“He is still living in the same place, and you shall go there if you like.” There was a very sober look on Mrs. Estabrook’s face as she made the reply.
“What makes you look so solemn?” inquired Persis. “I don’t believe you want to go. Are you doing it just for my sake? Will it make you unhappy?”
“I want to go very much. I have put it off from time to time, because I have felt that it would bring too many sad memories; but since we have discovered Annis I do not feel so about going, and I am very eager to see the old familiar scenes. I should like to take Annis, too, if I could afford it.”
“Oh, wouldn’t that be fine! I believe Mrs. Brown would pay Annis’s expenses if she knew you wanted her to go. She was saying the other day that Annis ought to have a change after her illness. Will you take her if she can go?”
“Most certainly.”
In consequence, to the delight of the two girls, it was arranged that Annis should go, and the three set off full of expectation.
“I feel exactly as if I were going on a pilgrimage,” declared Persis. “Let me see, we are going to the old Carter place first, Annis, and then to the Herricks’. There are distant cousins scattered all through that part of the country, and we shall be continually coming upon some of them. I can hear the old ladies exclaim over Mary Carter’s grand-daughter, for you know you are a discovery, and your existence has never been known to them. They will put on their spectacles and turn you round to the light, to see if you look like the Carters, or who you are like; won’t they, grandma? Are we going to that queer little town where those three sisters live, the ones who are so old? Annis, they are so funny; the youngest one is nearly seventy, and her two older sisters always treat her as if she were such a young, frivolous thing that they are afraid she might elope with the milkman, or do some equally giddy thing, if they didn’t keep a strict watch over her. They call her ‘Babe’ still, and she wears little blue bows in her hair and at her collar because blue was considered her color when she was young. Aunt Esther told me about them. We call them the Grææ.”
“We go there first,” Mrs. Estabrook informed them. “Cousin Cyrene is always the family news-letter, and we shall be able to make a number of little trips from their village, keeping that place as our headquarters.”
And at last when Parkerville was called the girls stepped out on the platform of the station, with curious eyes ready to take in every detail of the little place. In a lumbering old coach they were taken to the small hotel, which rejoiced in the name of the “Mansion House,” and presently were conducted to their rooms by a small colored boy. After passing along two long porches they found themselves at one end of the building, where three large comfortable rooms were opened to them.
“Isn’t this fine?” cried Persis. “I think it is great to come to such a funny old place. Do you see, Annis? All the rooms open on the porch, and you don’t go through any inside hall-way at all. Oh, look at those mountains right in front of us. Aren’t they lovely and blue?”