The Girls of Hillcrest Farm: or, The Secret of the Rocks

“I don’t believe they’ll be a very profitable crop,” observed Lyddy.

“My goodness me!” exclaimed ’Phemie, “let’s retain a little sentiment, Lyd! We can’t eat ’em–no; but they’re sweet and restful to look at. I’m going to have moon-flowers and morning-glories, too,” and she recklessly expended more pennies for those seeds.

Their train was waiting when they reached the station and the sisters boarded it in some excitement. ’Phemie’s gaiety increased the nearer they approached to Bridleburg, which was their goal. She was a plump, rosy girl, with broad, thick plaits of light-brown hair (“molasses-color” she called it in contempt) which she had begun to “do up” only upon going to work. She had a quick blue eye, a laughing mouth, rather wide, but fine; a nose that an enemy–had laughing, good-natured Euphemia Bray owned one–might have called “slightly snubbed,” and her figure was just coming into womanhood.

Lydia’s appearance was entirely different. They did not look much like sisters, to state the truth.

The older girl was tall, straight as a dart, with a dignity of carriage beyond her years, dark hair that waved very prettily and required little dressing, and a clear, colorless complexion. Her eyes were very dark gray, her nose high and well chiseled, like Aunt Jane’s. She was more of a Phelps. Aunt Jane declared Lyddy resembled Dr. Apollo, or “Polly,” Phelps more than had either of his own children.

The train passed through a dun and sodden country. The late thaw and the rains had swept the snow from these lowlands; the unfilled fields were brown and bare.

Here and there, however, rye and wheat sprouted green and promising, and in the distance a hedge of water-maples along the river bank seemed standing in a purple mist, for their young leaves were already pushing into the light.

“There will be pussy-willows,” exclaimed ’Phemie, “and hepaticas in the woods. Think of that, Lyddy Bray!”

“And the house will be as damp as the tomb–and not a stick of wood cut–and no stoves,” returned the older girl.

“Oh, dear, me! you’re such an old grump!” ejaculated ’Phemie. “Why try to cross bridges before you come to them?”

“Lucky for you, Miss, that I do think ahead,” retorted Lyddy with some sharpness.

There was a grade before the train climbed into Bridleburg. Back of the straggling old town the mountain ridge sloped up, a green and brown wall, breaking the wind from the north and west, thus partially sheltering the town. There was what farmers call “early land” about Bridleburg, and some trucking was carried on.

But the town itself was much behind the times–being one of those old-fashioned New England settlements left uncontaminated by the mill interests and not yet awakened by the summer visitor, so rife now in most of the quiet villages of the six Pilgrim States.

The rambling wooden structure with its long, unroofed platform, which served Bridleburg as a station, showed plainly what the railroad company thought of the town. Many villages of less population along the line boasted modern station buildings, grass plots, and hedges. All that surrounded Bridleburg’s barrack-like depôt was a plaza of bare, rolled cinders.

On this were drawn up the two ’buses from the rival hotels–the “New Brick Hotel,” built just after the Civil War, and the Eagle House. Their respective drivers called languidly for customers as the passengers disembarked from the train.

Most of these were traveling men, or townspeople. It was only mid-forenoon and Lyddy did not wish to spend either time or money at the local hostelries, so she shook her head firmly at the ’bus drivers.

“We want to get settled by night at Hillcrest–if we can,” she told ’Phemie. “Let’s see if your baggage and freight are here, first of all.”

She waited until the station agent was at leisure and learned that all their goods–a small, one-horse load–had arrived.

“You two girls goin’ up to the old Polly Phelps house?” ejaculated the agent, who was a “native son” and knew all about the “old doctor,” as Dr. Apollo Phelps had been known throughout two counties and on both sides of the mountain ridge.

“Why, it ain’t fit for a stray cat to live in, I don’t believe–that house ain’t,” he added. “More’n twenty year since the old doctor died, and it’s been shut up ever since.

“What! you his grandchildren? Sho! Mis’ Bray–I remember. She was the old doctor’s daughter by his secon’ wife. Ya-as.

“Well, if I was you, I’d go to Pritchett’s house to stop first. Can’t be that the old house is fit to live in, an’ Pritchett is your nighest neighbor.”

“Thank you,” Lyddy said, quietly. “And can you tell me whom we could get to transport our goods–and ourselves–to the top of the ridge?”

“Huh? Why! I seen Pritchett’s long-laiged boy in town jest now–Lucas Pritchett. He ain’t got away yet,” responded the station agent.

“I ventur’ to say you’ll find him up Market Street a piece–at Birch’s store, or the post-office. This train brung in the mail.

“If he’s goin’ up light he oughter be willin’ to help you out cheap. It’s a six-mile tug, you know; you wouldn’t wanter walk it.”

He pointed up the mountainside. Far, far toward the summit of the ridge, nestling in a background of brown and green, was a splash of vivid white.

“That’s Pritchett’s,” vouchsafed the station agent. “If Dr. Polly Phelps’ house had a coat of whitewash you could see it, too–jest to the right and above Pritchett’s. Highest house on the ridge, it is, and a mighty purty site, to my notion.”

CHAPTER V

LUCAS PRITCHETT

The Bray girls walked up the village street, which opened directly out of the square. It might have been a quarter of a mile in length, the red brick courthouse facing them at the far end, flanked by the two hotels. When “court sat” Bridleburg was a livelier town than at present.

On either hand were alternately rows of one, or two-story “blocks” of stores and offices, or roomy old homesteads set in the midst of their own wide, terraced lawns.

There were a few pleasant-looking people on the walks and most of these turned again to look curiously after the Bray girls. Strangers–save in court week–were a novelty in Bridleburg, that was sure.

Market Street was wide and maple-shaded. Here and there before the stores were “hitching racks”–long wooden bars with iron rings set every few feet–to which a few horses, or teams, were hitched. Many of the vehicles were buckboards, much appreciated in the hill country; but there were farm wagons, as well. It was for one of these latter the Bray girls were in search. The station agent had described Lucas Pritchett’s rig.

“There it is,” gasped the quick-eyed ’Phemie, “Oh, Lyd! do look at those ponies. They’re as ragged-looking as an old cowhide trunk.”

“And that wagon,” sighed Lyddy. “Shall we ride in it? We’ll be a sight going through the village.”

“We’d better wait and see if he’ll take us,” remarked ’Phemie. “But I should worry about what people here think of us!”

As she spoke a lanky fellow, with a lean and sallow face, lounged out of the post-office and across the walk to the heads of the disreputable-looking ponies. He wore a long snuff-colored overcoat that might have been in the family for two or three generations, and his overalls were stuck into the tops of leg-boots.

“That’s Lucas–sure,” whispered ’Phemie.

But she hung back, just the same, and let her sister do the talking. And the first effect of Lyddy’s speech upon Lucas Pritchett was most disconcerting.

“Good morning!” Lyddy said, smiling upon the lanky young farmer. “You are Mr. Lucas Pritchett, I presume?”

He made no audible reply, although his lips moved and they saw his very prominent Adam’s apple rise and fall convulsively. A wave of red suddenly washed up over his face like a big breaker rolling up a sea-beach; and each individual freckle at once took on a vividness of aspect that was fairly startling to the beholder.

“You are Mr. Pritchett?” repeated Lyddy, hearing a sudden half-strangled giggle from ’Phemie, who was behind her.

“Ya-as–I be,” finally acknowledged the bashful Lucas, that Adam’s apple going up and down again like the slide on a trombone.

“You are going home without much of a load; aren’t you, Mr. Pritchett?” pursued Lyddy, with a glance into the empty wagon-body.

“Ya-as–I be,” repeated Lucas, with another gulp, trying to look at both girls at once and succeeding only in looking cross-eyed.

“We are going to be your nearest neighbors, Mr. Pritchett,” said Lyddy, briskly. “Our aunt, Mrs. Hammond, has loaned us Hillcrest to live in and we have our baggage and some other things at the railway station to be carted up to the house. Will you take it–and us? And how much will you charge?”

Lucas just gasped–’Phemie declared afterward, “like a dying fish.” This was altogether too much for Lucas to grasp at once; but he had followed Lyddy up to a certain point. He held forth a broad, grimed, calloused palm, and faintly exclaimed:

“You’re Mis’ Hammon’s nieces? Do tell! Maw’ll be pleased to see ye–an’ so’ll Sairy.”

He shook hands solemnly with Lyddy and then with ’Phemie, who flashed him but a single glance from her laughing eyes. The “Italian sunset effect,” as ’Phemie dubbed Lucas’s blushes, began to fade out of his countenance.

“Can you take us home with you?” asked Lyddy, impatient to settle the matter.

“I surely can,” exclaimed Lucas. “You hop right in.”

“No. We want to know what you will charge first–for us and the things at the depôt?”

“Not a big load; air they?” queried Lucas, doubtfully. “You know the hill’s some steep.”

Lyddy enumerated the packages, Lucas checking them off with nods.

“I see,” he said. “We kin take ’em all. You hop in – ”

But ’Phemie was pulling the skirt of her sister’s jacket and Lyddy said:

“No. We have some errands to do. We’ll meet you up the street. That is your way home?” and she indicated the far end of Market Street.

“Ya-as.”

“And what will you charge us?”

“Not more’n a dollar, Miss,” he said, grinning. “I wouldn’t ax ye nothin’; but this is dad’s team and when I git a job like this he allus expects his halvings.”

“All right, Mr. Pritchett. We’ll pay you a dollar,” agreed Lyddy, in her sedate way. “And we’ll meet you up the street.”

Lucas unhitched the ponies and stepped into the wagon. When he turned them and gave them their heads the ragged little beasts showed that they were a good deal like the proverbial singed cat–far better than they looked.

“I thought you didn’t care what people thought of you here?” observed Lyddy to her sister, as the wagon went rattling down the street. “Yet it seems you don’t wish to ride through Bridleburg in Mr. Pritchett’s wagon.”

“My goodness!” gasped ’Phemie, breathless from giggling. “I don’t mind the wagon. But he’s a freak, Lyd!”

“Sh!”

“Did you ever see such a face? And those freckles!” went on the girl, heedless of her sister’s admonishing voice.

“Somebody may hear you,” urged Lyddy.

“What if?”

“And repeat what you say to him.”

“And that should worry me!” returned ’Phemie, gaily. “Oh, dear, Lyd! don’t be a grump. This is all a great, big joke–the people and all. And Lucas is certainly the capsheaf. Did you ever in your life before even imagine such a freak?”

But Lyddy would not join in her hilarity.

“These country people may seem peculiar to us, who come fresh from the city,” she said, with some gravity. “But I wonder if we don’t appear quite as ‘queer’ and ‘green’ to them as they do to us?”

“We couldn’t,” gasped ’Phemie. “Hurry on, Lyd. Don’t let him overtake us before we get to the edge of town.”

They passed the courthouse and waited for Lucas and the farm wagon on the outskirts of the village–where the more detached houses gave place to open fields. No plow had been put into these lower fields as yet; still, the coming spring had breathed upon the landscape and already the banks by the wayside were turning green.

’Phemie became enthusiastic at once and before Lucas hove in view, evidently anxiously looking for them, the younger girl had gathered a great bunch of early flowers.

“They’re mighty purty,” commented the young farmer, as the girls climbed over the wheel with their muddy boots and all.

’Phemie, giggling, took her seat on the other side of him. She had given one look at the awkwardly arranged load on the wagon-body and at once became helpless with suppressed laughter. If the girls she had worked with in the millinery store for the last few months could see them and their “lares and penates” perched upon this farm wagon, with this son of Jehu for a driver!

“I reckon you expect to stay a spell?” said Lucas, with a significant glance from the conglomerate load to Lyddy.

“Yes–we hope to,” replied the oldest Bray girl. “Do you think the house is in very bad shape inside?”

“I dunno. We never go in it, Miss,” responded Lucas, shaking his head. “Mis’ Hammon’ never left us the key–not to upstairs. Dad’s stored cider and vinegar in the cellar under the east ell for sev’ral years. It’s a better cellar’n we’ve got.

“An’ I dunno what dad’ll say,” he added, “to your goin’ up there to live.”

“What’s he got to do with it?” asked ’Phemie, quickly.

“Why, we work the farm on shares an’ we was calc’latin’ to do so this year.”

“Our living in the house doesn’t interfere with that arrangement,” said Lyddy, quietly. “Aunt Jane told us all about that. I have a letter from her for your father.”

“Aw–well,” commented Lucas, slowly.

The ponies had begun to mount the rise in earnest now. They tugged eagerly at the load, and trotted on the level stretches as though tireless. Lyddy commented upon this, and Lucas flushed with delight at her praise.

“They’re hill-bred, they be,” he said, proudly. “Tackle ’em to a buggy, or a light cart, an’ up hill or down hill means the same to ’em. They won’t break their trot.

“When it comes plowin’ time we clip ’em, an’ then they don’t look so bad in harness,” confided the young fellow. “If–if you like, I’ll take you drivin’ over the hills some day–when the roads git settled.”

“Thank you,” responded Lyddy, non-committally.

But ’Phemie giggled “How nice!” and watched the red flow into the young fellow’s face with wicked appreciation.

The roads certainly had not “settled” after the winter frosts, if this one they were now climbing was a proper sample. ’Phemie and Lyddy held on with both hands to the smooth board which served for a seat to the springless wagon–and they were being bumped about in a most exciting way.

’Phemie began to wonder if Lucas was not quite as much amused by their unfamiliarity with this method of transportation as she was by his bashfulness and awkward manners. Lyddy fairly wailed, at last:

“Wha–what a dread–dreadful ro-o-o-ad!” and she seized Lucas suddenly by the arm nearest to her and frankly held on, while the forward wheel on her side bounced into the air.

“Oh, this ain’t bad for a mountain road,” the young farmer declared, calmly.

“Oh, oh!” squealed ’Phemie, the wheel on her side suddenly sinking into a deep rut, so that she slid to the extreme end of the board.

“Better ketch holt on me, Miss,” advised Lucas, crooking the arm nearest ’Phemie. “You city folks ain’t useter this kind of travelin’, I can see.”

But ’Phemie refused, unwilling to be “beholden” to him, and the very next moment the ponies clattered over a culvert, through which the brown flood of a mountain stream spurted in such volume that the pool below the road was both deep and angry-looking.

There was a washout gullied in the road here. Down went the wheel on ’Phemie’s side, and with the lurch the young girl lost her insecure hold upon the plank.

With a screech she toppled over, plunging sideways from the wagon-seat, and as the hard-bitted ponies swept on ’Phemie dived into the foam-streaked pool!

CHAPTER VI

NEIGHBORS

Lucas Pritchett was not as slow as he seemed.

In one motion he drew in the plunging ponies to a dead stop, thrust the lines into Lyddy’s hands, and vaulted over the wheel of the farm wagon.

“Hold ’em!” he commanded, pulling off the long, snuff-colored overcoat. Flinging it behind him he tore down the bank and, in his high boots, waded right into the stream.

Poor ’Phemie was beyond her depth, although she rose “right side up” when she came to the surface. And when Lucas seized her she had sense enough not to struggle much.

“Oh, oh, oh!” she moaned. “The wa–water is s-so cold!”

“I bet ye it is!” agreed the young fellow, and gathering her right up into his arms, saturated as her clothing was, he bore her to the bank and clambered to where Lyddy was doing all she could to hold the restive ponies.

“Whoa, Spot and Daybright!” commanded the young farmer, soothing the ponies much quicker than he could his human burden. “Now, Miss, you’re all right – ”

“All r-r-right!” gasped ’Phemie, her teeth chattering like castanets. “I–I’m anything but right!”

“Oh, ’Phemie! you might have been drowned,” cried her anxious sister.

“And now I’m likely to be frozen stiff right here in this road. Mrs. Lot wasn’t a circumstance to me. She only turned to salt, while I am be-be-coming a pillar of ice!”

But Lucas had set her firmly on her feet, and now he snatched up the old overcoat which had so much amused ’Phemie, and wrapped it about her, covering her from neck to heel.

“In you go–sit ’twixt your sister and me this time,” panted the young man. “We’ll hustle home an’ maw’ll git you ’twixt blankets in a hurry.”

“She’ll get her death!” moaned Lyddy, holding the coat close about the wet girl.

“Look out! We’ll travel some now,” exclaimed Lucas, leaping in, and having seized the reins, he shook them over the backs of the ponies and shouted to them.

The remainder of that ride up the mountain was merely a nightmare for the girls. Lucas allowed the ponies to lose no time, despite the load they drew. But haste was imperative.

A ducking in an icy mountain brook at this time of the year might easily be fraught with serious consequences. Although it was drawing toward noon and the sun was now shining, there was no great amount of warmth in the air. Lucas must have felt the keen wind himself, for he was wet, too; but he neither shivered nor complained.

Luckily they were well up the mountainside when the accident occurred. The ponies flew around a bend where a grove of trees had shut off the view, and there lay the Pritchett house and outbuildings, fresh in their coat of whitewash.

“Maw and Sairy’ll see to ye now,” cried Lucas, as he neatly clipped the gatepost with one hub and brought the lathered ponies to an abrupt stop in the yard beside the porch.

“Hi, Maw!” he added, as a very stout woman appeared in the doorway–quite filling the opening, in fact. “Hi, Maw! Here’s Mis’ Hammon’s nieces–an’ one of ’em’s been in Pounder’s Brook!”

“For the land’s sake!” gasped the farmer’s wife, pulling a pair of steel-bowed spectacles down from her brows that she might peer through them at the Bray girls. “Ain’t it a mite airly for sech didoes as them?”

“Why, Maw!” sputtered Lucas, growing red again. “She didn’t go for to do it–no, ma’am!”

“Wa-al! I didn’t know. City folks is funny. But come in–do! Mis’ Hammon’s nieces, d’ye say? Then you must be John Horrocks Bray’s gals–ain’t ye?”

“We are,” said Lyddy, who had quickly climbed out over the wheel and now eased down the clumsy bundle which was her sister. “Can you stand, ’Phemie?”

“Ye-es,” chattered her sister.

“I hope you can take us in for a little while, Mrs. Pritchett,” went on the older girl. “We are going up to Hillcrest to live.”

“Take ye in? Sure! An’ ’twon’t be the first city folks we’ve harbored,” declared the lady, chuckling comfortably. “They’re beginnin’ to come as thick as spatters in summer to Bridleburg, an’ some of ’em git clear up this way – For the land’s sake! that gal’s as wet as sop.”

“It–it was wet water I tumbled into,” stuttered ’Phemie.

Mrs. Pritchett ushered them into the big, warm kitchen, where the table was already set for dinner. A young woman–not so very young, either–as lank and lean as Lucas himself, was busy at the stove. She turned to stare at the visitors with near-sighted eyes.

“This is my darter, Sairy,” said “Maw” Pritchett. “She taught school two terms to Pounder’s school; but it was bad for her eyes. I tell her to git specs; but she ’lows she’s too young for sech things.”

“The oculists advise glasses nowadays for very young persons,” observed Lyddy politely, as Sairy Pritchett bobbed her head at them in greeting.

“So I tell her,” declared the farmer’s wife. “But she won’t listen to reason. Ye know how young gals air!”

This assumption of Sairy’s extreme youth, and that Lyddy would understand her foibles because she was so much older, amused the latter immensely. Sairy was about thirty-five.

Meanwhile Mrs. Pritchett bustled about with remarkable spryness to make ’Phemie comfortable. There was a warm bedroom right off the kitchen–for this was an old-fashioned New England farmhouse–and in this the younger Bray girl took off her wet clothing. Lyddy brought in their bag and ’Phemie managed to make herself dry and tidy–all but her great plaits of hair–in a very short time.

She would not listen to Mrs. Pritchett’s advice that she go to bed. But she swallowed a bowl of hot tea and then declared herself “as good as new.”

The Bray girls had now to tell Mrs. Pritchett and her daughter their reason for coming to Hillcrest, and what they hoped to do there.

“For the land’s sake!” gasped the farmer’s wife. “I dunno what Cyrus’ll say to this.”

It struck Lyddy that they all seemed to be somewhat in fear of what Mr. Pritchett might say. He seemed to be a good deal of a “bogie” in the family.

“We shall not interfere with Mr. Pritchett’s original arrangement with Aunt Jane,” exclaimed Lyddy, patiently.

“Well, ye’ll hafter talk to Cyrus when he comes in to dinner,” said the farmer’s wife. “I dunno how he’ll take it.”

“We should worry about how he ‘takes it,’” commented ’Phemie in Lyddy’s ear. “I guess we’ve got the keys to Hillcrest and Aunt Jane’s permission to live in the house and make what we can off the place. What more is there to it?”

But the older Bray girl caught a glimpse of Cyrus Pritchett as he came up the path from the stables, and she saw that he was nothing at all like his rotund and jolly wife–not in outward appearance, at least.

The Pritchett children got their extreme height from Cyrus–and their leanness. He was a grizzled man, whose head stooped forward because he was so tall, and who looked fiercely on the world from under penthouse brows.

Every feature of his countenance was grim and forbidding. His cheeks were gray, with a stubble of grizzled beard upon them. When he came in and was introduced to the visitors he merely grunted an acknowledgment of their names and immediately dropped into his seat at the head of the table.

As the others came flocking about the board, Cyrus Pritchett opened his lips just once, and not until the grace had been uttered did the visitors understand that it was meant for a reverence before meat.

“For wha’ we’re ’bout to r’ceive make us tru’ grat’ful–pass the butter, Sairy,” and the old man helped himself generously and began at once to stow the provender away without regard to the need or comfort of the others about his board.

But Maw Pritchett and her son and daughter seemed to be used to the old man’s way, and they helped each other and the Bray girls with no niggard hand. Nor did the shuttle of conversation lag.

“Why, I ain’t been in the old doctor’s house since he died,” said Mrs. Pritchett, reflectively. “Mis’ Hammon’, she’s been up here two or three times, an’ she allus goes up an’ looks things over; but I’m too fat for walkin’ up to Hillcrest–I be,” concluded the lady, with a chuckle.

She seemed as jolly and full of fun as her husband was morose. Cyrus Pritchett only glowered on the Bray girls when he looked at them at all.

But Lyddy and ’Phemie joined in the conversation with the rest of the family. ’Phemie, although she had made so much fun of Lucas at first, now made amends by declaring him to be a hero–and sticking to it!

“I’d never have got out of that pool if it hadn’t been for Lucas,” she repeated; “unless I could have drunk up the water and walked ashore that way! And o-o-oh! wasn’t it cold!”