The Project Gutenberg eBook, Wheat and Huckleberries, by Charlotte Marion (White) Vaile, Illustrated by Alice Barber Stevens

Wheat and Huckleberries

Charlotte M. Vaile

“MORTON FOUND TIME TO ANSWER ALL HER QUESTIONS.”

WHEAT AND HUCKLEBERRIES

OR

DR. NORTHMORE’S DAUGHTERS

BY

CHARLOTTE M. VAILE

ILLUSTRATED BY

ALICE BARBER STEVENS

BOSTON AND CHICAGO

W. A. WILDE COMPANY

Copyright, 1899,

By W. A. Wilde Company.

All rights reserved.

WHEAT AND HUCKLEBERRIES.

To J. F. V.

This Story

TOO SLIGHT TO BE AN OFFERING TO HIM, BUT WRITTEN
IN DEAR REMEMBRANCE OF HIS EARLY HOME
AND OF MINE

Is Lovingly Dedicated

C. M. V.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

[CHAPTER I—HARVEST AT THE FARM]

Just how Dr. Philip Northmore came to be the owner of a farm had never been quite clear to his fellow-townsmen. That he had bought it—that pretty stretch of upland five miles from Rushmore—in some settlement with a friend, who owed him more money than he could ever pay, was the open fact, but how the doctor had believed it to be a good investment for himself was the question. The opportunity to pay interest on a mortgage and make improvements on those charming acres at the expense of his modest professional income was the main part of what he got out of it. The doctor, as everybody knew, had no genius for making money.

However, he had never lamented his purchase. On the principle perhaps which makes the child who draws most heavily on parental care the object of dearest affection, this particular possession seemed to be the one on which the good doctor prided himself most. Its fine location and natural beauty were points on which he grew eloquent, and he sometimes referred to its peaceful cultivation as the employment in which he hoped to spend his own declining years, an expectation which it is safe to say none of his acquaintances shared with him.

So much for Dr. Northmore’s interest in the farm. It had a peculiar interest for the feminine part of his household in the early days of July, when wheat harvest had come and the threshing machine was abroad in the land. It was too much to expect of Jake Erlock, the tenant at the farm, who, since his wife’s death had lived there alone, that he would provide meals for the score of threshers who would bring the harvesting appetite to the work of the great day. Clearly this fell to the Northmores, and the doctor’s wife had risen to the part with her own characteristic energy. But for once, on the very eve of the threshing, she found herself facing a sudden embarrassment. Relatives from a distance had made their unexpected appearance as guests at her house, and to leave them behind, or take them into the crowded doings at the farm, seemed alike impossible. The prompt proposal of her daughters, that they, with the combined wisdom of their seventeen and nineteen years, should manage the harvest dinner, hardly seemed a plan to be adopted, and would have found scant attention but for the unlooked-for support it received from one of the neighbors.

“Now why don’t you let ’em do it?” said Mrs. Elwell, who had happened in at the doctor’s an hour after the arrival of the guests. “You’ve got everything planned out, of course, and there’ll be lots of the neighbor women in to help. There always is.”

She caught the look of entreaty in the eyes of the girls and the doubt in the eyes of their mother, and added, “Now I think of it, I could go out there myself just as well as not. There isn’t anything so very much going on at our house to-morrow, and I’d be right glad to take a hand in it. I’ll risk it but what the girls and I can manage.”

Manage! There was no question on that score. Mrs. Northmore’s eyes grew moist and she opened her lips to speak, but her good friend was before her, her pleasant face at that moment the express image of neighborly kindness. “Now, with all you’ve done for us, you and the doctor, to make a fuss over a little thing like this!” she said. And Mrs. Northmore, with the grace which can receive as well as render a favor, accepted the offer without a protest.

That was how it happened that Esther and Kate Northmore went to the harvesting at the farm, in their mother’s stead, the next morning. Kate, at least, carried no anxiety, but Esther, as the older, could not lay aside some uneasiness, not so much lest things should go wrong as lest their generous friend might be too much burdened, and the thought of all there was to do lent an unusual gravity to her sensitive face.

It was a perfect July day, with the sky an unbroken blue except for the clouds which floated like golden chaff high in the zenith. The great machine, flaming in crimson against a background of gold, stood among the ripened sheaves, and a score of sunburned men urged the labor which had begun betimes.

Ah, there is no harvest like this of the wheat. It comes when the year is at its flood, and the sun, rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, holds long on his course against the slow-creeping night. What ingathering of the later months, when the days have grown short and chilly, can match it in joy? The one is like the victory that comes in youth, when the success of to-day seems the promise for to-morrow; the other is the reward that comes to the worn and enfeebled man, who whispers in the midst of his gladness: “How slight at best are the gains of life!”

Esther was too young to moralize and too busy with the very practical work of helping with the dinner to grow poetical over the harvest scene, but the beauty of it did hold her for a minute with a long admiring gaze as she stood by the well, where she had gone for a pitcher of fresh water.

A man in gray jeans had hurried from the edge of the field at sight of her, to lower the buckets hanging from the old-fashioned windlass. She detained him a moment when he had handed her the dripping pitcher.

“We couldn’t have had a better day than this, could we?” she said. “And what a good thing it is that you and father decided to put in the wheat! He was speaking of that at breakfast this morning, and he says it was all your doing. There was such a poor crop last year that for his part he was almost afraid to try it again.”

The man’s face shone with gratified pride. “Well, I reckon the doctor ain’t fretting over it much now that I had my way,” he said. And then he added modestly: “But I might have missed it. You never can tell how a crop’ll come out till you see the grain in the measure.”

“Well, we’re seeing that to-day,” said the girl. “How much will there be?”

“We can’t rightly tell till it’s all threshed out,” said the man; “but Tom Balcom ’lows it’ll average as well’s anything they’ve threshed, and they’ve had thirty-five bushels to the acre.”

Figures did not mean much to Esther, but her “Oh!” had a note of appreciation. Then, as he was turning away, she said earnestly: “I hope we shall have a good dinner for you, Mr. Erlock. Mother was ever so sorry she couldn’t come out to-day herself; I believe she was afraid you wouldn’t fare as well as you ought without her. But Mrs. Elwell came, and between us all we won’t let you suffer.”

“I hain’t a bit o’ doubt about the victuals being good,” said the man, gallantly. “I hope you found things all right in the house. I tried to red up a little for you.”

“Oh, everything was in beautiful order, and the women are all praising your good housekeeping,” said Esther, smiling.

He looked at once pleased and embarrassed. “I did the best I could,” he said, then turned with an awkward nod and hurried again to his work.

She remembered hers too, and hastened with her pitcher back to the house. It was a one-story frame, with gray shingled sides and a deep drooping roof whose forward projection formed a porch across the entire front. Ordinarily it wore an expression of shy reserve, but to-day, with doors and windows open, and the hum of voices sounding through and round it, it seemed to have taken a new interest in life and looked a willing part of the cheerful scene.

The kitchen which the girl entered was full of country women, so full indeed that it seemed a wonder they could accomplish any work, but every one was busy except a young woman with a baby in her arms, who sat complacently watching the labors of the others.

It is the neighborly fashion in the middle West for the women of adjoining farms to help each other in the labors of this busiest time in the year, and the custom had not been omitted to-day because there was no one to return the service. It was rendered willingly as ever, partly from regard for Dr. Northmore, and partly from sympathy with the lonely householder who managed his farm.

“I had to stop and talk a minute with Jake Erlock,” said Esther, apologetic for her slight loitering now that she felt the hurry of the work again. “He came up to draw the water for me, and you ought to have seen him blush when I told him you all thought he was a good housekeeper.”

“Well, if he has any doubt what we think on that point, he’d better come in here and we’ll tell him,” said a woman who was grinding coffee at a mill fixed to the wall. “I don’t believe there’s another man in this township that would manage as well as he does. I wouldn’t answer for the way things would look at our house if ’twas my man that had the running of ’em.”

Groans and headshakings followed this remark. Apparently none of the women present felt any confidence in the ability of their respective men to run the domestic machinery.

“Well, Mis’ Erlock was a mighty good housekeeper herself,” observed one of them. “And I reckon Jake thinks it wouldn’t be showing proper respect to her memory to let everything go at loose ends now she’s gone. I tell you, Jake’s an uncommon good man in more ways than one. ’Tain’t everybody that would stay single as long as he has, but that’s just what I expected from the feelings he showed at the funeral, and it coming so long afterward too.”

A murmur of assent showed that the speaker was not the only one who remembered the emotion of the bereaved man on that mournful occasion, which, as had been suggested, occurred some time after his wife’s death, the delay of the sermon devoted to her memory being occasioned, as often happens in country districts of the West and South, by the absence of the preacher proper, whose extended circuit gives him but a portion of the year in one place.

“Well, ’twas to his credit, of course,” observed an elderly woman who was shelling peas; “but I must say I don’t like this way of putting off the funeral so long. I think burying people and preaching about ’em ought to go together, and if you can’t have your own preacher, you’d better put up with somebody else, or go without.”

“I don’t know about that,” said the young woman with the baby. “It looks to me as if folks were in a mighty hurry to get the last word said when they can’t wait for the right one to say it. I shouldn’t want my husband to be so keen to get through with it all, if ’twas me that was taken.”

“Maybe you’d want him to do like the man that took his second wife to hear his first wife’s funeral,” retorted the other.

The defender of local custom admitted, in the midst of a general laugh, that this was carrying it too far, and then the conversation turned on the probability of Jake Erlock’s marrying again, the various suitable persons to be found should he feel so inclined, and the importance in general of men having some one to take care of them, and of women having men and their houses to take care of.

The subject which, with its ramifications, seemed fairly inexhaustible was making Kate Northmore yawn and had fairly driven Esther from the room, when a young man with a bright, sunburned face and a pair of straight, broad shoulders looked in at the window.

“My, how good it smells in here!” he exclaimed in a voice that went well with the face. “What all are we going to have for dinner, Aunt Jenny?”

Mrs. Elwell, who was testing the heat of the oven on a plump bare arm, turned a flushed face and motherly smile on the speaker.

“Everything nice,” she said. “You never saw a better dinner than the girls have brought out for you. What do you say to fried chicken, and new potatoes, and green peas, with pie and doughnuts to top off, and lots of other good things thrown in extra?”

The young man smacked his lips and sent a devouring glance around the room. “Say!” he repeated. “Why, I say it’s enough to make a fellow feel like John Ridd and thank the Lord for the room there is in him. When are you going to give us a chance at all that?”

“When the bell rings, of course,” said Kate Northmore, looking up at him with a saucy glance from the meal she was sifting. “You didn’t expect to get anything to eat now, I hope.”

“Oh, not anything much,” said the young man, helping himself to a doughnut from a plate which stood within easy reach. “I just looked in to tell you that while you’re getting, you’d better get us a plenty. We’re a fearful hungry crowd, and there won’t be much left over; but if there should be, it might come in handy to-morrow.”

“To-morrow!” repeated Kate, letting the meal which was whirling under her hand fall level in the pan. “You don’t mean that there’s any danger of your being here to-morrow, do you?”

The young man brushed the chaff from the shoulders of his blue flannel shirt, and set his straw hat a little further on the back of his head before he answered. Kate’s “To-morrow” had put a complete pause on the talk of the room, and every woman there was looking at him anxiously.

“Well, I wouldn’t really say that there’s any need of worrying about it yet” he said, lowering his voice to a confidential tone; “but you see the men have heard that you and Esther are such stunning good cooks that—well, of course, I don’t want to give ’em away, but I don’t know as you can blame ’em any for wanting to make the work hold out so as to get in an extra meal or two here, if they can. That’s all.”

There was a shout at this, and Mrs. Elwell said reproachfully, “Now, Morton, quit your fooling. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself to come scaring the girls with your talk about to-morrow? Why, we thought the machine had broken down, or something of that sort.”

He did look a little conscience-smitten just then, as Esther, who had caught some hint of excitement in the dining room, where she was setting the table, appeared in the doorway, looking really troubled. Kate was facing him with a different expression.

“Well, since you’re so anxious about to-morrow, Mort Elwell, you needn’t eat any more of those doughnuts,” she said, snatching up the plate toward which his hand was moving a second time, and setting it out of his reach. “We may want them, you know.”

He drew down his face to an injured expression. “That’s the way you treat a body, is it, when he comes to give you a friendly warning? All right, I’ll go now. I see I’m not wanted.”

He shifted his position as he spoke, and the next moment the pitchfork, on which he had been leaning, was thrust through the window, and as quickly withdrawn, with a doughnut sticking on every point. “Good-by, Kate,” he shouted, as he disappeared. “If the doughnuts don’t hold out, you can make some cookies for to-morrow.”

He had the best of it, and after a moment, apparently, even Kate forgave him, “the rascal,” as she called him, with a toss of her pretty head. And then the talk of the kitchen took a new turn, suggested by the thought of all the ills which would have followed if an accident had really happened to the machine. There had been such accidents in the experience of most of those present, and they were recounted now with much fulness of detail and some rivalry as to the amount of agony endured in the several cases by the workers in the culinary department.

“It’s the worst thing there is about threshing,” said the woman who had related the most harrowing tale of all. “I don’t care how many men there are, and I don’t mind cooking for ’em, and setting out the best I’ve got,—seems as if a body warn’t thankful for the crop if they don’t,—but when the machine gets out of order, and the work hangs on, and you have the men on your hands for three or four days running, just eating you out of house and home, and keeping you on the jump from morning to night, getting things on the table and off again, I tell you it’s something awful.”

There was no demur to this sentiment, but there was still another phase of distress to be mentioned.

“No,” said one of the others, “there ain’t anything quite as bad as that, but it’s the next thing to it to have the threshers come down on you without your having fair warning that they’re coming. I never will forget what a time we had last year. Abe had been telling me all along that they were going to stack the wheat and thresh in the fall, when one day, ’most sundown, up comes the threshing machine right into our barn lot. I told the men there must be some mistake, but they said, no, they’d just made a bargain with Abe, and were going to begin on our wheat in the morning. I tell you I was that mad I couldn’t see straight. Abe he tried to smooth it over, said he found the men had been thrown out at one place, and he thought he’d better close right in on ’em, and I needn’t to worry about the victuals—just give ’em what I had.”

She paused with an accent of inexpressible contempt, and covered her husband’s remarks on that point with the words, “You know how men talk! Why, even our side meat was most gone, and I hadn’t a single chicken frying size. Well, I tell you I didn’t let the grass grow under my feet nor under Abe’s neither. I made him hitch up and put himself into town the liveliest ever he did, and what with me sitting up most all night to brown coffee, and churn, and make pies, we somehow managed to put things through. I was plumb wore out when ’twas all over, but they do say the men bragged all the rest of the season on the dinner I gave ’em.”

Great applause followed this story, and an elderly woman remarked: “That’s one good thing about having the threshers. You’re sure to get your name up for a good cook if your victuals suit the men. I’ll warrant you’ll get a recommend after to-day, girls,” she said, with a nod at Kate and Esther. “And it ain’t a bad thing to have at your age,” she added, with a knowing wink.

Esther flushed, with a look of annoyance, but Kate responded gayly: “All right. Don’t any of you tell that they made the pies and doughnuts at home, and don’t you ever let it out that you fried the chickens, Mrs. Elwell.”

There was a sisterly resemblance between the two girls. Each was fair, with dark hair and eyes, but Esther was generally counted the prettier. She had a delicate, oval face, with soft, responsive eyes, and a color that came and went as easily as ripples in a wheat-field; the sort of face which, without the slightest coquetry of expression, was almost sure to hold and draw again the interested glance of those who met her. Kate’s was of the commoner type, and yet there was nothing too common in its strong, pleasant lines, or the straightforward frankness of her ready smile.

With so many to help, the preparations for dinner could not but move briskly. At sharp twelve o’clock the farm bell, mounted on a hickory post at the corner of the house, rang out its invitation, and almost instantly the engine stopped puffing, the whir of labor in the fields slackened, and the men had turned their faces toward the house. They were not a company of common laborers. Many of them were well-to-do farmers, who gave their services here in repayment or anticipation of similar aid in their own time of need. Most of them knew the Northmore girls, and had a friendly greeting for Kate as they passed her, standing by the swinging bell.

“Well, Miss Kate,” said one of them, a tall, angular man, who, in spite of his office in the district as the New Light preacher, was one of the most active workers, “I’ll wager you never rang a bell before for such a hard-looking crowd. We’re ‘knaves that smell of sweat.’ But there’s folks that look better in worse business, and I reckon you don’t mind the looks of us as long as we behave ourselves. How many do you want at once? I s’pose we can’t all sit down at the first table.”

“Well, then,” broke in a hearty young farmer, with a twinkle in his eyes, “I move that the preacher goes in with the last crowd. We don’t any of us want to run our chances after he gets through.”

“Oh,” said the preacher, good-naturedly, “I was calculating to wait, anyhow. Shan’t have any scruples then against taking the last piece.”

“Well, I’ll engage that the last piece shall lie as good as the first,” said Kate; “but we can’t give more than ten of you elbow-room at once. I might count ‘Eeny, meny, miny, mo,’ to see which of you shall come in now, but there’s a pan of corn-bread in the oven that I’m watching, and I think you’d better settle it yourselves.”

Apparently there was no difficulty, for in an extraordinarily short space of time the toilets made at the well were finished, and the dinner was furnished with guests. Loaded as the table was with good things, it might have seemed part of a Thanksgiving scene but that the holiday air was quite wanting to the men who sat around it. There was not much conversation. Some observations on crops and the price of wheat, or an occasional bit of good-natured raillery, filled the infrequent pauses in the business of eating, but the latter was carried on with a heartiness which spoke well for those who had spread the feast.

Outside, however, in the shadow of the great beech by the kitchen door, there was a waiting group who found time for talking, and the preacher, whose long, lank figure was stretched in the midst, was easily taking the leading part. Some remark had evidently started him on a train of reminiscences, and his mellow, half-drawling tones floated through the kitchen door, and mingled with the clatter of the dishes.

“Yes, there’s been a heap o’ change in this country since I came here twenty years ago. ’Twas pretty much all timber through here then, and there warn’t a foot o’ tile in this end o’ the county. I hired out to old Jim Rader. He was just clearing up his farm. Lord, he used to have me up by four o’clock in the morning, grubbing stumps, with the fog so thick you couldn’t tell stump from fog before you.”

“I reckon you made the acquaintance of the ager ’bout that time,” observed one of the group as the preacher paused.

“Ague!” repeated the other, raising himself on his elbow and eying the speaker. “Wall, I reckon! If there’s any kind I didn’t get on speaking terms with, I’d like to know the name of it. I’ve had the third-day ague, and the seventh-day ague, the shaking ague, and the dumb ague—though why ’twas ever called ‘dumb’ beats me. If there’s anything calculated to make a man open his mouth and express his mind freely on the way things go in this neck o’ wilderness, it’s that particular kind. Lord! My bones have ached so, I’d have given any man a black eye that said there was only two hundred of ’em. However, I got shet of it at last, taking quinine. Reckon this country couldn’t have been settled up without quinine, and I stayed with Rader two years and helped him break in the land. Didn’t like the business much, but I had a notion in my head that I wanted to make a preacher of myself, and I didn’t quit till I had the means to do it. Didn’t get over-much schooling, but I wouldn’t take a heap for what I did get. Mort!” he exclaimed, turning abruptly to the young man at his side, “how have you been getting on at college? They say you’re going to stick right to it.”

“I haven’t had to give up yet,” said the young man, quietly; “and I don’t think it’s likely any part of the course will be harder than the first two years.”

“Reckon your uncle don’t come down very heavy with the stamps yet,” said the preacher, grimly.

The young man flushed. “’Tisn’t my uncle’s business to send me to college,” he said; “I never asked him to.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” said the preacher, heartily. “I like your grit. For that matter, you might as well spend your breath trying to blow up a rain as trying to persuade him to spend any money on schooling that he didn’t haf to. But how did you make it? You must have found it hard pulling at first.”

“Oh, at first I sawed wood,” said the other, lightly, “and I’ll own that was hard pulling. Half a cord before breakfast is a pretty fair stint, but I managed to make it. After that ’twas different things. I never had any trouble getting work. It was one man’s horse and another man’s lawn, and in the spring I had a great run helping the women at house-cleaning. Got quite a reputation for laying carpets. This year there hasn’t been quite as much variety in my jobs, for I taught school in the winter.”

The preacher’s sallow face was tense and the shrewd gray eyes gleamed as he listened. “You’ll do, Mort Elwell!” he said. “If I was a betting man, I’d bet on you and take all the chances going.”

At that moment, Mrs. Elwell, who was standing in the kitchen doorway for a moment’s rest and coolness, was saying to Esther Northmore, with a little sigh, “I don’t wonder he had all he could do at house-cleaning. If he knew how I missed him last spring! There’s nobody ’round here that can put down carpets equal to him.” And then she sighed again, this time more heavily. Every one knew that if she had her way, her husband’s nephew, who had grown up as one of their own family, would not be working his way through college in this stern fashion.

As for Morton himself, perhaps, being a young fellow not much given to talking of his private affairs in public, he was glad to see a stream of men issuing just then from the house, and it was but a few minutes later when a second call summoned him and his fellows to their places.

It was hardly an hour that the wheels of the great machine stood still. At the end of that time the workers were all at their places again. And now that the masculine appetites were satisfied, the women sat down to eat, an occupation which they prolonged far beyond the time of their predecessors. To the Northmore girls, indeed, it seemed as if it would never be over, but there came an end to it at last, and even to the washing of the dishes.

Esther would not consent to the proposal of the women that they should do the work without her, but Kate—with better wisdom perhaps—accepted it with the frankest pleasure. She was a girl who had a healthy curiosity about everything that went on around her, and no one was surprised to see her presently standing in the field, beside the engine that made the wheels of the threshing machine go round, getting points from the man in charge as to how they did it. After that an invitation from Morton Elwell, who was on the feed board, to come up and watch the work from that point was instantly accepted, amid the laughing approval of the crowd. For her sake the speed of the work was slackened a little, the bundles were thrown from the loaded wagon more slowly, and Morton found time, while cutting their bands and thrusting them in at their place, to answer all her questions.

It was a pretty picture she made, standing in her blue gingham dress on this crimson throne, her sunbonnet fallen on her shoulders and her dark hair blowing about her face, but she knew nothing of this. She was thinking only of that wonderful machine, and she knew before she left her place how it whirled the loosened sheaves from sight, rubbed out the grain in its rough iron palms, sent the free clean wheat in a rushing stream down to the waiting measure, and flung out the broken straw to be caught on the pitchforks of the laborers behind and pressed to its place on the growing stack.

There was an exhilaration in it not to be dreamed of by her sister, who glanced at her occasionally from the kitchen windows and wondered how she could bear to be in the midst of all that heat and noise. For her part, she was quite content to let the machine stand merely as part of the picture. And perhaps for her it wore the greater dignity from her vague idea of its internal workings.

The afternoon wore away swiftly. There was a five o’clock supper to be served to the men, but this was not the elaborate affair the dinner had been, and by sunset of the long bright day the work indoors and out had been brought to a successful finish. The shining stubble of the field lay bare except for the fresh clean straw stack. The machine was rumbling on its way to another farm, and Jake Erlock’s kitchen had been restored to a state of order equal to that in which his kindly neighbors had found it.

It had been expected that Dr. Northmore would come for his daughters, but, as he had not appeared when the work was finished, they accepted the offer of a ride home with a farmer who was going their way. The sight of them sitting in the big Studebaker wagon must have acted as a prompter to Morton Elwell’s memory, for he suddenly recalled that he had an important errand in town, and proposed to go along too, a proposal to which the owner of the wagon agreed with the greatest good will. There was not a chair for him,—the girls had been established in the only two,—and the farmer and his hired man occupied the seat, but the young man settled him on a bundle of straw in the bottom of the wagon, with an air of supreme content.

They were old comrades, he and the Northmore girls; the girls could not remember the time when he had not been their escort and champion, their Fidus Achates, all the more free to devote himself to their service because he had no sisters or even girl cousins of his own. He was two years older than either of them, and his years at college seemed to make him older still, but if his absence had made any difference in the perfect freedom of their relations, he, at least, had not guessed it.

“Well, you girls must be glad to be through with this,” he said, as the team started at a rattling pace down the road. “I know you’re awfully tired.”

He included them both in his glance, but it rested longest on Esther’s face, which certainly looked a little weary under the shadow of her wide straw hat.

“You must be tired yourself, Mort,” she said, looking down at him. “You’ve been working ever since daylight, haven’t you?”

“Oh, but I’m used to that,” he said gayly, “and this is new business for you. I must say, though, I never saw things go better. There won’t be anybody round here to beat you at housekeeping if you keep on like this.”

She frowned slightly. “It was your aunt who managed everything,” she said; “all we did was to help a little.”

“That isn’t what she’ll say about it,” said the young man, and then he added warmly: “but my Aunt Jenny’s a host wherever you put her. There’s no doubt about that. My, what a good place this world would be if everybody in it was made like her!” And there was an assent to this which ought to have made the good woman’s ears burn, if there is any truth in the old saying.

For a while the talk ran lightly on the incidents of the day; then it grew more personal, and plans for the summer fell under discussion. Morton’s were all for work. He was of age, master of his own time, and he meant to make a good sum toward the expenses of the coming year at college. He talked of his hopes with the utmost frankness, and then questioned of theirs as one who had the fullest rights of friendship.

“Will you go away anywhere?” he asked; “or are you going to stay at home all summer?”

“That depends,” said Kate, answering for both. “We may go up to Maxinkuckee for a little while; but what we’d like to do, what we’d like best—” she paused upon the words with a lifting of her hands and the drawing of a long ecstatic breath, “would be to make a visit at grandfather’s. You can’t think how he’s urging us to come.”

“Do you mean go to New England?” he exclaimed, sitting up straight on his bundle of straw.

“Yes, to mother’s old home,” said Kate. “Just think, we haven’t been there since we were little girls. Mother’s been trying to persuade grandfather to come out here, but he says he’s too old to make the journey, and that we must come there. He has fairly set his heart on it.”

“And so have the others too,” said Esther. “Stella’s letters have been full of it for the last six months.”

“Stella’s that cousin of yours who’s such an artist, isn’t she?” said Morton. He was looking extremely interested.

“Oh, she’s an artist and everything else that’s lovely,” said Esther. “I don’t suppose you ever saw the kind of girl that she is. She has a studio in Boston in the winters. She sent me a picture of it once, and it’s perfectly charming. And only think, she’s been in Europe twice—once she was studying over there. And she’s seen those wonderful old places and the famous pictures, and been a part of everything that’s beautiful.”

“That’s the sort of thing you’d like to do yourself, I suppose,” said the young man, drawing a wisp of straw slowly through his fingers.

“Like it!” she cried. “To travel, to study, to see beautiful things, to hear beautiful music, and to be in touch every day with charming, cultivated people! Oh, if I had half a chance, wouldn’t I take it!”

There was something very wistful in her voice as she said it, but not more wistful than the look that came into Morton Elwell’s eyes at that moment. He turned them away from her face, and the rattle of the big wagon filled the silence.

“You ought to show Mort that picture of Stella you got the other day,” said Kate, suddenly.

Esther took a letter from her pocket. “I brought it out to the farm to-day on purpose to show your aunt,” she said, and she handed him a photograph which he regarded for a moment with a bewildered expression.

“Why, it looks like a picture of Greek statuary,” he said; “one of the old goddesses, or something of that sort.”

“That’s just the way she meant to have it look,” said Esther, triumphantly. “You see how artistic she is.”

The young man still looked mystified. “But is her hair really white, like that?” he asked.

“Why, of course not,” said Esther, in a rather disgusted tone. “She powdered it and did it in a low coil for the sake of the picture. Then she put the white folds over her shoulders to make it look like a bust against the dark background, and she had the lights and shadows arranged to give just the right effect. Isn’t it exquisite?”

“I can’t say I admire it,” said the young man, grimly; “I’d rather see people look as if they were made of flesh and blood.”

Kate laughed. She had privately expressed the same opinion herself, but she did not choose to encourage him in criticising her relatives.

“You’re an insensible Philistine, Mort Elwell,” she said, with a sly glance at her sister. “That’s what Stella’d call you, and she knows.”

The point of the taunt was lost on the young man, but he had an impression, derived from early lessons in the Sabbath School, that the Philistines were a race of heathen idolaters, and he resented the charge with spirit.

“You’d better call your cousin the Philistine,” he retorted; “I’m sure I have no liking for graven images.”

This was too much for Esther. She snatched the picture from his hand and bent a look of admiration upon the shapely white head, with its classic profile and downcast eyes, which made ample amends for the cold scrutiny to which it had just been subjected.

“It is perfectly beautiful,” she said, with slow emphasis; “I don’t see how you can be unappreciative.”

Morton did not press his obnoxious opinion. He grew rather silent, and except for an occasional sally from Kate, conversation was at a low ebb for the rest of the way.

Meanwhile the sunset flamed and faded in the west. The evening breeze sprang up, and cool, restful shadows fell on the wide, rich landscape.

“Home at last!” cried Kate, as a bend in the road brought them suddenly upon a house of the colonial style, shaded by fine old trees, at the edge of town. “And there’s mother in the doorway looking for us.”

[CHAPTER II—TALKING IT OVER]

Mrs. Northmore was at the gate to greet her daughters when the great wagon stopped.

“We knew you would find some one to bring you home,” she said, smiling up at them. “Your father was disappointed that he couldn’t come for you himself, but he took our friends to the station, and then, just as he was ready to start for you, he was called to the other end of the town. Come in, Morton,” she added, turning to the young man, who was helping the girls over the wheel; “I must have a full account of the doings to-day, and it may be a one-sided report if I have only the family version of it.”

“But there is only one side, Mrs. Northmore,” said the young man. “Everything went gloriously,—specially the dinner,—and everybody behaved beautifully except me. Kate’ll tell you how bad I was. No, I can’t stay. There’s an errand I must do before dark.”

“I shan’t take anybody’s report against you, Morton, unless it’s your own, and I’m not sure that I’ll admit even that,” said Mrs. Northmore. It was in her eyes as well as her voice how much she liked the big brown fellow. “Well, if you must go—but come and see us soon. Don’t work so hard this summer that you’ll have no time for your friends.”

She took an arm of each of the girls and walked with them up the gravel path between the rows of blossoming catalpas. “So the day has gone well?” she said, glancing from one to the other.

“As if you had been there yourself, mother,” said Esther, and Kate added: “It’s been a regular picnic. I never enjoyed a day more in my life.”

In different ways each of the girls resembled her strongly. Esther had the broad, low forehead and serious eyes, but Kate had the resolute mouth with a touch of playfulness lurking at the corners. A girl, much younger than either, rolled sleepily out of the hammock as they stepped on the veranda.

“Oh, I’m glad you’ve come,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “This has been the longest, stupidest day I ever saw. Papa’s been away, and mamma’s been busy with the company, and Aunt Milly’s been so cross because she couldn’t go out to the farm, that she’s been ready to snap my head off every time I looked in at the kitchen. Even the cat went off visiting.”

“What a dull day you’ve had of it, Virgie!” said Esther, kissing the child’s flushed cheek. “But what ailed Aunt Milly? She knows she couldn’t be spared to go out there to-day.”

“Of course she knows it,” said Mrs. Northmore, “and she would have felt even worse to be spared from here, but I suspect the real grievance was the cheerfulness with which you girls left her behind. She wanted to feel that she was needed in both places. Poor old Milly, she can’t reconcile herself to the idea that we can really get along without her anywhere.”

“Why didn’t we think of that?” cried Kate. “If we’d asked her advice about a lot of things, and shaken our heads over the difficulties we should get into, with her out of our reach, she’d have been happy all day. Esther, you and I are a pair of stupids, but I’ll make it up to her yet.”

“Oh, she’s forgiven you already,” said Mrs. Northmore; “and if she punishes you at all, it’ll be by way of showing you some special favors, you may be sure of that.”

“There she comes now,” said Kate, as footsteps were heard approaching on the tiled floor of the hall; and she added, listening to the thud of the heavy feet, whose stout slippers dropping at the heels doubled the fall with a solemn tap, “walking as if she went on two wooden legs and a pair of crutches.”

The comparison was not bad, and the laugh that followed it had hardly ended when the old servant showed a lugubrious face at the door.

“Howdy, Aunt Milly?” cried Kate before the other had a chance to speak. “Here we are, you see, home again. I was just coming out to the kitchen to tell you how we got along, and see if you could give us a bite to eat. I suppose you think we had our suppers at the farm, and so we did; but it wasn’t like one of your suppers, and I guess you know how much appetite you have when you’re all mixed up with the cooking. Don’t bother to bring anything in here, but just let us sit out in the kitchen with you.”

At this artful proposal Milly’s face shortened unmistakably. “Don’t know’s I’ve got anything you’d keer about,” she began with a show of reluctance, “but I’ll knock round and see what I can find for you.”

“Oh, you’ll find something—you always do,” said Kate. “By the way, I thought I smelled something good when I was coming up to the house.”

“It was the catalpa blossoms, and you know it,” said Esther, laughing, and looking at her sister with a reproving glance, when the door had closed behind Milly.

“Well, but she did make a spice cake, and it smells awfully good,” said Virgie. “It’s warm now, and she wouldn’t break a crumb of it for me.”

“There!” said Kate, triumphantly. “You see how people are helped out, when they prevaricate for high moral ends. Come on to the kitchen. I’ll never pretend to be smart again if I can’t put Aunt Milly in good spirits before we’ve been there long.”

It would have been an incomplete picture indeed of the Northmore household which did not include old Aunt Milly. An important figure she was and had been ever since the girls could remember. But in truth her connection with the family was of much older date than that. She had been born and reared a slave on the Kentucky plantation which had been the home of Dr. Northmore’s boyhood. He had left it earlier than she, having before the war gone out from the large circle of brothers to establish himself in his profession in a neighboring state. But when, in the changed times, the servants had scattered from the old place, Milly had made her way to the home of her favorite, and urged with many entreaties that she might fill a post of service there.

Dr. Northmore could not resist the appeal, nor his young wife his wish in the matter, and though the service had been a trying one at first to the energetic Northern girl, yet, as time went on, and children, one after another, were added to the household, she learned to set truer value on the faithful, affectionate servant, whose devotion nothing could tire; and now, when Milly was old and infirm, her place was as secure as it had been in her palmiest days. She herself had full confidence in her ability to fill it still, and her one fear for the future was that she might be forced to share it with one of those “transients” who rendered their service by the week,—a class for which her high-bred contempt knew no bounds.

Kate had not misjudged the effect of her stratagem on the simple old soul. It was a long time since her young ladies had done her the honor of eating at her own pine table, and Milly forgot the grief of the day in the zest of her hospitality, and accepted their praises for the feast she furnished, with a delight quite different from the forgiving dignity with which she had meant to pierce the hearts of her darlings.

“Well, yes, I did stir up a little cake for you,” she admitted, when Kate, after due admiration of the fresh and fragrant loaf, accused her of misrepresenting the extent of her supplies. “Laws, I knew you’d be wantin’ a bite of somethin’ afore you went to bed. It allers makes my stomach feel powerful empty to ride in one o’ them wagons, jouncin’ round in them straight-backed cheers.”

“And you must have named it for me, Aunt Milly,” said Kate, with her eyes on the cake.

This was an allusion to one of Milly’s culinary secrets, and she received it with a smile which fairly transfigured the dusky old face. She had her own theories of cake-making, theories which she maintained with the unanswerable logic of her own surpassing skill.

“You see, Miss Kate,” she had said years before, when the girl had come to the kitchen with a request to be instructed in the mysteries of the art, “there’s somethin’ curus about makin’ cake. It ain’t all in havin’ a good receipt, though it stan’s to reason if you don’t take the right things there’s no use puttin’ ’em together. An’ it ain’t all in the way you put ’em together neither, though I ’low that makes a heap o’ difference. Folks has their ’pinions, an’ there’s some that says you must take your hand to the mixin’, an’ some that says you must use a wooden spoon, an’ I knew one cook that would have it you must stir the batter all one way, or ’twould be plumb ruined. But I can’t say as I jest hold with any o’ them idees, nor yet with the notions folks has about the bakin’, though it’s true as you live, a body’s got to be mighty keerful on that p’int. Laws, I’ve known folks dassn’t let a cat run across the kitchen floor while the cake’s in the oven.

“I tell you, Miss Kate,” Milly had proceeded, growing more impressive, as the greatness of her subject loomed before her, “there’s a heap o’ things to be looked to in the makin’ o’ cake, but there’s somethin’ besides all them p’ints I’ve mentioned. It takes the right person to make it! There’s some that’s been ’lected to make cake an’ some that hasn’t. There ain’t no other doctrine to account for the luck folks has. I’ll show you my way, but I can’t tell beforehand how it’ll work with you. There’s one thing, though, I’ll jest say private between you’n me,” she added, lowering her voice to a mysterious whisper, “an’ I ain’t one to take up with no superstitious notions neither; when you want to make an extra fine cake, you name it for somebody that loves you jest as you’re shettin’ the oven door, an’ if you’ve made that cake all right, an’ if you ain’t deceived in that person, your cake’ll come out splendid.”

“But if you are deceived?” Kate had suggested solemnly.

“Then,” said Milly, lifting her finger, and shaking it with slow emphasis, “as sure’s you’re born that cake’ll fall in the pan an’ be sad. There can’t nothin’ on earth prevent it.”

“But that is such an uncertain way,” Kate had objected. “You can’t always tell whether or not a person loves you. Why don’t you name it for somebody that you love yourself? Then you could be sure.”

But Milly had shaken her head wisely. It was the nature of cake, as it was of love, to be uncertain, and she refused to reconstruct her charm.

All this had happened years before, but when, by some lucky turn of memory, Kate recalled it now, and suggested that this perfect specimen of cake had been baked under the inspiration of her own love for Milly, the last shadow of the old woman’s melancholy vanished. “Well, Honey,” she said radiantly, “I reckon I shouldn’t have missed it fur if I had.”

She was prepared now to enjoy to the full the account which the girls gave of the experiences at the farm, including everything of importance, from Kate’s exaltation on the machine to Morton Elwell’s capture of the doughnuts. Over the latter incident her eyes fairly rolled with delight, and she interrupted the narrator to exclaim, “That chile’s boun’ to make a powerful smart man. Puts me in mind of Mars Clay, your uncle, you know, what got to be kunnel in the army. That chile did have the most ’mazin’ faculty for comin’ roun’ when a body was cookin’, an’ the beatin’est way findin’ out where things was kep’ an’ helpin’ hisself that ever I did see. I never will forgit how he fooled your grandma one year ’bout the jelly. Ole Miss she allus put her jelly in glasses with lids to ’em. She had a closet full that year, an’ every glass of it would turn out slick an’ solid. Mars Clay, he foun’ he could turn the jelly out on the lid, an’ cut a slice off’m the bottom, an’ jist slide the jelly back again. I seed him do it one day, but I never let on, and your grandma she never foun’ out, but she ’lowed ’twas mighty strange how her jelly did shwink that year.”

She shook with glee at that remembrance, and Kate forgave Morton Elwell over again for outwitting her, since the act had been the means of giving her one more story of the old days. But Milly’s delight reached its climax when Kate told of the favor with which the various dishes had been received at dinner, and how Farmer Giles, after helping himself to the third piece of corn-bread, had declared it the best he ever tasted, to which she had replied that it ought to be; it was made by Aunt Milly’s own receipt.

“Bless your heart, chile,” cried the old woman; “you didn’t tell him that now, did you? You mustn’t make the old darky too proud!”

She did not enter with quite as much enthusiasm into Kate’s description of the threshing machine, and reverted with a sigh to the days when the thresher was content with his flail, an instrument which she extolled as being “a heap safer than that great snorting machine” (she persisted in confounding its functions with those of the engine); and she refused to share in Kate’s wonder that people didn’t starve in those days waiting for the grain to be threshed.

The two were still discussing harvests past and present when Esther, feeling that she had done her full duty there, left the kitchen. She had never held quite the place in Milly’s affections which Kate enjoyed, nor had she of late years listened with her sister’s contentment to the old woman’s thrice-told tales. She left them now and went to seek her mother.

Mrs. Northmore was seated on the cool veranda with her hands in her lap, and that look of tired content which tells of a busy but successful day. A generous hospitality had left her a little worn. Esther sat down on the step at her feet and leaned her arms across her lap in a childish fashion she had never outgrown.

“I wish I didn’t get so tired of people whom I really like,” she said. “It would break Aunt Milly’s heart if she knew how she bores me. It seems to me sometimes I get tired of everybody—everybody but you, mother dear.”

Mrs. Northmore looked into her daughter’s eyes with a smile.

“I don’t think I should feel hurt, my dear, if you wanted to get away from me, too, sometimes. Nobody quite suits all our moods. I wouldn’t reproach myself on that score, if I were you.”

“But it seems so disloyal, when it’s anybody—anybody that you really care a great deal about,” said Esther. Her mother’s smile kept its tinge of amusement, and the girl’s face grew more serious.

“I wonder sometimes if I’m made like other girls,” she said. “It isn’t just getting tired of people. It’s getting tired of things in general, and longing for something larger than anything that comes into my life. I don’t know as I can make you understand quite what I mean,” she went on, a strained note creeping into her voice, “but somehow it came over me to-day more strongly than it ever did before that I could never be satisfied just to live out my life in the common humdrum way. Perhaps it was the talk of those women. I suppose they’re just as good and useful as the average, but it seemed as if they thought there was nothing in the world for women to do but to be married, and keep house, and take care of children. Even Mrs. Elwell, nice as she is, appeared to think so, and it all seemed to me so poor and small. I almost despised them, mother.”

The smile had gone now from Mrs. Northmore’s eyes. “Oh, my dear!” she said; and then she was silent. Of what use would it be to tell this child, with the experiences of life all untried, that the common lot, which she despised, had in its round the truest joys and deepest satisfactions? Years and love and happy work must bring the knowledge of that. She stroked the brown head for a moment without speaking. It was Esther who found words first.

“You never felt like those women, did you, mother? You don’t seem a bit like them. You are always reading and thinking, and you know about a thousand things they’ve never thought of.”

The smile came back to Mrs. Northmore’s eyes, but there was a touch of sadness in it. “My dear girl,” she said, “I’m not half as wise as you think I am; but if I have any wisdom I’m sure I’ve found most of it, and my happiness too, in those same common things. There isn’t such a difference between me and those friends of ours as you imagine.”

The girl looked unconvinced. Presently she said, with a sigh, “If one could only be something or do something! When I think of the people who have been great—the heroes, the poets, the artists, people who have accomplished something that lasted—they seem to me the only ones who have been really happy. Just to be one of the mass, and live, and die, and be forgotten, seems so pitiful.”

There had never been any closed doors between Mrs. Northmore’s heart and her daughters. She had been the friend and confidante of each, and she knew this mood of Esther’s; but the day had deepened its color to an unusual sombreness. The girl had never before disclosed a feeling quite like this, and for once the mother was at a loss how to help her. To say that all could not be great was trite, and had no comfort in it.

“I think we often make a mistake in our envying of the great,” she said gently. “The happiness to them was not in being known and remembered beyond others; few of them knew in their lifetime that this would be true of them, or even the value of their work to the world. The real happiness lay in doing with success the thing they cared to do. To know our work and do it, Esther, not the sort of work nor the reward, but the finding and doing—that is the true joy of the greatest, and it is open to us all.”

She had spoken with simple seriousness, as she always did when others brought her their troubles, however fanciful. Perhaps the girl did not grasp the thought, or, grasping, find the comfort in it.

“But it seems to me that some of us have no special work to do, nor any special faculty for doing it,” she said. “Here am I, for instance. What am I good for? I seem to myself to be just one of those creatures who are made for nothing but to fill up the spaces between the people who amount to something.”

Mrs. Northmore pressed her hand for a moment lightly on the dark appealing eyes of the girl. “If we are in earnest,” she said gently, “and if it is usefulness, not praise that we are caring about, we shall find our work; and be sure it will seem special to us if we love it as we ought.”

There were a few minutes of silence; then the girl said more quietly, but with a note of despondence in her voice: “If I had gone to school longer and tried to fit myself for something, perhaps I might have found out what I was good for. I didn’t care much when I left Lance Hall, and I never studied as hard as I might while I was there; but I’ve thought more about it since then.”

A look of pain came into Mrs. Northmore’s face. It was a regret the girl had never expressed before, but one which had been often in her own thoughts. Yet the year in boarding-school, which had followed Esther’s graduation from the high school, had been all that Dr. Northmore could afford to give his daughter. She was considered in the region quite an accomplished girl, but her mother, at least, realized what a broader and more serious education might have done for her. She realized it at this moment with unusual force.

“I wish you might have had the best the schools can give, and some other things you have missed, Esther,” she said. And then she added, “If we were only a little richer!”

There was a tone in Mrs. Northmore’s voice which one heard but seldom, and the girl noted it with a sudden compunction. “I haven’t missed anything that I deserved to have,” she said quickly, “and I’ve had more than most girls. I know that. It’s you who go without things, mother. You’re always planning and saving, and pretending you don’t want to have anything or go anywhere.” And then the impatience came into her tone again, though she was not thinking of herself, as she added, “Sometimes I can’t see how it is that we have so little money to spend, when father has such a good practice.”

Mrs. Northmore sighed. “Your father has never looked very sharply after his own interests in money matters. He has been too busy with other things, and too generous, for that,” she said. And then she added, almost gayly: “But I have never lacked for anything; and it is so much easier to bear the sort of mistakes your father makes than it would be to bear some others! The ’handle’—you remember what Epictetus says about the ’two handles’—why, the handle to bear our sort of trouble with stands out all round, and is so big one can’t help laying hold of it.”

Perhaps it was the light-heartedness with which she spoke, more than the slight reproof which the words contained, that made Esther’s head drop in her mother’s lap. “I wish I were half as good as you are, mother,” she whispered.

The voices of Kate and Virgie from the direction of the kitchen made her spring to her feet a minute later. “I don’t want to be here when they come,” she said, dashing her handkerchief across her eyes. “I’m tired and disagreeable. Good night.”

She was off before the others had reached the porch, and a half hour later, when Kate followed her to her room, she was in bed, more than willing that her sister should think her closed eyelids drowsy with sleep, an impression which did not, however, prevent the other from indulging in some lively monologue as she undressed. Her father had come home, she said, and was delighted with the report of the day, but there was a lot left to tell him in the morning. “Besides,” she added, “I could see there was something on mother’s mind that she wanted to talk over with him alone, so I came away.”

She was silent for fully two minutes, then burst out, “I say, wasn’t it great, what Mort Elwell said about Stella Saxon’s picture?” She chuckled at the remembrance, then added: “By the way, did it occur to you that he wasn’t particularly enthusiastic over the idea of our going to grandfather’s? My, but I wish we could go.”

“I don’t know what difference our plans make to him,” said Esther, in a tone which indicated that her sleepiness had not reached an acute stage.

“Oh, they make plenty of difference to him; at least yours do,” said Kate, sagely.

“Well, he might spare himself the trouble,” said Esther. “I must say I think Morton Elwell takes too much for granted, lately.”

Kate stopped braiding her hair and stared at her sister. “I don’t know what he takes for granted, except that old friends don’t change,” she said. She continued to stare for a minute, then remarked slowly: “I know what ails you, Esther. You want to have a lot of romance and all that sort of thing. For my part I never could see that romance amounted to anything but getting all mixed up and having a lot of trouble.” And having delivered herself of this she apparently resigned herself to her own reflections.

On the porch, still sitting in the evening darkness, Mrs. Northmore was saying to her husband at that moment: “Philip, what do you say to letting the girls go to New England? We’ve talked about it a good deal; why not settle on it? Now that the wheat has turned out so well, couldn’t we afford it?”

“Why, I think ’twould be an excellent plan, Lucia,” said the doctor, cordially. “I’ve thought so all along, but I was under the impression that you wanted the wheat money to go another way.”

She gave a little sigh. “Yes,” she said, “I did want to reduce that mortgage, but some things can wait better than others. It would do the girls good to go, and I believe Esther really needs a change.”

“You think the child is not well?” queried the doctor, with a note of surprise in his voice.

“Oh, not ill,” said Mrs. Northmore, quickly, “but”—she hesitated a moment, “she is rather restless and inclined to be a little morbid and moody. It might be worth a good deal to her to have a change of scene, and get some new ideas.”

“By all means pack her off,” said the doctor. “It’s a prescription I always like to give my patients; and if that is yours for her I’ll fill it with all confidence.” He rose and stretched his long arms with a tired gesture. “I believe it’s bedtime for me,” he said, “and I rather think it ought to be for you too.”

[CHAPTER III—BETWEEN TIMES]

It was at breakfast the next morning that the great decision was announced.

“Well, young ladies,” said the doctor, looking from one to the other of his older daughters, “what do you think your mother and I have decided to do with you?” He paused for just an instant, then gave the answer himself without waiting for theirs. “Nothing short of sending you East for the rest of the summer. We’ve held a council, and decided that nothing else will do in your case.”

They caught their breath, gasping for a moment at the suddenness of it, then Kate brought her hands together with a clap. “Glorious!” she cried; “that’s the best news I ever heard. But, do you know, I felt in my bones last night that it was coming.”

The doctor laughed. The idea of this plump young creature deriving any premonitions from her bones amused him. “And what did yours indicate?” he asked, turning to Esther.

“Nothing as delightful as that,” she said. Her face was not as bright as Kate’s. She wondered, with a sudden misgiving, whether her discontented mood of the evening before had any share in bringing the decision, and the thought was in the glance which she sent at that moment toward her mother.

The latter met it with a smiling clearness. “Your father has been in favor of it for some time,” she said, “and now that the wheat has turned out so well there is really nothing in the way.”

The shadow flitted from Esther’s eyes. “Oh, it will be beautiful to go, perfectly beautiful! I only wish Virgie could go, too,” she said, with a glance at the little sister, whose face had grown very sober.

“Now you needn’t worry a bit about Virgie,” said the doctor, putting his arm around the child, who sat beside him. “Your mother and I couldn’t stand it without her, and we’re going to see that she has a good time. Just you wait, Virgie,” he added, lowering his voice confidentially, “I have a plan for this fall, and you’re going to be in it. There’ll be a fine slice of cake left for us three when the others have eaten theirs all up.”

He was exceedingly fond of his children. With their training, either physical or mental, he had never charged himself,—perhaps because they were girls,—but to gratify their wants, and to shield them as far as possible from the hardships of life, was a side of parental privilege to which he was keenly responsive.

“But when are we going?” Kate was already demanding.

“Just as soon as your mother can get you ready,” said the doctor; “and I shouldn’t think that need to take very long. I fancy she has your wardrobe planned already. Something kept her awake last night, and when I asked her, sometime in the small hours, what it was, she said she was contriving a new way to make over one of your old dresses. For your mother,” he added, smiling at that lady, “is like the wife of John Gilpin. Though bent on pleasure—yours, of course—she has ‘a frugal mind.’”

“Think of being likened to that immortal woman!” cried Mrs. Northmore. “I only hope my plans will work better than hers did.”

“Oh, your plans always work,” said the doctor. “But don’t tax your wits too far reconstructing old clothes. Get some new ones; get ’em pretty and stylish. I want the girls to be fixed up nice if they’re going to visit those Eastern relatives.”

“Hear! hear!” cried Kate. “Papa, your ideas and mine fit beautifully.”

He was in the best of spirits. The good wheat crop had already brought the payment of some long-standing medical bills, and Dr. Northmore could always adjust himself to a time of abundance more gracefully than to the day of small things.

“We shall treat you handsomely in the matter of our expenses, you may depend on that,” said his wife. She had no intention of relaxing her carefulness in the use of money; but she never wounded her husband’s pride, and she always indulged him in the amused smile with which, in times of comparative ease, he seemed to regard feminine economies.

There were plenty of them in the days that immediately followed, but the girls had most of the things they wanted, and their father was more than satisfied with the pretty becoming dresses in which they bloomed out, one after another, for his benefit. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Northmore was quite as desirous as he that her girls should be well provided for this summer outing. She was a bit of a philosopher, but she never affected the slightest indifference to the matter of dress. She had excellent taste herself, and had given it to her children.

Things moved so swiftly that in little more than a week they were ready. There were good-by calls to be made, and a host of others to be received from friends who came to offer their congratulations and express effusive hopes for their pleasure during the summer, for the news of their plan had spread rapidly. But there was one friend to whom word came late, and who, but for accident, might have missed it altogether.

This was Morton Elwell. The girls were walking home from the village late one afternoon, when Kate, glancing back, saw the young man with the New Light preacher. The two had been harvesting together at the other end of the county, and since that day at the farm neither of them had been in town.

“There’s Mort Elwell!” she exclaimed; and then she faced about, drawing her sister with her, and waited frankly for him to come up.

The two men quickened their steps instantly. “Upon my word, I didn’t know you till you turned,” said Morton. “My, how fine you look!”

Kate smiled, and Esther flushed. Perhaps it was one of the liberties she did not quite like his taking, that he should be so plainly observant of their new dresses.

“Well, it’s a wonder that anybody knows you, face to face, Mort,” said Kate. “I declare you’re as brown as a mulatto.”

“Am I?” said the young man cheerfully. “Well, I’m at the engine now, and what with smoke and sunburn it paints a fellow up in good style.”

“I suppose you know we’re going away next Wednesday,” said Kate. She had fallen behind with him, leaving Esther to walk with the preacher.

“Why, no, I didn’t know it,” said Morton, fairly stopping in his walk. “Is that so?”

“‘Certain true, black and blue,’ as we used to say when we were children,” replied Kate. “We’re going to Grandfather Saxon’s. It was all settled that night after we got home from the threshing.” She paused a moment; then, as he had not spoken, added, with a little pout: “I suppose you couldn’t strain a point to say you’re glad. Everybody else seems to say it easily enough.”

“Why, of course I’m glad,” said Morton, hastily, “and I hope you’ll have a tremendously good time; but it sort of takes a body’s breath away, it’s so sudden. When are you coming back?”

“We’re not thinking of that part yet,” said Kate; “but not before September.”

His face lengthened. “Why, I shan’t see anything of you girls all vacation,” he said. “I did think when the harvesting was over I should get an occasional glimpse of you. I wish threshing hadn’t begun so early this year.”

“What’s that?” said the preacher, turning his head. “Wanting seed time and harvest put off for your special benefit! That won’t do, Mort.”

“Oh, not that exactly,” said the young man. “But it is sort of hard on a fellow not to get any chance of seeing his friends all summer, when that’s the only time in the year he’s at home.”

“There’ll be plenty of your friends left,” said Esther. She had half turned her head, and was looking wonderfully pretty in her new leghorn hat with the corn-flowers and poppies.

“Oh!” he said, reproachfully; but he had no chance to say anything more just then, for the preacher claimed her attention.

“How far East are you going?” he asked.

“To mother’s old home in New England,” said the girl. The preacher gave a surprised whistle. “Was your mother raised back there?” he demanded. “Well, I never should have known but she was a born Hoosier.”

As a born Hoosier herself the young lady appreciated the compliment. “No,” she said, “mother came from Massachusetts; but she’s lived here twenty years, and I don’t suppose there’s much difference now.”

“Oh, we’ll let her have the name now,” said the preacher, good-naturedly. “But it’s queer I never heard her say a word about ‘Boston.’”

“She didn’t come from Boston,” said Esther. “There’s ever so much of New England outside of Boston, you know.”

“’Pears to cover the whole ground for most Yankees,” said the preacher, dryly. “I don’t recollect as I ever talked with any of ’em—except your mother—that it didn’t leak out mighty quick if they’d come from anywheres near the ‘Hub.’ ’Peared to carry it round as a sort of measuring stick, to size up everything else by.”

His figure was a trifle mixed, but it met the case. After a moment he added: “Well, I’m right glad you’re going. It’s a good thing for young folks to see something of the world outside of the home corner. I always thought I’d like to travel a bit myself, but I reckon I’ll never get to do it any other way than going round with a threshing machine, and that don’t exactly hit my notion of travelling for pleasure. Eh, Mort?” he queried, turning to the young man behind him.

The latter was not in a mood to feel the full humor of the remark, which he had heard in spite of his apparent attention to Kate’s lively chatter. “Can’t say there’s much variety in it,” he replied rather absently.

“However,” continued the preacher, turning again to Esther, “I did go to Kentucky once when I was a little chap. No,” he said, shaking his head, as he caught the eager question in her eyes, “not in the Blue Grass country where your father was raised, but in among the knobs where the Cumberlands begin. It was a mighty poor rough country. I reckon you’ll see something of the same sort where you’re going.”

“Oh, but that is a beautiful country! Mother has always said so,” cried the girl, looking quite distressed.

“Well, maybe you’d call that country down there pretty too,” said the preacher, with easy accommodation, “though it’s all in a heap, and rocks all over it. Reminds me of the story about a soldier from somewhere hereabouts that was going through there in the war-time, and stopped to talk a minute with a fellow that was hoeing corn. ‘Well, stranger,’ says he, ‘reckon you’re about ready to move out of here.’ ‘Why so?’ says the fellow, looking sort of stupid. ‘Why, I see you’ve got the land all rolled up ready to start,’ says the soldier.”

The preacher interrupted his mellow drawl for a moment to join in her laugh at the story, then went on: “Now my notion of a pretty country is one that looks as if you could raise something on it; the sort we’ve got round here, you know,” he added, stretching out his arm with an inclusive gesture.

His idea of landscape beauty was not Esther Northmore’s, but as she looked at that moment over the peaceful country, golden and green with its generous harvests, with here and there a stretch of forest rising tall and straight against the sky, she felt its quiet charm with a thrill of pride and gladness. “Yes; this is a beautiful country,” she said softly. “I shall never change my mind about that.”

They had reached a point where another road crossed the one they were following, and the preacher paused in his walk. “I must turn off here,” he said. “Good-by! and take care of yourselves.” He shook hands heartily with each of the girls, and added, with a nod at Esther: “Give my special regards to your mother. Tell her I’ve just found out that she’s a Yankee, and I don’t think any less of her for it.”

He was an odd genius, this New Light preacher. The Northmores were by no means of his flock, but the feeling between them was most cordial. In his office of comforter he had touched that of the healer more than once among the families under his care, and the touch had left a mutual respect between him and the doctor. With Mrs. Northmore the feeling was even warmer. Rough and ill-educated as he was, there was a native force and shrewdness in the man by no means common, and they were joined with a frank honesty which would have attracted her in a far less interesting person than he.

Morton Elwell walked on to the house, but refused the girls’ invitation to come in to supper. “You know mother would like to have you,” Esther said, with polite urgence. “She was complaining the other day that we saw so little of you.”

But Morton was resolute. Perhaps the thresher’s costume in which he was arrayed, the blue flannel shirt, jean trousers, and heavy boots, none too black, helped him to stand by the promise he had given Mrs. Elwell. “No,” he said; “I told Aunt Jenny I wouldn’t fail to come home to supper.” But he leaned on the gate when he had opened it for the girls, and stood for a minute as if he found it hard to turn away.

“HE LEANED ON THE GATE WHEN HE HAD OPENED IT FOR THE GIRLS.”

“Of course you’ll write to me first,” he said, glancing from one to the other. There had been a correspondence of a desultory sort between them ever since he went away to college, and he seemed to take for granted that it would go on now. And then he added, looking to Esther, “You wrote to me real often when you were a little girl, and went to your grandfather’s before.”

Her color rose a trifle. “You have a remarkably good memory, Mort, to remember such little things when they happened so long ago,” she said lightly.

“Why, I’ve got every one of them now,” he replied. “I was looking them over not so very long ago, and they were the jolliest kind of letters, with little postscripts added by Kate in cipher. She was five, I believe, then. They were joint productions in those days, but you needn’t feel obliged to make them so now.”

“I suppose we needn’t feel ‘obliged’ to write them at all,” she said, lifting her eyebrows a little.

“Oh, you wouldn’t go back on a fellow like that!” said Morton. “Why, it would break me all up.”

There was something so affectionately boyish in his manner that Kate said instantly: “Of course we’ll write to you, and tell you everything that happens. You may wish my letters were postscripts again before you get through with them.”

And Esther added cheerfully, “Yes, if you want to add a few more specimens of my handwriting to that ancient collection, you shall certainly have them.”

“Maybe we’ll send you our pictures too,” said Kate. “We’re going to have some taken after we get there, and if they’re good—”

He broke in upon her with a sudden eagerness. “Well, don’t let your cousin get you up like statues. I hate that kind.”

Kate burst into a laugh, but Esther looked impatient. “Oh, dear, don’t you know that common, everyday faces like ours can’t be made to look that way?” she said.

“Can’t they? Well, I’m awfully glad of it,” he replied. “Good-by.” And then he grasped their hands for a moment, and struck off at a long, swinging gait across the field that lay between their home and his uncle’s.

The days that were left ran fast. They were full and hurried, as the last days of preparation are apt to be in spite of the best-laid plans. But the girls managed to take some rides with their father, who, in view of the coming separation, seemed to expect more of their company than usual, and Kate contrived to hold some sittings in the kitchen with Aunt Milly, who had been in a depressed state of mind ever since the summer plan had been decided on. In spite of being one who held with no superstitions, a fact she never failed to mention when she had anything of a mysterious nature to communicate, the number of dreams and presentiments she had in regard to this visit was remarkable, and they all tended to throw doubt on the probability of her darlings’ return.

“Why, we came back when we were children,” said Kate one evening, when the old woman was unusually depressed, “and it was just as far to grandfather’s then as it is now. It’s because you’re getting old and rheumatic that you feel so blue about us, Aunt Milly.”

But Milly sighed as she shook her head. “It was different in those days, honey,” she said. “You couldn’t help comin’ back to your ole mammy when you were chil’en. But you’re older now, an’ a mighty good looking pair o’ girls, if I do say it, an’ there’s no tellin’ what may happen when you get to gallivantin’ roun’ with the young men in your mother’s country.”

“Now, Aunt Milly,” laughed Kate, “you’ve always pretended to think we’re only children still, and all at once you talk as if we were grown-up young ladies. It’s no such thing. Besides,” she added cunningly, “didn’t we come back safe and sound from Kentucky last year? And you know there are no young men anywhere to hold a candle with those down there.”

“That’s a fac’, honey,” said Aunt Milly, lifting her head. “The ole Kentucky stock don’t have to knock under yet, if some things is changed.”

“Trust Milly to stand up for her own country,” laughed Dr. Northmore, who had paused in his passage through the kitchen, and caught the last remark.

“And me for mine, papa,” cried Kate. “I shall always like it better than any other. I know I shall.”

Apparently he did not disapprove the sentiment, but he added warningly, “Well, make it big enough.” And then he took her away with him to join the family conclave in talking over the proposed journey.

They were small travellers, the Northmores, and the excursions from home had of late years been short. The length of the one about to be taken impressed them all. Mrs. Northmore spoke of it with manifest anxiety, and the doctor spent much time poring over the railroad guide and time-table. It was a work which, in spite of its fascination, harassed him, and he alternated between the exasperated opinion that it was impossible for any man not inspired to understand its vexatious figures, and a disposition to combat with vehemence any one who reached a conclusion different from his own on a single point. By this time the course of the journey had been fully decided on. There would be but one change of cars, and this had been hedged about with so much of explanation and admonition that no two girls of average sense could possibly go wrong.

The day came at last, and a perfect day it was, when they started off. The doctor and Virgie accompanied them to the station, but Mrs. Northmore preferred to say the last word quietly at home. There was a crowd of young people gathered at the station, but the time for good-bys was brief. The through train for the East was not a moment behind time. There was a short impatient stop of the iron steed, a sudden crowding together for hurried farewells, then two flushed faces, half smiling, half tearful, pressed against the window, and the great wheels were in motion again and the travellers on their way.

They drew a long breath as they settled fairly into their seats. “I’m glad that part of it’s over,” said Kate.

“So am I,” said Esther; and then she added: “I’m glad we don’t get there right away. It’s nice to have an interlude between the acts.”

[CHAPTER IV—AT THE OLD PLACE]

The journey to New England was more than a mere interlude for the girls. It was a distinct pleasure in itself. To watch the low, rich landscape which had lain around them from their infancy change imperceptibly to one different and bolder; the broad fields narrowing; the long, rolling swells lifting into clear-cut hills; the forests of beech and oak, with smooth, sunlighted floors, giving place to woods filled with a bewitching tangle of vines and ferns—all this was a constant delight to travellers as fresh and unsated as ours.