The Carter Girls' Mysterious Neighbors Part 8

Dr. George Wright was making a name for himself in his chosen profession. Older men were beginning to look upon him as an authority on nervous cases and now he had been asked to come in as partner in a sanitarium starting in the capital city of Virginia. Certainly he had been very successful in his treatment of Robert Carter's case, so successful that even Mrs. Carter could not but admire him. She was still very much in awe of him, but he had her respect and she depended upon him. The daughters felt the same way without the awe. Douglas and Nan and Lucy were openly extravagant in their praise of him. Helen was a little more guarded in her expressions of admiration, but she had a sincere liking for him and deep grat.i.tude not only for what he had done for her father but for his service to her.

She could never forget that it was Dr. Wright who had brought her to her senses when her father was first taken ill, making her see herself as a selfish, extravagant, vain girl. It takes some generosity of spirit to like the person who makes you see the error of your ways, but Helen Carter had that generosity. There were times when her cheeks burned at the memory of what Dr. Wright must have thought of her. How silly he must have found her, how childis.h.!.+

After the experience in the mountains when the rattlesnake bit her on the heel and Dr. Wright had come to her a.s.sistance with first aid to the injured, which in the case of a snake bite means sucking the wound, Helen began to realize that what the young physician thought of her made a great deal of difference to her. His approval was something worth gaining.

Douglas had not told her she had written the letter to Dr. Wright as Bobby's employer. She had a feeling that her dignity as teacher was involved and she must not confide in her family. She was waiting, hoping to hear from him, rather expecting him to write to Bobby and call him to account for his misdemeanors.

Bobby had been especially unruly all week. There was nothing he had not thought of doing in the way of mischief, and thinking mischief was almost identical with doing mischief where Bobby Carter was concerned.

The deed was no sooner conceived than accomplished and the other children, who were inclined to be naughty, thought up extra things for him to do.

Putting a piece of rubber on the stove was certainly not Bobby's idea, nor slipping chestnut burrs in the desk-seats while the girls were not looking, causing howls of anguish when they inadvertently sat down on the same. Bobby manfully took the blame for all of these things, however, confidently certain that no punishment worth speaking of would be meted out to him.

"He is honest, at least," sighed Douglas, "and owns up every time."

Friday afternoon on the way home she felt that maybe Nan's name for their place was a good one. She was almost a dead warrior if not quite one.

"Oh, for a Valkyrie to bear me to Valhalla!"

Bobby was trudging along by her side looking as though b.u.t.ter would not melt in his mouth. What a st.u.r.dy little fellow he was growing to be!

Douglas looked down on his jaunty, erect figure.

"Bobby, you are getting right fat."

Bobby slapped his pockets. "That ain't fat, that's blame pay!"

"Blame pay! What on earth?"

"Oh, them is the gif's I gits fer saying I done it ev'y time you asks us to hol' up our han's who done it."

"Oh, Bobby!"

"You see, the big fellers say you ain't man enough to whup 'em an' you is too soft to whup me, so I don't run no risk nohow. This is a top string I got for 'tendin' like I put the rubber on the stove,--this here is a big apple I got for not fillin' the girls' desks with chestnut burrs,--this here pile er oak b.a.l.l.s I come mighty near not gettin'. I sho' did want to turn the fleas loose on Minnie Brice but the big boys was afraid I might not be able to open the little purse right and so one of them done it."

"Fleas on Minnie Brice?"

"Yes, you never did fin' out about it, so I didn't have to own up. You know what a funny thin neck Minnie's got, just like a mud turkle, and how she wears a stiff collar kinder like a sh.e.l.l and it sets out all around, fur out from her neck?"

"Yes, I know," said Douglas, struggling with a laugh.

"Well, the fellers caught some fleas off'n ol' Blitz's houn' dog an'

then they put 'em in a teensy money purse with a tight clasp, an' while Minnie was leaning over studying her joggerfy, Tim Tenser dumped 'em all down her back."

"Poor Minnie! No wonder she missed all of her lessons today. I could not imagine what was the matter with her. Bobby, you wouldn't have done such a cruel thing as that surely!"

"Shoo! That ain't nothin'. It might 'a' been toads, 'cep'n the little ones is all growed up big now. We are a-savin' up the toad joke 'til spring. First the fellers said I didn't 'serve no blame money 'cause Minnie jes' cried when she missed her lessons an' didn't scratch none, only wiggled, an' teacher never did ask us to hol' up our han's who done it. But Ned Beatty said I was a dead game spo't an' I took the chanst an' I mus' have my blood money, an' so I got all these here oak b.a.l.l.s."

"Bobby, do you realize that you must take all of these blame gifts back to the boys?"

"Blamed if I will!"

"Please don't talk that way! Don't say: 'Blamed if you will.'"

"Well, wasn't you a-talkin' that way? Didn't you say, 'blame gif's,'

with your own mouth? I'd like to know why I have to take them back."

"Well, you got them for taking the blame and now you no longer take the blame but have told on the ones who did the naughty things."

"But I ain't a-tellin' teacher! I'm a-tellin' my own sister Douglas.

You ain't teacher 'cep'n when you is in school."

"Oh, so that is the way you look at it! I suppose you think I am not your own sister while I am teacher, either, and when you worry me sick at school it is only teacher and not Douglas you are distressing so much," and Douglas sat down on the roadside and burst out crying.

Now Douglas Carter was no weeper. I doubt if her little brother had ever seen her shed a tear in all of his seven years. And he, Robert Carter, Jr., had done this thing! He had made his sister Douglas cry. When she was playing teacher, she had feelings just as much as she did when she turned into his sister Douglas again. And what was this thing she was saying about his having to give back the blood money? Had he told on the boys after having received pay for taking the blame? Why, that was a low-down, sneaky trick!

"Don't cry, Douglas, please don't cry! I'm a-gonter take back all the things--'cep'n the apple--I done et into that a leetle bit."

But the flood gates were opened and Douglas could not stop crying. Like most persons who cry with difficulty, when she once began she kept it up. Now she was crying for all the times she might have cried. She had had enough to make her cry but had held in. She was crying now for all the days and nights of anxiety she had spent in thinking of her sick father; she was crying for the stern way in which she had been forced to deal with her mother over extravagancies; she was crying for having to make Helen understand that there was no money for clothes; she was crying for having to be the adamant sister who forced Nan and Lucy to go on to school; she was crying because her own dream of college was to come to nothing; she was crying very little because of Bobby's naughtiness, but he, of course, thought that it was all because of him.

One of her biggest grievances was against herself: why had she been so priggish with her cousin, Lewis Somerville? Last August he had come to her on the eve of his enlistment to go with the troops to the Mexican border and had plead so earnestly with her to try to love him just a little bit and to let him go off engaged to her, and she had turned him down with absurd talk of friends.h.i.+p and the like. He had astonished her when he made love to her, but she knew perfectly well in her heart of hearts that it would have astonished her a great deal more if he had made love to someone else.

No doubt that was what he was doing that minute: making love to someone else. A young man who looked like a Greek G.o.d was not going to be turned down by every girl. How good Lewis had always been to her and how well he had understood her! He thought she was cold and unfeeling now, she just knew he did. She had received no letters from him for weeks, at least it seemed weeks. Oh well, if he wanted to make love to other girls, why she wasn't going to be the one to care!

"Douglas, I hear a auto a-comin'. If'n you don't stop bawlin' folks will see you."

A car was coming! She could hear its chug as it climbed the hill half a mile off.

"Please wet my handkerchief in that little branch so I can wash my face," she begged Bobby, while she smoothed her ruffled hair and wished she had one of Helen's precious dorines to powder her red nose.

"Yo' hankcher is as wet as water already. I don't see what you want it any wetter for," said Bobby, who might have quoted: "'Too much of water hast thou, my poor Ophelia,'" had he known his Hamlet.

"I ain't a-gonter be bad no mo', Douglas," declared Bobby as he brought the little handkerchief back from the brook dripping wet. "You mos'

cried yo' face away, didn't you, Dug?" and with that Douglas had to laugh.

"Feel better now?" he said with quite the big brother air. "That there car is jes' roun' the bend. I reckon if you turn yo' face away the folks in it won't know you is been a-bawlin'."

The car slowed up, then stopped when the driver recognized Douglas, and Count de Lestis sprang out to greet her. The signs of the recent storm were still visible on her pretty face in spite of all the water Bobby had brought from the brook. Douglas tried to hold her head down so the count could not see her disfigured countenance, but such floods of weeping could not but be noticed.

"My dear Miss Carter, you are in distress!" He looked so truly grieved and anxious that already Douglas felt somewhat comforted. Sympathy is a great balm.

"It is nothing! I am a foolish, weak girl."

"Not that! You are very intelligent and far from weak. Are you not the staunch ally? The poor Kaiser would not find you weak."

"I done it all! I made her cry!" declared Bobby.

The count looked at the youngster, amused. "And so! Do little American gentlemen make their sisters cry?" Bobby hung his head. "Well, come on and let me take you home, and then I'll take your sister for a little ride and wipe all the tears away with the wind."