A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill
plunging down the steps and across to the hotel.
Noah had gone to bed, but he was unceremoniously routed out.
“Read that!” shouted Don, thrusting his hand in his pocket and pulling
out an envelope.
“It isn't opened,” said Noah, yawning; then recognizing Connie
Queerington's handwriting he suddenly woke up.
“Hang it! That's the wrong one,” said Donald, diving for the other note.
“Here it is! Behold a budding author, Wick! I've written some stuff they
say is worth while. They want more!”
Noah read the note, then returned it calmly.
“It's encouraging, I congratulate you,” he observed laconically.
Donald's face clouded, then cleared and he stepped forward impulsively:
“See here, Wick,” he said, “you think I'm poaching on your preserves.
I'm not. That's the first letter I have had from Connie for weeks. I
haven't written her a line since I left home, but she likes to keep me
on the string. She just plays with Ivy and me to keep her hand in. Don't
you mind either one of us. Stick to it and win.”
“Oh, I'm sticking to it all right,” said Noah doggedly, “but I don't
seem to stand much chance with the rest of you.”
“Nonsense, man! Think of your head-piece! The Lord started you out with
more brains than most of us end with. The Judge said this morning that
you knew more common law than any young lawyer he could think of.”
“Yes, but knowledge of common law won't win this suit. She'll never look
at me, Donald, except as a last resort. She thinks I am a heavy, awkward
hayseed, and I reckon she's about right.”
He towered there in his blue pajamas two sizes too small for him, his
hair on end, and his large hands grasping the chair back. “I don't know
the game,” he went on helplessly. “You fellows take the trick while I am
making up my mind what to play. She's too much for me. You are all too
much for me, but I shan't throw down my hand, not yet.”
Donald got up from the foot of the bed where he had been sitting, and
took Noah by the shoulders.
“You've been working like a dog on my case, old fellow. Suppose you let
me take charge of yours?”
“How do you mean?”
“You say you don't know the rules of the game. I know them backwards and
forwards and upside down. You let me play this hand for you with Connie
Queerington, and you stand to win.”
“But--but you?”
“Heavens, man! Do you suppose if it were anything to me I'd have
forgotten to read her letter all this time? No, I am through with that
sort of thing.” He turned his head abruptly and his face darkened.
“There never was but one race for me, that was worth the running and I
got left at the post.”
“Perhaps Miss Connie--”
“Likes me? Of course she does. And I like her tremendously. That's how
I am going to help you. Leave it to me, Wick. Let me write her all the
letters I want to. Let me tell her about the stir you are making up
here, about the Judge cottoning to you, and the Governor asking you to
dinner. In short, let me dramatize you, Wick; I'll write her a play in
five acts with you for the hero. All you have to do is to ease up on
your letters and keep out of her sight for a month or so. Tell her that
as long as you can't be anything more to her you will be a good friend.
Connie hates a man to be a friend! She wants him to be either an
acquaintance or a lover. You have gotten out of the first class, and she
will never let you alone until she gets you back into the third.”
Noah rubbed his massive and bewildered brow. “It's too complicated for
me,” he said; “I guess I'll have to accept your services.”
That night Donald worked until the small hours, eagerly blocking out the
chapters of his new book. So absorbed was he that it was not until he
straightened his tired back, and started to make ready for bed that he
remembered that he had not yet read Connie's letter.
It was a blotted and incoherent scrawl.
“Dear Cousin Don,” he read, “I don't see how I am ever going to write,
for my eyes are almost out from crying, but Miss Lady simply _can't_ do
everything, and somebody has to tell the relatives. Hattie ought to help
me, but she thinks she has to write to her intimate friends first, and
she's got about a dozen. You know how hateful she is.
“Well, he was taken worse last week, Father, I mean. I can't go into the
details for I have told them over to so many people now that I'm about
crazy, and every time I go over them I almost cry myself to death. He
didn't know any of us all last night or this morning, except once he
called for Miss Lady and patted her cheek. At the end he seemed to get
stronger and opened his eyes and asked for his manuscript. It was the
most pitiful thing you ever saw at the last, to see him trying to turn
over the sheets, with his poor eyes staring out at the wall, not knowing
any of us. You'll see about the funeral in the morning's paper. I don't
see how we are ever going through with it.
“Your loving cousin,
“CONSTANCE QUEERINGTON.
“P. S. Please tell Mr. Wicker--I'd rather die than write another
letter.”
CHAPTER XXV
The summer that followed the People's Bank failure was one of those
uncompromising summers that arrive in May and depart only with the
last leaf in October. The river dwindling to a feeble stream staggered
between distant banks, and the countryside lay parched and panting
beneath an unrelenting sun.
In the city Noah Wicker toiled laboriously over his first case which
had been granted a rehearing, and set for November the sixth. At the
Capitol, Donald Morley sat day after day, coatless, collarless, in the
torrid confines of his small bedroom, furiously covering reams of paper
with compact handwriting. At Thornwood Miss Lady, who had been left in
command of a sinking ship, struggled heroically to bring it into port.
One day early in July, Myrtella Flathers sat just inside the screen door
of the summer kitchen, armed with a fly-spanker and a countenance of
impending gloom. She was evidently rehearsing a speech, for her lips
moved in scornful curves, and her bristling black locks were tossed in
defiance. Mike, venturing out of a shady corner and catching a glimpse
of her face, thought her inaudible remarks were addressed to him and
retired with guilty eyelid and drooping tail to the woodshed.
Myrtella's bitter reflections were interrupted by the appearance of Miss
Lady on the vine-covered porch. She looked absurdly young in her
widow's weeds, in spite of the fact that her color was gone and her eyes
beginning to look too big for her face.
“They've come to stay a week!” she announced, sinking wearily on the top
step and casting a desperate glance at the closed shutters of the guest
room above. “And it's Friday, and Mr. Gooch will be here to supper. Do
you see how we are ever going to hold out?”
“_I_ ain't!” declared Myrtella, spanking a fly into eternity with deadly
precision. “I'm sick and tired of company. There ain't been a day in the
three months since the Doctor died that we ain't had his kin folks on
our hands. It beats my time how half the world gits a prowlin' fit every
summer, and goes pestering them that stays at home. As to these old
maids that come to-day, if they had a eye in their heads they'd see you
was plumb wore out. I wouldn't 'a' ast 'em to stay.”
“But I had to. They are the Doctor's cousins. They said they'd been
coming to see him every summer for years, and they don't want to lose
sight of the children.”
“Umph! The children wouldn't mind losing sight of them! Miss Hattie got
sent to bed onct for sassing the thin one that wants special dishes and
all her water boiled. I bet she'll ast you to change her mattress.”
“She has already. That's what I came out to tell you, and she wants her
supper an hour earlier than ours. But that isn't what's troubling me,
Myrtella, I have something much more serious than Cousin Emily to worry
over.”
“You ain't no exception,” said Myrtella, somewhat defensively. “Trouble
is about the only thing that rich people ain't got a monopoly on. I've
had my share; it's a wonder I got a black hair left in my head!”
“Has your brother lost his good place?” Miss Lady asked.
“Phineas? No, mam. He's been at Iselin's ever since he left Mrs.
Sequin's, an' to hear him tell it he's runnin' the whole 'stablishment.
I must say he's doin' better 'n he ever done before, but he's as full
of airs as a music-box, an' that there Maria, a paternizing me like I
hadn't been payin' her rent all these years. But I kin get along without
them. It's little Chick I'm a worryin' about.”
“What's the matter with Chick?”
“Matter with him?” Myrtella turned on her fiercely. “Ever' thing is the
matter with him. What chanct has he got in the world? Picked out of a
ash-barrel, livin' in dirt an' ignorance, drinkin' the beer that leaks
outen the kegs on the freight cars, hangin' 'round the saloons an'
gittin' runtier an' dumber an' more pitifuller every day he lives. My
Lord! Ain't that enough the matter with him?”
Miss Lady's quick, eager sympathy leapt into her face.
“We must do something for Chick. Dr. Wyeth believes he can cure him if
they can ever get him into the Children's Hospital. Why can't we--” she
checked herself, and sat looking off to the hills across the river.
“Myrtella, I've got to tell you something,” she began again desperately,
“I've been trying to tell you all day, but I didn't know how. You have
been so good to us, all through the Doctor's illness, and before. But
I'm afraid after this month we'll have to let you go.”
Myrtella had been threatening to give notice for a month, but at this
announcement she looked as if she had been the victim of an unsuccessful
electrocution.
“It's a question of money,” went on Miss Lady hurriedly. “You see we
simply haven't any. I've kept account of every cent that comes in and
goes out, just as Mr. Gooch told me to; but it doesn't balance. We'll
just have to keep on cutting down expenses until it does.”
“An' you are going to begin on me,” said Myrtella furiously, “an' git
in some onery nigger that'll carry home more in a basket than my wages
would come to!”
“No, Myrtella; we are going to try to do the work ourselves.”
“You mean _you_ are! An' Miss Connie'll primp herself up an' go hiking
into town after beaux, an' Miss Hattie'll set around with her nose in a
book, an' you'll go on workin' an' slavin' an' wearin' yourself to the
bone fer them, an' their tribe of prowlin' kin. Where's the money you
got for this farm?”
“It went to pay the debts and to carry out the Doctor's wishes.”
“'Bout printin' all them books he wrote over again, an' bringin' 'em out
in the same kind of covers?”
“Yes.”
“How many was there, in all?”
“Twenty.”
Myrtella compressed her lips, and with difficulty refrained from
comment. However freely the Doctor's will had been discussed in public,
no criticism of it was brooked in the presence of Miss Lady.
“As to your leaving,” she said, changing the subject, while Myrtella
vented her wrath on the flies, “you know you have wanted to go for
months. It was only your goodness that made you come out here with
us after you had saved money enough to start your boarding-house. We
haven't been paying you enough, I know that, and--and we haven't enough
to go on even as we are.”
Myrtella wheeled in the doorway, her face purple with anger:
“If you think I'm a-goin' an' leave you children in this big house,
messin' up yer own food, an' lettin' everybody run over you, you are
mighty mistaken! Miss Hattie 'd be having indigestion inside a week, an'
Bertie 'd git the croup, an' you'd have every female Queerington that
could buy a railroad ticket comin' an' settin' down on you!”
“But what can we do, Myrtella? I tell you the money is giving out!”
“Do? I'll tell you what we can do. We can board the company! We can fill