“Is it real?” I asked Poppy’s opinion, wondering if it would be safe for us to go in. “Or is it a mirage, as you read about in stories of people crossing the desert?”
“Tell me what you see,” laughed the other, as puzzled over the unusual place as I was, “and I’ll tell you what I see.”
“A beautiful three-story stone house,” I checked off, “with fancy jiggers all over it, to make it showy, and a stone wall in front, with a big gateway, like a cemetery.”
“That’s exactly what I see, too. So I guess it’s real enough. But it beats me,” the puzzled leader concluded, matching my thoughts, “to find a place like this in a country where there aren’t even farmhouses.”
Leg weary and hollow under our belts, it had been our intention to buy a meal here, late as it was, and if possible rent a bed for the night. Certainly, done up as we were from our first unsatisfactory day on the road, it was all right for us to draw on our emergency fund. The next night, when we were on the other road where the automobiles were, and playing in luck again, we would try working for our supper and breakfast, as we had planned on doing. But not to-night.
It struck me, though, as I stood there looking at the peculiar house, that this was no place to buy a meal. If we were admitted into the house at all it would be without pay. For only a very wealthy man could have built a place like this. And what would a dollar or two of our money mean to him?
Still, unless we wanted the people to think that we were tramps, it would be better for us to offer to pay for our supper, I told Poppy, than to ask for it. So of this determination we turned in through the big gate and mounted the front steps.
The door that we came to was set in a framework of glass, in the old colonial way, and taking a squint inside, I saw a long, wide, dimly-lit hall, the walls and ceiling of which were fixed up with fancy dark wood panels. It was a swell house, all right, as swell on the inside, with its beautiful walls and old furniture, as it was on the outside. And more than ever I wondered at its being here. It must have a queer history, I told myself.
“Clang!” went the old-fashioned knocker. And I stepped back now, out of sight, for a small, quick-footed woman of considerable age had come briskly into sight, carrying a hand lamp. I saw her set the lamp on a small table close to the door. In her blue and white kitchen apron, she didn’t look very high-toned, like the big house, yet, to that point, I liked her best the way she was. She had a sort of motherly look. Her gray hair was combed tight to her head, which she carried very straight on her shoulders, and even before I got a close look at her I knew that her eyes were gray, too. I was to learn soon that they were very bright eyes, sparkling as she talked—and could she talk! Oh, boy!
The door was opened without hesitation. Yet at sight of us the woman seemed to be startled, even disappointed. She was looking for some one else, I figured.