DOROTHY
AT SKYRIE
BY EVELYN RAYMOND
ILLUSTRATED
New York
THE PLATT & PECK CO.
[Illustration: "HOW MUCH AM I BID FOR THE BEAUTIFUL CALICO PONY?"]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. EARLY VISITORS 9
II. AN UNFORTUNATE AFFAIR 22
III. ON THE ROAD TO SOUTH MEADOW 41
IV. THE LEARNED BLACKSMITH 56
V. AN ACCIDENT AND AN APPARITION 69
VI. MORE PECULIAR VISITORS 85
VII. AT THE OFFICE OF A JUSTICE 96
VIII. A WALK AND ITS ENDING 112
IX. A LIVE STOCK SALE 127
X. AT MILKING-TIME 143
XI. HELPERS 158
XII. SETH WINTERS AND HIS FRIENDS 177
XIII. A BENEFICENT BEE 195
XIV. AN ASTONISHING QUESTION 210
XV. CONCERNING SEVERAL MATTERS 227
XVI. THE FATE OF DAISY-JEWEL 245
XVII. ON THE ROAD TO THE CIRCUS 259
XVIII. THAT SOUTH MEADOW 275
XIX. DOROTHY HAS ANOTHER SECRET 293
XX. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 308
DOROTHY AT SKYRIE
CHAPTER I
EARLY VISITORS
"Hello! How-de-do?"
This salutation was so sudden and unexpected that Dorothy Chester
jumped, and rising from the grass, where she had been searching for wild
strawberries, beheld a row of pink sunbonnets behind the great stone
wall.
Within the sunbonnets were three equally rosy faces, of varying sizes,
each smiling broadly and each full of a friendly curiosity. It was from
the biggest face that the voice had come, and Dorothy responded with a
courteous "Good-morning!" then waited for further advances. These came
promptly.
"I'm Alfaretta Babcock; this one's Baretta Babcock; and this other one,
she's Claretta Babcock. The baby that's to home and can't walk
yet--only just creep--she's Diaretta Babcock."
Dorothy laughed. The alphabetical names attached to these several
"Babcocks" sounded very funny and she couldn't help her amusement, even
if it were rude. However, no rudeness was suspected, and Alfaretta
laughed in return, then walked a few steps to the bar-way, with her
sisters following. These she hoisted upon the rails, and putting her
hands upon the topmost one vaulted over it with an ease that astonished
the city-bred Dorothy.
"Why! how well you did that! Like a regular gymnast!" she exclaimed,
admiringly, and observing that this was a girl of about her own age
though much larger and stronger in build, as the broad back now turned
toward her showed.
Alfaretta did not reply, except to bid the children on the other side of
the bars to "hop over," and when they were too timid to "hop" without
aid she seized their hands and pulled them across, letting them drop on
the long grass in a haphazard way that made Dorothy gasp and exclaim:
"Oh! you'll hurt them!"
Alfaretta faced about and keenly scrutinized Dorothy's face, demanding:
"You makin' fun, or not?"
"Fun? I don't see anything funny in such tumbles as those, and I surely
wasn't making fun of the way you sprang over that fence. I wish I was as
nimble."
"Pooh! That's nothing. I'm the best climber anywheres on the mounting. I
can beat any boy 'round, even if I do wear petticoats. I'll learn you if
you want me to," offered the visitor, generously.
"Thank you," said Dorothy, rather doubtfully. She did not yet know how
necessary climbing might be, in her new country life, but her
aspirations did not tend that way. Then thinking that this trio of
Babcocks might have come upon an errand to Mrs. Chester, she inquired:
"Did you want to see my mother?"
Alfaretta sat down on a convenient bowlder and her sisters did the same,
while she remarked:
"You may as well set, yourself, for we come to see you more'n anybody
else. Besides, you haven't got any mother. I know all about you."
"Indeed! How can that be, since I came to Skyrie only last night? And I
came out to find some wild strawberries for my father's breakfast--we
haven't had it yet."
If this was intended for a polite hint that it was too early in the day
for visiting it fell pointless, for Alfaretta answered, without the
slightest hesitation:
"We haven't, neither. We've come to spend the day. Ma she said she
thought you might be lonesome and 'twasn't no more'n neighborly to start
in to once. More'n that, she's glad to get us out the way, 'cause she's
going down mounting to the 'other village' to 'Liza Jane's
store--Claretta, stop suckin' your thumb! Dorothy Chester don't do that,
and ma said she'd put some more that picra on it if you don't quit--to
buy us some gingham for dresses. She heard 'Liza Jane had got in a lot
real cheap and she's going to get a web 'fore it's all picked over."
Tired of standing, Dorothy had also dropped down upon the bowlder and
now was regarding her uninvited guests with much of the same curiosity
they were bestowing upon her, and Alfaretta obligingly shoved her
smallest sister off the rock to make more room for their hostess.
"Don't do that! What makes you so rough with them? Besides, I must go.
Mother will need me and I don't see any berries," said Dorothy,
springing up. "Excuse me, please."
As she stooped to pick up the tin pail she had left on the grass,
Alfaretta snatched it from her grasp and was off down the slope, calling
back:
"Come on, then! I know where they're thicker 'n molasses in the winter
time!"
With their unvarying imitation of their elder sister the two little
girls likewise scampered away, and fearing she would lose mother
Martha's new "bucket" Dorothy followed also. Across a little hollow in
the field and up another rise Alfaretta led the way and there fulfilled
her promise, for the northern hillside was red with the fruit. With
little outcries of delight all of them went down upon their knees and
began to gather it; the younger ones greedily stuffing their mouths till
their faces were as red as the berries, but Alfaretta scrupulously
dropping all but a few extra-sized ones into the rapidly filling pail.
But she kept close to Dorothy and laughingly forced these finer ones
between her protesting lips, demanding once:
"Ever go berryin' before, Dorothy C.?"
"Not--this kind of 'berrying,'" answered the other, with a keen
recollection of the "berrying" she had done for the truck-farmer,
Miranda Stott. "But how happened you to call me that 'Dorothy C.' as
only my own people do? Who told you about me?"
"Why--everybody, I guess. Anyhow, I know all about you. See if I don't.
You was a 'foundling' on the Chesterses' doorstep and they brought you
up. You was kidnapped, and that there Barlow boy that Mis' Calvert's
brought to Deerhurst helped you to get away. Mis' Calvert, she saw you
in a lane, or somethin', and fetched you back to that Baltimore city
where the both of you lived. Then she brought you here, too, 'cause Mr.
Chester he's got something the matter with his legs and has had to come
to the mounting and live on Skyrie farm. If he makes a livin' off it
it'll be more'n anybody else ever done, ma says. The old man that owned
it 'fore he gave it to Mis' Chester, he was crazy as a loon. Believed
there was a gold mine, or somethin' like that, under the south
medder--'D you ever hear such a thing! Ma says all the gold'll ever be
dug out o' Skyrie is them rocks he put into his stone walls. The whole
farm was just clear rocks, ma says, and that's why the walls are four
five feet thick, some of 'em more. There wasn't no other place to put
'em and besides he wanted it that way. The whole of Skyrie farm is
bounded--Ever study jogaphy? Know how to bound the states? Course. I
s'pose you've been to school more'n I have: but I can bound Skyrie for
you all right. On the north by a stone wall, 'joining Judge Satterlee's
place: on the south by a stone wall right against Cat Hollow--that's
where I live, other side the mounting but real nigh, cut 'cross lots. On
the east--I guess that's Mis' Calvert's woods; an' west--Oh!
fiddlesticks--I don't know whose land that is, but it's kept off by more
stone wall an' the thickest of the lot. Where the stone wall had to be
left open for bar-ways, to drive through, he went to work and nailed up
the bars. That's why I had to hop over, 'stead of letting 'em down.
Say, our pail is filling real fast. Pity you hadn't a bigger one. After
we've et breakfast we can come and get a lot for Mis' Chester to
preserve. Ma she's done hers a'ready. Let's rest a minute."
Dorothy agreed. She was finding this new acquaintance most attractive,
despite the forwardness of her manner, for there was the jolliest of
smiles constantly breaking out on the round, freckled face, and the blue
eyes expressed a deal of admiration for this city girl, so unlike
herself in manner and appearance. Her tongue had proved fully as nimble
as her fingers, and now while she rested she began afresh:
"Ma says I could talk the legs off an iron pot, if I tried, and I guess
you're thinkin' so too. Never mind. Can't help it. Ain't it queer to be
adopted? There was a power of money, real, good money, offered for you,
wasn't there! My heart! Think of one girl bein' worth so much to
anybody! It was all in the papers, but ma says likely we never would
have noticed it, only Mis' Satterlee she showed it to ma, account of
Mis' Chester moving up here an' going nigh crazy over losin' you. Ma she
washes for the Satterlees, and they give us their old papers. Pa he
loves to read. Ma says he'd rather set an' read all day than do a stroke
to earn an honest livin'. Pa says if your folks had so many children as
he has and some of 'em got away he wouldn't offer no reward for 'em, he
wouldn't. But ma said: 'Now, pa, you hush! You'd cry your eyes out if
Diaretta fell into the rain-barrel, or anything!' We ain't all ma's
children. Four of 'em's named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They're
hired out to work, 'cause they're older 'n what I am, and three is dead.
Say, that's awful fine stuff your dress is made of. Do you wear that
kind all the time? and shoes, too?"
"Yes, this is an everyday frock that dear Mrs. Calvert had made for me
and gave me. She is my father's friend and is sorry for him, and does
things for me, I reckon, just to help him. Of course, I wear shoes--when
I have them!" laughed Dorothy, carefully refraining from looking at
Alfaretta's own bare feet.
"What you laughing at?" demanded that observant young person, already
joining in the mirth without knowing its cause.
"I was thinking how I was once allowed to buy a pair of shoes for myself
and picked them out so small they nearly crippled me. And I have been
barefooted, too, sometimes, when I was trying to escape from the
truck-farm;" and once started upon the subject, Dorothy did not hesitate
to complete the narrative of her adventures and, indeed, of all her
short, simple life, as already related by me in another book called,
"Dorothy Chester."--how she had been picked up on the doorstep by Mrs.
Chester and brought up as that lady's own child--how she had been
kidnapped and taken to the truck farm--how honest Jim Barlow had proved
her best friend--and how at last the rich Mrs. Calvert had restored her
to her foster parents at this picturesque if rather dilapidated home in
the Highlands of the Hudson.
Alfaretta was likewise confidential, and with each passing moment and
each fresh remembrance the liking between the two little maids
strengthened. Finally, with a trifle of gloom, the country girl
disclosed the fact:
"Pa he's the scolder to our house, but ma she's the licker. She says she
ain't going to spoil her children by sparing rods when our 'upper lot'
is full of 'em. The rods, I mean. She doesn't, neither. That's true as
preachin'."
"Why, Alfaretta! Are you ever whipped? A big girl like you?"
"Huh! I may be bigger 'n you but I ain't much older. When's your
birthday?"
"The second of April."
"My heart! If that don't beat the Dutch! Mine's the first. So we must be
next door to twins. But lickin's! You just come to Cat Hollow any
Saturday night, 'bout sundown, and you'll be in the nick of time to get
a whack yourself. Ma says she's real impartial, 'cause she takes us in
turn. One week she begins with me and the next time with Claretta.
Diaretta ain't old enough yet to fall into line, and the boys were let
off soon as they went to work and fetched in money. Ma says all of us
need a lickin' once a week, anyhow, and she don't have time to bother
with it only Saturday nights, after we all get washed. When do you get
licked, yourself, Dorothy C.?"
"When? Never! Never in my whole life has anybody struck me. I--I
wouldn't bear it--I couldn't!" cried Dorothy, indignantly. "But I
mustn't stop here any longer. We've more than enough berries for
breakfast and I'm so hungry. Besides, we're out of sight of the house
and my father John will worry. He said last night, when he had me in his
arms again after so long and so much happening, that he meant to keep me
right beside him for the rest of his life. Of course, he didn't mean
that exactly, and he was asleep when I came out. I waked up so early,
with all the birds singing round, and oh! I think this wonderful old
mountain is almost too beautiful to be true! Seems as if I'd come to
fairyland, sure enough! I'm going now."
Dorothy said this with a faint hope that her visitors might depart
without taxing Mrs. Chester to provide them a meal. She knew that no
food was ever wasted in mother Martha's frugal household and but
sufficient for three ever prepared, unless there was due warning of more
to partake. Twice three would halve the rations and--at that moment,
with appetite sharpened by early rising and the cool mountain air--the
young hostess felt as if she could not endure the halving process.
However, her hope proved useless, for with a shout and bound, Baretta
started for the cottage and Claretta kept her a close second, both
crying loudly:
"I'm hungry, too! I'm hungry, too!"
Alfaretta was off with a rush, carrying the pail of berries and bursting
in upon the astonished Mrs. Chester, with the announcement:
"We've come to spend the day! We're Mis' Babcock's children. See all the
berries I've picked you? Is breakfast ready? 'Cause we are if it ain't!"
"Where--is--Dorothy C.?" questioned the housemistress, recognizing the
extended pail as her own, wondering how it had come into this girl's
hands, and failing to see any sign of her daughter, no matter how
closely she peered outward.
"Why, sakes alive! Where is she?" echoed Alfaretta, with great surprise,
also searching the landscape. "A minute ago she was tagging me, close,
and now she isn't! My heart! What if she's gone and got herself
kidnapped again!"