings of milk, eggs, and new bread.
“Huh!” he said, in a gratified tone, sniffing in the doorway. “I told maw you two gals wouldn’t go hungry. Ye air a sight too clever.”
“Thank you, Lucas,” said Lyddy, demurely. “Will you have a cup of tea!”
“No’m. I’ve had my breakfast. It’s seven now and I’ll go right t’ work cutting wood for ye. That’s what ye’ll want most, I reckon. And I want to git ye a pile ready, for it won’t be many days before we start plowin’, an’ then dad won’t hear to me workin’ away from home.”
Lyddy went out of doors for a moment and spoke to him from the porch.
“Don’t do too much trimming in the orchard, Lucas, till I have a look at the trees. I have a book about the care of an old orchard, and perhaps I can make something out of this one.”
“Plenty of other wood handy, Miss Lyddy,” declared the lanky young fellow. “And it’ll be easier to split than apple and peach wood, too.”
’Phemie, meanwhile, had said she would run in and find the candle she had dropped in her fright the night before; but in truth it was more for the purpose of seeing the east wing of the old house by daylight–and that skeleton.
“No need for Lyddy to come in here and have a conniption fit, too,” thought the younger sister, “through coming unexpectedly upon that Thing in the case.
“And, my gracious! he might just as well have been the author of that mysterious speech I heard. I should think hewouldbe tired of staying shut up in that box,” pursued the girl, giggling nervously, as she stood before the open case in which the horrid thing dangled.
Light enough came through the cracks in the closed shutters to reveal to her the rooms that the old doctor had so long occupied.
’Phemie closed the skeleton case and picked up her candle. Then she continued her investigation of the suite to the third room. Here were shelves and work-benches littered with a heterogeneous collection of bottles, tubes, retorts, filters, and other things of which ’Phemie did not even know the names or uses.
There was a door, too, that opened directly into the back yard. But this door was locked and double-bolted. She was sure that the person, or persons, whom she had heard talking the night before had not been in this room. When she withdrew from the east wing she locked the green-painted door as she had found it; but in addition, she removed the key and hid it where she was sure nobody but herself would be likely to find it.
Later she tackled Lucas.
“I don’t suppose you–or any of your folks–were up here last night, Lucas?” she asked the young farmer, out of her sister’s hearing.
“Me, Miss? I should say not!” replied the surprised Lucas.
“But I heard voices around the house.”
“Do tell!” exclaimed he.
“Who would be likely to come here at night?”
“Why, I never heard the beat o’ that,” declared Lucas. “No, ma’am!”
“Sh! don’t let my sister hear,” whispered ’Phemie. “She heard nothing.”
“Air you sure—” began Lucas, but at that the young girl snapped him up quick enough:
“I am confident I even heard some things they said. They were men. It sounded as though they spoke over there by the east wing–or in the cellar.”
“Ye don’t mean it!” exclaimed the wondering Lucas, leading the way slowly to the cellar-hatch just under the windows of the old doctor’s workshop.
This hatch was fastened by a big brass padlock.
“Dad’s got the key to that,” said Lucas. “Jest like I told you, we have stored vinegar in it, some. Ain’t many barrels left at this time o’ year. Dad sells off as he can during the winter.”
“And, of course, your father didn’t come up here last night?”
“Shucks! O’ course not,” replied the young farmer. “Ain’t no vinegar buyer around in this neighborhood now–an’ ’specially not at night. Dad ain’t much for goin’ out in the evenin’, nohow. He does sit up an’ read arter we’re all gone to bed sometimes. But it couldn’t be dad you heard up here–no, Miss.”
So the puzzle remained a puzzle. However, the Bray girls had so much to do, and so much tothink of that, after all, the mystery of the night occupied a very small part of ’Phemie’s thought.
Lyddy had something–and a very important something, she thought–on her mind. It had risen naturally out of the talk the girls had had when they first went to bed the evening before. ’Phemie had wished for a houseful of company to make Hillcrest less lonely; the older sister had seized upon the idea as a practical suggestion.
Why not fill the big house–if they could? Why not enter the lists in the land-wide struggle for summer boarders?
Of course, if Aunt Jane would approve.
First of all, however, Lyddy wanted to see the house–the chambers upstairs especially; and she proposed to her sister, when their morning’s work was done, that they make a tour of discovery.
“Lead on,” ’Phemie replied, eagerly. “I hope we find a softer bed than that straw mattress–and one that won’t tickle so! Aunt Jane said we could do just as we pleased with things here; didn’t she?”
“Within reason,” agreed Lyddy. “And that’s all very well up to a certain point, I fancy. But I guess Aunt Jane doesn’t expect us to make use of the whole house. We will probably find this west wing roomy enough for our needs, even when father comes.”
They ventured first up the stairs leading to the rooms in this wing. There were two nice ones here and a wide hall with windows overlooking the slope of the mountainside toward Bridleburg. They could see for miles the winding road up which they had climbed the day before.
“Yes, this wing will do very nicely forus,” Lyddy said, thinking aloud. “We can make that room downstairs where we’re sleeping, our sitting-room when it comes warm weather; and that will give us all the rest of the house—”
“All but the old doctor’s offices,” suggested ’Phemie, doubtfully. “There are three of them.”
“Well,” returned Lyddy, “three and four are seven; and seven from twenty-two leaves fifteen. Some of the first-floor rooms we’ll have to use as dining and sitting-rooms for the boarders—”
“My goodness me!” exclaimed her sister, again breaking in upon her ruminations. “You’ve got the house full of boarders already; have you? What will Aunt Jane say?”
“That we’ll find out. But there ought to be at least twelve rooms to let. If there’s as much furniture and stuff in all as there is in these—”
“But how’ll we ever get the boarders? And how’d we cook for ’em over that open fire? It’s ridiculous!” declared ’Phemie.
“Thatis yet to be proved,” returned her sister, unruffled.
They pursued their investigation through the second-floor rooms. There were eight of them in the main part of the house and two in the east wing over the old doctor’s offices. The last two were only partially furnished and had been used in their grandfather’s day more for “lumber rooms” than aught else. It was evident that Dr. Phelps had demanded quiet and freedom in his own particular wing of Hillcrest.
But the eight rooms in the main part of the house on this second floor were all of good size, well lighted, and completely furnished. Some of them had probably not been slept in for fifty years, for when the girls’ mother, and even Aunt Jane, were young, Dr. Apollo Phelps’s immediate family was not a large one.
“The furniture is all old-fashioned, it is true,” Lyddy said, reflectively. “There isn’t a metal bed in the whole house—”
“And I had just as lief sleep in a coffin as in some of these high-headed carved walnut bedsteads,” declared ’Phemie.
“You don’t have to sleep in them,” responded her sister, quietly. “But some people would think it a privilege to do so.”
“They can havemyshare, and no charge,”sniffed the younger girl. “That bed downstairs is bad enough. And what would we do for mattresses? That’soneantique they wouldn’t stand for–believe me! Straw beds, indeed!”
“We’ll see about that. We might get some cheap elastic-felt mattresses, one at a time, as we needed them.”
“And springs?”
“Some of the bedsteads are roped like the one we sleep on. Others have old-fashioned spiral springs–and there are no better made to-day. The rust can be cleaned off and they can be painted.”
“I see plainly you’re laying out a lot of work for us,” sighed ’Phemie.
“Well, we’ve got to work to live,” responded her sister, briskly.
“Ya-as,” drawled ’Phemie, in imitation of Lucas Pritchett. “But I don’t want to feel as though I was just living to work!”
“Lazybones!” laughed Lyddy. “You know, if we really got started in this game—”
“A game; is it? Keeping boarders!”
“Well?”
“I fancy it’s downright hard work,” quoth ’Phemie.
“But if it makes us independent? If it willkeep poor father out of the shop? If it can be made to support us?” cried Lyddy.
’Phemie flushed suddenly and her eyes sparkled. She seized her more sedate sister and danced her about the room.
“Oh, I don’t care how hard I work if it’ll do all that!” she agreed. “Come on, Lyd! Let’s write to Aunt Jane right away.”
But Lyddy Bray never made up her mind in a hurry. Perhaps she was inclined to err on the side of caution.
Whereas ’Phemie eagerly accepted a new thing, was enthusiastic about it for a time, and then tired of it unless she got “her second wind,” as she herself laughingly admitted, Lyddy would talk over a project a long time before she really decided to act upon it.
It was so in this case. Once having seen the vista of possibilities that Lyddy’s plan revealed, the younger girl was eager to plunge into the summer-boarder project at once. But Lyddy was determined to know just what they had to work with, and just what they would need, before broaching the plan to Aunt Jane.
So she insisted upon giving a more than cursory examination to each of the eight chambers on this second floor. Some of the pieces of old furniture needed mending; but most of the mending could be done with a pot of glue and a little ingenuity.Furthermore, a can of prepared varnish and some linseed oil and alcohol would give most of the well-made and age-darkened furniture the gloss it needed.
There were old-style stone-china toilet sets in profusion, and plenty of mirrors, while there was closet room galore. The main lack, as ’Phemie had pointed out, was in the mattress line.
But when the girls climbed to the garret floor they found one finished room there–a very good sleeping-room indeed–and on the bedstead in this room were stacked, one on top of another, at least a dozen feather beds.
Each bed was wrapped in sheets of tarred paper–hermetically sealed from moths or other insect life.
“Oh, for goodness sake, Lyd!” cried ’Phemie, “let’s take one of these to sleep on. There are pillows, too; but we’ve gotthem. Say! we can put one of these beds on top of the straw tick and be in comfort at last.”
“All right. But the feather bed would be pretty warm for summer use,” sighed Lyddy, as she helped her sister lift down one of the beds–priceless treasures of the old-time housewife.
“Country folk–some of them–sleep on feathers the year ’round,” proclaimed ’Phemie.“Perhaps your summer boarders can be educated up to it–ordownto it.”
“Well, we’ll try the ‘down’ and see how it works,” agreed Lyddy. “My! these feathers are pressed as flat as a pancake. The bed must go out into the sun and air and be tossed once in a while, so that the air will get through it, before there’ll be any ‘life’ in these feathers. Now, don’t try to do it all, ’Phemie. I’ll help you downstairs with it in a minute. I just want to look into the big garret while we’re up here. Dear me! isn’t it dusty?”
Such an attractive-looking assortment of chests, trunks, old presses, boxes, chests of drawers, decrepit furniture, and the like as was set about that garret! There was no end of old clothing hanging from the rafters, too–a forest of garments that would have delighted an old clo’ man; but—
“Oo! Oo! Ooo!” hooted ’Phemie. “Look at the spider webs. Why, I wouldn’t touch those things for the whole farm. I bet there are fat old spiders up there as big as silver dollars.”
“Well, we can keep away from that corner,” said Lyddy, with a shudder. “I don’t want old coats and hats. But I wonder whatisin those drawers. We shall want bed linen if we go into the business of keeping boarders.”
She tried to open some of the nearest presses and bureaus, but all were locked. So, rather dusty and disheveled, they retired to the floor below, between them managing to carry the feather bed out upon the porch where the sun could shine upon it.
At noon Lyddy “buzzed” Lucas, as ’Phemie called it, about the way folk in the neighborhood cooked with an open fire, and especially about the use of the brick oven that was built into the side of the chimney.
“That air contraption,” confessed the young farmer, “ain’t much more real use than a fifth leg on a caow–for a fac’. But old folks used ’em. My grandmaw did.
“She useter shovel live coals inter the oven an’ build a reg’lar fire on the oven bottom. Arter it was het right up she’d sweep aout the brands and ashes with long-handled brushes, an’ then set the bread, an’ pies, an’ Injun puddin’ an’ the like–sometimes the beanpot, too–on the oven floor. Ye see, them bricks will hold heat a long time.
“But lemme tell ye,” continued Lucas, shaking his head, “it took theknow how, I reckon, ter bake stuff right by sech means. My maw never could do it. She says either her bread would be all crust, or ’twas raw in the middle.
“But now,” pursued Lucas, “these ’ere whatthey call ‘Dutch ovens’ ain’t so bad. I kin remember before dad bought maw the stove, she used a Dutch oven–an’ she’s got it yet. I know she’d lend it to you gals.”
“That’s real nice of you, Lucas,” said ’Phemie, briskly. “But what is it?”
“Why, it’s a big sheet-iron pan with a tight cover. You set it right in the coals and shovel coals on top of it and all around it. Things bake purty good in a Dutch oven–ya-as’m! Beans never taste so good to my notion as they useter when maw baked ’em in the old Dutch oven. An’ dad says they was ’nough sight better whenhewas a boy an’ grandmaw baked ’em in an oven like that one there,” and Lucas nodded at the closet in the chimney that ’Phemie had opened to peer into.
“Ye see, it’s the slow, steady heat that don’t die down till mornin’–that’s what bakes beans nice,” declared this Yankee epicure.
Lucas had a “knack” with the axe, and he cut and piled enough wood to last the girls at least a fortnight. Lyddy felt as though she could not afford to hire him more than that one day at present; but he was going to town next day and he promised to bring back a pump leather and some few other necessities that the girls needed.
Before he went home Lucas got ’Phemie off to one side and managed to stammer:
“If you gals air scart–or the like o’ that–you jest say so an’ I’ll keep watch around here for a night or two, an’ see if I kin ketch the fellers you heard talkin’ last night.”
“Oh, Lucas! I wouldn’t trouble you for the world,” returned ’Phemie.
Lucas’s countenance was a wonderful lobster-like red, and he was so bashful that his eyes fairly watered.
“’Twouldn’t be no trouble, Miss ’Phemie,” he told her. “’Twould be a pleasure–it re’lly would.”
“But what would folks say?” gasped ’Phemie, her eyes dancing. “What would your sister and mother say?”
“They needn’t know a thing about it,” declared Lucas, eagerly. “I–I could slip out o’ my winder an’ down the shed ruff, an’ sneak up here with my shot-gun.”
“Why, Mr. Pritchett! I believe you are in the habit of doing such things. I am afraid you get out that way often, and the family knows nothing about it.”
“Naw, I don’t–only circus days, an’ w’en the Wild West show comes, an’–an’ Fourth of July mornin’s. But don’t you tell; will yer?”
“Cross my heart!” promised ’Phemie, giggling. “But suppose you should shoot somebody around here with that gun?”
“Sarve ’em aout jest right!” declared the young farmer, boldly. “B’sides, I’d only load it with rock-salt. ’Twould pepper ’em some.”
“Salt and pepper ’em, Lucas,” giggled the girl. “And season ’em right, I expect, for breaking our rest.”
“I’ll do it!” declared Lucas.
“Don’t you dare!” threatened ’Phemie.
“Why–why—”
Lucas was swamped in his own confusion again.
“Not unless I tell you you may,” said ’Phemie, smiling on him dazzlingly once more.
“Wa-al.”
“Wait and see if we are disturbed again,” spoke the girl, more kindly. “I really am obliged to you, Lucas; but I couldn’t hear of your watching under our windows these cold nights–and, of course, it wouldn’t be proper for us to let you stay in the house.”
“Wa-al,” agreed the disappointed youth. “But if ye need me, ye’ll let me know?”
“Sure pop!” she told him, and was only sorry when he was gone that she could not tell Lyddy all about it, and give her older sister “an imitation” of Lucas as a cavalier.
The girls wrote the letter to Aunt Jane that evening and the next morning they watched for the rural mail-carrier, who came along the highroad, past the end of their lane, before noon.
He brought a letter from Aunt Jane for Lyddy, and he was ready to stop and gossip with the girls who had so recently come to Hillcrest Farm.
“I’m glad to see some life about the old doctor’s house again,” declared the man. “I can remember Dr. Polly–everybody called him that–right well. He was a queer customer some ways–brusk, and sort of rough. But he was a good deal like a chestnut burr. His outside was his worst side. He didn’t have no soothing bedside mannerisms; but if a feller was realsick, it was a new lease of life to jest have the old doctor come inter the room!”
It made the girls happy and proud to have people speak this way of their grandfather.
“He warn’t a man who didn’t make enemies,” ruminated the mail-carrier. “He was too strong a man not to be well hated in certain quarters. He warn’t pussy-footed. What he meant he said out square and straight, an’ when he put his foot down he put it down emphatic. Yes, sir!
“But he had a sight more friends than enemies when he died. And lots o’ folks that thought they hated Dr. Polly could look back–when hewas dead and gone–an’ see how he’d done ’em many a kind turn unbeknownst to ’em at the time.
“Why,” rambled on the mail-carrier, “I was talkin’ to Jud Spink in Birch’s store only las’ night. Jud ain’t been ’round here for some time before, an’ suthin’ started talk about the old doctor. Jud, of course, sailed inter him.”
“Why?” asked ’Phemie, trying to appear interested, while Lyddy swiftly read her letter.
“Oh, I reckon you two gals–bein’ only granddaughters of the old doctor–never heard much about Jud Spink–Lemuel Judson Spink he calls hisself now, an’ puts a ‘professor’ in front of his name, too.”
“Is he a professor?” asked ’Phemie.
“I dunno. He’s been a good many things. Injun doctor–actor–medicine show fakir–patent medicine pedlar; and now he owns ‘Diamond Grits’–the greatest food on airth,heclaims, an’ I tell him it’s great all right, for manan’beast!” and the mail-carrier went off into a spasm of laughter over his own joke.
“Diamond Grits is a breakfast food,” chuckled ’Phemie. “Do you s’pose horses would eat it, too?”
“Mine will,” said the mail-carrier. “Jud sent me a case of Grits and I fed most of it to this critter. Sassige an’ buckwheats satisfy mebetter of a mornin’, an’ I dunno as this hoss has re’lly been in as good shape since I give it the Grits.
“Wa-al, Jud’s as rich as cream naow; but the old doctor took him as a boy out o’ the poorhouse.”
“And yet you say he talks against grandfather?” asked ’Phemie, rather curious.
“Ain’t it just like folks?” pursued the man, shaking his head. “Yes, sir! Dr. Polly took Jud Spink inter his fam’bly and might have made suthin’ of him; but Jud ran away with a medicine show—”
“He’s made a rich man of himself, you say?” questioned ’Phemie.
“Ya-as,” admitted the mail-carrier. “But everybody respected the old doctor, an’ nobody respects Jud Spink–they respect his money.
“Las’ night Jud says the old doctor was as close as a clam with the lockjaw, an’ never let go of a dollar till the eagle screamed for marcy. But he done a sight more good than folks knowed about–till after he died. An’ d’ye know the most important clause in his will, Miss?”
“In grandfather’s will?”
“Ya-as. It was the instructions to his execketer to give a receipted bill to ev’ry patient of his that applied for the same, free gratis for nothin’!An’ lemme tell ye,” added the mail-carrier, preparing to drive on again, “there was some folks on both sides o’ this ridge that was down on the old doctor’s books for sums they could never hope to pay.”
As he started off ’Phemie called after him, brightly:
“I’m obliged to you for telling me what you have about grandfather.”
“Beginning to get interested in neighborhood gossip already; are you?” said her sister, when ’Phemie joined her, and they walked back up the lane.
“I believe I am getting interested in everything folks can tell us about grandfather. In his way, Lyddy, Dr. Apollo Phelps must have been a great man.”
“I–I always had an idea he was a littlequeer,” confessed Lyddy. “His name you know, and all—”
“But people reallylovedhim. He helped them. He gave unostentatiously, and he must have been a very, very good doctor. I–I wonder what Aunt Jane meant by saying that grandfather used to say there were curative waters on the farm?”
“I haven’t the least idea,” replied Lyddy. “Sulphur spring, perhaps–nasty stuff to drink.But listen here to what Aunt Jane says about father.”
“He’s better?” cried ’Phemie.
The older girl’s tone was troubled. “I can’t make out that he is,” she said, slowly, and then she began to read Aunt Jane’s disjointed account of her visit the day before to the hospital:
“I neverdolike to go to such places, girls; they smell so of ether, and arniky, and collodion, and a whole lot of other unpleasant things. I wonder what makes drugs so nasty to smell of?
“But, anyhow, I seen your father. John Bray is a sick man. Maybe he don’t know it himself, but the doctors know it, and you girls ought to know it. I’m plain-spoken, and there isn’t any use in making you believe he is on the road to recovery when he’s going just the other way.
“This head-doctor here, says he has no chance at all in the city. Of course, for me, if I was sick with anything, from housemaid’s knee to spinal mengetus, going into the country would be my complete finish! But the doctors say it’s different with your father.
“And just as soon as John Bray can ride in a railroad car, I am going to see that he joins you at Hillcrest.”
“Bully!” cried ’Phemie, the optimistic. “Oh, Lyddy! he’s bound to get well up here.” For this chanced to be a very beautiful spring day and the girls were more than ever enamored of the situation.
“I am not so sure,” said Lyddy, slowly.
“Don’t be a grump!” commanded her sister. “He’s justgotto get well up here.” But Lyddy wondered afterward if ’Phemie believed what she said herself!
They finished cleaning thoroughly the two rooms they were at present occupying and began on the chambers above. Dust and the hateful spiderwebs certainly had collected in the years the house had been unoccupied; but the Bray girls were not afraid of hard work. Indeed, they enjoyed it.
Toward evening Lucas and his sister appeared, and the former set to work to repair the old pump on the porch, while Sairy sat down to “visit” with the girls of Hillcrest Farm.
“It’s goin’ to be nice havin’ you here, I declare,” said Miss Pritchett, who had arranged two curls on either side of her forehead, which shook in a very kittenish manner when she laughed and bridled.
“I guess, as maw says, I’m too much with old folks. Fust I know they’ll be puttin’ me away in the Home for Indignant Old Maids over thereto Adams–though why ‘indignant’ I can’t for the life of me guess, ’nless it’s because they’re indignant over the men’s passin’ of ’em by!” and Miss Pritchett giggled and shook her curls, to ’Phemie’s vast amusement.
Indeed, the younger Bray girl confessed to her sister, after the visitors had gone, that Sairy was more fun than Lucas.
“But I’m afraid she’s far on the way to the Home for Indigent Spinsters, and doesn’t know it,” chuckled ’Phemie. “What a freak she is!”
“That’s what you called Lucas–at first,” admonished Lyddy. “And they’re both real kind. Lucas wouldn’t take a cent for mending the pump, and Sairy came especially to invite us to the Temperance Club meeting, at the schoolhouse Saturday night, and to go to church in their carriage with her and her mother on Sunday.”
“Yes; I suppose theyarekind,” admitted ’Phemie. “And they can’t help being funny.”
“Besides,” said the wise Lyddy, “if wedotry to take boarders we’ll need Lucas’s help. We’ll have to hire him to go back and forth to town for us, and depend on him for the outside chores. Why! we’d be like two marooned sailors on a desert island, up here on Hillcrest, if it wasn’t for Lucas Pritchett!”
The girls spent a few anxious days waiting forAunt Jane’s answer. And meantime they discussed the project of taking boarders from all its various angles.
“Of course, we can’t get boarders yet awhile,” sighed ’Phemie. “It’s much too early in the season.”
“Why is it? Aren’tweglad to be here at Hillcrest?” demanded Lyddy.
“But see what sort of a place we lived in,” said her sister.
“And lots of other people live hived up in the cities just as close, only in better houses. There isn’t much difference between apartment-houses and tenement-houses except the front entrance!”
“That may be epigrammatical,” chuckled ’Phemie, “but you couldn’t make many folks admit it.”
“Just the same, there are people who need just this climate we’ve got here at this time of year. It will do them as much good as it will father.”
“You’d make a regular sanitarium of Hillcrest,” cried ’Phemie.
“Well, why not?” retorted Lyddy. “I guess the neighbors wouldn’t object.”
’Phemie giggled. “Advertise to take folks back to old-fashioned times and old-fashioned cooking.”
“Why not?”
“Sleeping on feather beds; cooking in a brick oven like our great-great-grandmothers used to do! Open fireplaces. Great!”
“Plain, wholesome food. They won’t have to eat out of cans. No extras or luxuries. We could afford to take them cheap,” concluded Lyddy, earnestly. “And we’ll get a big garden planted and feed ’em on vegetables through the summer.”
“Oh, Lyddy, itsoundsgood,” sighed ’Phemie. “But do you suppose Aunt Jane will consent to it?”
They received Aunt Jane’s letter in reply to their own, on Saturday.
“You two girls go ahead and do what you please inside or outside Hillcrest,” she wrote, “only don’t disturb the old doctor’s stuff in the lower rooms of the east ell. As long as you don’t burn the house down I don’t see that you can do any harm. And if you really think you can find folks foolish enough to want to live up there on the ridge, six miles from a lemon, why go ahead and do it. But I tell you frankly, girls, I’d want to be paid for doing it, and paid high!”
Then the kind, if brusk, old lady went on totell them where to find many things packed away that they would need if theydidsucceed in getting boarders, including stores of linen, and blankets, and the like, as well as some good china and old silver, buried in one of the great chests in the attic.
However, nothing Aunt Jane could write could quench the girls’ enthusiasm. Already Lyddy and ’Phemie had written an advertisement for the city papers, and five dollars of Lyddy’s fast shrinking capital was to be set aside for putting their desires before the newspaper-reading public.
They could feel then that their new venture was really launched.
It was scarcely dusk on Saturday when Lucas drove into the side yard at Hillcrest with the ponies hitched to a double-seated buckboard. Entertainments begin early in the rural districts.
The ponies had been clipped and looked less like animated cowhide trunks than they had when the Bray girls had first seen them and their young master in Bridleburg.
“School teacher came along an’ maw made Sairy go with him in his buggy,” exclaimed Lucas, with a broad grin. “If Sairy don’t ketch a feller ’fore long, an’ clamp to him, ’twon’t be maw’s fault.”
Lucas was evidently much impressed by the appearance of Lyddy and ’Phemie when they locked the side door and climbed into the buckboard. Because of their mother’s recent death the girls had dressed very quietly; but their black frocks were now very shabby, it was coming warmer weather, and the only dresses they owned which were fit to wear to an evening function of anykind were those that they had worn “for best” the year previous.
But the two girls from the city had no idea they would create such a sensation as they did when Lucas pulled in the ponies with a flourish and stopped directly before the door of the schoolhouse.
The building was already lighted up and there was quite an assemblage of young men and boys about the two front entrances. On the girls’ porch, too, a number of the feminine members of the Temperance Club were grouped, and with them Sairy Pritchett.
Her own arrival with the schoolmaster had been an effective one and she had waited with the other girls to welcome the newcomers from Hillcrest Farm, and introduce them to her more particular friends.
But the Bray girls looked as though they were from another sphere. Not that their frocks were so fanciful in either design or material; but there was a style about them that made the finery of the other girls look both cheap and tawdry.
“Sothemstuck-up things air goin’ to live ’round here; be they?” whispered one rosy-cheeked, buxom farmer’s daughter to Sairy Pritchett–and her whisper carried far. “Well, I tell you right now I don’t like their looks.See that Joe Badger; will you? He’s got to help ’em down out o’ Lucas’s waggin’; has he? Well, I declare!”
“An’ Hen Jackson, too!” cried another girl, shrilly. “They’d let airy one of us girls fall out on our heads.”
“Huh!” said Sairy, airily, “if you can’t keep Joe an’ Hen from shinin’ around every new gal that comes to the club, I guess you ain’t caught ’em very fast.”
“He, he!” giggled another. “Sairy thinks she’s hooked the school teacher all right, and that he won’t get away from her.”
“Cat!” snapped Miss Pritchett, descending the steps in her most stately manner to meet her new friends.
“Cat yourself!” returned the other. “I guess you’ll show your claws, Miss, if you have a chance.”
Perhaps Sairy did not hear all of this; and surely the Bray girls did not. Sairy Pritchett was rather proud of counting these city girls as her particular friends. She welcomed Lydia and Euphemia warmly.
“I hope Lucas didn’t try to tip you into the brook again, Miss Bray,” Sairy giggled to ’Phemie. “Oh, yes! Miss Lydia Bray, Mr. Badger; Mr. Jackson, Miss Bray. And this isMiss Euphemia, Mr. Badger–andMr. Jackson.
“Now, that’ll do very well, Joe–and Hen. You go ’tend to your own girls; we can git on without you.”
Sairy deliberately led the newcomers into the schoolhouse by the boys’ entrance, thus ignoring the girls who had roused her ire. She introduced Lyddy and ’Phemie right and left to such of the young fellows as were not too bashful.
Sairy suddenly arrived at the conclusion that to pilot the sisters from Hillcrest about would be “good business.” The newcomers attracted the better class of young bachelors at the club meeting and Sairy–heretofore something of a “wall flower” on such occasions–found herself the very centre of the group.
Lyddy and ’Phemie were naturally a little disturbed by the prominent position in which they were placed by Sairy’s manœuvring; but, of course, the sisters had been used to going into society, and Lyddy’s experience at college and her natural sedateness of character enabled her to appear to advantage. As for the younger girl, she was so much amused by Sairy, and the others, that she quite forgot to feel confused.
Indeed, she found that just by looking at most of these young men, and smiling, she could throwthem into spasms of self-consciousness. They were almost as bad as Lucas Pritchett, and Lucas was getting to be such a good friend now that ’Phemie couldn’t really enjoy making him feel unhappy.
She was, indeed, particularly nice to him when young Pritchett struggled to her side after the girls were settled in adjoining seats, half-way up the aisle on the “girls’ side” of the schoolroom.
These young girls and fellows had–most of them–attended the district school, or were now attending it; therefore, they were used to being divided according to the sexes, and those boys who actually had not accompanied their girlfriends to the club meeting, sat by themselves on the boys’ side, while the girls grouped together on the other side of the house.
There were a few young married couples present, and these matrons made their husbands sit beside them during the exercises; but for a young man and young girl to sit together was almost a formal announcement in that community that they “had intentions!”
All this was quite unsuspected by Lyddy and ’Phemie Bray, and the latter had no idea of the joy that possessed Lucas Pritchett’s soul when she allowed him to take the seat beside her.
Her sister sat at her other hand, and Sairy wasbeyond Lyddy. No other young fellow could get within touch of the city girls, therefore, although there was doubtless many a swain who would have been glad to do so.
This club, the fundamental idea of which was “temperance,” had gradually developed into something much broader. While it still demanded a pledge from its members regarding abstinence from alcoholic beverages, including the bane of the countryside–hard cider–its semimonthly meetings were mainly of a literary and musical nature.
The reigning school teacher for the current term was supposed to take the lead in governing the club and pushing forward the local talent. Mr. Somers was the name of the young man with the bald brow and the eyeglasses, who was presiding over the welfare of Pounder’s District School. The Bray girls thought he seemed to be an intelligent and well-mannered young man, if a trifle self-conscious.
And he evidently had an element that was difficult to handle.
Soon after the meeting was called to order it became plain that a group of boys down in the corner by the desk were much more noisy than was necessary.
The huge stove, by which the room was overheated,was down there, its smoke-pipe crossing, in a L-shaped figure, the entire room to the chimney at one side, and it did seem as though none of those boys could move without kicking their boots against this stove.
These uncouth noises interfered with the opening address of the teacher and punctuated the “roll call” by the secretary, who was a small, almost dwarf-like young man, out of whose mouth rolled the names of the members in a voice that fairly shook the casements. Such a thunderous tone from so puny a source was in itself amazing, and convulsed ’Phemie.
“Ain’t he got a great voice?” asked Lucas, in a whisper. “He sings bass in the church choir and sometimes, begum! ye can’t hear nawthin’ but Elbert Hooker holler.”
“Isthathis name?” gasped ’Phemie.
“Yep. Elbert Hooker. ‘Yell-bert’ the boys call him. He kin sure holler like a bull!”
And at that very moment, as the bombastic Elbert was subsiding and the window panes ceased from rattling with the reverberations of his voice, one of the boys in the corner fell more heavily than before against the stove–or, it might have been Elbert Hooker’s tones had shaken loose the joints of stovepipe that crossed the schoolroom; however, there was a yell from those down front,the girls scrambled out of the way, the smoke began to spurt from between the joints, and it was seen that only the wires fastened to the ceiling kept the soot-laden lengths of pipe from falling to the floor.
The soot began sifting down in little clouds; but the sections of pipe had come apart so gently that no great damage was done immediately. The girls sitting under the pipe, however, were thrown into a panic, and fairly climbed over the desks and seats to get out of the way.
Besides, considerable smoke began to issue from the stove. One of the young scamps to whose mischievousness was due this incident, had thrown into the fire, just as the pipe broke loose, some woolen garment, or the like, and it now began to smoulder with a stench and an amount of smoke that frightened some of the audience.
“Don’t you be skeert none,” exclaimed Lucas, to ’Phemie and her sister, and jumping up from his seat himself. “’Taint nothin’ but them Buckley boys and Ike Hewlett. Little scamps—”
“But we don’t want to get soot all over us, Lucas!” cried his sister.
“Or be choked by smoke,” coughed ’Phemie.
There was indeed a great hullabaloo for a time;but the windows were opened, the teacher rescued the burning woolen rag from the fire with the tongs and threw it out of the window, and several of the bigger fellows swooped down upon the malicious youngsters and bundled them out of the schoolhouse in a hurry–and in no gentle manner–while others, including Lucas, stripped off their coats and set to work to repair the stovepipe.
An hour was lost in repairs and airing the schoolhouse, and then everybody trooped back. Meanwhile, the Bray girls had made many acquaintances among the young folk.
Mr. Somers, the teacher, was plainly delighted to meet Lyddy–a girl who had actually spent two years at Littleburg. He was seminary-bred himself, with an idea of going back to take the divinity course after he had taught a couple of years.
But it suddenly became apparent to ’Phemie–who was observant–that Sairy looked upon this interest of the school teacher in Lyddy with “a green eye.”
Mr. Somers, who allowed the boys and young men to repair the damage created by his pupils while he rested from his labors, sat by Lyddy all the time until the meeting was called to order once more.
Sairy, who had begun by bridling and lookingaskance at the two who talked so easily about things with which she was not conversant, soon tossed her head and began to talk with others who gathered around. And when Mr. Somers went to the desk to preside again Sairy was not sitting in the same row with the Bray girls and left them to their own devices for the rest of the evening.
Lucas, the faithful, came back to ’Phemie’s side, however. Some of the other girls were laughing at Sairy Pritchett and their taunts fed her ire with fresh fuel.
She talked very loud and laughed very much between the numbers of the program, and indeed was not always quiet while the entertainment itself was in progress. This she did as though to show the company in general that she neither cared for the schoolmaster’s attentions nor that she considered her friendship with the Bray girls of any importance.
Of course, the girls with whom she had wrangled on the schoolhouse steps were delighted with what they considered Sairy’s “let-down.” If a girl really came to an evening party with a young man, he was supposed to “stick” and to show interest in no other girl during the evening.
When the intermission came Mr. Somers deliberately took a seat again beside Lyddy.
“Well, I never!” shrilled Sairy. “Some folks are as bold as brass. Humph!”
Now, as it happened, both Lyddy and the school teacher were quite ignorant of the stir they were creating. The green-eyed monster roared right in their ears without either of them being the wiser. Lyddy was only sorry that Sairy Pritchett proved to be such a loud-talking and rather unladylike person.
But ’Phemie, who was younger, and observant, soon saw what was the matter. She wished to warn Lyddy, but did not know how to do so. And, of course, she knew her sister and the school teacher were talking of quite impersonal things.
These girls expected everybody to be of their own calibre. ’Phemie had seen the same class of girls in her experience in the millinery shop. But it was quite impossible for Lyddy to understand such people, her experience with young girls at school and college not having prepared her for the outlook on life which these country girls had.
’Phemie turned to Lucas–who stuck to her like a limpet to a rock–for help.
“Lucas,” she said, “you have been very kind to bring us here; but I want to ask you to take us home early; will you?”
“What’s the matter–ye ain’t sick; be you?” demanded the anxious young farmer.
“No. But your sister is,” said ’Phemie, unable to treat the matter with entire seriousness.
“Sairy?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the matter withher?” grunted Lucas.
“Don’t yousee?” exclaimed ’Phemie, in an undertone.
“By cracky!” laughed Lucas. “Ye mean because teacher’s forgot she’s on airth?”
“Yes,” snapped ’Phemie. “You know Lyddy doesn’t care anything about that Mr. Somers. But she has to be polite.”
“Why–why—”
“Will you take us home ahead of them all?” demanded the girl. “Then your sister can have the schoolmaster.”
“By cracky! is that it?” queried Lucas. “Why–if you say so. I’ll do just like you want me to, Miss ’Phemie.”
“You are a good boy, Lucas–and I hope you won’t be silly,” said ’Phemie. “We like you, but we have been brought up to have boy friends who don’t play at being grown up,” added ’Phemie, as earnestly as she had ever spoken in her life. “We like to havefriends, notbeaux. Won’t you be our friend, Lucas?”
She said this so low that nobody else could hear it but young Pritchett; but so emphatically that the tears came to her eyes. Lucas gaped at her for a moment; then he seemed to understand.
“I get yer, ’Phemie,” he declared, with emphasis, “an’ you kin bank on me. Sairy’s foolish–maw’s made her so, I s’pose. But I ain’t as big a fool as I look.”
“You don’t look like a fool, Lucas,” said ’Phemie, faintly.
“You’ve been brought up different from us folks,” pursued the young farmer. “And I can see that we look mighty silly to you gals from the city. But I’ll play fair. You let me be your friend, ’Phemie.”
The young girl had to wink hard to keep back the tears. There was “good stuff” in this young farmer, and she was sorry she had ever–even in secret–made fun of him.
“Lucas, you are a good boy,” she repeated, “and we both like you. You’ll get us away from here and let Sairy have her chance at the schoolmaster?”
“You bet!” he said. “Though I don’t care about Sairy. She’s old enough to know better,” he added, with the usual brother’s callousness regarding his sister.
“She feels neglected and will naturally be mad at Lyddy,” ’Phemie said. “But if we slip out during some recitation or song, it won’t be noticed much.”
“All right,” agreed Lucas. “I’ll go out ahead and unhitch the ponies and get their blankets off. You gals can come along in about five minutes. Now! Mayme Lowry is going to read the ‘Club Chronicles’–that’s a sort of history of neighborhood doin’s since the last meetin’. She hits on most ev’rybody, and they will all wanter hear. We’ll git aout quiet like.”
So, when Miss Lowry arose to read her manuscript, Lucas left his seat and ’Phemie whispered to Lyddy:
“Get your coat, dear. I want to go home. Lucas has gone out to get the team.”
“Why–what’s the matter, child?” demanded the older sister, anxiously.
“Nothing. Only I want to go.”
“We-ell–if you must—”
“Don’t say anything more, but come on,” commanded ’Phemie.
They arose together and tiptoed out. If Sairy saw them she made no sign, nor did anybody bar their escape.
Lucas had got his team into the road. “Here ye be!” he said, cheerfully.
“But–but how about Sairy?” cried the puzzled Lyddy.
“Oh, she’ll ride home with the school teacher,” declared Lucas, chuckling.
“But I really am surprised at you, ’Phemie,” said the older sister. “It seems rather discourteous to leave before the entertainment was over–unless you are ill?”
“I’m sorry,” said the younger girl, demurely. “But I gotsonervous.”
“I know,” whispered Lyddy. “Some of those awful recitationsweretrying.”
And ’Phemie had to giggle at that; but she made no further explanation.
The ponies drew them swiftly over the mountain road and under the white light of a misty moon they quickly turned into the lane leading to Hillcrest. As the team dropped to a walk, ’Phemie suddenly leaned forward and clutched the driver’s arm.
“Look yonder, Lucas!” she whispered. “There, by the corner of the house.”
“Whoa!” muttered Lucas, and brought the horses to a halt.
The girls and Lucas all saw the two figures. They wavered for a moment and then one hurried behind the high stone wall between the yard andthe old orchard. The other crossed the front yard boldly toward the highroad.
“They came from the direction of the east wing,” whispered ’Phemie.
“Who do you suppose they are?” asked Lyddy, more placidly. “Somebody who tried to call on us?”
“That there feller,” said Lucas, slowly, his voice shaking oddly, as he pointed with his whip after the man who just then gained the highroad, “that there feller is Lem Judson Spink–I know his long hair and broad-brimmed hat.”
“What?” cried ’Phemie. “The man who lived here at Hillcrest when he was a boy?”
“So they say,” admitted Lucas. “Dad knew him. They went to school together. He’s a rich man now.”
“But what could he possibly want up here?” queried Lyddy, as the ponies went on. “And who was the other man?”
“I–I dunno who he was,” blurted out Lucas, still much disturbed in voice and appearance.
But after the girls had disembarked, and bidden Lucas good night, and the young farmer had driven away, ’Phemie said to her sister, as the latter was unlocking the door of the farmhouse:
“Iknow who that other man was.”
“What other man?”
“The one who ran behind the stone wall.”
“Why, who was it, ’Phemie?” queried her sister, with revived interest.
“Cyrus Pritchett,” stated ’Phemie, with conviction, and nothing her sister could say would shake her belief in that fact.