The Girls of Hillcrest Farm; Or, The Secret of the Rocks

by Amy Bell Marlowe

  CHAPTER VI

  NEIGHBORS

  Lucas Pritchett was not as slow as he seemed.

  In one motion he drew in the plunging ponies to a dead stop, thrust thelines into Lyddy's hands, and vaulted over the wheel of the farm wagon.

  "Hold 'em!" he commanded, pulling off the long, snuff-colored overcoat.Flinging it behind him he tore down the bank and, in his high boots, wadedright into the stream.

  Poor 'Phemie was beyond her depth, although she rose "right side up" whenshe came to the surface. And when Lucas seized her she had sense enoughnot to struggle much.

  "Oh, oh, oh!" she moaned. "The wa--water is s-so cold!"

  "I bet ye it is!" agreed the young fellow, and gathering her right upinto his arms, saturated as her clothing was, he bore her to the bankand clambered to where Lyddy was doing all she could to hold the restiveponies.

  "Whoa, Spot and Daybright!" commanded the young farmer, soothing theponies much quicker than he could his human burden. "Now, Miss, you'reall right----"

  "All r-r-right!" gasped 'Phemie, her teeth chattering like castanets."I--I'm anything _but_ right!"

  "Oh, 'Phemie! you might have been drowned," cried her anxious sister.

  "And now I'm likely to be frozen stiff right here in this road. Mrs.Lot wasn't a circumstance to me. She only turned to salt, while I ambe-be-coming a pillar of ice!"

  But Lucas had set her firmly on her feet, and now he snatched up the oldovercoat which had so much amused 'Phemie, and wrapped it about her,covering her from neck to heel.

  "In you go--sit 'twixt your sister and me this time," panted the youngman. "We'll hustle home an' maw'll git you 'twixt blankets in a hurry."

  "She'll get her death!" moaned Lyddy, holding the coat close about the wetgirl.

  "Look out! We'll travel some now," exclaimed Lucas, leaping in, and havingseized the reins, he shook them over the backs of the ponies and shoutedto them.

  The remainder of that ride up the mountain was merely a nightmare for thegirls. Lucas allowed the ponies to lose no time, despite the load theydrew. But haste was imperative.

  A ducking in an icy mountain brook at this time of the year might easilybe fraught with serious consequences. Although it was drawing toward noonand the sun was now shining, there was no great amount of warmth in theair. Lucas must have felt the keen wind himself, for he was wet, too; buthe neither shivered nor complained.

  Luckily they were well up the mountainside when the accident occurred. Theponies flew around a bend where a grove of trees had shut off the view,and there lay the Pritchett house and outbuildings, fresh in their coatof whitewash.

  "Maw and Sairy'll see to ye now," cried Lucas, as he neatly clipped thegatepost with one hub and brought the lathered ponies to an abrupt stop inthe yard beside the porch.

  "Hi, Maw!" he added, as a very stout woman appeared in the doorway--quitefilling the opening, in fact. "Hi, Maw! Here's Mis' Hammon's nieces--an'one of 'em's been in Pounder's Brook!"

  "For the land's sake!" gasped the farmer's wife, pulling a pair ofsteel-bowed spectacles down from her brows that she might peer throughthem at the Bray girls. "Ain't it a mite airly for sech didoes as them?"

  "Why, Maw!" sputtered Lucas, growing red again. "She didn't _go_ for todo it--no, ma'am!"

  "Wa-al! I didn't know. City folks is funny. But come in--do! Mis' Hammon'snieces, d'ye say? Then you must be John Horrocks Bray's gals--ain't ye?"

  "We are," said Lyddy, who had quickly climbed out over the wheel andnow eased down the clumsy bundle which was her sister. "Can you stand,'Phemie?"

  "Ye-es," chattered her sister.

  "I hope you can take us in for a little while, Mrs. Pritchett," went onthe older girl. "We are going up to Hillcrest to live."

  "Take ye in? Sure! An' 'twon't be the first city folks we've harbored,"declared the lady, chuckling comfortably. "They're beginnin' to come asthick as spatters in summer to Bridleburg, an' some of 'em git clear upthis way---- For the land's sake! that gal's as wet as sop."

  "It--it was wet water I tumbled into," stuttered 'Phemie.

  Mrs. Pritchett ushered them into the big, warm kitchen, where the tablewas already set for dinner. A young woman--not so _very_ young, either--aslank and lean as Lucas himself, was busy at the stove. She turned tostare at the visitors with near-sighted eyes.

  "This is my darter, Sairy," said "Maw" Pritchett. "She taught school twoterms to Pounder's school; but it was bad for her eyes. I tell her to gitspecs; but she 'lows she's too young for sech things."

  "The oculists advise glasses nowadays for very young persons," observedLyddy politely, as Sairy Pritchett bobbed her head at them in greeting.

  "So I tell her," declared the farmer's wife. "But she won't listen toreason. Ye know how young gals air!"

  This assumption of Sairy's extreme youth, and that Lyddy would understandher foibles because she was so much older, amused the latter immensely.Sairy was about thirty-five.

  Meanwhile Mrs. Pritchett bustled about with remarkable spryness to make'Phemie comfortable. There was a warm bedroom right off the kitchen--forthis was an old-fashioned New England farmhouse--and in this the youngerBray girl took off her wet clothing. Lyddy brought in their bag and'Phemie managed to make herself dry and tidy--all but her great plaitsof hair--in a very short time.

  She would not listen to Mrs. Pritchett's advice that she go to bed. Butshe swallowed a bowl of hot tea and then declared herself "as good as new."

  The Bray girls had now to tell Mrs. Pritchett and her daughter theirreason for coming to Hillcrest, and what they hoped to do there.

  "For the land's sake!" gasped the farmer's wife. "I dunno what Cyrus'llsay to this."

  It struck Lyddy that they all seemed to be somewhat in fear of what Mr.Pritchett might say. He seemed to be a good deal of a "bogie" in thefamily.

  "We shall not interfere with Mr. Pritchett's original arrangement withAunt Jane," exclaimed Lyddy, patiently.

  "Well, ye'll hafter talk to Cyrus when he comes in to dinner," said thefarmer's wife. "I dunno how he'll take it."

  "_We_ should worry about how he 'takes it,'" commented 'Phemie in Lyddy'sear. "I guess we've got the keys to Hillcrest and Aunt Jane's permissionto live in the house and make what we can off the place. What more isthere to it?"

  But the older Bray girl caught a glimpse of Cyrus Pritchett as he came upthe path from the stables, and she saw that he was nothing at all likehis rotund and jolly wife--not in outward appearance, at least.

  The Pritchett children got their extreme height from Cyrus--and theirleanness. He was a grizzled man, whose head stooped forward because hewas so tall, and who looked fiercely on the world from under penthousebrows.

  Every feature of his countenance was grim and forbidding. His cheeks weregray, with a stubble of grizzled beard upon them. When he came in and wasintroduced to the visitors he merely grunted an acknowledgment of theirnames and immediately dropped into his seat at the head of the table.

  As the others came flocking about the board, Cyrus Pritchett opened hislips just once, and not until the grace had been uttered did the visitorsunderstand that it was meant for a reverence before meat.

  "For wha' we're 'bout to r'ceive make us tru' grat'ful--pass the butter,Sairy," and the old man helped himself generously and began at once tostow the provender away without regard to the need or comfort of theothers about his board.

  But Maw Pritchett and her son and daughter seemed to be used to the oldman's way, and they helped each other and the Bray girls with no niggardhand. Nor did the shuttle of conversation lag.

  "Why, I ain't been in the old doctor's house since he died," said Mrs.Pritchett, reflectively. "Mis' Hammon', she's been up here two or threetimes, an' she allus goes up an' looks things over; but I'm too fat forwalkin' up to Hillcrest--I be," concluded the lady, with a chuckle.

  She seemed as jolly and full of fun as her husband was morose. CyrusPritchett only glowered on the Bray girls when he looked at them at all.

  But Lyddy and 'Ph
emie joined in the conversation with the rest of thefamily. 'Phemie, although she had made so much fun of Lucas at first,now made amends by declaring him to be a hero--and sticking to it!

  "I'd never have got out of that pool if it hadn't been for Lucas," sherepeated; "unless I could have drunk up the water and walked ashore thatway! And o-o-oh! wasn't it cold!"

  "Hope you're not going to feel the effects of it later," said her sister,still anxious.

  "I'm all right," assured the confident 'Phemie.

  "I dunno as it'll be fit for you gals to stay in the old house to-night,"urged Mrs. Pritchett. "You'll hafter have some wood cut."

  "I'll do that when I take their stuff up to Hillcrest," said Lucas,eagerly, but flushing again as though stricken with a sudden fever.

  "There are no stoves in the house, I suppose?" Lyddy asked, wistfully.

  "Bless ye! Dr. Polly wouldn't never have a stove in his house, saving acook-stove in the kitchen, an' of course, that's ate up with rust aforethis," exclaimed the farmer's wife. "He said open fireplaces assured everyroom its proper ventilation. He didn't believe in these new-fangled waysof shuttin' up chimbleys. My! but he was powerful sot on fresh air an'sunshine.

  "Onct," pursued Mrs. Pritchett, "he was called to see Mis' Fibbetts--shethat was a widder and lived on 'tother side of the ridge, on the road toAdams. She had a mis'ry of some kind, and was abed with all the windersof her room tight closed.

  "'Open them winders,' says Dr. Polly to the neighbor what was a-nussin' ofMis' Fibbetts.

  "Next time he come the winders was down again. Dr. Polly warn't no gentleman, an' he swore hard, he did. He flung up the winders himself, an'stamped out o' the room.

  "It was right keen weather," chuckled Mrs. Pritchett, her double chinsshaking with enjoyment, "and Mis' Fibbetts was scart to death of a leetleair. Minute Dr. Polly was out o' sight she made the neighbor woman shetthe winders ag'in.

  "But when Dr. Polly turned up the ridge road he craned out'n the buggy an'he seen the winders shet. He jerked his old boss aroun', drove back to thehouse, stalked into the sick woman's room, cane in hand, and smashedevery pane of glass in them winders, one after another.

  "'Now I reckon ye'll git air enough to cure ye 'fore ye git them mended,'says he, and marched him out again. An' sure 'nough old Mis' Fibbettsgot well an' lived ten year after. But she never had a good word for Dr.Polly Phelps, jest the same," chuckled the narrator.

  "Well, we'll make out somehow about fires," said Lyddy, cheerfully, "ifLucas can cut us enough wood to keep them going."

  "I sure can," declared the ever-ready youth, and just here CyrusPritchett, having eaten his fill, broke in upon the conversation in atone that quite startled Lyddy and 'Phemie Bray.

  "I wanter know what ye mean to do up there on the old Polly Phelpsplace?" he asked, pushing back his chair, having set down his coffee-cupnoisily, and wiped his cuff across his lips. "I gotta oral contractwith Jane Hammon' to work that farm. It's been in force year arter yearfor more'n ten good year. An' that contract ain't to be busted so easy."

  "Now, Father!" admonished Mrs. Pritchett; but the old man glared at herand she at once subsided.

  Cyrus Pritchett certainly was a masterful man in his own household. Lucasdropped his gaze to his plate and his face flamed again. But Sairy turnedactually pale.

  Somehow the cross old man did not make Lyddy Bray tremble. She only feltangry that he should be such a bully in his own home.

  "Suppose you read Aunt Jane's letter, Mr. Pritchett," she said, takingit from her handbag and laying it before the farmer.

  The old man grunted and slit the flap of the envelope with his greasytableknife. He drew his brows down into even a deeper scowl as he read.

  "So she turns her part of the contract over to you two chits of gals; doesshe?" said Mr. Pritchett, at last. "Humph! I don't think much of that, nowI tell ye."

  "Mr. Pritchett," said Lyddy, firmly, "if you don't care to work the farmfor us on half shares, as you have heretofore with Aunt Jane, pray sayso. I assure you we will not be offended."

  "And what'll you do then?" he growled.

  "If you refuse to put in a crop for us?"

  "Ya-as."

  "Get some other neighboring farmer to do so," replied Lyddy, promptly.

  "Oh, you will, eh?" growled Cyrus Pritchett, sitting forward and restinghis big hands on his knees, while he glared like an angry dog at theslight girl before him.

  The kitchen was quite still save for his booming voice. The family wasevidently afraid of the old man's outbursts of temper.

  But Lyddy Bray's courage rose with her indignation. This cross old farmerwas a mere bully after all, and there was never a bully yet who was not amoral coward!

  "Mr. Pritchett," she told him, calmly, "you cannot frighten me by shoutingat me. I may as well tell you right now that the crops you have raisedfor Aunt Jane of late years have not been satisfactory. We expect abetter crop this year, and if you do not wish to put it in, some otherneighbor will.

  "This is a good time to decide the matter. What do you say?"