Part 7

“It’s fun,” replied Jean, “although it’s a little exhausting. But then, country living seems to be more strenuous altogether than what I was used to.” Just then Buzzy came back with the lemonade and Sally moved off with her partner.

After a few more dances, Jean declared she couldn’t take it any more, so the two left and drove back home. At the door Jean said, “I can’t thank you enough for the lovely time tonight, Buzzy. I never knew a barn dance could be such fun.”

“We’ll have to try it again some night. Good night, Jean.”

“Good night.” And Jean went into the house and upstairs to Kit, who was still awake and waiting impatiently to hear the details of the dance. The two older girls had always discussed their dates and parties with each other back at the Cove, and the tradition was not broken now. Together in Jean’s room, they talked it over while Jean undressed.

“Buzzy’s tops, Jean,” said Kit, after she had finished describing the evening. “I’ll bet he’ll be the best friend we make in this neighborhood.”

“It’s an evening I won’t forget soon,” replied Jean sleepily. “My feet ache so from dancing, I couldn’t possibly forget it for at least a week.”

14. Kit to the Rescue

In the following days, the girls and Tommy turned their attention to plans for the barbecue. The first thing to be sure of was a full moon. This came along the last week in June, so they made their arrangements accordingly.

Buzzy and Sally took almost as much interest in the affair as the girls themselves. All that day, when it finally did arrive, they worked gathering wood for the fire, knocking together temporary picnic tables, and digging the barbecue pit at the back of the house. Doris was making the lemonade and said she had cut and squeezed lemons until her whole mouth was puckered up, and her fingernails felt pickled. Kit was everywhere at once, it seemed. She showed Buzzy how to make the spit for the meat to be cooked on. She beguiled Matt, who had come down from Maple Grove to help around a bit, into moving the phonograph out on the front porch.

It did seem as if all Elmhurst and surrounding territory had turned out to show its neighborly spirit. There were cars parked along the road, in the barnyard, the driveway, and everywhere.

“I shouldn’t wonder, Margie, if we had as many as a hundred folks here tonight,” remarked Becky.

“More likely two hundred, Rebecca. It looks like a big crowd all right.” They were up on the porch where Mrs. Craig hovered between the lounge chair where Mr. Craig sat, and her various guests, welcoming each in her own charming way.

Doris and Kit followed Jean’s lead. First Jean rounded up the girls whom she had met on the ride with Sally and introduced them to the other Craig sisters. Tommy could not be located from one minute to another. He raced all over the grounds. One minute he was back by the barbecue pit trying to supervise things but generally heckling Buzzy. The next minute he was back in the front of the house dodging in and out of the crowd. But Doris and Kit led the other girls over to where the lemonade, ice cream and cake was laid out and asked them to serve. It was much better than standing around, shy and silent, not knowing what to do next. Kit found one girl, Abby Tucker, leaning disconsolately against a pear tree at the side of the drive. Her white dress was too short for her, and her hair was straggling in limp strands down her back. She looked lonely and rather indignant too.

“Don’t you want to come over and help us with the ice cream?” asked Kit.

“No, I don’t,” said Abby flatly. “They always ask me to help pass things to eat at the church suppers. I want to have a good time myself tonight. Though we aren’t going to have a good time.”

Kit looked at her doubtfully. She thoroughly realized the state of mind that will not let itself be happy, that in fact, finds its happiness in being unhappy, but Abby’s moroseness baffled her.

“Don’t you like it here?” she asked.

Abby nodded.

“Don’t you know anyone?”

“Know most of them.”

“Then what is it?” Kit laid her arm timidly around the stooped shoulders and at the touch of real human sympathy, Abby’s reserve melted.

“My new shoes pinch awful,” she exploded.

Kit took her straight up to the house to her own room, and ransacked closets and shoe boxes until she found a pair of loafers to fit Abby, and the latter came down again smiling and radiant, ready to serve ice cream, or make herself agreeable in any way she could.

Sally came up to the porch, personally conducting her mother to Mrs. Craig. She was a tall, fair-haired woman with deep dimples like the children’s and a happy face. Seated in a chair on the porch with the roses and honeysuckle shedding a perfume around, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Seems so nice to sit up here again, Mrs. Craig,” she said. “Sally’s told me all about how you’ve fixed the place up till it seemed as if I couldn’t wait to see it. I used to drive over once in a while after Father died, and get some slips of flowering quince and rose bushes to set out. You know I love every blade of grass in the garden and every pine cone on those trees.”

“It’s too bad you and the children couldn’t have had it.”

“Well, I don’t know. I never fret much over what has to be. Maybe this boy Ralph is all right. He’s my nephew, but I’ve never seen him. His father was a claim settler out in Oregon first off, when Cousin France married him. We called her that. Her name was Francelia. Good stock, I guess. I wish Buzzy could know him, he’s so set on being a rancher. I suppose settling and ranching’s about the same thing?”

“Not quite,” Mrs. Craig told her. Then came a chat about her own father’s ranch in California, and when Sally came back after her mother, she found her animated and interested over Buzzy’s future.

Kit and Etoile were arranging a jam session for alternate Saturday afternoons, the ones between to be given up to tennis and basketball. Those who couldn’t dance would be taught by the others. Ingeborg and Astrid and Hedda Hagerstrom stood listening and agreeing with shining eyes and eager faces. Hedda was short and strong-looking, with the bluest eyes possible and heavy blonde braids. She stared at Kit with wide-eyed wonder, Kit radiant and joyous in a yellow chambray sun-back dress, with a sprig of rambler roses in her hair.

“You’ll come, won’t you, Hedda?” she asked. “And bring any other girls over your way.”

“There’s only Abby over my way. We live on the same road.”

“Then bring Abby, but tell her to wear old shoes. We ought to find enough girls to make up a good team out here.”

“Do you like hikes?” asked Lucy Peckham. “I think it would be fun to have a hiking club, and each week tramp away off somewhere. There’s ever so many places I want to see.”

“It’s a good idea, Lucy,” Sally exclaimed.

The crowd began to break up and the Craigs stood on the porch saying goodbye to everyone. It was after twelve before the last car had driven away. Tommy was found sound asleep in the living room on the couch. Jean and Doris hunted in the grass for lost spoons and ice cream saucers.

“It was a good party,” Jean said happily. “We got acquainted with all our neighbors, and now I feel as if I could go ahead and organize something.”

15. The Haunted House

The following Saturday had been set as the first day for the girls to meet at Woodhow. Lucy was the first to arrive, as she lived nearest, and she brought with her Anne and Charlotte.

Hedda and the two girls from the old Ames place, Ingeborg and Astrid, arrived together and helped Kit and Doris plan the tennis court. Below the terraces the lawn lay smooth and even out to the south wall, but it had been decided to sacrifice a slice of the hay field across the road rather than the garden, and Matt had ploughed up a good-sized oblong of land for them, harrowed it smooth, and then the girls had pondered over the problem of rolling it. It must be rolled flat, wet down, and rolled again until it was fit to use.

“We could fill a barrel with sand, and roll that,” Doris suggested.

“Got something better than that,” Buzzy said. “Over at Mr. Peckham’s they’ve got a road roller. Mr. Peckham’s the road committee in Elmhurst township—”

Kit caught him up. “The whole committee, Buzzy?”

“Ain’t he enough? Ought to see him get out and clean up with those boys of his. He’ll let us take it, I’m sure, and it will roll that court down as smooth as can be. I’ll go after it this afternoon when I finish with the potato patch.”

The house being too far away from the site of the tennis court, the girls had to fill buckets with water from the brook and pour them over the harrowed ground. It was hard work in the hot sun. “I’m half dead,” exclaimed Doris.

“Cheer up, kid,” Kit told her briskly. “Think of the result and what fun it’ll be to play out here.”

Lucy stood back and looked at their work. “What else are you going to do up here?” she asked.

“Next we’re going to start weekly hikes,” Kit told her. “You girls have lived here for years, haven’t you—”

“We just came up a while ago,” Ingeborg corrected.

“I know, and so did Hedda, but Etoile and Tony and Lucy and the rest of you all grew up right here, didn’t you? Well, then. What do you know about the country for ten miles around?” Kit paused dramatically. “Do you know every wood road and cow path through the woods? Where does Little River rise? Have any of you followed the rock ledge up into the hills?”

“Nobody but the hunters go there, and they don’t come till fall,” said Hedda gravely. She hardly ever smiled, this transplanted little daughter of far-off Iceland. Her manner and expression always seemed to the girls to hold a certain aloofness. Up at her home, later on, they saw a finely carved model of a Viking ship which her father had made back in the home island, and Jean declared after that she always pictured Hedda standing at its high prow, facing the gale of the northern seas, her fair hair blowing behind her like a golden pennant, her blue eyes fearless and eager.

“But we’ll go. We’ll pack a picnic lunch. Hey, kids, are there any snakes up here?”

“Lots,” said Lucy. “But mostly black snakes. They’re ugly to look at, but they don’t hurt you. And little garter snakes, and green grass snakes. I never think about them.”

“Are you afraid of anything out here, Lucy?” Doris asked interestedly. She had eyed Lucy admiringly from the first moment of their acquaintance, and privately Doris held many fears. It was all very well to say there wasn’t anything to worry over, as Kit did, but one may step on toads in the dark, or hear noises in the attic that make one shiver even if they turn out to be just chipmunks after corn and nuts.

“Nothing that I know of,” Lucy replied serenely. “I never felt afraid in the dark. Just as soon go all over the house, upstairs and down, and when I go down into the cellar, I yell ‘look out, rats, here I come!’ Guess the only thing I’m really afraid of is a bat.”

“Everybody’s afraid of something,” Etoile said, her eyes wide with mystery. “I have the fear too, oh, but often. I am most afraid of those little mulberry worms, you know them? They come right down at you on little ropes they make all by themselves, and they curl up in the air and then they drop on you. Ugh!”

Kit rolled over on the grass in delight at this. “That’s a riot,” she laughed. “Tell some more, Etoile.”

“We’ve got a haunted house on our road,” Astrid said in a lowered voice. “The little spring house between the old mill and our place. It’s been there years and years, my father says. He knows the old man at the mill, and he told him. As far back as they can remember it has always been haunted. First there lived an old watchmaker there. He had clocks and watches all over the house, and they ticked all the time.”

“Maybe they kept him from being lonely,” Doris suggested.

“He was very strange, and when he died, then two old Indian women came to live there. And there was a peddler used to go through and put up overnight there, and he never was seen any more.”

“You can see the grave in the cellar where they buried him,” Ingeborg whispered. “Right down at the foot of the stairs. And at night he comes up and goes all around the house, rattling chains. Yes, he does. My brother went down with some of the boys and stayed there just to find out and they heard him.”

“Let’s go over there on our hike and stay overnight, kids,” Kit exclaimed. “I think it would be swell.”

“Don’t you believe in ghosts, Kit?” asked Lucy. “I don’t like to believe in them, but I just thought they had to be believed in if they’re really so.”

“No, I don’t. We’ll stay overnight at the spring house, kids. It’s a shame to have a real ghost around and not make it welcome. If there are any ghosts, which I doubt, they must be the lonesomest creatures in all creation because nobody wants them around. Suppose we say that next Friday we’ll walk up to the house and camp out for the night. Who’s afraid?”

The girls looked at each other doubtfully.

“Can I bring our dog along?” asked Ingeborg. “Then I’m not afraid, I don’t think.”

“Bring anything you like. I’m going to take a flashlight. Here comes our roller, now. We’d better finish the tennis court.”

Rebecca told the story of the old spring house when they saw her. She could remember Scotty McDougal, the old watchmaker who had lived there.

“Land, yes, I should say I could. He used to wear an old coonskin cap with the tail hanging down, and carried an old gun along with him wherever he went. After he died, two old women moved in from somewhere in the woods toward Dayville. They were Indian, I guess, or gypsy, real good-hearted people so far as I could see. Used to weave carpet and rag rugs and make baskets. There was a story around that they could tell fortunes and see things in the future, but that’s just talk. I never pay any attention to such things at all. Probably, if you could clear the house of its name, somebody’d be willing to live in it. It belongs to Judge Ellis.”

“Who’s Judge Ellis?” asked Kit, who always caught at a new name.

“Who’s he?” Becky laughed heartily. “Meanest man in seven counties, I guess. He ran for Senator years ago and was beaten, and he took a solemn oath he’d never have anything to do with anybody in this township again, and I guess he’s kept it. He lives in the biggest house here.”

“All alone?” asked Tommy.

“All alone excepting for a housekeeper and his grandson. He’s just a fussy old miser, and the way he lets that boy run wild makes my heart ache.”

“How old a boy is he, Becky?” asked Mrs. Craig, feeling sympathetic at once.

“Oh, I should say about fifteen. Name’s Billie. He’s a case, I tell you. What he can’t think of in five minutes isn’t worth doing. Still, he’s a good boy, too, at that. Five of my cows strayed off from the pasture lot last summer, and he found them after Matt had run his legs off looking for them. And once we lost some turkeys, and he found them over in the pines roosting with the crows. He knows every foot of land for ten miles around here and more, I guess. You never know when he’s going to bob out of the bushes and grin at you. The Judge don’t pay any more attention to him than if he was a scarecrow. Seems that he had one son, Finley Ellis, and he was that wild the Judge turned him off years ago. And one day he got a letter, so Mr. Ricketts told me, from New York, and away he went, looking cross enough to chew tacks. When he came back he had Billie with him, and that’s all Elmhurst ever found out. Billie says he’s his grandfather, and the Judge says nothing.”

“I’d like to see him,” Jean exclaimed.

“Who? The Judge?”

“No, no. Billie, this boy. What does he look like?”

“Looks like all-get-out half the time, and never comes to church at all. You’ll know him by his whistling. He can whistle like a bird. I’ve heard him sometimes in the early spring, and you couldn’t tell his whistle from a real whippoorwill. There is something about him that everybody likes.”

“I hope he comes over this way,” Mrs. Craig said.

“Oh, he will. The Judge never lets him have any pocket money, so he’s always trying to earn a little. He’ll come and try to sell you a tame crow, most likely, or a trained caterpillar. I was driving over toward their place one day and I declare if I didn’t find him lying flat in the middle of the road. Ella Lou barked and I asked him what he was doing. ‘Don’t drive in the middle of the road, Miss Craig,’ he said, ‘’cause I’ve got some ants here, taming them!’ Real good-looking boy he is too.”

“Gee, but he sounds like fun,” Kit remarked fervently. “I almost feel like hunting him up, don’t you, Jean?”

Jean nodded her head. She was putting up currants and raspberries, and the day was very warm.

“Why do you keep a fire going in the house?” Miss Craig asked her. “Put an old wood stove out in the back yard, the way I do, and let it sizzle along. Goodbye, everybody.”

“Come down and play tennis with us,” called Doris.

“Go ’long, child.” Becky chuckled. “How would I look hopping around, slapping at those little balls! Come on, Ella Lou.”

“Golly,” Kit exclaimed as the car drove away, “it seems as if every single day something new happens here, and we thought it would be so dull we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves.”

“You mean Billie’s something new?” asked Doris.

“Doesn’t he sound interesting? I’m going out to ask Buzzy about him.”

“You’d better help me finish these berries, Kathleen,” Jean urged. So Kit gave up the quest temporarily and sat on the edge of the kitchen table, stripping currants from their stems, and singing at the top of her lungs.

“Oh, Kit, do stop,” begged Jean. “It’s too hot to sing.”

Kit looked out at the widespread view of Woodhow, rich with uncut grass billowing with every vagrant breeze like distant waves. It was hot in the kitchen, hot and close. Suddenly Kit fled out the back door and over to the pasture where Princess rambled.

“Kit’s fretful, isn’t she?”

“She thinks she’s getting into a rut,” answered Jean. “We all do. Some days I get so homesick for the kids back home and everything that we haven’t got here—the library and the art museum and the movies and the symphony concerts. I think we ought to write down and ask some of the girls to come up.”

“I don’t. Not until Dad’s well.”

Tommy was out of hearing. Jean looked over at Doris, who in some ways always seemed nearer her own age than Kit.

“Doris, honest and truly, do you think Dad’s getting any better?” she asked in a low voice.

Doris hesitated, her face showing plainly how she dreaded acknowledging even to herself the possibility of his not improving.

“He eats better now, and he can sit up.”

“But he looks awful. I get goose pimples when I look at him sometimes. His eyes look as if they were gazing away off at some land we couldn’t see.”

“Jean Craig, how can you say that?”

“Hush, don’t let Mother hear,” cautioned Jean anxiously. “I had to tell somebody. I think of it all the time.”

“Well, don’t think of it. That’s like sticking pins in a wax statue back in the Middle Ages, and saying, ‘He’s going to die, he’s going to die,’ all the time. He’s getting better.”

Jean was silent. She felt worried, but if Doris refused to listen to her, there was nobody left except Becky. Somehow, at every emergency Becky seemed to be the one hope these days, unfailing and unfearing. Dauntless and cheerful, she rode over every obstacle.

But when Jean found an opportunity of speaking to her of her father, Rebecca’s face looked oddly passive.

“We’re all in the Lord’s hands, Jeannie,” she said. “Trust and obey, you know. There are lots worse things than passing over Jordan, but we’ve just got that notion in our heads that we don’t want to let any of our beloved ones take the voyage. Tom’s weak, I know, and he ain’t mending so fast as I’d hoped for, but he’s gained. That’s something. You’ve been up here only a couple of months. It took longer than that to break him down, and it may take years of peace and rest to build him up. Let’s be patient. Dr. Gallup seems to think he’s got a good deal more than an even chance.”

16. Unexpected Visitor

It would never do to leave Sally out of any hikes, Kit said as the end of the week drew near again, and so Buzzy was commissioned to give her a message.

“Tell her we’re going to walk from here over to Mount Ponchas, and back by way of the Spring House. We want to start at five Friday night.”

“Ought to start at daybreak for a hike,” Buzzy replied. “Never heard of starting near sundown. You’ll fetch up by dark at the rock ridge and sleep in a deer hollow.”

“Maybe we will,” Kit responded hopefully. “I hadn’t thought of that, Buzzy. It sounds awfully nice. If you could just get a peep at our lunch you’d want to hike too, no matter where we fetched up.”

“I’ve camped out along the river. Not this river. The big one down at the station, the Quinnebaug. We fellas go down there when the bass is running and fish for them nights. Eels too.”

“Do you know a boy named Billie Ellis?” Kit asked suddenly. “Does he ever go along with you?”

“Billie Ellis? I should say not,” Buzzy answered emphatically. “Judge Ellis wouldn’t let him go along anywhere with the rest of us fellows. He caught a big white owl the other day over in the pines back of the Ellis house.”

“I wish he’d come over our way some time. I’d love to know him. He sounds so kind of—well, different, you know.”

“He’s different all right,” laughed Buzzy good-naturedly. “I remember once three years ago it was awfully cold, and we boys had been skating and went into the feed store to get warm. And who should come in but Billie Ellis without any hat on, and only an old sweater and a pair of pants on, and shoes and socks. We asked him how he ever kept warm such weather, and what do you suppose he said?”

“What?” Kit’s face was eager with interest.

“Said he had seven cats he kept specially to keep him warm. Said the Judge wouldn’t let him have any fire, so he trained the cats to cuddle around him and keep him warm. So long. I’ll tell Sally you want her to go along with you.”

Kit sat out on the terrace after he had passed up the hill road. Jean and Doris were upstairs with their father, and Tommy was out in the barn somewhere. Her mother was playing the piano. Buzzy had been gone about fifteen minutes when Kit heard the sound of a car coming along the level valley road. It couldn’t be anyone for here, she thought. But just then the car turned in at the wide drive entrance and came up to the porch steps.

“You had better wait,” she heard a voice say, such a nice voice, young and alive-sounding. Then somebody bounded up the steps, three at a time, and crossed the porch, with her sitting right there on the top terrace below the rose and honeysuckle vines. Kit always jumped to conclusions and now she decided for some crazy reason that this was Ralph McRae, from Saskatoon.

There was no doorbell or even a knocker, and the double doors stood wide open, but the screen doors were locked inside, so Kit stood up and called.

“Just a minute, please. I’m coming.”

He waited for her, hat in hand and smiling. It was shadowy, but she saw his face and liked it. He was young and handsome.

“Are you Miss Craig?” he asked, and Kit flushed at the tone. As if she didn’t long seventeen hundred times a month to be _the_ Miss Craig like Jean.

“No. I’m only Kit,” she answered. “You’re our Mr. McRae, I think. Hello.”

He shook hands with her and Kit led him around to the side door and let him in while she lighted a lamp.

“Mother’s in here,” she said, leading the way into the living room. Mrs. Craig stopped playing and looked up. “Mother,” Kit said. “Mr. McRae’s come from Saskatoon.”

“Just as if he’d stepped over the whole distance in about seven strides,” Doris said later, after Mr. McRae had been settled in the guest chamber, and the family could discuss him safely. “I think he’s awfully nice-looking, don’t you, Jean?”