A Strange Woman
In real panic, Arden and Sim wheeled about, dropping some of the branches
they had treasured. Fairly glaring at them from the small stone building
was Viney Tucker. She wore a heavy black cloak and had on a black bonnet
from the edges of which had escaped several wisps of straggling gray
hair. What a startling picture she presented!
“What do you want here?” she asked again.
“Oh, how do you do!” greeted Sim, though the words were rather shaky. She
had heard about the queer cousin from the other girls and felt she knew
Viney well enough not to be afraid of her.
“I’m as well as I ever expect to be,” was the somewhat ungracious answer,
and she gave the old bonnet a vicious tug.
“We thought you were away,” Arden told her kindly.
“Who told you that?” she snapped.
“Dick.”
“Hum! Young folks know too much nowadays. It was different in my time.
Then children were seen and not heard!”
“Do you—do you object to us taking some of this mistletoe?” asked Arden.
“Mistletoe! That isn’t mistletoe, though lots of folks think it is. No, I
can’t say I object. This place isn’t anybody’s now. Do as you like. Turn
out the rightful owners!” Her voice was vindictive.
“We aren’t turning anyone out.” Sim tried to make her voice very gentle.
Really she felt sorry for the old lady, who did not seem to have the
resigned spirit of Granny Howe.
“Well, the state is doing it, and you’re part of the state, aren’t you? I
am, so you must be.”
“Yes, I suppose we can call ourselves citizens of the state,” admitted
Arden.
“Well, the state is turning me and my cousin out of our property. Making
a park of it for folks to ride horses in and birds to feed in. Bah! Don’t
talk to me! The state! I’d state ’em if I had my way!”
“Please don’t blame us,” urged Sim. “We really would love to help you and
Granny Howe get money for this place and perhaps——”
“Ahem!” coughed Arden loudly.
“Better get back home where you belong, not out here catching cold!”
snapped Viney Tucker. “Terrible weather! I hate snow!”
“I guess she hates everything and everybody,” thought Arden.
The strange old woman stood in the open doorway of the old stone
building. From the footprints in the snow the girls could easily guess
that she had recently entered it. Also it was plain that she had come
from over a distant hill and not from Granny Howe’s cottage, which
nestled in a little hollow about a quarter of a mile back of the old
Hall.
“Then you don’t mind if we take some of this mistletoe?” asked Sim, after
a pause.
“No! Why should I? You can settle with the _state_,” and she laughed
scornfully. “It doesn’t belong to my folks any more. Only don’t call it
_mistletoe_.”
“What is it?” asked Sim.
“How should I know? I’m not a botanist or a bird-sanctuary teacher.”
Really Viney Tucker must have arisen from the wrong side of her bed that
morning, Sim reflected. She surely was cross.
“So you didn’t go away?” asked Arden, wondering what the next move would
be.
“Yes, I did. Went to stay with Sairy Pendleton. But she and I never could
get along, so I came back. I came out here to the old smokehouse to get
away from everybody. Folks get on my nerves—more than often! This old
smokehouse sort of sets me up—better than the perfume you girls use.
Bah!”
Sim and Arden were aware of a distinctly smoky odor floating out to them
above the head of Viney Tucker. They were aware, now, of the use to which
the small stone building had formerly been put. In the old days hams and
bacon were cured there over a fire of hickory branches and corncobs, and
that smoky smell always remained. It was a curious whim of the old lady
to come there for solitude; surely lonely and uncanny.
“Well, if you’ve got all that wrongly called mistletoe you want,” Viney
Tucker suggested after rather an awkward pause, “you might as well take
yourselves back home so you won’t catch cold.”
“Won’t you catch cold, staying out in this bleak place?” asked Sim.
“No. I never catch cold. It’s only this soft new generation that catches
colds. Silly of ’em. Good-bye!”
She popped back into the smokehouse and closed the door.
Sim and Arden stood there, looking at each other in astonishment.
“Come on,” Sim whispered after a pause. “We have enough—mistletoe and
smokehouses.”
“Yes,” Arden agreed. “Let’s go.”
“And enough of such a strange woman,” added Sim as they walked away from
the smokehouse.
“She is strange,” Arden agreed. “But I feel sorry for her.”
“So do I, in a way. But I feel a lot more sorry for Granny Howe. She
takes it standing up. This creature whines and moans.”
“She does,” Arden admitted. “But different people have a different way of
taking adversity. Granny is sweet and serene.”
“And Viney Tucker is bitter—but not sweet. Oh, well, it takes all sorts
to make a world. This will be something to tell Terry and Dot, won’t it?”
“Indeed it will.”
“I wonder why she comes to such a lonesome smelly place as the old
smokehouse to brood over her troubles?”
“It must bring back the days when she was a girl,” suggested Arden. “I’ve
heard my father, who was born on a farm, tell how they used to smoke hams
and bacon in a little house like that one.” She looked back toward it.
There was no sign of Viney Tucker. She had shut herself in the strange
place. “Probably,” went on Arden, “Viney used to help smoke the hams out
here. They must have had a delicious flavor.”
“Not like the chemically prepared hams _we_ have to eat,” Sim surmised.
“Moselle was saying, only yesterday, that she wished she had a Smithfield
razor-back ham to bake with cloves for Christmas.”
“Maybe Mrs. Tucker could supply one,” suggested Arden.
“I wouldn’t ask her.”
“No, I don’t believe it would be wise. But isn’t it queer of her to go
off visiting, and then return and go sit out in an old smokehouse?”
“Very queer,” agreed Sim.
Carrying their “mistletoe,” the girls went back to their parked car. As
they were passing the Hall, they noticed the front door was closed as
they had left it. There were no footprints in the snow other than those
they themselves had made.
“Hark!” suddenly exclaimed Arden as they were at the edge of the sagging
old front porch.
“What?” asked Sim.
“Didn’t you hear a noise?”
“Where?”
They stood still and listened.
There was no doubt of it. Echoing footsteps were coming from the old
mansion. Faint but unmistakable. They floated out of one of the upper
windows, the frame of which had been torn away by the wreckers.
“Someone is in there!” whispered Sim.
“Well, they can stay there for all I’ll ever do to get them out!” gasped
Arden. “Come on!”
They ran back to the car, not pausing to listen any further.
Tossing their branches into the rumble seat, the two girls climbed into
the roadster. Sim’s trembling foot pressed the starter switch.
“Oh, I’m so glad it went off with a bang like that,” she murmured as the
motor chugged into service. Steering rather wildly, Sim shot up the hill
and out upon the main road and away from Jockey Hollow.
“What do you think it was?” asked Arden when they had their hearts and
breaths under control.
“Haven’t the least idea.”
“We must tell Harry.”
“Of course. He may be able to figure out how noises can come from an old
house when there isn’t a single mark in the snow to show that anyone has
entered.”
“The scream happened that same way; no one went in, but the scream came
out, he said.”
“Oh, it’s all so mysterious!” sighed Sim. “Shall we ever be able to solve
it? Seems to me it gets worse.”
“I hope we can solve it,” said her companion solemnly.
They created quite a sensation when they reached Sim’s house, not only
with the “mistletoe,” over which Dot went into wild raptures, but with
their story of Viney Tucker and the strange noises.
“What a queer old woman,” said Dorothy. “I wouldn’t want to meet her
alone in the dark.”
“Oh, I guess she’s just a poor old crank whose troubles have gotten the
best of her,” said Arden. “I feel sorry for her.”
“She must be a trial to Granny Howe,” suggested Terry, who seemed much
improved.
“Granny isn’t the sort that gives way to trials,” said Sim. “Oh, it will
be so wonderful if we can help her!”
“Leave it to Harry,” said Arden. “And, by the way, don’t you think we had
better tell him the latest happening?”
“Of course,” said Dorothy quickly. “Shall I telephone him?”
“Why—er—yes,” said Sim slowly, with a quick look at Arden and Terry.
“I’ll tell him to come over to dinner, shall I?” Her eyes were shining.
“Yes,” said Sim, smiling a little. “Harry is always welcome.”
“And if he can make anything out of this latest development,” said Arden,
“he’s a wonder.”
“I think he’s quite wonderful anyway,” said Terry, snuggling a little
deeper down in the bed. “Wasn’t he grand when he let us give him up and
collect the reward?”
“Them was the happy days!” laughed Arden.
“I’m going to phone,” called Dot from the hall.