"Katherine," hesitated Peggy, right in sight of their goal, "have you-have you thought how much heavier the jug will be to carry back when it is full?"
Katherine cast at her one withering glance, seized her arm, and the two ran now, the jug b.u.mping as it would against their knees, and the perspiration bright on their foreheads.
"It looks like a deserted castle," panted Peggy when they turned up the worn pathway to the entrance of the mill. "And isn"t it quiet? Doesn"t it usually make some kind of noise?"
"You"re thinking of the planing mill, infant," mocked Katherine.
"Well,-I-anyway, Katherine, the door is shut."
"It won"t be hard to open,-why can"t you-?"
"Yes, I can open it," Peggy answered, stepping into the entrance hall where the gla.s.ses of cider and the little packs of ginger cookies were usually sold, "but there"s no one here now that we"re in, and it looks more deserted than ever and there isn"t even a _crumb_ of a ginger cooky-and I"m starved, nor a _sip_ of cider-and I"m _thirsty_!"
"Why, this is Sat.u.r.day, too. What do you suppose is wrong, Peggy? I"m absolutely dead, if I must confess it. I can"t possibly walk home without a cool drink of cider to brace me up. I never was so hungry and tired in my life."
"That"s his house, I think," Peggy nodded across the road toward a comfortable-looking farm house.
"Do you suppose the cider man would be home?"
"Anyway," Peggy said faintly, "his wife would, and she might have some ginger cookies."
They hurried down the walk and shuffled across the dusty road, feeling that if they were disappointed now they could scarcely bear it.
They went to the side door of the farm house and knocked timidly.
"Oh, Peggy, they"re _eating_!" gasped Katherine. "I feel like a tramp. I almost wish I was one, too, and then maybe they"d invite us in. But isn"t it a late time to be having dinner?"
The cider man"s wife stood in the doorway now, smiling at them somewhat impatiently.
"Did you come for cider?" she asked. "Well, about ten others have been here before you to-day, on the same errand, but he didn"t make any to-day. And there aren"t any ginger cookies. We didn"t have anything for the other girls, either. I never saw anybody like you college girls-a person feels guilty if he rests one day,-what with you all being hungry and thirsty just the same. I"m real sorry."
"We-we brought a jug," said Peggy pathetically.
"Brought a jug? Ernie!" (raising her voice, and calling back into the room where the table was). "They brought a jug."
Ernie called back something, and a smile flitted across his wife"s face.
"He says if you want to wait till he"s through dinner, he"ll go over and make some," she interpreted. "We"re very late getting dinner to-day-we"ve had so many interruptions. But if you want to wait---?"
"We"ll wait!" cried Peggy and Katherine in the same breath.
"It will be about an hour," said the woman, closing the door.
"An hour!" Peggy and Katherine exchanged glances with deep sighs, and trudged down the steps, and slowly back toward the mill.
The cider mill was an important inst.i.tution to Hampton girls-and to Amherst boys, if they cared to walk so far. The man who owned it seemed to feel an especial responsibility toward college girls-as every one does near a college town-and so he kept a counter in the entrance hall over which he sold as much cider as a girl wanted to drink, for five cents. One of his stalwart young helpers would fill her gla.s.s as many times as she wished, for the single first payment.
Then there were the ginger cookies, done up in oiled paper, in packages of a dozen, that his wife had made, and these the hungry young invaders could purchase at ten cents a package. They seemed so much a part of it all that cider never tastes quite perfect to Hampton graduates, to this day, without ginger cookies. Any of the Hampton girls would have been surprised to visit any other cider mill and find that their order for ginger cookies was not understood.
Opposite the mill, on the same side as the farmer"s house, but farther back, and screened all around by a circlet of trees, so that it sparkled in the midst of them like a Corot painting, was the cool mill-pond, with reeds and rushes growing out into it, and shady branches overhanging it.
Drawn toward this now in their search for something of interest to while away the time, Peggy and Katherine parted the bushes and young birch trees, and found themselves looking into the very heart of beautiful things, with all the world of dust and disappointment and fatigue behind them.
"That water looks cool," murmured Peggy gladly.
"Yes; I don"t know as it"s safe drinking water, but I think we might _wade_ in it."
"If we have time."
"An hour?-why of course there"s time. What else can we do to amuse ourselves?"
They were as entirely hidden from the road and the farm house as if they had been in another world. Without more argument, the two sat down and Katherine slipped out of her grey pumps, and flung her grey silk stockings after them. Peggy was wearing tan oxfords and tan stockings.
"O-oh, who would dream there could be anything so cold on such a warm day?" gasped Peggy, trying it with her toes.
"I like this reedy, weedy part," laughed Katherine, her feet dipping in up to her ankles.
They sat, thus, side by side, dangling their feet like happy children, seeking to fathom with their eyes how soon the water got deep enough to drown them, should they step out farther, and watching idly the patterns made by the sea-weed strands near the sh.o.r.e.
"What if a fish should come?" cried Katherine suddenly, and laughed at the expedition with which Peggy"s feet came glistening up out of the water. "Don"t be silly, Peggy," she giggled, "fish can"t bite anything but flies and worms."
"Maybe the kind that would live in a mill-pond could," said Peggy, comfortably sliding the rea.s.sured feet back into the still water. "And anyway, who wants to dispute habitation with a fish?"
With all manner of the gayest and most idiotic prattle they whiled away that endless hour, and if any one had stood just outside the fringe of little trees and had heard their voices without seeing them, he would never in the world have guessed that such inconsequential conversation was being indulged in by two freshmen in good standing of the largest woman"s college in America; girls who would be candidates for the degree within four years and who were even now in the process of being moulded into "intelligent gentlewomen."
"Hasn"t that bird a funny whistle?" asked Katherine suddenly. "Listen!
He whistles just like a person!"
And as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she was covered with confusion, for the realization came to her that it was a person,-somebody going by on the road, probably, and they had so far forgotten the world outside their own green hedge that it had startled them.
"I"m going to peek out," said Peggy. Thrusting the leaves aside, she made a tiny opening,-large enough for her eyes to get a clear view of the road.
And then all of a sudden she sprang up, her face hot with excitement, and made as if to burst through the thicket to the road itself. She would have accomplished this had not Katherine caught her dress and dragged her back so violently that she sat down, breathless, on the bank of the pond, exclaiming over and over in gladness, "It"s Jim! Katherine, it"s Jim!"
"Your shoes and stockings, child," urged Katherine. "Put them on, quick."
But Peggy seized one grey and one tan stocking and on they went over her wet feet. Then she stepped into her tan oxfords and flew out from shelter.
Katherine looked helplessly after the retreating Peggy, and then down at the a.s.sorted pair of stockings left for her. "There seems to be nothing to do but put them on," she sighed resignedly. In a few minutes she emerged from the shadows with as much dignity as she could a.s.sume.
And there down the road was Peggy, the full blaze of the autumn sun on her golden head, her eager face uplifted and aglow, and towering above her two good-looking young men, apparently oblivious to everything except this strange and vivacious little apparition that had burst so suddenly upon them.
One, Katherine recognized at once as Jim Huntington Smith, the grandson of old Mr. Huntington, whom they had known last year at Andrews, and through whose generosity Peggy had been enabled to come to college.
The two girls had been the means of discovering Jim"s relationship to the owner of "Gloomy House," as the old Huntington place was known, and of re-uniting these two members of the same family.
So they regarded Jim as very much their property; as they might look upon some handsome older cousin.
Peggy was waving an arm back towards the pond, and the boys were laughing. Then as she went on with her gesticulations they looked up and saw Katherine.