Glory lay over the whole college world.
The sun blazed upon an earth more beautiful than Peggy and Katherine
ever remembered to have seen it. The woods, when the two took their
walks, were as red with burnished leaves as if they had been on fire.
And a golden haze came in the morning and at sunset.
The mystery, the still power, and the vague melancholy of autumn, crept
through the veins of the Hampton girls, and they walked and picnicked on
Leeds rocks, and sang away the glorious afternoons far into the
twilight, when the sudden coolness warned them of what they would
forget--that these days were going, and that winter would soon be upon
them.
Peggy and Katherine saw their first autumn at college dissolving in that
golden haze almost before they had begun to enjoy it and to realize that
all this was really theirs--this life among seventeen hundred girls, all
young, all having identical interests, all happy and congenial.
There came a Saturday afternoon too lovely to be spent at home.
"What shall we do to-day, Katherine?" Peggy asked. "Let's just go
somewhere by ourselves. Do you want to drive, or walk, or have a bacon
bat or take some books down by Paradise and read?"
A day like that one suggests many ways for enjoyment, but if there is
one thing more absolutely satisfying than another, and
just-the-thing-to-do on such a Saturday afternoon, it is to tramp over
to the cider mill, with a jug and a capacity-appetite for new cider and
ginger cookies.
So it was inevitable that Peggy and Katherine should decide on this as
the ideal adventure, after they had exhausted all the possibilities.
"That cider mill seems just as much a part of the college as Seelye
Hall," laughed Katherine. "Peggy, can't you taste that wonderful cider
now? Let's go right away,--I think we can walk over and back, don't
you?"
That would mean about a nine-mile jaunt.
Somebody in the house had a gallon jug, and the room-mates promptly and
unceremoniously "borrowed" this and, with silk sweater coats, and a
ribbon tied around their heads to keep their hair from blowing, started
off into the wonder of Indian summer, their hearts full of joy over
every one of the nine miles that lay before them.
The road was dusty, the jug was heavy, the day was hot. After two miles
they were warm and thirsty--and hungry, too, and their feet dragged a
little.
"Oh, that cider, that cider," laughed Katherine. "I wish it could come
part way to meet us!"
"Never mind, room-mate," cheered Peggy, with mock heroism; "only a mile
and a half to go now, and then the lovely cider will be running into our
jug, and we can get several glassesful to drink there. And ginger
cookies to your heart's content, Kay."
"Can't we--speed up a little?" urged Katherine on the strength of that;
"if we just double our steps, we'll get there sooner."
So the dust clouded up more thickly under their hastening footsteps, and
the mile and a half dwindled and disappeared, until there before them
was the cider mill itself, keeping guard over a little stream that
gurgled into the mill and out again.
"At last, room-mate!" hailed Katherine.
"Katherine," hesitated Peggy, right in sight of their goal, "have
you--have you thought how much heavier the jug will be to carry back
when it is full?"
Katherine cast at her one withering glance, seized her arm, and the two
ran now, the jug bumping as it would against their knees, and the
perspiration bright on their foreheads.
"It looks like a deserted castle," panted Peggy when they turned up the
worn pathway to the entrance of the mill. "And isn't it quiet? Doesn't
it usually make some kind of noise?"
"You're thinking of the planing mill, infant," mocked Katherine.
"Well,--I--anyway, Katherine, the door is shut."
"It won't be hard to open,--why can't you--?"
"Yes, I can open it," Peggy answered, stepping into the entrance hall
where the glasses of cider and the little packs of ginger cookies were
usually sold, "but there's no one here now that we're in, and it looks
more deserted than ever and there isn't even a _crumb_ of a ginger
cooky--and I'm starved, nor a _sip_ of cider--and I'm _thirsty_!"
"Why, this is Saturday, too. What do you suppose is wrong, Peggy? I'm
absolutely dead, if I must confess it. I can't possibly walk home
without a cool drink of cider to brace me up. I never was so hungry and
tired in my life."
"That's his house, I think," Peggy nodded across the road toward a
comfortable-looking farm house.
"Do you suppose the cider man would be home?"
"Anyway," Peggy said faintly, "his wife would, and she might have some
ginger cookies."
They hurried down the walk and shuffled across the dusty road, feeling
that if they were disappointed now they could scarcely bear it.
They went to the side door of the farm house and knocked timidly.
"Oh, Peggy, they're _eating_!" gasped Katherine. "I feel like a tramp. I
almost wish I was one, too, and then maybe they'd invite us in. But
isn't it a late time to be having dinner?"
The cider man's wife stood in the doorway now, smiling at them somewhat
impatiently.
"Did you come for cider?" she asked. "Well, about ten others have been
here before you to-day, on the same errand, but he didn't make any
to-day. And there aren't any ginger cookies. We didn't have anything for
the other girls, either. I never saw anybody like you college girls--a
person feels guilty if he rests one day,--what with you all being hungry
and thirsty just the same. I'm real sorry."
"We--we brought a jug," said Peggy pathetically.
"Brought a jug? Ernie!" (raising her voice, and calling back into the
room where the table was). "They brought a jug."
Ernie called back something, and a smile flitted across his wife's face.
"He says if you want to wait till he's through dinner, he'll go over and
make some," she interpreted. "We're very late getting dinner
to-day--we've had so many interruptions. But if you want to wait------?"
"We'll wait!" cried Peggy and Katherine in the same breath.
"It will be about an hour," said the woman, closing the door.
"An hour!" Peggy and Katherine exchanged glances with deep sighs, and
trudged down the steps, and slowly back toward the mill.
The cider mill was an important institution to Hampton girls--and to
Amherst boys, if they cared to walk so far. The man who owned it seemed
to feel an especial responsibility toward college girls--as every one
does near a college town--and so he kept a counter in the entrance hall
over which he sold as much cider as a girl wanted to drink, for five
cents. One of his stalwart young helpers would fill her glass as many
times as she wished, for the single first payment.
Then there were the ginger cookies, done up in oiled paper, in packages
of a dozen, that his wife had made, and these the hungry young invaders
could purchase at ten cents a package. They seemed so much a part of it
all that cider never tastes quite perfect to Hampton graduates, to this
day, without ginger cookies. Any of the Hampton girls would have been
surprised to visit any other cider mill and find that their order for
ginger cookies was not understood.
Opposite the mill, on the same side as the farmer's house, but farther
back, and screened all around by a circlet of trees, so that it sparkled
in the midst of them like a Corot painting, was the cool mill-pond, with
reeds and rushes growing out into it, and shady branches overhanging it.
Drawn toward this now in their search for something of interest to while
away the time, Peggy and Katherine parted the bushes and young birch
trees, and found themselves looking into the very heart of beautiful
things, with all the world of dust and disappointment and fatigue behind
them.
"That water looks cool," murmured Peggy gladly.
"Yes; I don't know as it's safe drinking water, but I think we might
_wade_ in it."
"If we have time."
"An hour?--why of course there's time. What else can we do to amuse
ourselves?"
They were as entirely hidden from the road and the farm house as if they
had been in another world. Without more argument, the two sat down and
Katherine slipped out of her grey pumps, and flung her grey silk
stockings after them. Peggy was wearing tan oxfords and tan stockings.
"O-oh, who would dream there could be anything so cold on such a warm
day?" gasped Peggy, trying it with her toes.
"I like this reedy, weedy part," laughed Katherine, her feet dipping in
up to her ankles.
They sat, thus, side by side, dangling their feet like happy children,
seeking to fathom with their eyes how soon the water got deep enough to
drown them, should they step out farther, and watching idly the patterns
made by the sea-weed strands near the shore.
"What if a fish should come?" cried Katherine suddenly, and laughed at
the expedition with which Peggy's feet came glistening up out of the
water. "Don't be silly, Peggy," she giggled, "fish can't bite anything
but flies and worms."
"Maybe the kind that would live in a mill-pond could," said Peggy,
comfortably sliding the reassured feet back into the still water. "And
anyway, who wants to dispute habitation with a fish?"
With all manner of the gayest and most idiotic prattle they whiled away
that endless hour, and if any one had stood just outside the fringe of
little trees and had heard their voices without seeing them, he would
never in the world have guessed that such inconsequential conversation
was being indulged in by two freshmen in good standing of the largest
woman's college in America; girls who would be candidates for the degree
within four years and who were even now in the process of being moulded
into "intelligent gentlewomen."
"Hasn't that bird a funny whistle?" asked Katherine suddenly. "Listen!
He whistles just like a person!"
And as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she was covered with
confusion, for the realization came to her that it was a
person,--somebody going by on the road, probably, and they had so far
forgotten the world outside their own green hedge that it had startled
them.
"I'm going to peek out," said Peggy. Thrusting the leaves aside, she
made a tiny opening,--large enough for her eyes to get a clear view of
the road.
And then all of a sudden she sprang up, her face hot with excitement,
and made as if to burst through the thicket to the road itself. She
would have accomplished this had not Katherine caught her dress and
dragged her back so violently that she sat down, breathless, on the bank
of the pond, exclaiming over and over in gladness, "It's Jim! Katherine,
it's Jim!"
"Your shoes and stockings, child," urged Katherine. "Put them on,
quick."
But Peggy seized one grey and one tan stocking and on they went over her
wet feet. Then she stepped into her tan oxfords and flew out from
shelter.
Katherine looked helplessly after the retreating Peggy, and then down at
the assorted pair of stockings left for her. "There seems to be nothing
to do but put them on," she sighed resignedly. In a few minutes she
emerged from the shadows with as much dignity as she could assume.
And there down the road was Peggy, the full blaze of the autumn sun on
her golden head, her eager face uplifted and aglow, and towering above
her two good-looking young men, apparently oblivious to everything
except this strange and vivacious little apparition that had burst so
suddenly upon them.
One, Katherine recognized at once as Jim Huntington Smith, the grandson
of old Mr. Huntington, whom they had known last year at Andrews, and
through whose generosity Peggy had been enabled to come to college.
The two girls had been the means of discovering Jim's relationship to
the owner of "Gloomy House," as the old Huntington place was known, and
of re-uniting these two members of the same family.
So they regarded Jim as very much their property; as they might look
upon some handsome older cousin.
Peggy was waving an arm back towards the pond, and the boys were
laughing. Then as she went on with her gesticulations they looked up and
saw Katherine.
Katherine had been shrinking back against the trees that lined the
water, very conscious of the one tan stocking and the other grey one.
She was trying to make up her mind whether to go forward and divert
Peggy some way so that she would let these boys go, and would come back
and change stockings, or whether she should go back and hide, and run
the risk of having the whole joyous trio down the road charge upon her
unexpectedly.
It was all settled for her now.
Jim swung his cap in the air and started toward her, while Peggy and the
other young man followed more slowly. And even at such a time Katherine
couldn't help noticing the funny little way Peggy's eye-lashes kept
sweeping down and up again, and how pretty and pink her face was.
"Oh," smiled Katherine to herself, "if she should suddenly wake up and
notice her own feet."
"Well, Katherine Foster, how are you?" Jim was saying, wringing her hand
heartily. "This is certainly fine. Bud and I walked over from Amherst to
get some cider, but found there was none to be had. But meeting you
people compensates for it all."
"Oh, but there's going to be some cider, too," Katherine informed him;
"that's what we're waiting for. The man is just finishing his dinner and
he promised to come over and make some for us. I hope he'll let us watch
him--I never saw any cider made."
"We'll stick around."
"Do--and maybe------"
"Well?"
"Maybe you'll help us carry our jug home. It's just inside the trees
there."
"I should say we will. It turns out to be mutually lucky that we met; we
have the advantage of cider being made and you get your jug carried
home. How's Hampton anyway? Like it as well as you thought you would?
Peggy has sent me a post-card now and then, but they all say the
regulation thing: 'Having a glorious time, the cross is our room,'
'Perfectly lovely up here, nice weather for ducks,'--you know the kind."
Katherine laughed. She remembered the day she and Peggy had picked out a
complete set of post-cards with Hampton views, and how they had been in
the habit of dispatching them with the most bromidic messages they could
think of, to their friend at Amherst.
"We just did it for fun," she told him now. "We wanted to embarrass you
before the other fellows by having a perfect flood of the usual type of
post-cards coming in from a girls' college. We thought you'd know. Why,
we even signed them all sorts of different things--'Essie,' and 'Jennie'
and 'Millicent' and----"
"And Marmalade," added Jim with a twinkle in his eye. "I have them all,
making a border around my room. The other boys are green with envy.
They----"
At this moment Peggy and her companion reached them, and Peggy
interrupted Jim in perfect unconcern.
"Katherine, I want you to meet Mr. Bevington, of Amherst college; Mr.
Bevington, this is Miss Foster, my room-mate."
"Awfully pleased to meet you," murmured the Bevington youth over
Katherine's hand.
"You may not be when you know what your friend, Jim, has volunteered for
you," laughed Katherine.
"It couldn't make any difference."
"He's promised that you and he will carry our cider jug home for us when
we get it filled."
"Has he?" cried Peggy delightedly. "Oh, that's going to be lovely. It
was awfully heavy, Mr. Bevington, when we were dragging it over here. At
first it seemed as light as a feather, but before we had traveled a mile
it became as heavy and awkward as a cannon ball."
"So you see," Katherine turned and laughed up at Bud Bevington, "there's
an awful task ahead of you."
But of course both young men were delighted to carry any burden for two
such charming young ladies, and as they started back toward the mill the
talk veered to other subjects and ranged from sports to house dances,
when the owner of the mill came up to them.
"Are you the college girls that wanted the cider?" he asked jovially.
"Two of us are," Peggy answered primly. "But all of us would like to
come and watch you make it if we may."
"You can help," answered the man.
So with that delightful prospect ahead of them, they entered the
rambling building, dim except where the sunlight found a crack between
the dusty boards and streamed weakly in.
They followed the man up a winding stairway, that was like climbing to
some quaint old attic. There was one place where they could look down
and see the black, gold-specked water rushing away under the stairs. It
gave Peggy a creepy feeling. The specks of gold were dots of light that
fell into its darkness.
"It--makes an awful roaring noise--kind of subterranean sound," murmured
Katherine, but nobody heard her, because of the rush of the stream.
When they reached the loft above, they stood to one side waiting for the
man to begin.
"The young ladies are going to make the cider," he said.
"Oh," cried Peggy, "that's fine, but how do we begin?"
The man hauled over several large sacks of apples, lifted a round cover
in the floor, bringing to view a kind of chute.
"Pour them apples down there," he invited.
With the assistance of the boys, they lifted the sacks and the apples
went tumbling down through the opening. But Peggy and Katherine were
aghast to see what kind of apples they were.
"Why, some of those I poured down were just--_awfully_ bad," declared
Peggy. "In fact, quite decomposed," she added facetiously.
"Don't they get sorted out down below?" Katherine inquired anxiously
when the last of the sacks had been emptied.
But the cider man only laughed.
When they went down, the apples fell into a kind of wagon without
wheels, which moved slowly by machinery, till it reached a certain
place, where heavy weights came down from above and slowly crushed the
fruit. Very soon a small stream of clear amber juice ran down a trough
and into a large hogshead.
The cider man filled their jug, and then gave them each a glass, and
told them to drink all they wanted from the hogshead, without additional
charge, since he had made the cider just for them.
Sweet, clear and refreshing as any cider in the world, this came to
their thirsty lips. And yet--the girls thought they had never enjoyed
cider less. The memory of that collection of apples that had gone
hurtling down the chute!
The boys, however, were enthusiastic, because Peggy and Katherine had
made it, and they praised it highly enough so that the kindly owner of
the mill did not notice the heroic efforts of his two feminine guests to
seem appreciative.
Out into the sunlight again the little party came, Jim carrying the jug
nonchalantly on his shoulder.
"Rebecca at the well," he laughed; "here she is in moving pictures."
And the others laughed, too, and began the long walk toward Hampton, as
refreshed as if they were just starting out for the day.
The farmer stood in the doorway of his mill, and watched the departure
with a friendly smile.
There is nothing so wonderfully satisfying as college Saturday
afternoon, with all lessons forgotten--and only a restful Sunday in the
immediate future. And such a perfect fall day as this!
The friends strolled leisurely along, enjoying the brilliant coloring of
the trees, and the beautiful golden sunlight of a late October
afternoon.
They had nearly reached Hampton village and Katherine was beginning to
think that Peggy would reach Ambler House without discovering her
mistake about the stockings when, with a thrill of horror, she heard her
say, "Look at my feet, how _dusty_ they are--you couldn't tell _what_
color shoes I had on."
"But, oh, dear, if they aren't blind they can tell what color
_stockings_," moaned Katherine to herself.
Politely Jim and their new friend glanced down at the dusty oxfords.
Jim gave a start and was about to speak, when Katherine saw him suddenly
look at her feet, too. His eyes twinkled.
"Is that a--new fad?" he asked finally. "A fellow would never dare adopt
anything so radical."
"Is what a new fad?" demanded the unconscious Peggy, and then she looked
down and saw.
Her face burned with a quick red, but she laughed infectiously. "We--we
went wading, and I suppose I did this when I saw you, Jim, so it's all
his fault. Kay dear, can you forgive?"
Jim and Bud laughed with her, and of course the devoted Katherine
forgave on the spot.
Young men are not allowed to linger in the grounds at Hampton, so the
adieus were quickly said and Peggy and Katherine hurried across the
campus to Ambler House.
No sooner had they reached their room than word went down the hall that
there was cider in room 22, and one by one the girls on the second floor
found excuses to drop into Peggy's and Katherine's room. They were most
generously supplied with cider, as they hoped they would be, and Peggy
and Katherine had no wish to keep any of it for themselves, after they
had seen the sort of apples that went into it.
"Funny thing," said Peggy sadly as they were dressing for the evening
later, "I don't believe I'll ever like cider so very much again."
"No," agreed Katherine, "the safest way to do, if you want to keep your
enthusiasm for anything, is not to know how it's made."
"You're right. I'll shut my eyes more after this," laughed Peggy, "but
anyway, dear room-mate, we had an awfully nice time, didn't we?"
"Oh, so, so," answered Katherine noncommittally.