Lyddy considered Mr. Somers quite as much at fault for what had happened at the meeting as anybody else. He was nominally in charge of the temperance meeting. On the other hand ’Phemie decided that she would not be seen so much in Lucas’s company–although Lucas was a loyal friend.
The morrow was the first Sunday of the month of May, and its dawn promised as perfect a day as the month ever produced. Now the girls’ flower gardens were made, the vines ’Phemie had planted were growing, the old lawns about the big farmhouse were a vernal green and the garden displayed many promising rows of spring vegetables.
The girls were up early and swept the great porch all the way around the house, and set several comfortable old chairs out where they would catch the morning sun for the early risers.
The earliest of the boarders to appear was Harris Colesworth, wrapped in a long raincoat and carrying a couple of bath towels over his arm.
“I found a fine swimming hole up yonder in the brook where it comes through the back of the farm,” he declared to the sisters. “It’s going to be pretty cold, I know; but nothing like a beginning. I hope to get a plunge in that brook every morning that I am up here.”
And he went away cheerfully whistling. A moment later ’Phemie saw Professor Spink dart out of the side door and peer after the departing Harris, around a corner of the house. The professor did not know that he was observed. He shook his head, scowled, stamped his foot, and finally ran in for his hat and followed upon Harris’s track.
“He’s suspicious of everybody who goes up there to the rocks,” thought ’Phemie. “What under the sun is it Spink’s got up there?”
Later in the day–it was an hour or more before their usual Sunday dinner time–something else happened which quite chased the professor’s odd actions out of ’Phemie’s mind–and it gave the rest of the household plenty to talk about, too.
The procession of carriages going to Cornell Chapel had passed some time since when another vehicle was spied far down the road toward Bridleburg. A faint throbbing in the air soon assured the watchers on Hillcrest that this was an automobile.
Not many autos climbed this stiff hill to Adams; there was a longer and better road which did not touch Bridleburg and the Pounder’s Brook District at all. But this big touring car came pluckily up the hill, and it did not slow down until it reached the bottom of the Hillcrest lane.