“I guess, as maw says, I’m too much with old folks. Fust I know they’ll be puttin’ me away in the Home for Indignant Old Maids over there to Adams–though why ‘indignant’ I can’t for the life of me guess, ’nless it’s because they’re indignant over the men’s passin’ of ’em by!” and Miss Pritchett giggled and shook her curls, to ’Phemie’s vast amusement.
Indeed, the younger Bray girl confessed to her sister, after the visitors had gone, that Sairy was more fun than Lucas.
“But I’m afraid she’s far on the way to the Home for Indigent Spinsters, and doesn’t know it,” chuckled ’Phemie. “What a freak she is!”
“That’s what you called Lucas–at first,” admonished Lyddy. “And they’re both real kind. Lucas wouldn’t take a cent for mending the pump, and Sairy came especially to invite us to the Temperance Club meeting, at the schoolhouse Saturday night, and to go to church in their carriage with her and her mother on Sunday.”
“Yes; I suppose they are kind,” admitted ’Phemie. “And they can’t help being funny.”
“Besides,” said the wise Lyddy, “if we do try to take boarders we’ll need Lucas’s help. We’ll have to hire him to go back and forth to town for us, and depend on him for the outside chores. Why! we’d be like two marooned sailors on a desert island, up here on Hillcrest, if it wasn’t for Lucas Pritchett!”
The girls spent a few anxious days waiting for Aunt Jane’s answer. And meantime they discussed the project of taking boarders from all its various angles.
“Of course, we can’t get boarders yet awhile,” sighed ’Phemie. “It’s much too early in the season.”
“Why is it? Aren’t we glad to be here at Hillcrest?” demanded Lyddy.
“But see what sort of a place we lived in,” said her sister.