16. Unexpected Visitor
It would never do to leave Sally out of any hikes, Kit said as the end of the week drew near again, and so Buzzy was commissioned to give her a message.
“Tell her we’re going to walk from here over to Mount Ponchas, and back by way of the Spring House. We want to start at five Friday night.”
“Ought to start at daybreak for a hike,” Buzzy replied. “Never heard of starting near sundown. You’ll fetch up by dark at the rock ridge and sleep in a deer hollow.”
“Maybe we will,” Kit responded hopefully. “I hadn’t thought of that, Buzzy. It sounds awfully nice. If you could just get a peep at our lunch you’d want to hike too, no matter where we fetched up.”
“I’ve camped out along the river. Not this river. The big one down at the station, the Quinnebaug. We fellas go down there when the bass is running and fish for them nights. Eels too.”
“Do you know a boy named Billie Ellis?” Kit asked suddenly. “Does he ever go along with you?”
“Billie Ellis? I should say not,” Buzzy answered emphatically. “Judge Ellis wouldn’t let him go along anywhere with the rest of us fellows. He caught a big white owl the other day over in the pines back of the Ellis house.”
“I wish he’d come over our way some time. I’d love to know him. He sounds so kind of—well, different, you know.”
“He’s different all right,” laughed Buzzy good-naturedly. “I remember once three years ago it was awfully cold, and we boys had been skating and went into the feed store to get warm. And who should come in but Billie Ellis without any hat on, and only an old sweater and a pair of pants on, and shoes and socks. We asked him how he ever kept warm such weather, and what do you suppose he said?”
“What?” Kit’s face was eager with interest.
“Said he had seven cats he kept specially to keep him warm. Said the Judge wouldn’t let him have any fire, so he trained the cats to cuddle around him and keep him warm. So long. I’ll tell Sally you want her to go along with you.”
Kit sat out on the terrace after he had passed up the hill road. Jean and Doris were upstairs with their father, and Tommy was out in the barn somewhere. Her mother was playing the piano. Buzzy had been gone about fifteen minutes when Kit heard the sound of a car coming along the level valley road. It couldn’t be anyone for here, she thought. But just then the car turned in at the wide drive entrance and came up to the porch steps.
“You had better wait,” she heard a voice say, such a nice voice, young and alive-sounding. Then somebody bounded up the steps, three at a time, and crossed the porch, with her sitting right there on the top terrace below the rose and honeysuckle vines. Kit always jumped to conclusions and now she decided for some crazy reason that this was Ralph McRae, from Saskatoon.
There was no doorbell or even a knocker, and the double doors stood wide open, but the screen doors were locked inside, so Kit stood up and called.
“Just a minute, please. I’m coming.”
He waited for her, hat in hand and smiling. It was shadowy, but she saw his face and liked it. He was young and handsome.
“Are you Miss Craig?” he asked, and Kit flushed at the tone. As if she didn’t long seventeen hundred times a month to be the Miss Craig like Jean.
“No. I’m only Kit,” she answered. “You’re our Mr. McRae, I think. Hello.”
He shook hands with her and Kit led him around to the side door and let him in while she lighted a lamp.
“Mother’s in here,” she said, leading the way into the living room. Mrs. Craig stopped playing and looked up. “Mother,” Kit said. “Mr. McRae’s come from Saskatoon.”
“Just as if he’d stepped over the whole distance in about seven strides,” Doris said later, after Mr. McRae had been settled in the guest chamber, and the family could discuss him safely. “I think he’s awfully nice-looking, don’t you, Jean?”
“I can’t think about his looks, Doris,” Jean replied blushingly. “All I can do is wonder what he has come after. Does he want the house and farm? Or has his conscience troubled him so much about Sally and her mother and Buzzy that he’s going to lay Woodhow on their front doorstep in restitution? Or did he just want to see what we all looked like?”
“Ask him,” suggested Kit blandly. “He seems to be a very approachable young man so far as I can see.”
“He wanted to go up to Rebecca’s for the night and Mother wouldn’t let him. That shows that she likes him.”
The next day Mr. Craig sat out in a big chair on the porch with their guest, and seemed to enjoy his company wonderfully.
“I do believe, Mom,” Jean said, “that poor Dad has been smothered with too much coddling. Just look at him brace up and talk to Mr. McRae.”
“I hope we can persuade him to stay with us while he is in Elmhurst.”
“He doesn’t act as if he needed much persuading. They’ve discovered that they were both in the Army and are comparing the Canadian Army with ours. They’ve already discussed salmon culture and whether a soy bean crop will do well in Connecticut. We girls think it’s unfair of Dad to monopolize such a charming guy.”
“Jeannie, you’d better come and help me put up our lunch,” called Doris from the kitchen. “Bacon and eggs are going to be the main course, with gingerbread and fruit for dessert.”
It had been agreed that the girls should meet at Woodhow that afternoon. Buzzy had been sent up to Maple Grove with the news that Ralph McRae had arrived, and an invitation for Rebecca to come down for supper. She drove down about four, fresh and cool-looking, wearing a black and white dress and a wide-brimmed black straw hat. Ralph helped her out of the car and stood smilingly while she examined him closely and patted his shoulder as she expressed her obvious approval.
“Just the sort of boy I expected Francelia’d have,” she said happily. “Well built and handsome too. Going to stay awhile, Ralph, and get acquainted?”
“Why, I’d like to, Miss Becky. It gets kind of lonesome out West with none of my own people there. I’ve always wanted to come back here and see all of you. Mother used to talk a lot about you all to me when I was little. She didn’t have anybody else to tell things to.”
“Like enough,” Becky responded rather soberly. “You must meet your cousins.”
“I didn’t know I had any.”
Miss Craig glanced over to the woodpile where Buzzy was sawing some chestnut tops for dry wood to mix in with the birch.
“Come over here, Buzzy,” she called briskly. “This is the boy cousin and Sally’s the girl, both children of your mother’s own sister Luella. Guess we’ll get this straightened out some time. Buzzy, this is Ralph McRae, your own blood cousin.”
Ralph took Buzzy’s tanned, supple hand in his, and held it fast, looking down at his cheery, freckled face.
“I think we’re going to be pals, Buzzy,” he said, and Buzzy’s heart warmed to him. Nobody had ever called him that before.
When Sally arrived with the other girls, she too was introduced, but she proved less pliable than Buzzy. Straight and tall, she faced her new cousin, every flash of her eyes telling him that she resented his having all while they had nothing, and Ralph could make no headway with her.
At five they were ready to start. Lucy could not go, nor Anne, Charlotte, or Tony.
But the older girls were all there, and at the last minute Abby Tucker came hurrying along the road with a large paper bag.
“Thought I’d never get here, but I did,” she said triumphantly. “I made popcorn balls for all of you. And I’ve got some red pepper too. Going to throw it at the ghost.”
“Why you cold-blooded person,” Kit exclaimed. “Red pepper at a poor harmless ghost! Shame on you.”
But Abby only smiled mysteriously and gave the girls to understand that red pepper was the very latest weapon for vanquishing ghosts.
Jean had told each girl to bring a blanket. These were spread down and rolled up army-fashion until they looked like life buoys, then slung over the girls’ shoulders. The commissary department consisted of Kit, Hedda and Ingeborg, who counted over their supplies. There were jam turnovers and deviled-egg sandwiches, loaf cake and cheese, ham-on-rye sandwiches, cherries, and gingerbread.
“You’re equipped for a journey over Chilkoot Pass,” Ralph told them teasingly. “How many weeks will you be gone?”
“We’ll be home tomorrow about sundown,” Kit retorted haughtily. “Should you see the distant light of a signal fire you may come after us.”
Jean looked hopeful at this remark, almost as though she wished it might happen. She suddenly seemed reluctant to leave on this long-planned hike.
The girls left Woodhow and turned into the open road. The first couple of miles went fast enough and then Etoile glanced back over the shadowy road behind them and said, “It’s getting a little dark.” Even though it was still broad daylight.
“We’ve got a flashlight,” Astrid said comfortably, “and Tip for sentinel. There isn’t anything to be afraid of that I can see.”
“Speak for yourself,” retorted Kit. “If we don’t see or hear something I’m going to be awfully disappointed. And if we do hear anything coming slowly upstairs, don’t flash the flashlight right at it until it has a chance to show itself. I hope it will be a lovely pale green.”
Etoile stopped short in the middle of the road, her eyes wide with dread.
“I think perhaps I’d better go right back now, girls.”
But Kit and Ingeborg promised faithfully to guard her if she would only stick the night out. They went on up the long wood road, past the falls above the mill, past Mud Hole where the boys fished for eels, past Otter Island where Matt came to fish, and on to the old spring house. It was set far back from the road in a garden overgrown with weeds and tall timothy grass, and tiger lilies grew rankly in green clumps along the gray stone walls. The little wooden shelter over the well was knocked over and the boards that protected the windows had been pulled half off. Jean went to the kitchen door and found it unlocked. Only wasps and spiders were to be seen, and one stout old toad that backed hurriedly out of sight under the stone doorstep.
“Let’s look it all over before it gets really dark,” she said, and they went in and out of each bare room, upstairs and downstairs, into the old musty cellar, even into the low-roofed loft over the summer kitchen.
“Now, we know there’s nothing here, don’t we?” Kit said, after the tour of inspection was over, and they sat out on the grass near the well, with their food spread around them. “How perfectly wonderful things taste after you’ve walked, don’t they? More ginger cookies, please, Hedda.”
“Which room are we going to sleep in?” asked Abby. “I’d just as soon sleep out here all night on blankets, wouldn’t you, Etoile?”
“We don’t care if you want to,” Doris agreed. “Try it on the little side porch. Then you can watch the cellar entrance because the ghost may decide to come up that way.”
It was getting quite dark by the time the supper was cleared away. Candles were lighted and set on the mantel in the front room and in the kitchen. Kit and Hedda had returned from a successful foraging expedition around the barn and corn house, and had brought back armfuls of hay to spread under their blankets on the floor. Tip, the brown water spaniel, took the whole affair very seriously and made the circuit of the grounds over and over again, chasing imaginary intruders.
“Well, girls, I guess we’re all ready to go to bed, aren’t we?” Kit called finally. They agreed and went into the big living room where the fireplace was. The nights were still very cool up in the hills, so Hedda and Doris had been appointed wood-gatherers and a fine dry wood fire blazed on the stone hearth. After they were ready for the night, they sat around this in a semicircle, eating popcorn balls and telling stories, until all at once there came a sound that silenced everyone and left them wide-eyed and scared.