Kit of Greenacre Farm Part 20

"I believe Cousin Roxy was perfectly right. She told me long ago, Piney, before I ever knew you, that you knew where every single wild flower bloomed in all Gilead Towns.h.i.+p, and every cow path and brook."

Piney's eyes held a little wistful gleam, but she smiled with the old dauntless tilt to her head.

"I guess I do around Greenacres," she said. "You see, Honey and I always thought it would be our home some day, and about the first thing that I can remember is mother telling us all the places around here that she loved best when she was a girl. I suppose that's why I remember them all."

Doris and Helen were far ahead, trying to get down some branches of dogwood that hung invitingly over the stone wall at the side of the road, and Kit laid one hand in comradely fas.h.i.+on on Piney's shoulder. What she meant to say was how wonderful and brave she had always thought Piney was, and how oftentimes, when her own pluck failed her, she would think of the Hanc.o.c.ks and how they had kept their faces valiantly turned to the sunny side of care through all the years of necessity and privation, but girls are curious people, and all that she really said was:

"Life's awfully queer, isn't it, Piney?"

Piney nodded with a little smile.

"It's fun though," she said, "if you just keep your face to the front and never look behind."

CHAPTER XXVI

PAYING GUESTS

The first campers were due to arrive the second week in June, but everything was in complete readiness long before that time. The girls never wearied of making their tours of inspection to be sure nothing had been overlooked, and each time it seemed as if they added a few more finis.h.i.+ng touches.

Cousin Roxy declared it was all so inviting that she felt like closing up the big house and coaxing the Judge to camp out with her.

Instead of grouping the tents together, they had chosen the most picturesque and sequestered spots to hide them away in. There was one on a little jutting point of land near the Peckham mill. Here, the river swept out in a wide U-shaped curve that was crowned with gray rocks and pines.

The music of the falls reached it, and the road was only about quarter of a mile across the fields to the north, but apparently it was completely isolated.

"I'd like to put a poet in there," Helen said, "or a musician. Wasn't it Rubenstein, Kit, who used to take his violin and play the music of the rain and falling water?"

"Ask me not, child, ask me not," returned Kit, practically. "All I'm wondering about this minute is how on earth Shad ever expected this fly to stay put, if a good, old-fas.h.i.+oned Gilead thunder-storm ever hit it."

Helen watched her as she climbed up on a camp stool, with most precarious footing, and tried to readjust the fly at the back of the tent.

"Don't you have to take them in when it storms or the wind blows, just like sails?" she asked. "Ingeborg and Astrid told me that. They learned it from their camp-fire rules. I'm sure you don't leave them stringing out like that, Kit."

All at once Doris came speeding around the rock path, her eyes wide with excitement, her whole manner full of mystery.

"There's an automobile just stopped in the road," she exclaimed, "and the man in it asked me who lived in the tent over here."

"I never supposed any one could see that tent from the road." Kit's tone held a distinct note of disappointment. "What did he want to sell us, Dorrie, lightning rods or sewing machines?"

"Oh, Kit, don't," pleaded Doris. "He's really in earnest, and he's coming over here right now. I told him all about everything, and he thinks he might want to rent a tent."

Kit's countenance cleared like magic. She forgot the refractory strip of canvas, and descended immediately from the camp stool.

"Lead me, sister darling, to this first paying guest, who cannot resist the woodland lure. Helen, don't you dare say anything to spoil the inviting picture which I shall give him. I don't see what more he could want." She hesitated a moment, surveying the river, almost directly below the sloping rock. "Why, he could almost sit up in bed in the morning and haul in his fish-lines from yon winding stream with a fine catch for breakfast on it."

"Oh, hurry, Kit, and don't stop to spout," Doris begged. "He is really awfully nice, and he's in earnest, I know he is."

But Kit went with dignity across the fields to the road where the automobile stood with its lone occupant. He must have been over forty years of age, but with his closely curled dark hair and alert smile he appeared much younger. He wore no hat, and was heavily tanned. It seemed to Kit at first glance as though she had never seen eyes so full of keen curiosity and genial friendliness.

"How do you do?" he called as soon as she came within hailing distance.

"Are you the young lady who has the renting of these tents which I see every once in a while?"

Kit admitted that she was. He nodded his head approvingly and smiled, a broad pleasant smile which seemed to include the entire landscape.

"I like it here," he announced with emphasis. "It is sequestered and silent. I have not met a single team or car on the road for miles."

"Oh, that happens often," said Kit, eagerly. "There are days when n.o.body pa.s.ses at all except the mail carrier."

"It suits me," he exclaimed, buoyantly. "I must have quiet and perfect relaxation. I will rent one of your tents and occupy it at once. I have been touring this part of the country looking for a spot which appealed to me."

"We have one on the hill yonder," Kit suggested. He seemed rather peculiar, and perhaps it would be just as well to sequester him as far off as possible. "It is right on the edge of the pines, and faces the west.

The sunsets are beautiful from there."

"No, no," he repeated. "I like the sound of the water. I hear falls below here. I will take that tent I see over there."

So came the first tent dweller to Greenacres. Kit had still been in doubt, and taking no chances on strangers within the gates, she had guided Mr.

Ormond up to her father to make the closing arrangements on renting the waterfall tent, as the girls called it, for the entire summer. The most amazing part was that he left a check that first day for $75.00, full rental for ten weeks.

"I must not be interrupted or bothered by little things," he told Mr.

Robbins, earnestly. "I must have perfect isolation or I cannot do my work."

"Now, what on earth do you suppose he meant by that?" Kit asked, after the underslung gray roadster had pa.s.sed out of sight. "My goodness, girls, he may be a counterfeiter. You can bet a cookie Gilead would look upon him as a suspicious character when he could pay seventy-five dollars right down all at once."

"I rather liked his face," Mrs. Robbins remarked, "and he gave your father excellent business references. I think you're very fortunate that he happened to travel this way."

He arrived promptly the following day and arranged with Shad to put up the automobile in the barn.

"Well, I've lugged down all his belongings to the tent," Shad said, rather hopelessly, that night, "and I can't find out for the life of me what kind of business he's in. He had a lot of heavy bundles, and I asked him a few questions about them, but he didn't seem to take kindly to it, so I let him alone. There's one thing though he's got, and that's a big photograph in a silver frame of an all-fired handsome woman he says is his wife.

She's dressed just like a queen, crown and all."

Helen's eyes were bright with interest, as she listened, but Kit's straight, dark brows were drawn together in a frown of perplexity.

"I suppose we'll just have to wait until we find out," she said, "but we'll hope for the best. Piney says he's made arrangements to buy eggs and chickens from them, so I see where our paying guests are going to scatter prosperity around the neighborhood."

Ralph MacRae and Honey arrived the seventeenth of June and took the Turtle Cove tent. The girls did not see very much of them until after Jean came up from the city, but then Ralph became what Doris called "the unexpected guest," dropping in at any time. Helen was the one who suspected a budding romance, but she contented herself with watching Jean meditatively, and investing her with the glamour of all her favorite heroines.

The first fruits of Jean's efforts to colonize the tents came with a letter from Bab Crane.

"You're going to have four of the girls from school through July anyway, and August if they like it. I've told them the scenery is perfectly gorgeous and they can pitch their easels anywhere they like, so be sure and give them the tents with the best outlook. I think it probable that you may catch Miss Emery, too, if Frances writes back approvingly. She's awfully odd, and lives all alone in a beautiful old mansion down on Was.h.i.+ngton Square, but her pictures are splendid, and she's a member of the N.A.D."

The next surprise was a letter from Billie. He could not reach home before the middle of July, as he was going on another trip with Stanley, but there were five of the boys from his cla.s.s who wanted to come up and camp.

"I've told them the fis.h.i.+ng is great around there, and they're going to make the trip from here in Jeff Saunders' car. Jeff's from Georgia, and most of the fellows have never been north. We're going to join them later on, so if you've got a bunch of tents together, you better save us three.

"Now, Kit, listen here, when I struck Delphi, and landed with all that crowd of girls unexpectedly, you know how well I behaved, just for your sake. Don't you get superior and toploftical with the boys when they come, because every last one of them is the right sort, and they're expecting to find Gilead folks waiting for them with open arms from what I've told them."