The Carter Girls Part 16

"Yes, the room will do very well."

It was rather faint praise and took very little time to say when one considered that Gwen had spent days on her task. But Nan and Douglas made up to her for their cousin's seeming coldness by going into raptures over the cabin.

"Lewis did not tell us he was going to whitewash the room for Cousin Lizzie," said Nan.

"I whitewashed it myself. The young gentlemen were so occupied with constructing the pavilion that I could not bear to interrupt them." Nan and Douglas could not help smiling at the little English girl's stilted language but they hid their amus.e.m.e.nt. "I prepared the attic room for the negro maid. Would you like to go up and see that?"

"Yes, indeed! Come on, Susan, and see your room. It is to be right up over Cousin Lizzie's."

"Well, praise be to my Maker that I ain't goin' to have to sleep in the air. My lungs is weak at best an' no doubt the air would be the death of me."

Susan's figure belied her words, as she was an exceedingly buxom girl with a chest expansion that Sandow might have envied her.

The attic was entered by a trap door from the room below and in lieu of stairs there was nothing but a ladder made chicken-steps style: small cross pieces nailed on a board.

The attic room was scrubbed as clean as Miss Lizzie's. The low ceiling and very small windows certainly suited Susan's idea of sanitation, as very little air could find its way into the chamber. A rough wooden bed was built against the wall, as is often the way in mountain cabins, more like a low, deep shelf than a bed. Gwen had stuffed a new tick with nice clean straw and Susan bid fair to have pleasant dreams on her fresh bed. A night spent without dreams of some kind was one wasted in the eyes of the colored girl who consulted her dream book constantly.

Josh had railed at Gwen for putting a bunch of black-eyed Susans in the attic room.

"Waitin' on a n.i.g.g.e.r! Humph! You uns ain't called on to lower yo'sef that a way. n.i.g.g.e.rs is n.i.g.g.e.rs an' we uns would ruther to bust than fetch an' carry fer 'em."

"This seems a very small thing to do," Gwen had answered. She did not share the mountaineer's prejudice against the black race. "I have no doubt this girl will like flowers just as much as Miss Somerville."

So she did and a great deal more, as she expressed her appreciation of the tomato can of posies, and Miss Somerville had not even noticed the bouquets in her room. As Susan followed the girls up the funny steps and her head emerged through the trap door, her eyes immediately fell on the flowers.

"Well, Gawd be praised! My dream is out! I done fell asleep in the cyars an' dream I see little chillun picking flowers in a fiel'. My book say that is one er two interpretations: you is either goin' ter have fresh flowers laid on yer grabe er some one is goin' ter make you a prisint er flowers. I thank yer, little miss, fer the bowkay."

"Indeed, you are welcome," and Gwen gave her a grave smile.

Susan had been quite doubtful at first what her att.i.tude should be with this white girl who went barefooted and whitewashed cabins herself. She knew very well how to treat po' white trash: like the dust under her feet. There was no other way for a self-respecting colored girl to treat them. But this white girl was different, somehow.

"She got a high steppin' way that is mo' like quality," she declared to Oscar later. "She calls that slab-sided, shanty-boat 'ooman Aunt Mandy, but I 'low they ain't no kin. Now that there Josh is low flung. I think Miss Douglas is crazy to let Bobby run around with him as much as she do. I bet his maw would stop it fast enough."

The Carter girls' enthusiasm and praise for the camp fully repaid the young men for their untiring labor. The pavilion was really a thing of beauty, built right up in the trees, as it were, like a great nest. It had no walls, but the roof projected far enough to keep out anything short of horizontal rain. An artistic rustic seat encircled the great poplar trunk in the centre and rough benches were built around three sides of the hall. Stairs went down on the fourth side to the kitchen in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and outside, steps gave entrance to the pavilion. The whole building was screened. This was to be dining-room, living-room, dance hall and everything and anything they chose to make of it. The girls had reserved their victrola in renting the house and it now had the place of honor near the circular seat.

"We just unpacked it this morning," said Lewis. "There was no use in music with no girls to dance with."

"Aren't men strange creatures?" laughed Helen. "Now girls love to dance so, they dance with each other, but two men would just as soon do fancy work as dance with one another."

"Sooner," muttered Bill. "Let's have a spin!"

So a spirited "one-step" was put on and then the youths felt themselves to be overpaid for their work as they danced over the floor that had been the cause of many an aching joint and mashed thumb. Joints were not aching now and mashed thumbs were miraculously cured by clasping the hands of these pretty girls.

That first supper in the mountains was a very merry one. Miss Elizabeth was much refreshed by a nap and came to the pavilion quite resigned to life. She had nothing but praise for the handiwork of her beloved nephew, and even included the laconic Bill in her compliments. She wished, however, he would not be so sudden in his laughter as she was afraid it betrayed the vacant mind.

Gwen had made a delicious frica.s.see of chicken in the fireless cooker, the mysteries of which she had been taught at the mission school. Hot biscuit and honey from Aunt Mandy's hive completed the feast.

"What delicious biscuit!" exclaimed Douglas. "Isn't Gwen a wonder?"

"'Scuse me, Miss Douglas, but I made them biscuit," said Susan, who was waiting on the table.

"But, Susan, I thought you said you couldn't cook a thing!"

"That was in Richmond. I ain't boun' by no regulations of no club whin I leaves the city. You see in my club, which is called the Loyal Housemaids, we swars never to 'tend to two 'fessions at onct. When we is housemaids, we is housemaids, but out here where th'ain't ter say no house, I kin do as I's a mind, and I sho' did want ter make some biscuit ter go with that there frica.s.sy. Uncle Oscar an' I is goin' ter share the cookin'. An' Miss Gwen is goin' ter do the haid wuck. We ain't conversant with the fi'less cooker an' we don't know nothin' 'tall 'bout lightin' kerosene stoves."

Our girls were much gratified by Susan's willingness to turn in and be of some real a.s.sistance. The work when only the family were there would be light, but if the many week-enders who had announced their intention of coming to their camp materialized, they well knew that it would take the combined efforts of them all to feed the hungry hordes and to wash the many dishes and make up the many cots. The laundering of the bed linen and towels would amount to more than they could cope with, so they had decided to patronize a laundry in Charlottesville, for all the flat work.

Bobby was in a state of extreme bliss. He had been allowed to help Josh feed Josephus and now he was permitted to come to supper without doing more towards purifying himself than just "renching the Germans" off his hands and face. He was to sleep in the tent with his Cousin Lewis, too.

The girls' tent was pitched just behind the Englishman's cabin, while the masculine quarters were nearer the pavilion.

"We will put up other tents as we need them," said Lewis. "We have chopped down enough trees and cleared enough ground to camp the whole of Richmond."

"Thank goodness, our boarders won't come for a week yet and we can have time to enjoy ourselves for a while," sighed Douglas.

She was very tired but it was not the miserable fatigue she had felt in town. It was a good healthy tired that meant a night's rest with nothing to think about but how good life was and how kind people were.

Everything was certainly working out well. Cousin Lizzie was behaving in a wonderful way for an old lady who thought much of her ease and had no love of Nature. Helen and Lucy were too interested to squabble at all and so were getting on splendidly. Bobby was behaving himself beautifully, and even the servants were rising to the occasion and evidently intending to do their best. The only fly in the ointment was their att.i.tude towards Josh and his towards them. He openly called them "n.i.g.g.e.rs," and they called him "po' white" right to his face. Gwen, they seemed to have accepted at her face value and not judged by her bare feet and scanty frock.

"n.i.g.g.e.rs, an' min' you, Miss Douglas, we don't 'low n.o.body but us to call us out of our names that way," said Oscar. "n.i.g.g.e.rs is reg'lar bloodhoun's an' they kin smell out quality same as geologists kin. Me'n Susan knows that that there little Miss Gwen is a lady bawn."

"I believe she is, Oscar, and I hope you and Susan will be just as nice to her as you can be."

"We'll do our best, but land's sake, Miss Douglas, don' arsk us to be gentle with that there Josh. He is low flung and mischeevous to that extent."

"All right, Oscar," laughed Douglas, "but don't be too hard on him."

Lewis had told her that Josh was fully capable of taking care of himself and in the trial of wits Josh would certainly come out ahead.

"He already done scart Susan to death, tellin' her about hants in the mountings. He says that Miss Gwen's paw was pestered by a ringin' an'

buzzin' in his haid that drove him 'stracted, and he used to roam the mountings trying to git shet of the sound, til bynby he couldn't stan'

it no mo an' up'n jumped off'n a place called the Devil's Gorge and brack ev'y bone in his body. An' he sayed the Englishman still hants these here parts an' you can hear the buzzin' an' ringin' sometimes jes'

as plain as the po' man uster hear it in his life time. He say he won't come over here arfter nightfall to save yo neck."

"What nonsense!" declared Douglas. "Well, all the buzzing on earth won't keep me awake," but before she went to sleep, she recounted the ridiculous tale to her three sisters, who shared the tent with her.

They agreed that they would have to ask Lewis to speak to Josh about telling such things to poor Susan, who was already eaten up with superst.i.tion.

"Ain't it grand to sleep in a----?" but Lucy was asleep before she said what it was grand to sleep in. Nan tried to recall some lines of Wordsworth that Gwen reminded her of, but "The sweetest thing that ever grew," was all she could think of before sleep got her, too. Helen forgot to put olive oil on her eyebrows, a darkening process she was much interested in, and went off into happy, dreamless slumber. Douglas shut her tired eyes and sleep claimed her for its own before she could count ten.

CHAPTER XII.

HANTS.

"Help! Help!" The call was followed by a blood-curdling shriek that drowned the noise of tree frogs and whip-poor-wills.

Douglas and Nan both awoke with a start and Helen stirred in her sleep.