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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40178 ***
+
+  [Illustration: The popovers had popped just right.
+  (_Frontis_)    (_The Carter Girls' Mysterious Neighbors_)]
+
+
+
+
+  THE CARTER GIRLS'
+  MYSTERIOUS NEIGHBORS
+
+  By NELL SPEED
+
+  AUTHOR OF
+
+  "The Molly Brown Series," "The Tucker
+  Twins Series," etc.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  A. L. BURT COMPANY
+  Publishers      New York
+  Printed in U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1931
+  BY
+  HURST & COMPANY
+
+  MADE IN U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+      I. EN ROUTE TO THE FARM                     7
+     II. THE LANDLADIES AND A NEW ACQUAINTANCE   19
+    III. THE COUNT                               38
+     IV. GRANTLY                                 56
+      V. VALHALLA                                63
+     VI. CHLOE                                   76
+    VII. BOBBY'S BLAME PAY                       90
+   VIII. SATURDAY                               107
+     IX. GOLDILOCKS' CHAIRS                     118
+      X. NOVEMBER                               133
+     XI. PARADISE                               153
+    XII. HERZ                                   167
+   XIII. GOOSE STEPPING                         189
+    XIV. AN EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY                 197
+     XV. BLACK SOCIALISM                        211
+    XVI. DRESSING FOR THE BALL                  221
+   XVII. THE BALL                               231
+  XVIII. ANGEL'S FOOD                           247
+    XIX. A LITTLE LEARNING                      255
+     XX. IN THE MEANTIME                        262
+    XXI. THE FLAMING SWORD                      272
+   XXII. A NEAT TRICK                           287
+  XXIII. VISITORS AT PRESTON                    294
+   XXIV. THE CARRIER PIGEON                     308
+
+
+
+
+The Carter Girls' Mysterious Neighbors
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+EN ROUTE TO THE FARM
+
+
+"How I hate being poor!" exclaimed Helen Carter, looking ruefully at her
+darned glove.
+
+"Me, too!" echoed the younger sister, Lucy.
+
+"Shh! Father will hear you," admonished Douglas.
+
+"Nobody can hear above the rattle of this horrid old day coach,"
+declared Helen. "There is something about the odor of a common coach
+that has spent its life hauling commuters from home to work--from work
+to home, that sickens me," and Helen's sensitive nostrils quivered in
+disgust.
+
+"I'm sorry, dear; I know it is all so hard on you," said Douglas.
+
+"Not a bit harder on me than it is on you."
+
+"Not a bit!" from Lucy.
+
+"I think it must be," smiled Douglas. "I have an idea Nature did not
+intend me to ride in Pullmans. I am really just as comfortable in a
+day coach and I think they are lots more airy and better ventilated.
+What do you think about it, Nan?"
+
+"Oh, I like 'em--such interesting types," drawled Nan. "You get to your
+destination sooner, too, as the Pullman is always hitched onto the back
+end of the train."
+
+"I can't see anything very interesting in commuters, I must say,"
+laughed Helen, "but Nan was always easy to please."
+
+"Yes, Nan is our philosopher," said Douglas.
+
+"Well, since Lucy and I are to join the army of commuters it would be
+foolish of us not to find them interesting. Don't you remember Mrs.
+Doasyouwouldbedoneby? If we find them interesting maybe they will return
+the compliment."
+
+"Yes, and I remember Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, too," declared Douglas,
+exchanging a sly glance with Helen.
+
+The two older sisters could not help seeing that a nice looking boy
+sitting across the aisle had already found something to interest him in
+the dreamy brown eyes of one courageous commuter to be. His own grey
+eyes were twinkling with merriment. Evidently the rattle of the despised
+coach had not drowned the conversation so far as he was concerned. He
+had made some pretense of studying, but Latin Comp. was deadly dull in
+comparison with the chatter of the Carter girls.
+
+The Carters were _en route_ to their winter quarters, chosen after much
+discussion and misgivings as the best place they could find for all
+concerned. The doctor had pronounced the ultimatum: Mr. Carter must be
+in the country for another year at least and he must have no business
+worries. He must live out-of-doors as much as possible and no matter
+how perplexing the problems that in the natural course of events would
+arise in a household, they were not to be brought to the master of that
+household. As Mrs. Carter had determined many weeks before to play the
+rôle of a lily of the field, announcing herself as a semi-invalid, who
+was to be loved and cherished and waited on but not to be worried, it
+meant that Douglas, as oldest child, must be mother and father as well.
+Hers was the thankless task of telling her sisters what they must and
+must not do, and curbing the extravagance that would break out now and
+then in spots. Small wonder that it was the case, as, up to a few months
+before this, lavish expenditure had been the rule in the Carter family
+rather than the exception.
+
+They had spent a wonderful summer running a week-end boarding camp on
+the side of a mountain in Albemarle County. It had been a remarkable
+thing for these young girls to have undertaken and accomplished, all
+untrained as they were. But when their father's nervous breakdown came
+and the realization that there was no more money in the family till, and
+none likely to be there unless they could earn it, right manfully they
+put their young shoulders to the wheel and with a long push and a strong
+push and a push all together they got their wagon, if not hitched to a
+star, at least moving along the highroad of life and making some
+progress.
+
+Dr. George Wright, the nerve specialist who had undertaken Mr. Carter's
+cure, had been invaluable in their search for the proper place in which
+to spend the winter, this winter that was to put the keystone in their
+father's recovery. Such a place was not easy to find, as it must be near
+enough to Richmond for Nan and Lucy to go to school. That was one time
+when Douglas put her foot down most emphatically. The two younger girls
+were quite willing to follow in their sister Helen's footsteps and
+"quiturate," but Douglas knew that they must be held to their tasks.
+She bitterly regretted her own inability to continue her education, as
+college had been her dream, and she also deplored the fact that Helen
+was not able to spend the one more year at school necessary for her
+graduation. As for Helen, not having to go to school was the one bright
+spot for her in the whole sordid business, at least she had boldly
+declared such was the case.
+
+The winter was to be a busy one for Helen, as the home work was to fall
+to her share. Douglas, by a great piece of good luck, had obtained a
+place as teacher in a district school not far from the little farm that
+had been selected as the abiding place for the Carter family during that
+winter of 1916 and '17. The teacher who had been employed had been
+called away by private affairs, and Douglas had fallen heir to the
+position.
+
+The train rocked and swayed and bumped on the illy-laid road-bed as our
+girls sped on to their destination. Mrs. Carter in a seat across the
+aisle had placed her tired head on her husband's shoulder. The poor
+little lady felt in her heart of hearts that all of this going to
+out-of-the-way country places to spend winter months was really absurd,
+but then it was absurd to be poor anyhow, something she had not
+bargained for in her scheme of existence. She had said not a word,
+however, but had let Douglas and that stern Dr. Wright manage
+everything. She felt about as capable of changing the plans of her
+family as her youngest child, Bobby, might.
+
+Bobby, who had spent the time on the train most advantageously, having
+made friends with the brakeman and conductor, was now sitting in an
+alert attitude, as his new friends had informed him that there were only
+five minutes more before they would reach Grantly, their destination.
+Going to the country was just what he wanted and he was preparing to
+have a glorious time with no restrictions as to clean face and hands. To
+be sure, he had heard that he was to go to school, but since Douglas was
+to be the teacher this fact was not disturbing him much.
+
+The summer in the mountains had done much to develop this darling of the
+Carters. He no longer looked so much like an angel as when we were first
+introduced to the family. His curls were close cropped now and he was
+losing teeth faster than he was gaining them. If there could be such a
+thing as a snaggled tooth angel perhaps that celestial being would
+resemble Bobby Carter; but I am sure if that angel could have thought up
+as much mischief in a week as Bobby could execute in an hour, he would
+have met the fate of Lucifer and been hurled from Heaven. It may be,
+though, that if Lucifer had possessed such eyes as this little boy he
+would have been forgiven and might still be in his happy home. It was an
+impossibility to harbor wrath against Bobby if once you looked in his
+eyes. They were like brown forest pools. His sister Nan had the same
+eyes and the same long curling lashes. The shape and color of their eyes
+were inherited from their beautiful little mother, but the soulful
+expression that the children possessed was something that came from
+within and is not controlled by laws of heredity. Mrs. Carter's eyes if
+they reminded one of forest pools were certainly very shallow pools.
+
+"At last!" as the brakeman called out their station, came with a sigh of
+relief from the whole family.
+
+The station consisted of a platform and a little three-sided shed
+designed to shield the traveler from the weather, if the weather did not
+happen to arrive on the unprotected fourth side.
+
+"They promised to meet us," said Douglas as she collected parcels and
+umbrellas, "but I don't see a sign of them."
+
+"Maybe they are on the other side," suggested the hopeful Nan, peering
+through the window.
+
+They weren't, however, nor anywhere in sight. Douglas and Helen looked
+at each other askance. The two older girls were the only ones in the
+family who had seen their future abode and they felt very responsible.
+This hitch of not being met was most disconcerting. They had felt if
+everything went off smoothly and well their choice of a home would be
+smiled upon. First, the day they moved must be good, and this day in
+October was surely perfect. The packing must be done without bustle
+and confusion, and that had been accomplished. They must have a good
+luncheon before leaving Richmond, and Miss Elizabeth Somerville, who had
+invited them to her house, had feasted her cousins most royally, sending
+them forth with well-nourished bodies and peaceful minds in consequence.
+This was the first obstacle to their carefully laid plans. They were to
+learn that no plan depending in any particular on the coöperation of
+their landladies, the Misses Grant, would go through safely.
+
+Miss Ella and Miss Louise Grant were joint owners of the small farm that
+the glib real estate agent had persuaded Dr. Wright and our girls was
+the one and only place in which the winter could be comfortably spent.
+
+"Excellent air and water; close to schools and churches; neighborhood as
+good as to be found in Virginia, and what more could be said? House one
+of the old landmarks of the county; the view from the front porch quite
+a famous one; R. F. D. at yard gate; commuting distance from Richmond;
+roads excellent, as we have found on our way here." They had motored out
+and certainly the roads had seemed very good.
+
+The Misses Grant were all that was left of a large and at one time
+influential family. They lived in a great old mansion erected in the
+middle of what was at one time a vast estate but which had gradually
+shrunk through generations of mortgages until now it comprised about two
+thousand acres. The name of this old place was Grantly.
+
+The farm that Helen and Douglas had rented for the year was only called
+a farm by courtesy, as it had in its holding only about ten acres. It
+had at one time been the home of the overseer of Grantly when that
+aristocratic estate could boast an overseer. It was too humble an abode
+to have a name of its own, but our girls were determined to give it a
+name when they found out what would suit it. Now they stood on the
+platform of the tiny station and said in their hearts that such a place,
+belonging to such unreliable persons, deserved no name at all.
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry they haven't sent to meet us. They told me if I would
+write to them they would have a carriage and a farm wagon here," wailed
+Douglas.
+
+"Why not walk?" suggested Mr. Carter. "A quarter of a mile is nothing."
+
+"Oh, do let's walk!" exclaimed Lucy. "We can just leave the luggage
+here and get someone to come back for it."
+
+"All of you can walk," came faintly from Mrs. Carter. "Just leave me
+here alone. I don't fancy anything much will happen to me."
+
+"But Mumsy, only a quarter of a mile!" begged Lucy.
+
+"Why, my child, I never expect to walk more than a few blocks again as
+long as I live."
+
+Mr. Carter looked pained and ended by staying with his wife while the
+four girls and Bobby trooped off to find someone to send for them.
+
+"Why does Mother say she never expects to walk more than a few blocks
+again as long as she lives?" blurted out Lucy. "Is she sick? She looks
+to me like she's getting fat."
+
+"Tell her that," suggested Nan, "and I bet you she will find she can
+walk a teensy little more than a few blocks."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE LANDLADIES AND A NEW ACQUAINTANCE
+
+
+"This is a long quarter of a mile," said Nan, trying to keep up with her
+more athletic sisters.
+
+"The agent told us a quarter of a mile, but I reckon he meant as the
+crow flies. He did not allow for all the twistings and turnings of this
+lane," laughed Helen.
+
+"It is a very pretty walk, anyhow, and I'm glad we are not so close to
+the track because of Bobby," said the philosophic Nan.
+
+"Shucks! You needn't be a-thinkin' I can't find my way back to that old
+station," said that young hopeful. "I wisht it was barefoot time and I
+would wade in that branch."
+
+They were crossing a pretty little stream that intersected the road. Of
+course Bobby took occasion to slip off the stepping-stones and get his
+foot wet.
+
+"S'long as one is wet I reckon I might as well get th' other one wet,
+too," and he stepped boldly into the stream. "Sqush! Sqush! Ain't this a
+grand and glorious feeling?"
+
+"Oh, Bobby!" chorused his sisters.
+
+"'Tain't gonter make no diffunce! My 'ployer says sech things as this
+toughen kids."
+
+Bobby always called Dr. Wright his employer, as it had been his habit to
+go with that young physician while he was making his professional calls,
+his duties being to hold out his arm when they were turning corners or
+preparing to stop; and to sit in the car and guard his 'ployer's
+property from the depredations of hoodlums and micks.
+
+"I don't think some kids need toughening," said Nan, trying to look
+severe.
+
+"Yes'n I gotter joke on you, too! They was a pretty near grown-up boy on
+the train wanted to know what yo' name was. I was jawin' the inductor
+an' the boy comed and plunked hissef down by me an' he axed me what was
+my name and where I was a-gointer, an' was all'n you my aunts or what.
+He was so busy a-findin' out he come near a-missing his gettin' off
+place. He lives jus' befo' our gettin' off place."
+
+"Oh, that must have been the good-looking boy sitting opposite us, just
+behind Mother and Father! You noticed him, Douglas, didn't you?" asked
+Helen.
+
+"Well, he wasn't a-noticin' you much," proceeded the _enfant terrible_.
+"He wanted mostly to know what was Nan's name an' where she went to
+school."
+
+"Surely you didn't tell him!" blushed Nan.
+
+"Sho' nix! I told him yo' name was Lizajane an' you was a-clerkin' in
+the five an' ten."
+
+"Oh, Bobby!"
+
+Nobody could help laughing at the saucy youngster, and his sisters were
+ever inclined to find him amusing and altogether delightful in spite of
+his outrageousness. Their laughter rang out clear and infectious.
+First they laughed at Bobby and then they laughed for the pure joy of
+laughing. Douglas forgot her burdens and responsibilities; Helen forgot
+how she hated to be poor; Nan forgot that the quarter of a mile she was
+going to have to trudge twice a day to join the army of commuters was
+much nearer half a mile and she was not a very energetic girl; Lucy
+had nothing to forget or regret, being only thirteen with a perfect
+digestion. For the moment all of them forgot the nerve-worn father and
+the hypochondriacal mother waiting so forlornly at the station with the
+luggage piled so hopelessly at one end.
+
+In the midst of their gale of laughter they heard the hum of a motor and
+the toot of a horn. A large touring car came swerving around the curve
+in the road.
+
+"That's him now!" cried the delighted Bobby.
+
+It was no other than the boy on the train. He stopped his car and with
+crimson face began to stammer forth unintelligible words.
+
+"Excuse me!--but--that is a--you see I---- Oh, hang it all! er--my name
+is William--Will--Billy Sutton."
+
+"Oh, he's plum nutty an' thinks he's Billy Sunday--Billy Nut Sunday!"
+and Bobby danced gleefully in his squshy shoes.
+
+"Bobby! Behave yourself!" said Douglas, trying to swallow the laugh she
+was in the midst of.
+
+"We was jes' a-talkin' about you," said Bobby, with his most disarming
+smile.
+
+"About me?" and the young fellow choked his engine.
+
+"Yes, I was a-tellin'----"
+
+But here Helen took her little brother in hand. Helen could usually
+manage him better than any of the others. She whispered some mysterious
+something to him which quickly sobered him.
+
+"I don't want you to think I am impertinent or interfering, but your
+little brother told me on the train coming out that your mother and
+father were both ill----"
+
+"Yes, I told him they were likely to die mos' any time."
+
+"And I heard at the post-office at Preston, where I live, that you have
+rented the farm from the Misses Grant; also that those ladies were not
+expecting you until tomorrow----"
+
+"But I wrote we would be there today, Wednesday!" exclaimed Douglas.
+
+"That doesn't make a bit of difference to Miss Ella and Miss Louise
+Grant," laughed the boy. "They never get anything straight because they
+discuss every subject so thoroughly that they are all mixed up before
+they get through. Anyhow, they did not meet you, and if you don't think
+I am pushing or forward or something----"
+
+"Butinsky!" suggested Bobby, but Helen slipped her hand over his pert
+little mouth.
+
+"Thank you for that word--butinsky--why, I should like the privilege of
+going after your mother and father and bringing all the luggage my car
+will hold."
+
+"Oh, you are too kind!" chorused the girls.
+
+"Let me take all of you first to the farm."
+
+"We must go by Grantly to let the ladies know we are here," suggested
+Douglas.
+
+"They are both of them at the farm. I saw them as I came by."
+
+"Did you tell them we had come?"
+
+"No! They were sure to let me know it was none of my business, and, as
+I was fully aware of the fact, I just drove on by, hoping to be of more
+service to you in this way."
+
+The girls and Bobby piled into the car assisted by the boy, who handed
+them in with pleasing gallantry. By adroit manoeuvering he managed to
+get Nan in front, although the irrepressible did squeeze in, too.
+
+"I must sit in front so I can poke out my arm. Maybe you is huntin' a
+shover. I'm Dr. Wright's shover in town an' up'n the mountings. He don't
+mind my having two jobs in off times when he ain't a-needin' me."
+
+"Well, then, I'll employ you right now," said Billy Sutton, solemnly.
+
+"I think maybe it is in order for us to introduce ourselves," said
+Douglas. "This is Helen Carter; and this, Nan; and this, Lucy; I am
+Douglas; and Bobby has already been noticed enough."
+
+Hands were shaken and then they started gaily off.
+
+"It seems a long quarter of a mile from the station to the farm, but
+maybe it is because I am lazy," said Nan, who was unfeignedly glad of
+a lift.
+
+"Who said it was only a quarter of a mile? It is exactly three
+quarters."
+
+Two minutes brought them to the farm gate, where Billy deposited the
+occupants of the back seat. It was decided that Nan and Bobby were to go
+on to the station with their new friend and benefactor and explain him
+to Mr. and Mrs. Carter.
+
+"Oh, Douglas, isn't the place sweet? Lucy, don't you like it?" asked
+Helen as they opened the big gate that led from the road into the lawn
+of their new abode.
+
+"Great! It looks so romantical."
+
+"I was so afraid it wasn't going to be as nice as we thought it was
+because the real estate agent was so glib and rattled on so he confused
+us. I was afraid he had hypnotized us into liking it. But it is lovely,"
+and Douglas breathed a great sigh of relief.
+
+Indeed it was lovely; lovelier, I fancy, than the real estate agent
+dreamed. The lawn was spacious, with soft rolling contours and a few
+great trees, some of them centuries old. In the front a mighty oak stood
+guard at one corner and an elm at another. Nearer the house a straight
+young ash and a willow oak divided the honors. At one side of the quaint
+old house a great mock orange had established a precedent for mock
+oranges and grown into a tree, just to show what a mock orange is
+capable of when not confined to the limitations of a hedge. Its trunk
+was gnarled and twisted and because of careful pruning of lower branches
+it had grown like a huge umbrella with limbs curving out from the parent
+stem and almost touching the ground all around.
+
+"What a grand place to play house and tell secrets!" thought Lucy,
+regretting that thirteen years old, almost fourteen, was too great an
+age to indulge in dolly tea parties.
+
+A grove of gum trees glorified the back yard with their brilliant
+October foliage. There never was such a red as the gum tree boasts and
+these huge specimens were one blaze of color. The trunks had taken on a
+hoary tone that contrasted pleasantly with the warm tints of the leaves.
+
+The yard contained about four acres enclosed by a fence that had been
+covered entirely by honeysuckle, and even then a few blossoms were
+making the air fragrant. In the back there were several rather
+tumble-down outhouses, but these, too, were covered with honeysuckle
+as though by a mantle of charity.
+
+The house had been added to from time to time as the race of overseers
+had felt the need. These additions had been made with no thought of
+congruity or ornamentation, but since utility had been the ruling
+thought the outcome was on the whole rather artistic. The original
+house, built in the first years of the nineteenth century, had a
+basement dining-room, a large chamber over this and two small,
+low-ceilinged attic rooms. Later a shed room had been built at one
+side in the back, then a two-story addition had reared itself next to
+that with no apparent connection with the main house, not even a
+family resemblance. This two-storied "lean-to" was known always as
+"the new house," although it had been in existence some threescore
+years. There were two rooms and two halls in this addition and it had
+a front porch all its own. The old house also boasted a front porch,
+with a floor of unplaned boards and posts of rough cedar. But who
+minds cedar pillars when Washington's bower has done its best to cover
+them up? As for unplaned boards with cracks between: what a good place
+to sweep the dirt!
+
+The green blinds were open all over the house and windows were raised.
+As our girls stood on the lawn drinking in the beauty and peace of the
+scene they heard loud and angry voices proceeding from the basement
+window.
+
+"Louise Grant, you are certainly foolish! Didn't I tell you they
+wouldn't be coming down here yesterday? Here you have littered up this
+place with flowers and they will all be faded by tomorrow. I have told
+you a million times I read the letter that Douglas Carter wrote and she
+said distinctly she was coming on Thursday." This in a loud, high,
+commanding tone as though the speaker was determined to be heard. "You
+needn't put your hands over your ears! I know you can hear me!"
+
+"That's all right, Ella Grant," came in full contralto notes; "just
+because they didn't come yesterday is no sign they did not say they were
+coming that day. I read the note, too, and if you hadn't have been so
+quick to burn it I guess I could prove it. Those flowers are not doing
+anybody any harm and I know one thing--they smell a sight better than
+that old carbolic you are so fond of sprinkling around."
+
+"I thought I heard the three train stop at the crossing," broke in the
+high, hard voice.
+
+"No such thing! I noticed particularly."
+
+"Nonsense! You were so busy watching that Sutton boy racing by in his
+car that you didn't even know it was train time. What John Sutton means
+by letting that boy drive that car I can't see. He isn't more than
+fourteen----"
+
+"Fourteen! Ella Grant, you have lost your senses! He is twenty, if he
+is a day. I remember perfectly well that he was born during the Spanish
+war."
+
+"Certainly! That was just fourteen years ago."
+
+The girls couldn't help laughing. It happened that it was eighteen years
+since the Spanish war, as our history scholar, Lucy, had just learned.
+That seemed to be the way the sisters hit the mark: one shooting far in
+front, one far behind.
+
+"We had better knock," whispered Helen, "or they will begin to break up
+the china soon."
+
+She accordingly beat a rat-tat on the open front door of the old house.
+
+"Someone is knocking!" exclaimed the contralto.
+
+"Not at all! It's a woodpecker," put in the treble.
+
+One more application of Helen's knuckles and treble was convinced.
+
+"That time it was a knock," she conceded.
+
+There was a hurrying and scurrying, a sound of altercation on the
+stairs leading from the basement to the front hall.
+
+"Why do you try to go first? You know perfectly well I can go faster
+than you can, and here you have started up the steps and I can't get by.
+You fat----"
+
+"If you can go so much faster, why didn't you start up the steps first?"
+panted the contralto.
+
+"Don't talk or you'll never get up the steps! Save your wind for
+climbing."
+
+The bulky form of Miss Louise hove in sight and over her shoulder the
+girls could see the stern countenance of her long, slim sister. How
+could two such different looking persons be born of one mother? Miss
+Louise was all breadth and no height; Miss Ella, all height and no
+breadth. Miss Louise was dark of complexion, with coal-black hair
+streaked with grey; Miss Ella was a strawberry blonde with sandy hair
+streaked with grey. Age that brought the grey hair seemed about the only
+thing they had in common, except, of course, the estate of Grantly. That
+had been willed to them by their father with a grim humor, as he must
+have been well aware of their idiosyncrasies. They were to hold the
+property together with no division, the one who survived to inherit
+the whole.
+
+"Well!" said Miss Ella over the shoulder of her sister, who refused to
+give her right of way but who was silenced for the moment by shortness
+of breath. "Why did you come today when you wrote you were coming
+to-morrow?"
+
+"I did not write I was coming tomorrow," said Douglas, smiling in spite
+of herself.
+
+"There! What did I tell you?" panted Miss Louise. "You said Tuesday,
+didn't you, honey?" with ingratiating sweetness.
+
+"No, Miss Grant, I said Wednesday."
+
+The incident was closed. The wrangling sisters had no more to say on the
+subject except to apologize for not having them met. It was explained
+that Billy Sutton had gone to get Mr. and Mrs. Carter, but the trunks
+must be sent for. Quite humbly Miss Ella went to get her farmhand to
+hitch up the mules to drive to the station, while Miss Louise showed
+the girls over the house.
+
+Everything was in beautiful order and shining with cleanliness. The
+white pine floors were scrubbed until they reminded the girls of biscuit
+boards, and very lovely did the bright rag rugs look on these floors.
+The furniture was very plain with the exception of an occasional bit of
+fine old mahogany. A beautiful old highboy was not too proud to stay in
+the same room with a cheap oak dresser, and in the basement dining-room
+a handsome mahogany table democratically mingled with split-bottom
+chairs.
+
+Miss Louise had put flowers everywhere for their reception the day
+before and the whole house was redolent of late roses and mignonette
+and citronella. An occasional whiff of carbolic acid and chloride of
+lime gave evidence of the indomitable practicality of Miss Ella.
+
+Miss Louise proved very sweet and kindly when not in her sister's
+presence and later on the girls found Miss Ella to be really very
+agreeable. Both ladies seemed to be bent on showing kindness and
+consideration to their tenants to make up for the mistake about their
+day of arrival.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Carter could not help thinking that the place their
+daughters had chosen for them to spend the winter was pretty. As they
+rolled up in Billy's car the quaint house and beautiful lawn certainly
+presented a most pleasing aspect, and their handsome daughters were an
+added loveliness to the landscape as they hurried to meet their parents.
+
+"Ah, this is great!" exclaimed Mr. Carter, taking a deep breath of the
+pure fresh air. "I think I shall have to have a cow and some pigs and do
+some fall plowing besides. Eh, Helen? You and I are to be the
+stay-at-homes. What do you think?"
+
+"I think what you think, Daddy," answered Helen, smiling happily over
+her father's show of enthusiasm. Dr. Wright had told her that with
+returning healthy nerves would come the enthusiasm that before his
+illness had seemed to be part of Robert Carter's make-up.
+
+"How do you like it, Mumsy?" asked Douglas as she drew her arm through
+her mother's.
+
+"Very nice, I am sure, but I think it would be wiser for me to go to bed
+now. I am not very strong and if I can give up before I drop it would be
+less trouble for my family," and Mrs. Carter took on a most plaintive
+accent. "A little tea and toast will be all I want for my supper."
+
+"Oh now, it will be too bad for you to go to bed," said Miss Ella. "We
+were planning to have all of you come up to Grantly for supper."
+
+She and Miss Louise seemed to have agreed for once on the propriety of
+having their tenants to supper.
+
+"The count is coming," said Miss Louise, with a sentimental note in her
+full voice.
+
+"The count! Who is the count?" asked Mrs. Carter with some show of
+animation and interest.
+
+"He is a nobleman who has settled in our neighborhood," said Miss Ella
+in a matter-of-fact tone, as though noblemen were the rule rather than
+the exception in her life.
+
+"Maybe it would be possible for me to take a short rest and come to
+Grantly," said Mrs. Carter, with a quickening in her pretty eyes.
+
+At mention of the count, Billy Sutton pretended to be much occupied with
+his engine, but Nan noticed a slight curl on his lip as he bent over the
+wheel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE COUNT
+
+
+"Isn't it fine not to have to bother about supper?" said Helen, as she
+and Douglas were attempting to get some order out of the chaos of trunks
+that had been brought from the station and systematically put in the
+wrong place by the good-natured, shambling, inefficient darky who served
+as factotum to the Misses Grant.
+
+Helen and Douglas had decided to take one attic room in the old house
+for their bedroom; Bobby was to have the other; the large chamber below
+them was to serve as family sitting-room; Nan and Lucy were to have the
+upstairs room in the new house; Mr. and Mrs. Carter the lower room; the
+shed room was to serve as guest chamber when needed; the dining-room was
+in the basement. Over the outside kitchen was another extremely low
+attic room that was to be the servant's bedroom, when they got her.
+This room was accessible from the kitchen by a flight of primitive
+chicken steps, that is, accessible to the young and agile.
+
+The two servants the Carters had had at the week-end camp had been eager
+to come with them to the country, but Douglas and Helen had decided that
+they were expensive luxuries, and as much as they hated to part with
+them, had determined to have a country girl, accustomed to less wages
+than Susan, and to do without a manservant in place of the faithful, if
+high-priced, Oscar. Dr. Wright had insisted that some chores were
+indispensable for Mr. Carter, such as chopping wood, carrying water,
+etc., and that gentleman was eager to assist wherever he could.
+
+"Surely you are not going to dress up to go out to supper this evening,"
+said Douglas, as Helen shook out a pretty little old-rose dinner gown, a
+leftover from the time when the Carters purchased clothes for every
+occasion and for every passing style and season.
+
+"I am going to dress suitably, but I don't call it dressing up," said
+Helen, hunting for the stockings to match the gown. "I think Father is
+well enough for me to wear silk stockings this evening," she said a
+little wistfully. We all remember that in the first throes of agony over
+her father's nervous breakdown Helen had taken an oath not to wear silk
+stockings until he was well. "What do you think, Douglas?"
+
+"Of course, you goose, just so you don't have to buy the stockings,"
+laughed Douglas. "I am going to wear what I have on, I can tell you
+that. There is a lot to do to get the beds made up and the house ready
+to sleep in, and I have no idea of unpacking my own trunk until
+tomorrow," and Douglas unlocked the trunk that held the bed linen.
+
+"Oh, Douglas, please put on your grey crêpe de chine! I'll get it out
+for you and find your stockings and everything," begged Helen. "I don't
+think it is very respectful to our hostesses for you not to be suitably
+dressed."
+
+"Is it altogether our hostesses you are thinking about?" teased Douglas.
+
+"Whom else should I consider?"
+
+"How about the count?"
+
+"Well, naturally I can't help thinking some about a nobleman," declared
+Helen frankly. "Do you fancy he is young or old, rich or poor, handsome
+or ugly? I am wild to see him."
+
+"I can't imagine. They didn't even say what he was a count of. I hope he
+is not German. I must say I'd hate to put on my best dress for a German
+count," laughed Douglas.
+
+"Why, Douglas, I wouldn't be so biased as all that. As long as our
+country is neutral, I don't think it is fair for us to take such a
+stand. I'd rather dress up for a German count than--than--a Russian
+anarchist or maybe an Australian Bushman."
+
+"Well, I am not pining to dress up for anybody, but if I must, I must.
+How about Mumsy?"
+
+"She has already got out her black lace and is going to wear her pearls.
+She is trying to persuade Father into his tuxedo but I fancy he will
+rebel."
+
+"Mercy on us! I thought we would never have to dress in this
+out-of-the-way spot," sighed Douglas.
+
+"Well, I for one am glad to have a chance to dress. It seems to me we
+have been khakied to death all summer, and I believe people deteriorate
+when they stay in the same old clothes year in and year out. I could
+wish my old-rose had another width in it. Skirts are much broader this
+fall. The sleeves are quite right, though,--sleeves haven't changed
+much."
+
+Poor Helen! It was a keen misery to her not to be in the latest style.
+She had a natural taste for dress and the tendency to overrate the
+importance of clothes had been fostered in her by her frivolous mother.
+Douglas, on the other hand, had a tendency to underrate the value of
+dress and her inclination was to be rather careless of her attire.
+
+After much scrabbling and stirring up of trunks the whole family was
+dressed in what Mrs. Carter and Helen considered suitable garments, with
+the exception of Mr. Carter, who could not be coerced into a dinner
+coat.
+
+"I can't think that a quiet supper in the country with two old ladies
+who are renting us the overseer's cottage could possibly call for formal
+dressing. Of course, you women know best what you want to wear, and very
+handsome all of you look I am sure, but you must excuse me."
+
+"That's what I say!" exclaimed Bobby, putting his hands in his pockets
+and trying to balance himself with his feet very far apart. "Me'n Father
+certainly do nachelly hate clean clothes. When I gits to be growed up,
+I'm gonter be a barefoot tramp an' ain't never gonter wash nor nothin'."
+Bobby was still smarting and indignant from the polishing Helen had
+seemed to think the occasion demanded, especially concentrating on his
+long-suffering ears.
+
+"Sometimes I wisht I hadn't never had my curls cut off. Folks weren't
+near so 'ticular 'bout my yers when I had curls. They kinder hid 'em."
+
+"But, Bobby, when you are going to have supper with a count you must be
+very carefully dressed," explained Lucy. "Counts are not just common
+persons like us."
+
+"I thank you I'm no common person," drawled Nan. "I'm a good American
+and fit to dine with any count living. That's the way Douglas and I
+feel. We wouldn't have changed our dresses if Mother and Helen hadn't
+made such a point of it."
+
+"Good for you, Nan!" and her father put his arm around her. "Of course
+you must dress as your mother sees fit, but don't, for goodness' sake,
+think a man, because he is a count or even a king, must be treated
+differently from any other gentleman of your acquaintance."
+
+They were on their way to Grantly, only about five minutes' walk from
+the farmhouse. The sun had set in a blaze of glory but already the great
+October moon was doing her best to take his place. There was a hint of
+frost in the air and our Carters were bringing their appetites with them
+to grace the board of their hospitable landladies.
+
+"I do hope Miss Ella and Miss Louise won't quarrel all the time,"
+whispered Helen as they approached the imposing mansion.
+
+"They remind me of the blue and white seidlitz powders," said Douglas:
+"bound to sizzle when you mix 'em. They are so mild and gentle when they
+are apart and the minute they get together--whiz!"
+
+Mrs. Carter cast a triumphant glance at her husband as they entered the
+parlor at Grantly. The Misses Grant were dressed in rustling black silk
+with old lace berthas and cuffs, and the gentleman who sprang to his
+feet, bringing his heels together with a click as he bowed low, was
+attired in a faultlessly fitting dress suit.
+
+Helen's questions were answered by one glance at this distinguished
+stranger; certainly he was young and handsome; the chances were that he
+was also not poor. That cut of dress suit did not go with poverty, nor
+did the exquisite fineness of his linen. Douglas's question of his
+nationality remained to be solved. "Count de Lestis" did not give the
+girls a clue to the country from which this interesting person hailed.
+
+"He does not look German," Douglas said to herself. "He is too dark and
+too graceful."
+
+She breathed a sigh of relief that her grey crêpe de chine had not been
+donned in honor of a German, count or no count. When she saw that the
+Misses Grant evidently considered their suppers worthy to be dressed up
+for, she was glad she had listened to the dictates of Helen.
+
+That young lady was looking especially charming in the old-rose gown, in
+spite of the fact that the skirt did not flare quite enough. Helen had a
+way of wearing her clothes and of arranging her hair that many a dame at
+Palm Beach or Newport would have given her fortune to possess.
+
+Mrs. Carter always was at her best in a parlor and now her beauty shone
+resplendent, framed in black lace and pearls. Her gracious manner and
+bearing marked her as one whose natural place was in society. Her gift
+was social and it did seem a great waste that such a talent should
+have to be buried under the bushel of an overseer's cottage in an
+out-of-the-way spot in the country, with a once prosperous husband to
+do the chores and a maid-of-all-work, chosen because of her cheapness
+and not her worth.
+
+The Misses Grant smiled their approval over the appearance of their
+guests. The fact that they were two quarrelsome old sisters farming on
+a dwindling estate did not lessen their importance in their own eyes,
+and they always felt that the dignity of Grantly demanded ceremonial
+dressing for the evening meal.
+
+The sisters showed no marks of having toiled through the entire
+afternoon to prepare the feast that they were to set before their
+guests. Disagreeing as they did on every subject, food was not exempt.
+If Miss Ella decided to make an angel's food cake, Miss Louise must
+make a devil's food cake; if one thought the whites of eggs left from
+the frozen custard would be well to use in a silver cake, the other
+simultaneously determined to have apple float, requiring whites of eggs,
+and then the yolks must be converted into golden cake. The consequence
+was that their supper table groaned with opposing dishes. Each one
+pressed upon the guests her own specialty, and if it so happened that
+Miss Ella had to serve some dish of Miss Louise's concocting, she would
+do it with a deprecating air as though she were helping you to cold
+poison; and if Miss Louise perforce must hand you one of Miss Ella's
+muffins, she would shake her head mysteriously as though to warn you
+against them.
+
+One thing was apparent from the beginning and that was that the count
+was a good mixer. His English was perfect, except for an occasional
+suggestion of an interchange of b and p, and also a too great stress on
+his s. He was a brilliant conversationalist but had the wit not to be a
+monologueist. He had done much traveling for a man under thirty and had
+lived in so many places that it made him a real citizen of the world.
+Evidently he had the Misses Grant charmed. From the moment that he
+bought Weston, a fine old estate in the neighborhood, and came into
+their county to settle, the old ladies had taken him to their hearts.
+They seemed in danger of agreeing on the subject of this fascinating
+young man's charms. However, they found something to quarrel about even
+in this stranger: Miss Ella thought his mouth was his best feature,
+while Miss Louise insisted that his eyes were.
+
+Of course the Carters were one and all dying to know more about him: Who
+was he? What was his nationality? Why had he settled in America? Where
+were his people? Did he have a family?
+
+He seemed to be equally curious about them. Why should city people of
+such breeding and beauty come and live in a little tumbledown shack in
+the country? He had merely been told by the Misses Grant that the
+tenants who had just moved into the little farmhouse were to have supper
+with them, when these visions of loveliness burst upon him. He couldn't
+decide which one of the sisters was the most attractive. Douglas was the
+most beautiful with her titian hair and clear complexion, not ruined by
+the summer out-of-doors as her mother had feared. But Helen--there was
+a piquancy about Helen that was certainly very fetching; her brown hair
+was so beautifully arranged at exactly the right and becoming angle; her
+little head was so gracefully set on her athletic shoulders; her bearing
+was so gallant;--certainly Helen was very attractive. Then there was Nan
+with her soft loveliness, her great eyes now shining with excitement and
+now dreaming some entrancing dream. She was only sixteen but there was
+something about her countenance that gave promise of great cleverness.
+Lucy was growing more like Helen and much of Helen's charm was hers,
+although the child had strong characteristics all her own.
+
+While Count de Lestis was deciding which one of the sisters was
+most attractive, he did the extremely tactful and suitable thing of
+addressing his remarks to their mother, not forgetting to give the
+hostesses a full share of attention. Mr. Carter, who since his illness
+had been inclined to be very quiet, was drawn into the conversation and
+held his own with his old time power. Little wonder that his daughters
+were grateful to this interesting stranger who had this effect on their
+beloved father.
+
+The young man told them he was Hungarian and had bought the estate of
+Weston with a view to entering into intensive farming.
+
+"Then you are not Prussian!" exclaimed Douglas. "Oh, I am so glad!"
+
+"Ah!" and his handsome eyes flashed for a moment. Then he looked amused.
+"And why are you so glad?"
+
+"Why, of course anyone would be glad," and Douglas blushed. "Who would
+want to have a Prussian for a neighbor?"
+
+"Do you dislike them so much then?"
+
+"I hate them!"
+
+"And you, too?" turning to Helen.
+
+"I am trying to remain neutral as our president has asked us to. I don't
+feel so terribly Anglo-Saxon as my sister."
+
+Of course this started the question of the war, which was in the minds
+of everybody. Count de Lestis rather surprised Mr. Carter by his frank
+announcement concerning his connection with Berlin.
+
+"I, no doubt, would be fighting with the Central Powers if I had not
+committed political suicide four years ago."
+
+"And how was that?"
+
+"I wrote a book in which I made a plea for a democratization of
+Austria-Hungary. In it I intimated that the Hohenzollerns had no right
+to dictate to the universe. I was requested to leave the country. I was
+then living in Vienna, making short trips to my estate, which lies
+partly in Austria and partly in Hungary. Now there is danger of my
+entire possessions being confiscated."
+
+"Oh, but when Germany is finally whipped you can come into your own
+again," asserted Douglas. "The outcome is merely a matter of time."
+
+"And so Germany is to be whipped?" his eyes flashing again.
+
+"Of course," said Douglas simply.
+
+"And why of course?"
+
+"'Because God's in his Heaven,'" whispered Nan, but the count heard her.
+
+"Yes, but whose God?"
+
+"The God of Justice and of Right."
+
+"How about the God of Might?"
+
+"There is no such God," and this time Douglas's eyes did some flashing.
+
+"I believe the United States will intervene before so very long," said
+Mr. Carter as he and the count strolled out on the veranda to enjoy
+their cigars. The older man was enjoying his talk with this young
+foreigner. He looked forward with pleasure to seeing much of him, since
+Weston was only about three miles from the farm. They made plans to do
+some shooting together, as the open season was only a week off.
+
+When de Lestis learned that Mr. Carter was an architect he asked him to
+visit him at his earliest convenience at Weston to advise with him
+concerning the restoration of the old house to its original grandeur.
+
+"I'm not supposed to be doing any work for at least a year," sighed Mr.
+Carter, "but I might look it over and tell you what I think and then
+recommend a suitable architect to take it in hand."
+
+Douglas and Helen had a talk with Miss Louise on the subject of a
+country girl to come to them as maid of all work.
+
+"They are all of them thoroughly trifling," declared that lady in her
+soft round voice, "but this creature we have has a sister who could come
+to you. I beg of you not to give her any more wages than ours receives,
+as in that case we should have to go up."
+
+"Certainly not," said Douglas. "Just tell us what that is." But on
+learning that it was only seven dollars a month, the girls felt that it
+was no wonder the creatures were thoroughly trifling.
+
+"Did she cook this wonderful supper?" asked Helen.
+
+"No, indeed! Ella and I always cook everything we eat and this Tempy
+washes the dishes and cleans."
+
+"But we want someone to cook. Do you think I might train the sister?"
+
+"Well, I have heard you can train monkeys but I have never seen it
+done," laughed the fat old lady. "Come with me now and we can speak to
+Tempy about her sister Chloe."
+
+They found Tempy in the pantry, peacefully sleeping in the midst of the
+unwashed dishes. Not in the least abashed at being caught napping, she
+waked up and told Helen that no doubt Chloe would be pleased fur ter
+come. She promised to fetch her on the morrow.
+
+"I will pay her just what the Misses Grant pay you," said Helen.
+
+"Lawsamussy, missy, she ain't wuth what I is. She ain't nebber wucked
+out ter say much. I done started at six and wucked up ter seben, an' if
+Chloe gits now what I gits, she'll be too proudified. You jis' start her
+at six same as Miss Ellanlouise done me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+GRANTLY
+
+
+Since our girls were to become quite intimate with the peculiar old
+sisters and their home, perhaps it would be just as well for me to give
+my readers some idea of what Grantly was like.
+
+The first thing that struck a visitor was the wonderful box bushes in
+the hedge enclosing the yard and in a labyrinth in the garden. These
+bushes were so thick that one could really walk on the tops of them if
+they were kept clipped, which they were not. In the labyrinth the
+bushes met overhead and even after a heavy rain the paths between were
+perfectly dry. It took days of soaking rain to make those winding paths
+wet. Beyond the labyrinth was an old-fashioned garden, but now in
+October chrysanthemums and late roses and cosmos were all that was left
+of the riot of color that could be seen there during the spring and
+summer.
+
+The house was of a very peculiar architectural design: a long, low body
+with a tower at each end. In each tower was a square room with many
+windows overlooking the country for miles around. Miss Ella claimed one
+of these rooms as her own especial property; Miss Louise the other. To
+approach Miss Ella's sanctum sanctorum it was necessary to climb a
+narrow spiral stairway; Miss Louise's was more accessible by reason of
+a broad stairway of many landings, but the ceilings at the landings
+were so low that anyone of ordinary stature must stoop to ascend.
+
+These rooms were used only as sitting-rooms by the erratic sisters as,
+strange to say, the two old ladies slept in the same room and in the
+same great four-posted tester bed. There were many other bedrooms in the
+mansion, but they both preferred the great chamber leading from the
+parlor, and there they slept and no doubt quarreled in their sleep.
+
+"This is my sitting-room up here," said Miss Ella as she showed her
+guests over the quaint old house. "You may come up if you like. I had
+the steps made this way so Louise can't get up here and worry my soul
+out of me with her eternal chatter. She's too fat for the spiral
+stairway. Elephant!"
+
+"Yes, and my sitting-room is in the other tower, and thank goodness,
+Ella would find it a back-breaking job to get up my steps," retaliated
+Miss Louise. "Giraffe!"
+
+Those strange old ladies had actually had the original steps to the
+towers changed to suit their particular grouches! They really spent very
+little time in their tower fastnesses, however, as they were much
+happier when together and quarreling.
+
+A tale was told in the neighborhood that once Miss Ella had neglected or
+forgotten to contradict Miss Louise on some vital subject such as
+whether it was or was not going to rain, and Miss Louise was so uneasy
+that she sent post haste for Dr. Allison.
+
+"I was afraid it was a stroke or something," whimpered Miss Louise. She
+worried herself into a sick headache before the doctor arrived, and
+then the fat one had to go to bed and take the medicine and Miss Ella
+was forced to repent of her misbehavior by nursing her sister. Dr.
+Allison left strict injunctions that she was not to worry her poor
+sister again by agreeing with her.
+
+Grantly was filled with fine old furniture and all kinds of curios. A
+great-uncle had been a traveler in the Orient and many were the
+teakwood cabinets and jade ornaments; curious Japanese prints; Chinese
+embroidered fans and screens; bronze Buddhas; rare vases with inlaid
+flowers and birds; Toby jugs and lacquered teapots; quaint armor, swords
+and daggers; everything in fact that might be found in an old house that
+a traveler had once called home.
+
+"Does Tempy dust all these beautiful things?" asked Mrs. Carter, who was
+quite carried away by the wonders in her landladies' home.
+
+"Bless you, no! She doesn't dare to touch a one of them," laughed Miss
+Louise. "Ella dusts the high ones, I dust the low." She said it quite
+with the air of the song:
+
+    "You take the high road,
+    I'll take the low."
+
+With all of its beauties, Grantly was undergoing a process of slow
+decay. Lack of paint and neglected leaks were getting in their insidious
+work. There never seemed to be money enough for the owners to afford the
+needed repairs, and if there ever was any money at all, they could never
+come to an agreement on which repairs were the most urgent.
+
+The overseer's house was suffering in the same way. A kind of dry rot
+had attacked portions of it. Weather-boarding was so loose in places
+that Bobby could pull it off. Steps groaned and floors creaked; shutters
+had lost fastenings; putty had dropped from the window panes, which were
+insecurely held in place with tacks; mop-boarding and floors had parted
+company many years before. All of these little details had escaped the
+inexperienced eyes of Douglas and Helen when they decided that this
+was the place of all others to spend the winter. Dr. Wright, who had
+accompanied them, had been more noticing, but had wisely decided to say
+nothing, as he wanted his patient to become interested in tinkering at
+small jobs, and he could see that this little farm would keep Mr. Carter
+busy.
+
+The ladies of Grantly had promised to have everything in order before
+the tenants should arrive, but disagreeing on which workman they should
+employ, the time had slipped by and nothing had been done.
+
+The pump to the well had lost its sucker and had to be primed before
+water could be got. This meant that the person who pumped must remember
+to fill a can of water and leave it for the next pumper. The yard gate
+shut with difficulty and opened with more. The stovepipe in the kitchen
+had a large hole in one side and if the wind shifted, so did the smoke,
+seeking an outlet through the nearest aperture.
+
+All of these disagreeable features dawned gradually on our girls. They
+saw nothing to be complained of in those rare October days. Accustomed
+as they had become to camp life, they made light of any inconveniences.
+Their father was happy and getting better every day, so any small
+hardships that might fall to their share were to be lightly borne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+VALHALLA
+
+
+That was the name Nan gave to the little winter home.
+
+"Valhalla is the place where the dead warriors go, and that is what we
+all of us are after the day's work is done."
+
+Commuting at first was very tiring for both Nan and Lucy. Catching
+trains was hard on their nerves and the trip seemed interminable, but in
+a few weeks they fell into the attitude of mind of all commuters and
+just accepted it as part of the daily routine. It became no more irksome
+than doing one's hair or brushing one's teeth.
+
+The girls made many friends on the train and before the winter was over
+really enjoyed the time spent going to and from school. Billy Sutton was
+Nan's devoted cavalier. He managed, if possible, to sit by her and
+together they would study. He helped her with her mathematics, and she,
+quick at languages, would correct his French exercises. Those were sad
+mornings for Billy when the seat by Nan was taken before they reached
+Preston. He cursed his luck that Preston should not have been beyond
+Grantly instead of a station nearer to town. Coming home he always saw
+to it that no "fresh kid" got ahead of him in the choice of seats. He
+would get to the station ahead of time and watch with eagle eye for
+Nan's sedate little figure; then he would pounce on her like a veritable
+eagle and possess himself of her books and parcels. Thereafter no power
+could have separated him from her short of the brakeman who cruelly
+called out: "P-errr-reston!"
+
+Billy's younger sister Mag was of great assistance to her big brother in
+his manoeuvres. She struck up a warm friendship with Lucy, and since
+the two younger girls were together, what more natural than that he and
+Nan should be the same?
+
+"How would you like me to run you over to see Lucy for a while this
+afternoon?" he would ask in the lordly and nonchalant manner of big
+brothers, and Mag would be duly grateful, all the time laughing in her
+sleeve, as is the way with small sisters.
+
+The only person who ever got ahead of Billy on the homeward voyage
+was Count de Lestis. That man of the world with lordly condescension
+permitted Billy to carry all the books and parcels and then quietly
+appropriated the seat by Nan. That was hard enough, but what was harder
+was to see how Nan dimpled under the compliments the count paid her, and
+how gaily she laughed at his wit, and how easily she held her own in the
+very interesting conversation into which they plunged. Billy, boiling
+and raging, could not help catching bits of it. Actually Nan was quoting
+poetry to the handsome foreigner. With wonder her schoolboy friend
+heard her telling the count of how she had gone up in an aeroplane the
+preceding summer and what her sensations were. She had never told him
+all these things.
+
+"And why is it you like so much to fly?" the count asked. "Is it merely
+the physical sensation?"
+
+"Oh no, there is something else. I'll tell you a little bit of poetry I
+learned the other day from a magazine. That is the way I feel, somehow:
+
+    "'Well, good-by! We're going!
+            Where?
+    Why there is no knowing
+            Where!
+    We've grown tired, we don't know why,
+    Of our section of the sky,
+    Of our little patch of air,
+    And we're going, going!
+            Where?
+
+    "'Who would ever stop to care?--
+      Far off land or farther sea
+      Where our feet again are free,
+    We shall fare all unafraid
+    Where no trail or furrow's made--
+    Where there's room enough, room enough, room enough for laughter!
+      And we'll find our Land o' Dreaming at a long day's close,
+      We'll find our Land o' Dreaming--perhaps, who knows?
+    To-morrow--or the next day--or maybe the day after!
+
+    "'So good-by! We're going!
+            Why?
+    O, there is no knowing
+            Why!
+    Something's singing in our veins,
+    Something that no book explains.
+    There's no magic in your air!
+    And we're going, going!
+            Where?
+
+    "'Where there's magic and to spare!
+      So we break our chains and go.
+      Life? What is it but to know
+      Southern cross and Pleiades,
+      Sunny lands and windy seas;
+    Where there's time enough, time enough, time enough for laughter!
+      We'll find our Land o' Dreaming, so away! Away!
+      We'll find our Land o' Dreaming--or at least we may--
+    Tomorrow, or the next day, or maybe the day after!'"
+
+Nan Carter was a very charming girl at any time, but Nan Carter reciting
+poetry was irresistible. So the count found her. Her eyes looked more
+like forest pools than ever and the trembling Billy was very much afraid
+the handsome nobleman was going to fall into said pools. He gritted his
+teeth with the determination to be on the spot ready to pull him out by
+his aristocratic and well-shod heels if he should take such a tumble.
+
+"Ah, you have the wanderlust, too! I'd like to go with you to your Land
+o' Dreaming." Fortunately Billy did not hear this remark, as the
+brakeman opened the door at this juncture and shouted the name of a
+station.
+
+For once Billy was glad when the brakeman finally called:
+"P-err-reston!" If he had to get out, so had the hated count. He never
+had taken as much of a fancy to de Lestis as the other members of the
+neighborhood had, anyhow, and now he knew why he had never liked him.
+
+"He is a selfish, arrogant foreigner," he raged on in his boyish way.
+"He might have let me sit with Nan part of the way, anyhow."
+
+Nan went home quite pleased with the interesting conversation she had
+had on the train. The count was rapidly becoming a warm friend of the
+family. Everybody liked him but Lucy, and she had no especial reason for
+disliking him.
+
+"He's got no time for me and I guess that's the reason," she said when
+questioned. "Mag doesn't cotton to him much, either."
+
+"Well, I should think you would be glad for Father to have somebody to
+talk to," said Helen. "You and Mag are too young to have much in common
+with a grown-up gentleman."
+
+"Pooh, Miss Grandmother! I'm most as old as Nan and he cottons to her
+for fair. I know why he doesn't think much of Mag and me--it is because
+he knows we know he is nothing but a Dutchman."
+
+"Dutchman! Nonsense! Dutchmen proper come from Holland and Count de
+Lestis is a Hungarian."
+
+"Well, he can talk Dutch like a Prussian, anyhow. You oughter hear him
+jabbering with that German family that live over near Preston. He brings
+old Mr. Blitz newspapers all the time and they laugh and laugh over
+jokes in them; at least, they must be jokes to make them laugh so."
+
+"Of course the count speaks German. He speaks a great many languages,"
+declared Helen with the dignified air that she thought necessary to
+assume when she and Lucy got in a discussion.
+
+"Well, what's the reason he ain't fighting for his country? Tell me
+that! Mag says that Billy says that if his country was at war you
+wouldn't catch him buying farms in strange countries, like this de
+Lestis. He says he'd be in the fight, if he couldn't do anything but
+beat a drum."
+
+"But you see he is not in sympathy with the cause, child. All of the
+Austrians and Hungarians are not on the Kaiser's side. A whole lot of
+them believe in a more democratic form of government than Emperor
+William wants. The count explained all that to Father. He says he
+could not conscientiously fight with Prussia against democracy."
+
+"All that sounds mighty fine but I like men that fight," and Lucy
+tossed her head. "Me and Mag both like men that fight."
+
+"Mag and I," admonished Helen.
+
+The gentleman in question had just been off on a business trip. He had
+much business in New York and Washington and sometimes made flying
+visits to Chicago. He was interested in a land agency and was hoping to
+import some Hungarian and Serbian families to the United States. He had
+bought up quite a tract of land in Virginia, making cash payments that
+showed he had unlimited means.
+
+"They make excellent servants," he told the Misses Grant, "far superior
+to your negroes. The Serbs are especially fine farmers. It is really a
+nation of yeomen. They could make the barren tracts of Virginia blossom
+like the rose."
+
+"Well, bring them over then." The sisters almost agreed about this but
+they had a diverging point in that Miss Ella thought she would rather
+have a family of Hungarians, since that was the count's nationality;
+while Miss Louise fancied some Serbs, because they were at least
+fighting on the side of the Allies.
+
+But to return to "Valhalla."
+
+Douglas did not at all approve of the name Nan had given the little
+home. "I am not a dead warrior when the day is over nor do I mean to be
+one ever," she declared.
+
+She started in on her winter of teaching with all the energy and vim of
+the proverbial new broom. She gloried in the fact that she was able to
+turn her education to some account; and while the remuneration of a
+country school teacher is certainly not munificent, it helped a great
+deal towards the family expenses.
+
+The rent from the Carters' pretty home in Richmond was all they had to
+live on now, except for a small sum in bank left over from the camp
+earnings. It would be possible to manage if no clothes had to be bought,
+and one and all promised to do with last year's suits.
+
+Only a born teacher could make a real success of a country school where
+thirty children must be taught in all grades up to high-school standing.
+It took infinite patience, boundless good humor, and a systematic saving
+of time, together with a keen sense of fun to get Douglas over each day.
+She found the school in a state of insurrection, due to having proved
+too much for the first teacher, who had found urgent business
+elsewhere, and then for a series of substitutes until the present
+incumbent, Miss Douglas Carter, was installed.
+
+She made a little speech the first morning, telling the pupils quite
+frankly that this was her first year of teaching but that it was not
+going to be her last; that she was determined to make good and she asked
+their help; that she was willing to give them all she had in the way of
+knowledge and strength but that they must meet her half-way and do their
+best. She gave them to understand from the very first that she intended
+to have good order and that obedience was to be the first lesson taught.
+
+Most of the children fell into her plans with enthusiasm. Of course
+there were the reactionaries who had to be dealt with summarily. Bobby
+was one of them. He was very difficult to manage in school. Never having
+been under the least restraint before in all of his seven years, it was
+hard on him to have to sit still and pretend to study, and he made it
+harder on Douglas. The faction opposed to government in any form egged
+him on. They laughed at his impertinent remarks to the teacher and
+bribed him to do and say many outrageous things.
+
+Poor Douglas was tempted to confess herself beaten as far as her little
+brother was concerned and give up trying to teach him. He was rather
+young for school, she almost fooled herself into believing; but there
+was a sturdiness and determination in Douglas Carter's make-up that
+would not let her succumb to difficulties.
+
+"I will succeed! He shall learn! My pupils must respect me, and if I
+can't make my own little brother obey me, how can I expect to control
+the rest of them?"
+
+She asked herself what she would do with any other pupil, not her
+brother, who gave her so much trouble.
+
+"Write a note to his mother or father, of course," she answered.
+
+"But I can't bear to bother Father, and Mother would blame me and no
+doubt pet Bobby. I'll write a note to Dr. Wright and his disapproval
+will hurt Bobby more than anything that could happen."
+
+And so she wrote the following letter to Bobby's employer:
+
+                                _Preston, Va., R. F. D. Route 1.
+                                              November 1, 1916._
+
+  DEAR DR. WRIGHT:
+
+  I am sorry to inform you that your chauffeur, Robert Carter, Jr.,
+  is misbehaving at school in such a way that his teacher is afraid
+  he will have to be expelled. She has done everything in her power
+  to make him be more considerate but he is very, very naughty and
+  tries to worry his teacher all the time.
+
+                                           Very sincerely,
+                                                 DOUGLAS CARTER.
+
+Dr. Wright telephoned that he would be down to see them on Saturday
+after receiving Douglas's note; but the message was sent via Grantly,
+as the Carters had no telephone, and Miss Ella and Miss Louise could
+not agree just what his name was or when he said he was coming. So the
+matter was lost sight of in the wrangle that ensued and the word was
+not delivered until too late.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CHLOE
+
+
+To Helen had fallen the most difficult and trying part of the program:
+training a cheap, country servant to the ways of civilization. Many
+times did she think of Miss Louise's trained monkey as she labored with
+Chloe, with whom she had to start all over every day.
+
+A seven o'clock breakfast must be ready for Nan and Lucy, and the one
+morning that she left it to Chloe the girls had to go off with nothing
+more comforting on their little insides than cold bread and milk. That
+was when the new maid had first arrived and Helen had not sounded the
+depths of her incompetence and ignorance.
+
+"What would you have done in your own home if you had had to have an
+early breakfast for someone?" asked Helen, curious to know if the girl
+knew how to do anything.
+
+"I'd 'a' done what I done this mornin': let 'um fill up on what col'
+victuals they was lef' on de she'f."
+
+Helen endeavored to introduce Chloe to the mysteries of the fireless
+cooker, which they had brought with them from camp, but the girl seemed
+to think there was some kind of magic in a thing that cooked without
+fire and would none of it.
+
+"I ain't a-goin' ter tetch no sich hoodoo doin's as dat 'ere box," she
+asserted. "It mus' hab a kinder debble in it ter keep it hot 'thout a
+piece er dry wood or nothin'."
+
+Helen was lifting out the pot full of steaming oatmeal that she had put
+in the cooker the night before, determined that her sisters should not
+have to go off again with such cold comfort.
+
+"All right, you keep up the wood fire and I'll attend to the fireless
+cooker," laughed Helen. "What makes the stove smoke? It was burning all
+right yesterday."
+
+"Smoking 'cause dat hoodoo debble done got in it," and Chloe rolled her
+great eyes until nothing showed but the whites.
+
+"Smoking because you've got the damper turned down," and Helen righted
+the appliance. "Have you set the table?"
+
+"Yassum!"
+
+"Put everything on it just as I showed you yesterday?"
+
+"Nom! I ain't put nothin' on it. I jes' sot the cheers up to it, but all
+the gals is got ter do is jes' retch the things off'n the sidebo'd."
+
+That meant that Helen must run and get the table set as quickly as
+possible as it was three minutes to seven.
+
+Chloe followed her meekly to the dining-room to do her bidding.
+
+"Run back to the kitchen, Chloe, and look at the biscuit, and see if
+they are burning," cried Helen as she rapidly placed the silver on the
+table.
+
+A few minutes later, having set the table she hastened to the kitchen.
+An ominous odor greeted her.
+
+"Chloe, did you look at the biscuit?"
+
+"Yassum! They was gettin' ready to burn. I guess they is 'bout burned by
+now."
+
+"Oh, Chloe, why didn't you take them out?" and poor Helen thought maybe
+she was going to weep with exasperation.
+
+"You nebber tol' me ter do mo'n look at 'em. My maw an' Sis Tempy both
+done caution me not to be too frisky 'bout doin' things 'til the white
+folks tells me. Tempy says white folks laks ter boss 'bout ev'ything."
+
+"Oh, for a trained monkey!" thought Helen. "I could at least give one a
+good switching."
+
+Chloe had only two characteristics to work on: one was perfect
+good-nature, the other unbounded health and strength. Helen wondered
+if she had enough material to go on to evolve even a passable servant.
+Anyhow she meant to try. She determined to do the cooking herself for
+a little while with Chloe as scullion, and also to have the girl do
+the housework.
+
+Of course Mrs. Carter was of absolutely no assistance. She held to her
+purpose of semi-invalidism. The family would not listen to her when
+she offered the only sane suggestion for the winter: that they should
+oust the tenant and move back into their own pretty, comfortable,
+well-furnished home; Douglas to make her début in Richmond society and
+the other girls continue at school. As for money--why not just make
+bills? They had perfectly good credit, and what was credit for but to
+use? Dr. Wright had been so stern with her, and Douglas so severe and
+unfilial, and they had intimated that she wanted to kill her dear
+Robert, so she had just let them have their own way. She insisted she
+had not the strength to cope with these changed conditions and took on
+the habits of an invalid.
+
+Helen, remembering how Susan, who was supposed to help with the cooking
+at the camp, had been kept busy waiting on her mistress, feared Chloe
+would be pressed into lady's maid service, too. Indeed Mrs. Carter
+attempted it, but Chloe proved too rough for the job, and that poor
+lady was forced to run the ribbons in her lingerie herself.
+
+Chloe's cleaning was even worse than her cooking if such a thing was
+possible. She spread up the beds, leaving great wrinkles and bumps,
+which proved to be top sheets and blankets that she had not thought fit
+to pull up. When Helen remonstrated and made her take all the covers off
+to air before making the beds she obeyed, but put the covers back on
+regardless of sequence, with counterpanes next to the mattress and
+sheets on top, with blankets anywhere that her fancy dictated. She swept
+the dirt safely under the rugs; wiped up the floor with bath towels; and
+the crowning glory of her achievement was sticking all the tooth-brushes
+together.
+
+Now when we remember that Helen herself had perhaps never made up a bed
+in her whole life until about eight months before this time, we may
+indeed have sympathy for her in her tribulations. Her days were full to
+running over, beginning very early in the morning and ending only after
+the family was fed at night. The cooking was not so difficult, as she
+had a genius for it and consequently a liking. Chloe could wash dishes
+after a fashion and clean the kitchen utensils, which was some comfort.
+
+Mr. Carter always carried his wife's breakfast tray to her room and
+waited on her like a devoted slave. He would even have run the ribbons
+in had she trusted him. All he could do for her now was wait on her and
+spoil her, and this he did to perfection. She was the same lovely little
+creature he had married and he was not unreasonable enough to expect her
+to be anything else. He did not think it strange that his little canary
+could not turn herself into a raven and feed him when he was hungry.
+His tenderness to his wife was so great that his daughters took their
+keynote from him and their patience towards their mother was wonderful.
+They vied with one another in their attentions to the parent that they
+would not let themselves call selfish.
+
+Helen cooked her little dainties; Nan kept her in light literature from
+the circulating library in town; Lucy scoured the fields for mushrooms
+that a late fall had made plentiful; Douglas always brought her the
+choice fruit and flowers that her pupils showered on her; even Bobby did
+his part by bringing her ripe persimmons that the frost had nipped just
+enough to make delicious. Mr. Carter was often able to bring her in a
+partridge or a young hare. On the whole life wasn't so bad. When one
+felt perfectly well, semi-invalidism was a pretty pleasant state. As for
+society: the count was a frequent visitor and the ladies from Grantly
+most attentive. The Suttons had called, too, several times, and other
+county families were finding the Carters out. It was easy to treat the
+fact that they were living in the overseer's house as a kind of joke. Of
+course, anyone could tell that they were not the kind of persons who
+usually lived in overseers' houses.
+
+Chloe was the thorn in the flesh, the fly in the ointment for Mrs.
+Carter. Chloe could not be laughed away,--Chloe was no joke. Accustomed
+to trained, highly-paid servants to do her bidding, this rough, uncouth
+ourang-outang was more than the dainty little lady could stand.
+
+The very first time Count de Lestis called, Mrs. Carter happened to be
+alone in the house except for Chloe, Mr. Carter having gone to Preston
+for much-needed nails and Helen having run up to Grantly to ask the
+advice of Miss Ella on the best way to preserve some late pears. A knock
+and Chloe promptly fell down the steps in her eagerness to get to the
+door. She had been up in Douglas's and Helen's room attempting to make
+up the bed to suit Miss Helen.
+
+"Thank Gawd I fell down instidder up! If'n I had 'a' fell up I wouldn't
+'a' got ma'ied dis year," and she picked herself up and dived at the
+front door.
+
+"Are Mr. and Mrs. Carter and the young ladies at home?" Mrs. Carter
+heard in the count's fine baritone.
+
+"Nawsir! The boss is done gone ter Preston ter fetch some nails ter try
+ter bolster up this here ole shack, an' Miss Douglas is done gone ter
+her teachin' job an' Miss Helen is done stepped up to see Miss
+Ellanlouise 'bout 'zervin' some ole hard pears----"
+
+"And how about Mrs. Carter?" in an amused voice.
+
+"Oh, she is a-layin' on the sofy tryin' ter git sick."
+
+"Is she ill?" solicitously.
+
+"Naw! She is jes' plum lazy. She's too lazy ter chaw an' has ter have
+all her victuals fixed soft like."
+
+"Well, will you please take her this card?"
+
+"That there ticket?"
+
+Imagine Mrs. Carter's mortification, when the grinning Chloe came
+running into the sitting-room with the count's card crushed in her eager
+hand, to discover that the wretched girl was in her stocking feet;
+capless, with her wrapped plaits sticking out all over her head like
+quills upon the fretful porcupine; her apron on hind part before.
+
+"Chloe! Where is your cap?" exclaimed that elegant lady.
+
+"Well, lawsamussy! I done forgot about it. It do make my haid eatch so
+I done pulled it off."
+
+"And your shoes?"
+
+"I's savin' them fer big meetin' nex' year."
+
+"And why do you wear your apron in the back? Put it on right this
+minute."
+
+"Well, Ole Miss, my dress was siled an' my ap'on was clean, so I jes'
+slid it 'roun' behinst so it wouldn't git siled, too."
+
+Nothing but the fact that the count was cooling his heels on the front
+porch kept Mrs. Carter from weeping outright. Old Miss, indeed! All she
+could do was feebly tell Chloe to ask the gentleman in.
+
+If Count de Lestis had been ushered in by a butler in livery he could
+not have entered in a more ceremonious manner. He bowed low over the
+fair lady's hand, kissing her finger-tips lightly. Even the spectacle of
+Chloe's walking off, with her clean apron on hind part before and her
+shoeless condition disclosing large holes in the heels of her stockings,
+did not upset his gravity. He, too, realized that Chloe was no joke.
+
+Afterwards Chloe said to Helen:
+
+"That sho' is a pretty man what comed ter see you alls. I ain't knowin'
+yit what made him stoop over an' smell yo' ma's hand. Cose she mus'
+smell pow'ful good with never put'n her hands in nothin' mo' than her
+own victuals." Helen was weak with laughter.
+
+"What fer they call him a count, Miss Helen? Is it 'cause he spen' all
+his time a-countin' out money? They do say he is pow'ful good an' kin'
+ter the niggers. Some say he likes niggers better'n what he does white
+folks, but I says that is plum foolish. Anyhow, he talks mighty sweet to
+'em an' don't never call 'em low down triflin' black rascals whin they
+gits kinder lop-sided with liquor, like some of the county gents does
+whin hands gits so fur gone they can't git in the craps. He done started
+a night school over at Weston what his secondary is teachin'."
+
+"I didn't know he had a secretary," exclaimed Helen, "but it certainly
+is kind of him to try and help the poor colored people. I wish you could
+go to night school, Chloe."
+
+"Lawd, Gawd, no! Miss Helen! I ain't got no call to larn."
+
+"Can't you read at all, Chloe?"
+
+"Well, I kin read whin they is picters ter go by. I done been ter school
+mos' six months countin' the diffunt years what I started, but my ma,
+she say my haid was too hard an' she 'fraid it might git cracked open
+if'n teacher tried to put any mo' in it. She say some folks is got sof'
+haids what kin stretch an' they ain't so ap' ter bus' open, haids kinder
+like hog bladders what you kin keep on a-blowin' up."
+
+"Wouldn't you like me to teach you to read, Chloe?" asked Helen, feeling
+rather ashamed that this foreigner should come to Virginia and take more
+interest in the education of the negroes than she should ever have done.
+"I believe I could teach you without breaking your head open."
+
+"Anything you says do I'll do, but I tell you now I ain't got no mo'
+notion er readin' than a tarrapin. A tarrapin kin git his haid out'n the
+shell an' you might git a little larnin' in it, but my haid is groun'
+what you gotter break up with a grubbin' hoe."
+
+"I am willing to try. Let's begin now! First we will learn how to spell
+things right here in the kitchen and then you can soon be reading
+recipes," said Helen kindly. "Now we are making biscuit, so we will
+begin with that. First take two cups of flour," and she wrote on the
+whitewashed wall of the kitchen: "2 cups of flour."
+
+Chloe was delighted with this kind of school, very different from her
+former experiences where she was made to sit for hours on a hard bench
+saying the same thing over and over with no conception of what it was
+all about. Now "2 cups of flour" had some sense in it, so had "2 spoons
+of baking powder." "Lard the size of an egg" was a brilliant remark;
+"1 spoon of salt" had a gleam of intelligence, too; "1 cup of milk" was
+filled with gumption. In less than a week the girl could read and write
+the recipe for biscuit and was eagerly waiting for her beloved Miss
+Helen to advance her to cake.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+BOBBY'S BLAME DAY
+
+
+Dr. George Wright was making a name for himself in his chosen
+profession. Older men were beginning to look upon him as an authority on
+nervous cases and now he had been asked to come in as partner in a
+sanitarium starting in the capital city of Virginia. Certainly he had
+been very successful in his treatment of Robert Carter's case, so
+successful that even Mrs. Carter could not but admire him. She was still
+very much in awe of him, but he had her respect and she depended upon
+him. The daughters felt the same way without the awe. Douglas and Nan
+and Lucy were openly extravagant in their praise of him. Helen was a
+little more guarded in her expressions of admiration, but she had a
+sincere liking for him and deep gratitude not only for what he had done
+for her father but for his service to her.
+
+She could never forget that it was Dr. Wright who had brought her to her
+senses when her father was first taken ill, making her see herself as a
+selfish, extravagant, vain girl. It takes some generosity of spirit to
+like the person who makes you see the error of your ways, but Helen
+Carter had that generosity. There were times when her cheeks burned at
+the memory of what Dr. Wright must have thought of her. How silly he
+must have found her, how childish!
+
+After the experience in the mountains when the rattlesnake bit her on
+the heel and Dr. Wright had come to her assistance with first aid to the
+injured, which in the case of a snake bite means sucking the wound,
+Helen began to realize that what the young physician thought of her made
+a great deal of difference to her. His approval was something worth
+gaining.
+
+Douglas had not told her she had written the letter to Dr. Wright as
+Bobby's employer. She had a feeling that her dignity as teacher was
+involved and she must not confide in her family. She was waiting, hoping
+to hear from him, rather expecting him to write to Bobby and call him
+to account for his misdemeanors.
+
+Bobby had been especially unruly all week. There was nothing he had not
+thought of doing in the way of mischief, and thinking mischief was
+almost identical with doing mischief where Bobby Carter was concerned.
+The deed was no sooner conceived than accomplished and the other
+children, who were inclined to be naughty, thought up extra things for
+him to do.
+
+Putting a piece of rubber on the stove was certainly not Bobby's idea,
+nor slipping chestnut burrs in the desk-seats while the girls were not
+looking, causing howls of anguish when they inadvertently sat down on
+the same. Bobby manfully took the blame for all of these things,
+however, confidently certain that no punishment worth speaking of would
+be meted out to him.
+
+"He is honest, at least," sighed Douglas, "and owns up every time."
+
+Friday afternoon on the way home she felt that maybe Nan's name for
+their place was a good one. She was almost a dead warrior if not quite
+one.
+
+"Oh, for a Valkyrie to bear me to Valhalla!"
+
+Bobby was trudging along by her side looking as though butter would not
+melt in his mouth. What a sturdy little fellow he was growing to be!
+Douglas looked down on his jaunty, erect figure.
+
+"Bobby, you are getting right fat."
+
+Bobby slapped his pockets. "That ain't fat, that's blame pay!"
+
+"Blame pay! What on earth?"
+
+"Oh, them is the gif's I gits fer saying I done it ev'y time you asks us
+to hol' up our han's who done it."
+
+"Oh, Bobby!"
+
+"You see, the big fellers say you ain't man enough to whup 'em an' you
+is too soft to whup me, so I don't run no risk nohow. This is a top
+string I got for 'tendin' like I put the rubber on the stove,--this here
+is a big apple I got for not fillin' the girls' desks with chestnut
+burrs,--this here pile er oak balls I come mighty near not gettin'. I
+sho' did want to turn the fleas loose on Minnie Brice but the big boys
+was afraid I might not be able to open the little purse right and so one
+of them done it."
+
+"Fleas on Minnie Brice?"
+
+"Yes, you never did fin' out about it, so I didn't have to own up. You
+know what a funny thin neck Minnie's got, just like a mud turkle, and
+how she wears a stiff collar kinder like a shell and it sets out all
+around, fur out from her neck?"
+
+"Yes, I know," said Douglas, struggling with a laugh.
+
+"Well, the fellers caught some fleas off'n ol' Blitz's houn' dog an'
+then they put 'em in a teensy money purse with a tight clasp, an' while
+Minnie was leaning over studying her joggerfy, Tim Tenser dumped 'em all
+down her back."
+
+"Poor Minnie! No wonder she missed all of her lessons today. I could not
+imagine what was the matter with her. Bobby, you wouldn't have done such
+a cruel thing as that surely!"
+
+"Shoo! That ain't nothin'. It might 'a' been toads, 'cep'n the little
+ones is all growed up big now. We are a-savin' up the toad joke 'til
+spring. First the fellers said I didn't 'serve no blame money 'cause
+Minnie jes' cried when she missed her lessons an' didn't scratch none,
+only wiggled, an' teacher never did ask us to hol' up our han's who done
+it. But Ned Beatty said I was a dead game spo't an' I took the chanst
+an' I mus' have my blood money, an' so I got all these here oak balls."
+
+"Bobby, do you realize that you must take all of these blame gifts back
+to the boys?"
+
+"Blamed if I will!"
+
+"Please don't talk that way! Don't say: 'Blamed if you will.'"
+
+"Well, wasn't you a-talkin' that way? Didn't you say, 'blame gif's,'
+with your own mouth? I'd like to know why I have to take them back."
+
+"Well, you got them for taking the blame and now you no longer take the
+blame but have told on the ones who did the naughty things."
+
+"But I ain't a-tellin' teacher! I'm a-tellin' my own sister Douglas.
+You ain't teacher 'cep'n when you is in school."
+
+"Oh, so that is the way you look at it! I suppose you think I am not
+your own sister while I am teacher, either, and when you worry me sick
+at school it is only teacher and not Douglas you are distressing so
+much," and Douglas sat down on the roadside and burst out crying.
+
+Now Douglas Carter was no weeper. I doubt if her little brother had ever
+seen her shed a tear in all of his seven years. And he, Robert Carter,
+Jr., had done this thing! He had made his sister Douglas cry. When she
+was playing teacher, she had feelings just as much as she did when she
+turned into his sister Douglas again. And what was this thing she was
+saying about his having to give back the blood money? Had he told on the
+boys after having received pay for taking the blame? Why, that was a
+low-down, sneaky trick!
+
+"Don't cry, Douglas, please don't cry! I'm a-gonter take back all the
+things--'cep'n the apple--I done et into that a leetle bit."
+
+But the flood gates were opened and Douglas could not stop crying. Like
+most persons who cry with difficulty, when she once began she kept it
+up. Now she was crying for all the times she might have cried. She had
+had enough to make her cry but had held in. She was crying now for all
+the days and nights of anxiety she had spent in thinking of her sick
+father; she was crying for the stern way in which she had been forced to
+deal with her mother over extravagancies; she was crying for having to
+make Helen understand that there was no money for clothes; she was
+crying for having to be the adamant sister who forced Nan and Lucy to go
+on to school; she was crying because her own dream of college was to
+come to nothing; she was crying very little because of Bobby's
+naughtiness, but he, of course, thought that it was all because of him.
+
+One of her biggest grievances was against herself: why had she been so
+priggish with her cousin, Lewis Somerville? Last August he had come to
+her on the eve of his enlistment to go with the troops to the Mexican
+border and had plead so earnestly with her to try to love him just a
+little bit and to let him go off engaged to her, and she had turned him
+down with absurd talk of friendship and the like. He had astonished her
+when he made love to her, but she knew perfectly well in her heart of
+hearts that it would have astonished her a great deal more if he had
+made love to someone else.
+
+No doubt that was what he was doing that minute: making love to someone
+else. A young man who looked like a Greek god was not going to be turned
+down by every girl. How good Lewis had always been to her and how well
+he had understood her! He thought she was cold and unfeeling now, she
+just knew he did. She had received no letters from him for weeks, at
+least it seemed weeks. Oh well, if he wanted to make love to other
+girls, why she wasn't going to be the one to care!
+
+"Douglas, I hear a auto a-comin'. If'n you don't stop bawlin' folks will
+see you."
+
+A car was coming! She could hear its chug as it climbed the hill half a
+mile off.
+
+"Please wet my handkerchief in that little branch so I can wash my
+face," she begged Bobby, while she smoothed her ruffled hair and wished
+she had one of Helen's precious dorines to powder her red nose.
+
+"Yo' hankcher is as wet as water already. I don't see what you want it
+any wetter for," said Bobby, who might have quoted: "'Too much of water
+hast thou, my poor Ophelia,'" had he known his Hamlet.
+
+"I ain't a-gonter be bad no mo', Douglas," declared Bobby as he brought
+the little handkerchief back from the brook dripping wet. "You mos'
+cried yo' face away, didn't you, Dug?" and with that Douglas had to
+laugh.
+
+"Feel better now?" he said with quite the big brother air. "That there
+car is jes' roun' the bend. I reckon if you turn yo' face away the folks
+in it won't know you is been a-bawlin'."
+
+The car slowed up, then stopped when the driver recognized Douglas, and
+Count de Lestis sprang out to greet her. The signs of the recent storm
+were still visible on her pretty face in spite of all the water Bobby
+had brought from the brook. Douglas tried to hold her head down so the
+count could not see her disfigured countenance, but such floods of
+weeping could not but be noticed.
+
+"My dear Miss Carter, you are in distress!" He looked so truly grieved
+and anxious that already Douglas felt somewhat comforted. Sympathy is a
+great balm.
+
+"It is nothing! I am a foolish, weak girl."
+
+"Not that! You are very intelligent and far from weak. Are you not the
+staunch ally? The poor Kaiser would not find you weak."
+
+"I done it all! I made her cry!" declared Bobby.
+
+The count looked at the youngster, amused. "And so! Do little American
+gentlemen make their sisters cry?" Bobby hung his head. "Well, come on
+and let me take you home, and then I'll take your sister for a little
+ride and wipe all the tears away with the wind."
+
+"Let me go riding, too. I don't want to go home."
+
+"No, not this time. My little red car doesn't like to take for long
+rides boys who make their sisters cry."
+
+So Bobby had to climb meekly in to be ignominiously dumped at the yard
+gate while Douglas was whisked off in the count's natty little red
+roadster.
+
+"Now you are looking like your beautiful self," he declared, slowing
+down his racer and turning to gaze into Douglas's face. "What is it that
+made you weep so profusely? Not the little brother. Beautiful damsels do
+not weep so much because of little brothers."
+
+Douglas smiled.
+
+"Ah, the sun has come out! Now I am happy. I am so distressed by tears
+that I can hardly bear it."
+
+"You must have a very tender heart."
+
+"Yes, perhaps! Now tell me what caused your grief."
+
+How handsome this man was and how kind! He seemed like an old friend. He
+really did care what was troubling her and it would be a relief to pour
+out all of her foolish griefs. Douglas missed her father's sympathy. She
+knew that he was as ready as ever with his love and solicitude for her,
+but she felt that she must not add to his worries one iota. Her mother
+was out of the question and Helen was too young. Before she knew it, she
+was trying to tell Count de Lestis all about it, all but about Lewis
+Somerville--somehow that was something she could not mention. Her
+grievances sounded very small when she tried to put them into words.
+Naturally she could not dwell upon her mother's extravagancies or this
+man would think her poor little mother was selfish; Helen was such a
+trump, the fact that she longed for stylish clothes certainly was not
+enough to make a grown girl sit on the roadside and dissolve in tears;
+while Nan and Lucy were commuting to school like little soldiers. It
+ended by being a humorous account of Bobby and his blame pay.
+
+Of course the count knew perfectly well that that was not all that
+had made this lovely girl give way so to grief. No doubt Bobby's
+misbehavior was the last straw, but there had been a heavy load to
+carry before Douglas's camel of endurance had got his back broken. He
+laughed merrily over the fleas and Douglas forgot all about her worries
+and laughed, too.
+
+"Poor little Minnie! She did squirm so, and think of her being too
+ladylike to scratch, and how she must have disappointed those bad boys
+by refraining!"
+
+"Yes, if all women would just squirm and not scratch it would take much
+from the pleasure of teasing them," laughed de Lestis. "What amuses me
+is how boys are alike all the world over. The discipline of my school
+days was very strict, but a thing like that might have happened among
+boys in Berlin as much as here in a rural school in Virginia."
+
+"Berlin! But you are Hungarian!"
+
+"So! So--but Hungarians can go to school in Berlin. Even Americans have
+profited by the educational advantages offered there."
+
+Douglas thought her companion's tone sounded a little harsh. She bent
+her candid gaze on him and met his glowing eyes. Blue eyes looked
+unflinchingly into black until the steering of the red car forced him to
+give his attention to the wheel.
+
+"I wish the count's moustache did not turn up quite so much at the
+corners," thought the girl. "It makes him look a wee bit like the
+Kaiser; of course, though, he is kind and the Kaiser is cruel."
+
+"Perhaps we had better turn around now," she suggested gently, contrite
+that even for a moment she had thought this kind friend could resemble
+the hated Kaiser.
+
+Certainly the wind had wiped away all traces of the emotional storm from
+Douglas's countenance. The young man by her side could but admire the
+pure profile presented to him, with its soft, girlish lines but withal a
+look of strength and determination. Her loosened hair was like sunlight
+and her cheeks had the pink of the Cherokee rose. Profiles were all well
+enough, but he would like another look into those eyes as blue as summer
+skies after a shower.
+
+"Of course, my dear Miss Carter, I know that the little rascal Bobby
+must have been very annoying but I cannot but think that you have not
+entrusted to me your real troubles."
+
+Douglas stiffened almost imperceptibly.
+
+"When one finds a beautiful damsel sitting by the roadside in such grief
+that her charming face is convulsed with weeping, one cannot but divine
+that some affair of the heart has touched her. Tell me, has some bold
+cavalier trifled with her affections?"
+
+Douglas stiffened more perceptibly.
+
+"Your father told me of a young cousin, a Mr. Somerville, who is now on
+the Mexican border----"
+
+"Father told you! I don't believe it."
+
+"My dear young lady, he only told me there was such a cousin; you have
+told me the rest. Now! Now! Don't let your sweet eyes shed another tear
+for him. He is not worth it! If he can find amusement in the ladies of
+Mexico, who are, when all is told, an untidy lot, why should you worry?
+There are other fish in the sea!"
+
+If the Count de Lestis wished to see something more of Douglas's eyes he
+had his desire fulfilled now. She turned and once more blue eyes looked
+unflinchingly into black. This time the black eyes had a mischievous
+gleam and the blue ones looked more like winter ice than summer skies.
+
+"Now I have made you angry." Once more his car took his attention for
+the moment.
+
+"Not at all!" icily.
+
+"You wish you had not come with me."
+
+"I appreciate your kindness in bringing me for the drive very much,"
+still cold and formal in tone.
+
+"I guessed too well, that is where I sinned."
+
+Douglas was silent, but she still looked at her companion.
+
+"She is like the little Minnie: she squirms but will not scratch."
+
+"I was just thinking," said Douglas, changing the subject with a
+swiftness that disarmed the count, "your moustache certainly turns up
+at the ends just like Emperor William's."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+SATURDAY
+
+
+"Isn't it glorious to be living and for it to be Saturday?" yawned Lucy.
+
+"Yes, and not to have to catch that old train," and Nan snuggled down
+luxuriously under the bedclothes. "I used to think Saturday was a pretty
+good institution when we lived in town, but now--Oh, ye gods! Now!"
+
+"Did you know that Saturday was decreed a half-holiday in the days of
+the Saxon King Edgar 958 A. D.?" asked Lucy, who had a way of springing
+historical facts on people.
+
+"No, but I know it's going to be a whole holiday for Nan Carter in the
+year of grace 1916. I intend to do nothing but laze the whole day long,
+laze and read."
+
+"I bet you won't. I bet you go nutting with Mag and me, because if we go
+it means Billy goes along, and if he goes along he'll be in a terrible
+grouch unless you go, too."
+
+October had delightfully spread over into November. The weather had
+obligingly stayed good, and although our Carters had been at Valhalla
+more than a month, they had experienced no real bad days.
+
+Nippy, frosty nights had put Mr. Carter wise to the many cracks that he
+must stop up. Weather strips must be put on windows and doors, panes of
+glass must be puttied in. Suspicious stains on walls and ceilings warned
+him of leaks, but he had to wait for a rain to locate them. He found
+himself almost as busy as he had been before his breakdown, but busy in
+such a different way.
+
+"I'm glad it's Saturday! I think I won't work today," he had remarked to
+his wife at about the same time Nan and Lucy were having their talk.
+"Come and walk in the woods with me."
+
+That lady had graciously consented, if he promised not to go far and to
+lift her over fences.
+
+"I think I'll wash my hair today; and darn the stockings; and go over
+the accounts; and write some letters; and read the _Saturday Evening
+Post_," said Douglas as she and Helen dressed hurriedly. Their little
+attic room was hot in summer and cold in winter.
+
+Douglas had been thinking a great deal about her ride with the count.
+Had he only meant to tease her? Was he trying to flirt with her? Did she
+like him at all or did she in a way distrust him? She asked herself all
+of these questions. Of course she liked him! Why should she distrust a
+man because of the way his moustache grew? Of course he was teasing
+her, and who could help teasing a silly goose of a girl who sat on the
+roadside and bawled until her nose was disgracefully red, and then
+insisted it was all because her little brother had aided and abetted in
+the crime of putting fleas down a little girl's neck? He had made a good
+guess about Lewis Somerville, because no doubt her father had told him
+that she and Lewis had been chums from the time they were babies.
+
+"I only hope I will be able to make up to him for my discourtesy by
+being very polite to him the next time I see him," she thought.
+
+"Count de Lestis is coming to lunch with us today," said Helen, almost
+as though she had been reading her sister's mind. "Father asked him."
+
+"That's good! Isn't it nice for Father to have such a congenial friend?"
+
+"And Mumsy! She enjoys his visits so much. I am going to try and have a
+scrumptious luncheon, but I tell you I am going to leave mighty little
+of it to Chloe."
+
+"I think she is improving, Helen."
+
+"Of course she is improving. She is trying so hard to do what I want her
+to and I am trying so hard to be patient. I think I am improving some
+myself."
+
+"Oh, honey, you are simply splendid. I think you have the hardest job of
+all and I think you are doing better than any of us."
+
+"Nonsense!" But Helen looked very happy over her sister's praise. "I'd
+rather do general housework for six dollars a month than go every day
+and teach thirty little nincompoops a-b, ab."
+
+"But the thing is you are doing general housework for nothing a month."
+
+"I am doing a little teaching of a-b, ab, too, only my methods are
+different. I have evolved a very advanced style of teaching and Chloe,
+too, is learning to spell. My method is somewhat that of Dotheboys'
+Hall--you remember: 'W-i-n-d-o-w, window--Go wash them.' I make her
+spell and write all the kitchen utensils. She learns while she is
+working and it makes her take an interest in becoming educated."
+
+"Oh, Helen, you are so clever! You must let me help about the luncheon."
+
+"How about washing your head; and writing your letters; and casting up
+the household accounts; and the _Saturday Evening Post_?"
+
+"Well, the letters and _Post_ will keep!"
+
+On Saturday the rule was that the dead warriors must make up their own
+beds and clean their own rooms, so shortly after breakfast there
+was a general scramble in process. Helen turned Chloe loose in the
+dining-room to have it swept and garnished for their distinguished
+visitor.
+
+What a pretty room it was, much the most attractive in the house, with
+the exception of the sitting-room, perhaps! Low, rough-hewn rafters were
+frankly exposed to view. The walls were sealed with pine boards. Walls
+and ceiling were both painted a very soft, pleasing grey-green. On the
+high mantel was an old-fashioned wooden clock with painted door, and
+this was flanked on both sides by funny old vases with large raised
+roses and gilt ears. Two high windows and a glass door, opening on a
+covered passage leading to the kitchen, gave a soft and insufficient
+light.
+
+Douglas had just put the finishing touch to the table: a bunch of cosmos
+sent down by the Misses Grant. Nan had made the mayonnaise; and Lucy had
+found a great basket of mushrooms and peeled them for Helen to cream.
+Truly they were to have a scrumptious luncheon. The count had arrived
+and was playing lady-come-to-see, so Lucy said, with Mrs. Carter.
+
+The whir of a motor drew the attention of all.
+
+"Who on earth!" exclaimed Helen. "Surely not callers at this hour, just
+when my popovers are almost ready to eat!"
+
+"Mo' comply!" declared Chloe. "Dat ol' red rooster what yo' paw set so
+much sto' by is been a-crowing halleluja all mornin'. I been a-tryin'
+ter make him hesh, 'cause we ain't got no mo' cheers fer comply."
+
+"That's so, there aren't but eight dining-room chairs," laughed Helen.
+
+"My 'ployer done come and a soger is in with him!" cried Bobby, tearing
+excitedly by the dining-room in his race to open the gate for his
+beloved Dr. Wright.
+
+Helen ran out in her pink bungalow apron, first peeping into the oven,
+not trusting Chloe yet to keep things from burning.
+
+"Douglas!" she called excitedly, but Douglas, with flushed cheeks, bent
+over the bowl of cosmos.
+
+"A soldier with him! What soldier? Could it be Lewis?" she asked
+herself.
+
+It was Lewis Somerville, looking very handsome and upstanding indeed in
+his khaki uniform, with his face burned a deep bronze so that his eyes
+looked very blue and his teeth very white. He clambered out over the
+great basket of fruit Dr. Wright was bringing to Mrs. Carter, dropped
+the boxes and parcels piled in around him and hugged and kissed all the
+female cousins in sight, Helen, Nan and Lucy. He shook Bobby by the
+hand, knowing full well that that youngster would sooner die than be
+hugged and kissed.
+
+"Douglas, where is Douglas?" he whispered to Helen.
+
+"In the dining-room! You can get there around at the back of the
+house--in the basement. We thought you were still in Mexico."
+
+Lewis did not wait to tell her that he wasn't, but doing double quick
+time he streaked around the house, and finding the basement stairs
+without any trouble, he was down them in one stride.
+
+"Douglas!"
+
+"Oh, Lewis!"
+
+Douglas forgot that not so very many months before this time she had
+informed her cousin that she was too big to be kissed and that he was
+not close enough kin to warrant indiscriminate hugging. Certainly she
+was no younger than she had been eight months before and Lewis was no
+closer kin, but now she submitted to his embraces and even clung to him
+for a moment.
+
+It was so wonderful to have him back safe and sound. She could hardly
+believe it was only yesterday that she had sat on the roadside and wept.
+He was her same Lewis, too. She felt instinctively that the count's
+suggestion in regard to Mexican beauties was ridiculous.
+
+"And Lewis, sergeant stripes on your sleeve, too! Why didn't you tell
+me?"
+
+"I did! Didn't you get my letter?"
+
+"No, not for weeks and weeks!"
+
+"Strange! I must say I am not crazy about that letter's being lost."
+
+"Can't you tell me what was in it?"
+
+"Sure! I'm telling you now," and the young man caught her to him once
+more, but Douglas suddenly remembered she was too old to be kissed by a
+second cousin, once removed. "I'm not crazy about having anyone but you
+read that letter, though, not only because of my telling you this," and
+he took another for luck, "but," as Douglas recovered her maidenly
+reserve and pushed him from her laughing, "I said some other things in
+that letter that I wouldn't like anyone and everyone to see."
+
+"State secrets?"
+
+"Well, a newly-made sergeant would hardly have such things intrusted to
+him! It was only my opinion concerning the state of affairs down there
+on the border. I may be wrong about things, but a soldier has no right
+to blab his conclusions about conditions in belligerent countries,
+especially when the press is wary in its comments."
+
+"I wouldn't worry a moment about it. If you could see the road that our
+R. F. D. has to come over you would not wonder that some of our letters
+jolt out. There is one creek to cross that is like going down the Grand
+Canyon."
+
+"If it only jolted out there and found watery oblivion, I shan't mind.
+But what a bully little shack this is! Wright was afraid we would not
+get here in time for luncheon, and he and I were determined to lie and
+say we had eaten, but gee, I'm glad not to have to perjure my soul!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+GOLDILOCKS' CHAIRS
+
+
+"Miss Hell-e-en! Miss Hell-e-en! Yo' popovers is done popped over!"
+came in a wailing shriek from the kitchen.
+
+Helen went so fast her pink bungalow apron looked like a rosy streak.
+Dr. Wright, fearing some dire calamity had befallen someone and his
+"first aid to the injured" might be in demand, ran after her. The
+popovers had popped just right, however, but must be devoured
+immediately; so luncheon was served as quickly as possible.
+
+"Bring those two chairs from the kitchen, Chloe," commanded Douglas as
+she deftly rearranged the table for ten persons instead of eight.
+
+"Now, Miss Douglas, don't you know 'bout dem cheers in de kitchen? Th'
+ain't got no mo' seat to 'em dan a rabbit."
+
+"Bring them anyhow," laughed Douglas. "I can sit in one and Miss Helen
+in the other."
+
+In the confusion of placing family and guests, Douglas forgot all about
+the bottomless chairs. After everyone was seated she suddenly remembered
+them with horror.
+
+"Suppose the count got one of them!" It made very little difference
+about anyone else. But the count! All of that charm and elegance in a
+chair with no seat!
+
+As soon as grace was said, Bobby, with a shriek of delight, suddenly
+collapsed and disappeared.
+
+"One chair accounted for!" thought Douglas.
+
+Bobby's heels were sticking up and he peered saucily through his feet at
+the astonished company.
+
+"I done got a Goldilocks' cheer," he announced. "'An' Goldilocks sat,
+an' sat, an' sat, an' sat 'til she sat the bottom out of the little
+bar's cheer.'"
+
+"Bobby, take your seat!" commanded Mr. Carter, trying to look stern.
+
+"I done took it!"
+
+"Get up!"
+
+Easier said than done! Bobby was fast stuck, "I reckon my 'ployer'll
+have to op'rate on me," he said plaintively, "'fo' I kin eat."
+
+There was a roar of laughter at this and Dr. Wright, who was sitting
+between Helen and Bobby, extricated the youngster and then changed
+chairs with him, whereupon they proceeded to the business of eating
+popovers and creamed mushrooms and the other good things that Helen had
+planned for the repast.
+
+Douglas then laughingly told of their predicament in having only eight
+whole straight chairs in the house and of her intention of sitting on
+one of the decrepit ones herself and of having Helen sit on the other.
+
+"It is rather like playing 'Thimble, thimble! Who's got the thimble?'"
+she laughed. "I hope whoever has it is comfortable."
+
+"Don't all speak at once!" said Lucy. "Of course some of the company's
+got it, because home folks would put you out of misery at once."
+
+Still silence and Douglas was mortally certain the count had it and was
+too polite to say so.
+
+"He certainly has beautiful manners," she said to herself, and turning
+from Lewis, who was endeavoring to monopolize her, she smiled her
+sweetest on the courteous foreigner. She felt she must make up to him
+anyhow for telling him his moustache turned up like the Kaiser's.
+
+"Isn't it strange, Cousin Robert," said Lewis to Mr. Carter, "I wrote
+Douglas I was coming and she never got my letter?"
+
+The count's manner was a little distrait. Evidently he was trying to
+hear what Douglas was saying and to listen to the conversation between
+Lewis and Mr. Carter at the same time.
+
+"Is that so? I am afraid our postman is careless. He seems to get the
+mail mixed sometimes. Every now and then our letters get left at
+Grantly."
+
+"But the ladies up there would send them down, I am sure," said Mrs.
+Carter.
+
+"You got my telephone message all right, didn't you?" Dr. Wright asked
+Douglas.
+
+"What message?"
+
+"Why, I telephoned Grantly I would be out today!"
+
+"No, they did not deliver it."
+
+"Perhaps they will send the letter with the message," suggested the
+count in an amused tone.
+
+Just then Chloe fell down the steps into the dining-room with a plate of
+hot popovers, which she adroitly caught before they reached the floor.
+
+"Miss Ellanlouise done sent Sis Tempy down with the news that you alls
+is gonter hab some comply. They done dis'greed whether they is a-comin'
+yesterday or tomorrow."
+
+"Who is it coming?" laughed Helen.
+
+"They done 'sputed whether it is a doctor or a lywer, an' they ain't
+able t' agree what his name is, but Miss Ella thinks it is Stites an'
+Miss Louise she holds that it is Bright. Both on 'em was a-tryin' ter
+listen at the 'phome ter onct so they done got kinder twis'ed like."
+
+"When was the message sent?" asked Douglas.
+
+"Sis Tempy said Miss Ella said it come of a Chuseday an' Miss Louise
+called her back an' tol' her not ter pay no 'tention ter Miss Ella, that
+she knows it come of a Thursday."
+
+"Why, that must be my message I sent on Wednesday!" exclaimed Dr.
+Wright. "I am either Lawyer Stites or Dr. Bright."
+
+"Of course!" and everyone laughed heartily over the mistake of the
+peculiar old sisters.
+
+"Well, it doesn't make any real difference since you are here, does it?"
+asked Helen.
+
+"Not a bit! Being here is what is important to me. Does it make any
+difference to you?"
+
+Dr. Wright was able to say this in a whisper to Helen. It seemed very
+difficult for him to have many words in private with this girl, who
+seemed to him to become more charming every day. Certainly adversity had
+improved her in his eyes. The character and determination she had shown
+when once the gravity of her father's condition had been explained to
+her were really remarkable in one so young, and one who had up to that
+time never done a single thing she had not wanted to do. Tête-à-têtes
+with Helen were made difficult for him by reason of his popularity with
+the whole Carter family. Mr. Carter had various questions to discuss
+with him; Mrs. Carter must always tell him her symptoms; Douglas wanted
+his advice about many things; Nan found him very sympathetic and always
+had something to confide in him; Lucy, realizing that Helen no longer
+looked upon him as an enemy to the family, had come over to his camp and
+now considered him her company just as much as anybody's and demanded
+his attention accordingly. Of course Bobby knew he belonged exclusively
+to him. Was he not his 'ployer?
+
+"Does it make any difference to you?" he repeated.
+
+Helen was on the point of answering him very kindly when Count de Lestis
+leaned over and engaged her attention.
+
+"Miss Helen, do not forget the promise you made me to come to Weston
+some morning with your father. There are many things I want to show
+you. I want your advice, too, about some pantry arrangements I am
+contemplating. What does mere man know of pantry shelves?"
+
+"Oh, I'd love to come!" exclaimed Helen, and the kind answer she was
+preparing to give Dr. Wright never was spoken.
+
+That young physician looked at the Hungarian count as though he would
+cheerfully throttle him. Helen's advice about pantry shelves, indeed!
+What business had this foreigner to draw Helen into his household
+arrangements?
+
+During that luncheon de Lestis managed to antagonize both Lewis
+Somerville and George Wright. Douglas had smiled entirely too many times
+on this stranger to suit Lewis, and Helen had been much too eager to
+pass on the housekeeping arrangements to accord with George's ideas of
+United States' relations with Hungary.
+
+"Why is he not fighting with his country?" each young man asked himself.
+
+Chloe was waiting on the table remarkably well, much to Helen's
+gratification. Only once had she fallen down the steps, and, thanks to
+her teacher's vigilance, she usually remembered to pass things to the
+left.
+
+"You must try to show the Count de Lestis how much you have learned,"
+Helen had told her while she was preparing the lunch; "remember how
+interested he is in educating colored people."
+
+Helen, seated at the head of the table, was pouring the tea, Mrs. Carter
+having resigned her place to her daughter when she resigned herself to
+be a semi-invalid.
+
+"Hand this to Count de Lestis," Helen said, having put in sugar to his
+taste.
+
+"Here's yo' C-U-P, CUP of T-E, TEA," shouted Chloe, as she balanced the
+cup precariously on the tray.
+
+"Beg pardon!" exclaimed the honored guest in amazement.
+
+"C-U-P, CUP! H-O-T, HOT! T-E, TEA!"
+
+The count took the tea with a puzzled look on his handsome countenance
+and Chloe fled from the room, not in embarrassment but to impart to Sis
+Tempy how she had done made Miss Helen proud by showing the count how
+much she done learned her to spell.
+
+Everybody roared, even Mrs. Carter, who had come to the realization that
+the most dignified way to treat Chloe was to recognize her as a joke.
+
+"It is this way," said Helen when she could speak. "You see, I have been
+trying to teach the poor thing to read and spell. She told me of the
+wonderful work you are doing," to the count.
+
+"I am doing?"
+
+"Yes, in your night school at Weston! It made me ashamed to think you,
+a foreigner, should be doing so much for the colored race, and I doing
+nothing, so I determined to do what I could with my own servant at
+least. I can't tell you how splendid I think it is of you and your
+secretary to give so much time to the poor country darkies."
+
+The count flushed a dark red. He seemed actually confused by this girl's
+praise.
+
+"All of us think it is fine," said Nan.
+
+"Speak for yourself!" whispered Lucy. "Mag and I think it is smart Alec
+of him and we bet he does it 'cause he wants to, not to help the colored
+people."
+
+"I beg your pardon! Did you speak to me?" asked the count, recovering
+himself from the evident confusion into which Helen's and Nan's
+approbration seemed to have plunged him.
+
+"I--I--said--er--I said you and your kind secretary must enjoy the
+work," stammered Lucy.
+
+"Do you find they learn easily?" asked Dr. Wright, trying to hide his
+feelings and wishing he had put in his spare time in altruistic work
+among the colored brethren.
+
+"The truth of the matter is I do no teaching myself. This night school
+is a fad of Herz, my secretary."
+
+"Ah, but I know you do some, because Chloe tells me of how kindly you
+speak to the darkies," insisted Helen. "She says you make beautiful
+talks to them sometimes and they are crazy about you."
+
+"They exaggerate!" shrugged the count. "They seem a simple, kindly folk,
+grateful for any crumb of learning."
+
+"Aren't there any district schools here for the colored people?" asked
+George Wright.
+
+"Yes, but no place for the older ones to learn. It is quite pathetic how
+they yearn for knowledge,--so Herz tells me."
+
+"Well, my opinion is that too much learning is bad for them," blurted
+out Lewis.
+
+"Oh, Lewis!" exclaimed Douglas. "How can you say such a thing? Too much
+learning can't be bad for anybody."
+
+"What I mean is too much and not enough. They get just enough to make
+them big-headed and not enough to give them any balance."
+
+    "'A little learning is a dangerous thing--
+    Drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring,'"
+
+murmured Nan.
+
+"Exactly!" said Lewis gratefully. "I don't want to hold the darky down,
+but I do think he should be taught very carefully or he will get wrong
+notions in his head, social equality with the whites and such stuff."
+
+"I find Americans very strange when one gets them on the subject of
+social equality," and de Lestis suddenly seemed very superior and quite
+conscious of his own station in life. "There is much talk of being
+democratic but not so much practice. Your Declaration of Independence
+plainly states that all men shall be free and equal, and still, while
+you grant the black race freedom, you deny it equality."
+
+"I reckon you don't understand the South very well," answered Lewis, his
+blue eyes flashing.
+
+"Ah!" was all the count said, but he said it with a toploftical manner
+that irritated Lewis.
+
+"The colored soldiers are excellent, so I have heard," put in Douglas,
+hoping to get the subject changed, if not too abruptly.
+
+"Yes, they are good," said Lewis, "but that is because they are trained
+well. That is drinking deep of Nan's Pierian Spring. I think a military
+training in colored schools is almost more important than in the white
+ones. It gives them the kind of balance they don't get in any other
+way."
+
+"Why don't you give the pupils in your night school some drilling?"
+asked Helen.
+
+"Thank you for the suggestion!" and the count bowed low over Helen's
+hand as they arose from the table at a signal from Mrs. Carter, who
+began to think the conversation was getting entirely too serious and not
+at all social. "I shall profit by it immediately and introduce a kind of
+setting-up exercise at least."
+
+"Now we'll find out who had the other busted cheer!" cried Bobby.
+
+It was the count, and his tact and good manners in patiently sitting
+through the meal on what must have been a rather uncomfortable perch
+made the females of the party, excepting Lucy, admire him just that much
+more, but it did not make George Wright and Lewis Somerville think any
+more highly of the good-looking foreigner.
+
+"He had much better be fighting for his country," grumbled Lewis to his
+companion in misery, "even if it would be on the wrong side." Which was
+not the proper remark for a soldier in the army of a neutral nation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+NOVEMBER
+
+
+The mystery that will never be solved for the human race is why some
+days must be dark and dreary and why those days sometimes stretch
+themselves into weeks.
+
+The weather that had been so perfect when our Carters first came to
+Valhalla had held for a long time. Frosty, crisp autumn mornings that
+made the blood tingle in one's veins, followed by warmer days and then
+cold bracing nights when a fire in the great chimney of the living-room
+was most acceptable, had become so much the rule that when the exception
+occurred no one was prepared to accept it.
+
+Morning after morning Nan and Lucy had trudged cheerfully over the
+fields and through the lane to Grantly Station to catch the early train,
+enjoying the walk and not minding at all that the quarter of a mile was
+really three-quarters. Coming home was happy, too. The train reached
+Grantly by half-past three, the pleasantest time in an autumn afternoon,
+and the girls would loiter along the road, stopping to eat wild grapes
+or to crack walnuts or maybe to get some persimmons, delicious and
+shriveled from the hard frosts. Sometimes Billy and Mag would have the
+good news for them that the Suttons' car was to be at Preston and that
+meant that our girls were to get out at that station and be run home by
+Billy.
+
+They were great favorites with both Mr. and Mrs. Sutton who encouraged
+the intimacy with their son and daughter. Suitable companions are not
+always to be found in rural communities and the coming of the Carters
+to the neighborhood was recognized by that worthy couple as a great
+advantage to their children.
+
+"Nan is a charming girl, William," Mrs. Sutton had said to her husband,
+"and even if Billy fancies himself to be in love with her it will do him
+no harm, only good, since she has such good sense and breeding."
+
+"Of course it will do him good and maybe it is not just fancy on his
+part. We Suttons have a way of deciding early and sticking to it. Eh,
+Margaret? I remember you had your hair in a plait and wore quite short
+skirts when I began to scheme how best to get a permanent seat by you on
+the train, and here I've got it!" and Mr. Sutton gave his portly wife a
+comfortable hug.
+
+"And Mag is having a splendid time with Lucy," continued that lady,
+accepting the hug with a smile. "Lucy is so quick and clever, no one
+could help liking her. I, for one, am glad the Carters have come."
+
+"What do you think is the matter with their mother? They always speak of
+her as an invalid. She looks well enough to me, although of course not
+robust like one beautiful lady I know." Mr. Sutton admired his wife so
+much that the flesh she was taking on just made her that much more
+beautiful in his eyes. He thought there could not be too much of a good
+thing.
+
+"Invalid indeed! She is just spoiled and lazy," declared Mrs. Sutton who
+was all energy and industry. "She is attractive enough but I should
+hate to be her daughter."
+
+"Yes, and I'd hate to be her husband, too!"
+
+The Suttons had been most pleasant and hospitable to their new
+neighbors, although there could not have been two women brought together
+so dissimilar as Mrs. Sutton and Mrs. Carter. Mrs. Carter considered her
+mission in life to be as beautiful as possible and also charming. Mrs.
+Sutton had never had time to think what her mission in life was, she was
+so busy doing the things it seemed important to do. She was first of all
+the wife of a successful farmer and that meant eternal vigilance on her
+part, as the success of a farm depends so much on the management of
+women. Next she was the mother of two healthy, normal children who must
+be trained in the way they should go. After that she was an important
+member of a community where her progressive spirit was needed and
+appreciated. Her home, Preston, was where the Ladies' Aid met and worked
+and kept the little church out of debt; there was headquarters for the
+Traveling Library; there the Magazine Club read and swapped periodicals.
+She was president of the Preston Equal Suffrage League, a struggling but
+valorous band, and now that work of organizations was sorely needed for
+suffering humanity, this same league was rolling bandages and making
+comfort kits for the Allies, showing that votes for women was not the
+only thing it could work for. Truly Mrs. Sutton was a busy and happy
+woman.
+
+But we are forgetting that the weather seemed destined to become our
+topic! Certainly the Suttons are a more agreeable subject than the
+weather our girls were fated to endure. Of course the sun can't shine
+all the time and in the natural course of events October days must
+shorten into November days and they in turn into December, with nights
+growing longer and longer and days shorter and shorter and both of them
+colder and colder. Drizzling rains must fall, even if a trusting family
+has taken its abode in a weather-beaten old house, up a muddy lane that
+must be walked through to reach the station.
+
+    "'In winter I get up at night
+    And dress by early candle light,'"
+
+yawned Nan one morning as the alarm went off, warning her it was time to
+rouse herself and Lucy. Lucy had curled up in a little ball, having gone
+to bed without quite enough cover. It had turned cold and damp during
+the night, a heavy rain had kept up for hours and now at six in the
+morning it was drizzling dismally.
+
+"I don't see how we can go to town to-day," sighed Nan, peering out of
+the window. "It is so dark and gloomy."
+
+"I reckon the lane will be awfully muddy," said Lucy, reluctantly
+uncurling herself, "and I believe I left my rubbers at school that time
+I took them in when I thought it was going to rain and it didn't."
+
+"You'll have to borrow Helen's."
+
+"Gee! Isn't it cold?" and Lucy drew back the foot she had tentatively
+poked out of bed. "I wish we could live in a steam-heated house again."
+
+Valhalla was heated by open fireplaces, drum stoves and the Grace of
+God, according to Chloe. There was a small stove in the younger girls'
+room, but up to this time they had not felt the necessity of having a
+fire.
+
+It seemed difficult on that rainy morning for everyone to awaken.
+Chloe's feet and then her reluctant legs came through the trap-door of
+her attic room and slowly down the chicken steps leading into the
+kitchen long after Helen had started the kerosene stove and put on the
+kettle.
+
+"I ain't slep' none," she declared when Helen remonstrated with her
+because of her tardiness. "The rain done leaked in on my haid an' I
+reckon I's gonter die er the ammonia."
+
+"Oh, I fancy not! A little water won't hurt you," said Helen, flying
+around the kitchen like a demented hen trying to scratch up a breakfast
+for her brood. "Hurry up and set the table, it is so late."
+
+"Won't hurt me! Lawsamussy, Miss Helen! Don't you know that niggers
+can't wash they haids in winter time? They do say they wool has deeper
+roots than what white folks' hair is got an' the water what touches they
+haids dreens plum down inter they brains."
+
+"Brains, did you say?" said Helen, but her sarcasm was lost on Chloe.
+"If it leaked on your head why didn't you move your bed? It leaked on
+Miss Douglas and me, too, but we moved the bed."
+
+"Well, I was in a kinder stupid an' looks like I couldn't raise han' or
+foot."
+
+"I can well believe it," muttered Helen. "Please set the table as fast
+as you can!"
+
+"Helen," cried Lucy, hurrying into the dining-room, "you'll have to lend
+me your rubbers! I left mine in town."
+
+"Have to?"
+
+"Well, please to!"
+
+"I hate for you to stretch my rubbers all out of shape."
+
+"Stretch 'em much! Your feet are bigger than mine."
+
+"That being the case I certainly won't lend them to be dropped off in
+the mud."
+
+"Children! Children!" admonished Douglas, hurrying to breakfast. "What
+are you quarreling about?"
+
+"Who shall be Cinderella!" drawled Nan. "And it seems a strange subject
+to dispute about on such a morning. For my part, I wish my feet were a
+quarter of a mile long and I could take three steps and land at the
+station."
+
+"It leaked in our room last night," said Lucy.
+
+"And ours!" chorused Helen and Douglas.
+
+"Mine, too! But I ain't a-keerin'," from Bobby.
+
+"My haid is done soaked up with leaks," grinned Chloe.
+
+"I really think Miss Ella and Miss Louise should have had the roof
+mended before we came," said Douglas.
+
+"Well, tonight we can go to bed with our umbrellas up," suggested Nan.
+
+"Yes! An' wake up a corp!" said Chloe dismally, as she handed the
+certainly not overdone biscuit. "It am sho' death ter hist a umbrell in
+the house."
+
+Nan and Lucy were finally off, forlorn little figures with raincoats and
+rubbers and dripping umbrellas. Helen's rubbers were a bit too small,
+much to that young lady's satisfaction and to Lucy's chagrin.
+
+"My feet will slim down some as I grow older, the shoe man told me. I
+betcher when I am as old as you are my feet will be smaller," said Lucy
+as she paddled off with the rubbers pulled on as far as she could get
+them.
+
+The road was passable until they got within a hundred yards of the
+station and then they struck a soft stretch of red clay that was the
+consistency of molasses candy about to be pulled. Nan clambered up an
+embankment, balancing herself on a very precarious path that hung over
+the road, but Lucy kept to the middle of the pike.
+
+"I hear the train!" cried Nan. "We must hurry!"
+
+"Hurry, indeed! How can anyone hurry through fudge?" and poor Lucy gave
+a wail of agony. She was stuck and stuck fast.
+
+"Come on!" begged Nan, but Lucy with an agonized countenance looked at
+her sister.
+
+"I'm stuck!"
+
+"If I come pull you out, I'll get stuck, too! What on earth are we to
+do?"
+
+"Throw me a plank," wailed Lucy in the tones of a drowning man. Her feet
+were going in deeper and deeper. Helen's rubbers were almost submerged
+and there seemed to be nothing to keep Lucy's shoes and finally Lucy
+from going the way of the rubbers.
+
+Nan dropped her books, umbrella and lunch on the bank and pulled a rail
+from the fence. Lucy clutched it and with a great pull and a sudden
+lurch which sent Nan backwards into the blackberry bushes, the younger
+girl came hurtling from what had threatened to become her muddy grave.
+
+The train was whistling, so they had to forego the giggling fit that
+was upon them and run for the station. The small branch that they
+must pass before they got there, was swollen beyond recognition, but
+one stepping-stone obligingly projected above water and with a mighty
+leap they were over. The accommodating accommodation train reached
+the station of Grantly before they did, but the kindly engineer and
+conductor waited patiently while the girls, puffing and panting, raced
+up the hill.
+
+They had hardly recovered their breath when Billy and Mag boarded the
+train at Preston.
+
+"Well, if you girls aren't spunky!" cried Billy admiringly as he sank in
+the seat by Nan, which Lucy had tactfully vacated, sharing the one with
+Mag. "Mag and I were betting you couldn't make it this morning."
+
+"We just did and that is all," laughed Nan, recounting the perils of the
+way.
+
+"And only look at my boots! Did you ever see such sights?" cried Lucy.
+"Oh, Heavens! One of Helen's rubbers is gone!"
+
+"That must have happened when I fished you out with the fence rail. I
+heard a terrible sough but didn't realize what it meant. They were so
+much too small for you," said Nan.
+
+"Small, indeed! They were too big. Their coming off proves they were too
+big," insisted Lucy.
+
+"I'm glad your feet didn't come off too, then," teased Nan. "At one time
+I thought they were going to."
+
+Billy produced a very shady handkerchief from a hip pocket and proceeded
+to wipe off the girls' shoes, while he sang the sad song of the Three
+Flies:
+
+    "'There were three flies inclined to roam,
+    They thought they were tired of staying at home,
+    So away they went with a skip and a hop
+    Till they came to the door of a grocer-ri shop.
+
+    "'Away they went with a merry, merry buz-zz,
+    Till they came to a tub of mo-las-i-uz,
+    They never stopped a minute
+    But plunged right in it
+    And rubbed their noses and their pretty wings in it.
+
+    "'And there they stuck, and stuck, and stuck,
+    And there they cussed their miserable luck,
+    With nobody by
+    But a greenbottle fly
+    Who didn't give a darn for their miser-ri.'"
+
+"But what I am worrying about," he continued when his song had been
+applauded, "is how you are going to get home. Our car has been put out
+of commission for the winter. Mag and I had to foot it over the hill
+this morning, but our path is high and dry, while the road to Grantly is
+something fierce. If you get off at Preston and go home with us, I'll
+get a rig and drive you over."
+
+"No, indeed, we couldn't think of it," objected Nan. "This is only the
+beginning of winter and we can't get off at Preston every day and impose
+on you and your father's horses to get us home. We shall just have to
+get some top boots and get through the mud somehow."
+
+"But you don't know that stream. If it was high this morning, by
+afternoon it will be way up. The Misses Grant should have told you what
+you were to expect. They should have a bridge there, but it seems Miss
+Ella wants a rustic bridge and Miss Louise thinks a stone bridge would
+be better, so they go a century with nothing but a ford."
+
+"Going home I mean to pull another rail off the fence and do some pole
+vaulting," declared Lucy. "I hope I can find Helen's big old rubber I
+left sticking in the mud."
+
+"It may stay there until the spring thawing," said Mag. "You had better
+stick to the path going home. It is better to stick than get stuck."
+
+"I wish I had some stilts," sighed Nan. "They would carry me over like
+seven league boots."
+
+"Can you walk on them?" asked Billy.
+
+"Sure! Walking on stilts is my one athletic stunt," laughed Nan. "I
+haven't tried for years but I used to do it with extreme grace."
+
+That afternoon Billy had a mysterious package that he stowed under the
+seats in the coach.
+
+"What on earth is that?" demanded Mag.
+
+"Larroes to catch meddlers!"
+
+"Please, Billy!"
+
+"Well, it's nothing but some fence rails to help Nan and Lucy get home.
+I'm afraid the Misses Grant will object if they pull down a fence every
+time they get stuck in the mud."
+
+The parcel proved to contain two pairs of bright red stilts found at a
+gentleman's furnishing store. They had been used to advertise a certain
+grade of very reliable trousers, of an English cut. Just before the
+train reached Preston Billy unearthed them and presented Nan and Lucy
+each with a pair.
+
+"Here are some straps, too, to put on your books to sling them over your
+shoulders. You can't walk on stilts and carry things in your hands at
+the same time. Tie your umbrellas to the stilts! So long!" and Billy
+fled from the coach before the delighted girls could thank him.
+
+Going home over the muddy road was very different from the walk they had
+taken that morning. In the first place it had stopped raining and their
+umbrellas could be closed and tied to the stilts. The air was cold and
+crisp now and there was a hint of snow. They stopped in the little
+station long enough to strap their books securely and get their packs on
+their backs, and then, mounting their steeds, they started on their way
+rejoicing.
+
+"I wonder if I can walk," squealed Nan. "It has been years and years
+since I tried," and she balanced herself daintily on the great long red
+legs.
+
+"Of course you can! Once a stilt walker, always a stilt walker!" cried
+Lucy, starting bravely off.
+
+Nan found the art was not lost and followed her sister down the muddy
+hill to the branch. Billy was right: it had been high in the morning but
+was much higher in the afternoon. The one stepping-stone that had kept
+its nose above water on their trip to town was now completely submerged.
+
+"Ugggh!" exclaimed Lucy. "My legs are floating!" And indeed it was a
+difficult feat to walk through deep rushing water on stilts. They have a
+way of floating off unless you put them down with a most determined push
+and bear your whole weight on them as you step.
+
+"Look at me! I can get through the water if I goose step!" cried Nan.
+
+"Isn't this the best fun ever? Oh, Nan, I pretty near love Billy for
+thinking of such a thing. Don't you?"
+
+"Well, I wouldn't say love exactly."
+
+"I would! I can't see the use in beating 'round the bush about such
+matters. He is certainly the nicest person we know and does more kind
+things for us."
+
+"He is nice and I do like him a lot," confessed Nan.
+
+"Better than the count and Mr. Tom Smith?"
+
+"I don't see what they have to do with it," and Nan got rosy from her
+exertion of goose stepping through the water and up the muddy hill.
+
+"Well, the old count talked about taking a trip with you to the land of
+dreaming, wherever that is, and Tom Smith took you on fine flying bats,
+but Billy here, he gets some stilts for you and lets you help yourself
+through the mud. I say, give me Billy every time!"
+
+"Billy is a nice boy; but Count de Lestis is an elegant, cultured
+gentleman; and Tom Smith--Tom Smith--he--he----"
+
+"I guess you are right--Tom Smith, Tom Smith he he! But flying machines
+wouldn't do much good here in the mud, and stilts will get us over the
+branch dry shod. There's Helen's rubber!" and Lucy adroitly lifted the
+little muddy shoe out of the mire on the end of one of her stilts and
+with a skillful twist of the wrist flopped it onto dry ground.
+
+When they reached the top of the hill where the road became better they
+hid their stilts in the bushes, up close to the fence, carefully
+covering them with dry leaves and brush.
+
+"Our flamingo legs," Nan called them. During that winter many times the
+girls crossed the swollen stream on those red stilts and truly thanked
+the kind Billy Sutton who had thought of them. They would cache them
+under the little station, there patiently and safely to await their
+return.
+
+It was always hard to walk through the water and on one dire occasion
+when the stream was outdoing itself, having burst all bounds and spread
+far up on the road, poor Nan goose stepped too far and fell backwards in
+the water. Fortunately it was on her homeward journey and she could get
+to Valhalla and change her dripping garments. She came across the
+following limerick of Frost's which she gleefully learned, feeling that
+it suited her case exactly:
+
+    "'There was once a gay red flamingo
+    Who said: By the Great Jumping Jingo!
+      I've been in this clime
+      An uncommon long time
+    But have not yet mastered their lingo.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+PARADISE
+
+
+It was astonishing how quickly that winter of 1916 and '17 passed for
+those sojourners in Valhalla in spite of the fact that they were at
+times thoroughly uncomfortable. It is not an easy matter for persons,
+brought up in a modern, steam-heated house with three bath rooms, every
+form of convenience and plenty of trained servants, to adapt themselves
+to the simplicity of country life and that in its most primitive state.
+
+Hard as the life was it agreed with them, one and all. Douglas and Bobby
+walked to school, rain or shine, but their road lay in the uplands where
+the mud rarely got more than ankle deep. Nan and Lucy had to contend
+with much more serious conditions, but thanks to their flamingo legs
+they got by.
+
+The weather wasn't always bad by any means. There were wonderful clear
+sparkling days with the ground frozen hard, and then came the snow that
+meant sleigh rides with the Suttons and grand coasting parties.
+
+Mr. Carter was growing very robust from his labors of stopping up cracks
+and cutting fire wood. He gradually mended the leaks in the roof;
+puttied in the window panes; replaced the broken hinges and fastenings
+to doors and shutters; propped up sagging porch floors; and patched the
+cracked and fallen plastering.
+
+The Misses Grant viewed his efforts with mingled satisfaction and
+embarrassment.
+
+"We have intended to do all this for you, Mr. Carter, but Ella was so
+stubborn about the carpenter. She never would agree to having that new
+man at Preston, who is really quite capable," Miss Louise would explain.
+
+"Certainly not! We knew nothing about him and have always employed Dave
+Trigg----"
+
+"But you know perfectly well that Dave Trigg is doubled up with
+rheumatism," snapped Miss Louise.
+
+"Yes, and you know perfectly well, too, that that man at Preston has
+moved away," retaliated her tall sister, and so on would they wrangle.
+
+"I enjoy doing it," Mr. Carter would assure them. "My only fear is that
+I will get the place in such good order that you will raise our rent."
+
+Which sally would delight the souls of the ladies who were in danger of
+agreeing about one more thing, and that was the altogether desirability
+of the Carters and the especial desirability of Mr. Carter.
+
+Accepting Mrs. Carter at the extremely high valuation of her patient
+family, they were ever kind and considerate of her. Many were the dainty
+little dishes they sent to Valhalla from the great house to tempt the
+palate of their semi-invalid tenant, vying with each other in their
+attentions.
+
+"An' she jes' sets back an' takes it," Chloe would mutter. "Mis' Carter
+done set back so much that settin' back come nachel ter her now.
+
+    "'My name is Jimmie
+    An' I take all yer gimme.'
+
+"That's my ol' Mis'."
+
+Chloe and Helen had continued the lessons in reading and writing. The
+whitewashed kitchen walls bore evidence to much hard work on part of
+both teacher and pupil. Chloe had learned to cook many simple dishes and
+to write and spell all she cooked. By slow stages, so slow they were
+almost imperceptible, the girl was becoming an efficient servant. Her
+wages were raised to eight dollars a month in spite of the remonstrances
+of her sister Tempy, who thought she must serve as long as she had
+before she could make as much.
+
+"Sis Tempy been a-goin' over ter night school at the count's ev'y time
+she gits a chanst but she ain't ter say larned nothin'."
+
+Helen and Chloe were engaged in the delectable task of making mince pies
+for Christmas. Chloe had just electrified Helen by writing on the wall
+of her own accord: "Reseat fer miCe Pize."
+
+"What does she learn?" asked Helen, smiling as she deftly rolled the
+pastry.
+
+"She say they done started a kinder 'batin' siety an' ain't ter say
+foolin' much with readin' an' writin' an' sich. The secondary ain't so
+patient as what you is, an' he uster git kinder worked up whin the
+niggers wint ter sleep in school."
+
+"I fancy that would be trying."
+
+"They's drillin' 'em now an' they likes that 'cause the secondary done
+promised them from the count that some day he'll gib 'em uniforms.
+Niggers is allus keen on begalia."
+
+"Does Tempy drill, too?"
+
+"Lawsamussy, no! Women folks jes' sets an' watches. Tempy say she
+done march aroun' enough fer Miss Ellanlouise, an' as fer flingin'
+broomsticks--she does enough of that 'thout no German gemmun a-showin'
+her nothin' 'bout how ter do it."
+
+"Do they drill with broomsticks?"
+
+"Yassum, that's what they tell me, but they do say----"
+
+"Say what?" asked Helen as the colored girl hesitated.
+
+"They don't say nothin'!"
+
+"You started to tell me something they say about broomsticks."
+
+"I ain't started ter tell a thing!" and Chloe shut her mouth very tight
+and rolled her eyes back in a way she had that made you think she was
+going to turn herself inside out.
+
+"What do they debate about?" asked Helen amused at Chloe's sudden
+reserve.
+
+"They 'spute 'bout the pros an' cons of racin'."
+
+"Horse racing?"
+
+"I ain't so sho', but from what Sis Tempy done tol' me it mought be an'
+agin it moughtn't."
+
+"Does Tempy debate?"
+
+"Sis Tempy! Yi! Yi!" and Chloe went off in peals of laughter. "Sis Tempy
+can't argyfy with nothin' but a rollin' pin. She done put up a right
+good argymint only las' Sunday with her beau, that big slue-footed
+nigger, Jeemes Hanks."
+
+"What was the argument about?"
+
+"Jeemes he done say he's jes' as good as any white folks an' some
+better'n a heap er them. He say his vote don't count none an' he ain't
+able ter buy no good lan' jes' 'cause de white folks won't sell him none
+up clost ter they homes,--an' Sis Tempy ups an' tells him that his vote
+ain't no count 'cause he ain't no count hisse'f. She tells him that
+buzzards lays buzzard eggs an' buzzard eggs hatches out mo' buzzards;
+an' that made him hoppin' mad 'cause that nigger Jeemes sho' do set
+great sto' by hisse'f."
+
+"Does James feel that white people ought to sell him land whether they
+want to or not?"
+
+"'Zactly! He been wantin' ter buy a strip from Miss Ellanlouise up
+yander by the clarin', not so fur from the great house. They's glad
+enough ter sell some er that rocky lan' off over by the gravel pit, but
+they don't want no niggers fer clost neighbors."
+
+"And what did Tempy say?"
+
+"She never said nothin'. She jes' up'n driv him out'n the cabin with the
+rollin' pin. She tells him while she's a-lickin' him, though, that he's
+a-larnin' his a-b-c's upside down at the count's school an' fer her part
+she ain't a-goin' back."
+
+"Do you think the count is responsible for James's nonsense?" asked
+Helen. "I can't see how he got such notions from a gentleman like the
+count."
+
+"I ain't a-sayin'! I ain't a-sayin'!" and once more Chloe's mouth went
+shut with a determined click and she rolled her great eyes.
+
+Helen thought no more about it. Darkies were funny creatures, anyhow. Of
+course it was hard on James Hanks if he wanted to buy good ground and no
+one would sell it to him, but on the other hand one could hardly expect
+the Misses Grant to sell off their ancestral acres just to accommodate
+the slue-footed beau of their cook.
+
+Miss Ella and Louise were entirely unreconstructed as far as the colored
+people were concerned. They were kind to them when they were ill and
+helped them in many ways, but they never for an instant lost sight of
+the fact that they were of an inferior race nor did they let the darkies
+lose sight of the fact. They were not very popular with their negro
+neighbors although they were mutually dependent. Grantly had to depend
+on colored labor and many families among them got their entire living
+from Grantly.
+
+The medicine chest at the great house furnished castor oil and paregoric
+for all the sick pickaninnies for miles around; Miss Louise had to make
+up great jars of her wintergreen ointment so that the aching joints of
+many an old aunty or uncle might find some ease; while Miss Ella's
+willow bark and wild cherry tonic warded off chills and fevers from the
+mosquito infested districts down in the settlement in the swamps.
+
+The older members of the community of negroes appreciated the real
+goodness and kindness of the two old ladies and overlooked their
+overbearing ways, but the younger generation, who cared not for the
+ointment or tonic, could see nothing but arrogance in the really
+harmless old spinsters.
+
+Most of the former slaves, who had at one time belonged to Grantly, had
+passed away. The few who remained were old and feeble and these had
+many arguments with the younger ones, trying to make them see the real
+kindness and goodness of Miss Ellanlouise.
+
+"You done got fat on castor ile out'n the chist at Grantly whin you was
+a sickly baby," old Uncle Abe Hanks would say to his refractory grandson
+Jeemes. "An' you an' yo' paw befo' you was pulled from the grabe by
+parrygoric from dat same chist, an' now you set up here an' say: 'Down
+with southe'n 'ristocrats!' Humph! You'd better be a-sayin': 'Down with
+the castor ile an' parrygoric!' 'Down with the good strong soup an' fat
+back Miss Ellanlouise done sent yo' ol' gran'pap las' winter whin there
+warn't hide or har er his own flesh an' blood come nigh him!' Yes! They
+went down all right--down the red lane. You free niggers is got the
+notion you kin live 'thout the 'ristocrats. Why don't you go an' live
+'thout 'em then? Nobody ain't a-holdin' you. As fer me--gib me
+'ristocrats ev'y time!"
+
+"The Count de Lestis is as 'ristocratical as those ol' tabbies," the
+grandson would reply sullenly, "and he doesn't treat a colored gemman
+like he was a houn' dog."
+
+"'Ristocratical much! That furrener? You ain't got good sinse, boy. That
+there pretty little count didn't even come from Virginny an' all the
+'ristocrats done come from Virginny one time er anudder. I done hear Ol'
+Marster say dat time an' time agin."
+
+"The count say he gonter sell us all the lan' we want. An' he say he
+gonter fetch over some nice, kind white folks ter live neighbors to us;
+white folks what is jes' as good as these white folks 'roun' here but
+who ain't a-gonter hol' theyselves so proudified like."
+
+"Yes! I kin see him now tu'nnin' loose a lot er po' white Guinnies what
+will take the bread out'n the mouth er the nigger. Them po' white
+furreners kin live on buzzard meat, an' dey don' min' wuckin' day in an'
+day out, an' if'n dey gits a holt in the lan' the nigger'll hab ter go.
+As fer a-livin' long side er niggers,--I tell you now, son, that the
+white folks what don't min' a-livin' long side er niggers is wuss'n
+niggers, an' I can't say no mo' scurrilous thing about them than
+that--wuss'n niggers!"
+
+A strong discontent was certainly brewing among the younger generation
+of negroes. Conversations similar to the one between Uncle Abe Hanks
+and James were not uncommon in the settlement that lay midway between
+Grantly and Weston. This settlement was known by the exceedingly
+appropriate name of Paradise. There were about a dozen cabins there,
+some of them quite comfortable and neat, others very poor and forlorn.
+
+There was a church, the pride of their simple hearts because it was
+built of brick; also a ramshackled old building known as "The Club."
+This club had originally been a tobacco barn, built, of course, without
+windows, for the curing of tobacco. In converting it into a club house,
+windows had been cut in the sides but with no fixed plan. Wherever a
+member decided it would be nice to have a window, a window was cut. No
+two were the same size or on the same level. Most of them were more or
+less on the slant, giving the building the appearance of having survived
+an earthquake.
+
+In this club house the secret societies met to hold their mysterious
+rites. Here they had their festivals and bazaars and sometimes, when the
+effects of protracted meetings had worn off and the ungodly were again
+to the fore, they would have dances that threatened to bring down the
+walls and roof of the rickety building. It was whispered through the
+county that a blind tiger was also operated there but this was not
+proven. Certainly there was much drunkenness at times in Paradise,
+considering the state was dry.
+
+Count de Lestis was very popular in Paradise. He always had a kind word
+for old and young. Then, too, he had work for them and paid them well.
+His fame spread and actually there was a boom in Paradise. Other negroes
+in settlements near by were anxious to move to Paradise. Town lots were
+in demand and the club had a waiting list for membership. The church was
+full to overflowing when on Sunday Brother Si took his stand in the
+little pulpit.
+
+Night school at Weston was something new and something to do, so the
+darkies flocked to it. Herz, the secretary, had his hands full trying to
+teach the mob that congregated three times a week to sit at the feet of
+learning. He did get angry occasionally when his pupils, tired out no
+doubt after a hard day's work, would fall asleep with audible
+attestations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HERZ
+
+
+Herz was in such strong contrast to his employer, the count, that he
+gave Helen and Douglas quite a shock when they first met him. They had
+walked over to Weston with their father, who had been prevailed upon to
+take the order for the restoration of the old mansion. Dr. Wright had
+been consulted as to the advisability of his trying to do this work and
+had approved of it as being something to occupy his patient without
+making him nervous. It meant many trips to Weston on the part of Mr.
+Carter and equally many to Valhalla on the part of the count.
+
+De Lestis had done very little talking about Herz, mentioning him
+usually rather in the tone of one speaking of a servant, but Helen
+came to the opinion the moment she looked at him that there was
+nothing servile about him; on the contrary, he was evidently the more
+intellectual of the two men. He was a little younger than the count,
+much taller, with broad spare shoulders and a back as straight as a
+board. His blue eyes were very near sighted, necessitating the wearing
+of very thick lenses in his large gold-rimmed spectacles. His hair was
+yellow and grew straight up on his head like wheat stubble. His brow was
+broad and high and well shaped. He really was a handsome man except that
+his mouth was too full lipped and so very red. His English was perfect
+with no touch of accent as with the count. He said he had been born in
+Cincinnati and his father was a naturalized American, so even Douglas,
+the strong pro ally, had to accept him as German in name only.
+
+Weston was a good three miles from Grantly by the road, but much closer
+if one took a path through the woods, skirting Paradise and approaching
+the old house from the rear. Truly it had been a grand estate in its day
+and de Lestis was determined to restore it to its pristine glory. He had
+owned the place about a year and had accomplished much in that time.
+The fences and gates were in perfect repair; the fields showed that good
+farming theories had already been put into practice; the woods, that
+some knowledge of forestry had been applied, as the undergrowth had been
+cleared away and useless timber been cut down to give room to valuable
+trees.
+
+"What a lot of money must have been spent here," said Douglas, noting
+the new fencing and well-built barns as they approached the house.
+
+"Yes, de Lestis seems to have unlimited supplies of cash. I fancy he is
+a man of great wealth," said Mr. Carter. "I have ordered a Delco light
+to be installed in his house. He spares no expense in restoring the old
+place. I was rather opposed to having the new lighting system. It seems
+such an anomaly in a colonial mansion."
+
+"But, Daddy, you wouldn't want the count to grope his way around with
+tallow dips," laughed Helen. "I fancy that was what was used when Weston
+was first built."
+
+"I'd have him do it rather than ruin the architectural effect of such a
+wonderful old house; but de Lestis has his own ideas about things and
+all he wants of me, after all, is to do the work of a contractor. As for
+Herz,--he has better taste than de Lestis, I believe."
+
+"Tell us about Herz, Daddy. You never have told us what he is like,"
+demanded Helen.
+
+"You judge for yourselves," answered the father.
+
+The truth was that Mr. Carter had not known just what to make of Herz.
+Clever he was certainly and no underling, as they had gathered from de
+Lestis.
+
+This was the girls' first visit to Weston although the count had
+urged their coming many times. Douglas's school was dismissed for the
+Christmas holidays and she felt like a bird out of the cage: two whole
+weeks of delightful freedom ahead of her!
+
+Teaching had come easy to her and she had conquered Bobby and the other
+unruly pupils and felt that she was in a way getting on top of her
+work. The days passed rapidly and her school was in a fine condition,
+enthusiastic pupils and eager students. Nevertheless it was great to be
+having a holiday and she meant to make the most of it. She and Helen
+were planning a trip to Richmond after Christmas to visit Cousin
+Elizabeth Somerville. Lewis was stationed there with his company and his
+duties not being so very arduous, he hoped to spend much time with his
+favorite cousin. Valhalla was very lovely and the girls had grown very
+fond of it. Their plans for their father were working out and they knew
+they had done right in taking the place and moving the family to the
+country, but nevertheless they were looking forward with pleasure to the
+visit to Richmond and release from all of their duties for a few days.
+
+What glowing girls they were! Robert Carter looked at them with
+pardonable pride as they tramped through the woods, their cheeks crimson
+with the exercise in the cold air. How they had shown the "mettle of
+their pasture" when the time came for them to take hold! He had always
+known that Douglas had a certain bulldog tenacity that would make her
+keep her grip no matter what happened, but Helen had astonished him.
+When something had snapped in his tired brain he had instinctively
+turned to Douglas as the person to decide for the family welfare, but
+Helen had shown herself capable far beyond his hopes. He well knew that
+her part of the work was most difficult, and he saw with wonder her
+patience with her mother and with the seemingly impossible Chloe.
+
+"I'll make it all up to them," he said to himself.
+
+The doctor's prescription of country life and freedom from care with
+plenty of occupation for his hands was working wonders. This work he had
+been doing for de Lestis was not taxing his mind at all, and he suddenly
+realized that it was not because it was so easy but because his mind was
+in working order again. He felt his old power coming back to him, the
+power of concentration, of initiative. Sometimes he would try to lie
+awake at night just for the pleasure of feeling himself to be well.
+
+His illness had been a blessing in disguise since it had brought out all
+this latent fineness in his girls. It had somehow made them more
+beautiful, too, at least they seemed so in the eyes of their doting
+father.
+
+Approaching Weston from the rear, no one was in sight. Smoke arising
+from the kitchen chimney gave evidence of a servant's being somewhere.
+The yard was in perfect order, with no unsightly ash pile or tin cans to
+offend the eye. To one side Mr. Carter pointed out the rose garden that
+the count had taken much care of, spending hundreds of dollars on
+every known variety that would flourish in that latitude. Beyond were
+greenhouses and hot beds that furnished lettuce and cauliflower and
+spinach through the winter for the master's delicate palate.
+
+"Isn't it lovely?" gasped Helen. "It must be splendid to be rich."
+
+Mounting the broad steps leading to the pillared gallery they heard
+voices speaking in some foreign language, they could not tell whether
+it was German or not, and then a loud laugh and "Ach Gott!" in the
+count's unmistakable baritone. Through the window they saw the two men,
+de Lestis and Herz, bending over a table spread with papers. Herz was
+pointing out something to his employer which seemed to delight him, as
+he was laughing heartily. This was gathered only by one glance, as
+immediately the Carters passed beyond the angle through which they could
+view the interior of the room and Mr. Carter knocked on the front door.
+
+The door was not opened for several minutes. Evidently the count
+employed servants for such tasks and did not believe in opening doors
+with his own august hands. Helen gave an impatient rat tat again. She
+was not fond of waiting. The door was opened suddenly and by the count.
+
+"Ah! My good friends!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I did not expect
+you until tomorrow, my dear Mr. Carter."
+
+"I came a day sooner because my daughters could come with me."
+
+"And what an honor!"
+
+He ushered them into the room where they had viewed him for the moment
+in passing. There were no papers on the table now and everything was in
+perfect order. The secretary was standing at attention, awaiting an
+introduction to the ladies.
+
+He bowed from his waist up, shutting up like a jack-knife. He had not
+the easy, graceful manners of the count, but seemed much blunter and
+less polished. One could not fancy his kissing the hand of a lady as
+the count was famous for doing.
+
+Love at first sight is supposed to happen only in books but it does
+happen sometimes in real life, and on that frosty day in December it
+came to pass in the library at Weston, came like a flash of lightning,
+came without warning and without being wanted. Certainly the secretary
+had not wanted to stop the work he was engaged in that seemed to be so
+engrossing; he did not even want to meet these Carter girls but had
+been forced into it by his employer. What good would it do him to
+fall in love? He cared not a whit for women, anyhow, despised them in
+fact. But the little blind god, Cupid, took none of these things
+into consideration. He simply let fly his dart and as Adolph Herz
+straightened himself up after making his stiff, jack-knife bow, the
+arrow hit him square in his heart.
+
+It was a toss of the penny which sister it should be; both of them
+were lovely, both of them rosy and charming. He looked at Douglas
+first, however, and never saw Helen at all, at least, seemed not to.
+He did not take his eyes from Douglas's face during the entire call.
+
+"Has the lighting system come yet?" asked Mr. Carter. "It should have
+been here by now."
+
+"Did you order one?" asked the count. "I understood I was to send the
+order and have done so. You sent it off, did you not, Herz?"
+
+"Certainly! A week ago!"
+
+"But you told me to order it," insisted Mr. Carter. "I am sure you did."
+
+"Why, that is all right, my dear fellow," said the count very kindly.
+"If both of them come it will make no difference. I can install one of
+them in the barn and garage."
+
+"Oh, but I cannot let you have the expense of both if I was at fault,"
+and Mr. Carter looked distressed. Was his head not behaving as it
+should, after all?
+
+"Why, my dear Mr. Carter, it might easily have been my mistake and I
+cannot have you bothered about it. The expense is trifling. Miss Helen,
+help me to persuade your father that it is nothing."
+
+The count's manner was so kindly and he seemed so anxious to make Mr.
+Carter feel that if any mistake had been made he, the count, had made
+it that Helen was deeply grateful. How much she liked this foreign
+nobleman, anyhow. He was always so gracious, so suave, so elegant. His
+heart must be tender, his disposition good, or how could he make all of
+the poor colored people like him so much? Helen was fully aware of the
+fact that the count was attracted by her, but there had been times when
+she was sure he was equally taken with Douglas, and certainly his
+manner to Nan on several occasions had been one of devotion. He always
+seemed to be coming out on the train with Nan and Lucy, and Lucy had
+intimated that he had caused Billy Sutton many sad hours by "hogging"
+the seat by Nan. Could he be a flirt? Helen put the thought from her.
+She hated a male flirt. Nevertheless she was conscious of the fact that
+she had a little tiny twinge of jealousy, so tiny that it was only a
+speck, but it was there.
+
+"It's Douglas's hair and Nan's eyes," she thought. "I believe he thinks
+I'm more interesting than they are, though," and then she took herself
+to task for a foolish, vain girl. "What difference does it make to me,
+anyhow? What do we know of this stranger and what is he to us?"
+
+Now the girls gave their attention to the estate, for they were
+naturally interested in the work their father had undertaken. The
+workmen were through, carpenters, plasterers and painters, and the place
+had been turned over to Count de Lestis. Very beautiful it was and one
+for any owner to be proud of. The spacious hall, with its waxed floor
+and beautiful stairway with mahogany treads and bannisters, was as
+fine an example of southern colonial as one could find in the whole of
+Virginia. The furnishings were in keeping with the general plan of the
+house, as at Mr. Carter's suggestion an antique dealer and decorator
+from Richmond had had his finger in the pie. Much of the furniture had
+been bought with the house, being old mahogany that had been at Weston
+for more than a century.
+
+"How lovely it is!" gasped Helen as the doors to the great dining-room
+were thrown open.
+
+"I am so glad you like it," whispered the count in a very meaning tone.
+"I have your father to thank for its being so complete. Never have I
+seen work carried on so rapidly. I was afraid I would be living in the
+discomfort of shavings and mortar beds for months to come."
+
+"Daddy is always like that," said Helen smiling. Nothing pleased Helen
+so much as praise of her father. "He can always make workmen work. They
+say in Richmond that not even plumbers disappoint him. He always turns
+over his houses on time unless there is something absolutely unforeseen,
+like a strike or something."
+
+"I am indeed fortunate in having prevailed upon him to do this for me."
+
+"But he has enjoyed doing it so much. You see Daddy has not been able to
+work for so long and I think he had begun to feel that maybe he had lost
+out, and this proves that he hasn't. He does not know how to be idle.
+Why last summer when he was supposed to do nothing but rest he drew the
+plans and built bird houses for Bobby."
+
+"Ah, indeed! I am so glad you reminded me of something. Mr. Carter," he
+called to that gentleman who was critically examining some electric
+wiring recently put in ready for the Delco batteries which were on the
+way, "I want now some plans for bird houses if such trivial work is not
+beneath you. I want bird houses for every kind of feathered songster
+that can be attracted and persuaded to live at Weston."
+
+"How wonderful!" cried Helen and Douglas in chorus. Douglas had been
+engaged in conversation by the secretary, who was limbering up in an
+amazing manner. He was most attentive, showing her into every nook and
+cranny of the old house. He opened sideboards and cabinets to reveal the
+exquisite finish of the satinwood drawers and shelves; he took down bits
+of rare old china from the plate rack in the dining-room, explaining the
+marks on the bottoms. He was so kind that Douglas almost liked him, but
+not quite.
+
+"Adolph Herz is too German in sound," the Anglo-Saxon in her cried out.
+"And then his mouth! It is so red!"
+
+"Certainly I'll enjoy drawing plans for bird houses," laughed Mr.
+Carter. "I shall even take pleasure in carpentering them. They are
+really lots of fun to make."
+
+"I agree with you," said Herz. "Simply drawing a design is never so much
+pleasure as carrying it out. How a sculptor can be willing to do only
+the clay modeling of his statue and then let someone else carve the
+marble is more than I can understand. When I think of something to be
+done, I must do it myself--trust it to no one."
+
+"Well, I am a lazy bones myself and anyone can do my work," laughed the
+count. "Now Adolph here has drawn the plan for a pigeon house and he
+wants to build it himself. I tell him it is absurd, that any carpenter
+can carry out his ideas, but he will not listen to me. Adolph is a very
+stubborn man, Miss Carter." He addressed this remark to Douglas who
+smiled at the young secretary. He was frowning heavily and his full lips
+were drawn into a hard red line. The count caught his eye and gave him a
+bantering look in return.
+
+"Come on, Adolph, and show Mr. Carter your plans for the pigeon house!"
+
+"They are not completed," he answered sullenly.
+
+"I am quite a pigeon fancier," went on the master of Weston. "They are
+charming birds to raise and one can make much money on squabs. We are
+going into pigeon raising quite seriously. I think we shall build a very
+large house. Eh, Adolph?"
+
+"Where will you put the pigeon house?" asked Mr. Carter.
+
+"Right there on the roof, about in the centre of the house," said the
+count, pointing to the top of the mansion.
+
+"Not there! Surely you would not do such a thing!" cried Helen
+incredulously.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It would ruin the architectural effect of Weston," declared Mr. Carter.
+
+"I think not!"
+
+"Well, I know it would," maintained the architect stoutly. "Why, de
+Lestis, all of my work would be as nothing if you should put a pigeon
+house there. I beg of you not to!"
+
+"But, my dear Mr. Carter, I am a pigeon fancier and want my pigeons at a
+point where I can watch them twirling and dipping. I love their cooing,
+too."
+
+"All right! It is your house and you can do as you choose with it, but
+please do not mention me as the architect who restored the place. I
+cannot stand for such a piece of Philistinism." Mr. Carter laughed as he
+made the above remark, but his daughters knew by a certain look in his
+eyes that he was angry.
+
+"Are you to have carrier pigeons?" asked Douglas, hoping to relieve the
+company of an embarrassment that seemed to have fallen upon it.
+
+The secretary still had his mouth drawn in a stern line although he had
+smoothed his frowning brow. Helen was plainly put out at the count's
+daring to go against her father's artistic taste, while Count de Lestis
+seemed to be taking a kind of delight in teasing everybody.
+
+"If you will promise to send me a message, I will," he answered
+gallantly.
+
+"Oh, that would be great fun! I have never seen a carrier pigeon."
+
+The count then devoted himself to Douglas for the rest of the visit,
+showing her the pantry shelves that he had on one occasion expressed
+himself as desirous for Helen to pass on.
+
+"All we need now is a lady of the manor," he said in a low tone. "It is
+not meet for man to live alone."
+
+Douglas looked at him quite frankly, her blue eyes steady as she gazed
+into his black ones. "Can't your mother come and keep house for you?"
+she asked quite simply.
+
+There was no flirting in Douglas Carter's make-up. Herz, who refused to
+go far from her in spite of the count's sudden devoted attentions,
+relaxed his grim expression that he had held ever since the pigeon house
+had been the subject of conversation. His mouth broke into a smile and
+his easy manner returned.
+
+The Carters soon took their departure, although the master of the house
+was insistent that they should stay to tea with them.
+
+"We must get back to Valhalla," declared Douglas.
+
+"Valhalla! Is that the name of your place?" asked Herz.
+
+"That is the name my sister Nan gave it. She says we are all more or
+less dead warriors when the day is over. I don't like giving it such a
+German name myself, but Nan says poetry is universal and---- Oh! I beg
+your pardon!" The girl had forgotten that her companion was of German
+birth.
+
+"Do you dislike the Germans so much?" he asked.
+
+"Not the German people----" she stammered. "Just the Imperial
+Government!"
+
+"But aren't the people the Government?"
+
+"I hope not."
+
+"Ah, so Miss Carter has opened fire on you, too, has she?" laughed de
+Lestis. "If there were more fighters like her among the Allies, poor
+Germany would have her banners trailing in the dust by now."
+
+"I did not mean to be rude to Mr. Herz," said Douglas. "I am too
+prejudiced in favor of France and England to remember my manners. If I
+have injured you, I beg your pardon," and she gave the secretary her
+hand in good-by.
+
+He blushed like a schoolgirl and stammered out some unintelligible
+something.
+
+De Lestis renewed his attentions to Helen just as though he had not been
+hovering over her sister with tender nothings.
+
+"He is a flirt!" thought Helen. "I think I can give him as good as he
+sends, but I am beginning to hate him." She dimpled to his remarks,
+however, and as she bade him good-by at the door she smiled saucily into
+his eyes.
+
+"To think of that man's being willing to ruin his roof line," sighed Mr.
+Carter as he and his daughters started on their homeward walk. "Just
+look how beautiful it is," pointing to the old chimneys where the roof
+melted into the sky.
+
+"It is a shame," cried Helen. "But how cold it is! There now, I left my
+gloves on the library table."
+
+"Run back and get them, honey; Douglas and I will wait for you here by
+the stile."
+
+Helen ran back. Once more she glanced into the library where on their
+arrival they had caught a glimpse of the two men bending over the
+papers. Now what was her astonishment to see the secretary actually
+shaking the count, who was laughing heartily. The secretary's eyes were
+flashing as he blurted out the words:
+
+"Fool! Fool!"
+
+The count opened the door quickly this time at her knock.
+
+"Your gloves! I found them and almost hoped you would leave them with
+me, but the little hands would have been so cold. Indeed, they are so
+cold," and he gallantly kissed them.
+
+Helen seized her gloves and with glowing cheeks raced back to her father
+and sister. She gave her hands a vigorous rubbing on her grey corduroy
+skirt before she put on her gloves as though she might rub off the kiss.
+In the excitement over the dénouement of the visit she forgot for the
+time being that she had caught the secretary shaking his employer and
+calling him a fool.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+GOOSE STEPPING
+
+
+The winter wore on. Our warriors were fighting the good fight and each
+night as they gathered round the cheerful fire in the great chimney in
+the living-room at Valhalla they had tales to tell of difficulties
+overcome. Of course there were failures, many of them, but each failure
+meant a lesson learned and better luck next time.
+
+Douglas had days when the little ideas refused to shoot and her pupils
+seemed to be just so many wooden dolls, but she learned the rare lesson,
+that teachers must learn if they are to be successful: when a class
+won't learn, and can't learn, and doesn't want to learn, there is
+something the matter with the teacher. When she came to this realization
+she took herself to task, and the dark days came farther and farther
+apart.
+
+The letter she had written Dr. Wright had had a most salutary effect on
+Bobby. That young physician had taken the naughty boy for a long ride
+and had given him a man to man talk, first temporarily dismissing him
+from his employ and sternly forbidding him to hold out his hand when
+they were going around corners. He was not allowed to blow the horn at
+dangerous curves and all of his honors were stripped from him.
+
+"It nearly killed me to do it," George Wright confessed to Helen. "I
+couldn't look him in the eye for fear of weakening, but he took it like
+the little man he is. I fancy Douglas will have no more trouble with him
+for a while. I am glad she asked me to help her out. It is no joke to
+teach your own flesh and blood. Bobby says he thought that Douglas was
+just playing school and he didn't know he was really bothering her. He
+knows now and is even prepared to lick any boy not twice his size who
+disturbs his sister."
+
+Count de Lestis seemed to have much business that took him away from
+Weston. Sometimes he was gone for several weeks at a time, but when he
+returned he would drop in at Valhalla as though he had not been away at
+all. He was always a welcome visitor. Mrs. Carter greeted him as a long
+lost friend. He seemed to be the incarnation of the social world to the
+poor little lady, destined to spend her days out of her element. Mr.
+Carter had almost forgiven him the pigeon house, but not quite.
+
+"There is something lacking, somehow, in a man who would do such a
+thing," he had declared to Helen.
+
+The pigeon house was built by the secretary, according to his own plans
+and specifications, and placed on the roof, where it loomed an eyesore
+to the artistic. Truly they seemed to be going into pigeon raising in
+good earnest. It was a huge affair, large enough to accommodate many
+pigeons; and then, with the careless expenditure of money that seemed to
+characterize the master of Weston, crates of pigeons arrived and were
+installed in their new quarters.
+
+"The carrier pigeons have not come, but when they do I'll bring one to
+you," the count said to Douglas, "and you must promise to send me a
+message." The girl laughingly promised.
+
+The count was still doing what Helen called "browsing." He flitted from
+sister to sister, whispering his tender nothings and for the moment
+seeming all devotion to the one with whom he happened to be.
+
+"Thank goodness, I found out in time what a flirt he is!" Helen
+whispered to her inmost self. "Once, for just a fraction of a second, I
+was jealous of Douglas and of Nan, too. His house is so lovely and he is
+so rich and handsome and so fascinating, and I do so hate to be poor!
+But I can't abide a male flirt!"
+
+Nevertheless, Helen was very glad to see the count when he called at
+Valhalla and she was very successful in hiding her real feelings
+from that gentleman, who twirled his saucy moustache in masculine
+satisfaction when he thought of the attractive girl who so courteously
+received his attentions. Douglas's indifference rather piqued him and
+he was constantly trying to break through it, but no matter what
+flattering remarks he made to her she never seemed to know they were
+intended for her, Douglas Carter.
+
+"That young soldier is at the bottom of it!" he would exclaim to
+himself after trying his best to get an answering spark from this
+girl who appeared so altogether lovely in his eyes, more lovely and
+desirable because of her indifference, and then, too, because he knew
+instinctively that Herz was hopelessly in love with her; and many men
+are like sheep and go where others lead.
+
+The secretary was becoming a real nuisance to Douglas, who in a way
+liked him, but who never got over his very German name and his red, red
+mouth. He so often seemed to know exactly the moment when she was to
+dismiss school and would appear as she locked the schoolhouse door and
+quietly join her on the walk home. He was very interesting and Douglas
+much preferred him to the count, who could not be with any female for
+more than a few moments without bordering on love-making of some kind.
+Herz had a great deal of information and this he would impart to
+Douglas in quite the manner of a professor as he walked stiffly by her
+side.
+
+Bobby was not at all in favor of sharing the walks home with this tall,
+stiff stranger. Ever since Dr. Wright's talk with him he had considered
+himself Douglas's protector, and he liked to pretend that as they went
+along the lonesome road and skirted the dark pine woods he was going to
+shoot imaginary bandits who infested their path. He couldn't play any
+such game with this matter-of-fact man stalking along by their side,
+explaining to Douglas some intricate point in philosophy.
+
+"Say, kin you goose step?" he asked one day when Herz was especially
+irritating to him. Bobby had a "bowanarrow" hid in the bushes by the
+branch, with which he had intended to kill many Indians on their
+homeward walk.
+
+"Yes, of course!" came rather impatiently from Herz, who thought
+children should be seen and not heard and that this especial child would
+be well neither seen nor heard.
+
+"Well, do it!"
+
+"Bobby, don't bother Mr. Herz," Douglas admonished.
+
+"He kin talk an' goose step at the same time," Bobby insisted.
+
+Herz began solemnly to goose step, expounding his philosophy as he went.
+Bobby shrieked with delight. This wasn't such a bad companion, after
+all. It was so ridiculous that Douglas could hardly refrain from
+shouting as loud as Bobby.
+
+"Is that the way the German soldiers really walk?" asked Bobby.
+
+"So I am told."
+
+"Where did you learn to do it?" asked Douglas.
+
+"I--I--at a school where I was educated."
+
+"Oh, but you are an American, so the count told me."
+
+"I am an American." This was uttered in a very dead tone. The man
+suddenly turned on his heel and with a muttered good-by disappeared.
+
+"Ain't he a nut, though?" exclaimed Bobby.
+
+"He is peculiar," agreed Douglas.
+
+"Do you like for him to walk home with you, Dug?"
+
+"I don't know whether I do or not."
+
+"Well, I don't like it a bit, 'cep'n, of co'se, when he goose steps an'
+then it's great. I seen a colored fellow a-goose steppin' the other day,
+an' he says he learned it at the count's school what Mr. Herz is
+a-teachin'. He says they call it settin' up exercises, but he would like
+to do some settin' down exercise. I reckon he was tryin' to make a
+kinder joke."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+AN EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY
+
+
+Every American will always remember that winter of 1917 as being one of
+extreme unrest. Would we or would we not be plunged into the World War?
+Should we get in the game or should we sit quietly by and see Germany
+overrun land and sea?
+
+Valhalla was not too much out of the world to share in the excitement,
+and like most of the world was divided in its opinions. Douglas and her
+father were for the sword and no more pens. Helen and Mrs. Carter felt
+it was a pity to mix up in a row that was not ours, although in her
+secret soul Helen knew full well that the row was ours and if war was to
+be declared she would be as good a fighter as the next. Nan was an out
+and out pacifist and declared the world was too beautiful to mar with
+all of this bloodshed. Lucy insisted that Nan got her sentiments from
+Count de Lestis, who had been "hogging" a seat by her sister quite often
+in the weeks before that day in March when diplomatic relations with
+Germany were broken off by our country. As for Lucy: she could tell you
+all about the causes of the war and was quite up on Bismarck's policy,
+etc. She delighted her father with her knowledge of history and her
+logical views of the present situation. She and Mag were determined to
+go as Red Cross nurses if we did declare war, certain that if they
+tucked up their hair and let down their dresses no one would dream they
+were only fourteen. Bobby walked on his toes and held his head very
+high, trying to look tall, hoping he could go as a drummer boy or
+something if he could only stretch himself a bit.
+
+"Good news, girls!" cried Helen one evening in February when they had
+drawn their seats around the roaring fire piled high with wood cut by
+Mr. Carter, whose muscles were getting as hard as iron from his outdoor
+work.
+
+"What?" in a chorus from the girls, always ready for any kind of news,
+good or bad.
+
+"The count is going to have a ball!"
+
+"Really? When?"
+
+"On the twenty-second of February! He says if he gives a party on
+Washington's birthday nobody can doubt his patriotism."
+
+"Humph! I don't see what business he has with patriotism about our
+Washington," muttered Lucy.
+
+"But he does feel patriotic about the United States, he told me he did,"
+said Nan.
+
+"I think he means to take out his naturalization papers in the near
+future," said Mr. Carter.
+
+"He tells me he feels very lonesome now that he is in a way debarred
+from his own country," sighed Mrs. Carter. "That book he wrote has made
+the Kaiser very angry."
+
+"Well, after the war is over that book will raise him in the estimation
+of all democracies," suggested Douglas.
+
+"Mag says that Billy wrote to Brentano's to try and get him that book
+and they say they can't find it; never heard of it," blurted out Lucy.
+
+"It has perhaps not been translated into English," said Helen loftily.
+
+"Mag says that that's no matter. Brentano will get you any old book in
+any old language if it is in existence."
+
+"How can they when a book has been suppressed? I reckon the Kaiser is
+about as efficient about suppressing as he is about everything else.
+Well, book or no book, I'm glad to be going to a ball. He says we must
+ask our friends from Richmond and he is going to invite everybody in the
+county and have a great big splendid affair, music from Richmond, and
+supper, too."
+
+"Kin I go?" asked Bobby, curling up in Helen's lap, a way he had of
+doing when there was no company to see him and sleep was getting the
+better of him.
+
+"Of course you can, if you take a good nap in the daytime."
+
+"Daddy and Mumsy, you will go, surely," said Douglas.
+
+"Yes, indeed, if your mother wants to! I'm not much of a dancer these
+days, but I bet she can outdance any of you girls. Eh, Mother?"
+
+"Not as delicate as I am now; but of course I shall go to the ball to
+chaperone my girls," said the little lady plaintively. "I doubt my
+dancing, however."
+
+"He says we must ask Dr. Wright and Lewis and any other people we want.
+He says he is really giving this ball to us because we have been so
+hospitable to him," continued Helen.
+
+"We haven't been any nicer to him than Miss Ella and Miss Louise," said
+Lucy, who seemed bent on obstructing.
+
+"But they are too old to have balls given to them," laughed Helen. "They
+are going, though. I went to see them this afternoon with Count de
+Lestis and they are just as much interested as I am. They asked the
+privilege of making the cakes for the supper and he was so tactful that
+he did not tell them he was to have a grand caterer to do the whole
+thing. The old ladies just love to do it, and one is to make angel's
+food and one devil's food.
+
+"The Suttons are going," and Helen held the floor without interruptions
+because of the subject that was interesting to all the family. "Mr.
+Sutton says if the roads permit he will send his big car to take our
+whole family, and if the roads are too bum he will have the carriage out
+for Mrs. Sutton and Mumsy, and all of us can go in the hay wagon."
+
+"Grand! I hope the roads will be muddy up to the hubs!" cried Lucy. "Hay
+wagons are lots more fun than automobiles."
+
+"Hard on one's clothes, though," and Helen looked a little rueful. The
+question of dress was important when one had nothing but old last year's
+things that were so much too narrow.
+
+"What are you going to wear to the ball?" asked Douglas that night when
+she and Helen were snuggling down in their bed in the little room up
+under the roof.
+
+"I haven't anything but my rose chiffon. It is pretty faded looking and
+hopelessly out of style, but I am going to try to freshen it up a bit.
+Ah me! I don't mind working, but I do wish I were not an unproductive
+consumer. I'd like to make some money myself and sometimes buy
+something."
+
+Douglas patted her sister consolingly. "Poor old Helen! I do feel so bad
+about you."
+
+"Well, you needn't! But I did see such a love of a dancing frock when we
+were down town that day with Cousin Elizabeth: white tulle over a silver
+cloth with silver girdle and trimmings. It was awfully simple but so
+effective. I could just see myself in it. I ought to be ashamed to let
+clothes make so much difference with me, but I can't help it. I am
+better about it than I was at first, don't you think?"
+
+"I think you are splendid and I also think you have the hardest job of
+all to do: working all the time and never making any money."
+
+The next morning Douglas held a whispered conversation with Nan before
+they got off to their respective schools.
+
+"See what it costs but don't let Helen know. She will be eighteen
+tomorrow, and if it isn't worth a million, I am going to take some of my
+last month's salary and get it for her."
+
+When Nan, who was not much of a shopper, approached the great windows of
+Richmond's leading department store, what was her joy to see the very
+gown that Douglas had described to her displayed on Broad Street and
+marked down to a sum in the reach of a district school teacher.
+
+"It looks so like Helen, somehow, that I can almost see her wearing it
+in place of the wax dummy," exclaimed Nan.
+
+"Must I charge it, Miss Carter?" asked the pleasant saleswoman as she
+took the precious dress out of the show-window.
+
+"Please, Miss Luly, somehow I'd rather not charge it, but I haven't the
+money today. Couldn't you fix it up somehow so I could take it with me
+and bring you the money tomorrow? We don't charge any more, but if I
+don't buy it right now I'm so afraid somebody else might get it."
+
+The smiling saleswoman, who had been waiting on the Carters ever since
+the pretty Annette Sevier came a bride to Richmond, held a conference
+with the head of the firm on how this could be managed.
+
+"Miss Nan Carter is very anxious not to charge, but can't pay until
+tomorrow."
+
+"Ummm! A little irregular! What Carter is it?"
+
+"Mr. Robert Carter's daughter!"
+
+"Let her have it and anything else she wants on any terms she wishes.
+Robert Carter's name on a firm's books is the same as money in the bank.
+I have wondered why his account has been withdrawn from our store," and
+the head of the firm immediately dictated a letter to his former patron,
+requesting in polite terms that he should run up as big a bill as he
+wished and that he could pay whenever he got ready. So very polite was
+the letter that one almost gathered he need not pay at all.
+
+Mr. Carter laughed aloud when he read the letter, remembering those days
+not yet a year gone by when the bills used to pile in on the first of
+every month and he would feel that they must be paid immediately and the
+only way to do it was redouble his energy and work far into the night.
+
+The flat box with the precious dancing dress was not an easy thing to
+carry on stilts, but the lane was muddy and Nan had to do it somehow.
+With much juggling she got safely over the dangers of the road and
+smuggled it into the house without Helen's seeing it.
+
+"I got it!" Nan whispered to Douglas when she could get her alone.
+
+"But you didn't have the money! I asked you to find out the price
+first," said Douglas, fearing Nan, in her zeal, had overstepped the
+limit in price. "I didn't want anything charged. I am so afraid we might
+get started to doing it again."
+
+"Never! I just kind of borrowed it until tomorrow. You see I struck a
+sale and they couldn't save it for me because there were only a few of
+them. I told them I couldn't charge but would bring the money tomorrow,
+and Miss Luly fixed it up for me, somehow, and told me I could have the
+whole department store on any terms I saw fit to dictate."
+
+Morning dawned on Helen's eighteenth birthday but found her in not very
+jubilant spirits. It isn't much fun to have an eighteenth birthday when
+you have to bounce out of bed and rush into your clothes to see that a
+poor ignorant country servant doesn't make the toast and scramble the
+eggs before she even puts a kettle of water on for coffee. Chloe always
+progressed backwards unless Helen was there to do the head work.
+
+Helen found Chloe had already descended her perilous ladder and had the
+stove hot and the kettle on as a birthday present to her beloved
+mistress. Chloe really adored Helen and did her best to learn and
+remember. The breakfast table was set, too, and Chloe's eyes were
+shining as though she had something to say but wild horses would not
+make her say it.
+
+The sisters came in at the first tap of the bell and her father was in
+his place, too. Helen started to seat herself at her accustomed place,
+but at a shout from Lucy looked before she sat. Her chair was piled high
+with parcels.
+
+"Happy birthday, honey!" said Douglas.
+
+"Happy birthday, daughter!" from Mr. Carter.
+
+"Happy birthday! Happy birthday!" shouted all of them in chorus.
+
+"Why, I didn't know anybody remembered!" cried Helen.
+
+"Not remember your eighteenth birthday! Well, rather!" said Mr. Carter.
+
+Then began the opening of the boxes while Chloe stood in the corner
+grinning for dear life.
+
+A pearl pin from Mrs. Carter, one she had worn when she first met her
+husband, was in the small box on top. An old-fashioned filigree gold
+bracelet was Mr. Carter's gift. It had belonged to his mother, for whom
+Helen was named.
+
+"It will look very lovely on your arm, my dear," he said when Helen
+kissed him in thanks.
+
+Cousin Elizabeth Somerville had sent her ten dollars in gold; Lewis,
+some new gloves; there was a vanity box from Lucy with a saucy message
+about always powdering her nose; a little thread lace collar from Nan,
+made by her own hands; and to balance all was a five-pound box of candy
+from Dr. Wright.
+
+"I had a big marble for you, but it done slipt out'n my pocket," said
+Bobby, and then he had to give a big hug and a kiss, which Helen
+declared was better than even a marble.
+
+"But you haven't opened your big box, the one at the bottom," insisted
+Nan. It had got covered up with papers and Helen had overlooked it.
+"Please hurry up and open it because Lucy and I have to beat it. It will
+be train time before we know it."
+
+As Helen untied the strings and unwrapped the tissue paper that was
+packed around the contents of the big box you could have heard a pin
+drop in that dining-room at Valhalla. She eagerly pulled aside the
+papers and then shook out the glimmering gown.
+
+"Oh, Douglas! Douglas! You shouldn't have done it! It is even prettier
+than I remembered it to be!"
+
+"Mind out, don't splash on it," warned Nan just in time to keep the two
+great tears that welled up into Helen's eyes from spotting the exquisite
+creation.
+
+"My Miss Helen's gwinter look like a angel whin she goes ter de count's
+jamboree," declared Chloe.
+
+"Well, your Miss Douglas is the angel and she's going to have to have a
+new dress with slits in the shoulder-blades to let her wings come
+through," sobbed Helen, laughing at the same time as she held the dress
+up in front of her and danced around the table. She had thought nobody
+remembered her eighteenth birthday and now found nobody had forgotten
+it.
+
+"You shouldn't have afforded it, Douglas. I can't keep it. It would be
+too selfish of me."
+
+"Marked down goods not sent on approval," drawled Nan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+BLACK SOCIALISM
+
+
+Sergeant Somerville and Private Tinsley accepted the invitation to the
+count's ball with alacrity. Their company had been mustered out just in
+the nick of time for them to obtain indefinite leave. It was rumored
+that they were to be taken in again, this time as regulars, but the
+certainty of having no military duties to perform for the time being was
+very pleasant to our two young men.
+
+The Carter girls had taken the count at his word and invited several
+friends from Richmond to stay at Valhalla and attend the ball. Dr.
+Wright was eager to come and with the recklessness of physicians who use
+their cars for business and not for pleasure, he made the trip in his
+automobile. He had a new five-seated car, taking the place of his former
+runabout.
+
+"M. D.'s and R. F. D.'s have to travel whether roads are good or bad,"
+he had declared.
+
+The two young soldiers and Tillie Wingo had the hardihood to risk their
+necks with him, and at the last minute he picked up Skeeter Halsey and
+Frank Maury, who had been invited by Lucy so that she and Mag would not
+have to be wall flowers. Six persons in a five-passenger car insures
+them from much jolting, as there is no room to bounce.
+
+Tillie was in her element with five pairs of masculine ears to chatter
+in. She and Bill were still engaged "in a way," as she expressed it,
+although neither one of them seemed to regard it very seriously. Tillie
+insisted upon making a secret of it as much as she was capable, so that
+in Bill's absence she might not be laid on the shelf.
+
+"The fellows don't think much of an engaged girl," she said frankly,
+"and I have no idea of taking a back seat yet awhile."
+
+The recklessness of the guests in coming over Virginia roads in an
+automobile in the month of February was nothing to the recklessness of
+the Carters in inviting six persons to spend the night with them when
+they possessed but one small guest chamber.
+
+"We can manage somehow," Helen declared, "and, besides, we will be out
+so late dancing there won't be much use in having a place to sleep,
+because we won't have any time to sleep."
+
+"Only think of all of those bedrooms at Grantly with nobody in them!"
+exclaimed Lucy. "Those old ladies might just as well ask some of us up
+there, but they will never think of it, I know."
+
+"If they do, they will disagree about which ones to ask and which rooms
+to put them in, and we will never get the invitation," laughed Helen.
+"Anyhow, they are dear old ladies and I am mighty fond of them." Helen
+often ran up to the great house to ask advice from the Misses Grant
+about household affairs and was ever welcome to the lonely old women.
+
+"They are certainly going to the ball, aren't they?" asked Douglas.
+
+"They wouldn't miss it for worlds. They are having a time just now,
+though, because Tempy has left them. They can't find out what her reason
+is and feel sure she didn't really want to go; now her sister Chloe is
+so near she seemed quite content, but for weeks she has been in a
+peculiar frame of mind and the last few days they have caught her in
+tears again and again. They sent for Dr. Allison, who lives miles and
+miles from here, but Miss Ella and Miss Louise will trust no other
+doctor. He says as far as he can tell she is not ill. Anyhow, she has
+gone home, and today their man-servant departed, also. Of course they
+might draw on the field hands for servants, but they hate to do it
+because they are so very rough. They have had this man-servant for years
+and years, ever since he was a little boy, and they can't account for
+his going, either. He had a face as long as a ham when he left them and
+gave absolutely no excuse except that his maw was sick, and as Miss Ella
+says, 'His mother has been dead for ten years, and she ought to know,
+since she furnished the clothes in which she was buried.' Miss Louise
+said she had only been dead eight, and they were her clothes, but they
+agree that she is dead at least, and can't account for Sam's excuse."
+
+"Poor old ladies, I am sorry for them," said Douglas.
+
+On the day of the ball, there was much furbishing up of finery at
+Valhalla. Mr. Carter's dress suit had to be pressed and his seldom used
+dress studs unearthed. Mrs. Carter forgot all about being an invalid and
+was as busy and happy as possible, trying dresses on her daughters to
+see that their underskirts were exactly the right length and even
+running tucks in with her own helpless little hands.
+
+"It is a good thing I don't have to think about my own outsides," said
+Helen, "as all of my time must be spent in planning for our guests'
+insides. I tell you, six more mouths to fill is going to keep Chloe and
+me hustling."
+
+"It sho' is an' all them dishes ter wash is goin' ter keep me hustlin'
+some mo'," grumbled Chloe. "An' then I gotter go ter the count's an'
+stir my stumps."
+
+"I am sorry, but I am going to give you a nice holiday after it is all
+over," said her young mistress kindly. The count had asked Helen to
+bring Chloe to look after the ladies in the dressing-room.
+
+"I ain't a-mindin' 'bout dishes. I's jes' a-foolin'---- Say, Miss Helen,
+what does potatriotic mean?"
+
+"Patriotic? That means loving your country and being willing to give up
+things for it and help save it. Everybody should be patriotic."
+
+"But s'posin' yer ain't got no country?"
+
+"Why, Chloe, everybody has a country, either the place where you were
+born or the place where you have been living long enough to love and
+feel that it is yours."
+
+"But niggers is been livin' here foreveraneveramen, an' still they ain't
+ter say got no country."
+
+"Why, you have! Don't you think Uncle Sam would look after you and fight
+for you if you needed his help?"
+
+"I ain't got no Uncle Sam, but I hear tell that he wouldn't raise his
+han' ter save a nigger, but yit if'n they's a war that he'll 'spec' the
+niggers ter go git shot up fer him."
+
+"Why, Chloe! How can you say such a thing?"
+
+"I ain't er sayin' it--I's jes' a-sayin' I hears tell."
+
+"Who told it to you?"
+
+"Nobody ain't tol' it ter me. I jes' hearn it."
+
+"Well, it's not true."
+
+"I hearn, too, that they's plenty er money ter go 'roun' in this
+country, but some folks what thinks they's better'n other folks has
+hoarded an' hoarded 'til po' folks can't git they han's on a nickel. An'
+I hearn that they's gonter be distress an' misery, an' wailin' an'
+snatchin' er teeth 'til some strong man arouses an' makes these here
+rich folks gib up they tin. Nobody ain't a-gonter know who dat leader
+will be, he mought be white an' thin agin he mought be black, but he's
+a-gonter be a kinder sabior."
+
+"How is he going to manage?" asked Helen, amused at what sounded like a
+sermon the girl might have heard from the rickety pulpit of the brick
+church.
+
+"I ain't hearn, but I done gib out ter all these niggers that my white
+folks ain't got no tin put away here in this Hogwallow or whatever Miss
+Nan done named it. They keeps their money hot a-spendin' it, I tells 'em
+all."
+
+Helen laughed, and with a final touch at the supper table and a last
+peep at the sally lunn muffins, which were rising as they should, she
+started to go help her mother with the dancing frocks and their
+petticoats that would show discrepancies.
+
+"Say, Miss Helen, is you sho' Miss Ellanlouise is goin' ternight?" asked
+Chloe, following her up the steps.
+
+"Yes, Chloe, I'm sure."
+
+"An', Miss Helen, if'n folks ain't got no country ter love what ought
+they do?"
+
+"Why, love one another, I reckon. Love the people of their own race, and
+try to help them."
+
+"Oughtn't folks ter love they own color better'n any other?"
+
+"Why, certainly!"
+
+"If'n some of yo' folks got into trouble, what would you do?"
+
+"Why, I'd help them out if I could."
+
+"Even if'n they done wrong?"
+
+"Of course! They would still be my own people."
+
+"If they ain't ter say done it but is a-gonter do it, thin what would
+you do?"
+
+"I'd try to stop them."
+
+"Would you tell on 'em?"
+
+"I'd try to stop them first. Who has done wrong or is going to do it,
+Chloe?"
+
+"Nobody ain't done wrong an' I ain't a-never said they is. I ain't said
+a word. This talk was jes' some foolishness I done made up out'n my
+haid. But say, Miss Helen,--I'd kinder like ter stop at Mammy's cabin
+over to Paradise befo' I gits ter de count's. I kin take my foot in my
+han' an' strike through the woods an' beat the hay wagin thar, it goin'
+roun' by the road."
+
+"All right, Chloe!"
+
+Helen rather fancied that Chloe wanted to see her sister, who was
+evidently contemplating some imprudence. She had been threatening to
+marry James Hanks, but her people had shown themselves very much opposed
+to it. Perhaps the girl was on the eve of an elopement which had called
+forth all of the above conversation from her sister. Where did she get
+all of those strange socialistic ideas? Was Lewis Somerville right and
+was the little learning a dangerous thing for these poor colored people?
+Surely she had helped Chloe by the little teaching she had given her.
+The girl was like another creature. She seemed now to have self-respect,
+and Helen felt instinctively that her loyalty to her and her family was
+almost a religion with her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+DRESSING FOR THE BALL
+
+
+"How are Miss Ella and Louise going?" asked Douglas, as she stooped for
+a parting glance in the mirror which the sloping ceiling necessitated
+hanging so low that a girl as tall as Douglas could not see above her
+nose without bending double.
+
+"In their phaeton," answered Helen. "They don't mind driving themselves.
+I asked them. You see with Sam gone they can't get out the big old
+rockaway."
+
+"They must keep along near the hay wagon. Such old ladies should not be
+alone on the road," said Douglas.
+
+"I dare you to tell them that! They have no fear of anything or anybody.
+They say they have lived alone in this county for so many, many years
+that they are sure nobody will ever harm them."
+
+"Well, I am sure nobody ever would," said Nan.
+
+The girls had decided that the only way to take care of so many guests
+was to double up "in layers," as Lucy called it. Bobby was sent over
+into the new house with Lewis and Bill, his old tent mates, for whom Nan
+and Lucy had vacated their room while they came over to the old house
+and brought Tillie Wingo with them.
+
+"Three in a double bed and two in a single bed wouldn't be so bad after
+a ball," Nan had declared.
+
+Dressing for the ball was the more difficult feat, however. The ceiling
+was so low and sloping and Tillie Wingo did take up so much room with
+her fluffy ruffles. The Carter girls were glad to see the voluble
+Tillie. She was such a gay, good-natured person and seemed so pleased to
+be included in this pleasure party. She looked as pretty as a pink in a
+much beruffled painted chiffon; and while they were dressing, she
+obligingly showed Helen the very latest steps in dancing.
+
+Helen was charming in her birthday present dress. Nan declared she
+looked like the princess in the fairy tale with the dress like the
+moonlight.
+
+"With all my finery, I don't look nearly so well as you do, Douglas,"
+Helen declared.
+
+Indeed Douglas was beautiful. She had on the graduating dress, the price
+of which had caused her so much concern the spring before. With careful
+ripping out of sleeves and snipping down of neck, Mrs. Carter had
+converted it into an evening dress with the help of a wonderful lace
+fichu, something left over from her own former splendor.
+
+The sight of her eldest daughter all dressed in the ball gown brought
+tears of regret to poor Mrs. Carter's eyes.
+
+"What a débutante you would have made!" she sighed. "You have a queenly
+something about you that is quite rare in a débutante and might have
+made the hit of the season."
+
+"Oh, Mumsy, I'm a much better district school teacher!" and Douglas
+blushed with pleasure at her mother's rare praise.
+
+The girl had seen a subtle difference in her mother's manner to her ever
+since she had felt it her duty to take a stand about their affairs. Mrs.
+Carter was ever gentle, ever courteous, but Douglas knew that she looked
+upon her no longer as her daughter somehow,--rather as a kind of
+taskmistress that Fate had set over her.
+
+The young men were gathered in the living-room waiting for the girls and
+when they burst upon them in all the glory of ball gowns they quite
+dazzled them.
+
+"Douglas!" gasped Lewis in an ill-concealed whisper, "you somehow make
+me think of an Easter lily."
+
+"Well, I don't feel like one a bit. I can't fancy an Easter lily's
+dancing, and I mean to dance every dance I get a chance and all the
+others, too."
+
+"I reckon I can promise you that," grinned her cousin.
+
+Bill Tinsley made no ado of taking the pretty Tillie in his arms and
+opening the ball with a whistled fox trot.
+
+"I'm going to get the first dance with you, and to make sure I'll just
+take it now, please."
+
+"Don't you like my dress?" asked Helen, twirling around on her toe
+before Dr. Wright, whose eyes plainly showed that he not only liked the
+dress but what was in the dress rather more than was good for the peace
+of mind of a rising young nerve specialist.
+
+"Lovely!" he exclaimed, not looking at the dress at all, but at the
+charming face above the dress.
+
+"Douglas gave it to me for a birthday present,--it was her extravagance,
+not mine. I think she is about the sweetest thing in all the world. The
+only thing that worries me is mashing it all up in the Suttons' hay
+wagon."
+
+"Are the roads so very bad? Why not go in my car?"
+
+"They are pretty bad, but no worse than the road from Richmond. It
+certainly is strange how that road changes. It was fine when the agent
+brought us out here to see the place. Wasn't it?"
+
+"It was, but I don't think it is such a very bad road now. It may be
+because I like to travel on it. But come on and go with me in my car. If
+you will trust your dress and neck to me."
+
+"I will, since you put my dress first! Somehow that makes me feel you
+will be careful of it and respect it."
+
+A rattle of wheels and Billy Sutton came driving up in a great hay wagon
+filled with nice, clean straw, and close on his heels were Mr. and Mrs.
+Sutton in their carriage, which was to take Mr. and Mrs. Carter sedately
+to the ball.
+
+"Helen and I are going in my car. Does anyone want to occupy the back
+seat?" asked George Wright, hoping he would be paid for his politeness
+by a refusal.
+
+"No indeed, I adore a hay wagon! It's so nice and informal," cried
+Tillie.
+
+Douglas did want to go, but felt perhaps it was up to her to chaperone
+the youngsters in the hay wagon, so for once Dr. Wright thought he was
+to get Helen for a few moments to himself.
+
+"Chloe must go with us," declared Helen. "She wants to stop in Paradise
+to see her mother."
+
+Dr. Wright cracked a grim joke to himself which concerned Chloe and the
+antipodes of Paradise, but he smothered his feelings and opened the door
+for the delighted colored girl, who had never been in an automobile
+before.
+
+What a gay crowd they were in that hay wagon! Billy Sutton had contrived
+to get Nan on the front seat with him, where she was enthroned high
+above the others, looking down on the horses' backs as they strained and
+pulled the great wagon through the half-frozen mud. Billy had some
+friends out from town who immediately attached themselves to Tillie
+Wingo, who was to beaux just as a honey-pot to bees. They stopped and
+picked up two families of young folks on the way to the count's, and by
+the time they got them all in, the wagon was quite full.
+
+"I am glad Helen didn't trust her new dress to this," Douglas whispered
+to Lewis.
+
+"Well, I am glad you didn't have on such fine clothes and came this
+way," he whispered back. "Wright is too reckless for me on these country
+roads. Not that I am afraid myself, but I certainly should hate to see
+you turned over."
+
+"Whar Miss Ellanlouise?" asked Chloe, when she could get her breath
+after the first mad plunge into the delights of motoring.
+
+"Oh, there! How selfish of me! I should have thought of it and asked
+them to go with us," said Helen.
+
+"We can go back for them," suggested the doctor, who had begun to feel
+that he never would have a chance to see Helen alone.
+
+"Oh, no, we needn't mind. They are coming in their phaeton, and no doubt
+have started long before this. They are so good to me, I should have
+thought of them."
+
+Chloe was put out at Paradise, assuring her mistress she would come up
+through the woods in a few moments and no doubt be at her post in the
+dressing-room before the guests should arrive.
+
+Paradise was very dark and lonesome. The few scattered cabins showed
+not a gleam. There was a dim light trickling from the windows of the
+club, but as they approached that rickety building, that disappeared.
+Helen saw some dark forms up close to the wall when she looked back
+after passing that place of entertainment.
+
+"I reckon they are going to initiate someone tonight," she thought.
+
+"Chloe had such a strange talk with me today," she told her companion
+and then repeated the conversation she had had with the colored girl. "I
+can't quite understand her."
+
+"Perhaps this count is instilling some kind of silly socialistic notions
+in their heads," suggested the doctor, who held the same opinion Lewis
+Somerville did of the gentleman who was to be their host for the
+evening. Indeed, he so cordially mistrusted him that only the fact he
+was to be with Helen had reconciled him to spending an evening under his
+roof.
+
+"Oh, no, I can hardly think that, and besides, the count does not do the
+teaching. That is done by a Mr. Herz, his secretary. He is an American,
+born in Cincinnati. He seems to be very intelligent and certainly has
+taken a shine to Douglas. I don't know just what she thinks of him, but
+she lets him walk home from school with her every now and then."
+
+"I don't like the name much!"
+
+"Well, the poor man can't help his name. You speak as though we were
+already at war with Germany. I am trying to preserve our neutrality
+until war is declared."
+
+"My neutrality has been nothing but a farce since I have realized that
+Germany is at war with us."
+
+"You sound just like Douglas and Father. Will you go to war if it
+comes?"
+
+"Why, of course! Would you have me do otherwise?"
+
+"I--I--don't know," and Helen wished she had not asked the question that
+had called forth this query. This night was to be one of pleasure,
+feasting and dancing. War had no place in her thoughts when she had on
+her new dress and the music was coming from Richmond.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE BALL
+
+
+"Music and lights put me all in a flutter!" exclaimed Helen as they
+approached the broad and hospitable mansion.
+
+Already there were several buggies and carriages in the gravelled
+driveway. The guests were arriving early, as sensible country people
+should. Let the city folks wait until far in the night to begin their
+revels, but those living in the country as a rule feel that balls should
+start early and break up early.
+
+"Do you care so much for parties?"
+
+"I think I must. I have not been to very many balls, because you see I
+am not out in society yet. I reckon I'll never make my début now," and
+Helen gave a little sigh.
+
+"Does it make so very much difference to you?"
+
+"Well, not so much as it would have a year ago. I used to feel that
+making one's début was a goal that was of the utmost importance, but
+somehow now I do feel that there are things a little bit more worth
+while."
+
+"What for instance?"
+
+"Getting Father well, and--and----"
+
+"And what?"
+
+"You might think I am silly if I tell you,--silly to talk about it."
+
+"I promise to think you are you no matter what else it is, and you
+are--well, never mind what you are."
+
+"Well, somehow I have begun to feel that helping people to be gay is
+important, like cheering up Miss Ella and Miss Louise. They have such
+stupid times. I really believe they quarrel just to make life a little
+gayer. I go to see them every day and it makes me feel good all over to
+know how much they like to have me come."
+
+"And you were afraid I'd think that was silly?" asked George Wright as
+he halted his car down under a great willow oak, well away from the
+other vehicles. How he wished they were to stay out under that tree all
+evening! Music and dancing were nothing to him compared to the pleasure
+he obtained from talking to this girl.
+
+"Let's sit here until the others come," he suggested.
+
+"And waste all that good music!"
+
+Dr. Wright began to envy the Misses Grant whom Helen wanted to make
+happy.
+
+"Of course not! I forgot how seldom you have a chance to dance."
+
+Weston was wonderfully beautiful. The electric lights may have been an
+anomaly, but they certainly helped to make the old house show what it
+was capable of. The dead and gone colonials who had built the place
+had been forced either to have their balls by daylight or to content
+themselves with flickering candles, which no doubt dropped wax or even
+tallow on the handsome gowns of the beauties and belles. The broad hall
+with the great rooms on each side seemed to be made for dancing. The
+floor was polished to a dangerous point for the unwary, but the unwary
+had no business on a ballroom floor.
+
+The count seemed in his element as he received his guests, but Herz
+looked thoroughly out of place and ill at ease.
+
+"Ah, Miss Helen! I am so glad to welcome you--and Dr. Wright--it is
+indeed kind of you to come! I am depending upon you, Miss Helen, to
+help me entertain these people who have come so promptly. They neither
+dance nor speak. Herz is about as much use to me on this occasion as a
+porcupine would be. Only look around the room at my guests!"
+
+They did indeed look most forlorn. One old farmer was almost asleep
+while his wife sat bolt upright by his side with a long sad face and a
+deep regret in her eyes. No doubt, she was regretting the comfortable
+grey wrapper she had discarded for the stiff, best, green silk, and
+the broad easy slippers that had been replaced by the creaking shoes.
+Several girls with shining eyes and alert expressions were evidently
+wondering what ailed the young men who stood against the wall as though
+it might fall down if they budged an inch.
+
+"Why are they wasting all this good music?" demanded Helen.
+
+"As you say in America: 'Seek me!'" laughed the host.
+
+"Search me, you mean."
+
+"Ah, but is it not almost the same? What do you say, Dr. Wright?"
+
+"Well, I'd rather someone would seek me than search me."
+
+"So! And now, Miss Helen, if you will discard your wraps and return
+quickly and help me I shall be most grateful. If these poor people do
+not get started they will go to sleep."
+
+Helen flew up to the dressing-room which, sure enough, Chloe had reached
+before her. The girl was huddled down in a corner of the room looking
+the picture of woe.
+
+"Did you see Tempy?" asked Helen, taking for granted that Chloe had been
+speaking of her sister when she had asked about one's duty to one's own
+people.
+
+"No'm!"
+
+"Wasn't she at your mother's?"
+
+"I don't know, 'm!"
+
+"Was your mother there?"
+
+"Yassum!"
+
+There was never any use in trying to make Chloe talk when she had
+decided not to, so Helen threw off her wraps and with a peep in the
+mirror where one could see from top to toe, she hastened to the aid of
+Count de Lestis.
+
+"Mother will be along soon and she can do wonders with people who are
+bashful," declared Helen, "but I'll try my hand at it until she comes.
+They must dance, then they will thaw out."
+
+"Certainly, and will you dance with me to show them how?"
+
+Helen forgot all about the fact that she had come with Dr. Wright and he
+might reasonably expect to claim the first dance.
+
+"Yes, but you must introduce me to all these people and I'll ask some of
+the girls to dance while you go get the young men to come fall in the
+breach."
+
+The shiny-eyed girls were willing enough and the young men seemed to
+think if the count didn't mind his walls falling down, far be it from
+them to hold them up, so in a few moments the sad crowd were in a gale
+of good humor. The old farmer waked up and his wife looked as though she
+might try her new creaky shoes on the waxed floor if anyone would only
+ask her.
+
+Dr. Wright looked on rather grimly as Helen was whisked from under his
+very nose. He might have stood it better if the count had not been such
+a perfect dancer and so very handsome. He had a way of whispering to his
+partner during the dance that was also a sore trial to the young
+physician.
+
+"What could he be saying to Helen to make her dimple and blush?"
+
+The arrival of the carriage containing Mrs. Sutton and Mrs. Carter with
+their rather bored husbands was a welcome interruption to the poor young
+man. Soon came the lumbering hay wagon with its giggling, chattering
+load, and then Helen was at liberty to dance with him, since the count
+perforce must again play the gracious host.
+
+"Isn't it perfect?" she exclaimed. "The floor, the music, and
+everything!"
+
+"Not quite so perfect now as when you had the count for a partner, I am
+afraid," he muttered, bending over to make her hear. He was too tall to
+converse while dancing with Helen. He had never regretted his inches
+before.
+
+"Nonsense! You dance just as well as he does, and he talks so much while
+he is dancing. I hate to dance and talk, too,--just dancing is enough
+for me."
+
+"Me, too, then!" and once more he felt the satisfaction that a man who
+measures over six feet can't help feeling.
+
+Helen was right. Mrs. Carter was a born entertainer and she had hardly
+taken the social reins in her hands before the ball was running
+smoothly. Even Bobby found a partner, a funny little girl with such
+bushy hair that anyone could tell at a glance it had been put up in
+curl papers for several days. She looked like a pink hollyhock in her
+starched book-muslin that stood out like a paper lamp shade. Her round
+black eyes seemed very lovely to the gallant Bobby, who took her into
+the back hall where they turned round and round in imitation of the
+dance, and when dancing palled on them they showed each other how to
+make rabbits out of their handkerchiefs.
+
+"This is the kind of party I like," said the wholesome Mrs. Sutton.
+"Every Jill has her Jack and there are some Jacks to spare. Deliver me
+from parties where girls must sit against the wall and wait for partners
+to be released."
+
+"When you get the vote you can do the asking, and then parties where the
+females predominate will be more popular," teased her husband.
+
+"Nonsense! We can still do the asking if we care to. Come on and dance
+with me, sir!" and Mr. Sutton delightedly complied.
+
+Mrs. Carter did not have to spend all the evening making other people
+have a good time. She was asked to dance by the count and her pretty
+little figure and graceful bearing attracted other partners, and she
+was soon tripping the light fantastic toe as untiringly as any of her
+daughters. Tillie Wingo herself did not get broken in on oftener.
+
+Herz stood in corners, looking like one of the men out of Noah's ark,
+Nan declared, so stiff and wooden.
+
+"I don't know which one he resembles most, Shem, Ham, or Japheth," she
+whispered to Billy Sutton, "but I wonder if you licked him if the paint
+would come off."
+
+"I don't know, but I'd like to try. I can't abide that Dutchman. I
+believe he thinks he is superior to all of us, even his precious count.
+Jehoshaphat! I believe he is asking Douglas to dance."
+
+So he was. The secretary was stalking across the room, determination on
+his noble brow and his full mouth drawn together in a tight red line. He
+stopped in front of Douglas and placing one hand on his breast and the
+other one on his waist line in the back, he shut up like a jack-knife.
+
+Douglas looked a little astonished, not knowing exactly what the young
+man wanted, and then the memory of the early days at dancing school came
+to her when the little boys were forced to bow to the little girls
+before they danced with them.
+
+"Certainly," she said, excusing herself from Lewis, who looked a little
+sullen, having expected to claim this particular waltz with his cousin,
+but who had neglected to do so, being too intent on gazing at her pretty
+flushed face.
+
+Herz clasped her around the waist and began to twirl in a most
+astonishing manner. She could hardly keep her footing and very early
+lost her breath. Skilful guiding was not necessary, although when they
+arose to dance the floor was well filled with other couples, but these,
+knowing full well that discretion was the better part of valor, gave the
+spinning pair the right of way. The man never lost his gravity or
+dignity, but his mouth broke from the hard red line to its usual
+full-lipped curve. Douglas felt as though that dance would never end.
+His strong arm held her like an iron ring as round and round they went.
+
+    "'Hi! Lee! Hi! Low!
+    Hi! Lee! Hi! Low!
+    I jus' come over,
+    I jus' come over--
+    Hi! Lee! Hi! Low!
+    Hi! Lee! Hi! Low!
+    I jus' come over the sea,'"
+
+sang Billy Sutton, as he and Nan watched the gyrations of their host's
+secretary. "Did you ever see such a proof of foreign blood in any man
+who pretends to be American born?"
+
+"Why, Billy, he is American born. The count says he was born and raised
+in Cincinnati."
+
+"Yes, and the count says he himself was born and raised in Hungary, but
+I bet you anything they may have been born where they say they were but
+they were raised in Berlin. Look at that fellow and tell me if he
+doesn't dance like Old Heidelberg."
+
+"The count doesn't, anyhow. I never saw such divine dancing as the
+count's."
+
+As though he had heard her, the handsome smiling de Lestis came to claim
+her for the rest of the dance.
+
+"Aren't these foreigners the limit?" said the boy, seeking the
+disconsolate Lewis. "I know I oughtn't to say anything about a fellow
+when I am in his house, but somehow that count gets my goat."
+
+"Mine, too! Who is this Herz?"
+
+"Oh, he is a kind of lady's maid or secretary or something for his nibs.
+Says he is an American, but I have my doubts. I don't see how Miss
+Douglas Carter can stand for him, but she lets him walk home from school
+with her any time, so I hear," announced Billy, absolutely unconscious
+of the fact he was retailing very unwelcome news to his companion.
+
+"Humph!" was all Lewis could say, but that monosyllable had a world of
+meaning in it. And so although the music was gay and the lights were
+bright and the laughter was merry in that ballroom, there were several
+sore hearts, and the little green-eyed monster was waltzing or fox
+trotting or one stepping every dance.
+
+"I wonder why Miss Ella and Louise don't get here," Helen said to Dr.
+Wright, who had at last persuaded her to sit out one dance with him.
+"They have had plenty of time even with their slow old horse."
+
+They had found a sofa in the back hall behind a clump of palms. There
+were many plants artistically grouped by the florist from town, who had
+tastefully decorated the whole mansion.
+
+"The telephone has been ringing a great deal since we came. Could they
+be trying to get the count? I always feel like jumping when the 'phone
+rings, feeling that it must be for me."
+
+"Oh, no! The ring for Weston is two long and three short rings. These
+country 'phones are hard to learn, but I often answer the one at Grantly
+for my old friends."
+
+"Listen, there goes the bell again! Goodness! I believe one of these
+'phones that rings everybody's number would send me crazy."
+
+"They say you get used to them. That is four shorts and a long. That's
+for Dr. Allison, who lives miles and miles from here. Don't you remember
+Page Allison, that lovely girl who came to Greendale with the Tucker
+twins? It is her father."
+
+"Of course I do, and I know Dr. Allison, too! A delightful gentleman!"
+
+"I believe I'll call up Miss Ella and see what is the matter,--why they
+don't come on."
+
+George Wright sighed. There always seemed to be something to keep Helen
+from talking to him tête-à-tête. Still, he felt glad to think that Helen
+was so fond of these old ladies and so thoughtful of them.
+
+The telephone was under the stairway, quite near their retired nook.
+Helen rang the number for Grantly and there was a quick response.
+
+"Hello!" came in Miss Louise's contralto notes.
+
+"Miss Louise, this is Helen Carter! Why haven't you started yet? Don't
+you know the count can't give a ball without you and Miss Ella?"
+
+"Oh, my dear, my sister is ill, very ill,--fainted just as we were
+getting ready to leave. You see she would make that cake, that angel's
+food, although I told her I was going to make a fruit cake, but you
+know Ella---- Oh, but how can I rattle along this way? I have been
+trying so hard to get Dr. Allison and he doesn't answer."
+
+"Wait a minute, Miss Louise," and Helen put her hand over the receiver
+and turned to Dr. Wright.
+
+"Dr. Wright, will you take me to Grantly? Miss Ella has had a fainting
+fit--a stroke, I am afraid it is."
+
+"Take you! My dear, I'll take you anywhere you want to go."
+
+"Miss Louise, Dr. Wright is going to bring me to Grantly in his
+automobile immediately. Don't worry; we will be there soon."
+
+She rang off quickly and flew upstairs for her wraps. Chloe was not in
+the dressing-room, but she quickly unearthed her cape and hood from the
+bed where the many shawls and cloaks had been piled. On the way out she
+whispered to Nan where she was going, but told her not to tell the
+others, as she did not want to break up the ball or to cast a shadow
+on the happiness of the dancers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+ANGEL'S FOOD
+
+
+Not a sound or glimmer of light in Paradise as they speeded silently
+through the settlement! The club, too, was deserted.
+
+"I think you are splendid to be willing to give up this ball to go to
+the aid of these old ladies," said Dr. Wright, drawing the rug more
+closely around Helen, as the air was quite nipping.
+
+"Why, the idea of my not doing it! You must think I'm nothing but a
+heartless butterfly."
+
+"I think you are anything but one. You love dancing, though, so much.
+I should have come alone. Somehow I couldn't make up my mind to forego
+the ride alone with you. Isn't it a beautiful night?"
+
+The stars were shining brightly but the lazy moon had not yet gotten up.
+
+"If we find the poor old lady not too ill, I'll take you back to the
+dance after we have made her comfortable. There will be a moon to light
+our way later on."
+
+"That will be fine! Maybe they won't even miss us. But somehow I have a
+feeling that Miss Ella is very ill."
+
+"Five minutes more will decide the question. Hasn't my new car eaten up
+distance, though? Just think, in old days what a time sick persons had
+to wait for a physician without telephones and without cars!"
+
+"Dr. Allison still drives a fast horse to a light buggy. Page says he
+will none of horseless carriages. I believe it is only recently that he
+has submitted to a telephone."
+
+"It is a good thing his medical theories have not kept pace with his
+means of locomotion, or he would be a back number sure."
+
+Valhalla was very quiet, peacefully sleeping under the stars. What a
+haven of refuge it had been to the Carters! Helen looked lovingly at the
+picturesque roof lines as the car glided rapidly past.
+
+"Do you know, I think that must be the most restful place in all the
+world? I have grown so attached to the little tumbledown house, leaks
+and cracks, smoking stove and all."
+
+"Hasn't it been awfully hard on you?"
+
+"Not any harder on me than on the others!"
+
+"I can't tell you what I think of all of you Carter girls for the way
+you have grappled with the winter in the country. I think you have had
+the hot end of it, too."
+
+There flashed through Helen's mind a picture of the first time she saw
+the young doctor, in the library of their pretty home in Richmond. There
+had been no approval in his cold glance then, nothing but censure and
+severity. She had deserved it all. Did she deserve the praise he gave
+her now?
+
+"The hot end is better than the cold end during the winter months," she
+laughed. "At least I can stay snugly in the kitchen and not have to go
+out in all weathers like poor Douglas and the other girls."
+
+Miss Louise met them at the door, tears rolling down her fat cheeks.
+She still was dressed in her stiff black silk but had tied on a great
+gingham apron over her best dress.
+
+"How good of you to come to us!" was all she could sob out.
+
+"You should have sent for us immediately," said Helen, putting her arms
+around the trembling old woman.
+
+"Ella always wants Dr. Allison, and I hated so to break up the pleasure
+of the young people."
+
+"Where is your sister?" asked Dr. Wright, taking off his gloves and
+great coat, and extracting a small leather case from its pocket.
+
+"I got her to bed after she came to."
+
+"She is conscious then?"
+
+"Yes, but very low, very low. She has been so docile I am afraid she is
+going to die," and the poor lady began to weep anew.
+
+"Let me go in with the doctor," insisted Helen. "I can do what is
+necessary and you might scare Miss Ella. She mustn't be made to think
+she is so ill."
+
+The tall form of Miss Ella was stretched on the great four-posted bed,
+and so still was it that for a moment Helen was afraid to go near.
+
+"She might be dead! She might be dead!" her heart cried out, but she
+shut her mouth very tight and advanced bravely up to the bedside.
+
+"Miss Ella, Dr. Wright has come to see you. Dr. Allison will be here
+later on perhaps."
+
+"I'll be better in a few moments. I must have fainted," she said weakly.
+"I ought not to have tried the angel food cake. It is so tedious. Louise
+told me not to, but I was very headstrong."
+
+Helen looked up apprehensively at the doctor, who was feeling the
+patient's pulse. It did seem rather ominous for Miss Ella to be so
+humble and to confess that Louise's judgment was of any importance.
+
+"What did you eat for dinner?" asked the doctor.
+
+"I--I--don't remember."
+
+"Think!"
+
+"I reckon I ate some bread."
+
+"Nothing else?"
+
+"I can't remember."
+
+At a nod from the doctor Helen went out to seek this information from
+Miss Louise, whom she found huddled up on the hall sofa.
+
+"Eat for dinner! I am sure I don't know. She wouldn't eat when I did and
+I do believe she didn't eat anything."
+
+"How about supper?"
+
+"Oh, we neither one of us ate any supper. We felt it would be
+discourteous to the count after all the trouble and expense he must
+have gone to, with caterers from Richmond and all."
+
+Helen flew back to the bedside of Miss Ella.
+
+"She ate no dinner that Miss Louise can remember and neither one of them
+ate any supper," she cried.
+
+"Well, of course she fainted then. Can you take the matter in hand and
+get some toast and tea for both of them? Miss Louise will be toppling
+over next."
+
+Helen was intimate enough with the old sisters to know just where they
+kept everything and in short order she had a tray ready for poor
+half-starved Miss Ella.
+
+"It was not a stroke at all," Dr. Wright assured the anxious sister.
+"Nothing but hunger."
+
+"I told her to eat," and Miss Louise looked venomously at the invalid.
+
+"I came to get my dinner and you had taken all the breast of the
+chicken. I wasn't going to eat your leavings," declared Miss Ella, color
+coming back into her wan cheeks and the fire of battle to her faded
+eyes. Helen laughed happily. The sisters were quarreling again and
+everything was assuming a more normal aspect.
+
+"Now both of you ladies must get to bed," insisted the doctor, after
+Miss Louise had been persuaded to eat some of Helen's good toast.
+
+"I think you have had ball enough for tonight." He looked at his watch.
+"I will take you back to Weston," he whispered to Helen.
+
+Helen would not go until both of her old friends were tucked peacefully
+in their great bed and then, kissing them good-night, she stole quietly
+from the room. She was greatly relieved that things had turned out so
+well and delighted that she was to be taken back to the ball.
+
+"It's pretty nice to do your duty and still have a good time," she said
+to herself.
+
+Dr. Wright was waiting in the hall for her. He silently bundled her up
+in her cape and hood and together they stepped on the gallery.
+
+The lazy moon was up now and outshining the faithful stars. The great
+box bushes and thick hedge cast deep shadows across the lawn. The two
+stood for a moment in silence, drinking in the beauty of the scene.
+
+"We can't lock the front door," said Dr. Wright finally. "I see it has
+an old-fashioned great brass key and the only way to lock it is to
+fasten the old ladies in the house."
+
+"Why, nothing will ever hurt those dear old folks," laughed Helen.
+"There are as safe as can be. They tell me they often go to bed without
+locking doors. They usually have a quarrel about whether the front door
+has been locked or not, and get so excited they both forget to do it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A LITTLE LEARNING
+
+
+"Listen! What is that?"
+
+A low rumble of voices was heard, coming from the rear of Grantly.
+
+"Could it be the dancers coming home?" suggested Helen.
+
+"No, not from that direction!"
+
+The rumble increased to a roar, low but continuous. Evidently a great
+many persons were talking or muttering and they were getting closer and
+closer.
+
+"Let's have a light, so we kin see!" said a voice louder and clearer
+than the rest, and then there was a guffaw from many throats.
+
+"A lot of darkies!" gasped Helen. "What can they be doing here?"
+
+"You go inside and I'll see," commanded the young man.
+
+"I'll do no such thing! I'll go with you and see. If I go in the house
+again I'll wake Miss Ella and Miss Louise up, and you said yourself that
+it was most important for them to have a night of unbroken rest."
+
+"Helen, I insist!"
+
+"But I'm not going to be sent back in the house while you go get shot up
+or something, so there!"
+
+"Shot up! The idea! It is nothing but some late revelers going home.
+Perhaps the darkies have been having a ball somewhere, too."
+
+"Perhaps, but they have no business coming through Grantly."
+
+There was a hoarse shout from the rear and suddenly a light shot up into
+the sky.
+
+"The straw stack! They are burning the straw stack!" cried Helen.
+
+George Wright quietly opened the great front door and picking Helen up
+in his arms, carried her into the hall. He put her down and hastily
+closed the door. Helen heard the great brass key turn in the lock.
+
+It was very dark in the hall. She groped her way along the wall. It was
+all she could do to keep from screaming, but remembering her two old
+friends, now no doubt peacefully snoozing, she held herself in check.
+Suddenly she bumped square into the telephone.
+
+"I'll give a hurry call for the whole neighborhood," she cried, and no
+sooner thought than done. It was said afterwards that no such ringing of
+a 'phone had ever been heard before in the county.
+
+"_Grantly on fire and a great crowd of negro brutes in the yard!_" was
+the message that was sent abroad.
+
+The two old ladies slept peacefully on. Helen could hear the deep
+stertorous snore, Miss Louise's specialty, and the high steam-whistle
+pipe that Miss Ella was given to.
+
+"I can't stand this!" cried the girl. "They may be killing him this
+minute; and he expects me to stay shut up in this house while he gets
+shot to death!"
+
+She felt her way back to the kitchen where she could see well enough,
+thanks to the fire that the desperadoes had kindled. She cautiously
+unlocked the door and stepped out on the back porch.
+
+The negroes were dancing around the burning stack, led by a tall
+gangling man whom Helen recognized as Tempy's slue-footed admirer, James
+Hanks. Some of them seemed to be rather the worse for drink, and all of
+them were wild-eyed and excited-looking.
+
+"Come on, gent'men!" cried the leader. "Let's git our loot while we's
+got light a-plenty. The ol' tabbies is safe at the count's ball, safe
+an' stuffin'."
+
+There was a shout of laughter at this witticism. Helen was trembling
+with fright, but not fright for herself. The dear old ladies were
+uppermost in her mind, and the doctor! Her doctor! Where was he? Would
+he tackle all of those crazy, half-drunk brutes single-handed and not
+even armed?
+
+A sudden thought came to her. She slipped back into the kitchen.
+Remembering the box tacked to the wall, just over the kerosene stove
+where the matches were kept, she felt along the wall until her hand
+touched it. Then armed with these matches she crept back through the
+house to the great parlor where the trophies of the dead and gone
+great-uncle, the traveler in the Orient, were. She cautiously struck a
+match, thankful that the parlor was on the other side of the house from
+the fire, and seized at random what old arms she could lay her hands on:
+a great sword, that Richard the Lion-Hearted might have wielded, an
+Arabian scimiter and a light, curiously wrought shield. The sword was
+heavy but she managed to stagger along the hall with her load.
+
+"Now remember, friends an' citizens!" James Hanks was saying as he
+harangued the crowd. "This here prop'ty by rights b'longs to us. Ain't
+we an' our fo'bars done worked this here lan' from time in memoriam?
+Ain't we tilled the sile an' hoed the craps fur these ol' tabbies an'
+what is we got to show fur it? Nothin'! Nothin', I say! All we is
+a-doin' on this sacred night is takin' what is ourn. 'Tain't meet nor
+right fur two ol' women to hab control of all these fair lands, livin'
+in luxry, wallowin' in honey an' rollin' in butter, while we colored
+ladies an' gent'men is fo'ced to habit pig stys an' thankful to git
+sorghum an' drippin's. Don't none of you go into this here undertakin'
+'thout you is satisfied you is actin' up to principles. All what
+considers it they bounden duty to git back what is by rights theirn,
+jes' step forward."
+
+Helen counted fifteen men as they reeled forward.
+
+Where was Dr. Wright? Was he hearing the speech that the perfidious
+James was making? And the old ladies--were they still sleeping? The back
+porch was littered up with various barrels and boxes, and behind these
+Helen crouched. Of course she realized that the darkies thought that
+Grantly was empty and that they intended to break in and take what
+treasures they could find. Would they be scared off when they found
+someone was in the house, or would they feel that they had gone too
+far to retreat in their infamous undertaking? Whatever was to be the
+outcome, she must find the doctor and help him, die by his side if
+necessary.
+
+What an ending to the ball, the ball where she had danced so gaily and
+happily! Had they missed them yet? She had not been able to tell what
+'phones had answered her hurry call. She had only known that several
+persons got on the line and that her message had reached some ears, but
+whose she could not say.
+
+The mob had started towards the front.
+
+"Yes, we'll go in the front way, now an' ever after," growled the
+leader. "Only las' week that ol' skinny Ella done driv me to the back
+do'. I come up the front way jes' to tes' her an' she sent me roun' to
+the back jes' lak some dog. Whin we gits through, I reckon she'll be
+glad enough if she's got a back do' to go in."
+
+Helen waited to hear no more but streaked around the opposite side of
+the house, bearing her ancient weapons. Peeping through the railing of
+the great gallery in front she espied George Wright calmly standing in
+the doorway which was flooded with moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+IN THE MEANTIME
+
+
+Nan and Billy Sutton were the only persons at Weston who knew that Helen
+and Dr. Wright had left the house, and they, according to instructions,
+had kept mum.
+
+"I hate for Helen to miss one teensy bit of the ball," Nan said. "She
+does so adore dancing."
+
+"I should think she would. Anybody who can dance like that ought to like
+it. I think she is a ripper to go to those old grouches."
+
+"Now, Billy, that is no way to talk! Those old ladies are really lovely.
+You would have gone to them in a minute."
+
+"Well, maybe! But I wouldn't have enjoyed leaving this to go."
+
+"Perhaps they will be able to come back. Miss Louise is an awful
+alarmist."
+
+Supper was served, the waiters from Richmond taking affairs into their
+own hands, so that the untrained country servants at Weston were pushed
+into the background.
+
+"Miss Helen done said I's got quite a el'gant air in serving," grumbled
+Chloe, when she was not allowed to bear in the trays of dainties to the
+hungry guests. "I reckon these here town niggers thinks they is the king
+bees. I don't care what they says, I's gonter git a sicond hep ter my
+Miss Helen."
+
+The girl filled a tray with salad, croquettes, sandwiches and what not
+and made her way into the parlors. She peered around for her young
+mistress. The rooms were well filled with the country guests and many
+couples were having their supper in the nooks made by the skilful
+decorators of clumps of palms and evergreens. Chloe peeped behind them
+all and not finding her Miss Helen she went to Douglas.
+
+"Whar Miss Helen?"
+
+"Why, I don't know, Chloe! What do you want?"
+
+"I want my Miss Helen ter git her fill er victuals she ain't had ter
+mess in."
+
+"I haven't seen her," laughed Douglas. "Ask Miss Nan."
+
+"Miss Nan, whar Miss Helen?"
+
+"Why, Chloe, she has gone away but may be back later."
+
+"Whar she gone?"
+
+"She told me not to tell, because she doesn't want to disturb the
+others, but she has gone with Dr. Wright to see Miss Ella Grant, who is
+ill."
+
+"Miss Ellanlouise is here to the ball, ain't they?"
+
+"No, they didn't come."
+
+"Miss Helen ain't gone ter Grantly, is she?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+Then poor Chloe dropped her tray, laden with goodies for her beloved
+mistress, and a mixture of salad and croquettes and sandwiches rolled
+over the floor.
+
+"My Gawd! My Gawd!" shrieked the girl. "Whar the count? Whar Mr. Carter?
+Whar that secondary?"
+
+"What is it?" demanded the count sternly, as he stepped over the
+débris.
+
+"My Miss Helen done gone ter Grantly!"
+
+"Is that so? Why did she leave?"
+
+His calm tones quieted the girl a little.
+
+"She done gone with Dr. Wright----"
+
+"Miss Ella Grant is ill and Helen went with Dr. Wright to look after
+her," put in Nan. "I don't know why Chloe is so excited."
+
+By this time the guests were crowding around the corner where Nan and
+Billy had ensconced themselves for what they thought was to be a quiet
+little supper.
+
+"'Cited! I tell you, you'd better git a move on you, you count and you
+secondary. The niggers is planning no good fur Grantly this night."
+
+"What negroes?" asked the count.
+
+"'Tain't no diffunce what niggers! You git out that little red devil of
+a mobile an' you licksplit ter Grantly as fas' as you kin, an' you take
+mo'n one gun."
+
+If everybody had not been wrought up to a high pitch of excitement, they
+would have been amused to see this ignorant country black girl handing
+out orders to the Count de Lestis as though she were a duchess and he a
+stable boy.
+
+The count motioned to Herz and they turned and left the room.
+
+"I get in on this!" cried Lewis Somerville.
+
+"And I! And I!" from every male throat in the room.
+
+Many of the farmers had pistols with them, deeming it more prudent to go
+armed on midnight drives through the lonely districts. Mrs. Carter
+fainted when it was explained to her where her daughter had gone and
+what the danger was. For once in her life, however, her husband had no
+thought for her. He left her to the ministrations of the farmer's wife
+in the stiff green silk, and hastened out to climb on the running-board
+of the count's little car, which was already under way.
+
+In what seemed like a moment since the poor Chloe had dropped her tray,
+there was not a single white male left at Weston, except Bobby Carter
+and he was only left because Lucy held him, scratching and fighting to
+go to the rescue of his precious sister. Even the musicians from
+Richmond had joined the posse. The negro waiters stepped gingerly around
+with many superior airs, congratulating themselves that they were as
+they were and not as the ignorant country blacks.
+
+Chloe sat on the floor and rocked and moaned, refusing to be comforted.
+
+"I done what she tol' me was right!" was her cryptic remark which none
+understood.
+
+"Why do we wait here?" asked Douglas, who was pale as death.
+
+Mrs. Carter had been revived and was lying on a sofa.
+
+"Why, indeed! Let's get in the hay wagon and go," said Nan.
+
+"Who can drive it?"
+
+"I!" cried the redoubtable Mrs. Sutton.
+
+Almost all of the carriages and buggies had been requisitioned by the
+masculine element but the hay wagon remained and a few other vehicles.
+The horses were quickly unblanketed by the women with the help of the
+waiters. Mrs. Carter and Douglas were the last to leave the house, as
+the poor nervous lady was kept quiet until they were ready to start.
+
+Just as they were going out the door Douglas heard a violent ringing of
+the telephone. Knowing the peculiarities of a country connection and its
+way of ringing at every house, and also knowing that the long, violent,
+protracted ringing meant emergency of some sort, Douglas ran to answer
+it. She distinctly heard Helen's voice crying the alarm:
+
+"_Grantly on fire and a great crowd of negro brutes in the yard!_"
+
+"What is it, my dear?" feebly asked Mrs. Carter.
+
+"Nothing at all!" said Douglas calmly. She felt that such a message
+would only upset her poor mother more, and it was best to keep it locked
+within her own panting breast.
+
+If any of the persons in that hay wagon should live to be a thousand
+years old they could never forget that terrible ride over the rough,
+muddy roads on that twenty-second of February, 1917.
+
+"Look, the moon is up!" whispered Lucy to Mag, both of them remembering
+the gay ride to the ball only a few hours before and how they had
+remarked that it would be so jolly going back because the moon would be
+up.
+
+"Something's on fire!" someone cried, and then the heavens were lit by
+the burning straw stack. A straw stack can make more light in the sky
+than a Woolworth building if both should be set afire; but the straw
+burns out so quickly that it is little more than a flash in the pan.
+
+Mrs. Sutton proved a famous Jehu. She managed her team quite as well as
+Billy. Nan sat up on the high seat by her, looking with admiration at
+the strong, capable hands.
+
+"Do you think they will be in time?" Nan whispered to her valiant
+companion.
+
+"Sure they will, my dear! They are there by this time and I believe that
+fire is nothing but a straw stack. Look, even now how it is dying down!
+Poor Miss Ella and Miss Louise! They seem to have the faculty of not
+getting along with the darkies. They are as kind as can be to them when
+they are sick or in want, but they always have an overbearing manner
+with them when they are well. I wonder what that girl meant by saying
+she had done just as Helen had told her."
+
+"I don't know. Helen has been so patient with Chloe and has really made
+a pretty good cook of her. She simply adores Helen. She comes to her
+with all kinds of questions to answer and problems of life to solve. Do
+you think these colored men would want to kill Helen just because they
+are angry with the Misses Grant?"
+
+"No, my dear, I don't think these colored men would want to kill
+anybody. God grant they are not drunk! That is the only danger I am
+fearing. I am not afraid of any sober negro alive, but a drunken one is
+to be avoided like a rattlesnake."
+
+"Well, Mrs. Sutton, I just feel somehow that God and Dr. Wright are
+going to take care of Helen,--and Miss Ella and Miss Louise, too."
+
+"I am sure of it, my dear. I am so sure of it that I am thanking God for
+having sent Dr. Wright and Helen to Grantly,--otherwise the poor,
+foolish old ladies might have been found there by the darkies when they
+expected the house to be empty, with everyone gone to the ball, and then
+there is no telling what would have happened." Mrs. Sutton shuddered as
+though she were cold.
+
+"I keep on thinking of Dr. Wright's face,--his keen blue eyes and his
+jaw,--somehow, I believe that jaw will pull them out safely."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE FLAMING SWORD
+
+
+And what a time we have had to keep Helen peeping through the railings
+at Dr. Wright as he stood in the brilliant moonlight on the gallery at
+Grantly, while the crazed mob of darkies advanced jauntily to the front
+of the old mansion! It was their intention to enter and claim the spoils
+thereof: treasures that they had begun to think belonged to them by
+reason of their long service and the service of their fathers and
+fathers' fathers.
+
+Confident that the mansion was empty, they made no endeavor to be quiet.
+All the white folks for miles and miles around were feasting at the
+count's ball; as for the burning rick,--they had not thought that the
+fire would do more than warm things up for their deed.
+
+"Now fur the loot!" cried James Hanks. "An' we mus' hurry up, 'cause
+whin the ol' tabbies gits home from the ball they mus'n't be hide or har
+of the house lef' standin'."
+
+"Bus' open the bar'l er coal ile!" suggested one black brute, "so's we
+can pour her on."
+
+"They keep the coal ile in the woodshed," a little bandy-legged man
+remarked.
+
+"Now see hyar! Befo' we enter this here domicyle, they's to be a reg'lar
+understandin' 'bout the findin's," continued James Hanks. "The money is
+to be 'vided ekal an' the silvo and chino an' other little value bowles
+is to be portioned out 'cordin' to they valubility."
+
+"Sho'! Sho'! We's all 'greed to that!" came in a chorus.
+
+"I goes fust, as the man 'pinted by Gawd as yo' leader."
+
+As James Hanks started up the broad steps he was dumfounded when Dr.
+Wright came forward. He retreated down the steps and the crowd of
+darkies behind him surged backward.
+
+"What is it you want?" asked the young physician quite simply, in a
+voice as cool and natural as though he were a soda clerk dealing out
+soft drinks.
+
+"We--er--we--we didn't know any of the white folks was in."
+
+"Exactly!" and Dr. Wright came closer to the nonplussed darky. "Perhaps
+God has appointed me to defend this home."
+
+"We is hyar fur our rights," came from the extreme edge of the crowd in
+a growling voice.
+
+"Your rights!"
+
+"Yessah!" and James Hanks spoke up more bravely, emboldened by the
+support he felt the crowd was able to give him.
+
+"Aw go on, Jeemes! He ain't even armed," cried the black brute who had
+been so free in his suggestions about breaking open the barrel of
+kerosene. "Gawd wouldn't send nobody 'thout even a razor."
+
+Helen saw the crowd pushing forward. She felt a choking in her throat
+and loosened the cord that fastened her evening wrap. The heavy cape
+and hood fell to the ground. She was over the railing in a twinkling
+of an eye, dragging her ancient weapons of offense and defense with
+her. The hood had loosened her hairpins and now her hair fell around
+her shoulders in a heavy shower. She ran along the gallery, dragging
+the sword with one hand and with the other clutching the shield and
+scimiter. Without a word she thrust the great sword in the
+outstretched hand of the young man.
+
+He looked at her in astonishment and terror. Having locked her in the
+hall he had thought of course she would remain there. At least, he had
+so devoutly hoped so that he had made himself believe that was where he
+would find her when this wretched affair was over.
+
+His face blanched and his knees trembled visibly. The fear that he had
+not felt for himself was intense for this girl, but he grasped the sword
+and waved it over the crowd.
+
+At sight of Helen the crowd set up a groan. They sank on their knees
+or fell prone to the earth. God had sent an angel of vengeance with a
+flaming sword for their undoing. Indeed less superstitious persons than
+those poor darkies might have been startled by the sudden appearance of
+Helen Carter. Her dress, that Nan had described as like the moon, might
+well have been the garb of an angel. Her long light brown hair, usually
+so carefully coiffed but now falling below her waist, added to the
+make-up, as did also the ancient shield and the crescent scimiter.
+
+With the shield held forward, as though to guard the doctor, and the
+scimiter raised aloft, she stood gazing on the trembling crowd.
+
+"Gawd save this nigger! Gawd save this nigger!" cried the abject one
+with the bandy legs.
+
+"A angel of destruction, carryin' a flamin' sword! Lemme git out'n
+this!" wailed another.
+
+"'Twas Jeemes Hanks set fire to the straw stack! Not me! Not me!" from
+one who knelt and rocked himself back and forth.
+
+"I ain't teched a thing what don't b'long to me!"
+
+"I jes' come along to see the fun! I ain't nebber had no idee er harmin'
+Miss Ellanlouise!"
+
+"Me neither! Me neither!"
+
+"Jeemes Hanks, He's the one, good Gawd! He's the one!"
+
+James Hanks, goaded to desperation by the backslidings of his followers,
+turned on them in fury:
+
+"You low down sneaks! Can't you see that this ain't no angel of the
+Lawd? This is one of them gals come to live in the ol' tumble-down
+overseer's house, jes' a play actin' to scare you. If'n we can't down
+them we ain't worth of the name of Loyal Af'cans. Come on, boys, an'
+let's finish 'em an' thin we can git our loot. I ain't afraid of them. A
+flamin' sword ain't in it with a gun." He reached for his hip pocket.
+
+Dr. Wright grabbed the angel of the Lord most unceremoniously and held
+her behind him. The kneeling and groveling mob was divided in its
+feelings as to whether Helen was or was not a celestial visitor, but
+they were one and all anxious to be through with the night's work
+without bloodshed. This was an outcome they had not bargained for. To
+go to Grantly and get all the money that they ignorantly supposed the
+old ladies to possess, to steal the silver and whatever else they
+fancied and then to set fire to the ancient pile, thereby destroying
+all trace of their burglary, so that when the white folks came home
+from the count's fine ball there would be naught to tell the tale, was
+a very different matter from this thing of having to get rid of two
+persons, perhaps kill them and then be found out.
+
+"Jeemes, you is foolish in de haid," spoke up Bandy-Legs.
+
+"Indeed you are!" came in clear ringing tones from Helen as she waved
+her scimiter, the moonlight flashing on it. "This minute the whole
+county knows that Grantly is on fire and that all of you are here."
+
+"Oh, rats! Whatcher tryin' ter give us?" from the scornful, incredulous
+leader.
+
+"I am telling you what is so. As soon as I heard you in the yard and saw
+the light from the straw stack, I gave a hurry call and got the
+neighbors on the 'phone."
+
+"An' what was you an' the young man a-doin' of in Grantly?" sneered
+James, coming up quite close to Helen. "Looks like whin Miss Ellanlouise
+is to the ball, it's a strange place----" but James was not allowed to
+finish what he had to say. Dr. Wright's powerful fist shot out and the
+darky received a scientifically dealt blow square on his jaw bone that
+sent him backwards down the steps, where he lay in a huddled heap and
+like the Heathen Chinee:
+
+"Subsequent proceedings interested him no more"--at least, not for a
+while.
+
+Their leader down and out, the crowd began to melt away, but in a tone
+that commanded instant obedience George Wright bade them to halt.
+
+"Listen, you fools! If one of you budges from this spot until I give
+him permission I will lick him to within an inch of his life. Miss Ella
+Grant had a fainting spell and could not go to the ball, and Miss Carter
+and I came over here from Weston when her sister telephoned us the
+trouble she was in. We were just leaving the house when you arrived."
+
+"Is Miss Ellanlouise in dar now?" asked a trembling old man.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Praise be ter Gawd fer stayin' our han'! Praise be ter Gawd!"
+
+"Yes, you had better give praise. I am not going to tell you what I
+think of you for attempting this terrible thing. You know yourselves how
+wicked and foolish you are."
+
+Just then a light shot across the yard and in a moment the red car
+belonging to the count came whizzing into view.
+
+"Now you may go, all but you, and you, and you!" indicating the ones who
+had been so glib about the kerosene and their rights, and the one who
+had known so well that God would not have sent an angel without even a
+razor.
+
+The men pointed out tremblingly obeyed, coming up to the steps as though
+drawn by a magnet. The rest of the mob simply disappeared, dodging
+behind the box bushes and losing themselves in the convenient labyrinth.
+
+That little red car had brought over six men: the count and his
+secretary, Mr. Carter, Mr. Sutton, Lewis Somerville and Bill Tinsley.
+Hardly a word had been spoken on that ride. The count had pushed the
+powerful engine to its utmost ability and it had taken the car through
+heavy mud, up hills and down dales, through mire and ruts with a speed
+truly remarkable.
+
+"Some car!" remarked Lewis.
+
+"Some!" grunted Bill.
+
+Mr. Carter's mouth was close set and his eyes looked like steel points.
+All of his girls were dear to him but Helen had always seemed closer for
+some reason; perhaps her very wilfulness was the reason. And now as he
+thought of her in danger, it seemed as though he could single-handed
+tackle any number of foes. He prayed continuously as he stood on the
+running-board of that speeding car, but his prayer was perhaps not very
+devout:
+
+"Oh, God, let me get at them! Let me get at them!"
+
+The relief of finding his dear girl alive and unharmed was so great
+that Mr. Carter sobbed. When Helen saw him jump from the car, she flew
+down the box-bordered walk and threw herself into his arms.
+
+"Daddy! Daddy! We saved Miss Ella and Miss Louise!"
+
+"And who saved you?"
+
+"Dr. Wright saved me and I saved him."
+
+Mr. Sutton, who was magistrate for the district, made short order in
+arresting James Hanks and his companions. As the vehicles arrived with
+the other members of the posse there was some whisper of a lynching, but
+Mr. Sutton downed the whisper with contempt.
+
+"There hasn't been a lynching in Virginia for eighteen years and I
+should hate our county to be the one to break the record. It will have a
+much more salutary effect to have these poor fools locked up in jail and
+be brought to trial with all of their deviltry exposed and aired in the
+papers. After all, the only real harm done is the burning of an old
+rotting straw stack that was not fit for bedding, as I remember."
+
+The count and Herz were most solicitous in their endeavors to help in
+any possible way. It was decided that Grantly must be patrolled for the
+rest of the night, as it was feared that some of the darkies might
+return. Dr. Wright smiled at the suggestion. He knew full well that the
+poor negroes who had been allowed to depart would not be seen or heard
+of for many a day. He had seen too great and abject a fear in their
+rolling eyes to have any apprehension of danger from them.
+
+James Hanks showed signs of returning life. The young physician leaned
+over him and felt his pulse.
+
+"Umm hum! You had better be glad I didn't break your jaw. You'll be all
+right in a few days and in the meantime the quiet of the lock-up will be
+very good for your nerves."
+
+"Ah, then that is some work that Herz and I can do," cried the count.
+"These men must be taken to jail, and why should not we attend to it?
+Eh, Adolph!"
+
+"Certainly!" Herz had been looking very grim ever since Chloe had
+dropped the tray of second helpings for Helen.
+
+"I wish we had handcuffs," said Mr. Sutton.
+
+"Why, that is hardly necessary. I should think Herz and I with pistols
+could take four poor devils, unarmed, to jail. Especially since one of
+those devils has been already put out of business by this skilful
+surgeon," laughed the count.
+
+"Yes, and I'll go along with you," sighed Mr. Sutton who was accustomed
+to early retiring. This midnight rioting was not much to his taste, but
+he was determined as magistrate of the district to see the matter safely
+through.
+
+"Why, my dear man, there is not a bit of use in your going. You can
+trust Herz and me to land them safely."
+
+"Well, all right, but I feel responsible for the good of the community
+and these black devils must be locked up in the court-house jail before
+many hours."
+
+"You had better take my car," suggested Dr. Wright. "It will hold the
+six of you more comfortably."
+
+"Oh, not at all! Mine brought six of us over here from Weston and can
+take six away. The prisoners can stand on the running-boards, all but
+the injured one, and he can sit by me. If any of them attempts to escape
+we can wing him quite easily."
+
+Dr. Wright felt rather relieved that his offer was turned down. No man
+would relish his perfectly new car being used to carry four bad darkies
+to jail over roads that were quite as vile as the prisoners.
+
+Everyone felt grateful to the count for his unselfish offer, everyone
+but Skeeter Halsey and Frank Maury. They had fondly hoped to have a hand
+in the undertaking. The night had been a thrilling one for the two boys.
+They bitterly regretted that they had not got there in time to rush in
+and save Miss Helen.
+
+"I felt like I could 'a' killed at least six niggers," Skeeter said to
+Lucy and Mag.
+
+"Humph! Only six? I could have put a dozen out of business," scoffed
+Frank; and Lucy and Mag were sure they could.
+
+The boys were allowed to divide the patrol duties with Lewis and Bill,
+and very proud they were as they stalked up and down in front of the
+mansion and around the barnyard, keeping a sharp lookout for skulking
+blacks.
+
+Almost everything has an amusing side if one can see it. Witness: the
+jokes that are cracked by the men in the trenches in the midst of the
+tremendous world tragedy. The amusing thing about that night's
+happenings was that Miss Ella and Miss Louise slept right through it.
+Worn out by their cake making and wrangling, intensely relieved that it
+was nothing but hunger and not a stroke that had befallen one of them,
+they had slept like two children.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A NEAT TRICK
+
+
+The court-house was due south of Grantly and towards it the count turned
+his powerful little car. After running about two miles, he made a
+deviation to the west and then to the north.
+
+"How much gasoline have we?" he asked Herz.
+
+"The tank is full."
+
+"Good! I take it you grasp my intentions."
+
+"Of course! I'm no fool. It would never do to have these idiots testify
+in court. Where to?"
+
+"Richmond! There we can turn them loose with money enough to get north."
+
+"Boss, ain't yer gonter han' us over?" asked James Hanks, who was
+rapidly recovering.
+
+"Naturally not! You can thank your stars that you are too big a fool to
+be trusted to face a judge," snarled Herz.
+
+The three negroes who were hanging to the car were jubilant at the
+news.
+
+"I sho' is lucky," said one. "I ain't nebber had no sinse an' it looks
+lak it done he'p me out a heap ter be so foolish lak."
+
+"It would be much easier to shoot them all and testify that they
+endeavored to escape," suggested Herz with a humorous twist to his ugly
+mouth.
+
+"Oh, boss! Please don't do no sich a deed," whined James Hanks. "I ain't
+never a-goin' ter let on that you----"
+
+"I know you are not!" and Herz put a cold revolver against the negro's
+temple. "You are not even going to let on anything here in this car. Now
+you keep your mouth shut, and shut tight or I'll blow your head off.
+We've got no use for people who fail."
+
+"Heavens! What a Prussian you are, Herz!" laughed the count.
+
+Richmond was reached in safety. Money was handed out to each one of the
+grateful negroes with instructions to take the first train north and
+then to separate.
+
+"They'll catch you sure if you stick together. But if they do catch
+you, you keep your black mouths shut about anything connected with the
+Count de Lestis or me,--do you understand?"
+
+They understood and made off as quickly as they could.
+
+"Ain't he a tur'ble slave driver, though?" said the bandy-legged one,
+and the others agreed.
+
+No time for rest for the occupants of the little red car. Back they went
+over the muddy roads as fast as the wonderful engine could take them. It
+was just dawn when they reached a certain spot in the road on the way to
+the court-house where they considered it most likely they could work
+their machinations.
+
+There was a sharp curve with a steep embankment on the outer edge. The
+car was carefully steered until two wheels were almost over the
+precipice. Then the count alighted, first turning off his engine. With
+shoulders to the wheel, the two men pushed until the machine toppled
+over into the ditch.
+
+"There, my darling! I hated to do it. I hope you are not much hurt,"
+said the count whimsically.
+
+"Now roll on after her," and Herz pushed his employer over the
+embankment. Then he jumped down himself and wallowed in the mud.
+
+"Here's blood a-plenty for both of us. You can furnish blue blood but I
+have good red blood for two."
+
+He deliberately gashed his arm with his penknife and smeared his face
+with blood, and then rubbed it all over the countenance of the laughing
+count, who seemed to look upon the whole affair as a kind of college
+boy's prank.
+
+"Now your ankle is sprained and you can't walk, so I'll go to the
+nearest farmhouse for assistance and there telephone Mr. Sutton that his
+prisoners have escaped. You were pinioned under the car and I had to dig
+you out,--remember!"
+
+"All right, but I wish you would have the sprained ankle and let me go
+for aid. I'm beastly hungry and besides I don't want to be laid up just
+now. I rather wanted to take a walk with Miss Douglas Carter this
+afternoon. Heavens! Wasn't she beautiful last night?"
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"Much more beautiful than her sister, although I tell you that that
+Helen was very wonderful, especially after her hair came down and she
+had played angel. I wish I could have taken that stupid doctor's car
+instead of my own little red devil. I should have enjoyed ditching his
+car, but we needed the endurance and speed of my own darling."
+
+"You had better be having some pain now in case a traveler comes along
+the road. I'll get help as soon as possible;" and Herz went off without
+any comment on the comparative beauty of the two Misses Carter. Douglas
+was to him the most beautiful person in all the world, but he hated
+himself for loving her, feeling instinctively that his love was
+hopeless. His very name was against him and should she ever know the
+truth--but pshaw! These stupid people never would find out things. They
+were as easy to hoodwink as the darkies themselves.
+
+Mr. Sutton's fury knew no bounds when he got the message from Herz that
+the prisoners had escaped. It was with difficulty that he composed
+himself sufficiently to ask after the welfare of the two gentlemen who
+had undertaken the job of landing the negroes safely in jail.
+
+"The Count de Lestis has sprained his ankle and his face is all smeared
+with blood,--I could not tell how great were his injuries," lied the
+unblushing one over the telephone. "I spent hours getting him from under
+the car. Fortunately the mud was soft and deep and he is not seriously
+injured."
+
+"Just where was the accident?"
+
+"At that sharp curve in the road about two miles this side of the
+court-house,--just beyond the bridge."
+
+"Umhum! Do you need any assistance?"
+
+"No, I thank you. I'll get some mules to right the car. I think I am
+mechanic enough to repair the engine."
+
+"How about a doctor for your friend? Dr. Wright is still with the
+Carters."
+
+"Oh--er--ah--I think he can get along very well without calling in a
+physician. I have bandaged his ankle."
+
+"You did a good deal before you gave warning as to the escape of the
+prisoners."
+
+There was no answer to this remark, so without further ceremony Mr.
+Sutton hung up the receiver.
+
+There was to be no rest for the weary, it seemed. A search party must be
+called and the country scoured for the missing men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+VISITORS AT PRESTON
+
+
+Dr. Wright was pretty sure that James Hanks would not have been able to
+travel very far after the knockout blow he had received, so when they
+could not find him in the woods near by it was decided he must be in
+hiding in some cabin. The search continued but no trace was found of the
+missing men.
+
+"Sounds shady to me," declared Lewis Somerville.
+
+"The idea! You can't mean that the count and Mr. Herz deliberately let
+the men get away!" exclaimed Douglas.
+
+"I believe they are capable of it."
+
+"Lewis! How can you?"
+
+"I tell you I mistrust them both. I don't like their names--I don't like
+their looks--I don't like their actions."
+
+"Nor do I," declared Billy Sutton, who had dropped in that morning to
+have a chat after the ball. Everybody was too exhausted to think of
+going on with any very arduous work.
+
+"Well, I think that after you accepted the count's hospitality you have
+no right to say things about him," broke in Nan.
+
+"Well, hasn't he accepted the hospitality of this country, and what is
+he doing? Don't you know it is that fool darky school that got all those
+poor nigs thinking that Grantly belonged to them? I bet Miss Helen
+agrees with me."
+
+"I--I--don't know," said Helen faintly. "I am all mixed up about the
+whole thing. Why should the count want to make trouble?"
+
+The matter was discussed up and down by the young people. The males for
+the most part sided against the count and his secretary, the females,
+with the exception of Lucy and Mag, taking up for them. Mrs. Carter was
+most indignant that anyone should say anything disagreeable about a
+gentleman of such fine presence and engaging manners as the Count de
+Lestis, one who knew so well how to entertain and who was so lavish. As
+for the other man, that Herz, no doubt he was fully capable of any
+mischief. He could not dance, had no small talk, and held his fork in a
+very awkward way when at the table.
+
+The count's ankle did not keep him in very long. He was soon around,
+although he limped quite painfully. His only difficulty was in
+remembering which foot was injured. He renewed his attentions towards
+the ladies at Valhalla. His protestations of concern for the Misses
+Grant were warm and convincing. He offered to come stay with them or let
+Herz come until they were sure that the county had settled down into its
+usual state of safety and peace.
+
+Those ladies were not in the least afraid, however, but still declared
+that nobody would ever hurt them. It turned out that on the night of
+what came so near being such a tragedy they had had in the house exactly
+three dollars and twenty cents. What an angry crowd it would have been
+when they began the division!
+
+Now came stirring news in the daily papers.
+
+Diplomatic relations were broken with Germany and the declaration of
+war imminent! Excitement and unrest were on every hand. Sometimes Nan
+and Lucy would come home laden with extras with headlines of terror and
+bloodshed. Mr. Carter occasionally went to town with them.
+
+"I feel as though I must find out what people are saying and thinking,"
+he would declare.
+
+The truth of the matter was that Mr. Carter was well,--as well as ever,
+and the mere chopping of wood and stopping of cracks was not enough to
+occupy him. It had seemed to him as he went on that mad ride to the
+rescue of his beloved Helen that he was absolutely himself again. No
+longer could he let people plan his life for him. He was a man and meant
+to take the reins into his own hands. Not that his girls had not driven
+the family coach excellently well. They were wonderful, but he was able
+to do it for himself now and he intended to start.
+
+He consulted Dr. Wright:
+
+"I tell you, Wright, I am as fit as a fiddle and can get to work now."
+
+"Of course you are! Didn't I give you a year? You have not taken quite a
+year but the time is almost up. The shock that night of the ball helped
+you on to a complete recovery a little ahead of time. Sometimes a
+nervous patient gets a shock that does more than rest. The trouble is,
+one can't tell whether it will kill or cure."
+
+"Well, this one cured all right. Why, man, I could build a cathedral
+tomorrow!"
+
+"Good!"
+
+"I never can thank you enough for your kindness to me and my family. If
+there is ever anything I can do for you----"
+
+"No doubt there will be," was the doctor's cryptic remark.
+
+Herz kept up his walks with Douglas, although the girl did nothing to
+encourage him. She did everything to discourage him, in fact, except
+actually ask him to let her alone. She would find him waiting on the
+road after school. Sometimes he would even come to the school door for
+her if for any reason she was detained. These walks were usually taken
+when the count was off on one of his many business trips.
+
+In Virginia, March means spring, although sometimes a very blustering
+spring. If one wanders in the woods it is quite usual to find hepatica
+and arbutus making their way up through the leaves. The tender green
+begins to make its appearance on hedge and tree, and in the old gardens
+jonquils and daffodils and crocuses pop up their saucy heads, defying
+possible late snows and frosts.
+
+The roads were still muddy but not quite so bad as in the winter, and
+now, more than ever, Douglas with her faithful protector, Bobby, could
+enjoy the walks to and from school. The stilts did not have to be used
+nearly so often, although Nan and Lucy had become such adepts on their
+flamingo legs that they often mounted them merely for the pleasure and
+not because of the mud.
+
+Valhalla was growing lovelier day by day. The gaunt trees had taken on a
+veil of green. The nations were at war. The United States was being
+forced into the game in spite of her attempts at neutrality; but Mother
+Nature's slogan was: "Business as usual!" and she was attending to it
+exactly as she had from the beginning and as she will until the end of
+time.
+
+Spring had come in good earnest, and with her the myriads of little
+creatures who must work so hard for a mere existence. Strange
+scratchings had begun in the chimneys at Valhalla. The swallows were
+back and gave the Carters to understand that they had been tenants in
+that old overseer's house long before those city folks ever thought of
+such a thing as spending the winter in such a place. The robins were
+hopping about the lawn, trying to decide where they would build, while
+the mocking-birds were already busy in the honeysuckle hedge.
+
+One Saturday, the Saturday before war was actually declared, the Count
+de Lestis came to call, bringing with him in a lovely wicker cage a
+carrier pigeon for Douglas.
+
+"You promised that sometimes you would send me a message, remember," he
+said with the sentimental glance that Douglas refused to respond to.
+
+"Certainly I will. I'll send a note asking you to come to dinner. Would
+that do?"
+
+"Anything you send will do," he sighed.
+
+The pigeon was a beautiful little creature with glossy plumage and
+dainty red legs.
+
+"He will come back straight to Weston because he has young in the nest.
+He is not like some men who are up and away at the smallest excuse."
+
+"But how cruel to take him away from his young!"
+
+"Ah, but the hausfrau is there! She will see that no harm befalls the
+babies. And, too, she will remain faithful until her lord returns. As
+faithful as a pigeon means true unto death."
+
+The pigeon house had continued to be a thorn in the flesh to Mr. Carter.
+It was painted white, as that is what the pigeons like, and it was so
+large and so out of tone with the fine lines of the roof that Mr. Carter
+declared he could not bear to go to Weston any more.
+
+No trace of the lost negroes was found, although Mr. Sutton had
+detectives from Richmond to work on the case. They had evidently got
+away and well away. The farmer who had been so nearly asleep when Helen
+and Dr. Wright arrived at the ball, the farmer whose wife wore the
+stiff, green silk, declared he had passed that road on the way home that
+night and he had seen no sign of a red car turned turtle down a ditch.
+Of course the neighbors all said he had been driving in his sleep.
+
+Mr. Sutton made a trip into Richmond and had a conference with the
+governor. He told him that the bloodhounds employed to trace the darkies
+had never left the scene of the accident, although they had had many
+things belonging to the escaped men as a clue to tracing them. The
+governor told Mr. Sutton something that made him open his honest eyes
+very wide. At the same time he was cautioned to keep his honest mouth
+shut very tight. He came back to Preston with an air of mystery about
+him that disconcerted his good wife greatly.
+
+"Margaret, could you accommodate a guest just now?"
+
+"Why, certainly, if it is necessary, but who is the guest?"
+
+"A gentleman I have never met, maybe there will be two of them,--but we
+must pretend they are our very good friends."
+
+"Why, William, are you crazy?"
+
+"No, ma'am!" and then he whispered something to her, although they were
+alone, and she, too, opened her eyes very wide but promised to keep her
+mouth shut.
+
+The visitors came, two quiet gentlemen with good manners and simple
+habits. Mr. and Mrs. Sutton decided they should be some long lost
+cousins from the west who were in the country for their health. Thus
+they explained their visitors to Billy and Mag and their neighbors. They
+brought a small Ford runabout which they used a great deal.
+
+Mr. Sutton had a long conference with Mr. Carter. There was some more
+opening of eyes and shutting of mouths.
+
+"What a fool I have been!" cried that gentleman. "I can see it all now.
+Lewis Somerville tried to make me see but I was quite hard on the boy.
+Well! Well! What is to be done?"
+
+"Nothing! Just bide our time."
+
+"See here, Sutton, I believe there was method in that man's madness when
+he got two electric light systems. He told me to order one and then said
+his secretary had ordered one, too. Pretended he had not told me to, and
+then was tremendously kind and magnanimous about it. I began to think
+maybe I had not understood,--you see my head hadn't been very clear for
+business for many months and I mistrusted myself. I'll wager anything
+that that extra battery is running a wireless station at Weston."
+
+"Geewhilikins!" exclaimed the elder Sutton in very much the same tone
+his son might have used. "This business is growing very exciting."
+
+Sometimes the two quiet gentlemen visitors at Preston would go out for
+an airing in their little car, and finding a secluded spot in a pine
+woods, one of them would cleverly convert himself into an Armenian
+pedlar with a pack filled with cheap lace and jewelry. Then he would
+make the rounds of the cabins. He could speak almost no English when
+doing this part and seemed not to understand any at all. He visited
+every house in Paradise and from there made his way to Weston. His
+heavy, blue-black beard and long straggling hair so completely disguised
+him that the count never dreamed the man he saw at his kitchen door
+haggling with his colored cook over some coarse pillow shams was the
+same smooth-faced gentleman he had met that morning driving with his
+neighbor Sutton.
+
+As a book agent, the clever detective gained access to the count's
+library and actually sold him a set of Ruskin. As telephone inspector,
+he got much information desired, and as a government agricultural
+expert, he was favored with a long, intimate talk with the owner of
+Weston.
+
+Old Blitz, the German farmer near Preston, came in for his share of
+visits, too, from pedlars and book agents, etc. The mills of the
+government were grinding slowly but they were grinding exceeding small.
+
+The neighborhood was in absolute ignorance of the fact that their
+delightful count was being watched. His comings and goings were known.
+He had few secrets. It was learned by the detectives that he was not a
+Hungarian at all but his father was Austrian, his mother Prussian. He
+had been sent to this country by his government to make trouble among
+the negroes and to buy up tracts of land for future emigration. When the
+world was to be Prussianized, fair Virginia was not to be neglected.
+
+The raid on Grantly was traced absolutely to his lectures and the
+teachings of Herz, the so-called secretary. The only thing that had gone
+wrong was that the negroes had acted sooner than their masters had
+planned. Their object had been to have a general uprising and they
+wanted it to be timed about when war was declared. Their schemes had not
+been directed against poor old Grantly especially, but against all the
+whites, with a view of keeping the darkies out of the army.
+
+Herz turned out to be a full-blooded Prussian, who had lived in
+Cincinnati for about five years. He was a trusted spy of his government
+and had done wonderful work for them in Mexico. He was really the brains
+of the partnership and de Lestis the mixer. When de Lestis went off on
+his long business trips to Chicago and New York it developed he had been
+across the water several times, bearing with him maps and information
+that must be personally conducted.
+
+A wireless station was suspected but it was difficult to locate.
+
+"Look in the pigeon house," suggested Mr. Carter, still bearing a grudge
+against the atrocity that had ruined his beloved roof line.
+
+There it was, as neatly installed an instrument as one could find with
+the extra batteries doing the work perfectly. The telephone inspector
+found it quite easily. The pigeon house was a hollow sham. There was a
+reason for making it so large since the wireless was to have an inner
+chamber.
+
+The net was drawing more closely around the two men but they, scornful
+of the intelligence of the stupid Americans, went unconcernedly on,
+laying their plans and hatching their deviltries. Many a laugh they had
+over the automobile accident.
+
+"Those darkies before a clever lawyer would have been our undoing," they
+admitted to one another.
+
+The night school was discontinued for the time being and the poor
+colored people got back into their one time rut. Tempy resumed her
+labors at Grantly, a sadder and wiser girl. She no longer slept amidst
+the unwashed dishes but seemed anxious to become as good a servant as
+her sister Chloe. Sam, the factotum, returned in time to put in the
+garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE CARRIER PIGEON
+
+
+There came a day in mid-April that will always be remembered by the
+dwellers in Valhalla. Herz had walked home from school with Douglas,
+and contrary to his custom, had come in when they reached the house. He
+was in a strange, fierce humor and it seemed to Douglas as though his
+near-sighted eyes were boring holes in her. She could not keep her mind
+and talk off the war and whenever war was mentioned he became very glum.
+
+"Now that we are at war, will you not enlist?" she asked. "If you are a
+true American, I do not see how you can help it."
+
+"My eyes would debar me. Near-sighted men can't always serve where they
+would like to," he answered rather bitterly. "You see good in no one but
+a soldier."
+
+"Why, not at all!" blushed Douglas. "Of course, when my country is at
+war I want our young men to be willing to fight. Being a girl is all
+that keeps me here. You might work in a munition factory and help that
+way."
+
+"Ah, I should like that! Would you think more of me if I could help your
+country in some way?"
+
+"Your country, too!"
+
+Herz had come so close to her as they stood in the middle of the quaint
+old living-room that Douglas felt a desire to run away. She welcomed
+the sight of Helen running across the lawn from the direction of
+Grantly.
+
+"Guess!" panted Helen, bursting in on them. "I have seen James Hanks! He
+was sneaking out of the kitchen at Grantly. Had been in to see Tempy, I
+reckon. The man is crazy about her. Miss Louise saw him, too, and has
+'phoned Mr. Sutton. I fancy he is on the way over here now with those
+western cousins of his. Funny men, aren't they? Miss Ella says she never
+heard of either Mr. or Mrs. Sutton's having any western kin, and she has
+known them and all their people for pretty near a century. I believe
+they are detectives myself, trying to find those runaway darkies."
+
+While Helen was giving out this information, Herz stood as though he had
+turned to stone. His face was white with a red spot on each high cheek
+bone.
+
+"Where is your carrier pigeon?" he asked Douglas abruptly.
+
+"The cage hangs on the porch."
+
+He drew from his pocket a small note-book and wrote rapidly in it.
+Tearing out the sheet, he strode to the porch, and with a small rubber
+band he quickly attached the note to the foot of the docile bird that he
+had grabbed from the cage without even a "by your leave."
+
+"What are you doing?" demanded Douglas. Was the man crazy?
+
+"Stop!" cried Helen. "Count de Lestis gave that bird to my sister."
+
+"Yes, and she was to send him a message. This is the message. It is as
+he would have it, I am sure. You remember he told you he would rather
+someone would seek him than search him. He shall have his choice."
+
+He carried the pigeon out on the lawn and freed it. The clever bird rose
+in a spiral flight and then started straight towards Weston and its
+mate. Without a word, Herz left the girls and started towards Weston,
+too, taking a line almost as straight as the one the pigeon had chosen.
+
+"Is he crazy, Douglas?"
+
+"I think he is something worse. I believe he is afraid of detectives."
+
+The count and his confederate got away,--although they were captured
+later on in North Carolina. The faithful red car carried them off
+rapidly. De Lestis was waiting for his one time secretary at the cross
+roads by Paradise.
+
+"Did you destroy the papers and maps?" gasped that gentleman as he
+sprang into the car.
+
+"How could I when your call was so urgent? I brought all the money,
+though. Those fools will never find the wireless. They have no
+imagination. And I have the grey paint to put my darling here in her
+uniform."
+
+That night, after having speeded for hours, the two men drew the little
+red car into the woods where they painted her a dingy grey. The count
+had purchased the paint only the day before at the country store.
+
+"In case of an emergency!" he had told Herz.
+
+Little did he dream that one of the visitors at Mr. Sutton's found out
+before night that he had bought the paint, and that when messages were
+sent in every direction to look out for two German spies, information
+was also given that they would be in a red car that had more than likely
+been painted grey.
+
+When Weston was thoroughly searched, many things besides the wireless
+station were brought to light. One of the detectives brought to Douglas
+a letter addressed in Lewis Somerville's writing.
+
+"Where did you find it?" blushed Douglas.
+
+"In the count's desk! I am sorry to have to tell you that it was my duty
+to read it before giving it to you."
+
+It was the letter Lewis had written from the Mexican border and no
+wonder Douglas blushed. He had made most violent love to her in this
+letter and had also spoken quite openly of the situation in Mexico from
+a soldier's standpoint.
+
+"Nothing is too small for them!" cried Douglas.
+
+"But what an escape we have made!" exclaimed Helen. "I bet you that man
+has made love to every one of us except Lucy."
+
+"He had better not say anything sweet to me," said that young lady. "Mag
+and I never could abide him."
+
+"Well, I liked him a whole lot," sighed Nan. "He appreciated poetry so
+thoroughly."
+
+There were three young men who were secretly glad when the count and
+Herz were caught: Dr. Wright, Lewis Somerville and Billy Sutton. They
+did not wish to be ungenerous, but it _was_ hard to have your especial
+girl monopolized on every occasion.
+
+The Misses Grant never could be made to understand that their precious
+count was a spy. "He was a charming gentleman and we want to hear
+nothing unkind about him," they actually agreed.
+
+Mrs. Carter insisted it was all the doings of that common Herz, who did
+not know how to conduct himself in a ballroom and who held his fork so
+awkwardly at the table. And Mr. Carter, true to his professional
+instinct, declared he had had his doubts about de Lestis from the moment
+he sacrificed his roof line to the pigeon house.
+
+But whatever the opinion held by the various members of the Carter
+family, all agreed that the surprising summer at Valhalla was one
+long to be remembered. Fascinating as had been its mysteries, its
+uncertainties, its new friendships and responsibilities however, not one
+of the family was sorry to return to Richmond. There, as fall advanced
+into winter, new doors of opportunity were opened and old associations
+renewed. Once more there were numbered among the city's happily busy
+people "The Carter Girls of Carter House."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  The
+  Girl Scouts
+  Series
+
+BY EDITH LAVELL
+
+
+A new copyright series of Girl Scouts stories by an author of wide
+experience in Scouts' craft, as Director of Girl Scouts of Philadelphia.
+
+Clothbound, with Attractive Color Designs.
+
+PRICE, 65 CENTS EACH.
+
+  THE GIRL SCOUTS AT MISS ALLEN'S SCHOOL
+  THE GIRL SCOUTS AT CAMP
+  THE GIRL SCOUTS' GOOD TURN
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+  THE GIRL SCOUTS' RIVALS
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+  THE GIRL SCOUTS' VACATION ADVENTURES
+  THE GIRL SCOUTS' MOTOR TRIP
+
+For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the
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+
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+  114-120 EAST 23rd STREET      NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  Marjorie Dean
+  High School
+  Series
+
+BY PAULINE LESTER
+
+Author of the Famous Marjorie Dean College Series
+
+
+These are clean, wholesome stories that will be of great interest to all
+girls of high school age.
+
+  All Cloth Bound      Copyright Titles
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+PRICE, 65 CENTS EACH
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+  MARJORIE DEAN, HIGH SCHOOL FRESHMAN
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+
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+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  Marjorie Dean
+  College
+  Series
+
+BY PAULINE LESTER.
+
+Author of the Famous Marjorie Dean High School Series.
+
+
+Those who have read the Marjorie Dean High School Series will be eager
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+  MARJORIE DEAN, COLLEGE FRESHMAN
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+
+For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the
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+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  The Camp Fire
+  Girls Series
+
+By HILDEGARD G. FREY
+
+
+A Series of Outdoor Stories for Girls 12 to 16 Years.
+
+  All Cloth Bound      Copyright Titles
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+
+  THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS IN THE MAINE WOODS; or, The Winnebagos go
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+  THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS AT ONOWAY HOUSE; or, The Magic Garden.
+  THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS GO MOTORING; or, Along the Road That Leads
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+
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+  Seminary Girls Series
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+BY CAROLYN JUDSON BURNETT
+
+
+For Girls 12 to 16 Years
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+
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+  MILDRED KEITH        MILDRED'S MARRIED LIFE
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+  THE RADIO BOYS ON THE MEXICAN BORDER
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+
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+
+The Golden Boys Series
+
+BY L. P. WYMAN, PH.D.
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+Dean of Pennsylvania Military College.
+
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+  THE GOLDEN BOYS AND THEIR NEW ELECTRIC CELL
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+
+
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+
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+with the Forest Rangers in the state of Maine.
+
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+  THE RANGER BOYS TO THE RESCUE
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+  THE BOY TROOPERS ON THE TRAIL
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+
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+
+
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+
+The Jack Lorimer Series
+
+BY WINN STANDISH
+
+For Boys 12 to 16 Years.
+
+  All Cloth Bound      Copyright Titles
+
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+
+
+CAPTAIN JACK LORIMER; or, The Young Athlete of Millvale High.
+
+  Jack Lorimer is a fine example of the all-around American
+  high-school boys. His fondness for clean, honest sport of all kinds
+  will strike a chord of sympathy among athletic youths.
+
+JACK LORIMER'S CHAMPIONS; or, Sports on Land and Lake.
+
+  There is a lively story woven in with the athletic achievements,
+  which are all right, since the book has been O. K'd. by Chadwick,
+  the Nestor of American Sporting journalism.
+
+JACK LORIMER'S HOLIDAYS; or, Millvale High in Camp.
+
+  It would be well not to put this book into a boy's hands until the
+  chores are finished, otherwise they might be neglected.
+
+JACK LORIMER'S SUBSTITUTE; or, The Acting Captain of the Team.
+
+  On the sporting side, this book takes up football, wrestling, and
+  tobogganing. There is a good deal of fun in this book and plenty of
+  action.
+
+JACK LORIMER, FRESHMAN; or, From Millvale High to Exmouth.
+
+  Jack and some friends he makes crowd innumerable happenings into an
+  exciting freshman year at one of the leading Eastern colleges. The
+  book is typical of the American college boy's life, and there is a
+  lively story, interwoven with feats on the gridiron, hockey,
+  basketball and other clean honest sports for which Jack Lorimer
+  stands.
+
+For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the
+Publishers
+
+  A. L. BURT COMPANY
+  114-120 EAST 23rd STREET      NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+In this text-version italics has been indicated with _italics_ and
+bold with =bold=. Small capitals has been changed to all capitals.
+
+A few obvious printer's errors have been corrected. Otherwise the
+original has been preserved, including inconsistencies in spelling,
+hyphenation or accentuation.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Carter Girls' Mysterious Neighbors, by 
+Nell Speed
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40178 ***