The Outdoor Girls Around the Campfire by Laura Lee Hope (free novel 24 txt) 📖

Before the little old lady found breath for reply Betty had darted from the room. After a surprised moment, Amy followed her.

Grace and Mollie, following Betty’s unexpressed wish, stayed with the old lady.

Half way down the hill Amy caught up to Betty.

“Where to?” she asked, panting. “And why the dreadful hurry?”

“Oh, Amy!” exclaimed the Little Captain, slowing her pace, “did you ever see anything so pitiful and so dear as that little old thing—did you?”

“She’s a darling,” agreed Amy, warmly. “Imagine her really enjoying being called the Old Maid of the Mountains!”

“She’s quaint and, in some ways, rather queer,” admitted Betty, as they reached the main road and swung along toward the nearest farmhouse. “But I reckon she gets that way from living so much alone. Poor little soul, she’s altogether too feeble to live alone. Amy,” changing the subject abruptly, “how much cash do you happen to have on hand?”

“Two dollars and three cents,” returned Amy, promptly. “I didn’t bring much along because I thought we wouldn’t need a great deal in the way of provisions.”

“It’ll do,” said Betty, adding musingly: “I have a dollar, and with that we ought to get the farmer’s wife to give us a pretty good dinner.”

“What are you going to get?” asked Amy, as they turned into the broad drive that led up to the rambling porch of the old farmhouse.

“A chicken, if I can,” said Betty. “We can cook it in the old lady’s oven. I noticed she had a pretty hot fire in the stove in spite of the hot weather. And apple sauce if I can. And fresh butter and maybe a home-made pie——”

“Good gracious!” cried Amy. “What do you think this is, Thanksgiving?”

“It’s going to be a mighty fine party if I have anything to say about it,” returned Betty, as the farmer’s wife appeared on the threshold—a gigantic figure of a woman but with a rosy, kindly face that attested to her good-nature.

As the girls had been there several times before, she recognized them instantly and greeted them with a broad smile.

“Come right into the kitchen,” she said, waving a hand toward the interior of the house from which floated an appetizing aroma. “I’ve a pie in the oven and I’m afraid it will burn.”

With these words she vanished, leaving the girls to follow. This they did eagerly, for the smell of baking things drew them irresistibly.

“And now what’ll you have?” asked the good-natured giantess, whose name was Mrs. Joyce. “I’ve got plenty of fresh eggs to-day—the hens have been workin’ overtime—and more milk than I know what to do with. It’ll be a mercy if you’ll take it off my hands.”

Betty laughed.

“It’s very kind of you,” she said. “But it isn’t milk and eggs that we’re really after to-day. You see, we want the makings for a real feast.”

Then she explained while the kindly woman listened with interest and sympathy.

“And so you’ve met the Old Maid of the Mountains,” she said, an indulgent smile on her wide mouth. “A queer little soul, but a good woman for all that. We folk around here try our best to befriend her, but she’s too proud to take much from us. Sure, if it’s a spread you want, you shall have it.”

Mrs. Joyce sent Henry, the hired man, out to kill a chicken, “the likeliest bird in the lot,” and the girls waited while the slain fowl was duly plucked and cleaned.

Afterward the farmer’s wife filled a huge hamper for them, putting in, in spite of their protests, a generous supply of home-made biscuits and doughnuts, adding as a final glorious gift a huge apple pie which she had taken from the oven, crisp and flaky of crust, but a moment before.

“Oh, you’re too good to us, Mrs. Joyce,” murmured Amy, longing eyes on the tempting pastry. “We don’t deserve it.”

“Anybody who tries to do good in this world deserves every nice thing that comes to ’em,” said the good woman stoutly, as she securely fastened the top of the hamper. “Now, be gone with you, while I tend to the rest of my baking.”

“But, Mrs. Joyce, we haven’t paid you yet,” protested Betty. “How much——”

“Run along with you,” repeated the big woman, already busy with her oven. “You don’t owe me a cent.”

However, Betty, with Amy’s help did finally get her to consent to take some money for the feast—although it was only a tenth of what it was really worth—and when the girls turned once more toward the cabin of the Old Maid of the Mountains it was with a warm feeling about their hearts.

“There are so many lovely people in the world,” said Amy, contentedly as, with the basket between them, they toiled up the steep ascent.

“I only hope,” said Betty in a low tone, as they stopped before the door of the little cabin, “that our little old lady won’t object to our contributing our feast.”

“I don’t think she will,” returned Amy, “as long as we’re going to eat it too.”

But when the Old Maid of the Mountains saw what that basket contained she was too amazed and bewildered at first to make any protest, if, indeed, she had wanted to. She just sat and stared from one to the other of the girls as though she were trying to figure things out.

“But what are you going to do, my dears?” she asked in a plaintive, uncertain little voice that went to Betty’s heart. “I don’t understand.”

“Why,” explained Betty, gayly, “if you don’t mind, we’ve invited ourselves to dinner with you. That is,” she paused and added with that pretty deference she always paid to the old, “if you are quite sure you don’t mind?”

She was startled then, and disturbed to see that the old lady’s eyes had suddenly filled with tears. But all the quaint little person said was:

“I do not mind!”

And indeed, as the preparations for the feast gayly proceeded, it almost seemed as though the little old lady grew younger. Her eyes became bright and a color warmed her sweet old face, making her look more than ever like a picture out of a story book.

“It is so lovely to have young ladies about,” she sighed, as Betty gayly tested the chicken with a fork and proclaimed that it was done. “Youth is a wonderful thing.”

“You,” said Betty, turning to her impulsively, “will never be old.”

The old lady shook her head, although the compliment evidently pleased her.

“My soul will remain young perhaps, my dear,” she said, gently. “But it is my body that must feel the weight of years.”

“After all,” returned the Little Captain, “it’s the soul that really counts. That’s what mother says.”

“You are a dear child,” returned the little old lady, reaching up to pat the hand that Betty had laid on her shoulder. “And you must have a very sweet mother. I envy her. I have always longed to have a daughter of my own.” At the words such a look of sadness spread over the wrinkled old face that Betty knew she had chanced upon a secret wound in the old lady’s heart. She had a quick moment of wondering what had been the early life of the Old Maid of the Mountains.

However, as Mollie announced that dinner was ready to serve, they were soon merry again, crowding eagerly about the table.

Their hostess occupied the seat of honor at the head of the table while Betty took the foot, proudly presiding over the carving of the chicken.

“I don’t know anything about this business,” she admitted, as she severed a brownly roasted leg from the bird with the aid of a carving knife of finest steel.

This was one thing Betty, and the other girls, too, had noticed about the contents of the little cabin. Although the furnishings were scant, they were all of good material.

The crockery—what there was of it—was of the finest china, and the cutlery—what there was of that—was tempered steel and real silver. Like the thoroughbred old lady, they were genuine, seeming strangely incongruous and out of place in the tumbled-down little cabin.

“She’s a mystery,” thought Betty, as she struggled nobly with the chicken. “I’d give a good deal to know something about her past. I reckon she’s had an interesting one.”

Take it all in all, it was one of the most delicious dinners that the Outdoor Girls had ever sat down to, and, as Mollie afterward observed: “That was saying something.”

As for their quaint little hostess, it is safe to say she had not been given such a treat in a long while.

She ate as though she were famished, and Betty realized with a new rush of pity that what she had at first suspected was true, the old lady had been really hungry—half fed.

Yielding to the girl’s eager entreaties she even took a second piece of Mrs. Joyce’s wondrous pie, and when she had finished she sat back with a sigh, looking at the girls plaintively.

“I know I shall be sick,” she said. “I have not eaten so much in——” she caught herself up suddenly as though sorry for the admission and went on talking hurriedly, trying to cover it up with a flow of words.

After dinner the girls carefully cleaned up, anxious that the little old lady’s party should not be spoiled by any hard work on her part. And then, as the twilight shadows were beginning to fall, they knew it would be necessary to hurry if they were to reach camp before dark.

“And we’re none too sure of the way, either,” Mollie said to the Little Captain in an undertone. “There’s no time to waste.”

But when they explained this to the old lady, she seemed so disappointed and frail and little that they had hard work to get away at all.

“We’ll come back to-morrow or next day,” Betty promised, as they stepped out into the open, the old lady following them hospitably to the door. “We’ve just had a lovely time.”

At the edge of the woods they turned and looked back.

The Old Maid of the Mountains was waving her hand.