Peggy Parsons a Hampton Freshman Part 15

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 finis.h.i.+ng 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 embarra.s.s 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 n.o.body 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 a.s.sistance 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 gla.s.s, 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 refres.h.i.+ng 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 Sat.u.r.day afternoon, with all lessons forgotten-and only a restful Sunday in the immediate future. And such a perfect fall day as this!