“Who is this Mr. Spink?” asked Lydia Bray the following morning, as they prepared for church.
It was a beautiful spring morning. There had been a pattering shower at sunrise and the eaves were still dripping, while every blade of the freshly springing grass in the side yard–which was directly beneath the girls’ window–sparkled as though diamond-decked over night.
The old trees in the orchard were pushing both leaf and blossom–especially the plum and peach trees. In the distance other orchards were blowing, too, and that spattered the mountainside with patches of what looked to be pale pink mist.
The faint tinkling of the sheep-bells came across the hills to the ears of Lyddy and ’Phemie. The girls were continually going to the window or door to watch the vast panorama of the mountainside and valley, spread below them.
“Who is this Mr. Spink?” repeated Lyddy.
Her sister explained what she knew of the man who–once a poorhouse boy–was now counted a rich man and the proprietor of Diamond Grits, the popular breakfast food.
“He lived here at Hillcrest as a boy, with grandfather,” ’Phemie said.
“But what’s that got to do with his coming up here now–and at night?”
“And with Mr. Pritchett?” finished ’Phemie.
“Yes. I am going to ask Mr. Pritchett about it. They surely weren’t after vinegar so late at night,” Lyddy observed.
But ’Phemie did not prolong the discussion. In her secret thoughts the younger Bray girl believed that it was Cyrus Pritchett and Mr. Spink whom she had heard about the old house the night she and Lyddy had first slept at Hillcrest.
There was no use worrying Lyddy about it, she told herself.
A little later the roan ponies appeared with the Pritchett buckboard. Instead of Mrs. Pritchett and her daughter, however, the good lady’s companion on the front seat was Lucas, who drove.
“Oh, dear me!” cried Lyddy. “I hope we haven’t turned Miss Pritchett out of her seat. Surely we three girls could have squeezed in here on the back seat.”
“Nope,” said Mrs. Pritchett. “That ain’t it, at all. Sairy ain’t goin’ to church this mornin’.”
“I dunno. She ain’t got no misery as I can find out; but she sartainly has a grouch! A bear with a sore head in fly time would be a smilin’ work of Grace ’side of Sairy Pritchett ever since she come home from the Temperance Club las’ night.”
“Oh!” came from ’Phemie.
“Why—She surely isn’t angry because we went home early?” cried Lyddy. “My sister, you see, got nervous—”
“I reckon ’taint that,” Lucas hastened to say. “More likely she’s sore on me.”
“’Tain’t nawthin’ of the kind, an’ you know it, Lucas,” declared his mother. “Though ye might have driven ’round by the schoolhouse ag’in and brought her home.”
“Wal, I thought she’d ride back with school teacher. She went with him,” returned Lucas, on the defensive.
“She walked home,” said Mrs. Pritchett, shortly. “I dunno why. She won’t tell me.”
“I hope she isn’t ill,” remarked the unconscious Lyddy.
But Lucas cast a knowing look over his shoulder at ’Phemie and the latter had hard work to keep her own countenance straight.
“Well,” said Mrs. Pritchett, more briskly, “ye can’t always sometimes tell what the matter is with these young gals. They gits crotchets in their heads.”
She kept up the fiction that Sairy was a young and flighty miss; but even ’Phemie could no longer laugh at her for it. It was the mother’s pitiful attempt to aid her daughter’s chances for that greatly-to-be-desired condition–matrimony.
The roads were still muddy; nevertheless the drive over the ridge to Cornell Chapel was lovely. For some time the girls had been noting the procession of carriages and wagons winding over the mountain roads, all verging upon this main trail over the ridge which passed so close to Hillcrest.
Lucas, driving the ponies at a good clip, joined the procession. Lyddy and ’Phemie recognized several of the young people they had met the night before at the Temperance Club–notably the young men.
Joe Badger flashed by in a red-wheeled buggy and beside him sat the buxom, red-faced girl who had voiced her distaste for the city-bred newcomers right at the start. Badger bowed with a flourish; but his companion’s nose was in the air.
“I never did think that Nettie Meyers had very good manners,” announced Mrs. Pritchett.
They overtook the schoolmaster jogging along behind his old gray mare. He, likewise, bowed profoundly to the Bray girls.
“I am afraid you did not enjoy yourself last night at the club, Miss Bray,” he said to Lyddy, who was on his side of the buckboard, as Lucas pulled out to pass him. “You went home so early. I was looking for you after it was all over.”
“Oh, but you are mistaken,” declared Lyddy, pleasantly. “I had a very nice time.”
As they drove on Mrs. Pritchett’s fat face became a study.
“And he never even asked arter Sairy!” she gasped. “And he let her come home alone last night. Humph! he must ha’ been busy huntin’ for you, Miss Bray.”
Lucas cast oil on the troubled waters by saying:
“An’ I carried Miss Lyddy and Miss ’Phemie away from all of ’em. I guess all the Pritchetts ain’t so slow, Maw.”
“Humph! Wa-al,” admitted the good lady, somewhat mollified, “you hev seemed to ’woke up lately, Lucas.”
The chapel was built of graystone and its north wall was entirely covered with ivy. It nestled in a grove of evergreens, with the tidy fenced graveyard behind it. The visitors thought it a very beautiful place.
Everybody was rustling into church when they arrived, so there were no introductions then. The pastor was a stooped, gray old man, who had been the incumbent for many years, and to the Bray girls his discourse seemed as helpful as any they had ever heard.
After service the girls of Hillcrest Farm were introduced to many of the congregation by Mrs. Pritchett. Naturally these were the middle-aged, or older, members of the flock–mostly ladies who knew, or remembered, the girls’ mother and Aunt Jane. Indeed, it was rather noticeable that the young women and girls did not come forward to meet Lyddy and ’Phemie.
Not that either of the sisters cared. They liked the matrons who attended Cornell Chapel much better than they had most of the youthful members of the Temperance Club.
Some of the young men waited their chance in the vestibule to get a bow and a smile of recognition from the newcomers; but only the schoolmaster dared attach himself for any length of time to the Pritchett party.
And Mrs. Pritchett could not fail to take note of this at length. The teacher was deep in some unimportant discussion with Lyddy, who was sweetly unconscious that she was fanning the fire of suspicion in Mrs. Pritchett’s breast.
That lady finally broke in with a loud “Ahem!” following it with: “I re’lly don’t know what’s happened to my Sairy. She’s right poorly to-day, Mr. Somers.”
“Why–I–I’m sorry to hear it,” said the startled, yet quite unsuspicious teacher. “She seemed to be in good health and spirits when we were on our way to the club meeting last evening.”
“Ya-as,” agreed Mrs. Pritchett, simpering and looking at him sideways. “She seems to have changed since then. She ain’t been herself since she walked home from the meeting.”
“Perhaps she has a cold?” suggested the teacher, blandly.
“Oh, Sairy is not subject to colds,” declared Mrs. Pritchett. “But she is easily chilled in other ways–yes, indeed! I don’t suppose there is a more sensitive young girl on the ridge than my Sairy.”
Mr. Somers began to wake up to the fact that the farmer’s wife was not shooting idly at him; there was “something behind it!”
“I am sorry if Miss Sairy is offended, or has been hurt in any way,” he said, gravely. “It was a pity she had to walk home from the club. If I had known—”
“Wa-al,” drawled Mrs. Pritchett, “you took her there yourself in your buggy.”
“Indeed!” he exclaimed, flushing a little. “I had no idea that bound me to the necessity of taking her home again. Her brother was there with your carriage. I am sure I do not understand your meaning, Mrs. Pritchett.”
“Oh, I don’t mean anything!” exclaimed the lady, but very red in the face now, and her bonnet shaking. “Come, gals! we must be going.”
Both Lyddy and ’Phemie had begun to feel rather unhappy by this time. Mrs. Pritchett swept them up the aisle ahead of her as though she were shooing a flock of chickens with her ample skirts.
They went through the vestibule with a rush. Lucas was ready with the ponies. Mrs. Pritchett was evidently very angry over her encounter with the teacher; and she could not fail to hold the Bray girls somewhat accountable for her daughter’s failure to keep the interest of Mr. Somers.
She said but little on the drive homeward. There had been something said earlier about the girls going down to the Pritchett farm for dinner; but the angry lady said nothing more about it, and Lyddy and ’Phemie were rather glad when Hillcrest came into view.
“Ye better stop in an’ go along down to the house with us,” said the good-natured Lucas, hesitating about turning the ponies’ heads in at the lane.
“Oh, we could not possibly,” Lyddy replied, gracefully. “We are a thousand times obliged for your making it possible for us to attend church. You are all so kind, Mrs. Pritchett. But this afternoon I must plead the wicked intention of writing letters. I haven’t written a line to one of my college friends since I came to Hillcrest.”
Mrs. Pritchett merely grunted. Lucas covered his mother’s grumpiness by inconsequential chatter with ’Phemie while he drove in and turned the ponies so that the girls could get out.
“A thousand thanks!” cried ’Phemie.
“Good-day!” exclaimed Lyddy, brightly.
Mrs. Pritchett’s bonnet only shook the harder, and she did not turn to look at the girls. Lucas cast a very rueful glance in their direction as he drove hastily away.
“Now we’ve done it!” gasped ’Phemie, half laughing, half in disgust.
“Why! whatever is the matter, do you suppose?” demanded her sister.
“Well, if you can’t see that—”
“I see she’s angry over Sairy and the school teacher–poor man! But what have we to do with that?”
“It’s your fatal attractiveness,” sighed ’Phemie. Then she began to laugh. “You’re a very innocent baby, Lyd. Don’t you see that Maw Pritchett thought–or hoped–that she had Mr. Somers nicely entangled with Sairy? And he neglected her for you. Bing! it’s all off, and we’re at outs with the Pritchett family.”
“What awful language!” sighed Lyddy, unlocking the door. “I am sorry you ever went to work in that millinery shop, ’Phemie. It has made your mind–er–almost common!”
But ’Phemie only laughed.
If the Pritchett females were “at outs” with them, the men of the family did not appear to be. At least, Cyrus and his son were at Hillcrest bright and early on Monday morning, with two teams ready for plowing. Lyddy had a serious talk with Mr. Pritchett first.
“Ya-as. That’s good ’tater and truckin’ land behind the barn. It’s laid out a good many years now, for it’s only an acre, or so, and we never tilled it for corn. It’s out o’ the way, kinder,” said the elder Pritchett.
“Then I want that for a garden,” Lyddy declared.
“It don’t pay me to work none of this ‘off’ land for garden trucks,” said Cyrus, shortly. “Not ’nless ye want a few rows o’ stuff in the cornfield jest where I can cultivate with the hosses.”
“But if you plant corn here, you must plant my garden, too,” insisted Lyddy, who was quite as obstinate as the old farmer. “And I’d like to have a big garden, and plenty of potatoes, too. I am going to keep boarders this summer, and I want to raise enough to feed them–or partly feed them, at least.”
“Huh! Boarders, eh? A gal like you!”
“We’re not rich enough to sit with idle hands, and I mean to try and earn something,” Lyddy declared. “And we’ll want vegetables to carry us over winter, too.”
Lucas had been listening with flushed and anxious face. Now he broke in eagerly:
“You said I could till a piece for myself this year, Dad. Lemme do it up here. There’s a better chance to sell trucks in Bridleburg than there has been. I’ll plow and take care of two acres up here, if Miss Lyddy says so, for half the crops, she to supply seed and fertilizer.”
“Will–will it cost much, Lucas?” asked Lyddy, doubtfully.
“That land’s rich, but it may be sour. Ain’t that so, Dad? It won’t take so very much phosphate; will it?”
Cyrus was slower mentally than these eager young folk. He had to think it over and discuss it from different angles. But finally he gave his consent to the plan and advised his son and Lyddy how to manage the matter.
“You kin git your fertilizer on time–six or nine months–right here in Bridleburg. That gives you a chance to raise your crop and market it before paying for the fertilizer,” he said. “You’ll have to get corn fertilizer, too, in the same way. But ’most ev’rybody else on the ridge does the same. We ain’t a very fore-handed community, and that’s a fac’.”
At noon Lyddy and ’Phemie talked over the garden project more fully with Lucas. They planned what early seeds should be planted, and Lucas began plowing that particular piece behind the barn right after dinner.
Lyddy had very little money to work with, but she believed in “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” She told Lucas to purchase a bag of potatoes for planting the next day when he went to town, and he was to buy a few papers of early garden seeds, too.
And when Lucas came back with the potatoes he brought a surprise for the Bray girls. He drove into the yard with a flourish. ’Phemie looked out of the window, uttered a scream of joy and surprise, and rushed out to receive her father in her strong young arms as he got down from the seat.
How feeble and tired he looked! ’Phemie began to cry; but Lyddy “braced up” and declared he looked a whole lot better already and that Hillcrest would cure him in just no time.
“And that foolish ’Phemie is only crying for joy at seeing you so unexpectedly, Father,” said Lyddy, scowling frightfully at her sister over their father’s bowed head as they helped him into the house.
Lucas hovered in the background; but he could not help them. ’Phemie saw, however, that the young farmer fully appreciated the situation and was truly sympathetic.
The change in Mr. Bray’s appearance was a great shock to both girls. Of course, the doctor at the hospital had promised Lyddy no great improvement in the patient until he could be got up here on the hills, where the air was pure and healing.
Aunt Jane had come as far as the junction with him; but he had come on alone to Bridleburg from there, and the agent at the station had telephoned uptown to tell Lucas that the invalid wished to get to Hillcrest.
“I’m all right; I’m all right!” he kept repeating. But the girls almost carried him between them into the house.
“The doctors said you could do more for me up here than they could do for me there,” panted Mr. Bray, smiling faintly at his daughters, who hovered about him as he sat before the crackling wood fire in the kitchen.
“And Aunt Jane never told us you were coming!” gasped Lyddy.
“What’s the odds, as long as he’s here?” demanded ’Phemie.
“Why, I shall soon be my old self again up here,” Mr. Bray declared, hopefully. “Now, don’t fuss over me, girls. You’ve got other things to do. That young fellow who brought me up here seems to be your chief cook and bottle-washer, and he wants to speak to you, I reckon,” for Lucas was waiting to learn where he should put the potatoes and other things.
Mr. Bray knew all about the boarding house project and approved of it. “Why, I can soon help around myself. And I must do something,” he told them, that evening, “or I shall go crazy. I couldn’t endure the rest cure.” But it was complete rest that he had to endure for several days after his unexpected arrival.
The girls gave up their room to their father, and went upstairs to sleep. ’Phemie had to admit that even she was glad there was at last somebody else in the house. Especially a man!
“But I never have thought to ask Mr. Pritchett about his being up here with that Spink man last Saturday night,” Lyddy said, sleepily.
“You’d better let it drop,” advised ’Phemie. “We don’t want to get the whole Pritchett family down on us.”
“What nonsense! Of course I shall ask him,” declared her sister.
But as it happened something occurred the following day to quite put this small matter out of Lyddy’s mind. The postman brought the first letter in answer to their advertisement. Lyddy was about to tear open the envelope when she halted in amazement. The card printed in the corner included the number of Trimble Avenue right next to the big tenement house in which the Brays had lived before coming here to Hillcrest.
“Isn’t that strange?” she murmured, and read the card again:
Commonwealth Chemical Company
407 Trimble Avenue
Easthampton
“Right from the very next door!” sparkled ’Phemie. “Don’t that beat all!–as Lucas says.”
But Lyddy had now opened the letter and read as follows:
“L. Bray, Hillcrest Farm, Bridleburg P. O.
“Dear Madam:
“I have read your advertisement and believe that you offer exactly what my father and I have been looking for–a quiet, home-like boarding house in the hills, and not too far away for me to get easily back and forth. If agreeable, we shall come to Bridleburg Saturday and would be glad to have you meet the 10:14 train on its arrival. If both parties are suited we can then discuss terms.
“Respectfully,
“Harris Colesworth.”
“Why, what’s the matter, Lyd?” demanded her sister, in amazement.
But Lyddy Bray did not explain. In her own mind she was much disturbed. She was confident that the writer of this note was the “fresh” young fellow who had always been at work in the chemical laboratory right across the air-shaft from her kitchen window!
Of course, it was quite by chance–in all probability–that he had answered her advertisement. Yet Lyddy Bray had an intuition that if she answered the letter, and the Colesworths came here to Hillcrest, trouble would ensue.
She had hoped very much to obtain boarders, and to get even one thus early in the season seemed too good to be true. Yet, now that she had got what she wanted, Lyddy was doubtful if she wanted it after all.
Mr. Bray fell in with the boarder project, as we have seen, with enthusiasm. Although he could do nothing as yet, his mind was active enough and he gaily planned with ’Phemie what they should do and how they should arrange the rooms for the horde of visitors who were, they were sure, already on their way to Hillcrest.
“Though Lyd won’t show the very first letter she’s received in answer to our ad.,” complained the younger sister. “What’s the matter with those folks, Lyddy? Do they actually live right there near where we did on Trimble Avenue?”
“That was a loft building next to us,” said their father, curiously. “Who are the people, daughter?”
“Somebody by the name of Colesworth. The Commonwealth Chemical Company office. It’s about an old man to stay here.”
“One man only!” exclaimed ’Phemie.
“With a young man–the one who writes–to come up over Sundays, I suppose,” acknowledged Lyddy, doubtfully.
“Goody!” cried her sister. “That sounds better.”
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, ’Phemie!” chided Lyddy, with some asperity.
But Mr. Bray only laughed. “I guess I can play ‘he-chaperon’ for all the young men who come here,” he said. “Your sister is only making fun, Lydia.”
But Lyddy was more worried in secret about the Colesworth proposition than she was ready to acknowledge. She “just felt” that Harris Colesworth was the young man who had helped them the evening of the fire in the Trimble Avenue tenement.
“He found out our name, of course, and when he saw my advertisement he knew who it was. He may even have found out where we were going when we left for the country. In some way he could have done so,” thought Lyddy, putting the young man’s character before her mind in the very worst possible light.
“He is altogether too persistent. I hope he is as energetic in a better way–I hope he attends to his business as faithfully as he seems to attend to our affairs,” continued Lyddy, bitterly.
“I don’t suppose this idea of his father coming up here into the hills is entirely an excuse for him to become familiar with–with us. But it looks very much like it. I–I wonder what kind of a man old Mr. Colesworth can be?”
Lyddy ruminated upon the letter she had received all that day and refused to answer it right away. Indeed, as far as she could see, the letter did not really need an answer. This Harris Colesworth spoke just as though he expected they would be only too glad to meet him on Saturday with a rig.
“And, if it were anybody else, I suppose I would be glad to do so,” Lyddy finally had to admit. “I suppose that ‘beggars mustn’t be choosers’; and if this Harris Colesworth isn’t a perfectly proper young man to have about, father will very quickly attend to his case.”
Really, Lyddy Bray thought much more about the Colesworths than her sister and father thought she did. After being urged by ’Phemie several times she finally allowed her sister to reply to the letter, promising to have a carriage at the station for the train mentioned in Harris Colesworth’s letter.
Of course, this meant hiring Lucas Pritchett and the buckboard. Lucas was at Hillcrest a good deal of the time that week. He got the garden plowed and the early potatoes planted, as well as some few other seeds which would not be hurt by the late frosts.
Mr. Bray got around very slowly; at first he could only walk up and down in the sun, or sit on the porch, well wrapped up.
Like most men born in the country and forced to be city dwellers for many years, John Bray had longed more deeply than he could easily express for country living. He appreciated the sights and sounds about him–the mellow, refreshing air that blew over the hills–the sunshine and the pattering rain which, on these early spring days, drifted alternately across the fields and woods.
With the girls he planned for the future. Some day they would have a cow. There was pasture on the farm for a dozen. And already Lyddy was studying poultry catalogs and trying to figure out a little spare money to purchase some eggs for hatching.
Of course they had no hens and at this time of the year the neighbors were likely to want their own setting hens for incubating purposes. Lyddy sounded Silas Trent, the mail-carrier, about this and Mr. Trent had an offer to make.
“I tell ye what it is,” said the garrulous Silas, “the chicken business is a good business–if ye kin ’tend to it right. I tried it–went in deep for incubator, brooders, and the like; and it would have been all right if I didn’t hafter be away from home so much durin’ the day.
“My wife’s got rheumatiz, and she can’t git out to ’tend to little chicks, and for a few weeks they need a sight of attention–that’s right. They’d oughter be fed every two hours, or so, and watched pretty close.
“So I had ter give it up last year, an’ this year I ain’t put an egg in my incubator.
“But if I could git ’em growed to scratchin’ state–say, when they’re broiler-size–I sartainly would like it. Tell ye what I’ll do, Miss. I’ll let ye have my incubator. It’s 200-egg size. In course, ye don’t hafter fill it first time if ye don’t wanter. Put in a hundred eggs and see how ye come out.”
“But how could I pay you?” asked Lyddy.
“I’ll sell ye the incubator outright, if ye want to buy. And I’ll take my pay in chickens when they’re broiler-size–say three months old.”
“What do you want for your incubator?” queried Lyddy, thoughtfully.
“Ten dollars. It’s a good one. And I’ll take a flock of twenty three-months-old chicks in pay for it–fifteen pullets and five cockerels. What kind of hens do you favor, Miss Bray?”
Lyddy told him the breed she had thought of purchasing–and the strain.
“Them’s fine birds,” declared Mr. Trent. “For heavy fowl they are good layers–and when ye butcher one of ’em for the table, ye got suthin’ to eat. Now, you think my offer over. I’ll stick to it. And I’ll set the incubator up and show ye how to run it.”
Lyddy was very anxious to venture into the chicken business–and here was a chance to do it cheaply. It was the five dollars for a hundred hatching eggs that made her hesitate.
But Aunt Jane had shown herself to be more than a little interested in the girls’ venture at Hillcrest Farm, and when she expressed the keys of the garret chests and bureaus to Lyddy–so that the girl could get at the stores of linen left from the old doctor’s day–she sent, too, twenty-five dollars.
“Keep it against emergencies. Pay it back when you can. And don’t let’s have no talk about it,” was the old lady’s characteristic note.
Lyddy was only doubtful as to whether this desire of hers to raise chickens was really “an emergency.” But finally she decided to venture, and she wrote off for the eggs, sending the money by a post-office order, and Lucas brought up Silas Trent’s incubator.
Friday night Trent drove up to Hillcrest and spent the evening with the Brays. He set the incubator up in the little washhouse, which opened directly off the back porch. It was a small, tight room, with only one window, and was easily heated by an oil-lamp. The lamp of the incubator itself would do the trick, Trent said.
He leveled the machine with great care, showed Lyddy all about the trays, the water, the regulation of heat, and gave her a lot of advice on various matters connected with the raising of chicks with the “wooden hen.”
They were all vastly interested in the new vocation and the evening passed pleasantly enough. Just before Trent went, he asked:
“By the way, what’s Jud Spink doing up this way so much? I seen him again to-day when I came over the ridge. He was crossin’ the back of your farm. He didn’t have no gun; and, at any rate, there ain’t nothin’ in season jest now–’nless it’s crows,” and the mail-carrier laughed.
“Spink?” asked Mr. Bray, who had not yet gone to bed. “Who is he?”
“Lemuel Judson Spink,” explained ’Phemie. “He’s a man who used to live here with grandfather when he was a boy–when Spink was a boy; not grandfather.”
“He’s a rich man now,” said Lyddy. “He owns a breakfast food.”
“Diamond Grits,” added ’Phemie.
“He’s rich enough,” grunted Trent. “Rich enough so’t he can loaf around Bridleburg for months at a time. Been here now for some time.”
“Why, could that be the Spink your Aunt Jane told me once made her an offer for the farm?” asked Mr. Bray, thoughtfully.
“For Hillcrest?” cried ’Phemie. “Oh, I hope not.”
“Well, child, if she could sell the place it would be a good thing for Jane. She has none too much money.”
“But why didn’t she sell to him?” asked Lyddy, quite as anxious as her sister.
“He didn’t offer her much, if anything, for it.”
“Ain’t that like Jud?” cackled Trent. “He is allus grouching about the old doctor for being as tight as the bark to a tree; but when it comes to a bargain, Jud Spink will wring yer nose ev’ry time–if he can. Glad Mis’ Hammon’ didn’t sell to him.”
“Perhaps he didn’t want Hillcrest very much,” said Mr. Bray, quietly.
“He don’t want nothin’ ’nless it’s cheap,” declared Trent. “He’s picked up some mortgage notes, and the like, on property he thinks he can foreclose on. Got a jedgment against the Widder Harrison’s little place over the ridge, I understand. But Jud Spink wouldn’t pay more’n ha’f price for a gold eagle. He’d claim ’twas second-hand, if it warn’t fresh from the mint,” and the mail-carrier went off, chuckling over his own joke.
Both Lyddy and ’Phemie forgot, however, about the curious actions of Mr. Spink, or his desire to buy Hillcrest, in their interest in the coming of the only people who had, thus far, answered their advertisement for boarders.
Lucas met the 10:14 train on Saturday morning, and before noon he drove into the side yard with an old gentleman and a young man on the rear seat of the buckboard.
Before this the two girls, working hard, had swept and garnished the whole lower floor of the big farmhouse, save the east wing, which was locked. Indeed, Lyddy had never ventured into the old doctor’s suite of offices, for she couldn’t find the key.
A fire had been laid and was burning cheerfully in the dining-room–that apartment being just across the square side entrance hall from the kitchen. Lyddy was busy over the cooking arrangements when the visitors arrived, and ’Phemie was giving the finishing touches to the table in the dining-room.
But Mr. Bray, leaning on his cane, met the Colesworths as they alighted from the buckboard. Lucas drove away at once, promising to return again with the team in time to catch the four-fifty train back to town.
Lyddy found time to peep out of the kitchen window. Yes! there was that very bold young man who had troubled her so much–at times–while they lived in Trimble Avenue.
He met Mr. Bray with a warm handshake, and he helped his father up the wide stone steps with a delicacy that would have pleased Lyddy in anybody else.
But she had made up her mind that Harris Colesworth was going to be a very objectionable person to have about, and so she would not accept his friendly attitude or thoughtfulness as real virtues. He might attract the rest of the family–already ’Phemie was standing in the door, smiling and with her hand held out; but Lyddy Bray proposed to watch this young man very closely!
Lyddy heard her sister and Harris Colesworth in the hall, and then in the dining-room. The girls had not made a fire in any other room in the house. It took too much wood, and the dining-room was large enough to be used as a sitting-room “for company,” too.
And with the fresh maple branches and arbutus decorating the space over the mantel, and the great dish of violets on the table, and the odorous plum branches everywhere, that dining-room was certainly an attractive apartment.
The old-fashioned blue-and-white china and the few pieces of heavy silverware “dressed” the table very nicely. The linen was yellow with age, but every glass and spoon shone.
The sun streamed warmly in at the windows, the view from which was lovely. Lyddy heard the appreciative remarks of the young man as ’Phemie ushered him in.
But she ran out to greet the old gentleman. The elder Colesworth was sixty or more–a frail, scholarly-looking man, with a winning smile. He, like Mr. Bray, leaned on a cane; but Mr. Bray was at least fifteen years Mr. Colesworth’s junior.
“So you are ‘L. Bray’; are you?” asked the old gentleman, shaking hands with her. “You are the elder daughter and head of the household, your father tells me.”
“I am older than ’Phemie–yes,” admitted Lyddy, blushing. “But we have no ‘head’ here. I do my part of the work, and she does hers.”
“And, please God,” said Mr. Bray, earnestly, “I shall soon be able to do mine.”
“Work is the word, then!” cried the old gentleman. “I tell Harris that’s all that is the matter with me. I knocked off work too early. ‘Retired,’ they call it. But it doesn’t pay–it doesn’t pay.”
“There will be plenty for you to do up here, Mr. Colesworth,” suggested Lyddy, laughing. “We’ll let you chop your own wood, if you like. But perhaps picking flowers for the table will be more to your taste–at first.”
“I don’t know–I don’t know,” returned the old gentleman. “I was brought up on a farm. I used to know how to swing an axe. And I can remember yet how I hated a buck-saw.”
They went into the house; but Lyddy slipped back to the kitchen and allowed her father to follow Harris Colesworth and ’Phemie, with the old gentleman, into the dining-room.
’Phemie soon came out to help, leaving their father to entertain the visitors while dinner was being served. Lyddy had prepared a simple meal, of which the staple was the New England standby–baked beans.
She had been up before light, had built a huge fire in the brick oven, had heated it to a high temperature, and had then baked her pies, a huge pan of gingerbread, her white bread, and potatoes for dinner. She had steamed her “brown loaf” in a kettle hanging from the crane, and the sealed beanpot had been all night in the ashes on the hearth, the right “finish” being given in the brick oven as it gradually cooled off.
The girl had had wonderfully good luck with her baking. The bread was neither “all crust” nor was it dough in the middle. The pies were flaky as to crust and the apples which filled them were tender.
When Lyddy brought in the beanpot, wrapped in a blue and white towel to retain the heat, she met Harris Colesworth for the first time. To her surprise he did not attempt to appear amazed to see her.
“Miss Bray!” he cried, coming forward to shake hands with her. “I have been telling your father that we are already acquainted. But I never did expect to see you again when you sold out and went away from Trimble Avenue that morning.”
“Shows how small the world is,” said Mr. Bray, smiling. “We lived right beside the building in which Mr. Colesworth works, and he saw our advertisement in the paper—”
“Oh, I was sure it was Miss Bray,” interrupted young Colesworth, openly acknowledging his uncalled-for interest (so Lyddy expressed it to herself) in their affairs.
“You see,” said this very frank young man, “I knew your name was Bray. And I knew you were going into the country for Mr. Bray’s health. I–I even asked at the hospital about you several times,” he added, flushing a little.
“How very kind!” murmured Lyddy, but without looking at him, as ’Phemie brought in some of the other dishes.
“Not at all; I was interested,” said the young man, laughing. “You always were afraid of getting acquainted with me when I used to watch you working about your kitchen. But now, Miss Bray, if father decides to come out here to board with you, you’ll just have to be acquainted with me.”
Mr. Bray laughed at this, and ’Phemie giggled. Lyddy’s face was a study. It did seem impossible to keep this very presuming young man at a proper distance.
But they gathered around the table then, and Lyddy had another reason for blushing. The visitors praised her cooking highly, and when they learned of the old-fashioned means by which the cooking was done, their wonder grew.
And Lyddy deserved some praise, that was sure. The potatoes came out of their crisp skins as light as feathers. The thickened pork gravy that went with them was something Mr. Colesworth the elder declared he had not tasted since he was a boy.
And when the beans were ladled from the pot–brown, moist, every bean firm in its individual jacket, but seasoned through and through–the Colesworths fairly reveled in them. The fresh bread and good butter, and the flaky wedges of apple pie, each flanked by its pilot of cheese, were likewise enjoyed.
“If you can put us up only half comfortably,” declared the elder Colesworth, bowing to Lyddy, “I can tell you right now, young lady, that we will stay. Let us see your rooms, we will come to terms, and then I’ll take a nap, if you will allow me. I need it after this heavy dinner. Why, Harris! I haven’t eaten so heartily for months.”
“Never saw you sail into the menu with any more enjoyment, Dad,” declared his son, in delight.
But Lyddy made her sister show them over the house. They were some time in making up their minds regarding the choice of apartments; but finally they decided upon one of the large rooms the girls proposed making over into bed-chambers on the ground floor. This room was nearest the east wing, had long windows opening upon the side porch, and with the two small beds removed from the half-furnished rooms on the second floor of the east wing, and brought downstairs, together with one or two other pieces of furniture, the Colesworths declared themselves satisfied with the accommodations.
Young Colesworth would come out on Saturdays and return Monday mornings. He would arrange with Lucas to drive him back and forth. And the old gentleman would come out, bag and baggage, on the coming Monday to take possession of the room.
To bind the bargain Harris handed Lyddy fifteen dollars, and asked for a receipt. Fifteen dollars a week! Lyddy had scarcely dared ask for it–had done so with fear and trembling, in fact. But the Colesworths seemed to consider it quite within reason.
“Oh, ’Phemie!” gasped Lyddy, hugging her sister tight out in the kitchen. “Just think of fifteen dollars coming in every week. Why! we can all live on that!”
“M–m; yes,” said ’Phemie, ruminatively. “But hasn’t he a handsome nose?”
“Who–what— ’Phemie Bray! haven’t you anything else in your head but young men’s noses?” cried her sister, in sudden wrath.
But it was a beginning. They had really “got into business,” as their father said that night at the supper table.
“I only fear that the work will be too much for us,” he observed.
“For ’Phemie and me, you mean, Father,” said Lyddy, firmly. “You are not to work. You’re to get well. That is your business–and your only business.”
“You girls will baby me to death!” cried Mr. Bray, wiping his eyes. “I refuse to be laid on the shelf. I hope I am not useless—”
“My goodness me! Far from it,” cried ’Phemie. “But you’ll be lots more help to us when you are perfectly well and strong again.”
“There’ll be plenty you can do without taxing your strength–and without keeping you indoors,” Lyddy added. “Just think if we get the chicken business started. You can do all of that–after the biddies are hatched.”
“I feel so much better already, girls,” declared their father, gravely, “that I am sure I shall have a giant’s strength before fall.”
Aunt Jane had written them, however, certain advice which the doctor at the hospital had given to her regarding Mr. Bray. He was to be discouraged from performing any heavy tasks of whatsoever nature, and his diet was to consist mainly of milk and eggs–tissue-building fuel for the system.
He had worked so long in the hat shop that his lungs were in a weakened state, if not actually affected. For months they would have to watch him carefully. And to return to his work in the city would be suicidal.
Therefore were Lyddy and ’Phemie more than ever anxious to make the boarders’ project pay. And with the Colesworths’ fifteen dollars a week it seemed as though a famous start had been made in that direction.
By serving simple food, plainly cooked, Lyddy was confident that she could keep the table for all five from the board paid by Mr. Colesworth and his son. If they got other boarders, a goodly share of their weekly stipends could be added on the profit side of the ledger.
Lucas helped them for a couple of hours Monday morning, and the girls managed to put the room the newcomers had chosen into readiness for the old gentleman. Lucas drove to town to meet Mr. Colesworth. Lucas was beginning to make something out of the Bray girls’ project, too, and he grinned broadly as he said to ’Phemie:
“I’m goin’ to be able to put up for a brand new buggy nex’ fall, Miss ’Phemie–a better one than Joe Badger’s got. What ’twixt this cartin’ boarders over the roads, and makin’ Miss Lyddy’s garden, I’m going to be well fixed.”
“On the road to be a millionaire; are you, Lucas?” suggested ’Phemie, laughing.
“Nope. Jest got one object in view,” grinned Lucas.
“What’s that?”
“I wanter drive you to church in my new buggy, and make Joe Badger an’ that Nettie Meyers look like thirty cents. That’s what I want.”
“Oh, Lucas! That isn’t a very high ambition,” she cried.
“But it’s goin’ to give me an almighty lot of satisfaction,” declared the young farmer. “You won’t go back on me; will yer, Miss ’Phemie?”
“I’ll ride with you–of course,” replied ’Phemie. “But I’d just as lief go in the buckboard.”
“Now that,” said the somewhat puzzled Lucas, “is another thing that makes you gals diff’rent from the gals around here.”
Old Mr. Colesworth came and made himself at home very quickly. He played cribbage with Mr. Bray in the evening while the girls did up the work and sewed; and during the early days of his stay with them he proved to be a very pleasant old gentleman, with few crotchets, and no special demands upon the girls for attention.
He walked a good deal, proved to be something of a geologist, and pottered about the rocky section of the farm with a little hammer and bag for hours together.
As Mr. Bray could walk only a little way, Mr. Colesworth did most of his rambling about Hillcrest alone. And he grew fonder and fonder of the place as the first week advanced.
As far as his entertainment went, he could have no complaint as to that, for he was getting all that Lyddy had promised him–a comfortable bed, a fire on his hearth when he wanted it, and the same plain food that the family ate.
The girls of Hillcrest Farm had received no further answer to their advertisement, but the news that they were keeping boarders had gone broadcast over the ridge, of course. Silas Trent would have spread this bit of news, if nobody else.
But on Saturday morning, soon after breakfast, Mr. Somers’s old gray mare turned up their lane, and Lyddy put on a clean apron and rolled down her sleeves to go out and speak to the school teacher.
“That’s a very good thing about that lane,” ’Phemie remarked, aside. “It is just long enough so that, if we see anybody turn in, we can primp a little before they get to the house.”
“Miss Bray,” said the teacher, hopping out of his buggy and shaking hands, “you see me here, a veritable beggar.”
“A beggar?” queried Lyddy, in surprise.
“Yes, I have come to beg a favor. And a very great one, too.”
“Why–I—”
He laughed and went on to explain–yet his explanation at first puzzled her.
“Where do you suppose I slept last night, Miss Bray?” he asked.
“In your bed,” she returned.
“Wrong!”
“Is it a joke–or a puzzle?”
“Why, I had to sleep in the barn. You see, thus far this term I have boarded with Sam Larribee. But yesterday his boy came down with the measles. He had been out of school for several days–had been visiting the other side of the ridge. They think he caught it there–at his cousin’s.
“However,” continued Mr. Somers, “that does not help me. When I came home from school and heard the doctor’s report, I refused to enter the house. We don’t want an epidemic of measles at Pounder’s School.
“So I slept in the barn with Old Molly, here. And now I must find another boarding place. They–er–tell me, Miss Bray, that you intend to take boarders?”
“Why–er–yes,” admitted Lyddy, faintly.
“You have some already?”
“Mr. Colesworth and his son. They have just come.”
“Couldn’t you put me–and Molly–up for the rest of the term?” asked the school teacher, laughing.
“Why, I don’t know but I could,” said Lyddy, her business sense coming to her aid. “I–why, yes! I am quite sure about you; but about the horse, I do not know.”
“You surely have a stall to spare?”
“Plenty; but no feed.”
“Oh, I will bring my own grain; and I’ll let her pasture in your orchard. She doesn’t work hard and doesn’t need much forage except what she can glean at this time of year for herself.”
“Well, then, perhaps it can be arranged,” said Lyddy. “Will you come in and see what our accommodations are?”
And so that is how another boarder came to Hillcrest Farm. Mr. Somers chose one of the smaller rooms upstairs, and agreed to pay for his own entertainment and pasturage for his horse–six dollars and a half a week. It was a little more than he had been paying at Larribee’s, he said–but then, Mr. Somers wanted to come to Hillcrest.
He drove away to get his trunk out of the window of his bedroom at the measles-stricken farmhouse down the hill; he would not risk entering by the door for the sake of his other pupils.
A little later Lucas drove up from town with Harris Colesworth and his bag.
“Say!” whispered the lanky farmer, leaning from his seat to whisper to ’Phemie. “I hear tell you’ve got school teacher for a boarder, too? Is that so?”
“What of it?” demanded ’Phemie, somewhat vexed.
“Oh, nawthin’. Only ye oughter seen Sairy’s face when maw told her!”
The school teacher pressingly invited the Bray girls to accompany him to the temperance meeting that evening; his buggy would hold the three, he declared. But both Lyddy and ’Phemie had good reason for being excused. There was now work for them–and plenty of it.
They had to disappoint Lucas in this matter, too; but Harris Colesworth laughingly accepted the teacher’s later proposal that he attend, and the two young men drove off together, leaving the girls in the kitchen and old Mr. Colesworth and Mr. Bray playing cribbage in the dining-room.
It was while ’Phemie was clearing the supper table that her attention was caught by something that Mr. Colesworth said.
“Who is your neighbor that I see so much up yonder among the rocks, at the back of this farm, Mr. Bray?” he asked.
“Mr. Pritchett?” suggested Mr. Bray. “Cyrus Pritchett. The long-legged boy’s father. He farms a part of these acres—”
“No. It is not Cyrus Pritchett I mean. And he is no farmer.”
“I couldn’t tell you,” said Mr. Bray.
“A rather peculiar-looking man–long hair, black coat, broad-brimmed hat. I have frequently come upon him during the last few days. He always walks off as though in haste. I never have got near enough to speak to him.”
“Why,” responded Mr. Bray, thoughtfully scanning his hand, and evidently giving little attention to Mr. Colesworth’s mystery, “why, I’m sure I don’t know what would attract anybody up in that part of the farm.”
“Saving a man interested in breaking open rocks to see what’s in them,” chuckled Mr. Colesworth. “But this fellow is no geologist.”
’Phemie, however, decided that she knew who it was. Silas Trent had mentioned seeing the man, Spink, up that way; and, on more than one occasion, ’Phemie was sure the owner of the Diamond Grits breakfast food had been lurking about Hillcrest.
“Lyddy has never asked Cyrus Pritchett about that evening he and Spink were up here–two weeks ago this very night. I almost wish she’d do so. This mystery is getting on my nerves!”
And yet ’Phemie was not at all sure that there was any mystery about it.
Lyddy, on the strength of getting her first boarders, renewed her advertisement in the Easthampton papers. At once she received half a dozen inquiries. It was yet too early in the season to expect many people to wish to come to the country to board; yet Lyddy painstakingly answered each letter, and in full.
But she really did not see how she would be able to get on over the summer with the open fire and the brick oven. It would be dreadfully hot in that kitchen. And she would have been glad to use Mrs. Pritchett’s Dutch oven that Lucas had told her about.
But since the first Sunday neither Mrs. Pritchett or Sairy had been near Hillcrest. Now that Mr. Somers had established himself here, the Bray girls did not expect to ever be forgiven by “Maw” Pritchett and her daughter.
“It’s too bad people are so foolish,” said Lyddy, wearily. “I haven’t done anything to Sairy.”
“But she and her mother think you have. By your wiles you have inveigled Mr. Somers away from Sairy,” giggled ’Phemie.
“’Phemie!” gasped her sister. “If you say such a thing again, I’ll send Mr. Somers packing!”
“Oh, shucks! Can’t you see the fun of it!?”
“There is no fun in it,” declared the very proper Lyddy. “It is only disgraceful.”
“I’d like to tell that young Mr. Colesworth about it,” laughed ’Phemie. “He’d just be tickled to death.”
Lyddy looked at her haughtily. “You dare include me in any gossip of such a character, and I–”
“Well? You’ll what?” demanded the younger girl, saucily.
“I shall feel very much like spanking you!” declared Lyddy. “And that is just what you would deserve.”
“Oh, now–don’t get mad, Lyd,” urged ’Phemie. “You take things altogether too seriously.”
“Well,” responded the older girl, going back to the main subject, “the problem of how we are to cook when it comes warm weather is a very, very serious matter.”
“We’ve just got to have a range–ought to have one with a tank, on the end in which to heat water. I’ve seen ’em advertised.”
“But how can we? I’ve gone into debt now for more than thirty dollars’ worth of commercial fertilizer. I don’t dare get deeper into the mire.”
“But,” cried the sanguine ’Phemie, “the crops will more than pay for that outlay.”
“You’re a born grump, Lyddy Bray!”
“Somebody has to look ahead,” sighed Lyddy. “The crops may fail. Such things happen. Or we may get no more boarders. Or father may get worse.”
“Don’t say such things, Lyddy!” cried her sister, stamping her foot. “Especially about father.”
The older girl put her arms about ’Phemie and the latter began to weep on her shoulder.
“Don’t let us hide our true beliefs from each other,” whispered Lyddy, brokenly. “Father is not mending–not as we hoped he would, at least. And yet the hospital doctor told Aunt Jane that there was absolutely nothing medicine could do for him.”
“I know! I know!” sobbed ’Phemie. “But don’t let’s talk about it. He is so brave himself. He talks just as though he was gaining every day; but his step is so feeble—”
“And he has no color,” groaned Lyddy.
“But, anyhow,” ’Phemie pursued, wiping her eyes, her flurry of tears quickly over, as was her nature, “there is one good thing.”
“What is that?”
“He doesn’t lose hope himself. And we mustn’t lose it, either. Of course things will come out right–even the boarders will come.”
“We don’t know that,” said Lyddy, shaking her head again.
“How about the woman who wrote you a second time?” queried ’Phemie. “Mrs. Castle. I bet she comes next week.”
And ’Phemie was right in that prophecy. They had Lucas meet the train for Mrs. Castle on Saturday, and ’Phemie went with him. There were supplies to buy for the house and the young girl made her purchases before train time.
A little old lady in a Paisley shawl and black, close bonnet, got out of the train. The porter lifted down an ancient carpet-bag–something ’Phemie had never in her life seen before. Even Lucas was amazed by the little old woman’s outfit.
“By cracky!” he whispered to ’Phemie. “You reckon that’s the party? Why, she’s dressed more behind the times than my grandmother useter be. Guess there must be places on this airth more countrified than Bridleburg.”
But ’Phemie knew that Mrs. Castle’s letter had come from an address in Easthampton which the Brays knew to be in a very good neighborhood. Nobody but wealthy people lived on that street. Yet Mrs. Castle–aside from the valuable but old-fashioned shawl–did not look to be worth any great fortune.
“Are you the girl who wrote to me?” asked the old lady, briskly, when ’Phemie came forward to take the carpet-bag.
Mrs. Castle’s voice was very resonant; she had sharp blue eyes behind her gold-bowed spectacles; and she clipped her words and sentences in a manner that belied her age and appearance.
“No, ma’am,” said ’Phemie, doubtfully. “It was my sister who wrote. I am Euphemia Bray.”
“Ha! And what is your sister’s name? What does the ‘L’ stand for?”
“Lydia.”
“Good!” ejaculated this strange old lady. “Then I’ll ride out to the farm with you. Such good, old-fashioned names promise just what your sister said: An old-fashioned house and old-time ways. If ‘L!’ had meant ‘Lillie,’ or ‘Luella,’ or ‘Lilas’–and if you, young lady, had been called ‘Marie’–I’d have taken the very next train back to town.”
’Phemie could only stare and nod. In her secret thoughts she told herself that this queer old woman was doubtless a harmless lunatic. She did not know whether it was quite best to have Lucas drive them to Hillcrest or not.
“You got a trunk, ma’am?” asked the long-legged youth, as the old lady hopped youthfully into the buckboard, and ’Phemie lifted in the heavy carpet-bag.
“No, I haven’t. This is no fashionable boarding house I’m going to, I s’pose?” she added, eyeing ’Phemie sternly.
“Oh, no, ma’am!” returned the girl.
“Then I’ve got enough with me in this bag, and on my back, to last me a fortnight. If I like, I’ll send for something more, then.”
She certainly knew her own mind, this old lady. ’Phemie had first thought her to be near the three-score-and-ten mark; but every moment she seemed to get younger. Her face was wrinkled, but they were fine wrinkles, and her coloring made her look like a withered russet apple. Out of this golden-brown countenance the blue eyes sparkled in a really wonderful way.
“But I don’t care,” thought ’Phemie, as they clattered out of town. “Crazy or not, if she can pay her board she’s so much help. Let the ball keep on rolling. It’s getting bigger and bigger. Perhaps we shall have a houseful at Hillcrest, after all.”