"And that's the best 'joke' of all. I might be but I'm not. So let's all heave--heave away! for that pleasant sh.o.r.e of a wide lounge and a--towel! With the best intentions--I've been ducked pretty wet!"

"That was my fault! I'm awful sorry but--but--that time John Babc.o.c.k he fell off the barn roof ma she flung a whole pail of water right out the rain-barrel onto him and that brung him to quicker'n scat. So I remembered and I'm real sorry now," explained Alfaretta, more abashed than ordinarily: and in her own heart feeling that the guilt of carelessness which caused the accident had been more hers than Dorothy's. "And n.o.body needn't scold Dolly C. 'Cause she didn't know about the bridge over an' I did, and----"

"No, no! My fault, my very own!" interposed Dorothy hastily.

"Let n.o.body blame n.o.body! All's well that ends well! Alfaretta mustn't regret her serviceable memory nor my drenching, for she's a wise little maid and I owe my 'coming to,' to her 'remembering.' As for you, Dolly darling, let me see another tear in your eye and I will 'scold' in earnest. Now, Martha, wife, I'll give it up. I'm rather shaky on my pins yet and the chair it must be, if I'm to put myself in connection with that lounge. I shan't need the towel after all. I've just let myself 'dreen,' as my girl used to do with the dishes, sometimes!"

He talked so cheerily and so naturally that he almost deceived them into believing that he was not a whit the worse for his tumble, and as they helped him to be seated and began to push him up the slope toward the cottage, he whistled as merrily as he had used to do upon his postal route.

"And you ain't goin' to the gold mine after all?" asked Alfy, much disappointed. It was a spot she had hitherto shunned on account of its ghostly reputation, but was eager to visit now in company with these owners of it, who scoffed at the "haunt." She wanted to show them she was right and see what they would say then.

"Gold mine? Trash! If there had been such a thing on this farm, a man as clever as my uncle Simon Waterman would have used some of the 'gold' to keep things in better shape. I don't want to hear any more of that nonsense, nor to have you, Dorothy, go searching for the place. Our first trip to hunt for gold has been a lesson to us all," said mother Martha, with such sharpness that Alfaretta stared and the others, who knew her better, realized that this was a time to keep silence.

More than once that day was the good housewife tempted to send the three visiting Babc.o.c.ks home, but was too courteous to do so. She longed to have her daughter to herself, and to discuss with her not only the happenings of the past but plans for the future. Besides this desire, she also saw, at last, how badly shaken by his fall her husband was and that he needed perfect quiet--a thing impossible to procure with Alfaretta Babc.o.c.k in the cottage.

However, the day wore away at length. The girl showed herself as useful in the dinner-getting and clearing away as she had done at breakfast time; also, she and her sisters brought to it as keen an appet.i.te, so that, after all, the clearing away was not so great a matter as might be.

Dorothy kept the smaller girls out of doors, helping them to make a playhouse with bits of stones, to stock it with broken crockery and holly-hock dolls, and to entrance them with her store of fairy tales to such a degree that Baretta decided:

"I'm comin' again, Dorothy Chester. I'm comin' ever' single day they is."

"Oh, no! You mustn't do that!" gasped the surprised young hostess. "I will have to work a great deal to help my mother and I shan't have time for visiting."

"Me come, too, Do'thy Chetter," lisped Claretta. "Me like playhouth futh-rate. Me come to-mowwow day, maybe."

Dorothy said no more, but found a way to end their plans by getting a book for herself, and becoming so absorbed in it that they ceased to find her interesting and wandered off by themselves to rummage in the old barn; and, finally, to grow so tired of the whole place that they began to howl with homesickness.

Dorothy let them howl. She had recently been promoted to the reading of d.i.c.kens, and enthralled by the adventures of Barnaby Rudge she had wandered far in spirit from that mountain farm and the disgruntled Babc.o.c.ks. Curled up on the gra.s.s beneath a low-branched tree she forgot everything, and for a long time knew nothing of what went on about her.

Meantime, to keep Alfaretta's tongue beyond reach of her husband's ears, Mrs. Chester had gone down into the cellar of the cottage which, her visitor informed her, had once been the "dairy." Until now, since her coming to Skyrie, the housemistress had occupied herself only in getting the upper rooms cleaned and furnished with such of her belongings as she had brought with her, and in attendance upon father John. She had not attempted any real farm work, though she had listened to his plans with patient unbelief in his power to accomplish any of them.

"If Dorothy should be found," had been his own conclusion of all his schemes, during the time of their uncertainty concerning her; and afterward, when news of her safety and early coming had reached them, he merely changed this form to: "Now that Dorothy is found."

Everything had its beginning and end in "Dorothy." For her the garden was to be made, especially the flower beds in it; the farm rescued from its neglected condition and made a well-paying one, that Dorothy might be educated; and because of Dorothy's love of nature the whole property must be rendered delightfully picturesque.

Now Dorothy had really come; and, unfortunately, as Mrs. Chester expressed it:

"I can see to the bottom of our pocket-book, John dear, and it's not very deep down. Plans and talk are nice but it takes money to carry them out. As for your doing any real work yourself, you can't till you get well. 'Twould only hinder your doing so if you tried. We'll have to hire a man to work the ground for us and clear it of weeds. If we can get him to do it 'on shares,' so much the better; if he won't do that--Oh! hum!

To think of folks having more dollars than they can spend and we just enough to starve on!"

This talk had been on that very day before, while they sat impatiently awaiting her arrival, and it had made John Chester wince. While his life had been in danger, even during all their time of doubt concerning their adopted child, Martha had been gentleness and hopefulness indeed. She had seemed to a.s.sume his nature and he hers: but now that their more serious fears were removed, each had returned to his own again; she become once more a fretter over trifles and he a jester at them.

"Don't say that, dear wife. I don't believe we will starve; or that we'll have to beg the superfluous dollars of other people," he had answered, hiding his regret for his own lost health and comfortable salary.

But the much-tried lady was on the highroad toward trouble-borrowing and bound to reach her end.

"I might as well say it as think it, John. I never was one to keep things to myself that concern us both, as you did all that time you knew you was going lame and never told me. Besides the man, we must have a horse, or two of them. Maybe mules would come cheaper, if they have 'em around here. We'll have to get a cow, of course. Milk and b.u.t.ter save a lot of butcher stuff. Then we must get a pig. The pig will eat up the sour milk left after the b.u.t.ter's made----"

"My dear, don't let him eat up the b.u.t.termilk, too! Save that for Dorothy and me, please. Remember how the little darling used to coax for a nickel to run to the 'corner' and buy a quart of it, when we'd been digging extra hard in our pretty yard. And don't forget, in your financial reckonings, to leave us a few cents to buy roses with. I've been thinking how well some climbing 'Clothilde Souperts' would look, trained against that barn wall, with, maybe, a row of crimson 'Jacks,'

or 'Rohans' in front. Dorothy would like that, I guess. I must send for a new lot of florists' catalogues, since you didn't bring my old ones."

"I hadn't room; and I hope you won't. We've not one cent to waste on plants, let alone dollars. Besides, once you and Dorothy get your heads together over one those books you want all that's in it, from cover to cover. There's things I want, too, but I put temptation behind me. The whole farm's run to weeds and posies, anyhow. No need to buy more."

Father John had thought it wise to change the subject. Martha was the best of wives, but there were some things in which she failed to sympathize. He therefore remarked, what he honestly believed:

"I think it's wonderful, little woman, how you can remember so much about farming, when you haven't lived on one since you were a child."

"Children remember better than grown folks. I don't forget how I used to have to churn in a dash-churn, till my arms ached fit to drop off. And I learned to milk till I could finish one cow in a few minutes; but it nearly broke my fingers in two, at first. I wonder if I can milk now!

I'll have to try, anyway, soon as we get the cow. I guess you'd better write an advertis.e.m.e.nt for the _Local News_, and I'll go to Mrs.

Calvert's place and ask her coachman to post it when he goes down the mountains to meet the folks. Just to think we shall have our blessed child this very night before we sleep!" ended the housemistress, with a return of her good spirits.

Father John laughed with almost boyish gayety. Dorothy was coming!

Everything would be right. So he hobbled across to his own old desk which Martha had placed in the cheeriest corner of the room a.s.signed to him, looking back over his shoulder to inquire:

"Shall it be for a cow, a horse, or that milk-saving pig? Or all three at one fell swoop? Must I say second-hand or first-cla.s.s? I never lived on a farm, you know, and enjoyed your advantages of knowledge: and, by the way, what will we do with the creatures when we get them? I haven't been into that barn yet, but it looks shaky."

"John Chester! Folks don't keep pigs in their barns! They keep them in pens. Even an ex-postman ought to know enough for that. And make the thing short. The printers charge so much a word, remember."

"All right. 'Brevity is the soul of wit.' I'll condense."

Whistling over his task, Mr. Chester soon evolved the following "Want Ad.":

"Immediate. Pig. Cow. Horse. Skyrie."

This effusion, over which he chuckled considerably, he neatly folded and addressed to the publisher of the local newspaper and left on his desk for his wife to read, then hobbled back to his bed to sleep away the time till Dorothy came, if he could thus calm his happy excitement. But it never entered his mind that his careful wife would not read and reconstruct the advertis.e.m.e.nt before she dispatched it to its destination.

However, this she did not do. She simply sealed and delivered it to old Ephraim, just as he was on the point of starting for his mistress at the Landing: and the result of its prompt appearance in the weekly sheet, issued the next morning, was not just what either of the Chesters would have desired.

After all, Alfaretta was good company down in that old cellar-dairy, poking into things, explaining the probable usage of much that Martha did not understand. For instance:

"That there great big wooden thing in the corner's a dog-churn. Ma says 'twas one more o' old Si Waterman's crazy kinks. He had the biggest kind of a dog an' used to make him do his churnin'. Used to try, anyhow. See?

This great barrel-like thing is the churn. That's the treadmill 'Hendrick Hudson'--that was the dog's name--had to walk on. Step, step, step! an' never get through! Ma says 'twas no wonder the creatur' 'd run away an' hide in the woods soon's churnin' days come round. He knew when Tuesday an' Friday was just as well as folks. Then old Si he'd spend the whole mornin' chasing 'Hudson'--he was named after the river or something--from Pontius to Pilate; an' when he'd catch him, Si'd be a good deal more tuckered out an' if he'd done his churnin' himself."

Martha laughed, and rolling the big, barrel-churn upon its side was more than delighted to see it fall apart, useless.

"How could he ever get cream enough to fill such a thing? Or enough water to keep it clean? And look, Alfy! what a perfect rat-hole of dirt and rubbish is under it. That old dog-churn must come down first thing.

I've a notion to take that rusty ax yonder and knock it to pieces myself," she remarked and turned her back for a moment, to examine the other portions of her future dairy.

Now good-natured Alfaretta was nothing if not helpful, and quite human enough to enjoy smashing something. Before Mrs. Chester could turn around, the girl had caught up the ax and with one vigorous blow from her strong arm sent the dog-churn, already tumbling to pieces with age, with a deafening rattle down upon the stone floor.

The sound startled John Chester from his restful nap, silenced the outcries of the little Babc.o.c.ks, and sent Dorothy to her feet, in frightened bewilderment. For there before her, in the flesh, stood the hero of the very book she dropped as she sprang up--Barnaby Rudge himself!

CHAPTER VI

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