The Girls of Hillcrest Farm Part 6

"If that man paid me twenty dollars for our furniture, I might have fifty dollars in hand," she thought. "It will cost us something like two dollars each for our fares. And then there would be the freight and baggage, and transportation for ourselves up to Hillcrest from the station.

"And how would it do to bring father to an old, unheated house--and so early in the spring? I guess the doctor didn't think about that.

"And how will we live until it is time for us to go--until father is well enough to be moved? All our little capital will be eaten up!"

Lyddy's practical sense then came to her aid. Sat.u.r.day night 'Phemie would get through at the millinery shop. They must not remain dependent upon Aunt Jane longer than over Sunday.

"The thing to do," she decided, "is for 'Phemie and me to start for Hillcrest immediately--on Monday morning at the latest. If one of us has to come back for father when he can be moved, all right. The cost will not be so great. Meanwhile we can be getting the old house into shape to receive him."

She found Aunt Jane sitting before her fire, with a tray of tea and toast beside her, and her bonnet already set jauntily a-top of her head, the strings flowing.

"You found that flat in a mess, I'll be bound!" observed Aunt Jane.

Lydia admitted it. She also told her what the second-hand man had offered.

"Twenty dollars?" cried Aunt Jane. "Take it, quick, before he has a change of heart!"

But when Lyddy told her of what the doctor at the hospital had said about Mr. Bray, and how they really seemed forced into taking up with the offer of Hillcrest, the old lady looked and spoke more seriously.

"You're just as welcome to the use of the old house, and all you can make out of the farm-crop, as you can be. I stick to what I told you last night. But I dunno whether you can really be comfortable there."

"We'll find out; we'll try it," returned Lyddy, bravely. "Nothing like trying, Aunt Jane."

"Humph! there's a good many things better than trying, sometimes. You've got to have sense in your trying. If it was me, I wouldn't go to Hillcrest for any money you could name!

"But then," she added, "I'm old and you are young. I wish I could sell the old place for a decent sum; but an abandoned farm on the top of a mountain, with the railroad station six miles away, ain't the kind of property that sells easy in the real estate market, lemme tell you!

"Besides, there ain't much of the two hundred acres that's tillable. Them romantic-looking rocks that 'Phemie was exclaimin' over last night, are jest a nuisance. Humph! the old doctor used to say there was money going to waste up there in them rocks, though. I remember hearing him talk about it once or twice; but jest what he meant I never knew."

"Mineral deposits?" asked Lyddy, hopefully.

"Not wuth anything. Time an' agin there's been college professors and such, tappin' the rocks all over the farm for 'specimens.' But there ain't nothing in the line of precious min'rals in that heap of rocks at the back of Hillcrest Farm--believe me!

"Dr. Polly useter say, however, that there was curative waters there. He used 'em some in his practise towards the last. But he died suddent, you know, and n.o.body ever knew where he got the water--'nless 'twas Jud Spink.

And Jud had run away with a medicine show years before father died.

"Well!" sighed Aunt Jane. "If you can find any way of makin' a livin'

out of Hillcrest Farm, you're welcome to it. And--just as that hospital doctor says--it may do your father good to live there for a spell. But _me_--it always give me the fantods, it was that lonesome."

It seemed, as Aunt Jane said, "a way opened." Yet Lyddy Bray could not see very far ahead. As she told 'Phemie that night, they could get to the farm, bag and baggage; but how they would exist after their arrival was a question not so easy to answer.

Lyddy had gone to one of the big grocers and bought and paid for an order of staple groceries and canned goods which would be delivered at the railroad station nearest to Hillcrest on Monday morning. Thus all their possessions could be carted up to the farm at once.

She had spent the afternoon at the flat collecting the clothing, bedding, and other articles they proposed taking with them. These goods she had taken out by an expressman and s.h.i.+pped by freight before six o'clock.

In the morning she met the second-hand man at the ruined flat and he paid her the twenty dollars as promised. And Lyddy was glad to shake the dust of the Trimble Avenue double-decker from her feet.

As she turned away from the door she heard a quick step behind her and an eager voice exclaimed:

"I say! I say! You're not moving; are you?"

Lydia was exceedingly disturbed. She knew that boy in the laboratory window had been watching closely what was going on in the flat. And now he had _dared_ follow her. She turned upon him a face of p.r.o.nounced disapproval.

"I--I beg your pardon," he stammered. "But I hope your father's better?

Nothing's happened to--to him?"

"We are going to take him away from the city--thank you," replied Lyddy, impersonally.

She noted with satisfaction that he had run out without his cap, and in his work-ap.r.o.n. He could not follow her far in such a rig through the public streets, that was sure.

"I--I'm awful sorry to have you go," he said, stammeringly. "But I hope it will be beneficial to your father. I--I---- You see, my own father is none too well and we have often talked of his living out of town somewhere--not so far but that I could run out for the week-end, you know."

Lyddy merely nodded. She would not encourage him by a single word.

"Well--I wish you all kinds of luck!" exclaimed the young fellow, finally, holding out his hand.

"Thank you," returned the very proper Lyddy, and failed to see his proffered hand, turning promptly and walking away, not even vouchsafing him a backward look when she turned the corner, although she knew very well that he was still standing, watching her.

"He may be a very nice young man," thought Lyddy; "but, then----"

Sunday the two girls spent a long hour with their father. They found him prepared for the move in prospect for the family--indeed, he was cheerful about it. The house physician had evidently taken time to speak to the invalid about the change he advised.

"Perhaps by fall I shall be my own self again, and we can come back to town and all go to work. We'll worry along somehow in the country for one season, I am sure," said Mr. Bray.

But that was what troubled Lyddy more than anything else. They were all so vague as to what they should do at Hillcrest--how they would be able to live there!

Father said something about when he used to have a garden in their backyard, and how nice the fresh vegetables were; and how mother had once kept hens. But Lyddy could not see yet how they were to have either a garden or poultry.

They were all three enthusiastic--to each other. And the father was sure that in a fortnight he would be well enough to travel alone to Hillcrest; they must not worry about him. Aunt Jane was to remain in town all that time, and she promised to report frequently to the girls regarding their father's condition.

"I certainly wish I could help you gals out with money," said the old lady that evening. "You're the only nieces I've got, and I feel as kindly towards you as towards anybody in this wide world.

"Maybe we can get a chance to sell the farm. If we can, I'll help you then with a good, round sum. Now, then! you fix up the old place and make it look less like the Wrath o' Fate had struck it and maybe some foolish rich man will come along and want to buy it. If you find a customer, I'll pay you a right fat commission, girls."

But this was "all in the offing;" the Bray girls were concerned mostly with their immediate adventures.

To set forth on this pilgrimage to Hillcrest Farm--and alone--was an event fraught with many possibilities. Both Lyddy and 'Phemie possessed their share of imagination, despite their practical characters; and despite the older girl's having gone to college for two years, she, or 'Phemie, knew little about the world at large.

So they looked forward to Monday morning as the Great Adventure.

It was a moist, sweet morning, even in the city, when they betook themselves early to the railway station, leaving Aunt Jane luxuriously sipping tea and nibbling toast in bed--_this_ time with her nightcap on.

March had come in like a lion; but its lamblike qualities were now manifest and it really did seem as though the breath of spring permeated the atmosphere--even down here in the smoky, dirty city. The thought of growing things inspired 'Phemie to stop at a seed store near the station and squander a few pennies in sweet-peas.

"I know mother used to put them in just as soon as she could dig at all in the ground," she told her sister.

"I don't believe they'll be a very profitable crop," observed Lyddy.