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

An hour was lost in repairs and airing the schoolhouse, and then everybody trooped back. Meanwhile, the Bray girls had made many acquaintances among the young folk.

Mr. Somers, the teacher, was plainly delighted to meet Lyddy–a girl who had actually spent two years at Littleburg. He was seminary-bred himself, with an idea of going back to take the divinity course after he had taught a couple of years.

But it suddenly became apparent to ’Phemie–who was observant–that Sairy looked upon this interest of the school teacher in Lyddy with “a green eye.”

Mr. Somers, who allowed the boys and young men to repair the damage created by his pupils while he rested from his labors, sat by Lyddy all the time until the meeting was called to order once more.

Sairy, who had begun by bridling and looking askance at the two who talked so easily about things with which she was not conversant, soon tossed her head and began to talk with others who gathered around. And when Mr. Somers went to the desk to preside again Sairy was not sitting in the same row with the Bray girls and left them to their own devices for the rest of the evening.

Lucas, the faithful, came back to ’Phemie’s side, however. Some of the other girls were laughing at Sairy Pritchett and their taunts fed her ire with fresh fuel.

She talked very loud and laughed very much between the numbers of the program, and indeed was not always quiet while the entertainment itself was in progress. This she did as though to show the company in general that she neither cared for the schoolmaster’s attentions nor that she considered her friendship with the Bray girls of any importance.

Of course, the girls with whom she had wrangled on the schoolhouse steps were delighted with what they considered Sairy’s “let-down.” If a girl really came to an evening party with a young man, he was supposed to “stick” and to show interest in no other girl during the evening.

When the intermission came Mr. Somers deliberately took a seat again beside Lyddy.

“Well, I never!” shrilled Sairy. “Some folks are as bold as brass. Humph!”

Now, as it happened, both Lyddy and the school teacher were quite ignorant of the stir they were creating. The green-eyed monster roared right in their ears without either of them being the wiser. Lyddy was only sorry that Sairy Pritchett proved to be such a loud-talking and rather unladylike person.

But ’Phemie, who was younger, and observant, soon saw what was the matter. She wished to warn Lyddy, but did not know how to do so. And, of course, she knew her sister and the school teacher were talking of quite impersonal things.

These girls expected everybody to be of their own calibre. ’Phemie had seen the same class of girls in her experience in the millinery shop. But it was quite impossible for Lyddy to understand such people, her experience with young girls at school and college not having prepared her for the outlook on life which these country girls had.

’Phemie turned to Lucas–who stuck to her like a limpet to a rock–for help.

“Lucas,” she said, “you have been very kind to bring us here; but I want to ask you to take us home early; will you?”

“What’s the matter–ye ain’t sick; be you?” demanded the anxious young farmer.

“No. But your sister is,” said ’Phemie, unable to treat the matter with entire seriousness.

“Sairy?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the matter with her?” grunted Lucas.

“Don’t you see?” exclaimed ’Phemie, in an undertone.

“By cracky!” laughed Lucas. “Ye mean because teacher’s forgot she’s on airth?”

“Yes,” snapped ’Phemie. “You know Lyddy doesn’t care anything about that Mr. Somers. But she has to be polite.”

“Why–why – ”

“Will you take us home ahead of them all?” demanded the girl. “Then your sister can have the schoolmaster.”

“By cracky! is that it?” queried Lucas. “Why–if you say so. I’ll do just like you want me to, Miss ’Phemie.”

“You are a good boy, Lucas–and I hope you won’t be silly,” said ’Phemie. “We like you, but we have been brought up to have boy friends who don’t play at being grown up,” added ’Phemie, as earnestly as she had ever spoken in her life. “We like to have friends, not beaux. Won’t you be our friend, Lucas?”

She said this so low that nobody else could hear it but young Pritchett; but so emphatically that the tears came to her eyes. Lucas gaped at her for a moment; then he seemed to understand.

“I get yer, ’Phemie,” he declared, with emphasis, “an’ you kin bank on me. Sairy’s foolish–maw’s made her so, I s’pose. But I ain’t as big a fool as I look.”

“You don’t look like a fool, Lucas,” said ’Phemie, faintly.

“You’ve been brought up different from us folks,” pursued the young farmer. “And I can see that we look mighty silly to you gals from the city. But I’ll play fair. You let me be your friend, ’Phemie.”

The young girl had to wink hard to keep back the tears. There was “good stuff” in this young farmer, and she was sorry she had ever–even in secret–made fun of him.

“Lucas, you are a good boy,” she repeated, “and we both like you. You’ll get us away from here and let Sairy have her chance at the schoolmaster?”

“You bet!” he said. “Though I don’t care about Sairy. She’s old enough to know better,” he added, with the usual brother’s callousness regarding his sister.

“She feels neglected and will naturally be mad at Lyddy,” ’Phemie said. “But if we slip out during some recitation or song, it won’t be noticed much.”

“All right,” agreed Lucas. “I’ll go out ahead and unhitch the ponies and get their blankets off. You gals can come along in about five minutes. Now! Mayme Lowry is going to read the ‘Club Chronicles’–that’s a sort of history of neighborhood doin’s since the last meetin’. She hits on most ev’rybody, and they will all wanter hear. We’ll git aout quiet like.”

So, when Miss Lowry arose to read her manuscript, Lucas left his seat and ’Phemie whispered to Lyddy:

“Get your coat, dear. I want to go home. Lucas has gone out to get the team.”

“Why–what’s the matter, child?” demanded the older sister, anxiously.

“Nothing. Only I want to go.”

“We-ell–if you must – ”

“Don’t say anything more, but come on,” commanded ’Phemie.

They arose together and tiptoed out. If Sairy saw them she made no sign, nor did anybody bar their escape.

Lucas had got his team into the road. “Here ye be!” he said, cheerfully.

“But–but how about Sairy?” cried the puzzled Lyddy.

“Oh, she’ll ride home with the school teacher,” declared Lucas, chuckling.

“But I really am surprised at you, ’Phemie,” said the older sister. “It seems rather discourteous to leave before the entertainment was over–unless you are ill?”

“I’m sorry,” said the younger girl, demurely. “But I got so nervous.”

“I know,” whispered Lyddy. “Some of those awful recitations were trying.”

And ’Phemie had to giggle at that; but she made no further explanation.

The ponies drew them swiftly over the mountain road and under the white light of a misty moon they quickly turned into the lane leading to Hillcrest. As the team dropped to a walk, ’Phemie suddenly leaned forward and clutched the driver’s arm.

“Look yonder, Lucas!” she whispered. “There, by the corner of the house.”

“Whoa!” muttered Lucas, and brought the horses to a halt.

The girls and Lucas all saw the two figures. They wavered for a moment and then one hurried behind the high stone wall between the yard and the old orchard. The other crossed the front yard boldly toward the highroad.

“They came from the direction of the east wing,” whispered ’Phemie.

“Who do you suppose they are?” asked Lyddy, more placidly. “Somebody who tried to call on us?”

“That there feller,” said Lucas, slowly, his voice shaking oddly, as he pointed with his whip after the man who just then gained the highroad, “that there feller is Lem Judson Spink–I know his long hair and broad-brimmed hat.”

“What?” cried ’Phemie. “The man who lived here at Hillcrest when he was a boy?”

“So they say,” admitted Lucas. “Dad knew him. They went to school together. He’s a rich man now.”

“But what could he possibly want up here?” queried Lyddy, as the ponies went on. “And who was the other man?”

“I–I dunno who he was,” blurted out Lucas, still much disturbed in voice and appearance.

But after the girls had disembarked, and bidden Lucas good night, and the young farmer had driven away, ’Phemie said to her sister, as the latter was unlocking the door of the farmhouse:

“I know who that other man was.”

“What other man?”

“The one who ran behind the stone wall.”

“Why, who was it, ’Phemie?” queried her sister, with revived interest.

“Cyrus Pritchett,” stated ’Phemie, with conviction, and nothing her sister could say would shake her belief in that fact.

CHAPTER XIII

LYDDY DOESN’T WANT IT

“Who is this Mr. Spink?” asked Lydia Bray the following morning, as they prepared for church.

It was a beautiful spring morning. There had been a pattering shower at sunrise and the eaves were still dripping, while every blade of the freshly springing grass in the side yard–which was directly beneath the girls’ window–sparkled as though diamond-decked over night.

The old trees in the orchard were pushing both leaf and blossom–especially the plum and peach trees. In the distance other orchards were blowing, too, and that spattered the mountainside with patches of what looked to be pale pink mist.

The faint tinkling of the sheep-bells came across the hills to the ears of Lyddy and ’Phemie. The girls were continually going to the window or door to watch the vast panorama of the mountainside and valley, spread below them.

“Who is this Mr. Spink?” repeated Lyddy.

Her sister explained what she knew of the man who–once a poorhouse boy–was now counted a rich man and the proprietor of Diamond Grits, the popular breakfast food.

“He lived here at Hillcrest as a boy, with grandfather,” ’Phemie said.

“But what’s that got to do with his coming up here now–and at night?”

“And with Mr. Pritchett?” finished ’Phemie.

“Yes. I am going to ask Mr. Pritchett about it. They surely weren’t after vinegar so late at night,” Lyddy observed.

But ’Phemie did not prolong the discussion. In her secret thoughts the younger Bray girl believed that it was Cyrus Pritchett and Mr. Spink whom she had heard about the old house the night she and Lyddy had first slept at Hillcrest.

There was no use worrying Lyddy about it, she told herself.

A little later the roan ponies appeared with the Pritchett buckboard. Instead of Mrs. Pritchett and her daughter, however, the good lady’s companion on the front seat was Lucas, who drove.

“Oh, dear me!” cried Lyddy. “I hope we haven’t turned Miss Pritchett out of her seat. Surely we three girls could have squeezed in here on the back seat.”

“Nope,” said Mrs. Pritchett. “That ain’t it, at all. Sairy ain’t goin’ to church this mornin’.”

“She’s not ill?” asked Lyddy.

“I dunno. She ain’t got no misery as I can find out; but she sartainly has a grouch! A bear with a sore head in fly time would be a smilin’ work of Grace ’side of Sairy Pritchett ever since she come home from the Temperance Club las’ night.”

“Oh!” came from ’Phemie.

“Why – She surely isn’t angry because we went home early?” cried Lyddy. “My sister, you see, got nervous – ”

“I reckon ’taint that,” Lucas hastened to say. “More likely she’s sore on me.”

“’Tain’t nawthin’ of the kind, an’ you know it, Lucas,” declared his mother. “Though ye might have driven ’round by the schoolhouse ag’in and brought her home.”

“Wal, I thought she’d ride back with school teacher. She went with him,” returned Lucas, on the defensive.

“She walked home,” said Mrs. Pritchett, shortly. “I dunno why. She won’t tell me.”

“I hope she isn’t ill,” remarked the unconscious Lyddy.

But Lucas cast a knowing look over his shoulder at ’Phemie and the latter had hard work to keep her own countenance straight.

“Well,” said Mrs. Pritchett, more briskly, “ye can’t always sometimes tell what the matter is with these young gals. They gits crotchets in their heads.”

She kept up the fiction that Sairy was a young and flighty miss; but even ’Phemie could no longer laugh at her for it. It was the mother’s pitiful attempt to aid her daughter’s chances for that greatly-to-be-desired condition–matrimony.

The roads were still muddy; nevertheless the drive over the ridge to Cornell Chapel was lovely. For some time the girls had been noting the procession of carriages and wagons winding over the mountain roads, all verging upon this main trail over the ridge which passed so close to Hillcrest.

Lucas, driving the ponies at a good clip, joined the procession. Lyddy and ’Phemie recognized several of the young people they had met the night before at the Temperance Club–notably the young men.

Joe Badger flashed by in a red-wheeled buggy and beside him sat the buxom, red-faced girl who had voiced her distaste for the city-bred newcomers right at the start. Badger bowed with a flourish; but his companion’s nose was in the air.

“I never did think that Nettie Meyers had very good manners,” announced Mrs. Pritchett.

They overtook the schoolmaster jogging along behind his old gray mare. He, likewise, bowed profoundly to the Bray girls.

“I am afraid you did not enjoy yourself last night at the club, Miss Bray,” he said to Lyddy, who was on his side of the buckboard, as Lucas pulled out to pass him. “You went home so early. I was looking for you after it was all over.”

“Oh, but you are mistaken,” declared Lyddy, pleasantly. “I had a very nice time.”

As they drove on Mrs. Pritchett’s fat face became a study.

“And he never even asked arter Sairy!” she gasped. “And he let her come home alone last night. Humph! he must ha’ been busy huntin’ for you, Miss Bray.”

Lucas cast oil on the troubled waters by saying:

“An’ I carried Miss Lyddy and Miss ’Phemie away from all of ’em. I guess all the Pritchetts ain’t so slow, Maw.”

“Humph! Wa-al,” admitted the good lady, somewhat mollified, “you hev seemed to ’woke up lately, Lucas.”

The chapel was built of graystone and its north wall was entirely covered with ivy. It nestled in a grove of evergreens, with the tidy fenced graveyard behind it. The visitors thought it a very beautiful place.

Everybody was rustling into church when they arrived, so there were no introductions then. The pastor was a stooped, gray old man, who had been the incumbent for many years, and to the Bray girls his discourse seemed as helpful as any they had ever heard.

After service the girls of Hillcrest Farm were introduced to many of the congregation by Mrs. Pritchett. Naturally these were the middle-aged, or older, members of the flock–mostly ladies who knew, or remembered, the girls’ mother and Aunt Jane. Indeed, it was rather noticeable that the young women and girls did not come forward to meet Lyddy and ’Phemie.

Not that either of the sisters cared. They liked the matrons who attended Cornell Chapel much better than they had most of the youthful members of the Temperance Club.

Some of the young men waited their chance in the vestibule to get a bow and a smile of recognition from the newcomers; but only the schoolmaster dared attach himself for any length of time to the Pritchett party.

And Mrs. Pritchett could not fail to take note of this at length. The teacher was deep in some unimportant discussion with Lyddy, who was sweetly unconscious that she was fanning the fire of suspicion in Mrs. Pritchett’s breast.

That lady finally broke in with a loud “Ahem!” following it with: “I re’lly don’t know what’s happened to my Sairy. She’s right poorly to-day, Mr. Somers.”

“Why–I–I’m sorry to hear it,” said the startled, yet quite unsuspicious teacher. “She seemed to be in good health and spirits when we were on our way to the club meeting last evening.”

“Ya-as,” agreed Mrs. Pritchett, simpering and looking at him sideways. “She seems to have changed since then. She ain’t been herself since she walked home from the meeting.”

“Perhaps she has a cold?” suggested the teacher, blandly.

“Oh, Sairy is not subject to colds,” declared Mrs. Pritchett. “But she is easily chilled in other ways–yes, indeed! I don’t suppose there is a more sensitive young girl on the ridge than my Sairy.”

Mr. Somers began to wake up to the fact that the farmer’s wife was not shooting idly at him; there was “something behind it!”

“I am sorry if Miss Sairy is offended, or has been hurt in any way,” he said, gravely. “It was a pity she had to walk home from the club. If I had known – ”

“Wa-al,” drawled Mrs. Pritchett, “you took her there yourself in your buggy.”

“Indeed!” he exclaimed, flushing a little. “I had no idea that bound me to the necessity of taking her home again. Her brother was there with your carriage. I am sure I do not understand your meaning, Mrs. Pritchett.”

“Oh, I don’t mean anything!” exclaimed the lady, but very red in the face now, and her bonnet shaking. “Come, gals! we must be going.”

Both Lyddy and ’Phemie had begun to feel rather unhappy by this time. Mrs. Pritchett swept them up the aisle ahead of her as though she were shooing a flock of chickens with her ample skirts.

They went through the vestibule with a rush. Lucas was ready with the ponies. Mrs. Pritchett was evidently very angry over her encounter with the teacher; and she could not fail to hold the Bray girls somewhat accountable for her daughter’s failure to keep the interest of Mr. Somers.

She said but little on the drive homeward. There had been something said earlier about the girls going down to the Pritchett farm for dinner; but the angry lady said nothing more about it, and Lyddy and ’Phemie were rather glad when Hillcrest came into view.

“Ye better stop in an’ go along down to the house with us,” said the good-natured Lucas, hesitating about turning the ponies’ heads in at the lane.

“Oh, we could not possibly,” Lyddy replied, gracefully. “We are a thousand times obliged for your making it possible for us to attend church. You are all so kind, Mrs. Pritchett. But this afternoon I must plead the wicked intention of writing letters. I haven’t written a line to one of my college friends since I came to Hillcrest.”

Mrs. Pritchett merely grunted. Lucas covered his mother’s grumpiness by inconsequential chatter with ’Phemie while he drove in and turned the ponies so that the girls could get out.

“A thousand thanks!” cried ’Phemie.

“Good-day!” exclaimed Lyddy, brightly.

Mrs. Pritchett’s bonnet only shook the harder, and she did not turn to look at the girls. Lucas cast a very rueful glance in their direction as he drove hastily away.

“Now we’ve done it!” gasped ’Phemie, half laughing, half in disgust.

“Why! whatever is the matter, do you suppose?” demanded her sister.

“Well, if you can’t see that– ”

“I see she’s angry over Sairy and the school teacher–poor man! But what have we to do with that?”

“It’s your fatal attractiveness,” sighed ’Phemie. Then she began to laugh. “You’re a very innocent baby, Lyd. Don’t you see that Maw Pritchett thought–or hoped–that she had Mr. Somers nicely entangled with Sairy? And he neglected her for you. Bing! it’s all off, and we’re at outs with the Pritchett family.”

“What awful language!” sighed Lyddy, unlocking the door. “I am sorry you ever went to work in that millinery shop, ’Phemie. It has made your mind–er–almost common!”

But ’Phemie only laughed.

If the Pritchett females were “at outs” with them, the men of the family did not appear to be. At least, Cyrus and his son were at Hillcrest bright and early on Monday morning, with two teams ready for plowing. Lyddy had a serious talk with Mr. Pritchett first.

“Ya-as. That’s good ’tater and truckin’ land behind the barn. It’s laid out a good many years now, for it’s only an acre, or so, and we never tilled it for corn. It’s out o’ the way, kinder,” said the elder Pritchett.

“Then I want that for a garden,” Lyddy declared.

“It don’t pay me to work none of this ‘off’ land for garden trucks,” said Cyrus, shortly. “Not ’nless ye want a few rows o’ stuff in the cornfield jest where I can cultivate with the hosses.”

“But if you plant corn here, you must plant my garden, too,” insisted Lyddy, who was quite as obstinate as the old farmer. “And I’d like to have a big garden, and plenty of potatoes, too. I am going to keep boarders this summer, and I want to raise enough to feed them–or partly feed them, at least.”

“Huh! Boarders, eh? A gal like you!”

“We’re not rich enough to sit with idle hands, and I mean to try and earn something,” Lyddy declared. “And we’ll want vegetables to carry us over winter, too.”

Lucas had been listening with flushed and anxious face. Now he broke in eagerly:

“You said I could till a piece for myself this year, Dad. Lemme do it up here. There’s a better chance to sell trucks in Bridleburg than there has been. I’ll plow and take care of two acres up here, if Miss Lyddy says so, for half the crops, she to supply seed and fertilizer.”

“Will–will it cost much, Lucas?” asked Lyddy, doubtfully.

“That land’s rich, but it may be sour. Ain’t that so, Dad? It won’t take so very much phosphate; will it?”

Cyrus was slower mentally than these eager young folk. He had to think it over and discuss it from different angles. But finally he gave his consent to the plan and advised his son and Lyddy how to manage the matter.

“You kin git your fertilizer on time–six or nine months–right here in Bridleburg. That gives you a chance to raise your crop and market it before paying for the fertilizer,” he said. “You’ll have to get corn fertilizer, too, in the same way. But ’most ev’rybody else on the ridge does the same. We ain’t a very fore-handed community, and that’s a fac’.”

At noon Lyddy and ’Phemie talked over the garden project more fully with Lucas. They planned what early seeds should be planted, and Lucas began plowing that particular piece behind the barn right after dinner.

Lyddy had very little money to work with, but she believed in “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” She told Lucas to purchase a bag of potatoes for planting the next day when he went to town, and he was to buy a few papers of early garden seeds, too.

And when Lucas came back with the potatoes he brought a surprise for the Bray girls. He drove into the yard with a flourish. ’Phemie looked out of the window, uttered a scream of joy and surprise, and rushed out to receive her father in her strong young arms as he got down from the seat.

How feeble and tired he looked! ’Phemie began to cry; but Lyddy “braced up” and declared he looked a whole lot better already and that Hillcrest would cure him in just no time.

“And that foolish ’Phemie is only crying for joy at seeing you so unexpectedly, Father,” said Lyddy, scowling frightfully at her sister over their father’s bowed head as they helped him into the house.

Lucas hovered in the background; but he could not help them. ’Phemie saw, however, that the young farmer fully appreciated the situation and was truly sympathetic.

The change in Mr. Bray’s appearance was a great shock to both girls. Of course, the doctor at the hospital had promised Lyddy no great improvement in the patient until he could be got up here on the hills, where the air was pure and healing.

Aunt Jane had come as far as the junction with him; but he had come on alone to Bridleburg from there, and the agent at the station had telephoned uptown to tell Lucas that the invalid wished to get to Hillcrest.

“I’m all right; I’m all right!” he kept repeating. But the girls almost carried him between them into the house.

“The doctors said you could do more for me up here than they could do for me there,” panted Mr. Bray, smiling faintly at his daughters, who hovered about him as he sat before the crackling wood fire in the kitchen.

“And Aunt Jane never told us you were coming!” gasped Lyddy.

“What’s the odds, as long as he’s here?” demanded ’Phemie.

“Why, I shall soon be my old self again up here,” Mr. Bray declared, hopefully. “Now, don’t fuss over me, girls. You’ve got other things to do. That young fellow who brought me up here seems to be your chief cook and bottle-washer, and he wants to speak to you, I reckon,” for Lucas was waiting to learn where he should put the potatoes and other things.