The Spanish Chest Part 20

Wednesday afternoon found an expectant quartette walking up the Manor road, slowly because Win paused occasionally to regain breath, but there were so many lovely things to look at that no delay seemed irksome. To begin with were fascinating cottages with neat little box-edged gardens and straw-thatched roofs; curious evergreen trees with stiff jointed branches known locally as monkey-puzzles; there were pretty children, some of whom waved hands of recognition; there were skylarks singing in the blue above, their happy notes falling like musical rain; there were big black and white magpies and black choughs, rooks and corbies, now known to the young people by their English names. And always there were glimpses of the ever-changing, changeless sea.

Roger, who had gradually forged ahead, remained leaning over a low cottage wall until the others came up. In the yard sat a woman milking one of the pretty, soft-eyed Jersey cows, but what held Roger's fascinated attention was her milk-pail.

Instead of the ordinary tin receptacle familiar to Roger during country summers, she had an enormous copper can with a fat round body, rather small top and handle at one side like a bloated milk- jug. Over the top was tied loosely a piece of coa.r.s.e cloth and on this rested a clean sea sh.e.l.l. Streams of milk directed into the sh.e.l.l slowly overflowed its edges to strain through the cloth and subside gently into the can.

"That's something of a milk pail," observed Roger approvingly.

"It's just like the hot-water jugs Annette brings in the morning,"

said Frances, "only ten times bigger. Wouldn't it be lovely for goldenrod and asters? I'm going to ask Mother to buy one."

"Pretty sight you'll be walking up the dock at Boston with that on your arm," jeered Roger. "It will never go in any trunk and you'll have to carry it everywhere you go. You needn't ask me to lug it, either."

"It can be crated and sent that way," said Frances calmly.

"Those hot-water jugs make me tired," Roger went on as they continued their walk. "I'm sick to death of having a quart of lukewarm water in a watering-pot dumped at my door every morning.

Think of the hot water we have at home, gallons and gallons of it, steaming, day or night!"

Edith looked politely incredulous. "How can that be?" she asked.

"Do you keep coals on the kitchen fire all night?"

"Coals!" snorted Roger. "All we have to do is to turn a faucet and that lights a heater and the water runs hot as long as you leave it turned on. No quart pots for us!"

"But surely," said Edith, "only very wealthy people can have luxuries like that."

"We're not made of money but we have it," retorted Roger. "Even workmen have hot-water heaters in their houses."

From Edith's face it was plain that she frankly didn't believe him and Win tried to make matters better.

"You see, Edith," he explained, "it is much more difficult in the United States to get satisfactory servants and so we have all sorts of clever mechanical devices that make it easier to manage with fewer maids."

Edith's brow cleared. "Oh, I see," she said. "I thought there must be some reason. Of course, if we needed them, we would have such arrangements in England."

"England," declared Roger bluntly, "in ways of living is about two hundred years behind the United States!"

"Roger!" exclaimed the shocked Frances.

"Cut it out!" ordered Win.

"It's true, anyway," retorted the annoyed Roger, "and there's another thing. We licked England for keeps in the Revolutionary War!"

"Only because you were English yourselves!" flashed Edith before Roger's scandalized family could remind him of his forgotten manners.

This retort disconcerted Roger and delighted Win.

"You've hit the nail on the head, Edith," he declared approvingly.

"England could never have been beaten except by her own sons. And England's navy has always ruled the seas."

"How about Dewey wiping out the Spanish fleet at Manila?" demanded Roger still huffily,

"That reminds me," said Win coolly. "I believe it was an English admiral who backed Dewey up at Manila when the Germans tried to b.u.t.t in. After that battle somebody wrote a poem about it and wrote the truth, too. This is what he said:

"'Ye may trade by land, ye may fight by land, Ye may hold the land in fee; But go not down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps To battle with the free; For England and America Will keep and hold the sea!'"

As Win concluded, Edith's high color lessened and Roger looked less pugnacious. Presently, each stole a sly glance at the other, both were caught in the act and simultaneously laughed. So the party reached the Manor without disruption by the way.

Constance, with a soft green sweater over her frock, came to meet them.

"All ready for the fray? Leave your hats in the hall. You will need your woollies for we are going where sunlight never comes.

There's good store of candles and two lanterns. Anything else needed, Win?"

"A hammer perhaps," suggested Win. "We may want to sound walls."

"A hammer there shall be," and Constance rang the bell to order it. "Dad says he will come down if we make any startling discovery, but being an elderly person, he's a bit shy of damp."

Provided with lights and the hammer, the gay party started, filing through a kitchen so fascinating with its red-bricked floor and s.h.i.+ning copper cooking utensils that Fran found it hard to pa.s.s.

Several maids and a jolly cook smiled on them as they vanished down the cellar stairs.

"I suppose you want to see the oldest part of the Manor vaults,"

Connie said to Win as she led the way with a candle in a bra.s.s reflector. "We shall come back through here."

To Edith and Frances it seemed that they traversed numberless dark rooms, dry but chilly, some stored with vegetables and barrels, while others were empty or showed dusky apparitions of old lumber.

Constance stopped at last.

"We are under the library now, Win. This is the original cellar and you can see how much rougher the workmans.h.i.+p is than in the newer parts."

Walls were rough and floor uneven, indeed, a part of it was composed of an outlying ledge of the Jersey granite. Obedient to suggestion, Roger and the girls began to inspect the walls for traces of some former exit; Roger by himself, the girls, rather fearfully, together. Win stood looking at the ledge in the floor.

"That settles there being any hiding-place underneath," he remarked.

"Yes," said Connie, "but the paper said 'beyond the walls,' you know. So wouldn't it more likely be in one of the cellars not built at that time?"

"Well, probably," a.s.sented Win. "But I was looking at the way this rock runs." He produced a pocket-compa.s.s. "It's much thicker at this end and the direction is approximately north and south. What is to the east, Miss Connie?"

"Nothing at all. That wall is still the outer one."

"And the wall farthest from the water?" asked Win quickly.

Constance nodded.

"Then it is the western wall I want," said Win, turning toward it.

Somewhat mystified, Connie watched him make a minute examination, tapping with the hammer on its entire length.

"I suspect that it's frightfully thick," she said as he stopped, looking disappointed.

"What is on the other side?" he inquired. "Is this whole part.i.tion now included in the house?"

Constance led the way to the opposite side of the wall. There lay a large apartment, dimly lighted, but of better workmans.h.i.+p and finish. Win went immediately to the eastern side of this cellar and bestowed upon the part.i.tion stones the same minute inspection.