“Dear Helen:
“I presume you are now in glorious La France, wondering why you have not heard from me. But my excuse is this magnificent mountain scenery, and my new duties, which have taken every minute of my time until to-day. We came up on the fifteenth from New York. Mother knitted and read during the ten-hour ride, while I wished inexpressibly good things for Mrs. Van Vorst for renting our little dovecote, and planned liberty work. I have decided to adopt the club’s motto, ‘Liberty and Humanity—our best,’ for the summer’s watchword. As it means to try and be helpful and kind to people, whether I like them or not, wish me success, for I have undertaken something big.
“Mr. Banker, my aunt’s lawyer, met us at the Littleton station with his car. He is a tall, lean man, but his brown eyes have a quizzical gleam in them that makes you feel that you are affording him some amusement. The seven-mile ride up one mountain slope and down another, in the shade of the woods that gloomed dark and weird on each side of the road, with the hush of the gloaming in their moist depths, was most enjoyable.
“From out of their rustling shadows the white birches and poplars peered at us like ghosts, while the resinous aroma from the pines made us sniff with delight. Mountain villages with a straggle of white cottages, and grizzly gray churches in a setting of purple mountain-peaks, strangely somber and still, as they stood forth from feathery masses of clouds tinted with sunset’s glow, with gossamer wreaths of mist floating above them, stilled us to a mute ecstasy of sheer joy.
“Stone gate-posts, beds of old-time posies, backed by cobble-stone walls with hedges of green, and a little white house, like a keeper’s lodge, peered curiously out of the silver shadows of the rising moon as we whizzed up the roadway to Seven Pillars, and came to a stop under the porte-cochère of a large, white mansion, set on a green knoll, facing the rocky heights of far-distant mountains. Here square glass lanterns threw yellowish gleams on the wide, low veranda, with its seven magic pillars,—round, fluted columns reaching high above the second-story windows, as with lofty stateliness they held the pointed dome above the portico.
“Passing through the quaint, white-columned doorway, with its tiny panes of glass and shiny brass knocker, we stood, dazed and tired, in a broad, gloomy hall, where, in the flare from a snapping log-fire, numerous trophies of the hunt eyed us glassily, as we were welcomed by my cousin, Janet Page, and her sister, Cynthia.
“Janet is a winsome thing. We have already become great chums, although she is a few years older than your lonesome. She is short and plump, with a white, satiny skin, and apple-blossom cheeks that make you feel that you want to kiss the pink of them. Her eyes fairly beam with kindliness as she looks at you from under her short, wavy brown hair. She’s a pacifist and a suffragist, and aims to be a farmerette. Although she has decided ideas on the war and voting questions, they are rather vague on farming, but she goes about saying, ‘God speed the plow and the woman who drives it.’
“Cynthia Loretto Stillwell—she always insists on the Loretto, as it is the sole heritage from some Italian ancestor, famed for his noble birth and deeds of valor—is not my own cousin, as she is the daughter of my uncle’s wife, who was a widow when they married. She is distinctively tall, somewhat angular, with sharp features, a drooping, discontented mouth, and a sallow skin which she endeavors to hide by dabs of white and pink powder. Her eyes are large and dark, and would be handsome, if they did not repel you at times by their hard, metallic glitter. Her coiffure is a wonderful combination of braids, curls, and puffs, and made me wonder how she did it. She greeted us effusively, but somehow its warmth seemed cold and artificial, and—well, I don’t believe I’m going to like her.
“After our hunger was appeased,—Janet said she got the supper, as we shall have to be our own maids up here,—Mr. Banker ‘personally conducted’ us through many high-ceiled rooms with recessed window-seats, big doors, and dark closets, up winding stairways and through rambling corridors. The antique furniture, carved and black-looking, musty-smelling and stuffy, made one feel as if long-ago-dead people were peering at you from the eerie shadows of the hide-and-seeky nooks.
“Mr. Banker then read my aunt’s letter of instruction,—an odd document, as it stated that each one of ‘we girls,’—as Cynthia calls us,—she’s almost as old as mumsie,—during our stay is to search the house for the most valuable thing in it. And the lucky finder of the ‘mysterious it,’ as Jan and I call the valuable thing, is to inherit something. Whether this something is property, or money, or just some personal effects of my aunt’s, I don’t know, for that letter was so queer it made me feel creepy. And once when I glanced up, it really seemed as if her eyes were glaring menacingly at me from a large portrait of her which hangs over the library mantel.