“How many acres in this piece, Jeffreys?” asked Mrs. Parsons, of the coachman, seeing that the two Northern girls were interested.
“Four hundred acres, ma’am. I hear Mistah Lomaine say so.”
“We passed huge corn and grain fields when we went West to Silver Ranch,” Ruth said. “But mostly in the night, I believe; and the corn was not in the same stage of growth as this.”
“Cotton is still king in the South,” laughed Mrs. Parsons; “but Corn has become his prime-minister. I believe some of our bottom lands will raise even better corn than this.”
They rode steadily on, having taken a considerable sweep around to see the “quarters,” and now approached the Big House. And it was big! Ruth and Helen never heard it called anything but the “Big House” by anybody on the plantation.
It was set upon a low mound in a grove of whispering trees. The lawns about it were like velvet; the grass was of that old-fashioned, short, “door-yard” kind which finds root in many door-yards of the South and spreads slowly and surely where the land is strong enough to sustain it. It needs little attention from the lawnmower, but makes a thick, velvety carpet.
The roots of some of the old trees had been exposed so many years that their upper surface had rotted away, and in the rich mold thus made the grass had taken root, upholstering low, inviting seats with its green velvet.
The house itself—mansion it had better be called—was painted white, of course, even to its brick foundation. The massive roof of the veranda which sheltered the second-floor windows as well as those of the first floor on the front of the main building, was upheld by six great fluted pillars as sound now as when cut from an equal number of forest monarchs and raised into place, a hundred years before.
On either side wings were built on to the main house, each big enough for the largest family Ruth Fielding had ever known! What could possibly be done with all those bedrooms upstairs was a mystery to her inquiring mind until Nettie told her that, in the old slavery days, long before the war, and when people traveled only on horseback and by coach, a house party at the Merredith plantation meant the inviting for a week or two of twenty-five ladies and as many gentlemen, and each had his or her black attendant—valet, or maid—that had to be sheltered in the Big House at night, although coachmen and footmen, and other “outriders” could find room in the cabins, or stables.
Both wings were closed now; but the windows remained dressed, for Mrs. Parsons would not allow any part of the old house to look ugly and forlorn. Twice a year an army of colored women went through the empty rooms and cleaned and scoured, just as though again a vast company were expected.