PROFESSOR SPINK'S BOTTLES
But Professor Lemuel Judson Spink did not look happy--not at all!
While the neighbors were crowding around, emitting "ohs" and "ahs" over
his find in the broken old desk, the proprietor of "the breakfast for the
million" began to look pretty sick.
"Five thousand dollars! My mercy!" gasped the Widow Harrison. "Then Bob
_didn't_ lie about bringing home that fortune when he came from the army."
"It's a shame, Widder!" cried one man. "That five thousand ought to belong
to you."
"Dad got it right; didn't he?" said Lucas, shaking his head sadly. "He
allus said Harrison was trying to tell him where it was hid when he had
his last stroke."
Harris Colesworth spoke for the first time since the packages of notes
were discovered:
"Mr. Harrison told Cyrus Pritchett that he had hid away 'that that would
be wuth five thousand.' It's plain what he had in his mind--and a whole
lot of other foolish people had it in their minds just after the Civil
War."
"What do you mean, Mr. Colesworth?" cried Lyddy, who was clinging to the
widow's hand and patting it soothingly.
"Why," chuckled Harris, "there were folks who believed--and they believed
it for years after the Civil War--that some day the Federal Government was
going to redeem all the paper money printed by the Confederate States----"
"_What?_" bawled Lucas, fairly springing off the ground.
"Confederate money?" repeated the crowd in chorus.
No wonder Professor Spink looked sick. He broke through the group,
flinging the neat packages of bills behind him as he strode away.
"How about the desk, Professor?" shouted Harris; "don't you want it?"
"Give it to the old woman--you swindler!" snarled Spink.
And then the crowd roared! The humor of the thing struck them and it was
half an hour before the auctioneer could go on with the sale.
"No; I did not know the bills were there," Harris avowed. "But I thought
the professor was so avaricious that he could be made to bid up the old
desk. Had he bid on it when it was put up by the auctioneer, however, Mrs.
Harrison would not have benefited. You see, the best the auctioneer can
do, what he gets from the sale will not entirely satisfy Spink's claim.
But the money-grabber can't touch that fifty dollars in good money he paid
over to Mrs. Harrison with his own hands."
"Oh, it was splendid, Harris!" gasped Lyddy, seizing both his hands. Then
she retired suddenly to Mrs. Harrison's side and never said another word
to the young man.
"Gee, cracky!" said Lucas, with a sigh. "I was scairt stiff when I seen
them bills fall out of the old desk. I thought sure they were good."
"I confess I knew what they were immediately--and so did Spink," replied
Harris.
The young folks had got enough of the vendue now, and so had Mrs.
Pritchett. Lucas agreed to come up with the farm wagon for the pieces of
furniture with which Harris had presented the Widow Harrison--including
the broken desk--and transport them and the widow herself to Hillcrest
before night.
Mrs. Pritchett was enthusiastic over the girls taking Mrs. Harrison to
the farm, and she could not say enough in praise of it. So Lyddy was glad
to get out of the buckboard with Harris Colesworth at the bottom of the
lane.
"You all talk too much about it, Mrs. Pritchett!" she cried, when bidding
the farmer's wife good-bye. "But I'd be glad to have you come up here as
often as you can--and talk on any other subject!" and she ran laughing
into the house.
Lyddy feared that Professor Spink would make trouble. At least, he and
Harris Colesworth must be at swords' point. And she was sorry now that
she had so impulsively given the young chemist her commendation for what
he had done for the Widow Harrison.
However, Harris went off at noon, walking to town to take the afternoon
train to the city; and as the professor did not show up again until
nightfall there was no friction that day at Hillcrest--nor for the rest of
the week.
Mrs. Harrison came and got into the work "two-fisted," as she said
herself. She was a strong old woman, and had been brought up to work.
Lyddy and 'Phemie were at once relieved of many hard jobs--and none too
quickly, for the girls were growing thin under the burden they had assumed.
That very week their advertisements brought them a gentleman and his wife
with a little crippled daughter. It was getting warm enough now so that
people were not afraid to come to board in a house that had no heating
arrangements but open fireplaces.
As the numbers of the boarders increased, however, Lyddy did not find
that the profit increased proportionately. She was now handling fifty-one
dollars and a half each week; but the demands for vegetables and fresh
eggs made a big item; and as yet there had been no returns from the
garden, although everything was growing splendidly.
The chickens had hatched--seventy-two of them. Mr. Bray had taken up the
study of the poultry papers and catalogs, and he declared himself well
enough to take entire charge of the fluffy little fellows as soon as they
came from the shell. He really did appear to be getting on a little; but
the girls watched him closely and could scarcely believe that he made any
material gain in health.
With Harris Colesworth's help one Saturday, he had knocked together a
couple of home-made brooders and movable runs, and soon the flock, divided
in half, were chirping gladly in the spring sunshine on the side lawn.
They fed them scientifically, and with care. Mr. Bray was at the pens
every two hours all day--or oftener. At night, two jugs of hot water went
into the brooders, and the little biddies never seemed to miss having a
real mother.
Luckily Lyddy had chosen a hardy strain of fowl and during the first
fortnight they lost only two of the fluffy little fellows. Lyddy saw the
beginning of a profitable chicken business ahead of her; but, of course,
it was only an expense as yet.
She could not see her way clear to buying the kitchen range that was so
much needed; and the days were growing warmer. May promised to be the
forerunner of an exceedingly hot summer.
At Hillcrest there was, however, almost always a breeze. Seldom did the
huge piles of rocks at the back of the farm shut the house off from the
cooling winds. The people who came to enjoy the simple comforts of the
farmhouse were loud in their praises of the spot.
"If we can get along till July--or even the last of June," quoth Lyddy
to her sister, "I feel sure that we will get the house well filled, the
garden will help to support us, and we shall be on the way to making a
good living----"
"If we aren't dead," sighed 'Phemie. "I _do_ get so tired sometimes. It's
a blessing we got Mother Harrison," for so they had come to call the widow.
"We knew we'd have to work if we took boarders," said Lyddy.
"Goodness me! we didn't know we had to work our fingers to the bone--mine
are coming through the flesh--the bones, I mean."
"What nonsense!"
"And I know I have lost ten pounds. I'm only a skeleton. You could hang me
up in that closet in the old doctor's office in place of that skeleton----"
"What's _that_, 'Phemie Bray?" demanded the older sister, in wonder.
'Phemie realized that she had almost let _that_ secret out of the bag, and
she jumped up with a sudden cry:
"Mercy! do you know the time, Lyd? If we're going to pick those wild
strawberries for tea, we'd better be off at once. It's almost three
o'clock."
And so she escaped telling Lyddy all she knew about what was behind the
mysteriously locked green door at the end of the long corridor of the
farmhouse.
Harris Colesworth, on his early Sunday morning jaunts to the swimming-hole
in Pounder's Brook, had discovered a patch of wild strawberries, and
had told the girls. Up to this time Lyddy and 'Phemie had found little
time in which to walk over the farm. As for traversing the rocky part
of it, as old Mr. Colesworth and Professor Spink did, that was out of the
question.
But fruit was high, and the chance to pick a dish for supper--enough for
all the boarders--was a great temptation to the frugal Lyddy.
She caught up her sunbonnet and pail and followed her sister. 'Phemie's
bonnet was blue and Lyddy's was pink. As they crossed the cornfield, their
bright tin pails flashing in the afternoon sunlight, Grandma Castle saw
them from the shady porch.
"What do you think about those two girls, Mrs. Chadwick?" she demanded of
the little lame girl's mother.
"I have been here so short a time I scarcely know how to answer that
question, Mrs. Castle," responded the other lady.
"I'll tell you: They're wonderful!" declared Grandma Castle. "If my
granddaughters had half the get-up-and-get to 'em that Lydia and Euphemia
have, I'd be as proud as Mrs. Lucifer! So I would."
Meanwhile the girls of Hillcrest Farm had passed through the young
corn--acres and acres of it, running clear down to Mr. Pritchett's
line--and climbed the stone fence into the upper pasture.
Here a path, winding among the huge boulders, brought them within sound of
Pounder's Brook. 'Phemie laughed now at the remembrance of her intimate
acquaintance with that brook the day they had first come to Hillcrest.
It broadened here in a deep brown pool under an overhanging boulder. A
big beech tree, too, shaded it. It certainly was a most attractive place.
"Wish I was a boy!" gasped 'Phemie, in delight. "I certainly would get
a bathing suit and come up here like Harris Colesworth. And Lucas comes
here and plunges in after his day's work--he told me so."
"Dear me! I hope nobody will come here for a bath just now," observed
Lyddy. "It would be rather awkward."
"And I reckon the water's cold, too," agreed her sister, with a giggle.
"This stream is fed by a dozen different springs around among the rocks
here, so Lucas says. And I expect one spring is just a little colder than
another!"
"Oh, look!" exclaimed Lyddy. "There are the strawberries."
The girls were down upon their knees immediately, picking into their
tins--and their mouths. They could not resist the luscious berries--"tame"
strawberries never can be as sweet as the wild kind.
And this patch near the swimming hole afforded a splendid crop. The girls
saw that they might come here again and again to pick berries for their
table--and every free boon of Nature like this helped in the management of
the boarding house!
But suddenly--when their kettles were near full--'Phemie jumped up with a
shrill whisper:
"What's that?"
"Hush, 'Phemie!" exclaimed her sister. "How you scared me."
"Hush yourself! don't you hear it?"
Lyddy did. Surely that was a strange clinking noise to be heard up here
in the woods. It sounded like a milkman going along the street carrying
a bunch of empty bottles.
"It's no wild animal--unless he's got glass teeth and is gnashing 'em,"
giggled 'Phemie. "Come on! I want to know what it means."
"I wouldn't, 'Phemie----"
"Well, _I_ would, Lyddy. Come on! Who's afraid of bottles?"
"But _is_ it bottles we hear?"
"We'll find out in a jiff," declared her younger sister, leading the way
deeper into the woods.
The sound was from up stream. They followed the noisy brook for some
hundreds of yards. Then they came suddenly upon a little hollow, where
water dripped over a huge boulder into another still pool--but smaller
than the swimming hole.
Behind the drip of the water was a ledge, and on this ledge stood a row of
variously assorted bottles. A man was just setting several other bottles
on the same ledge.
These were the bottles the girls had heard striking together as the man
walked through the woods. And the man himself was Professor Spink.