Ruth Fielding Down in Dixie Part 13

She greeted Helen kindly, but warmly kissed Ruth, having become an admirer of the girl of the Red Mill some time before.

"Here's my clever little girl," she said, in her soft, drawling way. "I declare! Ev'ry time I put on my necklace I think of you, Ruthie Fielding, and how greatly beholden to you I am. I tell Nettie, here, that when _she_ receives our heirloom at her coming-out party, she will thank you, too."

"I don't have to wait till then, Aunt Rachel!" cried Nettie, squeezing the plump shoulders of the girl of the Red Mill. "Isn't it nice to see you both again? How jolly!"

"That's a new word Nettie got up No'th," said her Aunt Rachel. "Tell me, dears: Have they treated you right, here at the hotel?"

The girls a.s.sured her that the management had been very kind to them.

Then the question was asked: What had they done to kill time?

Helen rattled off a dozen things she and Ruth had dabbled in that afternoon-or, "evening" as the Virginians say; but it was Ruth who mentioned their ride in the rain with old Unc' Simmy.

"To the gatehouse? Where is that?" asked Aunt Rachel, lazily.

Between bursts of laughter Helen tried to tell her about the queer old negro and his dilapidated turnout; but it was Ruth who softly explained to Mrs. Parsons about Miss Catalpa and the faithful old darkey's relations to her.

"Grogan?" repeated the lady. "Yes, yes, I remember the name. Who doesn't? Major Grogan, her father, was a famous leader in the Lost Cause. Oh, dear me, Ruthie! We are still so poor in the South that the family of many a hero has come down to want. Catalpa Grogan? And you say she is blind?"

"She said we might come again and see her before we left the Point,"

suggested Ruth, gently.

Mrs. Rachel Parsons looked at her understandingly. "Quite right, my dear. We _will_ go. I will find out about this lawyer, Colonel Wilder, and he can probably tell me all we need to know. She and the old negro shall be helped-that is the least we can do."

So, the next morning, all in the glorious suns.h.i.+ne that is usually the weather condition at Old Point Comfort, the party climbed into Unc'

Simmy's old barouche and set out on the drive. Mrs. Parsons accepted the dilapidated turnout as quite a matter of course.

"Don't fret about _me_, girls," she said, when Helen said that they should have taken a different equipage.

Ruth had already begun to get the "slant" of the Southern mind. The Southerners respected themselves, and were inordinately proud of their name and blood; but they could cheerfully go without many of the conveniences of life which Northerners would consider a distinct privation. Poverty among them was no disgrace; rather, it was to be expected. They cheerfully made the best of it, and enjoyed what good things they had without allowing caviling care to corrode their pleasure.

The suns.h.i.+ne drenched them as they rolled over the now dusty road, as the rain had drenched the chums the day before. Yonder was the hole beside the roadway into which Miss Miggs had been half submerged, and from which she was rescued by the unfortunate Curly Smith.

Helen hilariously related this incident to Nettie and her aunt. But, warned by Ruth, she said nothing about the ident.i.ty of the boy.

"I hope we shall not meet that woman again," Ruth said, with a sigh.

"She surely would make a scene, Mrs. Parsons. You don't know how mean she can be."

"And a school teacher?" was the reply. "Fancy!"

They arrived at the gatehouse and Ruth begged Unc' Simmy to stop and ask if Miss Catalpa would receive them.

"Give her my card, too, boy," said Mrs. Parsons, as the smiling old man climbed down from his seat.

"Ya-as'm! ya-as'm!" said Unc' Simmy, rolling his eyes, for he saw that Mrs. Parsons was "one of de quality," as he expressed it. "Sho' will."

They were not kept waiting long. Miss Grogan was too much the lady to strive for effect. She received them, as she had the girls, on her porch; but this time in the suns.h.i.+ne.

It was a beautiful old front yard, hidden by an untrimmed hedge from the highway; and the end of the porch where the blind woman sat was now dressed with several old chairs that her guests might sit down. It was likely that Unc' Simmy had brought these out himself, foretelling that there would be visitors.

"I am glad to see you," Miss Catalpa said. She remembered Ruth and Helen when she clasped their hands, distinguis.h.i.+ng between them, although she had "seen" them but once.

To Mrs. Parsons she confessed: "These young girls came in the rain and cheered me up. I love the young. Don't you, ma'am?"

"I do," sighed Aunt Rachel. "I'd give anything for my own youth."

"No, no," returned Miss Catalpa, shaking her head. "Life gets better as we grow mellow. That's what I tell them all. I do not regret my youth, although 'twas spent comparatively free from care. And now--"

She waved the knitting in her hand, and laughed-her low, bird-like call.

"The good Lord will provide. He always has."

Mrs. Parsons, being a Southerner herself, could talk confidentially to Miss Catalpa. It seemed that several names were known to them in common; and the visitor from South Carolina learned how and where to find the particular "Kunnel Wildah" who had the disposal of Miss Catalpa's affairs in his hands.

The party had a very pleasant visit with the blind woman. Unc' Simmy appeared suddenly before them, his coachman's coat and gloves discarded, and a rusty black coat in place of the livery. He bore a tray with high, beautifully thin, tinkling gla.s.ses of lemonade, with a sprig of mint in each.

"n.o.body makes lemonade quite like Uncle Simmy," Miss Catalpa said kindly, and the old negro's face shone like a polished kitchen range at the praise. It was evident that he fairly wors.h.i.+ped his mistress.

The visitors left at last. Helen understood now why they had come. That afternoon the girls were left to their own devices while Mrs. Parsons sought out Colonel Wilder and made some provision for helping in the support of Miss Catalpa and her old servant.

"No, my dear," she said to Ruth. "You may help a little; but not much.

Wait until you become a self-supporting woman-as you will be, I know.

Then you can have the full pleasure of helping other people as you desire. I can only enjoy it because my cotton fields have made me rich.

When we use money that has been left to us, or given to us in some way, for charitable purposes, we lose the sweeter taste of giving away that which we have actually earned.

"And I thank you, my dear," she added, "for giving me the opportunity of helping Miss Grogan and Uncle Simmy."

CHAPTER X-AN ADVENTURE IN NORFOLK

The party was off on its real tour into Dixie the next day. They were to take the route in a leisurely fas.h.i.+on to the Merredith plantation, and, as Nettie laughingly put it, "would go all around Robin Hood's barn" to reach that South Carolinian Garden of Eden.

"But we want you to really _see_ something of the South on the way; it will be so warm-or, will seem so to you No'therners-when you come back, that you will only be thinking of taking the steamer at Norfolk for New York.

"Now you shall see something of Richmond and Charleston, anyway,"

concluded the Louisiana girl. "And next winter I hope you'll go home with me to my own canebrakes and bayous. _Then_ we'll have a good time, I a.s.sure you."

Ruth and Helen were having a good time. Everybody about the hotel treated them like grown-up young ladies-and of course such deferential attentions delighted two schoolgirls just set free from the scholastic yoke.

They went across the bay on the ferry and landed at Norfolk. A trip to the Navy Yard was the first thing, and as Mrs. Parsons knew some of the officers there, the party was very courteously treated. They might have visited the war vessels lying in Hampton Roads; but it seemed so hot on the water that the chums from the North voted for a trip by surface car to Norfolk's City Park.

The lawns had not yet been burned brown and the trees were beautifully leaved out. The park was a pleasant place and in it is one of the best small zoological parks in the East. The deer herd was particularly fine-such pretty, graceful creatures! All would have gone well had not Helen received an unexpected fright as they were watching the beautiful beasts.

"You would better not stand so near that grating, Helen," Nettie told her, as they were in front of the fence of the deer range.

"How am I going to feed this pretty, soft-nosed thing with gra.s.s if I _don't_ stand near?" demanded Helen.

"But you don't _have_ to feed the deer," laughed Nettie.