The Carter Girls' Mysterious Neighbors Part 2

"It seems a long quarter of a mile from the station to the farm, but maybe it is because I am lazy," said Nan, who was unfeignedly glad of a lift.

"Who said it was only a quarter of a mile? It is exactly three quarters."

Two minutes brought them to the farm gate, where Billy deposited the occupants of the back seat. It was decided that Nan and Bobby were to go on to the station with their new friend and benefactor and explain him to Mr. and Mrs. Carter.

"Oh, Douglas, isn't the place sweet? Lucy, don't you like it?" asked Helen as they opened the big gate that led from the road into the lawn of their new abode.

"Great! It looks so romantical."

"I was so afraid it wasn't going to be as nice as we thought it was because the real estate agent was so glib and rattled on so he confused us. I was afraid he had hypnotized us into liking it. But it is lovely,"

and Douglas breathed a great sigh of relief.

Indeed it was lovely; lovelier, I fancy, than the real estate agent dreamed. The lawn was s.p.a.cious, with soft rolling contours and a few great trees, some of them centuries old. In the front a mighty oak stood guard at one corner and an elm at another. Nearer the house a straight young ash and a willow oak divided the honors. At one side of the quaint old house a great mock orange had established a precedent for mock oranges and grown into a tree, just to show what a mock orange is capable of when not confined to the limitations of a hedge. Its trunk was gnarled and twisted and because of careful pruning of lower branches it had grown like a huge umbrella with limbs curving out from the parent stem and almost touching the ground all around.

"What a grand place to play house and tell secrets!" thought Lucy, regretting that thirteen years old, almost fourteen, was too great an age to indulge in dolly tea parties.

A grove of gum trees glorified the back yard with their brilliant October foliage. There never was such a red as the gum tree boasts and these huge specimens were one blaze of color. The trunks had taken on a h.o.a.ry tone that contrasted pleasantly with the warm tints of the leaves.

The yard contained about four acres enclosed by a fence that had been covered entirely by honeysuckle, and even then a few blossoms were making the air fragrant. In the back there were several rather tumble-down outhouses, but these, too, were covered with honeysuckle as though by a mantle of charity.

The house had been added to from time to time as the race of overseers had felt the need. These additions had been made with no thought of congruity or ornamentation, but since utility had been the ruling thought the outcome was on the whole rather artistic. The original house, built in the first years of the nineteenth century, had a bas.e.m.e.nt dining-room, a large chamber over this and two small, low-ceilinged attic rooms. Later a shed room had been built at one side in the back, then a two-story addition had reared itself next to that with no apparent connection with the main house, not even a family resemblance. This two-storied "lean-to" was known always as "the new house," although it had been in existence some threescore years. There were two rooms and two halls in this addition and it had a front porch all its own. The old house also boasted a front porch, with a floor of unplaned boards and posts of rough cedar. But who minds cedar pillars when Was.h.i.+ngton's bower has done its best to cover them up? As for unplaned boards with cracks between: what a good place to sweep the dirt!

The green blinds were open all over the house and windows were raised.

As our girls stood on the lawn drinking in the beauty and peace of the scene they heard loud and angry voices proceeding from the bas.e.m.e.nt window.

"Louise Grant, you are certainly foolis.h.!.+ Didn't I tell you they wouldn't be coming down here yesterday? Here you have littered up this place with flowers and they will all be faded by tomorrow. I have told you a million times I read the letter that Douglas Carter wrote and she said distinctly she was coming on Thursday." This in a loud, high, commanding tone as though the speaker was determined to be heard. "You needn't put your hands over your ears! I know you can hear me!"

"That's all right, Ella Grant," came in full contralto notes; "just because they didn't come yesterday is no sign they did not say they were coming that day. I read the note, too, and if you hadn't have been so quick to burn it I guess I could prove it. Those flowers are not doing anybody any harm and I know one thing--they smell a sight better than that old carbolic you are so fond of sprinkling around."

"I thought I heard the three train stop at the crossing," broke in the high, hard voice.

"No such thing! I noticed particularly."

"Nonsense! You were so busy watching that Sutton boy racing by in his car that you didn't even know it was train time. What John Sutton means by letting that boy drive that car I can't see. He isn't more than fourteen----"

"Fourteen! Ella Grant, you have lost your senses! He is twenty, if he is a day. I remember perfectly well that he was born during the Spanish war."

"Certainly! That was just fourteen years ago."

The girls couldn't help laughing. It happened that it was eighteen years since the Spanish war, as our history scholar, Lucy, had just learned.

That seemed to be the way the sisters. .h.i.t the mark: one shooting far in front, one far behind.

"We had better knock," whispered Helen, "or they will begin to break up the china soon."

She accordingly beat a rat-tat on the open front door of the old house.

"Someone is knocking!" exclaimed the contralto.

"Not at all! It's a woodp.e.c.k.e.r," put in the treble.

One more application of Helen's knuckles and treble was convinced.

"That time it was a knock," she conceded.

There was a hurrying and scurrying, a sound of altercation on the stairs leading from the bas.e.m.e.nt to the front hall.

"Why do you try to go first? You know perfectly well I can go faster than you can, and here you have started up the steps and I can't get by.

You fat----"

"If you can go so much faster, why didn't you start up the steps first?"

panted the contralto.

"Don't talk or you'll never get up the steps! Save your wind for climbing."

The bulky form of Miss Louise hove in sight and over her shoulder the girls could see the stern countenance of her long, slim sister. How could two such different looking persons be born of one mother? Miss Louise was all breadth and no height; Miss Ella, all height and no breadth. Miss Louise was dark of complexion, with coal-black hair streaked with grey; Miss Ella was a strawberry blonde with sandy hair streaked with grey. Age that brought the grey hair seemed about the only thing they had in common, except, of course, the estate of Grantly. That had been willed to them by their father with a grim humor, as he must have been well aware of their idiosyncrasies. They were to hold the property together with no division, the one who survived to inherit the whole.

"Well!" said Miss Ella over the shoulder of her sister, who refused to give her right of way but who was silenced for the moment by shortness of breath. "Why did you come today when you wrote you were coming to-morrow?"

"I did not write I was coming tomorrow," said Douglas, smiling in spite of herself.

"There! What did I tell you?" panted Miss Louise. "You said Tuesday, didn't you, honey?" with ingratiating sweetness.

"No, Miss Grant, I said Wednesday."

The incident was closed. The wrangling sisters had no more to say on the subject except to apologize for not having them met. It was explained that Billy Sutton had gone to get Mr. and Mrs. Carter, but the trunks must be sent for. Quite humbly Miss Ella went to get her farmhand to hitch up the mules to drive to the station, while Miss Louise showed the girls over the house.

Everything was in beautiful order and s.h.i.+ning with cleanliness. The white pine floors were scrubbed until they reminded the girls of biscuit boards, and very lovely did the bright rag rugs look on these floors.

The furniture was very plain with the exception of an occasional bit of fine old mahogany. A beautiful old highboy was not too proud to stay in the same room with a cheap oak dresser, and in the bas.e.m.e.nt dining-room a handsome mahogany table democratically mingled with split-bottom chairs.

Miss Louise had put flowers everywhere for their reception the day before and the whole house was redolent of late roses and mignonette and citronella. An occasional whiff of carbolic acid and chloride of lime gave evidence of the indomitable practicality of Miss Ella.

Miss Louise proved very sweet and kindly when not in her sister's presence and later on the girls found Miss Ella to be really very agreeable. Both ladies seemed to be bent on showing kindness and consideration to their tenants to make up for the mistake about their day of arrival.

Mr. and Mrs. Carter could not help thinking that the place their daughters had chosen for them to spend the winter was pretty. As they rolled up in Billy's car the quaint house and beautiful lawn certainly presented a most pleasing aspect, and their handsome daughters were an added loveliness to the landscape as they hurried to meet their parents.

"Ah, this is great!" exclaimed Mr. Carter, taking a deep breath of the pure fresh air. "I think I shall have to have a cow and some pigs and do some fall plowing besides. Eh, Helen? You and I are to be the stay-at-homes. What do you think?"

"I think what you think, Daddy," answered Helen, smiling happily over her father's show of enthusiasm. Dr. Wright had told her that with returning healthy nerves would come the enthusiasm that before his illness had seemed to be part of Robert Carter's make-up.

"How do you like it, Mumsy?" asked Douglas as she drew her arm through her mother's.

"Very nice, I am sure, but I think it would be wiser for me to go to bed now. I am not very strong and if I can give up before I drop it would be less trouble for my family," and Mrs. Carter took on a most plaintive accent. "A little tea and toast will be all I want for my supper."

"Oh now, it will be too bad for you to go to bed," said Miss Ella. "We were planning to have all of you come up to Grantly for supper."

She and Miss Louise seemed to have agreed for once on the propriety of having their tenants to supper.

"The count is coming," said Miss Louise, with a sentimental note in her full voice.