CHAPTER II
THE LANDLADIES AND A NEW ACQUAINTANCE

“This is a long quarter of a mile,” said Nan, trying to keep up with her more athletic sisters.

“The agent told us a quarter of a mile, but I reckon he meant as the crow flies. He did not allow for all the twistings and turnings of this lane,” laughed Helen.

“It is a very pretty walk, anyhow, and I’m glad we are not so close to the track because of Bobby,” said the philosophic Nan.

“Shucks! You needn’t be a-thinkin’ I can’t find my way back to that old station,” said that young hopeful. “I wisht it was barefoot time and I would wade in that branch.”

They were crossing a pretty little stream that intersected the road. Of course Bobby took occasion to slip off the stepping-stones and get his foot wet.

“S’long as one is wet I reckon I might as well get th’ other one wet, too,” and he stepped boldly into the stream. “Sqush! Sqush! Ain’t this a grand and glorious feeling?”

“Oh, Bobby!” chorused his sisters.

“’Tain’t gonter make no diffunce! My ’ployer says sech things as this toughen kids.”

Bobby always called Dr. Wright his employer, as it had been his habit to go with that young physician while he was making his professional calls, his duties being to hold out his arm when they were turning corners or preparing to stop; and to sit in the car and guard his ’ployer’s property from the depredations of hoodlums and micks.

“I don’t think some kids need toughening,” said Nan, trying to look severe.

“Yes’n I gotter joke on you, too! They was a pretty near grown-up boy on the train wanted to know what yo’ name was. I was jawin’ the inductor an’ the boy comed and plunked hissef down by me an’ he axed me what was my name and where I was a-gointer, an’ was all’n you my aunts or what. He was so busy a-findin’ out he come near a-missing his gettin’ off place. He lives jus’ befo’ our gettin’ off place.”

“Oh, that must have been the good-looking boy sitting opposite us, just behind Mother and Father! You noticed him, Douglas, didn’t you?” asked Helen.

“Well, he wasn’t a-noticin’ you much,” proceeded the enfant terrible. “He wanted mostly to know what was Nan’s name an’ where she went to school.”

“Surely you didn’t tell him!” blushed Nan.

“Sho’ nix! I told him yo’ name was Lizajane an’ you was a-clerkin’ in the five an’ ten.”

“Oh, Bobby!”

Nobody could help laughing at the saucy youngster, and his sisters were ever inclined to find him amusing and altogether delightful in spite of his outrageousness. Their laughter rang out clear and infectious. First they laughed at Bobby and then they laughed for the pure joy of laughing. Douglas forgot her burdens and responsibilities; Helen forgot how she hated to be poor; Nan forgot that the quarter of a mile she was going to have to trudge twice a day to join the army of commuters was much nearer half a mile and she was not a very energetic girl; Lucy had nothing to forget or regret, being only thirteen with a perfect digestion. For the moment all of them forgot the nerve-worn father and the hypochondriacal mother waiting so forlornly at the station with the luggage piled so hopelessly at one end.

In the midst of their gale of laughter they heard the hum of a motor and the toot of a horn. A large touring car came swerving around the curve in the road.

“That’s him now!” cried the delighted Bobby.

It was no other than the boy on the train. He stopped his car and with crimson face began to stammer forth unintelligible words.

“Excuse me! – but – that is a – you see I – Oh, hang it all! er – my name is William – Will – Billy Sutton.”

“Oh, he’s plum nutty an’ thinks he’s Billy Sunday – Billy Nut Sunday!” and Bobby danced gleefully in his squshy shoes.

“Bobby! Behave yourself!” said Douglas, trying to swallow the laugh she was in the midst of.

“We was jes’ a-talkin’ about you,” said Bobby, with his most disarming smile.

“About me?” and the young fellow choked his engine.

“Yes, I was a-tellin’ – ”

But here Helen took her little brother in hand. Helen could usually manage him better than any of the others. She whispered some mysterious something to him which quickly sobered him.

“I don’t want you to think I am impertinent or interfering, but your little brother told me on the train coming out that your mother and father were both ill – ”

“Yes, I told him they were likely to die mos’ any time.”

“And I heard at the post-office at Preston, where I live, that you have rented the farm from the Misses Grant; also that those ladies were not expecting you until tomorrow – ”

“But I wrote we would be there today, Wednesday!” exclaimed Douglas.

“That doesn’t make a bit of difference to Miss Ella and Miss Louise Grant,” laughed the boy. “They never get anything straight because they discuss every subject so thoroughly that they are all mixed up before they get through. Anyhow, they did not meet you, and if you don’t think I am pushing or forward or something – ”

“Butinsky!” suggested Bobby, but Helen slipped her hand over his pert little mouth.

“Thank you for that word – butinsky – why, I should like the privilege of going after your mother and father and bringing all the luggage my car will hold.”

“Oh, you are too kind!” chorused the girls.

“Let me take all of you first to the farm.”

“We must go by Grantly to let the ladies know we are here,” suggested Douglas.

“They are both of them at the farm. I saw them as I came by.”

“Did you tell them we had come?”

“No! They were sure to let me know it was none of my business, and, as I was fully aware of the fact, I just drove on by, hoping to be of more service to you in this way.”

The girls and Bobby piled into the car assisted by the boy, who handed them in with pleasing gallantry. By adroit manœuvering he managed to get Nan in front, although the irrepressible did squeeze in, too.

“I must sit in front so I can poke out my arm. Maybe you is huntin’ a shover. I’m Dr. Wright’s shover in town an’ up’n the mountings. He don’t mind my having two jobs in off times when he ain’t a-needin’ me.”

“Well, then, I’ll employ you right now,” said Billy Sutton, solemnly.

“I think maybe it is in order for us to introduce ourselves,” said Douglas. “This is Helen Carter; and this, Nan; and this, Lucy; I am Douglas; and Bobby has already been noticed enough.”

Hands were shaken and then they started gaily off.

“It seems a long quarter of a mile from the station to the farm, but maybe it is because I am lazy,” said Nan, who was unfeignedly glad of a lift.

“Who said it was only a quarter of a mile? It is exactly three quarters.”

Two minutes brought them to the farm gate, where Billy deposited the occupants of the back seat. It was decided that Nan and Bobby were to go on to the station with their new friend and benefactor and explain him to Mr. and Mrs. Carter.

“Oh, Douglas, isn’t the place sweet? Lucy, don’t you like it?” asked Helen as they opened the big gate that led from the road into the lawn of their new abode.

“Great! It looks so romantical.”

“I was so afraid it wasn’t going to be as nice as we thought it was because the real estate agent was so glib and rattled on so he confused us. I was afraid he had hypnotized us into liking it. But it is lovely,” and Douglas breathed a great sigh of relief.

Indeed it was lovely; lovelier, I fancy, than the real estate agent dreamed. The lawn was spacious, with soft rolling contours and a few great trees, some of them centuries old. In the front a mighty oak stood guard at one corner and an elm at another. Nearer the house a straight young ash and a willow oak divided the honors. At one side of the quaint old house a great mock orange had established a precedent for mock oranges and grown into a tree, just to show what a mock orange is capable of when not confined to the limitations of a hedge. Its trunk was gnarled and twisted and because of careful pruning of lower branches it had grown like a huge umbrella with limbs curving out from the parent stem and almost touching the ground all around.

“What a grand place to play house and tell secrets!” thought Lucy, regretting that thirteen years old, almost fourteen, was too great an age to indulge in dolly tea parties.

A grove of gum trees glorified the back yard with their brilliant October foliage. There never was such a red as the gum tree boasts and these huge specimens were one blaze of color. The trunks had taken on a hoary tone that contrasted pleasantly with the warm tints of the leaves.

The yard contained about four acres enclosed by a fence that had been covered entirely by honeysuckle, and even then a few blossoms were making the air fragrant. In the back there were several rather tumble-down outhouses, but these, too, were covered with honeysuckle as though by a mantle of charity.

The house had been added to from time to time as the race of overseers had felt the need. These additions had been made with no thought of congruity or ornamentation, but since utility had been the ruling thought the outcome was on the whole rather artistic. The original house, built in the first years of the nineteenth century, had a basement dining-room, a large chamber over this and two small, low-ceilinged attic rooms. Later a shed room had been built at one side in the back, then a two-story addition had reared itself next to that with no apparent connection with the main house, not even a family resemblance. This two-storied “lean-to” was known always as “the new house,” although it had been in existence some threescore years. There were two rooms and two halls in this addition and it had a front porch all its own. The old house also boasted a front porch, with a floor of unplaned boards and posts of rough cedar. But who minds cedar pillars when Washington’s bower has done its best to cover them up? As for unplaned boards with cracks between: what a good place to sweep the dirt!

The green blinds were open all over the house and windows were raised. As our girls stood on the lawn drinking in the beauty and peace of the scene they heard loud and angry voices proceeding from the basement window.

“Louise Grant, you are certainly foolish! Didn’t I tell you they wouldn’t be coming down here yesterday? Here you have littered up this place with flowers and they will all be faded by tomorrow. I have told you a million times I read the letter that Douglas Carter wrote and she said distinctly she was coming on Thursday.” This in a loud, high, commanding tone as though the speaker was determined to be heard. “You needn’t put your hands over your ears! I know you can hear me!”

“That’s all right, Ella Grant,” came in full contralto notes; “just because they didn’t come yesterday is no sign they did not say they were coming that day. I read the note, too, and if you hadn’t have been so quick to burn it I guess I could prove it. Those flowers are not doing anybody any harm and I know one thing – they smell a sight better than that old carbolic you are so fond of sprinkling around.”

“I thought I heard the three train stop at the crossing,” broke in the high, hard voice.

“No such thing! I noticed particularly.”

“Nonsense! You were so busy watching that Sutton boy racing by in his car that you didn’t even know it was train time. What John Sutton means by letting that boy drive that car I can’t see. He isn’t more than fourteen – ”

“Fourteen! Ella Grant, you have lost your senses! He is twenty, if he is a day. I remember perfectly well that he was born during the Spanish war.”

“Certainly! That was just fourteen years ago.”

The girls couldn’t help laughing. It happened that it was eighteen years since the Spanish war, as our history scholar, Lucy, had just learned. That seemed to be the way the sisters hit the mark: one shooting far in front, one far behind.

“We had better knock,” whispered Helen, “or they will begin to break up the china soon.”

She accordingly beat a rat-tat on the open front door of the old house.

“Someone is knocking!” exclaimed the contralto.

“Not at all! It’s a woodpecker,” put in the treble.

One more application of Helen’s knuckles and treble was convinced.

“That time it was a knock,” she conceded.

There was a hurrying and scurrying, a sound of altercation on the stairs leading from the basement to the front hall.

“Why do you try to go first? You know perfectly well I can go faster than you can, and here you have started up the steps and I can’t get by. You fat – ”

“If you can go so much faster, why didn’t you start up the steps first?” panted the contralto.

“Don’t talk or you’ll never get up the steps! Save your wind for climbing.”

The bulky form of Miss Louise hove in sight and over her shoulder the girls could see the stern countenance of her long, slim sister. How could two such different looking persons be born of one mother? Miss Louise was all breadth and no height; Miss Ella, all height and no breadth. Miss Louise was dark of complexion, with coal-black hair streaked with grey; Miss Ella was a strawberry blonde with sandy hair streaked with grey. Age that brought the grey hair seemed about the only thing they had in common, except, of course, the estate of Grantly. That had been willed to them by their father with a grim humor, as he must have been well aware of their idiosyncrasies. They were to hold the property together with no division, the one who survived to inherit the whole.

“Well!” said Miss Ella over the shoulder of her sister, who refused to give her right of way but who was silenced for the moment by shortness of breath. “Why did you come today when you wrote you were coming to-morrow?”

“I did not write I was coming tomorrow,” said Douglas, smiling in spite of herself.

“There! What did I tell you?” panted Miss Louise. “You said Tuesday, didn’t you, honey?” with ingratiating sweetness.

“No, Miss Grant, I said Wednesday.”

The incident was closed. The wrangling sisters had no more to say on the subject except to apologize for not having them met. It was explained that Billy Sutton had gone to get Mr. and Mrs. Carter, but the trunks must be sent for. Quite humbly Miss Ella went to get her farmhand to hitch up the mules to drive to the station, while Miss Louise showed the girls over the house.

Everything was in beautiful order and shining with cleanliness. The white pine floors were scrubbed until they reminded the girls of biscuit boards, and very lovely did the bright rag rugs look on these floors. The furniture was very plain with the exception of an occasional bit of fine old mahogany. A beautiful old highboy was not too proud to stay in the same room with a cheap oak dresser, and in the basement dining-room a handsome mahogany table democratically mingled with split-bottom chairs.

Miss Louise had put flowers everywhere for their reception the day before and the whole house was redolent of late roses and mignonette and citronella. An occasional whiff of carbolic acid and chloride of lime gave evidence of the indomitable practicality of Miss Ella.

Miss Louise proved very sweet and kindly when not in her sister’s presence and later on the girls found Miss Ella to be really very agreeable. Both ladies seemed to be bent on showing kindness and consideration to their tenants to make up for the mistake about their day of arrival.

Mr. and Mrs. Carter could not help thinking that the place their daughters had chosen for them to spend the winter was pretty. As they rolled up in Billy’s car the quaint house and beautiful lawn certainly presented a most pleasing aspect, and their handsome daughters were an added loveliness to the landscape as they hurried to meet their parents.

“Ah, this is great!” exclaimed Mr. Carter, taking a deep breath of the pure fresh air. “I think I shall have to have a cow and some pigs and do some fall plowing besides. Eh, Helen? You and I are to be the stay-at-homes. What do you think?”

“I think what you think, Daddy,” answered Helen, smiling happily over her father’s show of enthusiasm. Dr. Wright had told her that with returning healthy nerves would come the enthusiasm that before his illness had seemed to be part of Robert Carter’s make-up.

“How do you like it, Mumsy?” asked Douglas as she drew her arm through her mother’s.

“Very nice, I am sure, but I think it would be wiser for me to go to bed now. I am not very strong and if I can give up before I drop it would be less trouble for my family,” and Mrs. Carter took on a most plaintive accent. “A little tea and toast will be all I want for my supper.”

“Oh now, it will be too bad for you to go to bed,” said Miss Ella. “We were planning to have all of you come up to Grantly for supper.”

She and Miss Louise seemed to have agreed for once on the propriety of having their tenants to supper.

“The count is coming,” said Miss Louise, with a sentimental note in her full voice.

“The count! Who is the count?” asked Mrs. Carter with some show of animation and interest.

“He is a nobleman who has settled in our neighborhood,” said Miss Ella in a matter-of-fact tone, as though noblemen were the rule rather than the exception in her life.

“Maybe it would be possible for me to take a short rest and come to Grantly,” said Mrs. Carter, with a quickening in her pretty eyes.

At mention of the count, Billy Sutton pretended to be much occupied with his engine, but Nan noticed a slight curl on his lip as he bent over the wheel.