The Carter Girls Part 26

"Certainly not!" And then Helen blushed to think how short a time had elapsed since she had expressed all kinds of doubts about the honesty of this man, because, forsooth, he had been given power of attorney over a paltry $83.59! Here she was advising this little mountain waif to hand over to Dr. Wright what seemed to them a large fortune without even a receipt.

George Wright smiled and quietly wrote a receipt for the amount.

"It would be safer to let me carry this money for you because it might get out that you have it, and it would be easier to get it from you than me. I will deposit it at the Virginia Trust Co. in Richmond, and will send you the bank book immediately. You can invest it or not as you see fit. It would bring in forty-five dollars a year if you put it in the savings bank."

"Oh, that would be enough for me to go to school on and even be a boarder at school! But I want some of it to buy a new mule for Aunt Mandy. Josephus is so old and feeble."

"You had better not tell Josh you think so," laughed the doctor. "But will you be contented, child, just to stay on in the mountains for the rest of your life?"

"This is the only home I have. Where else can I go?"

"You can go wherever we are," cried Helen impulsively, and Dr. Wright's admiration for her was increased if possible.

"Oh, Miss Helen, you are so good! But Aunt Mandy needs me and maybe if I stay here I can make Josh wash, even in the winter time."

"Well, maybe you can," said the doctor kindly, "and it is a great thing to be needed and to see some chance of improving your fellow man. You could, with economy, get yourself through college on this money."

"And then, of course, you own the land our camp is built on,"

remembered Helen. "That is a thousand dollars more."

"But I don't want that," exclaimed Gwen. "It has been so wonderful to have all of you here and so good to me."

"But, my dear child, the land belongs to you and this Abner Dean will have to be the one to suffer, not you or the Carters. If you will let me, I will consult a lawyer in Richmond and have him take hold of the matter. Don't you find a deed of some sort among those papers?"

There was no deed among the papers and, in fact, one never was found.

The mystery was never solved how such an intelligent man as St. John Brownell evidently was had contented himself with a mere receipt for the $1,000 paid Abner Dean. He was perhaps suffering so with the nervous complaint which finally caused his death, that he had accepted the simplest method which presented itself to establish himself in a place where he hoped to find some peace.

While Helen was confined to her couch with the spurious sprained ankle, she helped Gwen unravel the story of her life from the letters found in the wonderful wallet. It was not such an extraordinary story, after all.

St. John Brownell was of good family and education but evidently of small means, being the younger son of one of the many daughters of an impoverished earl. He had married young, come to America, and taken up teaching as a profession. His wife had died and then had come on him the strange malady that had caused him so much agony. Cities were hateful to him and he had decided that his small patrimony would serve best in some locality where the living was very inexpensive. Helen gathered from some of the letters that this patrimony amounted to about $3,000. He seemed to have arrived in the mountains with that much money in cash. He had bought the one hundred acres of land on the side of the mountain, hoping to improve it, possibly by going into Albemarle pippins. Gwen thought he had perhaps put his money into cash expecting to place it in a bank in Virginia; but as his malady gained on him all money dealings became very hateful and irksome to him, and he had evidently procrastinated until he had become in the habit of just carrying that roll of money around with him.

Gwen could recall nothing of her mother, but she remembered being in a kindergarten in New York and of course remembered coming to Virginia, and her father's every characteristic was as fresh in her mind as though he had died only yesterday. The poor man had never been too miserable to be anything but gentle and loving to his little daughter, and he had spared no pains in teaching her, so that at nine years, her age when he had died, Gwen had been quite as well educated as many a child of twelve.

"Aren't you going to write to some of your father's family, Gwen?" asked Helen, who had become so absorbed in the research that she felt like a full-fledged detective.

"I think not," and Gwen shook her head sadly. "He must have gone completely out of their lives. I can't remember his getting any letters after we came to Virginia. Some day, maybe, I can make enough money to go to England, and then I will hunt them up and peep at them through the shutters, and if they look kind and nice, I'll make myself known to them."

"Perhaps you are right. They may be all kinds of pills and they might come over here and take you back with them whether you wanted to go or not. And you might have to live in stuffy chambers in London and never see the mountains any more."

"Dreadful! That would kill me!"

And so Gwen went on living with kind Aunt Mandy, little by little cleaning up that good woman until she became reconciled to water and almost fond of it.

George Wright consulted a lawyer friend who took Gwen's affairs in hand and by skillful management brought old Abner Dean to the realization that it would be best for him to execute a deed to the land bought by St. John Brownell, arranging it so Gwen would own the property without any string tied to it. He was forced to pay the money to Mr. Carter, and then the girls, having unwittingly built on Gwen's land, rented it from her. Land had increased twofold in value since the Englishman had made his purchase, and the timber had grown so there was every indication that by careful management Gwen would have a good deal more money to add to her bank account.

Before Dr. Wright went back to Richmond, he told Helen he had killed the snake, if not the one who had taken a nip out of her tendon Achilles, at least one just as good or just as bad, whichever way she chose to look at it.

"Poor old snake!" exclaimed Helen. "He shouldn't have been punished for acting according to his nature. I am the one that should have been punished, because I hope I acted not according to my nature."

"Well, haven't you been punished?"

Helen said nothing. She felt in her heart that she had not been punished at all but had been favored, in that through that rattlesnake she had gained a real friend in the young doctor.

CHAPTER XXI.

WHERE IS BOBBY?

"Where is Bobby, Helen?" asked Douglas, coming into the tent where Helen was having an enforced invalidism. She had promised Dr. Wright to be quiet until he returned to camp, which he was planning to do in a week.

"I want to make you glad to see me and if my coming means you are no longer in durance vile I know I shall be welcome," he had said when he told her good-by after a little more pulse taking.

"We shall always be glad to have you," she had replied impersonally. He did think she might have used a singular p.r.o.noun but he was grateful to her for any small sc.r.a.p of politeness. As for Helen, it was difficult for her to get over a certain sharpness of manner she had up to this time carefully kept for the young physician. When she had fooled herself into thinking she hated him there had been times when she had forgotten to be rude in spite of her intentions and now, when she meant to be mild and gentle, sometimes the old habit of studied disagreeableness got the better of her. That long week of enforced idleness had chastened her spirit wonderfully. She was so gentle that Douglas sometimes thought maybe she was ill. The rattler seemed to have extracted the poison from her system, rather than injected it.

"Only one more day!" she was thinking when Douglas came in. Dr. Wright was expected on the morrow and then she could be up and doing once more.

There were absolutely no ill effects from the wound and that tiny excuse for a bandage had wholly disappeared. It seemed foolish to be nursing up herself like this, but then she had promised and Helen Carter never broke her word.

"Bobby, you say? Why, he must have gone with Josh."

"No, Josh was to go a long way for some chickens and I thought Bobby would get too tired."

"Maybe Lewis took him to the station with him."

"Of course! I hear the goat chugging up the mountain now. I'll go see."

But no Bobby!

The mountain goat was laden with packages and two previous boarders who could not wait for the week-end to return to camp. No one had seen Bobby for hours and hours it developed on investigation.

"He done pestered the life out'n me all mornin'," declared Oscar, "an'

I done tol' him go fin' Susan and worry her some."

"Yes, an' I sint him back to you."

"Well, he ain't never come."

"He came to me for a story," confessed Nan, "but I was so interested in my book I couldn't stop. I'm so sorry."

"He wanted to go with Lil and me but we didn't want him tagging on," and Lucy looked ready to weep.

"He came to me and wanted me to build a log cabin out of sticks but I had my accounts to go over," groaned Douglas. "I sent him to Helen but she hasn't seen him."

"Well, he is around somewhere," comforted Lewis.

"Sure!" declared Bill. "All hands turn out and hunt."