The Carter Girls' Mysterious Neighbors Part 12

What business had this foreigner to draw Helen into his household arrangements?

During that luncheon de Lestis managed to antagonize both Lewis Somerville and George Wright. Douglas had smiled entirely too many times on this stranger to suit Lewis, and Helen had been much too eager to pa.s.s on the housekeeping arrangements to accord with George's ideas of United States' relations with Hungary.

"Why is he not fighting with his country?" each young man asked himself.

Chloe was waiting on the table remarkably well, much to Helen's gratification. Only once had she fallen down the steps, and, thanks to her teacher's vigilance, she usually remembered to pa.s.s things to the left.

"You must try to show the Count de Lestis how much you have learned,"

Helen had told her while she was preparing the lunch; "remember how interested he is in educating colored people."

Helen, seated at the head of the table, was pouring the tea, Mrs. Carter having resigned her place to her daughter when she resigned herself to be a semi-invalid.

"Hand this to Count de Lestis," Helen said, having put in sugar to his taste.

"Here's yo' C-U-P, CUP of T-E, TEA," shouted Chloe, as she balanced the cup precariously on the tray.

"Beg pardon!" exclaimed the honored guest in amazement.

"C-U-P, CUP! H-O-T, HOT! T-E, TEA!"

The count took the tea with a puzzled look on his handsome countenance and Chloe fled from the room, not in embarra.s.sment but to impart to Sis Tempy how she had done made Miss Helen proud by showing the count how much she done learned her to spell.

Everybody roared, even Mrs. Carter, who had come to the realization that the most dignified way to treat Chloe was to recognize her as a joke.

"It is this way," said Helen when she could speak. "You see, I have been trying to teach the poor thing to read and spell. She told me of the wonderful work you are doing," to the count.

"I am doing?"

"Yes, in your night school at Weston! It made me ashamed to think you, a foreigner, should be doing so much for the colored race, and I doing nothing, so I determined to do what I could with my own servant at least. I can't tell you how splendid I think it is of you and your secretary to give so much time to the poor country darkies."

The count flushed a dark red. He seemed actually confused by this girl's praise.

"All of us think it is fine," said Nan.

"Speak for yourself!" whispered Lucy. "Mag and I think it is smart Alec of him and we bet he does it 'cause he wants to, not to help the colored people."

"I beg your pardon! Did you speak to me?" asked the count, recovering himself from the evident confusion into which Helen's and Nan's approbration seemed to have plunged him.

"I--I--said--er--I said you and your kind secretary must enjoy the work," stammered Lucy.

"Do you find they learn easily?" asked Dr. Wright, trying to hide his feelings and wis.h.i.+ng he had put in his spare time in altruistic work among the colored brethren.

"The truth of the matter is I do no teaching myself. This night school is a fad of Herz, my secretary."

"Ah, but I know you do some, because Chloe tells me of how kindly you speak to the darkies," insisted Helen. "She says you make beautiful talks to them sometimes and they are crazy about you."

"They exaggerate!" shrugged the count. "They seem a simple, kindly folk, grateful for any crumb of learning."

"Aren't there any district schools here for the colored people?" asked George Wright.

"Yes, but no place for the older ones to learn. It is quite pathetic how they yearn for knowledge,--so Herz tells me."

"Well, my opinion is that too much learning is bad for them," blurted out Lewis.

"Oh, Lewis!" exclaimed Douglas. "How can you say such a thing? Too much learning can't be bad for anybody."

"What I mean is too much and not enough. They get just enough to make them big-headed and not enough to give them any balance."

"'A little learning is a dangerous thing-- Drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring,'"

murmured Nan.

"Exactly!" said Lewis gratefully. "I don't want to hold the darky down, but I do think he should be taught very carefully or he will get wrong notions in his head, social equality with the whites and such stuff."

"I find Americans very strange when one gets them on the subject of social equality," and de Lestis suddenly seemed very superior and quite conscious of his own station in life. "There is much talk of being democratic but not so much practice. Your Declaration of Independence plainly states that all men shall be free and equal, and still, while you grant the black race freedom, you deny it equality."

"I reckon you don't understand the South very well," answered Lewis, his blue eyes flas.h.i.+ng.

"Ah!" was all the count said, but he said it with a toploftical manner that irritated Lewis.

"The colored soldiers are excellent, so I have heard," put in Douglas, hoping to get the subject changed, if not too abruptly.

"Yes, they are good," said Lewis, "but that is because they are trained well. That is drinking deep of Nan's Pierian Spring. I think a military training in colored schools is almost more important than in the white ones. It gives them the kind of balance they don't get in any other way."

"Why don't you give the pupils in your night school some drilling?"

asked Helen.

"Thank you for the suggestion!" and the count bowed low over Helen's hand as they arose from the table at a signal from Mrs. Carter, who began to think the conversation was getting entirely too serious and not at all social. "I shall profit by it immediately and introduce a kind of setting-up exercise at least."

"Now we'll find out who had the other busted cheer!" cried Bobby.

It was the count, and his tact and good manners in patiently sitting through the meal on what must have been a rather uncomfortable perch made the females of the party, excepting Lucy, admire him just that much more, but it did not make George Wright and Lewis Somerville think any more highly of the good-looking foreigner.

"He had much better be fighting for his country," grumbled Lewis to his companion in misery, "even if it would be on the wrong side." Which was not the proper remark for a soldier in the army of a neutral nation.

CHAPTER X

NOVEMBER

The mystery that will never be solved for the human race is why some days must be dark and dreary and why those days sometimes stretch themselves into weeks.

The weather that had been so perfect when our Carters first came to Valhalla had held for a long time. Frosty, crisp autumn mornings that made the blood tingle in one's veins, followed by warmer days and then cold bracing nights when a fire in the great chimney of the living-room was most acceptable, had become so much the rule that when the exception occurred no one was prepared to accept it.

Morning after morning Nan and Lucy had trudged cheerfully over the fields and through the lane to Grantly Station to catch the early train, enjoying the walk and not minding at all that the quarter of a mile was really three-quarters. Coming home was happy, too. The train reached Grantly by half-past three, the pleasantest time in an autumn afternoon, and the girls would loiter along the road, stopping to eat wild grapes or to crack walnuts or maybe to get some persimmons, delicious and shriveled from the hard frosts. Sometimes Billy and Mag would have the good news for them that the Suttons' car was to be at Preston and that meant that our girls were to get out at that station and be run home by Billy.