The next week was a very quiet and peaceful one at Chatsworth. There had
been so many excitements, with burglars and negro uprisings and what
not, that Molly was afraid her visitors would think Kentucky deserved
the meaning the Indians attached to it--"the dark and bloody
battle-ground."
Ernest, home for a vacation from his labors in the West, endeavored to
keep Judy from missing the attentions of Kent, who was back at his grind
in Louisville in the architect's office, and did not get home each day
until time for a late supper. Judy liked Ernest very well, as she did
all of the Browns, but Kent and Molly were her favorites still, and the
evenings were the best of all when Kent came home and, as he put it,
"relieved Ernest."
Molly found herself on easier terms with Professor Green than she had
ever imagined possible. If he did not consider her quite an old lady,
she at least was beginning to look upon him as not such a very old
gentleman. He played what Kent designated as a "cracker-jack" game of
tennis, and turned out to be as good a horseman as the Brown boys
themselves.
"If he only had a little more hair on his forehead," thought Molly, "he
would look right young."
Aunt Mary was the unconscious means of consoling her for his lack of
hair. "Honey, I likes yo' teacher mo'n any Yankee I ever seed. He'd
oughter rub onions on his haid to stimilate the roots. Not but what he
ain't han'some, baldish haid an' all, with them hones' eyes an' that
upstandin' look. I done took notice that brains don' make the best sile
to grow ha'r on an' lots er smart folks is baldish. Mindjer, I wouldn'
go so fer as to say bald haided folks is all smart. It looks like some
er them is so hard-haided the ha'r can't break th'ough the scalp."
Of course, the first day at Chatsworth he had to be taken out to view
his possessions, the two acres of orchard land. It was a possession for
any man to be proud of. It lay on the side of a gently sloping hill
covered with blue grass and noble, venerable, twisted apple trees, that
Molly said reminded her of fine old hands that showed hard, useful work.
"And these trees always have done good work. You know my father called
these his lucky acres. He was always certain of an income from these
apples. The trees have been taken care of and trimmed and not allowed to
rot away as some of the old orchards around here have, Aunt Clay's, for
instance. She is so afraid of doing something modern that she refused to
spray her trees when the country was full of San Jose scale, and in
consequence lost her whole peach orchard and most of her apples. This is
where our 'castle' used to be."
They were in a grassy space near the middle of the orchard, where a
stump of an old tree was still standing. The land, showing a beautiful
soft contour, sloped to the worm fence at the foot of the hill, where
the grass changed its green to a brighter hue and a beautiful little
stream sparkled in the sun.
"All of us, even Sue, who is not given to such things, cried when in a
big wind storm our beloved castle was twisted off of its roots. It was a
tree made for children to play in, with low spreading branches and great
crotches, the limbs all twisted and bent and one of them curving down so
low you could sit in it and touch your feet to the ground. We had our
regular apartments in that tree and kept our treasures in a hole too
high up for thieves to have any suspicion of it. It was so shady and
cool and breezy that on the hottest day we were comfortable and often
had lunch here. We played every kind of game known to children and made
up a lot more. 'Swiss Family Robinson' when they went to live up the
tree was our best game. I remember once Kent gathered a lot of
peach-tree gum and ruined my slippers trying to make rubber boots out of
them as the father in Swiss Family Robinson did. Our castle had
wonderful apples on it, too. They grew to an enormous size, and if any
of them were ever allowed to get really ripe they turned pure gold and
tasted--oh, how good they did taste."
Edwin Green listened, enchanted at Molly's description of her childhood
and the beloved play-house. He half shut his eyes and tried to picture
her as a little girl in a blue sun-bonnet--of course she must have had a
blue bonnet--climbing nimbly up the old apple tree, entering as eagerly
into the game of Swiss Family Robinson as she was now playing the game
of life, even letting her best little slippers be gummed over to play
the game true. He had a feeling of almost bitter regret that he hadn't
known Molly as a little girl. "She must have been such a bully little
girl," thought that highly educated teacher of English.
"Miss Molly, do you think that this would be the best place to build my
bungalow? Place it right here where your castle stood? Maybe I could
catch some of the breezes that you used to enjoy; and perhaps some of
the happiness that you found here was spilled over and I might pick it
up. It could not be so beautiful as your tree castle, but it is my
'Castle in the Air.' If I put it here I should not have to sacrifice any
of the other trees; there is room enough where your old friend stood for
my modest wants. Would it hurt your feelings to have me build a little
house where your childish mansion stood?"
"Why, Professor Green, the idea of such a thing! It would give me the
greatest happiness to have your bungalow right on this site. I would not
be a dog in the manger about it, anyhow. Are you really and truly going
to build?"
"I hope to. Of course, I shall have to ask your mother if she would mind
having such a close neighbor."
"Well, I hardly think mother would expect to sell a lot and then not let
the purchaser build. She may have to sell some more of the place. I wish
it could be that old stony strip over by Aunt Clay's. You know our home,
Chatsworth, is a Brown inheritance, and the Carmichael place adjoining
belonged to mother's people. They call it the Clay place now, but until
grandfather died it was known as the Carmichael place. Aunt Clay married
and lived there and somehow got hold of grandfather and made him appoint
her administratrix and executrix to his estate. She managed things so
well for herself that she got the house with everything in it and the
improved, cleared land, giving mother acres and acres of poor land where
even blackberries don't flourish and the cows won't graze. The sheep
won't drink the water, but they do condescend to keep down the weeds. I
really believe that Aunt Clay is the only person in the world that I
can't like even a little bit. I fancy it is because she has been so mean
to mother. I believe I could get over her being cross and critical with
me, but somehow I can't forgive the way she has always treated mother."
"I found her a very trying companion at your sister's wedding, and she
looks as though she had brains, too. But how anyone with sense could be
anything but kind to your mother I cannot see."
Molly beamed with pleasure. "Ah, you see how wonderful mother is. I
thought you would appreciate her. She likes you, too, Professor Green.
Mother says she believes she understands boys better than girls and can
enter into their feelings more."
"Oh, what am I saying?" thought Molly. "I wonder what the Wellington
girls would say if they could know I forgot and as good as called their
Professor of English a boy! Well, he does look quite boyish out of
doors, with his hat on."
They strolled on down toward the brook, Molly patting each tree as they
passed and telling some little incident of her childhood.
"I truly believe you love every one of these trees. You touch them as
lovingly as you do President or the dogs, and look at them as fondly as
you do at old Aunt Mary."
"Indeed, I do; and, as for this little stream, it makes to me the
sweetest music in the world."
"Miss Molly, when I build my little bungalow, will you come and have
lunch with me as you used to with your brothers in the old castle? I'll
promise you not to let you eat at the second table as you did when you
took breakfast with me last Christmas."
They both laughed at the thought of that morning; and Molly remembered
that it was then that she had overheard Professor Green tell his
housekeeper of his apple orchard out in Kentucky, and had realized for
the first time that it was he who had bought the orchard at Chatsworth.
"Indeed, I will take lunch with you, and would like to cook it, too, as
I did your breakfast that cold morning. Do you know, when you came
downstairs and I peeped at you through the crack in the pantry door, you
looked and sounded almost as fierce as the mob of colored men who came
hungry from Aunt Clay's last week? The nice breakfast I fixed for you
seemed to soften your temper just as mother's buttermilk did the
darkies'. Aunt Mary says, 'White men and black men is all the same on
the inside, and all of them is Hungarians.'"
Edwin Green laughed, as he always did when Molly got on the subject of
Aunt Mary. The old woman was a never failing source of wonder and
amusement to him; and Molly mimicked her so well that you could almost
see her short, fat figure with her head tied up in a bandanna
handkerchief, vigorously nodding to punctuate each epigram.
"Next winter I hope to have my sister with me at Wellington, and she
will see that this 'Hungarian' is fed better than my housekeeper has.
You will come to us a great deal, I hope. I am overjoyed that you are to
take the postgraduate course. That was the one pleasant thing your aunt,
Mrs. Clay, had to tell me when I conversed with her at the wedding, and
she little dreamed how pleasant it was, or I doubt her giving me that
joy."
"I am truly glad. I hated to give up right now. It seemed to me as
though I could see the open door of culture but had not reached it, and
had a lot of things to learn before I had any right to consider myself
fit to pass through it. Mother and Kent together decided it must be
managed for me. They are both bricks, anyhow."
The young people had come to the little purling brook during this
conversation, and at Molly's instigation had turned down the stream and
entered, through a break in the worm fence, a beautiful bit of woods.
The beech woods in Kentucky are, when all is told, about the most
beautiful woods in the world. No shade is so dense, no trees more noble,
not even oaks. With the grace of an aspen and the dignity of an oak, the
beech to my mind is first among trees.
"Of all the beautiful pictures
That hang on Memory's wall,
Is one of a dim old forest
That seemeth the best of all.
"Not for the gnarled oaks olden,
Dark with the mistletoe,
Not for the violets golden
That sprinkle the vale below.
"Not for the milk-white lilies
Leaning o'er the hedge,
Coquetting all day with the sunbeams
And stealing their golden edge."
Molly quoted the verses in her soft, clear voice, adding:
"I say 'gnarled oaks olden' for euphony, but I always think 'beech.' I
don't know what Miss Alice or Phoebe Gary, whichever one it was who wrote
those lovely verses, would think of my taking such a liberty, even in my
mind."
"No doubt if Miss Alice or Phoebe Cary could have seen this wood, she
would have searched about in her mind for a line to fit beeches and let
oaks go hang. This is really a wonderful spot. Can't we sit down a
while? I hope your mother will let me have right of way through these
woods when I build my nest in the orchard. This makes my lot more
valuable than I thought. I have never seen such beech trees; why, in the
East a beech is not such a wonderful tree! We have an occasional big
one, but here are acres and acres of genuine first growth. You must love
it here even more than in the orchard, don't you?"
"Well, you see the orchard period is what might be known as my early
manner; while the beech woods is my romantic era. I used to come here
after I got old enough to roam around by myself, and a certain mystery
and gloom I felt in the air would so fill my soul with rapture that (I
know you think this is silly) I would sit right where we are sitting now
and cry and cry just for the pure joy of having tears to shed, I
suppose! I know of no other reason."
Professor Green smiled, but his eyes had a mist in them as he looked at
the young girl, little more than a child now, with her sweet, wistful
expression, already looking back on her childhood as a thing of the past
and her "romantic era" as though she had finished with it.
"Oh, Miss Molly, let's stay in the 'beech wood period' forever! None of
us can afford to give up romance or the dear delight of tears for tears'
sake. I love to think of you as a little child playing in the apple
orchard, and as a beautiful girl wandering in the woods. But do you
know, a still more beautiful picture comes to my inward eye, and that is
an old Molly with white hair sitting where you are now, still in the
'romantic era,' still in the beech woods; and, God willing, I'll be
beside you, only," he whimsically added, "I am afraid I'll be
bald-headed instead of white-haired!"