Читать книгу: «The Girls of Hillcrest Farm: or, The Secret of the Rocks», страница 5

CHAPTER IX
MORNING AT HILLCREST

The bang of the door, closed by the draught when ’Phemie had opened the way into the east wing, had aroused 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? What is it?” 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 explain away the voice she had heard. Of course, she knew very well it had not proceeded 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, I wouldn’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 and were skillfully lifted off by ’Phemie and buttered and sugared.

What if a black coal or two did snap over the cakes? And what if ’Phemie’s hair did get 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 from this fire.”

“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 he would be 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 to think 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 for us,” 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.

“That is 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 have my share, and no charge,” sniffed the younger girl. “That bed downstairs is bad enough. And what would we do for mattresses? That’s one antique 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 will keep 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.”

CHAPTER X
THE VENTURE

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 got them. 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–or down to 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 what is in 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 the know 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 what they 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 when he was 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 real sick, 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 he was 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, he claims, an’ I tell him it’s great all right, for man an’ 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 me better 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 little queer,” confessed Lyddy. “His name you know, and all – ”

“But people really loved him. 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 never do like 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 just got to 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 there to 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 they are kind,” admitted ’Phemie. “And they can’t help being funny.”

“Besides,” said the wise Lyddy, “if we do try 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 for Aunt 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.”