Kitabı oku: «The Carter Girls», sayfa 4
“Do without,” said Douglas wearily. She saw it was going to take more than a few hours or a few days to make two of her sisters realize the necessity for reconstruction of their lives. “Helen and I are going right after breakfast to see real estate agents about getting us a tenant, and Helen is going to purchase some cotton stockings. She still persists in sticking to the letter of her oath not to wear silk stockings until Daddy is home and well.”
“I’m going to wear cotton stockings, too, if Helen is.”
“So you are, so are all of us, but we are going to keep on with the ones we have until we go to the country. Helen is spending her own money, some she had, on these stockings and no one is buying them for her,” and Douglas went back to her room to dress and take up the burden of the day that was beginning to seem very heavy to her young shoulders. “If only Helen and Lucy could see without being knocked down and made to see,” she thought. “Poor Father, if he had only not been so unselfish how much better it would have been for all of us now that we have got to face life!”
True to their determination, Douglas and Helen went to several real estate agents. None of them were very encouraging about renting during the summer months to reliable tenants, but all of them promised to keep an eye open for the young ladies.
“Your father gone off sick?” asked one fatherly old agent. “Well, I saw him going to pieces. Why, Robert Carter did the work of three men. Just look at the small office force he kept and the work he turned out! That meant somebody did the drudgery, and that somebody was the boss. What do the fellows in his office think of this?”
“I – I – don’t know,” stammered Douglas. She couldn’t let the kind old man know that she had not even thought of informing the office of her father’s departure. How could she think of everything?
Before seeing any more agents, she and Helen betook themselves to their father’s office, a breezy apartment at the top of a great bank building. Two young men were busily engaged on some architectural drawings. They stopped work and came eagerly forward to inquire for Mr. Carter. Their consternation was great on hearing of his sudden departure and their grief and concern very evident.
“We will do all we can to keep things going,” said the elder of the two.
“You bet we will!” from the other, who had but recently been advanced from office boy.
“There is a big thing Mr. Carter has been working on for some time, a competitive design for a country club in North Carolina. It is about done and I will do my best to finish it as I think he would want it, and get it off. Did he leave power of attorney with any one? You see, Mr. Carter has two accounts, in different banks, one, his personal account, and one, his business one.”
“Yes, Dr. Wright, his physician, was given power of attorney. There was no time to let any of you know as it was important to have Father kept very quiet, with no excitement. Dr. Wright will come in to see you on Monday, I feel sure. He does not get back from New York until to-night.”
“More work and responsibility for the doctor,” thought Douglas.
“More power over us than we dreamed even,” was in Helen’s mind.
“We want to rent our house, furnished, for the summer, giving possession immediately, or almost immediately,” continued Douglas; “perhaps you may hear of some one who will be interested.”
“I know of some one right now,” eagerly put in Dick, the promoted office boy. “It is a family who have been driven from Paris by the war. They have been living there for years – got oodlums of money and no place to spend it now, poor things! They want a furnished house for six months with privilege of renewing the lease for a year.”
“Oh, please, could you send them to me or me to them right off?”
“Yes, Miss Carter, that’s easy! If you go home, I’ll have the folks up there in an hour.”
“How kind you are!”
“Not a bit of it! I’m so glad I happened to know about them – and now you will be saved an agent’s fee.”
“How much do you think we should ask for our house?” said Douglas, appealing to both young men.
“Well, that house is as good a one as there is in Richmond for its size,” said Mr. Lane, the elder. “I know, because I helped on it. There is not one piece of defective material in the whole building. Even the nails were inspected. If it had been on Franklin Street, I’d say one hundred a month, unfurnished, with all the baths it has in it; but since it is not on Franklin, I believe one hundred, furnished, would be a fair price.”
“Oh, wouldn’t that be fine, Douglas?” spoke Helen for the first time. She had been very quiet while these business conferences had been going on. “That will be a whole lot of money. Now we need not feel so poverty stricken.”
“Certainly families do live on less,” and the young man smiled. “I think Mr. Carter usually takes out about six hundred a month for his household expenses – of course, that’s not counting when he buys a car. I know it is none of my business, but I am very much interested to know what you young ladies are going to do with yourselves. If I can be of any assistance, you must call on me.”
“Oh, we’ve got the grandest scheme! I thought of it myself, so I am vastly proud of it. We are going up to Albemarle County, where Father owns a tract of land right on the side of a mountain, and there we are going to spend the summer and take boarders and expect to make a whole lot of money.”
“Take boarders? Is there a house there? I understood from Mr. Carter that it was unimproved property.”
“So it is. That is the beauty of it. We intend to camp and all the boarders will camp, too.”
The young men could not contain themselves but burst out laughing. They had not seen much of their employer’s family but they well knew the luxurious lives they lived and their helplessness. It was funny to hear this pretty butterfly of a girl talking about taking boarders and making money at it.
“It does sound funny,” said Douglas when the laugh in which she and Helen had joined subsided, “but we are really going to do it – that is, I think we are,” remembering that the Power of Attorney had not yet been consulted and nothing could really be determined on until then. “I don’t know about our making lots of money, but we can certainly live much more cheaply camping than any other way.”
“That’s so!” agreed Mr. Lane. “Now maybe this is where Dick and I can help. Camps have to be built and we can get up some plans for you. There is a book of them just issued and we can get a working plan for you in short order.”
“That is splendid. We have a cousin, Lewis Somerville, who is home now and has nothing to do, and he is going up to Albemarle ahead of us and build the camp. I’ll tell him to come down and see you and you can tell him all about it.”
Then the girls, with many expressions of gratitude, hastened home to prepare for the poor rich people who had been driven from Paris and now had no place to spend their money.
They stopped on Broad Street long enough for Helen to spend one of her precious dollars for six sixteen-and-two-third-cent stockings.
“Do you think it would be very extravagant if I spent a dime in market for flowers?” asked Helen. “It would make the house look more cheerful and might make the poor rich people like it better.”
“Why, no, I don’t think that would be very extravagant,” laughed Douglas.
So they went over to the Sixth Street market, where the old colored women sit along the side-walk, and purchased a gay bunch of wild phlox for a dime. And then Helen could not resist squandering another nickel for a branch of dogwood. They jitneyed home, another extravagance. There was no tangible reason why they should not have ordered out their own car for this business trip they had been forced to take, but it had seemed to both of them a little incongruous to ride in a seven-seated touring car on the mission they had undertaken.
“It doesn’t gee with cotton stockings, somehow,” declared Helen, “to step out of a good car like ours. Jitneys are much more in keeping.”
The exiles from Paris came with the faithful Dick; liked the house; did not mind the price, although furnished houses during the summer months are somewhat a drug in the real estate market; and were ready to close the bargain just as soon as Dr. Wright should return.
The son, an æsthetic looking youth of seventeen, who was Dick’s acquaintance, was carried away with the wild phlox and went into ecstasies over the branch of dogwood which Helen had placed near a Japanese print in the library.
“Let’s take it, Mamma! It is perfect!” he exclaimed as he stood enraptured by the effect.
Helen always declared that the market flowers rented the house, and so they may have.
CHAPTER VII
A COINCIDENCE
“Almost time for Dr. Wright!” exclaimed Douglas. “I believe I heard the R. F. & P. stop at Elba. I do wonder what he is going to say.”
“He is going to say we are a set of fools and lunatics and refuse to let us have any money to start the camp. Since we have been so extravagant and selfish for all these years, he’ll think we ought to go to the poor house, where we belong,” said Helen, frowning. “I can see him now looking through his eyebrows at me with the expression of a hairy wildman in a show.”
Dr. Wright came with good news of the travelers. He had not only seen them safely on board but had sailed with them, coming back with the pilot. He reported Mr. Carter as singularly calm and rested already and Mrs. Carter as making an excellent nurse. Evidently he was rather astonished that that poor lady could make herself useful, and Helen, detecting his astonishment, was immediately on the defensive; but as Dr. Wright was addressing his remarks principally to Douglas, almost ignoring her, she had no chance to let him know what she thought of his daring even to think slightingly of poor little Mumsy.
“I have a scheme for you girls, too, if you won’t think I am presumptuous to be making suggestions,” he said, now including all four of the sisters.
Of course, Douglas and Nan assured him that they considered it very kind of him to think of them at all, but Helen tossed her head and said nothing. Lucy waited to see what Helen would do and did the same thing, but she could not help smiling at the young doctor when he laughed out-right at her ridiculous mimicry of Helen. He flushed, however, showing he was not quite so callous to Helen’s scorn and distrust as he would have liked to appear.
“I think the wisest thing for you to do would be to rent this house, furnished, if you can find a tenant – ”
“We’ve done it!” exclaimed Helen triumphantly.
“That is, we have got a tenant if you think it is best,” explained Douglas. “We were going to do nothing without your approval.”
“Oh, come now! I have no jurisdiction over you,” laughed the young man.
“Isn’t power of attorney jurisdiction?” asked Lucy. “Nan says I can’t have any more stockings until you permit me.”
“Well, well! I must be a terrible bugaboo to you! I don’t feel at all qualified to judge of your stockings, little girl, or anything else pertaining to the female attire. It was the merest accident that I was given power of attorney. I am not in the least an appropriate person to be having it. I only consented to have it wished on me when I saw your father was becoming excited and tired over the unexpected hitch when the notary spoke of Miss Douglas’s not being of age. I have transferred what cash your father has to your sister’s account. I must find out from you whom you want to look after your affairs and consult that person – ”
“But, Dr. Wright, we would lots rather have you, if you don’t mind!” exclaimed Douglas. “Any of our kinsmen that we might call on would insist upon our coming to live with them or make us go to some stuffy boarding house or something. They would not look at it as I believe you would at all. We have a scheme, too, but we want to hear yours first.”
“My scheme was, as I say, first to rent your house, furnished, and then all of you, with some suitable older person and some man whom you can trust, go and camp out on the side of the mountain in Albemarle. What do you say to it?” The girls burst out laughing, even Helen.
“Dr. Wright, this is absolutely uncanny!” exclaimed Douglas. “That is exactly what we were planning!”
“Only we were going you some better and were to have boarders,” drawled Nan.
“Boarders, eh, and what do you know about keeping boarders?” laughed the doctor.
“We know enough not to do the way we have been done by at summer boarding houses where we have been sometimes.”
“Well, all I can say is that I think you are a pretty spunky lot. Please tell me which one of you thought up this plan. There must surely have been a current of mental telepathy flowing from one of you girls to me. It was you, I fancy, Miss Douglas.”
“No, I am never so quick to see a way out. It was Helen.”
“Yes, Helen thought of it, but I came mighty near doing it,” declared Lucy. “I would have done it all the way but I went to sleep.”
Helen looked as though she did not at all relish having anything even so intangible as a current of mental telepathy connecting her with one whom she was still determined to look upon as an enemy. He was gazing at her with anything but the eyes of an enemy, however, and Nan’s remark about his eyes looking like blue flowers high up on a cliff that you must climb to reach, came back to her. She felt that those flowers were in easy reach for her now; that all she had to do to make this rugged young man her friend was to be decently polite. But her pride was still hurt from his former disapproval and while his present attitude was much better, she still could not bring herself to smile at him. She was very quiet while the other girls unfolded their plans for the camp. She did not take so much pleasure in it now that it was not altogether her scheme. To think that while she was working it up this bumptious young doctor was doing the same thing!
“The keeping boarders part of it was mine, though,” she comforted herself by thinking.
Dr. Wright was really astonished by the quickness with which these spoiled girls had acted and their eagerness to begin to be something besides the butterflies they had seemed. Douglas told him of the plans for the camp that the assistant in the office was to draw for them, and then showed him some of the advertisements of their boarding camp that Nan had been working on all day.
“This is sure to draw a crowd of eager week-enders,” he declared. “In fact, I believe you will have more boarders than the mountain will hold.”
“I thought it best to have kind of catchy ads that would make people wonder what we were up to anyhow,” said Nan. “Now this one is sure to draw a crowd: ‘A week-end boarding camp, where one can have all of the discomforts of camping without the responsibility.’ Here is another: ‘Mountain air makes you hungry! Come to The Week-End Camp and let us feed you.’”
“Fine!” laughed the young man. “But please tell me how you plan to feed the hungry hordes that are sure to swarm to your camp. Do you know how to cook?”
“Helen can make angel’s food and I know how to make mayonnaise, but sometimes it goes back on me,” said Nan with the whimsical air that always drew a smile from Dr. Wright.
“I can make angel’s food, too,” declared Lucy.
“Well, angel’s food and mayonnaise will be enough surely for hungry hordes.”
“Of course, we are going to take some servants with us,” said Helen, breaking the vow of silence that she was trying to keep in Dr. Wright’s presence. “Old Oscar, our butler, and Susan, the housemaid, have both volunteered to go. I can make more things than angel’s food, and, besides, I am going to learn how to do all kinds of things before we go.”
“That’s so, you can make devil’s food,” teased Nan. “Somehow I didn’t like to mention it.”
“Cook is going to teach me to make all kinds of things. I am going to get dinner to-morrow and have already made up bread for breakfast. I am going to buy some of the cutest little bungalow aprons to cook in, pink and blue. I saw them down town this morning. They are what made me think of learning how to cook.”
“I’m going to learn how to cook, too, and I must have some aprons just like Helen’s.”
“All of us are Camp Fire Girls,” said Douglas to the doctor, “and of course we have learned some of the camping stunts, but we have not been as faithful as we might have been.”
“I am an old camper and can put you on to many things if you will let me.”
“We should be only too glad,” responded Douglas sincerely.
“One of the first things is canvas cots. Don’t try to sleep on all kinds of contrived beds. Get folding cots and insure comfortable nights. Another is, don’t depend altogether on camp fires for cooking. Kerosene stoves and fireless cookers come in mighty handy for steady meal getting. It will be another month at least before you go, won’t it?”
“Just about, I think, if we can manage it. We have school to finish and I have some college exams that I want to take, although I see no prospect of college yet. Another thing I want to discuss with you, Dr. Wright, is selling our car. I think that might bring in money enough for us to pay for all the camp fixtures and run us for awhile.”
“Certainly; I’ll see about that for you immediately.”
The young man took his departure with a much higher opinion of the Carter sisters than he had held twenty-four hours before. As for the Carter sisters: they felt so grateful to him for his kindness to their parents and to them that their opinion of him was perforce good. Helen still sniffed disdainfully when his name was mentioned, but she could not forget the expression of approval in his blue eyes when he found that the camping scheme was hers.
CHAPTER VIII
GWEN
Bill Tinsley was as keen on the camp building plan as Lewis Somerville had said he would be.
“Sleeping on my arms,” was his telegram in answer to the letter he got from Lewis, a letter with R. S. V. P. P. D. Q. plainly marked on the envelope.
“Good old Bill! I almost knew he would tumble at the chance. All of you will like Bill, I know.”
“What does he mean by sleeping on his arms?” asked Lucy. “I should think it would make him awfully stiff.”
“Oh, that means ready to go at a moment’s notice. I bet his kit is packed now.”
Mr. Lane and Dick had worked hard on the plans for the camp and had them ready when the would-be builder called for them. Then Mr. Lane and Lewis made a flying trip to Greendale to look into the lay of the land and to decide on a site for the dining pavilion. It was a spot about one hundred yards from the log cabin, built by the aforesaid sick Englishman, that seemed to them to be intended for just their purpose. It was a hollowed out place in the mountain side, not far from the summit, and four great pine trees formed an almost perfect rectangle of forty by twenty-five feet. In the centre stood a noble tulip poplar.
“Pity to sacrifice him,” said Bill Tinsley, whom they had picked up at Charlottesville on their way to Greendale. Bill was a youth of few words but of frequent mirth expressed in uncontrollable fits of laughter that nothing could stop, not even being shipped from West Point. It was this very laugh that had betrayed the hazers. If Bill had only been able to hold in that guffaw of his they would never have been caught. His laugh was unmistakable and through it the whole crowd of wrongdoers was nabbed, poor Lewis along with them although he was innocent.
“No more to blame for laughing than a lightning bug for shining,” he had declared to Lewis; “but I wish I had died before I got you into this, old fellow.”
“Well, it can’t be helped, but I bet you will be laughing on the other side of your face before you know it.”
The youths had remained fast friends and now that this chance had come for them to be of service and to use the surplus energy that was stored up in their splendidly developed muscles, they were happy at the prospect of being together again.
Mr. Lane took careful measurements and adapted his plans so as to utilize the four trees as natural posts and the great tulip poplar as a support for the roof. Under the pavilion the space was to be made into kitchen and store room. Some little excavating would be necessary for this as measurements showed that one edge of the pavilion would rest almost on the mountain side while the other stood ten feet from the ground.
“I am trying to spare you fellows all the excavating possible, as that is the tedious and uninteresting part of building,” explained Mr. Lane.
“Oh, we can shovel that little pile of dirt away in no time,” declared Lewis, feeling his muscles twitch with joy at the prospect of removing mountains. Mr. Lane smiled, knowing full well that it was at least no mole hill they were to tackle.
Within a week after Mr. and Mrs. Carter had sailed on their health-seeking voyage, Lewis and his chum were en route for Greendale, all of the lumber for their undertaking ordered and their tools sent on ahead by freight. Bill had gone to Richmond, ostensibly to consult a dentist, but in reality to see the Carter girls, who had aroused in him a great curiosity.
“They must be some girls,” had been his laconic remark.
“So they are, the very best fun you ever saw,” Lewis had assured him. “They took this thing of waking up and finding themselves poor a great deal better than you and I did waking up and finding ourselves nothing but civilians when we had expected to be major generals, at least.”
The Carter girls had one and all liked Bill, when Lewis took him to call on them the evening of his arrival in Richmond.
“There is something so frank and open in his countenance,” said Helen.
“His mouth!” drawled Nan. “Did you ever see or hear such a laugh?”
“He is a great deal nicer than your old Dr. Wright, who looks as though it would take an operation on his risibles to get a laugh out of him.”
Bill had offered the services of a battered Ford car he had in Charlottesville as pack mule for the camp and it was joyfully accepted. He and Lewis stopped in Charlottesville on their way to Greendale and got the tried old car, making the last leg of their trip in it.
They had decided to sleep in the Englishman’s cabin, as the little log house that went with the property was always called, but Miss Somerville had made them promise to burn sulphur candles before they went in and was deeply grieved because her beloved nephew refused to carry with him a quart bottle of crude carbolic acid that she felt was necessary to ward off germs.
It was late in the afternoon as the faithful Ford chugged its way up the mountain road to the site of the proposed camp. The boys had stopped at the station at Greendale and taken in all the tools they could stow away, determined to begin work at excavating the first thing in the morning.
“Let’s lay out the ground this afternoon,” proposed Lewis.
“There’s nothing to lay out since the four pine trees mark the corners. I, for one, am going to lay out myself and rest and try to decide which one of your cousins is the most beautiful.”
“Douglas, of course! The others can’t hold a candle to her, although Helen is some looker and Nan has certainly got something about her that makes a fellow kind of blink. And that Lucy is going to grow up to her long legs some day and maybe step ahead of all of them.”
“Well, I’m mighty glad you thought about giving me this job of working for such nice gals.” These young men always spoke of themselves as being in the employ of the Carter girls, and all the time they were building the camp they religiously kept themselves to certain hours as though any laxity would be cheating their bosses. Besides, the regular habits that two years at West Point had drilled into them would have been difficult to break.
“I don’t know how to loaf,” complained Lewis. “That’s the dickens of it.”
“Me, neither!”
“They say the Government makes machines of its men.”
“True! I am a perpetual motion machine.”
They were busily engaged on their first morning in the mountains, plying pick and shovel. They bent their brave young shoulders to the task with evident enjoyment in the work. When they did straighten up to get the kinks out of their backs, they looked out across a wonderful country which they fully appreciated as being wonderful, but raving about landscapes and Nature was not in their line and they would quickly bend again to the task in a somewhat shamefaced way.
The orchards of Albemarle County in Virginia are noted and the green of an apple tree in May is something no one need be ashamed to admire openly, but all these boys would say on the subject was:
“Good apple year, I hope.”
“Yep! Albemarle pippins are sho’ good eats.”
Moving mountains was not quite so easy as they had expected it to be. They remembered what Mr. Lane had said about excavating when the sun showed it to be high noon and after five hours’ steady work they had made but little impression on the pile they were to dig away.
“Gee, we make no impression at all!” said Lewis. “I verily believe little Bobby Carter could have done as much as we have if he had been turned loose to play mud pies here.”
“Well, let’s stop and eat. I haven’t laughed for an hour,” and Bill gave out one of his guffaws that echoed from peak to peak and started two rabbits out of the bushes and actually dislodged a great stone that went rolling down the side of the mountain into an abyss below. At least, his laugh seemed to be the cause but Bill declared it was somebody or something, and to be sure a little mountain boy came from behind a boulder, grinning from ear to ear.
“What be you uns a-doin’?”
“Crocheting a shawl for Aunty,” said Lewis solemnly.
“Well, we uns is got a mule an’ a scoop that could make a shawl fer Aunty quicker’n you uns.” This brought forth another mighty peal from Bill and another stone rolled down the mountain side.
“Good for you, son!” exclaimed Lewis. “Suppose you fetch the mule here this afternoon and we’ll have a sewing bee. What do you say, Bill? Do you believe we would ever in the world get this dirt moved?”
“Doubt it.”
“Do you uns want we uns to drive the critter? We uns mostly goes along ’thout no axtra chawge.”
“Sure we want you. What do you charge for the mule and driver?”
“Wal, time was when Josephus brought as much as fifty cents a day, but he ain’t to say so spry as onct, an’ now we uns will be satisfied to git thirty cents, with a feedin’ of oats.”
“Oats! Who has oats? Not I. The only critter we have eats gasoline. I tell you, son, you feed Josephus yourself and we will feed you and pay you fifty cents a day for your animal. I don’t believe a mule could work for thirty cents and keep his self-respect.”
“Wal, Josephus an’ we uns don’t want no money what we uns don’ arn,” and the little mountain boy flushed a dark red under his sunburned, freckled face.
He was a very ragged youngster of about twelve. His clothes smacked of the soil to such an extent that you could never have told what was their original color. What sleeves there were left in his shirt certainly must once have been blue, but the body of that garment showed spots of candy pink calico, the kind you are sure to find on the shelves of any country store. His trousers, held up by twine, crossed over his wiry shoulders, were corduroy. They had originally been the color of the earth and time and weather had but deepened their tone. His eyes shone out very clear and blue in contrast to the general dinginess of his attire. His was certainly a very likable face and the young men were very much attracted to the boy, first because of his ready wit, shown from his first words, and then because of his quick resentment at the possibility of any one’s giving him or his mule money they had not earned.
“Of course, you are going to earn it,” reassured Lewis. “Now you go home and get your mule and as soon as we can cook some dinner for ourselves and satisfy our inner cravings, we will all get to work. You and Josephus can dig and Bill and I will begin to build.”
“Please, sir, wouldn’t you uns like Gwen to cook for you uns and wash the platters an’ sich? She is a great han’ at fixin’s.”
“Gwen! Who is Gwen?”
Another stone slipped from behind the boulder from which the boy had emerged and then a young girl came timidly forth.
“I am Gwen,” she said simply.
She was a girl of about fourteen, very slim and straight, with wide grey eyes that looked very frankly into those of the young men, although you felt a timidity in spite of her directness. Her scant blue dress was clean and whole and her brown hair was parted and braided in two long plaits, showing much care and brushing.
“Oh, how do you do, Miss Gwen? I am Lewis Somerville and this is my friend and fellow laborer, Mr. William Tinsley.”
The girl made a little old-fashioned courtesy with a quaint grace that charmed the laborers.
“Do you want me to cook and clean for you?”
“Of course we do! What can you cook?”
“I have learned to cook some very good dishes at the Mountain Mission School. Maybe you would not like them, though.”
“Of course we would like them! When can you start?”
“When you wish!”
“Well, I wish now,” put in Bill. “I never tasted meaner coffee than you made last night except what I made myself this morning, and as for your method of broiling bacon – rotten – rotten!”
The girl followed Lewis to the Englishman’s cabin and after being shown the provisions, she said she thought she could manage to get dinner without his assistance. He showed her how to light the hard alcohol stove which was part of their outfit and then gave her carte blanche with the canned goods and groceries.
Gwen shook her head in disapproval at sight of the pile of dirty dishes left from breakfast. It would take more than West Point training to make men wash dishes as soon as a meal is over. Lewis and Bill had a method of their own and never washed a plate until both sides had been eaten from, and not then until they were needed immediately. Supper had been eaten from the top side; breakfast, from the bottom. There were still some clean plates in the hamper, so why wash those yet?
