The following Saturday had been set as the first day for the girls to
meet at Woodhow. Lucy was the first to arrive, as she lived nearest, and
she brought with her Anne and Charlotte.
Hedda and the two girls from the old Ames place, Ingeborg and Astrid,
arrived together and helped Kit and Doris plan the tennis court. Below
the terraces the lawn lay smooth and even out to the south wall, but it
had been decided to sacrifice a slice of the hay field across the road
rather than the garden, and Matt had ploughed up a good-sized oblong of
land for them, harrowed it smooth, and then the girls had pondered over
the problem of rolling it. It must be rolled flat, wet down, and rolled
again until it was fit to use.
“We could fill a barrel with sand, and roll that,” Doris suggested.
“Got something better than that,” Buzzy said. “Over at Mr. Peckham’s
they’ve got a road roller. Mr. Peckham’s the road committee in Elmhurst
township—”
Kit caught him up. “The whole committee, Buzzy?”
“Ain’t he enough? Ought to see him get out and clean up with those boys
of his. He’ll let us take it, I’m sure, and it will roll that court down
as smooth as can be. I’ll go after it this afternoon when I finish with
the potato patch.”
The house being too far away from the site of the tennis court, the
girls had to fill buckets with water from the brook and pour them over
the harrowed ground. It was hard work in the hot sun. “I’m half dead,”
exclaimed Doris.
“Cheer up, kid,” Kit told her briskly. “Think of the result and what fun
it’ll be to play out here.”
Lucy stood back and looked at their work. “What else are you going to do
up here?” she asked.
“Next we’re going to start weekly hikes,” Kit told her. “You girls have
lived here for years, haven’t you—”
“We just came up a while ago,” Ingeborg corrected.
“I know, and so did Hedda, but Etoile and Tony and Lucy and the rest of
you all grew up right here, didn’t you? Well, then. What do you know
about the country for ten miles around?” Kit paused dramatically. “Do
you know every wood road and cow path through the woods? Where does
Little River rise? Have any of you followed the rock ledge up into the
hills?”
“Nobody but the hunters go there, and they don’t come till fall,” said
Hedda gravely. She hardly ever smiled, this transplanted little daughter
of far-off Iceland. Her manner and expression always seemed to the girls
to hold a certain aloofness. Up at her home, later on, they saw a finely
carved model of a Viking ship which her father had made back in the home
island, and Jean declared after that she always pictured Hedda standing
at its high prow, facing the gale of the northern seas, her fair hair
blowing behind her like a golden pennant, her blue eyes fearless and
eager.
“But we’ll go. We’ll pack a picnic lunch. Hey, kids, are there any
snakes up here?”
“Lots,” said Lucy. “But mostly black snakes. They’re ugly to look at,
but they don’t hurt you. And little garter snakes, and green grass
snakes. I never think about them.”
“Are you afraid of anything out here, Lucy?” Doris asked interestedly.
She had eyed Lucy admiringly from the first moment of their
acquaintance, and privately Doris held many fears. It was all very well
to say there wasn’t anything to worry over, as Kit did, but one may step
on toads in the dark, or hear noises in the attic that make one shiver
even if they turn out to be just chipmunks after corn and nuts.
“Nothing that I know of,” Lucy replied serenely. “I never felt afraid in
the dark. Just as soon go all over the house, upstairs and down, and
when I go down into the cellar, I yell ‘look out, rats, here I come!’
Guess the only thing I’m really afraid of is a bat.”
“Everybody’s afraid of something,” Etoile said, her eyes wide with
mystery. “I have the fear too, oh, but often. I am most afraid of those
little mulberry worms, you know them? They come right down at you on
little ropes they make all by themselves, and they curl up in the air
and then they drop on you. Ugh!”
Kit rolled over on the grass in delight at this. “That’s a riot,” she
laughed. “Tell some more, Etoile.”
“We’ve got a haunted house on our road,” Astrid said in a lowered voice.
“The little spring house between the old mill and our place. It’s been
there years and years, my father says. He knows the old man at the mill,
and he told him. As far back as they can remember it has always been
haunted. First there lived an old watchmaker there. He had clocks and
watches all over the house, and they ticked all the time.”
“Maybe they kept him from being lonely,” Doris suggested.
“He was very strange, and when he died, then two old Indian women came
to live there. And there was a peddler used to go through and put up
overnight there, and he never was seen any more.”
“You can see the grave in the cellar where they buried him,” Ingeborg
whispered. “Right down at the foot of the stairs. And at night he comes
up and goes all around the house, rattling chains. Yes, he does. My
brother went down with some of the boys and stayed there just to find
out and they heard him.”
“Let’s go over there on our hike and stay overnight, kids,” Kit
exclaimed. “I think it would be swell.”
“Don’t you believe in ghosts, Kit?” asked Lucy. “I don’t like to believe
in them, but I just thought they had to be believed in if they’re really
so.”
“No, I don’t. We’ll stay overnight at the spring house, kids. It’s a
shame to have a real ghost around and not make it welcome. If there are
any ghosts, which I doubt, they must be the lonesomest creatures in all
creation because nobody wants them around. Suppose we say that next
Friday we’ll walk up to the house and camp out for the night. Who’s
afraid?”
The girls looked at each other doubtfully.
“Can I bring our dog along?” asked Ingeborg. “Then I’m not afraid, I
don’t think.”
“Bring anything you like. I’m going to take a flashlight. Here comes our
roller, now. We’d better finish the tennis court.”
Rebecca told the story of the old spring house when they saw her. She
could remember Scotty McDougal, the old watchmaker who had lived there.
“Land, yes, I should say I could. He used to wear an old coonskin cap
with the tail hanging down, and carried an old gun along with him
wherever he went. After he died, two old women moved in from somewhere
in the woods toward Dayville. They were Indian, I guess, or gypsy, real
good-hearted people so far as I could see. Used to weave carpet and rag
rugs and make baskets. There was a story around that they could tell
fortunes and see things in the future, but that’s just talk. I never pay
any attention to such things at all. Probably, if you could clear the
house of its name, somebody’d be willing to live in it. It belongs to
Judge Ellis.”
“Who’s Judge Ellis?” asked Kit, who always caught at a new name.
“Who’s he?” Becky laughed heartily. “Meanest man in seven counties, I
guess. He ran for Senator years ago and was beaten, and he took a solemn
oath he’d never have anything to do with anybody in this township again,
and I guess he’s kept it. He lives in the biggest house here.”
“All alone?” asked Tommy.
“All alone excepting for a housekeeper and his grandson. He’s just a
fussy old miser, and the way he lets that boy run wild makes my heart
ache.”
“How old a boy is he, Becky?” asked Mrs. Craig, feeling sympathetic at
once.
“Oh, I should say about fifteen. Name’s Billie. He’s a case, I tell you.
What he can’t think of in five minutes isn’t worth doing. Still, he’s a
good boy, too, at that. Five of my cows strayed off from the pasture lot
last summer, and he found them after Matt had run his legs off looking
for them. And once we lost some turkeys, and he found them over in the
pines roosting with the crows. He knows every foot of land for ten miles
around here and more, I guess. You never know when he’s going to bob out
of the bushes and grin at you. The Judge don’t pay any more attention to
him than if he was a scarecrow. Seems that he had one son, Finley Ellis,
and he was that wild the Judge turned him off years ago. And one day he
got a letter, so Mr. Ricketts told me, from New York, and away he went,
looking cross enough to chew tacks. When he came back he had Billie with
him, and that’s all Elmhurst ever found out. Billie says he’s his
grandfather, and the Judge says nothing.”
“I’d like to see him,” Jean exclaimed.
“Who? The Judge?”
“No, no. Billie, this boy. What does he look like?”
“Looks like all-get-out half the time, and never comes to church at all.
You’ll know him by his whistling. He can whistle like a bird. I’ve heard
him sometimes in the early spring, and you couldn’t tell his whistle
from a real whippoorwill. There is something about him that everybody
likes.”
“I hope he comes over this way,” Mrs. Craig said.
“Oh, he will. The Judge never lets him have any pocket money, so he’s
always trying to earn a little. He’ll come and try to sell you a tame
crow, most likely, or a trained caterpillar. I was driving over toward
their place one day and I declare if I didn’t find him lying flat in the
middle of the road. Ella Lou barked and I asked him what he was doing.
‘Don’t drive in the middle of the road, Miss Craig,’ he said, ‘’cause
I’ve got some ants here, taming them!’ Real good-looking boy he is too.”
“Gee, but he sounds like fun,” Kit remarked fervently. “I almost feel
like hunting him up, don’t you, Jean?”
Jean nodded her head. She was putting up currants and raspberries, and
the day was very warm.
“Why do you keep a fire going in the house?” Miss Craig asked her. “Put
an old wood stove out in the back yard, the way I do, and let it sizzle
along. Goodbye, everybody.”
“Come down and play tennis with us,” called Doris.
“Go ’long, child.” Becky chuckled. “How would I look hopping around,
slapping at those little balls! Come on, Ella Lou.”
“Golly,” Kit exclaimed as the car drove away, “it seems as if every
single day something new happens here, and we thought it would be so
dull we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves.”
“You mean Billie’s something new?” asked Doris.
“Doesn’t he sound interesting? I’m going out to ask Buzzy about him.”
“You’d better help me finish these berries, Kathleen,” Jean urged. So
Kit gave up the quest temporarily and sat on the edge of the kitchen
table, stripping currants from their stems, and singing at the top of
her lungs.
“Oh, Kit, do stop,” begged Jean. “It’s too hot to sing.”
Kit looked out at the widespread view of Woodhow, rich with uncut grass
billowing with every vagrant breeze like distant waves. It was hot in
the kitchen, hot and close. Suddenly Kit fled out the back door and over
to the pasture where Princess rambled.
“Kit’s fretful, isn’t she?”
“She thinks she’s getting into a rut,” answered Jean. “We all do. Some
days I get so homesick for the kids back home and everything that we
haven’t got here—the library and the art museum and the movies and the
symphony concerts. I think we ought to write down and ask some of the
girls to come up.”
“I don’t. Not until Dad’s well.”
Tommy was out of hearing. Jean looked over at Doris, who in some ways
always seemed nearer her own age than Kit.
“Doris, honest and truly, do you think Dad’s getting any better?” she
asked in a low voice.
Doris hesitated, her face showing plainly how she dreaded acknowledging
even to herself the possibility of his not improving.
“He eats better now, and he can sit up.”
“But he looks awful. I get goose pimples when I look at him sometimes.
His eyes look as if they were gazing away off at some land we couldn’t
see.”
“Jean Craig, how can you say that?”
“Hush, don’t let Mother hear,” cautioned Jean anxiously. “I had to tell
somebody. I think of it all the time.”
“Well, don’t think of it. That’s like sticking pins in a wax statue back
in the Middle Ages, and saying, ‘He’s going to die, he’s going to die,’
all the time. He’s getting better.”
Jean was silent. She felt worried, but if Doris refused to listen to
her, there was nobody left except Becky. Somehow, at every emergency
Becky seemed to be the one hope these days, unfailing and unfearing.
Dauntless and cheerful, she rode over every obstacle.
But when Jean found an opportunity of speaking to her of her father,
Rebecca’s face looked oddly passive.
“We’re all in the Lord’s hands, Jeannie,” she said. “Trust and obey, you
know. There are lots worse things than passing over Jordan, but we’ve
just got that notion in our heads that we don’t want to let any of our
beloved ones take the voyage. Tom’s weak, I know, and he ain’t mending
so fast as I’d hoped for, but he’s gained. That’s something. You’ve been
up here only a couple of months. It took longer than that to break him
down, and it may take years of peace and rest to build him up. Let’s be
patient. Dr. Gallup seems to think he’s got a good deal more than an
even chance.”