A borrowed sister

When school was over, and Jessie went to spend the long vacation with her aunt and sister, Lois was so unhappy that it seemed as if she could hardly live through the separation.

The day after her friend’s departure, Lois, with a pale, miserable face, came to her mother.

“Mother, it looks so scant in my closet, with all Jessie’s things gone,” she said. “I don’t see how I am going to stand it until she gets back.”

Mrs. Page looked up from a stocking that she was darning.

“My dear child,” she returned, “I wish you had more of Jessie’s way of finding happiness everywhere.”

“But, mother, it is easy for her to be happy, for she is going to be with her aunt and Cicely. That is one of the worst parts of it, that she was so glad to go.”

“But even if she had been the one to stay here, she would have contrived to make herself contented. I think she would be going this very minute to see the Morgans, and that is what I advise you to do.”

Things looked a little brighter, as Lois put on her hat and shut the front door behind her, and her face lighted up with a smile when she met Ellen turning in at the gate.

“You dear thing,” said Lois, “I was just going to see you. Come out on the piazza and we’ll decide what to play.”

“I have come to tell you that I am going away to-morrow,” said Ellen, with a solemn face.

“You are going away!” Lois felt that her last ray of comfort had gone. “Where are you going?” she inquired in a subdued voice.

“To Hollisford, on an exchange with father. We are to drive there and back, and perhaps we’ll stay over Monday.”

“What a lovely thing to do!” said Lois, with a sigh of envy.

“Yes, it is nice, and the nicest part is that father says I can ask some girl to go too. I am wondering if Ethel Smith would enjoy it.”

At the mention of Ethel’s name poor Lois had a stab of jealousy.

“I know Ethel would like it very much,” she said slowly.

“I am not sure that it would not be better to ask Dora Robertson,” Ellen continued; “she does not have so much fun as Ethel has.”

“Yes, Dora would just love it.”

“Goosie!” and Ellen put her arm impetuously around Lois’s waist; “do you suppose I’d ask any one in the world but you? I can’t help teasing you, because I can always get a rise out of you.”

“Do you mean that you and your father are going to take me on a driving journey?” Lois asked, with shining eyes.

“Perhaps your mother won’t let you go,” said the irrepressible Ellen. “In that case I’ll have a chance to ask Gertrude Brown.”

But Lois only smiled back at Ellen; she was beyond being teased now.

Mrs. Page was delighted that Lois was to have the pleasure of a little journey, and the next day, after an early lunch, Mr. Morgan and Ellen drove up to the gate, with Diana the brown horse, in the capacious buggy that was wide enough for three.

Mrs. Page came out to see them off.

“Your rubbers and raincoat are in the dress-suit case,” she said, as she put it in under the seat.

“Mother, it can’t rain,” Lois objected. “There isn’t a cloud in the sky.”

“It may be a weather-breeder. It is well to be prepared for everything. There are some sandwiches and cookies in this box, in case you are hungry before you get to Hollisford.”

Oh, the joy of that drive! There would be five long hours before Hollisford was reached; five hours of summer sunshine, alternating with shady wood roads, and highways between meadows full of daisies, or else sweet with new-mown hay. Five hours of the bliss of out of doors, in company with Ellen and her father!

At first it was enough happiness just to sit still and watch the landscape, the exquisite fresh green of trees, meadows, and hillsides; to hear the rustle of the wind among the leaves, to watch a squirrel as he ran along a stone wall and vanished among the branches of an oak-tree; to exchange friendly greetings with the dwellers in the lonely farmhouses scattered along the road; but a time came when the shadows began to lengthen, when the luncheon had all been eaten and they wanted more, when Ellen asked how long it would be before they got to Hollisford. Then it was that Mr. Morgan proposed playing travelers’ whist. They agreed that every live creature, man, woman, child, and animals of all sorts, should count one, excepting the cat, and she, for some mysterious reason known only to Ellen, was to count five, while a cat in the window was to count ten. Lois felt that Ellen had much the best of it, for she was on the left-hand side, and whenever they met a carriage, it turned to the right and passed along on Ellen’s side of the road. Once they met a three-seated wagon drawn by two horses and with three people on a seat, and this put Ellen far ahead of Lois.

But at last, to Lois’s joy, there was a weather-beaten, vine-covered, gray house on her side of the way, close by the roadside, and at the window were a maltese cat and two maltese kittens.

“Look at the sweet things, Ellen,” said Lois. “Aren’t they darlings? Three cats in the window for me. That makes thirty all at once. I am ahead of you now.”

“There is only one cat in the window,” Ellen said. “Kittens oughtn’t to count as much as cats. They oughtn’t to count more than half as much, ought they, father?”

“But they are more than half as big as the cat,” Lois protested.

“As we can’t stop to measure all the cats we pass, I think we’ll call it ten for kittens as well as cats,” Mr. Morgan decided.

“Very well,” said Ellen in an injured tone, “but I don’t think it is fair.”

Just then a farm laborer and his wife and two little flaxen-haired girls, one in a pink dress, the other in blue, and a boy in a torn jacket, strolled out from a house farther down the road, crossed over, and came along on Ellen’s side of the way.

“Five for me,” she cried.

“But they started on my side of the road,” said Lois.

“I can’t help that. They came over on my side finally.”

“If kittens were half what cats were, children ought to be half what grown people are,” said Lois.

“But they are not. Father decided kittens and cats should count alike.”

“I only said if they were.”

“But they are not.”

The last mile was enlivened by more than one dispute, for the children were tired and hungry. The eating of the sandwiches and cookies now seemed to have taken place in a remote past. Even Lois, who a few hours before had wanted the afternoon to stretch on and on and never end, was glad when they stopped at a white tavern with the sign “Hollisford House” hanging before it.

Lois had traveled so little that her entrance into this country inn was a great event. It looked very pleasant and homelike, with its broad piazzas across the first and second stories. The inn stood at one end of the village common, and facing it across the green was a brick church with a white belfry.

The group of men who were smoking in the office of the Hollisford House filled Lois with consternation, and she wondered that Mr. Morgan and Ellen could take the formidable clerk so calmly. He showed them to their rooms, up one flight of stairs and at the end of a winding passage. Mr. Morgan had a small room, and Lois and Ellen shared a very large one opening out of it.

“What a queer, rambling old room!” said Ellen; “it looks just as if it might be haunted.”

“Don’t, Ellen, you make me feel quite crawly.”

Ellen went over to the windows and opened the blinds to let in the late sunlight.

“Oh, Ellen, what a lovely view!” said Lois.

Two of the windows were at the back of the house, and looked out on a swiftly flowing little brook that came rushing down between its green banks, as if it were about to run under the tavern, but thinking better of it, took a sharp turn to the right. There were willow-trees on either side of the brook, and in the distance beyond the vegetable garden was a peaceful meadow where two black and white cows were grazing, and far away at the horizon rose a round, green hill. Lois was enchanted with the quiet beauty of the scene, but Ellen was more interested in a white-haired old woman who was taking some pillow-cases off the clothes-line.

“I wonder why they have such a very old person to help do the work,” said Ellen; “and why do you suppose she has left that feather-bed so very near the brook?”

“I never noticed the feather-bed.”

Supper was a formidable meal to poor Lois, because they had to eat it in a very large dining-room, at a long table half filled with guests. Lois felt that her shoes had a too conspicuous squeak, as she crossed the uncarpeted wooden floor. She longed to sit between Ellen and Mr. Morgan, but Ellen also preferred to sit in the middle. As Lois was nearest the kitchen, the maid came to her first for orders.

“Beefsteak, baked potatoes, and toast,” she said in an indifferent tone.

Lois wanted all three, but she was afraid this might seem too grasping, so she said in an almost inaudible voice, “Baked potatoes and toast, please,” only to find that both Ellen and Mr. Morgan said with bold courage, “All three.”

When supper was over, they went upstairs to the large room, and Mr. Morgan read aloud to the two little girls from “Ivanhoe” until their bed-time.

“I suppose we ought to shut the blinds,” said Ellen, as she and Lois began to undress. “The side windows open on the piazza, and any one could look in. It would be very easy for a burglar to get in,” she added dramatically.

“He wouldn’t find anything to steal,” Lois said cheerfully; “we haven’t any watches, and I have only ten cents mother gave me to put into the contribution-box to-morrow.”

“If he finds the ten cents you can tell him what it is for, and he will leave it for the good cause,” said Ellen.

Lois thought this a very witty remark and she laughed merrily.

“Perhaps the ghost and the burglar will come at the same time, and the ghost will frighten the burglar away,” she suggested.

“I believe your mother was right about to-day being a weather-breeder,” said Ellen, as she closed the blinds; “it has clouded over and there isn’t a star to be seen. I tell you what let’s do,” she added, as she blew out the lamp and joined Lois in the wide, old-fashioned bed: “let’s talk until midnight, just for the fun of it.”

“Oh, Ellen,” Lois replied sleepily, “I don’t think I could.”

“Well, you needn’t, then,” said Ellen stiffly. “I know Ethel Smith would be just delighted to talk to me all night long, if I wished it.”

At the mention of this name Lois rubbed her eyes and said drowsily, “All right, Ellen, what do you want to talk about?”

“Ghosts and burglars.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts, do you?” Lois asked.

“Well, they are very interesting to talk about, anyway,” said Ellen non-committally.

After all, Ellen was the first to go to sleep, for her tales were so exciting that Lois soon became very wide awake; but long before midnight she too was peacefully slumbering, dropping off to the accompaniment of the rain that was beginning to fall on the tin roof of the piazza.

It seemed to her that she had been sleeping a long time when she was waked by the slamming of a blind. The wind was blowing a gale and the rain was falling in torrents. There were all sorts of strange creaking, tapping, rattling noises, and although she was sure it was only the wind, she could not but think of Ellen’s tales. How the house shook! and what a noise the brook made as it rushed downhill! The boards of the floor creaked as if some one were walking over them. Surely that must be a footstep! There certainly was some one in the room, and remembering Ellen’s burglar, Lois gave her friend a violent shake.

“What’s the matter?” Ellen cried in a sleepy, but cross voice.

“Listen, Ellen.”

Ellen gripped Lois’s hand.

Through the surrounding darkness they could catch the glimmer of a white form.

“It is a ghost,” Ellen said in an awestruck voice; and Lois, who did not believe in ghosts, wished ardently that it was morning. Ellen held Lois’s hand as if it were in a vise.

The white object moved stealthily towards the window.

Suddenly Ellen remembered that her father was in the next room.

“Father, father!” she called.

Then the ghost came towards them and said in Mr. Morgan’s comfortable voice, “I am sorry I waked you up. It is such a storm I was afraid the rain might be coming in at your east windows.”

Ellen laughed hysterically.

“We thought you were a ghost, father,” she said.

“Or a burglar,” added Lois.

“I am sorry to disappoint you,” said Mr. Morgan.