CHAPTER XXI CAUGHT

Nettie Meyers was there–Joe Badger’s buxom friend. She stared hard at ’Phemie and her sister, and then tossed her head. But Mr. Badger came over particularly to speak to the girls.

Sairy Pritchett was very much in evidence. She sat with half a dozen other young women and by their looks and laughter they were evidently commenting unfavorably upon the Bray girls’ appearance and character.

Lyddy bowed pleasantly to Mr. Badger and the other young men who spoke to her; but she gave her main attention to Harris. But ’Phemie noted all the sidelong glances, the secret whispering, the bold and harsh words. She was very sorry they had come.

Alone, ’Phemie could have given these girls “as good as they sent.” Young as she was, her experience among common-minded girls like these had prepared her to hold her own with them. There had been many unpleasant happenings in the millinery shop where she had worked, of which she had told Lyddy nothing.

Mr. Somers came down from the desk to speak to the party from Hillcrest before the meeting opened. But everybody turned around to stare when he did so, and the teacher grew red to his very ears and remained but a moment under fire.

“Hul-lo!” exclaimed Harris Colesworth, under his breath, and ’Phemie knew that he immediately realized the situation. The whole membership–at least, the female portion of it–was hostile to the party from Hillcrest.

While the entertainment was proceeding, however, the Bray girls and their escorts were left in peace. Sairy Pritchett sat where she could stare at Lyddy and ’Phemie, and they were conscious of her antagonistic gaze all the time.

But Lucas was quite undisturbed by his sister’s ogling and when there came a break in the program he leaned over and demanded of her in a perfectly audible voice:

“I say, Sairy! You keep on starin’ like that and you’ll git suthin’ wuss’n a squint–you’ll git cross-eyed, and it’ll stay fixed! Anything about me you don’t like the look of? Is my necktie crooked?”

Some of the others laughed–and at Sairy. It made the spinster furious.

“You’re a perfect fool, Lucas Pritchett!” she snapped. “If you ever did have any brains, you’ve addled ’em now over certain folks that I might mention.”

“Go it, old gal!” said the slangy Lucas. “Ev’ry knock’s a boost–don’t forgit that!”

“Hush!” commanded ’Phemie, in a whisper.

“Huh! that cat’s goin’ to do somethin’ mean. I can see it,” growled Lucas.

“She is your sister,” admonished ’Phemie.

“That’s how I come to know her so well,” returned Lucas, calmly. “If she’d only been a boy I’d licked her aout o’ this afore naow!”

“About what?” asked the troubled ’Phemie.

“Oh, just over her ’tarnal meanness. And maw’s so foolish, too; she could stop her.”

“I’m sorry we came here to-night, Lucas,” ’Phemie whispered.

And at the same moment Lyddy was saying exactly the same thing to Harris Colesworth.

“Pshaw!” said the young chemist, in return, “don’t give ’em the satisfaction of seeing we’re disturbed. They know no better. I can’t understand why they should be so nasty to us.”

“It’s Lucas’s sister,” sighed Lyddy. “She thinks she has reason for being offended with me. But I did hope that feeling had died out by this time.”

“You say the word and we’ll get out of here, Miss Lydia,” urged Harris.

“Sh! No,” she whispered, for somebody was painfully playing a march on the tin-panny old piano, and Mr. Somers was scowling directly down upon the Hillcrest party to obtain silence.

“Say! what’s the matter with that Somers chap, too?” muttered Harris.

But Lyddy feared that the teacher felt he had cause for offence, and she certainly was uncomfortable.

The recess–or intermission–between the two halves of the literary and musical program, was announced. This was a time always given to social intercourse. The company broke up into groups and chattered and laughed in a friendly–if somewhat boisterous–way.

Newcomers and visitors were made welcome at this time. Nobody now came near the Bray girls–not even Mr. Somers. Whether this was intentional neglect on his part or not they did not know, for the teacher seemed busy at the desk with first one and then another.

Sairy Pritchett and the club historian had their heads together, and the latter, Mayme Lowry, was evidently adding several items to her “Club Chronicles,” which amused the two immensely. And there was a deal of nudging and tittering over this among the other girls who gathered about the arch-plotters.

“I’m glad they’ve got something besides us to giggle about,” Lyddy confided to her sister.

But ’Phemie was not sure that the ill-natured girls were not hatching up some scheme to offend the Hillcrest party.

“I believe I’d like to go home,” ventured ’Phemie.

“Aw! don’t let ’em chase you away,” exclaimed the young farmer.

“Oh, I know: ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me!’ But being called names–or, even having names looked at one–isn’t pleasant.”

Lyddy heard her and said quickly, her expression very decided indeed:

“We’re not going–yet. Let us stay until the finish.”

“Yes, by jove!” muttered Harris. “I’d just like to see what these Rubes would dare do!”

But girls are not like boys–at least, some girls are not. They won’t fight fair.

The Hillcrest party need not have expected an attack in any way that could be openly answered–no, indeed. But they did not escape.

Mr. Somers rang his desk bell at last and called the company to order. After a song from the school song-book, in which everybody joined, the “Club Chronicles” were announced.

This “history”–being mainly hits on what had happened in the community since the last meeting of the Temperance Club–was very popular. Mayme Lowry was a more than ordinarily bright girl, and had a gift for composition. It was whispered that she wrote the “Pounder’s Brook Items” for the Bridleburg Weekly Clarion.

Miss Lowry rose and unfolded her manuscript. It was written in a somewhat irreverent imitation of the scriptural “Chronicles;” but that seemed to please the young folks here gathered all the more. She began:

“And it came to pass in the reign of King Westerville Somers, who was likewise a seer and a prophet, and in the fourth month of the second year of his reign over the Pounder’s School District, that a certain youth whose name rhymes with ‘hitch it,’ hitched himself to the apron-strings of a maid, who was at that time sojourning at the top of the hill–and was hitched so tight that you couldn’t have pried the two apart with a crowbar!”

“Oh, by cracky!” gasped the suddenly ruddy-faced Lucas. “What a wallop!”

The paragraph was punctuated with a general titter from the girls all over the room, while some of the boys hooted at Lucas in vast joy.

Lyddy turned pale; ’Phemie’s countenance for once rivalled Lucas’s own in hue. But Miss Lowry went on to the next paragraph, which was quite as severe a slap at somebody else.

“Don’t get mad with me, Miss ’Phemie,” begged Lucas, in a whisper.

“Oh, you can’t help it, Lucas,” she said. “But I’ll never come to this place with you again. Don’t expect it!”

The amusing but sometimes merely foolish paragraphs were reeled off, one after the other. Sometimes the crowd shouted with laughter; sometimes there was almost dead silence as Miss Lowry delivered a particularly hard hit, or one that was not entirely understood at first.

“And it came to pass in those days that certain damsels of the Pounder’s Brook Temperance Club gathered themselves together in one place, and saith, the one to the other:

“Is it not so that the young men of Pounder’s Brook are no longer attracted by our girls? They no longer care to listen to our songs, or when we play upon the harp or psaltery. They pass us by with unseeing vision. Verily an Easter bonnet no longer catcheth the eye of the wayward youth, and holdeth his attention. Selah.

“Therefore spake one damsel to the others gathered together, and sayeth: ‘Surely we are not wise. The young men of our tribe goeth after strange gods. Therefore, let us awake, and go forth, and show the wisdom of serpents and–each and every one of us–start a boarding house!’”

The young men, who had begun to look exceedingly foolish during this harangue, suddenly broke into a chorus of laughter. Even Lucas and Harris Colesworth could not hide a grin, and the school teacher hid his face from the company.

The whole room was a-roar. Lyddy and ’Phemie suffered under the indignity–and yet ’Phemie could scarcely forbear a grin. It was a coarse joke, but laughter is contagious–even when the joke is against oneself.

Miss Lowry gave them no time to recover from this bon mot. She went on with:

“And it was said of a certain young man, as he rode on the way to Bridleburg, that he was met by another youth, who halted and asked a question of the traveler. But the traveler was strangely smitten at that moment, and all he could do was to bray.”

There were no more shots at the Hillcrest folk after that–at least, if there were, the Bray girls did not hear them. The “Chronicles” came to an end at last. Somehow the sisters got away from the hateful place with their escorts.

“But don’t ever ask me to go to that schoolhouse again,” said Lyddy, who was infrequently angry and so, when she displayed wrath, was the more impressive. “I think, Lucas, the people around here are the most ill-mannered and brutal folk who ever lived. They are in the stone age. They should be living in caves in the hillside and be wearing skins of wild animals instead of civilized clothing.”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Lucas, gently. “I reckon it looks so to you. But they have all got used to Mayme Lowry’s shots–it’s give an’ take with most of ’em.”

“There is no excuse–there can be no excuse for such cruelty,” reiterated Lyddy. “And we never have done a single thing knowingly to hurt them.”

Harris Colesworth was silent, but ’Phemie saw that his eyes danced. He only said, soothingly:

“They are a different class from your own, Miss Lydia. They look on life differently. You cannot understand them any more than they can understand you. Forget it!”

But that was more easily said than done. Forget it, indeed! Lydia declared when she went to bed with ’Phemie that she still “burned all over” at the recollection of the impudence of that Lowry girl!

Of course, common sense should have come to the aid of the Bray sisters and aided them to scorn the matter. “Overlook it” was the wise thing to do. But a tiny thorn in the thumb may irritate more than a much more serious injury.

Lyddy considered Mr. Somers quite as much at fault for what had happened at the meeting as anybody else. He was nominally in charge of the temperance meeting. On the other hand ’Phemie decided that she would not be seen so much in Lucas’s company–although Lucas was a loyal friend.

The morrow was the first Sunday of the month of May, and its dawn promised as perfect a day as the month ever produced. Now the girls’ flower gardens were made, the vines ’Phemie had planted were growing, the old lawns about the big farmhouse were a vernal green and the garden displayed many promising rows of spring vegetables.

The girls were up early and swept the great porch all the way around the house, and set several comfortable old chairs out where they would catch the morning sun for the early risers.

The earliest of the boarders to appear was Harris Colesworth, wrapped in a long raincoat and carrying a couple of bath towels over his arm.

“I found a fine swimming hole up yonder in the brook where it comes through the back of the farm,” he declared to the sisters. “It’s going to be pretty cold, I know; but nothing like a beginning. I hope to get a plunge in that brook every morning that I am up here.”

And he went away cheerfully whistling. A moment later ’Phemie saw Professor Spink dart out of the side door and peer after the departing Harris, around a corner of the house. The professor did not know that he was observed. He shook his head, scowled, stamped his foot, and finally ran in for his hat and followed upon Harris’s track.

“He’s suspicious of everybody who goes up there to the rocks,” thought ’Phemie. “What under the sun is it Spink’s got up there?”

Later in the day–it was an hour or more before their usual Sunday dinner time–something else happened which quite chased the professor’s odd actions out of ’Phemie’s mind–and it gave the rest of the household plenty to talk about, too.

The procession of carriages going to Cornell Chapel had passed some time since when another vehicle was spied far down the road toward Bridleburg. A faint throbbing in the air soon assured the watchers on Hillcrest that this was an automobile.

Not many autos climbed this stiff hill to Adams; there was a longer and better road which did not touch Bridleburg and the Pounder’s Brook District at all. But this big touring car came pluckily up the hill, and it did not slow down until it reached the bottom of the Hillcrest lane.

There were several people in the car, and one, a lithe and active youth, leaped out and ran up the lane. Plainly he came to ask a question, for he dashed across the front yard toward where the family party were sitting on the porch.

“Oh, I say,” he began, doffing his cap to the girls, “can you tell a fellow—”

His gaze had wandered, and now his speech trailed off into silence and his eyes grew as large as saucers. He was staring at the placidly-knitting Mrs. Castle, who sat listening to the Professor’s booming voice.

“Grandma! Great–jumping–horse–chestnuts!” the youth yelled.

Mrs. Castle dropped her ball of yarn, and it went rolling down the steps into the grass. She laid down her knitting, took off the spectacles and wiped them, and them put them on again the better to see the amazed youth below her.

“Well,” she said, at length, “I guess I’m caught.”