The whippoorwill flew to other “pitches” near the house, and once actually lit upon the roof to utter his love-call; but never, Nettie told the other girls, would the bird alight upon a live branch.
Just before his cry began they could hear him “cluck! cluck! cluck!” just like an old hen—or, as Ruth suggested—“like a rheumatic old clock getting ready to strike.”
“He’s clearing his voice,” declared Helen. “Now! off he goes. Isn’t he funny?”
“I wonder what the little whippoorwillies are like?” asked Ruth.
“I don’t know. I never saw the young. But I’ve seen a nest,” said Nettie. “The whippoorwill makes it right out in the open, on the top of an old stump, or on a boulder. There the female lays the eggs and shelters them and the young from the storms with her own body.”
“My, I’d like to see one!” exclaimed Helen.
But there were more interesting things than the nest of the whippoorwill to see about the Merredith plantation. And the sightseeing began the next morning, before the sun had been long up.
Immediately after breakfast, while it was still cool, the horses appeared on the gravel before the great door, each held by a grinning negro lad from the stables. No Southern plantation would be properly equipped without a plentiful supply of good riding stock, and Mrs. Parsons had bred some rather famous horses during the time she had governed her ancestral estate.
Ruth and Helen had learned to ride well when they visited Silver Ranch some years before; so they were not afraid to mount the spirited animals that danced and curveted upon the gravel. Mr. Lomaine, the superintendent of the estate, and whom the visitors had met the evening before, came pacing along from the stables upon a great, black horse, ready to accompany the three girls upon a tour of inspection.
Mr. Lomaine was a very pleasant gentleman and was dressed in black, wearing a broad-brimmed black hat, riding puttees, and gauntlets. The whip he carried was silver-mounted. He had entire charge of the work on the plantation; but the old negro, Patrick Henry, Mammy Dilsey’s husband, had personal care of the house, its belongings, and the other negroes’ welfare.