The Carter Girls Part 6

"Do you mean that you let a perfect stranger pick up your parents and send them off on a journey without consulting a soul?"

"But it was important to avoid all confusion and discussion. Dr. Wright has been lovely about it all. He even got a notary public so I could be given power of attorney to attend to any business that might come up. It so happened, though, that my being under age was a drawback and Father gave him power of attorney instead."

"Douglas Carter! Do you mean to say that a strange young Yankee doctor that has only been living in Richmond a little while has the full power to sell your father out and do anything he chooses with his estate?

Preposterous!"

"But there isn't any estate," objected Douglas, and Helen could not help a little gleam of satisfaction creeping into her eyes. She was not the only person who felt that Dr. Wright had been, to say the least, presumptuous.

"No estate! Why I thought Robert Carter was very well off. What has he done with his money, please?"

"We have just lived on it. We didn't know," sadly from Douglas.

"I never heard of such extravagance. 'A fool and his money are soon parted.'"

"We have got just exactly eighty-three dollars and fifty-nine cents in the bank. Father owns this house and a side of a mountain in Albemarle, and that is all."

"Mercy, child! I can't believe it."

"We have got to live somehow, and I believe we all feel that it would be very bad for Father to come back and find debts to be paid off. He has such a horror of debt that he has always paid the bills each month. What do you think we could do--something to make money, I mean? Father was in such a nervous state we could not consult him, and Mother, poor little Mother, of course she does not understand business at all."

"Humph! I should say not! And what do you chits of girls know about it, either? Are you meaning to stay alone, all un-chaperoned, until this Yankee doctor thinks it is time to let your parents return? Just as like as not there is nothing the matter with your father but a touch of malaria."

"We had not thought of a chaperone, as we have been so miserable about Father we could not think of ourselves. If we are going to make a living, we won't need chaperones, anyhow."

"Make a living, indeed! You are to stay right here in your home and I will come stay with you, and you can curtail your expenses somewhat by dismissing one servant and giving up your car. Robert Carter is not the kind of man who would want his eighteen-year-old daughter and others even younger to go out into the world to make a living. He would rather die than have such a thing happen."

"But we are not going to have him die," broke in Helen. "I thought just as you do, Cousin Lizzie, until I saw him this afternoon and realized how worried he has been. We are going to do something and there are to be no debts awaiting him, either. What do you think of boarders? Do you think we could get any?"

"Who on earth would board with us, here in Richmond? Everybody knows what a trifling lot we are. If we have boarders, it will have to be on the side of the mountain in Albemarle," said Nan, and as usual every one stopped to hear what she had to say. "Besides, a boarding house in summer shuts up shop in cities. Country board is the thing. Let's rent our house furnished for a year and go to the mountains."

"But there are nothing but trees and rocks on the side of the mountain in Albemarle," objected Douglas; "not a piece of a house except a log cabin near the top built by the sick Englishman who used to live there."

"No room for boarders in that, I know, as Father pointed it out to me once from the train when we were on our way to Wytheville. It had one room and maybe two. It must command a wonderful view. You could see it for miles and miles and when you get up there, there is no telling what you can see. It would make a great camp--Girls! Girls! Cousin Lizzie!

Lewis! All of you! I've got a scheme! It just came to me!" and Helen jumped up and ran around and hugged everybody, even the cousin she and Douglas had grown too big to kiss.

"Well, cough it up! We are just as anxious as can be to share your idea, or is it so big it got stuck on the way," laughed Lewis, accepting the caress as it was meant.

"Let's have a boarding camp, with Cousin Lizzie to chaperone us! I know just lots of girls who would simply die to go, and Albemarle is close enough for week-enders to pour in on us."

"Hurrah! Hurrah! And I bid to be man-of-all work! I know rafts of fellows who would want to come."

"Yes, and let's call it Week End Camp," said Nan. "Week to be spelled W-E-A-K. What do you think of the plan, Cousin Lizzie? If you are to be chaperone, it seems to me you should be consulted the first thing."

"Don't ask me, child. Things are moving too rapidly for me. We must go a little more slowly," and truly the old lady did look dazed indeed.

"'More haste, less speed,' is a very good adage."

"Well, Cousin Lizzie, it does sound crazy in a way, but do you know, I believe we could really do it and do it very well," said Douglas. "I consider Helen a genius to have thought of such a thing. I don't think the outlay need be very great, and surely the living would be cheap when once we get there."

"But, my dear, at my age I could not begin to eat out of doors. I have not done such a thing since I can remember but once, and then I went with the United Daughters of the Confederacy on a picnic. The undertaker went ahead with chairs and tables so everything was done in decency and order."

Nan's "Funeral baked meats!" made them all laugh, even Cousin Lizzie.

"I am going to have a short khaki suit with leggins coming way up,"

declared Helen, who could not contemplate anything without seeing herself dressed to suit the occasion.

"Me, too," sleepily from Lucy, who was trying to keep awake long enough to find out what it all meant.

"Aunt Lizzie, I wish you would consent. It all depends on you. You could eat in the cabin and sleep in the cabin and not camp out at all. I could go up right away and build the camp. I'd just love to have something to do. Bill Tinsley, from Charlottesville, got s.h.i.+pped with me and I'm pretty sure he'd join me. You'd like Bill, he's so quaint. We are both of us great carpenters and could make a peach of a job of it. Do, please, Aunt Lizzie!"

Could this be the young man who, only ten minutes ago, she had described as being in a state of dejection bordering on insanity? This enthusiastic boy with his eyes dancing in joyful antic.i.p.ation of manual labor to be plunged into? If she consented to go to the mountains, thereby no doubt making herself very uncomfortable, she might save her beloved nephew from doing the thing that she was dreading more than all others, dreading it so much that she had been afraid to give voice to it: going to France to fight with the Allies.

"Well, Lewis, if this plan means that you will find occupation and happiness, I will consent. I can't bear to think of your being idle.

'Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.'"

"Oh, Cousin Lizzie, I think you are just splendid!" exclaimed Helen.

And, indeed, Miss Elizabeth Somerville was splendid in her way. She was offering herself on the altar of aunthood. It was a real sacrifice for her to consent to this wild plan of going to the mountains. She hated snakes, and while she did not confess that she hated Nature, she certainly had no love for her. Her summer outings had meant, heretofore, comfortable hotels at the springs or seash.o.r.e, where bridge was the rule and Nature the exception. The promise of being allowed to sleep in the cabin and even eat in it was not any great inducement. A log cabin, built and lived in and finally, no doubt, died in, by a sick Englishman was not very pleasant to contemplate. Miss Lizzie was very old-fas.h.i.+oned in all her ideas with the exception of germs, and she was very up-to-date as to them. No modern scientist knew more about them or believed in them more implicitly. Oh, well! She could take along plenty of C. N. and sulphur candles and crude carbolic. That would kill the germs. She would find out the latest cure for snake bite, and with a pack of cards for solitaire perhaps she could drag out an existence until Robert Carter and Annette got home from this mad trip. All she hoped was that n.o.body would wake her up to see the sun rise and that she would not be called on to admire the moon every time there was a moon.

"I hope we can get the daily paper," she moaned feebly. "I hate to go too far from the daily paper."

"We'll get it if I have to build a flying machine and fly to Richmond for it," declared Lewis.

"The place is not half a mile from the post office," said Helen. "At least, that is the way it looks from the train. When can we get started?

I don't think it is worth while to go back to school any more. We can all of us just stop."

"Oh, Helen, of course we can't! Douglas is going to graduate, and Lucy and I have our exams next week. What would Father say at our giving up right now? You can quiturate all you've a mind to, but I intend to go on and graduate and go to college like Douglas," said Nan.

"I am afraid I'll have to give up college, but I am going to take my Bryn Mawr examinations just the same because I want Father to know I can stand them." Douglas hoped sincerely that the tear she felt gathering would evaporate before it dropped.

"Give up college! Why, Douglas Carter, I don't see what you mean. You have been full of it all winter," exclaimed Helen.

"But Helen, you know perfectly well there is no more money."

"Oh, I keep on forgetting!"

"There is one thing that I have forgotten, too, and I feel awfully bad about it after all his kindness," said Douglas. "That is, we must make no decided plans until we consult Dr. Wright."

"Consult Dr. Wright, indeed! I'd like to know what's it to him," said Helen wrathfully. "Can't we even go on a summer trip without asking his permission?"

"Well, I think inasmuch as he has power of attorney and we can't do anything without money that we shall have to consult him. He'll be home to-morrow night and we can ask him immediately. I am pretty sure he will think it a good thing, though."

"Maybe, but for goodness' sake, don't tell him it was my idea originally, as he hates me as much as I hate him, and if _he_ had thought of it, I just know I'd never have consented or thought it a good plan."

"Well, I know one thing," said Miss Somerville, "I am dead tired and this child here is asleep. We had better go to bed and get all the rest we can if we are going to camp out for the summer."

How different the night was from what the Carters had looked forward to!

Sleepless misery was what they had been sure would be their lot, and instead, they went to their beds with their heads full of their week-end boarding camp. Father was to get well on his voyage and come back to join them in Albemarle. Instead of finding debts piled on debts, their camp was to pay and he was to find his girls actually making a living.