We Girls, Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney [100 best novels of all time .txt] 📗

Warner; the place where Queechy came from, and Dollars and Cents, and the Wide, Wide World. It seems so strange to think that they sit there and write still, lovely stories while all this parade and bustle and learning how to fight are going on close beside and about them.

The Cadets are very funny. They will do almost any thing for mischief,--the frolic of it, I mean. Dakie Thayne tells us very amusing stories. They are just going into camp now; and they have parades and battery-practice every day. They have target-firing at old Cro' Nest,--which has to stand all the firing from the north battery, just around here from the hotel. One day the cadet in charge made a very careful sighting of his piece; made the men train the gun up and down, this way and that, a hair more or a hair less, till they were nearly out of patience; when, lo! just as he had got "a beautiful bead," round came a superintending officer, and took a look too. The bad boy had drawn it full on a poor old black cow! I do not believe he would have really let her be blown up; but Dakie says,--"Well, he rather thinks,--if she would have stood still long enough,--he would have let her be--astonished!"

The walk through the woods, around the cliff, over the river, is beautiful. If only they wouldn't call it by such a silly name!

We went out to Old Fort Putnam yesterday. I did not know how afraid Miss Pennington could be of a little thing before. I don't know, now, how much of it was fun; for, as Dakie Thayne said, it was agonizingly funny. What must have happened to him after we got back and he left us I cannot imagine; he didn't laugh much there, and it must have been a misery of politeness.

We had been down into the old, ruinous enclosure; had peeped in at the dark, choked-up casemates; and had gone round and come up on the edge of the broken embankment, which we were following along to where it sloped down safely again,--when, just at the very middle and highest and most impossible point, down sat Miss Elizabeth among the stones, and declared she could neither go back nor forward. She had been frightened to death all the way, and now her head was quite gone. "No; nothing should persuade her; she never could get up on her feet again in that dreadful place." She laughed in the midst of it; but she was really frightened, and there she sat; Dakie went to her, and tried to help her up, and lead her on; but she would not be helped. "What would come of it?" "She didn't know; she supposed that was the end of her; _she_ couldn't do anything." "But, dear Miss Pennington," says Dakie, "are you going to break short off with life, right here, and make a Lady Simon Stylites of yourself?" "For all she knew; she never could get down." I think we must have been there, waiting and coaxing, nearly half an hour, before she began to _hitch_ along; for walk she wouldn't, and she didn't. She had on a black Ernani dress, and a nice silk underskirt; and as she lifted herself along with her hands, hoist after hoist sidewise, of course the thin stuff dragged on the rocks and began to go to pieces. By the time she came to where she could stand, she was a rebus of the Coliseum,--"a noble wreck in ruinous perfection." She just had to tear off the long tatters, and roll them up in a bunch, and fling them over into a hollow, and throw the two or three breadths that were left over her arm, and walk home in her silk petticoat, itself much the sufferer from dust and fray, though we did all we could for her with pocket-handkerchiefs.

"What _has_ happened to Miss Pennington?" said Mrs. General M----, as we came up on the piazza.

"Nothing," said Dakie, quite composed and proper, "only she got tired and sat down; and it was dusty,--that was all." He bowed and went off, without so much as a glance of secret understanding.

"A joke has as many lives as a cat, here," he told Pen and me, afterwards, "and that was _too_ good not to keep to ourselves."

Dear little mother and girls,--I have told stories and described describes, and all to crowd out and leave to the last corner _such_ a thing that Dakie Thayne wants to do! We got to talking about Westover and last summer, and the pleasant old place, and all; and I couldn't help telling him something about the worry. I know I had no business to; and I am afraid I have made a snarl. He says he would like to buy the place! And he wanted to know if Uncle Stephen wouldn't rent it of him if he did! Just think of it,--that boy! I believe he really means to write to Chicago, to his guardian. Of course it never came into my head when I told him; it wouldn't at any rate, and I never think of _his_ having such a quantity of money. He seems just like--as far as that goes--any other boy. What shall I do? Do you believe he will?

P.S. Saturday morning. I feel better about that Poll Parroting of mine, to-day. I have had another talk with Dakie. I don't believe he will write; now, at any rate. O girls! this is just the most perfect morning!

Tell Stephen I've got a _splendid_ little idea, on purpose for him and me. Something I can hardly keep to myself till I get home. Dakie Thayne put it into my head. He is just the brightest boy, about everything! I begin to feel in a hurry almost, to come back. I don't think Miss Pennington will go to Lake George, after all. She says she hates to leave the Point, so many of her old friends are here. But Pen and I think she is afraid of the steamers.

* * * * *

Ruth got home a week after this; a little fatter, a little browner, and a little merrier and more talkative than she had ever been before.

Stephen was in a great hurry about the splendid little mysterious idea, of course. Boys never can wait, half so well as girls, for anything.

We were all out on the balcony that night before dusk, as usual. Ruth got up suddenly, and went into the house for something. Stephen went straight in after her. What happened upon that, the rest of us did not know till afterward. But it is a nice little part of the story,--just because there is so precious little of it.

Ruth went round, through the brown room and the hall, to the front door. Stephen found her stooping down, with her face close to the piazza cracks.

"Hollo! what's the matter? Lost something?" Ruth lifted up her head. "Hush!"

"Why, how your face shines! What _is_ up?"

"It's the sunset. I mean--that shines. Don't say anything. Our splendid--little--idea, you know. It's under here."

"Be dar--never-minded, if mine is!"

"You don't know. Columbus didn't know where his idea was--exactly. Do you remember when Sphinx hid her kittens under here last summer? Brought 'em round, over the wood-pile in the shed, and they never knew their way out till she showed 'em?"

"It _isn't_ about kittens!"

"Hasn't Old Ma'amselle got some now?"

"Yes; four."

"Couldn't you bring up one--or two--to-morrow morning _early_, and make a place and tuck 'em in here, under the step, and put back the sod, and fasten 'em up?"

"What--_for_?" with wild amazement.

"I can't do what I want to, just for an idea. It will make a noise, and I don't feel sure enough. There had better be a kitten. I'll tell you the rest to-morrow morning." And Ruth was up on her two little feet, and had given Stephen a kiss, and was back into the house, and round again to the balcony, before he could say another word.

Boys like a plan, though; especially a mysterious getting-up-early plan; and if it has cats in it, it is always funny. He made up his mind to be on hand.

Ruth was first, though. She kept her little bolt drawn all night, between her room and that of Barbara and Rose. At five o'clock, she went softly across the passage to Stephen's room, in her little wrapper and knit slippers. "I shall be ready in ten minutes," she whispered, right into his ear, and into his dream.

"Scat!" cried Stephen, starting up bewildered.

And Ruth "scatted."

Down on the front piazza, twenty minutes after, she superintended the tucking in of the kittens, and then told him to bring a mallet and wedge. She had been very particular to have the kittens put under at a precise place, though there was a ready-made hole farther on. The cat babies mewed and sprawled and dragged themselves at feeble length on their miserable little legs, as small blind kittiewinks are given to doing.

"They won't go far," said Ruth. "Now, let's take this board up."

"What--_for_?" cried Stephen, again.

"To get them out, of course," says Ruth.

"Well, if girls ain't queer! Queerer than cats!"

"Hush!" said Ruth, softly. "I _believe_--but I don't dare say a word yet--there's something there!"

"Of course there is. Two little yowling--"

"Something we all want found, Steve," Ruth whispered, earnestly. "But I don't know. Do hush! Make haste!"

Stephen put down his face to the crack, and took a peep. Rather a long serious peep. When he took his face back again, "I _see_ something," he said. "It's white paper. Kind of white, that is. Do you suppose, Ruth--? My cracky! if you do!"

"We won't suppose," said Ruth. "We'll hammer."

Stephen knocked up the end of the board with the mallet, and then he got the wedge under and pried. Ruth pulled. Stephen kept hammering and prying, and Ruth held on to all he gained, until they slipped the wedge along gradually, to where the board was nailed again, to the middle joist or stringer. Then a few more vigorous strokes, and a little smart levering, and the nails loosened, and one good wrench lifted it from the inside timber and they slid it out from under the house-boarding.

Underneath lay a long, folded paper, much covered with drifts of dust, and speckled somewhat with damp. But it was a dry, sandy place, and weather had not badly injured it.

"Stephen, I am sure!" said Ruth, holding Stephen back by the arm. "Don't touch it, though! Let it be, right there. Look at that corner, that lies opened up a little. Isn't that grandfather's writing?"

It lay deep down, and not directly under. They could scarcely have reached it with their hands. Stephen ran into the parlor, and brought out an opera-glass that was upon the table there.

"That's bright of you, Steve!" cried Ruth.

Through the glass they discerned clearly the handwriting. They read the words, at the upturned corner,--"heirs after him."

"Lay the board back in its place," said Ruth. "It isn't for us to meddle with any more. Take the kittens away." Ruth had turned quite pale.

Going down to the barn with Stephen, presently, carrying the two kittens in her arms, while he had