The Carter Girls' Mysterious Neighbors. Speed Nell
no plan depending in any particular on the coöperation of their landladies, the Misses Grant, would go through safely.
Miss Ella and Miss Louise Grant were joint owners of the small farm that the glib real estate agent had persuaded Dr. Wright and our girls was the one and only place in which the winter could be comfortably spent.
“Excellent air and water; close to schools and churches; neighborhood as good as to be found in Virginia, and what more could be said? House one of the old landmarks of the county; the view from the front porch quite a famous one; R. F. D. at yard gate; commuting distance from Richmond; roads excellent, as we have found on our way here.” They had motored out and certainly the roads had seemed very good.
The Misses Grant were all that was left of a large and at one time influential family. They lived in a great old mansion erected in the middle of what was at one time a vast estate but which had gradually shrunk through generations of mortgages until now it comprised about two thousand acres. The name of this old place was Grantly.
The farm that Helen and Douglas had rented for the year was only called a farm by courtesy, as it had in its holding only about ten acres. It had at one time been the home of the overseer of Grantly when that aristocratic estate could boast an overseer. It was too humble an abode to have a name of its own, but our girls were determined to give it a name when they found out what would suit it. Now they stood on the platform of the tiny station and said in their hearts that such a place, belonging to such unreliable persons, deserved no name at all.
“Oh, I’m so sorry they haven’t sent to meet us. They told me if I would write to them they would have a carriage and a farm wagon here,” wailed Douglas.
“Why not walk?” suggested Mr. Carter. “A quarter of a mile is nothing.”
“Oh, do let’s walk!” exclaimed Lucy. “We can just leave the luggage here and get someone to come back for it.”
“All of you can walk,” came faintly from Mrs. Carter. “Just leave me here alone. I don’t fancy anything much will happen to me.”
“But Mumsy, only a quarter of a mile!” begged Lucy.
“Why, my child, I never expect to walk more than a few blocks again as long as I live.”
Mr. Carter looked pained and ended by staying with his wife while the four girls and Bobby trooped off to find someone to send for them.
“Why does Mother say she never expects to walk more than a few blocks again as long as she lives?” blurted out Lucy. “Is she sick? She looks to me like she’s getting fat.”
“Tell her that,” suggested Nan, “and I bet you she will find she can walk a teensy little more than a few blocks.”
CHAPTER II
THE LANDLADIES AND A NEW ACQUAINTANCE
“This is a long quarter of a mile,” said Nan, trying to keep up with her more athletic sisters.
“The agent told us a quarter of a mile, but I reckon he meant as the crow flies. He did not allow for all the twistings and turnings of this lane,” laughed Helen.
“It is a very pretty walk, anyhow, and I’m glad we are not so close to the track because of Bobby,” said the philosophic Nan.
“Shucks! You needn’t be a-thinkin’ I can’t find my way back to that old station,” said that young hopeful. “I wisht it was barefoot time and I would wade in that branch.”
They were crossing a pretty little stream that intersected the road. Of course Bobby took occasion to slip off the stepping-stones and get his foot wet.
“S’long as one is wet I reckon I might as well get th’ other one wet, too,” and he stepped boldly into the stream. “Sqush! Sqush! Ain’t this a grand and glorious feeling?”
“Oh, Bobby!” chorused his sisters.
“’Tain’t gonter make no diffunce! My ’ployer says sech things as this toughen kids.”
Bobby always called Dr. Wright his employer, as it had been his habit to go with that young physician while he was making his professional calls, his duties being to hold out his arm when they were turning corners or preparing to stop; and to sit in the car and guard his ’ployer’s property from the depredations of hoodlums and micks.
“I don’t think some kids need toughening,” said Nan, trying to look severe.
“Yes’n I gotter joke on you, too! They was a pretty near grown-up boy on the train wanted to know what yo’ name was. I was jawin’ the inductor an’ the boy comed and plunked hissef down by me an’ he axed me what was my name and where I was a-gointer, an’ was all’n you my aunts or what. He was so busy a-findin’ out he come near a-missing his gettin’ off place. He lives jus’ befo’ our gettin’ off place.”
“Oh, that must have been the good-looking boy sitting opposite us, just behind Mother and Father! You noticed him, Douglas, didn’t you?” asked Helen.
“Well, he wasn’t a-noticin’ you much,” proceeded the enfant terrible. “He wanted mostly to know what was Nan’s name an’ where she went to school.”
“Surely you didn’t tell him!” blushed Nan.
“Sho’ nix! I told him yo’ name was Lizajane an’ you was a-clerkin’ in the five an’ ten.”
“Oh, Bobby!”
Nobody could help laughing at the saucy youngster, and his sisters were ever inclined to find him amusing and altogether delightful in spite of his outrageousness. Their laughter rang out clear and infectious. First they laughed at Bobby and then they laughed for the pure joy of laughing. Douglas forgot her burdens and responsibilities; Helen forgot how she hated to be poor; Nan forgot that the quarter of a mile she was going to have to trudge twice a day to join the army of commuters was much nearer half a mile and she was not a very energetic girl; Lucy had nothing to forget or regret, being only thirteen with a perfect digestion. For the moment all of them forgot the nerve-worn father and the hypochondriacal mother waiting so forlornly at the station with the luggage piled so hopelessly at one end.
In the midst of their gale of laughter they heard the hum of a motor and the toot of a horn. A large touring car came swerving around the curve in the road.
“That’s him now!” cried the delighted Bobby.
It was no other than the boy on the train. He stopped his car and with crimson face began to stammer forth unintelligible words.
“Excuse me! – but – that is a – you see I – Oh, hang it all! er – my name is William – Will – Billy Sutton.”
“Oh, he’s plum nutty an’ thinks he’s Billy Sunday – Billy Nut Sunday!” and Bobby danced gleefully in his squshy shoes.
“Bobby! Behave yourself!” said Douglas, trying to swallow the laugh she was in the midst of.
“We was jes’ a-talkin’ about you,” said Bobby, with his most disarming smile.
“About me?” and the young fellow choked his engine.
“Yes, I was a-tellin’ – ”
But here Helen took her little brother in hand. Helen could usually manage him better than any of the others. She whispered some mysterious something to him which quickly sobered him.
“I don’t want you to think I am impertinent or interfering, but your little brother told me on the train coming out that your mother and father were both ill – ”
“Yes, I told him they were likely to die mos’ any time.”
“And I heard at the post-office at Preston, where I live, that you have rented the farm from the Misses Grant; also that those ladies were not expecting you until tomorrow – ”
“But I wrote we would be there today, Wednesday!” exclaimed Douglas.
“That doesn’t make a bit of difference to Miss Ella and Miss Louise Grant,” laughed the boy. “They never get anything