“Carter always liked the country,” she said to herself when her reverie came to an end, and she left her seat by the window; “and Rex is just like him, and will buy that place if he can, and I shall have to go there as hostess and be called upon by a lot of old women in sun-bonnets and blanket shawls, who will call me Lucy Ann and say, ‘You remember me, don’t you? I was Mary Jane Smith; I worked in the shoe-shop with you years ago.’ And Phineas Jones will turn up, with his cousining and dreadful reminiscences. Ah me, what a pity one could not be born without antecedents!”
CHAPTER II.
THE HOMESTEAD.
It stood at the end of a grassy avenue or lane a little distance from the electric road between Worcester and Spencer, its outside chimneys covered with woodbine and its sharp gables distinctly visible as the cars wound up the steep Leicester hill. Just what its age was no one knew exactly. Relic-hunters who revel in antiquities put it at one hundred and fifty. But the oldest inhabitant in the town, who was an authority for everything ancient, said that when he was a small boy it was comparatively new, and considered very fine on account of its gables and brass knocker, and, as he was ninety-five or six, the house was probably over a hundred. It was built by a retired sea-captain from Boston, and after his death it changed hands several times until it was bought by the Hallams, who lived there so long and were so highly esteemed that it came to bear their name, and was known as the Hallam Homestead. After the death of Carter Hallam’s father it was occupied by different parties, and finally became the property of a Mr. Leighton, who rather late in life had married a girl from Georgia, where he had been for a time a teacher. Naturally scholarly and fond of books, he would have preferred teaching, but his young wife, accustomed to plantation life, said she should be happier in the country, and so he bought the Homestead and commenced farming, with very little knowledge of what ought to be done and very little means with which to do it. Under such circumstances he naturally grew poorer every year, while his wife’s artistic tastes did not help the matter. Remembering her father’s plantation with its handsome grounds and gardens, she instituted numerous changes in and about the house, which made it more attractive, but did not add to its value. The big chimney was taken down and others built upon the outside, after the Southern style. A wide hall was put through the centre where the chimney had been; a broad double piazza was built in front, while the ground was terraced down to the orchard below, where a rustic bridge was thrown across the little brook where Carter and Jack Hallam had built their water-wheel. Other changes the ambitious little Georgian was contemplating, when she died suddenly and was carried back to sleep under her native pines, leaving her husband utterly crushed at his loss, with the care of two little girls, Dorcas and Bertha, and a mortgage of two thousand dollars upon his farm. For some years he scrambled on as best he could with hired help, giving all his leisure time to educating and training his daughters, who were as unlike each other as two sisters well could be. Dorcas, the elder, was fair and blue-eyed, and round and short and matter-of-fact, caring more for the farm and the house than for books, while Bertha was just the opposite, and, with her soft brown hair, bright eyes, brilliant complexion, and graceful, slender figure, was the exact counterpart of her beautiful Southern mother when she first came to the Homestead; but otherwise she was like her father, caring more for books than for the details of every-day life.
“Dorcas is to be housekeeper, and I the wage-earner, to help pay off the mortgage which troubles father so much,” she said, and when she was through school she became book-keeper for the firm of Swartz & Co., of Boston, with a salary of four hundred dollars a year. Dorcas, who was two years older, remained at home as housekeeper. And a very thrifty one she made, seeing to everything and doing everything, from making butter to making beds, for she kept no help. The money thus saved was put carefully by towards paying the mortgage coming due in October. By the closest economy it had been reduced from two thousand to one thousand, and both Dorcas and Bertha were straining every nerve to increase the fund which was to liquidate the debt.
It was not very often that Bertha indulged in the luxury of coming home, for even that expense was something, and every dollar helped. But on the Saturday following the appearance of Mrs. Hallam’s advertisement in the New York Herald she was coming to spend Sunday for the first time in several weeks. These visits were great events at the Homestead, and Dorcas was up as soon as the first robin chirped in his nest in the big apple-tree which shaded the rear of the house and was now odorous and beautiful with its clusters of pink-and-white blossoms. There was churning to do that morning, and butter to get off to market, besides the usual Saturday’s cleaning and baking, which included all Bertha’s favorite dishes. There was Bertha’s room to be gone over with broom and duster, and all the vases and handleless pitchers to be filled with daffies and tulips and great bunches of apple-blossoms and a clump or two of the trailing arbutus which had lingered late in the woods. But Dorcas’s work was one of love; if she were tired she scarcely thought of it at all, and kept steadily on until everything was done. In her afternoon gown and white apron she sat down to rest awhile on the piazza overlooking the valley, thinking as she did so what a lovely place it was, with its large, sunny rooms, wide hall, and fine view, and how dreadful it would be to lose it.
“Five hundred dollars more we must have, and where it is to come from I do not know. Bertha always says something will turn up, but I am not so hopeful,” she said, sadly. Then, glancing at the clock, she saw that it was nearly time for the car which would bring her sister from the Worcester station. “I’ll go out to the cross-road and meet her,” she thought, just as she heard the sharp clang of the bell and saw the trolley-pole as it came up the hill. A moment more, and Bertha alighted and came rapidly towards her.
“You dear old Dor, I’m so glad to see you and be home again,” Bertha said, giving up her satchel and umbrella and putting her arm caressingly around Dorcas’s neck as she walked, for she was much the taller of the two.
It was a lovely May afternoon, and the place was at its best in the warm sunlight, with the fresh green grass and the early flowers and the apple orchard full of blossoms which filled the air with perfume.
“Oh, this is delightful, and it is so good to get away from that close office and breathe this pure air,” Bertha said, as she went from room to room, and then out upon the piazza, where she stood taking in deep inhalations and seeming to Dorcas to grow brighter and fresher with each one. “Where is father?” she asked at last.
“Here, daughter,” was answered, as Mr. Leighton, who had been to the village, came through a rear door.