The Carter Girls

“I think the wisest thing for you to do would be to rent this house, furnished, if you can find a tenant – ”

“We’ve done it!” exclaimed Helen triumphantly.

“That is, we have got a tenant if you think it is best,” explained Douglas. “We were going to do nothing without your approval.”

“Oh, come now! I have no jurisdiction over you,” laughed the young man.

“Isn’t power of attorney jurisdiction?” asked Lucy. “Nan says I can’t have any more stockings until you permit me.”

“Well, well! I must be a terrible bugaboo to you! I don’t feel at all qualified to judge of your stockings, little girl, or anything else pertaining to the female attire. It was the merest accident that I was given power of attorney. I am not in the least an appropriate person to be having it. I only consented to have it wished on me when I saw your father was becoming excited and tired over the unexpected hitch when the notary spoke of Miss Douglas’s not being of age. I have transferred what cash your father has to your sister’s account. I must find out from you whom you want to look after your affairs and consult that person – ”

“But, Dr. Wright, we would lots rather have you, if you don’t mind!” exclaimed Douglas. “Any of our kinsmen that we might call on would insist upon our coming to live with them or make us go to some stuffy boarding house or something. They would not look at it as I believe you would at all. We have a scheme, too, but we want to hear yours first.”

“My scheme was, as I say, first to rent your house, furnished, and then all of you, with some suitable older person and some man whom you can trust, go and camp out on the side of the mountain in Albemarle. What do you say to it?” The girls burst out laughing, even Helen.

“Dr. Wright, this is absolutely uncanny!” exclaimed Douglas. “That is exactly what we were planning!”

“Only we were going you some better and were to have boarders,” drawled Nan.

“Boarders, eh, and what do you know about keeping boarders?” laughed the doctor.

“We know enough not to do the way we have been done by at summer boarding houses where we have been sometimes.”

“Well, all I can say is that I think you are a pretty spunky lot. Please tell me which one of you thought up this plan. There must surely have been a current of mental telepathy flowing from one of you girls to me. It was you, I fancy, Miss Douglas.”

“No, I am never so quick to see a way out. It was Helen.”

“Yes, Helen thought of it, but I came mighty near doing it,” declared Lucy. “I would have done it all the way but I went to sleep.”

Helen looked as though she did not at all relish having anything even so intangible as a current of mental telepathy connecting her with one whom she was still determined to look upon as an enemy. He was gazing at her with anything but the eyes of an enemy, however, and Nan’s remark about his eyes looking like blue flowers high up on a cliff that you must climb to reach, came back to her. She felt that those flowers were in easy reach for her now; that all she had to do to make this rugged young man her friend was to be decently polite. But her pride was still hurt from his former disapproval and while his present attitude was much better, she still could not bring herself to smile at him. She was very quiet while the other girls unfolded their plans for the camp. She did not take so much pleasure in it now that it was not altogether her scheme. To think that while she was working it up this bumptious young doctor was doing the same thing!

“The keeping boarders part of it was mine, though,” she comforted herself by thinking.

Dr. Wright was really astonished by the quickness with which these spoiled girls had acted and their eagerness to begin to be something besides the butterflies they had seemed. Douglas told him of the plans for the camp that the assistant in the office was to draw for them, and then showed him some of the advertisements of their boarding camp that Nan had been working on all day.

“This is sure to draw a crowd of eager week-enders,” he declared. “In fact, I believe you will have more boarders than the mountain will hold.”

“I thought it best to have kind of catchy ads that would make people wonder what we were up to anyhow,” said Nan. “Now this one is sure to draw a crowd: ‘A week-end boarding camp, where one can have all of the discomforts of camping without the responsibility.’ Here is another: ‘Mountain air makes you hungry! Come to The Week-End Camp and let us feed you.’”

“Fine!” laughed the young man. “But please tell me how you plan to feed the hungry hordes that are sure to swarm to your camp. Do you know how to cook?”

“Helen can make angel’s food and I know how to make mayonnaise, but sometimes it goes back on me,” said Nan with the whimsical air that always drew a smile from Dr. Wright.

“I can make angel’s food, too,” declared Lucy.

“Well, angel’s food and mayonnaise will be enough surely for hungry hordes.”

“Of course, we are going to take some servants with us,” said Helen, breaking the vow of silence that she was trying to keep in Dr. Wright’s presence. “Old Oscar, our butler, and Susan, the housemaid, have both volunteered to go. I can make more things than angel’s food, and, besides, I am going to learn how to do all kinds of things before we go.”

“That’s so, you can make devil’s food,” teased Nan. “Somehow I didn’t like to mention it.”

“Cook is going to teach me to make all kinds of things. I am going to get dinner to-morrow and have already made up bread for breakfast. I am going to buy some of the cutest little bungalow aprons to cook in, pink and blue. I saw them down town this morning. They are what made me think of learning how to cook.”

“I’m going to learn how to cook, too, and I must have some aprons just like Helen’s.”

“All of us are Camp Fire Girls,” said Douglas to the doctor, “and of course we have learned some of the camping stunts, but we have not been as faithful as we might have been.”

“I am an old camper and can put you on to many things if you will let me.”

“We should be only too glad,” responded Douglas sincerely.

“One of the first things is canvas cots. Don’t try to sleep on all kinds of contrived beds. Get folding cots and insure comfortable nights. Another is, don’t depend altogether on camp fires for cooking. Kerosene stoves and fireless cookers come in mighty handy for steady meal getting. It will be another month at least before you go, won’t it?”

“Just about, I think, if we can manage it. We have school to finish and I have some college exams that I want to take, although I see no prospect of college yet. Another thing I want to discuss with you, Dr. Wright, is selling our car. I think that might bring in money enough for us to pay for all the camp fixtures and run us for awhile.”

“Certainly; I’ll see about that for you immediately.”

The young man took his departure with a much higher opinion of the Carter sisters than he had held twenty-four hours before. As for the Carter sisters: they felt so grateful to him for his kindness to their parents and to them that their opinion of him was perforce good. Helen still sniffed disdainfully when his name was mentioned, but she could not forget the expression of approval in his blue eyes when he found that the camping scheme was hers.

CHAPTER VIII

GWEN

Bill Tinsley was as keen on the camp building plan as Lewis Somerville had said he would be.

“Sleeping on my arms,” was his telegram in answer to the letter he got from Lewis, a letter with R. S. V. P. P. D. Q. plainly marked on the envelope.

“Good old Bill! I almost knew he would tumble at the chance. All of you will like Bill, I know.”

“What does he mean by sleeping on his arms?” asked Lucy. “I should think it would make him awfully stiff.”

“Oh, that means ready to go at a moment’s notice. I bet his kit is packed now.”

Mr. Lane and Dick had worked hard on the plans for the camp and had them ready when the would-be builder called for them. Then Mr. Lane and Lewis made a flying trip to Greendale to look into the lay of the land and to decide on a site for the dining pavilion. It was a spot about one hundred yards from the log cabin, built by the aforesaid sick Englishman, that seemed to them to be intended for just their purpose. It was a hollowed out place in the mountain side, not far from the summit, and four great pine trees formed an almost perfect rectangle of forty by twenty-five feet. In the centre stood a noble tulip poplar.

“Pity to sacrifice him,” said Bill Tinsley, whom they had picked up at Charlottesville on their way to Greendale. Bill was a youth of few words but of frequent mirth expressed in uncontrollable fits of laughter that nothing could stop, not even being shipped from West Point. It was this very laugh that had betrayed the hazers. If Bill had only been able to hold in that guffaw of his they would never have been caught. His laugh was unmistakable and through it the whole crowd of wrongdoers was nabbed, poor Lewis along with them although he was innocent.

“No more to blame for laughing than a lightning bug for shining,” he had declared to Lewis; “but I wish I had died before I got you into this, old fellow.”

“Well, it can’t be helped, but I bet you will be laughing on the other side of your face before you know it.”

The youths had remained fast friends and now that this chance had come for them to be of service and to use the surplus energy that was stored up in their splendidly developed muscles, they were happy at the prospect of being together again.

Mr. Lane took careful measurements and adapted his plans so as to utilize the four trees as natural posts and the great tulip poplar as a support for the roof. Under the pavilion the space was to be made into kitchen and store room. Some little excavating would be necessary for this as measurements showed that one edge of the pavilion would rest almost on the mountain side while the other stood ten feet from the ground.

“I am trying to spare you fellows all the excavating possible, as that is the tedious and uninteresting part of building,” explained Mr. Lane.

“Oh, we can shovel that little pile of dirt away in no time,” declared Lewis, feeling his muscles twitch with joy at the prospect of removing mountains. Mr. Lane smiled, knowing full well that it was at least no mole hill they were to tackle.

Within a week after Mr. and Mrs. Carter had sailed on their health-seeking voyage, Lewis and his chum were en route for Greendale, all of the lumber for their undertaking ordered and their tools sent on ahead by freight. Bill had gone to Richmond, ostensibly to consult a dentist, but in reality to see the Carter girls, who had aroused in him a great curiosity.

“They must be some girls,” had been his laconic remark.

“So they are, the very best fun you ever saw,” Lewis had assured him. “They took this thing of waking up and finding themselves poor a great deal better than you and I did waking up and finding ourselves nothing but civilians when we had expected to be major generals, at least.”

The Carter girls had one and all liked Bill, when Lewis took him to call on them the evening of his arrival in Richmond.

“There is something so frank and open in his countenance,” said Helen.

“His mouth!” drawled Nan. “Did you ever see or hear such a laugh?”

“He is a great deal nicer than your old Dr. Wright, who looks as though it would take an operation on his risibles to get a laugh out of him.”

Bill had offered the services of a battered Ford car he had in Charlottesville as pack mule for the camp and it was joyfully accepted. He and Lewis stopped in Charlottesville on their way to Greendale and got the tried old car, making the last leg of their trip in it.

They had decided to sleep in the Englishman’s cabin, as the little log house that went with the property was always called, but Miss Somerville had made them promise to burn sulphur candles before they went in and was deeply grieved because her beloved nephew refused to carry with him a quart bottle of crude carbolic acid that she felt was necessary to ward off germs.

It was late in the afternoon as the faithful Ford chugged its way up the mountain road to the site of the proposed camp. The boys had stopped at the station at Greendale and taken in all the tools they could stow away, determined to begin work at excavating the first thing in the morning.

“Let’s lay out the ground this afternoon,” proposed Lewis.

“There’s nothing to lay out since the four pine trees mark the corners. I, for one, am going to lay out myself and rest and try to decide which one of your cousins is the most beautiful.”

“Douglas, of course! The others can’t hold a candle to her, although Helen is some looker and Nan has certainly got something about her that makes a fellow kind of blink. And that Lucy is going to grow up to her long legs some day and maybe step ahead of all of them.”

“Well, I’m mighty glad you thought about giving me this job of working for such nice gals.” These young men always spoke of themselves as being in the employ of the Carter girls, and all the time they were building the camp they religiously kept themselves to certain hours as though any laxity would be cheating their bosses. Besides, the regular habits that two years at West Point had drilled into them would have been difficult to break.

“I don’t know how to loaf,” complained Lewis. “That’s the dickens of it.”

“Me, neither!”

“They say the Government makes machines of its men.”

“True! I am a perpetual motion machine.”

They were busily engaged on their first morning in the mountains, plying pick and shovel. They bent their brave young shoulders to the task with evident enjoyment in the work. When they did straighten up to get the kinks out of their backs, they looked out across a wonderful country which they fully appreciated as being wonderful, but raving about landscapes and Nature was not in their line and they would quickly bend again to the task in a somewhat shamefaced way.

The orchards of Albemarle County in Virginia are noted and the green of an apple tree in May is something no one need be ashamed to admire openly, but all these boys would say on the subject was:

“Good apple year, I hope.”

“Yep! Albemarle pippins are sho’ good eats.”

Moving mountains was not quite so easy as they had expected it to be. They remembered what Mr. Lane had said about excavating when the sun showed it to be high noon and after five hours’ steady work they had made but little impression on the pile they were to dig away.

“Gee, we make no impression at all!” said Lewis. “I verily believe little Bobby Carter could have done as much as we have if he had been turned loose to play mud pies here.”

“Well, let’s stop and eat. I haven’t laughed for an hour,” and Bill gave out one of his guffaws that echoed from peak to peak and started two rabbits out of the bushes and actually dislodged a great stone that went rolling down the side of the mountain into an abyss below. At least, his laugh seemed to be the cause but Bill declared it was somebody or something, and to be sure a little mountain boy came from behind a boulder, grinning from ear to ear.

“What be you uns a-doin’?”

“Crocheting a shawl for Aunty,” said Lewis solemnly.

“Well, we uns is got a mule an’ a scoop that could make a shawl fer Aunty quicker’n you uns.” This brought forth another mighty peal from Bill and another stone rolled down the mountain side.

“Good for you, son!” exclaimed Lewis. “Suppose you fetch the mule here this afternoon and we’ll have a sewing bee. What do you say, Bill? Do you believe we would ever in the world get this dirt moved?”

“Doubt it.”

“Do you uns want we uns to drive the critter? We uns mostly goes along ’thout no axtra chawge.”

“Sure we want you. What do you charge for the mule and driver?”

“Wal, time was when Josephus brought as much as fifty cents a day, but he ain’t to say so spry as onct, an’ now we uns will be satisfied to git thirty cents, with a feedin’ of oats.”

“Oats! Who has oats? Not I. The only critter we have eats gasoline. I tell you, son, you feed Josephus yourself and we will feed you and pay you fifty cents a day for your animal. I don’t believe a mule could work for thirty cents and keep his self-respect.”

“Wal, Josephus an’ we uns don’t want no money what we uns don’ arn,” and the little mountain boy flushed a dark red under his sunburned, freckled face.

He was a very ragged youngster of about twelve. His clothes smacked of the soil to such an extent that you could never have told what was their original color. What sleeves there were left in his shirt certainly must once have been blue, but the body of that garment showed spots of candy pink calico, the kind you are sure to find on the shelves of any country store. His trousers, held up by twine, crossed over his wiry shoulders, were corduroy. They had originally been the color of the earth and time and weather had but deepened their tone. His eyes shone out very clear and blue in contrast to the general dinginess of his attire. His was certainly a very likable face and the young men were very much attracted to the boy, first because of his ready wit, shown from his first words, and then because of his quick resentment at the possibility of any one’s giving him or his mule money they had not earned.

“Of course, you are going to earn it,” reassured Lewis. “Now you go home and get your mule and as soon as we can cook some dinner for ourselves and satisfy our inner cravings, we will all get to work. You and Josephus can dig and Bill and I will begin to build.”

“Please, sir, wouldn’t you uns like Gwen to cook for you uns and wash the platters an’ sich? She is a great han’ at fixin’s.”

“Gwen! Who is Gwen?”

Another stone slipped from behind the boulder from which the boy had emerged and then a young girl came timidly forth.

“I am Gwen,” she said simply.

She was a girl of about fourteen, very slim and straight, with wide grey eyes that looked very frankly into those of the young men, although you felt a timidity in spite of her directness. Her scant blue dress was clean and whole and her brown hair was parted and braided in two long plaits, showing much care and brushing.

“Oh, how do you do, Miss Gwen? I am Lewis Somerville and this is my friend and fellow laborer, Mr. William Tinsley.”

The girl made a little old-fashioned courtesy with a quaint grace that charmed the laborers.

“Do you want me to cook and clean for you?”

“Of course we do! What can you cook?”

“I have learned to cook some very good dishes at the Mountain Mission School. Maybe you would not like them, though.”

“Of course we would like them! When can you start?”

“When you wish!”

“Well, I wish now,” put in Bill. “I never tasted meaner coffee than you made last night except what I made myself this morning, and as for your method of broiling bacon – rotten – rotten!”

The girl followed Lewis to the Englishman’s cabin and after being shown the provisions, she said she thought she could manage to get dinner without his assistance. He showed her how to light the hard alcohol stove which was part of their outfit and then gave her carte blanche with the canned goods and groceries.

Gwen shook her head in disapproval at sight of the pile of dirty dishes left from breakfast. It would take more than West Point training to make men wash dishes as soon as a meal is over. Lewis and Bill had a method of their own and never washed a plate until both sides had been eaten from, and not then until they were needed immediately. Supper had been eaten from the top side; breakfast, from the bottom. There were still some clean plates in the hamper, so why wash those yet?

In an incredibly short time Gwen called the young men to dinner. They lay stretched at their ease on a grassy slope near the cabin, quite pleased with themselves and their luck in having found a mule to move the dirt and a girl to cook their food all in one morning.

“What do you make of her?” asked Lewis. “She doesn’t talk or walk like a mountain girl.”

“Mission School!” commented Bill, looking at the slim, erect back of the girl as she went up the hill to the spring. She had refused their offer of help and said she wanted to get the water herself.

“I don’t believe Mission School would have her walking that way. Don’t you fancy the boy goes to school, too? Look how he slouches.”

Just then the boy, whose name was Josh, appeared, leading Josephus. Surely there never was such a specimen of horse flesh as that mule. Maud in the comic supplement was beautiful compared to him. His legs had great lumps on them and he was forced to walk with his feet quite far apart to keep from interfering. He was sway backed and spavined and blind in one eye, but there was a kindly expression in his remaining eye that reassured one. One fore leg was shorter than the other, which gave him a leaning, tumbling look that seemed to threaten to upset his equilibrium at every step.

“Well, God bless my soul!” exclaimed Lewis. “Is that Josephus?”

“Yes, sir! He ain’t so measly as he looks. He kin do a sight of scrapin’ an’ dumpin’,” and the boy reached an affectionate arm up around the old animal’s neck. Josephus responded by snorting in his master’s ear. “We uns done brought the implee-ment to make Aunty’s shawl,” pointing to a rusty old road shovel that Josephus had hitched to him.

“Good! as soon as Miss Gwen feeds us, we will see what he can do in the way of fancy work.”

Gwen was a born cook and the domestic science that had been so ably taught in the Mission School had developed her talent wonderfully. She had turned up two empty boxes and smoothed some wrapping paper over them. A bunch of mountain laurel glorified an old soup can and made a beautiful centre piece. The coffee was hot and clear and strong; the hoecake brown and crisp on the outside and soft and creamy within, just as a hoecake should be; the bacon vied with the hoecake in crispness, with no pieces limp and none burned. She had opened a can of baked beans and another of spaghetti, carefully following the directions on the cans as how to serve the contents.

“Well, don’t this beat all?” said Bill as he sank down by the improvised table.

“But you must come and eat with us, you and Josh,” insisted Lewis.

“Oh, no, the table isn’t big enough, and, besides, I must go on baking hoecakes.”

“Well, Josh, you come, anyhow.”

“No, sir, thanky! We uns will wait for Gwen. We uns ain’t fitten to sit down with the likes of you uns, all dirty with we uns’ meat a-stickin’ through the rags.”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Lewis, “if you are fit to sit with Miss Gwen, you are fit to sit with us. We don’t mind your meat sticking through, and as for being dirty – why don’t you wash?”

Gwen gave a laugh of delight. “There now, Josh, what do I tell you all the time? Rags don’t make a bit of difference if you are just clean.”

“Wal, we uns’ll eat with Josephus if we uns has to wash. This ain’t no time of the week for washin’.” But while the young men were enjoying the very appetizing food, Josh did sneak off to the stream and came back with his face and hands several shades fairer.

That afternoon was a busy one for all on that mountain side. Gwen gave the cabin a thorough cleaning, washed all the dishes and put papers on the shelves that were already in the cabin, unpacked the provisions and placed them with the dishes neatly on the shelves and in the old cupboard that still stood in the corner, left there by the Englishman. She went back to her home for yeast and made up a sponge, planning to have hot rolls for breakfast.

Josephus showed the mettle of his pasture by scraping and dumping about three times as much dirt in an hour as the two West Pointers had been able to move in a whole morning’s work. Josh did very spirited driving, pretending all the time that his steed had to be handled very carefully or he would run away, road-shovel and all.

“How did your mule happen to have one leg shorter than the other?” teased Lewis.

“Wal, that’s a mounting leg. He got that walkin’ round the mounting. All critters in the mountings is built that a way. Ain’t you an’ Mr. Bill there a-planning that there buildin’ after we unses’ mule, with short legs up the hill an’ long legs down?”

Bill almost fell out of the poplar tree where he had climbed to saw off limbs for twenty feet or more. He laughed so loud and long at the way Josh had gotten ahead of his friend in repartee that Gwen came out of the cabin to see what was the matter. Bill’s laugh was a very disconcerting thing until you got used to him.