Kitabı oku: «Ruth Fielding At Sunrise Farm; What Became of the Raby Orphans», sayfa 5
CHAPTER XI – TOBOGGANING IN JUNE
The four horses climbed briskly after that and brought the yellow coach to an old stone gateway. At the end of the Caslon farm the stone wall had begun, and now it stretched ahead, up over the rise, as far as anything was to be seen. Indeed, it seemed to melt right into the sky.
Bobbins turned the leaders’ noses in at the gateway. Already it was shown that the new owner had begun to improve the estate. The driveway was an example of what road-making should be – entirely different from the hap-hazard work done on the country roads.
There were beautiful pastures on either hand, all fenced in with wire – “horse high, bull strong, and pig tight,” as Bobbins explained, proudly. There were horses in one pasture and a herd of cows in another. Beyond, sheep dotted a rocky bit of the hillside, and the thin, sweet “baa-as” of the lambs came to their ears as the coach rolled on.
The visitors were delighted. Every minute they saw something to exclaim over. A pair of beautifully spotted coach dogs raced down the drive, and cavorted about the coach, eagerly welcoming them.
When they finally topped the hill and came out upon the tableland on which the house and the main buildings of Sunrise Farm stood, they received a welcome indeed.
There was a big farm bell hung to a creaking arm in the water-tower beside the old colonial dwelling. The instant the leaders’ ears topped the rise, and while yet the coach was a long way off, several youngsters swung themselves on the bell-rope, and the alarm reverberated across the hills and valleys in no uncertain tone.
Beside this, a cannon that was something bigger than a toy, “spoke” loudly on the front lawn, and a flag was run up the pole set here in a prominent place before the house. Mr. and Mrs. Steele stood on the broad veranda, between the main pillars, to receive them, and when the coach drew up with a flourish, the horde of younger Steeles – Madge’s and Bob’s brothers and sisters, whom the big sister called “steel filings” – charged around from the bell-tower. There were four or five of the younger children, all seemingly about of an age, and they made as much confusion as an army.
“Welcome to Sunrise, girls and boys,” said Mr. Steele, who was a short, brisk, chubby man, with an abrupt manner, but with an unmistakably kind heart, or he would not have sanctioned the descent of this horde of young folk upon the place. “Welcome to Sunrise! We want you all to have a good time here. The place is open to you, and all Mother Steele begs is that you will not break your necks or get into any other serious trouble.”
Mrs. Steele was much taller than her husband; it was positive that Madge and Bobbins got their height from her side of the family. All the younger Steele seemed chubby and round like their father.
Everybody seemed so jolly and kind that it was quite surprising to see how the faces of both Mother and Father Steele, as well as their children, changed at the long lunch table, half an hour later, when the name of Caslon, the neighboring farmer, was mentioned.
“What d’ye think they have been telling me at the stables, Pa?” cried Bobbins, when there was a lull in the conversation so that he could be heard from his end of the table to his father’s seat.
“I can’t say. What?” responded Mr. Steele.
“About those Caslons. What do you suppose they’re going to do now?”
“Ha!” exclaimed the gentleman, his face darkening. “Nothing you have heard could surprise me.”
“I bet this does,” chuckled Bob. “They are going to take a whole raft of fresh air kids to board. What do you know about that? Little ragamuffins from some school, or asylum, or hospital, or something. Won’t they make a mess all over this hill?”
“Ha! he’s done that to spite me,” exclaimed Mr. Steele. “But I’ll post my line next to his, and if those young ones trespass, I’ll see what my lawyer in Darrowtown can do about it.”
“It shows what kind of people those Caslons are,” said Mrs. Steele, with a sigh. “Of course, they know such a crowd of children will be very annoying to the neighbors.”
“And we’re the only neighbors,” added Bob.
“Seems to me,” said Madge, slowly, “that I have heard the Caslons always do take a bunch of fresh air children in the summer.”
“Oh, I fancy he is doing it this year just to spite us,” said her father, shortly. “But I’ll show him – ”
He became gloomy, and a cloud seemed to fall upon the whole table for the remainder of the meal. It was evident that nothing the neighboring farmer could do would be looked upon with favorable eyes by the Steeles.
Ruth did not comment upon the situation, as some of the other girls did out of hearing of their hosts. It did seem too bad that the Steeles should drag this trouble with a neighbor into the public eye so much.
The girl of the Red Mill could not help but remember the jovial looking old farmer and his placid wife, and she felt sure they were not people who would deliberately annoy their neighbors. Yet, the Steeles had taken such a dislike to the Caslons it was evident they could see no good in the old farmer and his wife.
The Steeles had come directly from the city and had brought most of their servants with them from their city home. They had hired very few local men, even on the farm. Therefore they were not at all in touch with their neighbors, or with any of the “natives.”
Mr. Steele was a city man, through and through. He had not even lived in the country when he was a boy. His own children knew much more about out-of-doors than he, or his wife.
The host was a very successful business man, had made money of late years, and wished to spend some of his gains now in laying out the finest “gentleman’s farm” in that quarter of the State. To be balked right at the start by what he called “a cowhide-booted old Rube” was a cross that Mr. Steele could not bear with composure.
The young folks, naturally (save Ruth), were not much interested in the controversy between their hosts and the neighboring farmer. There was too much fun going on for both girls and boys to think of much beside.
That afternoon they overran the house and stables, numbered the sheep, watched the tiny pigs and their mothers in the clover-lot, were delighted with the colts that ran with their mothers in the paddock, played with the calves, and got acquainted in general with the livestock of Sunrise Farm.
“Only we haven’t goats,” said Bobbins. “I’ve been trying to get father to buy some Angoras. Old Caslon has the best stock anywhere around, and father says he won’t try to buy of him. I’d like to send off for a good big billy-goat and turn him into Caslon’s back pasture. I bet there’d be a fight, for Caslon’s got a billy that’ll chase you just as soon as he’d wink.”
“We’d better keep out of that pasture, then,” laughed one of the girls.
“Oh, father’s forbidden us trespassing on Caslon’s land. We’d like to catch him on our side of the line, that’s all!”
“Who – Mr. Caslon, or the billy?” asked Tom, chuckling.
“Either one,” said Bob, shaking his head threateningly.
Everyone was in bed early that night, for all were tired; but the boys had a whispered colloquy before they went to sleep in their own big room at the top of the house, and Bob tied a cord to his big toe and weighted the other end so that it would drop out of the window and hang just about head-high above the grass.
The first stableman up about the place ran over from the barns and gave Master Bob’s cord a yank, according to instructions, and pretty nearly hauled that ingenious chap out of bed before the eastern sky was even streaked with light.
“Gee! have we got to get up now?” demanded Busy Izzy, aroused, as were the other boys, by Bobbins dancing about the floor and rubbing his toe. “Somebody has been foolin’ you – it’s nowheres near morning.”
“Bet a dog jumped up and bit that string you hung out of the window,” chuckled Tom Cameron.
He looked at his watch and saw that it really was after four o’clock.
“Come on, then!” Tom added, rolling Ralph Tingley out of bed. “We must do as we said, and surprise the girls.”
“Sh!” commanded Bobbins. “No noise. We want to slide out easy.”
With much muffled giggling and wrestling, they dressed and made their way downstairs. The maids were just astir.
The boys had something particular to do, and they went to work at it very promptly, under Tom Cameron’s leadership. Behind one of the farther barns was a sharp, but smooth slope, well sodded, which descended to the line of the farm that adjoined Mr. Caslon’s. There, at the bottom, the land sloped up again to the stone wall that divided the two estates.
It was a fine place for a slide in winter, somebody had said; but Tom’s quick wit suggested that it would be a good place for a slide in summer, too! And the boys had laid their plans for this early morning job accordingly.
Before breakfast they had built a dozen barrel-stave toboggans – each long enough to hold two persons, if it was so desired.
Tom and Bobbins tried them first and showed the crowd how fine a slide it really was down the long, grassy bank. The most timid girl in the crowd finally was convinced that it was safe, and for several hours, the shrieks of delight and laughter from that hillside proved that a sport out of season was all the better appreciated because it was novel.
Over the broad stone wall was the pasture in which Caslon kept his flock of goats. Beautiful, long-haired creatures they were, but the solemn old leader of the flock stamped his feet at the curious girls and boys who looked over the wall, and shook his horns.
Somewhere, along by the boundary of the two estates, Bob said there was a spring, and Ruth and Helen slipped off by themselves to find it. A wild bit of brush pasture soon hid them from the view of their friends, and as they went over a small ridge and down into the deeper valley, the laughter and shouting of those at the slide gradually died away behind them.
The girls had to cross the stone wall to get at the spring, and they did not remember that in doing so they were “out of bounds.” Bob had said nothing about the spring being on the Caslon side of the boundary.
Once beside the brook, Helen must needs explore farther. There were lovely trees and flowering bushes, and wild strawberries in a small meadow that lured the two girls on. They were a long way from the stone fence when, of a sudden, a crashing in the bushes behind them brought both Ruth and Helen to their feet.
“My! what’s that?” demanded Helen.
“Sounds like some animal.”
Ruth’s remark was not finished.
“The goat! it’s the old billy!” sang out Helen, and turned to run as the horned head of the bewhiskered leader of the Angora herd came suddenly into view.
CHAPTER XII – A NUMBER OF INTRODUCTIONS
“We must run, Ruthie!” Helen declared, instantly. “Now, there’s no use in our trying to face down that goat. Discretion is the better part of valor – Oh!”
The goat just then shook his horns and charged. Ruth was not much behind her chum. She saw before Helen, however, that they were running right away from the Steele premises.
“We’re getting deeper and deeper into trouble, Helen,” she panted. “Don’t you see?”
“I can’t see much. Oh! there’s a tree we can both climb, I am sure.”
“But I don’t want to climb a tree,” objected Ruth.
“All right. You stay down and play tag with Mr. Billy Goat. Me for the high and lofty!” and she sprang up as she spoke and clutched the low limb of a widely branching cedar.
“I’ll never leave my pal!” Ruth declared, giggling, and jumping for another limb.
Both girls had practiced on the ladders in the school gymnasium and they quickly swung themselves up into the tree. The goat arrived almost on the instant, too. At once he leaped up with his fore-feet against the bole of the tree.
“My goodness me!” gasped Helen. “He’s going to climb it, too.”
“You know goats can climb. They’re very sure-footed,” said her chum.
“I know all that,” admitted Helen. “But I didn’t suppose they could climb trees.”
The goat gave up that attempt, however, very soon. He had no idea, it seemed, of going away and leaving his treed victims in peace.
He paced around and around the cedar, casting wicked glances at the girls’ dangling feet, and shaking his horns in a most threatening way. What he would do to them if he got a chance would “be a-plenty,” Helen declared.
“Don’t you suppose he’ll get tired, bye and bye?” queried her chum, despondently.
“He doesn’t look as though he ever got wearied,” returned Helen. “What a savage looking beast he is! And such whiskers!”
“I wouldn’t make fun of him,” advised Ruth, timidly. “I believe he understands – and it makes him madder! Oh! see him!”
Mr. Goat, impatient of the delay, suddenly charged the tree and banged against it with his horns in a desperate attempt to jar down the girls perched above.
“Oh, the foolish billy!” cooed Helen. “We’re not ripe enough to drop off so easily. But he thinks we are.”
“You can laugh,” complained Ruth. “But I don’t think this is much fun.”
“Not for the goat, anyway. He is getting so angry that he may have apoplexy. Let’s shout. Maybe the boys will hear us.”
“Not ‘way down here, I fear,” returned Ruth. “We can’t hear a sound from them. But let’s try.”
They raised their voices in unison, again and again. But there came no reply, save that a number of Mr. Billy Goat’s lady friends came trooping through the brush and looked up at the girls perched so high above them.
“Bla-a-a-t! bla-a-a-at!” quoth the chorus of nannies.
“The same to you, and many of them!” replied Helen, bowing politely.
“Look out! you’ll fall from the limb,” advised Ruth, much worried.
“And what a fall would then be there, my countrymen!” sighed Helen. “Say, Ruth! did you ever notice before what an expressive countenance a goat has? Now, Mr. Billy, here, looks just like a selectman of a country school board – long whiskers and all.”
“You stop making fun of him,” declared Ruth, shaking her head. “I tell you it makes him mad.”
“Goaty, goaty, go away,
Come again some other day,
Ruthie and Helen want to get down and play!”
sang Helen Cameron, with a most ridiculous expression.
“We’ll never get down unless somebody comes to drive that beast away,” cried Ruth, in disgust.
“And I bet nobody comes over to this end of the farm for days at a time.”
“That’s it! keep on! make it just as bad as you can,” groaned Ruth. “Do you know it will soon be luncheon time, Helen?”
“But that won’t bother Mr. Goat. He hopes to lunch off us, I guess.”
“But we can’t stay here, Helen!” cried Ruth, in despair.
“You have my permission to hop right down, my dear, and make the closer acquaintance of Sir Capricornus, and all the harem. Ex-cuse me! I think after due consideration I will retain my lofty perch – Ugh!”
“You came pretty near slipping off that time!” exclaimed Ruth. “I wouldn’t be too funny, if I were you.”
“Maybe you are right,” agreed her friend, in a more subdued tone. “Dear me! let us call again, Ruth!”
So both girls again raised their voices. This time there was a response, but not from the direction of the stone wall they had crossed to reach the spring.
“Hello!” called a jovial sounding voice. “Hello up there!”
“Hello yourself!” shouted Helen. “Oh, do, do come and drive away these awful goats.”
There was a hearty laugh at this reply, and then a man appeared. Ruth had guessed his identity before ever he came in view. It was the portly Mr. Caslon.
“Well, well, my dears! how long have you been roosting up there?” he demanded, laughing frankly at them. “Get out, you rascal!”
This he said to the big goat, who started for him with head lowered. Mr. Caslon leaped nimbly to one side and whacked the goat savagely across the back with his knobby stick. The goat kept right on down the hillside, evidently having had enough of that play, and the nannies followed, bleating.
“You can come down now, young ladies,” said the farmer. “But I wouldn’t come over into this pasture to play much. The goats don’t like strangers.”
“We had no business to come here at all, but we forgot,” explained Ruth, when both she and her chum had descended from the tree. “We were warned not to come over on this side of the line.”
“Oh, indeed? you’re from up on the hill-top?” he asked.
“We are visiting Madge Steele – yes,” said Helen, looking at him curiously.
“Ah! I saw all you young folk going by yesterday. You should have a fine time about here,” said the farmer, smiling broadly. “And, aside from the temper of the goats, I don’t mind you all coming over here on my land if you like.”
The girls thanked him warmly for rescuing them from their predicament, and then ran up the hill to put the stone wall between them and the goats before there was more trouble.
“I like him,” said Helen, referring to Mr. Caslon.
“So do I,” agreed Ruth. “And it’s too bad that Mr. Steele and he do not understand each other.”
Although their escapade with the goats was a good joke – and a joke worth telling to the crowd – Ruth decided that it would be just as well to say nothing about it, and she told Helen so.
“I expect you are right,” admitted her chum. “It will only cause comment because we went out of bounds, and became acquainted with Mr. Caslon. But I’m glad the old goat introduced us,” and she laughed and tossed her head.
So they joined their friends, who had gotten tired by this time of tobogganing in June, and they all trooped up the hill again to the house. It was growing warm, and the hammocks and lounging chairs in the shade of the verandas attracted them until noon.
After luncheon there was tennis and croquet on the lawns, and toward evening everybody went driving, although not in the yellow coach this time.
The plans for the following day included a long drive by coach to a lake beyond Darrowtown, where they had a picnic lunch, and boated and fished and had a glorious time in general.
Bobbins drove as before, but there were two men with the party to do the work and look after the horses, and Mrs. Steele herself was present to have an oversight of the young folk.
Bob Steele was very proud of his ability to drive the four-in-hand, and when they swung through Darrowtown on the return trip, with the whip cracking and Tom tooting the horn, many people stopped to observe the passing of the turnout.
Every other team got out of their way – even the few automobiles they passed. But when they got over the first ridge beyond the town and the four horses broke into a canter, Mrs. Steele, who sat up behind her son on this journey, suddenly put a hand upon his shoulder and called his attention to something ahead in the road.
“Do have a care, my son,” she said. “There has been an accident there – yes? Don’t drive too fast – ”
“By jiminy!” ejaculated Ralph Tingley. “That’s a breakdown, sure enough.”
“A farm wagon. There’s a wheel off,” cried Ann Hicks, leaning out from the other end of the seat the better to see.
“And who are all those children in blue?” demanded Mercy Curtis, looking out from below. “There’s such a lot of them! One, two, three, four, five – Goodness me! they jump about so like fleas that I can’t count them!”
“Why, I bet I know what it is,” drawled Bobbins, at last. “It’s old Caslon and his load of fresh airs. He was going to town to meet them to-day, I believe. And he’s broken down before he’s half way home with them – and serves him good and right!”
CHAPTER XIII – “THE TERRIBLE TWINS”
Ruth heard Bob’s last expression, despite the rattling of the harness and the chattering of the girls on, and in, the coach, and she was sorry. Yet, could he be blamed so much, when similar feelings were expressed daily by his own father regarding the Caslons?
Mrs. Steele was shocked as well. “My dear son!” she exclaimed, in a low voice, leaning over his shoulder. “Be careful of your tongue. Don’t say things for which you might be sorry – indeed, for which I am sure you are sorry when you stop to think.”
“Huh! Isn’t that old Caslon as mean as he can be?” demanded Bobbins.
“I am sure,” the good lady sighed, “that I wish he would agree to sell his place to your father, and so have an end of all this talk and worriment. But I am not at all sure that he hasn’t a right to do as he pleases with his own property.”
“Well – now – Mother – ”
But she stopped him with: “At any rate, you must halt and offer him help. And those children – I hope none of them has been hurt.”
“Pooh! you couldn’t hurt kids like those,” declared Bob.
But he brought the horses down to a walk and the yellow coach approached the scene of the accident at a temperate pace.
The big farm-wagon, the body of which had been filled with straw for the youngsters to ride in, had been pulled to the side of the road out of the way of passing vehicles. It was clear that the smashed wheel was past repair by any amateur means, for several spokes were broken, and the hub was split.
The youngsters whom Mr. Caslon had taken aboard at the railway station in Darrowtown were dancing about and yelling like wild Indians. As the coach came nearer, the excited party upon it could more carefully count the blue-clad figures, and it was proved that there were twelve.
Six girls were in blue gingham frocks, all alike, and all made “skimpy” and awkward looking. The six boys were in new blue overalls and cotton shirts. The overalls seemed all of one size, although the boys were not. They must have been purchased at the store of one size, and whether a boy was six, or twelve, he wore the same number.
Each of the children, too, carried a more or less neatly made up parcel, the outer covering of which was a blue and white bandanna, and the contents of which was the change of clothing the institution allowed them.
“What a terrible noise they make!” sighed Mrs. Steele. “And they are perfect little terrors, I suppose. But they are clean.”
They had not been out of the sight of the institution nurse long enough to be otherwise, for she had come as far as Darrowtown with them. But they were noisy, sure enough, for each one was trying to tell his or her mates how he or she felt when the wheel crashed and the wagon went over.
“I reckon I oughtn’t to have risked that wheel, after all,” said Mr. Caslon, doffing his hat to Mrs. Steele, but smiling broadly as he looked up from his examination of the wheel.
“Whoa, Charlie! Don’t get too near them heels, youngsters. Charlie an’ Ned are both old duffers like me; but you can’t fool around a horse’s legs without making him nervous.
“And don’t pull them reins. I don’t want ’em to start right now… Yes, ma’am. I’ll haf ter lead the horses home, and that I don’t mind. But these young ones – Now, let that whip lay right where it is, young man! That’s right.
“You see, ma’am,” he proceeded, quite calmly despite all that was going on about him, and addressing himself to Mrs. Steele, “it’s too long a walk for the little ones, and I couldn’t tote ’em all on the backs of the horses —
“Now, you two curly heads there – what do you call ’em?”
“The Terrible Twins!” quoth two or three of the other orphans, in chorus.
“I believe ye! I believe ye! They jest bile over, they do. Now, you two boys,” he added, addressing two youngsters, very much alike, about of a height, and both with short, light curly hair, “never mind tryin’ to unharness Charlie and Ned. I’ll do that.
“Ye see, ma’am, if you could take some of the little ones aboard – ” he suggested to Mrs. Steele.
The coach was well filled, yet it was not crowded. The girls began to call to the little folks to get aboard even before Mrs. Steele could speak.
“There’s lots of room up here,” cried Ruth, leaning from her end of the seat and offering her hand. The twins ran at once to climb up and fought for “first lift” by Ruth.
“Oh, yes! they can get aboard,” said Mrs. Steele. “All there is room for.”
And the twelve “fresh airs” proved very quickly that there was room for them all. Ruth had the “terrible twins” on the seat with her in half a minute, and the others swarmed into, or on top of, the coach almost as quickly.
“There now! that’s a big lift, I do declare,” said the farmer, hanging the chains of the horses’ traces upon the hames, and preparing to lead the pair along the road.
“My wife will be some surprised, I bet,” and he laughed jovially. “I’m certain sure obleeged to ye, Mis’ Steele. Neighbors ought to be neighborly, an’ you air doin’ me a good turn this time – yes, ma’am!”
“Now, you see,” growled Bob, as the four coach horses trotted on, “he’ll take advantage of this. We’ve noticed him once, and he’ll always be fresh.”
“Hush, my son!” whispered Mrs. Steele. “Little pitchers have big ears.”
“Huh!” exclaimed one of the wriggling twins, looking up at the lady sideways like a bird. “I know what that means. We’re little pitchers – Dickie an’ me. We’ve heard that before – ain’t we, Dickie?”
“Yep,” announced his brother, nodding wisely.
These two were certainly wise little scamps! Willie did most of the talking, but whatever he said his brother agreed to. Dickie being so chary with speech, possibly his brother felt that he must exercise his own tongue the more, for he chattered away like a veritable magpie, turning now and then to demand:
“Ain’t that so, Dickie?”
“Yep,” vouchsafed the echo, and, thus championed, Willie would rattle on again.
Yes. They was all from the same asylum. There were lots more of boys and girls in that same place. But only twelve could get to go to this place where they were going. They knew boys that went to Mr. Caslon’s last year.
“Don’t we, Dickie?”
“Yep.”
No. They didn’t have a mama or papa. Never had had any. But they had a sister. She was a big girl and had gone away from the asylum. Some time, when they were big enough, they were going to run away from the asylum and find her.
“Ain’t we, Dickie?”
“Yep.”
Whether the other ten “fresh airs” were as funny and cute as the “terrible twins,” or not, Ruth Fielding did not know, but both she and Mrs. Steele were vastly amused by them, and continued to be so all the way to the old homestead under the hill where the children had come to spend a part of the summer with Mr. and Mrs. Caslon.
