Speed Nell
The Carter Girls

In an incredibly short time Gwen called the young men to dinner. They lay stretched at their ease on a grassy slope near the cabin, quite pleased with themselves and their luck in having found a mule to move the dirt and a girl to cook their food all in one morning.

“What do you make of her?” asked Lewis. “She doesn’t talk or walk like a mountain girl.”

“Mission School!” commented Bill, looking at the slim, erect back of the girl as she went up the hill to the spring. She had refused their offer of help and said she wanted to get the water herself.

“I don’t believe Mission School would have her walking that way. Don’t you fancy the boy goes to school, too? Look how he slouches.”

Just then the boy, whose name was Josh, appeared, leading Josephus. Surely there never was such a specimen of horse flesh as that mule. Maud in the comic supplement was beautiful compared to him. His legs had great lumps on them and he was forced to walk with his feet quite far apart to keep from interfering. He was sway backed and spavined and blind in one eye, but there was a kindly expression in his remaining eye that reassured one. One fore leg was shorter than the other, which gave him a leaning, tumbling look that seemed to threaten to upset his equilibrium at every step.

“Well, God bless my soul!” exclaimed Lewis. “Is that Josephus?”

“Yes, sir! He ain’t so measly as he looks. He kin do a sight of scrapin’ an’ dumpin’,” and the boy reached an affectionate arm up around the old animal’s neck. Josephus responded by snorting in his master’s ear. “We uns done brought the implee-ment to make Aunty’s shawl,” pointing to a rusty old road shovel that Josephus had hitched to him.

“Good! as soon as Miss Gwen feeds us, we will see what he can do in the way of fancy work.”

Gwen was a born cook and the domestic science that had been so ably taught in the Mission School had developed her talent wonderfully. She had turned up two empty boxes and smoothed some wrapping paper over them. A bunch of mountain laurel glorified an old soup can and made a beautiful centre piece. The coffee was hot and clear and strong; the hoecake brown and crisp on the outside and soft and creamy within, just as a hoecake should be; the bacon vied with the hoecake in crispness, with no pieces limp and none burned. She had opened a can of baked beans and another of spaghetti, carefully following the directions on the cans as how to serve the contents.

“Well, don’t this beat all?” said Bill as he sank down by the improvised table.

“But you must come and eat with us, you and Josh,” insisted Lewis.

“Oh, no, the table isn’t big enough, and, besides, I must go on baking hoecakes.”

“Well, Josh, you come, anyhow.”

“No, sir, thanky! We uns will wait for Gwen. We uns ain’t fitten to sit down with the likes of you uns, all dirty with we uns’ meat a-stickin’ through the rags.”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Lewis, “if you are fit to sit with Miss Gwen, you are fit to sit with us. We don’t mind your meat sticking through, and as for being dirty – why don’t you wash?”

Gwen gave a laugh of delight. “There now, Josh, what do I tell you all the time? Rags don’t make a bit of difference if you are just clean.”

“Wal, we uns’ll eat with Josephus if we uns has to wash. This ain’t no time of the week for washin’.” But while the young men were enjoying the very appetizing food, Josh did sneak off to the stream and came back with his face and hands several shades fairer.

That afternoon was a busy one for all on that mountain side. Gwen gave the cabin a thorough cleaning, washed all the dishes and put papers on the shelves that were already in the cabin, unpacked the provisions and placed them with the dishes neatly on the shelves and in the old cupboard that still stood in the corner, left there by the Englishman. She went back to her home for yeast and made up a sponge, planning to have hot rolls for breakfast.

Josephus showed the mettle of his pasture by scraping and dumping about three times as much dirt in an hour as the two West Pointers had been able to move in a whole morning’s work. Josh did very spirited driving, pretending all the time that his steed had to be handled very carefully or he would run away, road-shovel and all.

“How did your mule happen to have one leg shorter than the other?” teased Lewis.

“Wal, that’s a mounting leg. He got that walkin’ round the mounting. All critters in the mountings is built that a way. Ain’t you an’ Mr. Bill there a-planning that there buildin’ after we unses’ mule, with short legs up the hill an’ long legs down?”

Bill almost fell out of the poplar tree where he had climbed to saw off limbs for twenty feet or more. He laughed so loud and long at the way Josh had gotten ahead of his friend in repartee that Gwen came out of the cabin to see what was the matter. Bill’s laugh was a very disconcerting thing until you got used to him.

That first day showed much accomplished. The excavating was half done; the post holes were dug and logs cut and trimmed and planted ready for the beams. A load of lumber arrived before sundown and that meant no delay in the to-morrow’s work.

Six o’clock found them very tired and hungry but Gwen had supper all ready for them, a great dish of scrambled eggs and flannel cakes. She had brought from home a pitcher of milk that stayed delightfully cool in the mountain spring.

“There’ll be buttermilk to-morrow,” she said, blushing with pleasure at the praise the young men bestowed on her culinary efforts.

“Splendid and more splendid!” exclaimed Lewis. “And will you and your brother just come every day and take care of us?”

“You mean Josh? He is not my brother.”

“Oh, cousin, then?”

“No, he is no relation to me. I live with his mother, though, Aunt Mandy. I have lived with her for five years. I am very fond of Josh, but if he were my brother, I’d simply make him take baths.”

“Can’t you anyhow as it is?”

“No,” sadly. “He thinks it is foolishness. Teacher has told him time and time again and even sent him home, five miles across the mountains, but he won’t wash for her or for me. Aunt Mandy thinks it is foolishness, too, but she makes him bathe oftener than he used to in summer.”

“Boys will be boys and it is hard to make them anything else. I remember the time well when bathing was something that I thought grown-ups wished on me just for spite, and now a cold shower every morning is as necessary to my happiness as dirt used to be when I was a kid. Bill and I are going to pipe from the spring up there and concoct a shower somehow under the pavilion.”

“That will be glorious. Father always meant to use that spring and get a shower at the cabin.”

“Your father!”

“Yes, my father was the man who built the Englishman’s cabin. He died five years ago.”

“Gee whilikins! Now I understand!”

CHAPTER IX
SOME LETTERS

From Lewis Somerville to Douglas Carter

Greendale, Va., May – , 19 – .

Dear Douglas:

Bill and I are coming on finely. Already the noble palace is rearing its head. We’ve got the posts planted and the uprights and rafters in place and will begin on the roof to-morrow. Bill is a perfect glutton for work. Speaking of gluttons – we’ve got a cook. A perfect gem of a cook who has been born and bred at Lonesomehurst and doesn’t mind the country. We are going to hang on to her like grim Death to a dead nigger.

The funny thing about her is she is a real lady. I spotted it from the beginning from a certain way she had with her. She is only fourteen and her father, who, by the way, was the Englishman who built this cabin and used to own the side of the mountain, has been dead five years; but before he died this child evidently learned to eat with a fork and to take a daily bath and to keep her hair smooth. She handles the King’s English with the same respect and grace she does a fork, and her speech is very marked because of the contrast between it and the we uns and you uns and you allses of the ordinary mountaineer. She has lived ever since her father’s death with Aunt Mandy, a regular old mountain character who looks as though she might have stepped out of one of John Fox’s books. She is the same back and front, concave both ways – slightly more convex in the back than the front. She stands a good six feet in her stocking feet (although I doubt her ever having on a pair). I have never seen her without a snuff stick in her mouth except once and then she had a corn-cob pipe. She is as sharp as a tack and woe be to the one who engages her in a contest of wit.

Josh is her son and Josephus her mule. Mr. Mandy is dead, and Aunt Mandy and Josh, who is twelve, I think, have scratched a living out of their “clarin’” with the help of Josephus, who is as much of a character as Aunt Mandy and Josh.

When the Englishman died, Aunt Mandy took the little orphan Gwendolin to her house, never dreaming that there was anything for her to do but take her. She has been as good as gold to the girl and shared her corn pone and drippings with a heart of charity. Gwen is surely making up to her now for all her kindness as she does all the housework for her foster mother and all kinds of sewing and knitting, which she sells to the summer boarders down at the hotel at Greendale. I am crazy to engage Gwen and Josh for you girls but am afraid of butting in on your arrangements.

Josh is delicious. He did not learn to wash from an English father nor to handle a fork, nor yet to speak the King’s English – but good old Aunt Mandy has endowed him plentifully with a keen wit and as good and kind a heart as she herself has. Maybe he does not speak the King’s English but one thing sure: the King himself could not boast a finer sense of honor and pride.

I have done one thing that may be butting in, but it seems to me to be so necessary that I am sure you will forgive me: I have had Josh and Josephus plow up a piece of land on top the mountain, where the Englishman once had a garden, and there I have planned to set out a lot of vegetables. It is late to start a garden but there are lots of things that will come in mighty handy for you when you have a camp full of boarders. This was Gwen’s suggestion. Aunt Mandy and Josh are enlarging their garden with a hope of selling things to you and they are also planning to sell you milk. I say all right to that, provided Gwen does the milking, but I am sure if Josh does it, it will look like cocoa by the time we get it, no matter how much it is strained. He is certainly one dirty boy but I comfort myself with the thought that it is clean Mother Earth dirt, the kind Bobby gets on him, and, after all, that isn’t so germy.

We are having glorious weather and I do wish you girls could be here, but no doubt if you were, we would not eat up work quite so fast as we are doing now. We are enjoying ourselves greatly and are getting over our terrible disappointment. If Uncle Sam doesn’t want us to soldier for him in times of peace we will show him what we are good for in times of war. I did think right seriously of enlisting with the Canadians and going over to help the Allies, but somehow I have a feeling I won’t butt in on Europe’s troubles but wait for one of our own which is sure to turn up sooner or later. In the meantime, thanks to you girls, we work so hard in the day time that when night comes there is nothing to do but sleep. I could sleep on a rock pile I am so tired, but instead of a rock pile, a nice canvas cot serves me very well. We have all kinds of schemes for comfort but I am not going to tell you of them as they may not pan out as we expect, and then if they do come right, we can surprise you with them.

Bill sends his regards. He stayed awake for a little while one night trying to decide which one of you was the most beautiful, but as he had to give it up, he has lost no more sleep on the subject. One thing that makes us work so hard is that we feel that as soon as we get the place habitable you will come and inhabit. My love to the girls and Bobby. Tell him there is so much mischief he can get in up here, I know he is going to have the time of his life.

Your devoted cousin,

Lewis Somerville.

Miss Elizabeth Somerville to Lewis Somerville

Richmond, Va.

My dear Nephew:

Your letters have been most satisfactory and I am deeply grateful to you for writing so frequently and in such detail. I spent yesterday afternoon with the Carter girls and Douglas read me your last letter to her. I must say your description of the mountain woman and her son is far from pleasant.

You are very much mistaken, germs do lurk in the earth. Tetanus and hookworm are both taken in directly from the earth, and meningitis is considered by some of the best authorities to be a product of rotting wood. Did the Englishman die of T. B.? If he did, no power on earth will make me sleep in that cabin. The daughter no doubt has inherited the disease from her parent and is this moment stirring the dread germ into your batter cakes. She sounds to be very industrious and efficient. Do not praise her too much but remember: “A new broom sweeps clean.” Please find out from this girl what was the matter with her father. Did you burn the sulphur candles?

The Carter’s tenants take possession of their house next week and then all of the girls and that Bobby, who is certainly a living illustration of “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” will come to me until it is time to go to the mountains. It will be quite a care for me, but I do not forget that my mother, your grandmother, was brought up in their grandfather’s house. “Cast your bread upon the waters and after many days,” etc. Old Cousin Robert Carter left no money but many debts, debts to himself just like this one that I owe him.

Please let me know by return mail what was the matter with the Englishman and if he died of T. B.’s.

Your devoted

Aunt Lizzie.

Telegram from Lewis Somerville to his Aunt Lizzie

Englishman had melancholia and committed suicide. Lungs sound. Lewis.

From Douglas Carter to Lewis Somerville

Richmond, Va., May – , 19 – .

My dear Lewis:

You don’t know how we appreciate your kindness in going up to the mountains and working so hard for us. We feel as though we could never repay you and Mr. Tinsley for your kindness. Everything you have to say about the camp sounds delightful. As for your butting in – you know you couldn’t do that. If you think Josh and the little English girl would be good ones to have for the Week-End Boarding Camp, why you just engage them. We are so inexperienced that sometimes I think we are perfectly crazy to undertake this thing, but then I think if the boarders don’t like our ways they don’t have to stay, and certainly one week-end would not kill them. They don’t have to come back, either.

Nan’s funny ads have called forth all kinds of replies and already we have many applications for board. One woman wants us to take care of her six children as she wants to go to the war zone as Red Cross nurse. We had to turn that down as Bobby will be about all we can manage in the way of kids. She only wanted to pay two full boards for the six children as she declared their ages aggregated only thirty-seven, which would not be as much as two full grown persons.

Some of our school friends are eager to go, and as Cousin Lizzie has a reputation for being a very strict chaperone, their mothers are willing. Mr. Lane and Dick, the two young men in Father’s office, are both coming up when they can and they are going to send us some of their friends.

While you have been working so hard, we, too, have not been idle. Of course, school has kept me very busy as I am anxious to take my exams and make all the points I can for college, whether I am to go next year or not. Helen has decided that her schooling just now is of very little importance since she has no idea of going in for college, so she has simply quit; but she is very busy, busier than any of us perhaps. She is learning all the cooking that our cook can teach her in the few days she is to be with us, and she has also joined a domestic science class at the Y. W. C. A. and has added jelly roll and chocolate pie to her list of culinary accomplishments.

Dr. Wright made a splendid suggestion: that each one of us learns to cook a meal, a different menu for each girl. If we do that, we can change about and give the boarders some variety, and then the responsibility would not rest too heavily on any one of us. Nan and I are trying it and on Saturday I am to serve the family a dinner under cook’s directions. Helen, of course, scorns Dr. Wright’s suggestion and Lucy says she won’t learn anything Helen won’t. Susan, this housegirl who is to go with us, cannot cook at all, but we are to have her wash the dishes and make up beds, or cots, and set the tables, etc. Oscar will wait on the table and help with the dishes.

We are looking out for a cook, but the trouble is good cooks are already cooking. This old woman who has been with us for years is weeping all the time because she is too afraid of snakes to go to the mountains. I have found her a good home and next week she leaves us. Oscar says he can cook but he has lived with us, as Lucy says, since before we were born, and no one has ever known of his so much as making a cup of tea or a piece of toast, and I am afraid that he has hid his light under a bushel for so long that it has perhaps gone out.

We have sold the car and all debts are paid, and we have a tidy little sum to buy camping outfits and also provisions. Mr. Lane assures me that the store room will be large enough for a quantity of provisions, so we are ordering everything by the barrel, except pepper, of course. It saves a lot and Schmidt pays the freight. We already have a list as long as I am of things we have to get, and every day one of us thinks of more things.

We are filled with admiration for you that you should have thought of a garden. Have you looked into the matter of chickens? I remember when we have boarded in the country chickens were what we and all the other boarders clamored for. I want to have fried chicken on my menu that I am to learn to cook, but they are so terribly high now in town that I shall have to put in a substitute and learn how to fry chickens when they get cheaper, which they will surely do later on.

Dear Cousin Lizzie, who has been kindness itself, is to take us to her home after this week, where we will stay until we go to the mountains. It is so good of her to go with us. I just know she hates it and we must all of us try to make things as easy for her as possible. Will the cabin be comfortable? When the other things are freighted, I am going to send a little iron bed with a good mattress, also an easy chair for her to be comfortable in.

Please remember me to Mr. Tinsley. All the girls send messages to both of you.

Very sincerely,

Douglas Carter.

From Mrs. Carter to her children

My darling children:

I am writing this on the steamer but expect to mail it at Bermuda. You are in my thoughts every moment, but my dreams of you are so sweet and peaceful that somehow I feel that you are all right. I know you are anxious about your beloved father and I am very happy to tell you that he is much better. It seems that every day puts new life in him. At first he lay so quiet and slept so much that a strange dread filled my heart. The young surgeon on board, who is a friend of Dr. Wright, assured me that sleep was the best thing for him, but while he slept, I would get so lonely that I could hardly stand it. I had time to think much of what a poor wife I have been to him and foolish mother to all of you. I have not worried him with my grievance against myself, however, and I am not going to worry you, but am going to be less selfish with him and may even be stricter with you. He lets me wait on him now and he thinks it is a great joke to lie still and ask me to bring water or to fill his pipe or do something equally easy.

Sometimes he worries about his business, but I won’t let him talk about it. He thinks he hasn’t any money left, but of course I know that is nonsense. Dr. Wright told me he would look after you girls and see that you were well taken care of. As for money, – why, you don’t need much cash and our credit at the shops is perfectly good, and you can get what you need. If you summer in the mountains, which is what Dr. Wright hinted you might do, you must all of you have plenty of little afternoon frocks. I hate to see girls at the springs wear the same clothes morning and afternoon. Don’t be dowdy, I pray of you.

You had better take Susan wherever you go so she can look after Bobby, who is too large for a nurse, I know, but who needs much attention. Susan can look after your clothes, too, and do up your lace collars and keep your boots cleaned. Keep the other servants in town on full pay and be sure that they have plenty of provisions. I think nothing is so horrid as the habit some persons have of letting servants shift for themselves while they are off enjoying themselves at the springs.

I am hoping for letters when we land at Bermuda. I am hungry for news of all of you. Your poor father talks a great deal of you and wants to go over incidents of your childhood. He says he is relying on your good sense to keep you from harm until we return.

We both of us liked Dr. Wright very much, – at least, your father liked him. I was too afraid of him to call it liking but I trusted him implicitly, and now that your father is so much better, I know that his treatment was exactly the right thing. This young surgeon on board says that Dr. Wright is one of the very finest young men in the profession and his friends expect great things of him.

Our quarters are very comfortable and, strange to say, although the food is far from dainty, I am enjoying it very much. It is well cooked and everything is spotlessly clean. They have room for only thirty passengers on this boat as it is entirely given up to freight. This young surgeon has accepted a position on the boat so he can have time to do some writing he is deep in.

It is a very lazy, peaceful life and somehow I feel that your father and I have always been on this boat and that all the rest of it is a dream – even my dear children are just dream children. I believe that is the state of mind that Dr. Wright wanted your father to attain. I think he has attained it, too. He worries less and less and will lie for hours in his deck chair watching the sailors at work, seemingly with no care in the world.

Tell my dear little Bobby he must be very good and must mind all his sisters, even Lucy. There is no scrap of news too small to interest us and you must tell us what you are doing and all the doings of your friends. Give our kindest regards to all the servants and tell them I know they are taking good care of you in our absence.

Good by, my darlings,

Your Mother.

Bobby to his father

richmond, vA.

Dere farther?

i am sho mising U. These here gurls is sech tickular feblemales they Dont let a feller git no durt on him atall. I is printin this my silf but arsker is tellin me how to spil them Few wourds what i aint come tow yit in my book, dr Right is awl right wich is a joak. he has reglar ingauged me as his shover to hole out my arum whin we gose Round cornders. also to set in his cyar an keep the big hudlams from Swipang it. They has bin mutch trubble in richmond latly becuze of swipars. They jes takes cyars and joy riders in them and leaves them in some Dish in the subbubs? whitch gose tow show they is jes half way bunglars or robers. Plese tell my muther that i aint never seed any lady yet what is so nice as she Is. I helped dr. Right mend a tior yestiddy. it war a puctuashun an speakin of them things I hope you and muther is noticing how i am a usin punctuashuns in my letter? sumtime i Am goin to make a joak to dr. Right bout that whin he runs over a broaken botle, i aint quiet sho how i will uze it but i can bring it in sumhow. Did you all no that we air po now! i is goin to dress in ovarawls and aint never goin to wash no more when onct we gits in the mauntings. they is a boy up there what never washis an lewis Somevil say they is a cow up thair what gives choclid. whineva that nice boy milks. Helen bernt her thum tryin to brile a stake an lucy had to bern hern to. boath of them bernt the stake awlso. Dugles saiz i have rit enuf but i still have mutch to tel. i am very good when i am a slep an when dr. Right lets me be his siztant. he is bout the nisest man i ever seed but helen saiz he looks like a man she can mak with a Hatchet. i done tole him what she saiz an he got right redd an sed he was bliged to my fare sister. I awlso tole helen what he sed an that wuz when she bernt her thum. No more from me at presence,

bobbY.

From Gwen to Teacher

Greendale, Va.

May – , 19 – .

My dear Teacher:

At first, I missed the school so much that I felt as though I could hardly stand to have you away for four long months. Now I am so busy that it is growing much easier for me. Even Josh says he misses you, too, but I think he is very happy in not having to bathe. I make him say some lessons to me every day and practice his penmanship.

Some gentlemen from Richmond, the capital of the state, situated on the James, are now building a camp on the land that my father at one time owned. They have engaged Josh and me to serve in the capacity of cook and gardener. I, of course, am the cook. I find I can apply the knowledge that you have imparted to me at school, and the young gentlemen are very kind in praising my culinary efforts. I learned that word from Mr. Somerville who used it quite often and then I looked it up in my school dictionary and now have added it to my vocabulary.

At first, I felt almost faint when I had to go in the cabin where Father and I used to live, but it was necessary if I was going to do anything for these young gentlemen, and now the horror of the cabin has passed from me. I believe I would not even mind being there at night, but Josh says he is afraid of haunts. Of course he expresses himself as “feard er hants.” Josh distresses me because he will not try to speak proper English. He is so good except for not washing and saying we uns, etc.

I try not to be critical of my surroundings, remembering as I ever must, how good Aunt Mandy and Josh have been to me, because even before Father died Aunt Mandy was the only woman I could remember who had ever been loving to me. I do wish they liked to wash more than they do, though. I try to keep Aunt Mandy’s cabin clean and she likes it now that she does not have to do it herself. I set the table carefully, too, and she likes the flowers I put in the centre. I think Aunt Mandy would have been cultured if she had ever had the chance. She loves beautiful things like sunsets and distant mountains.

I think Mr. Somerville and Mr. Bill Tinsley like beautiful things, too, but they are like Josh in some respects. I believe Josh would just as soon have some one see him cry as to come right out and say he was really admiring a view. These young gentlemen don’t mind saying girls are pretty, in fact, they are quite frank about saying they are even beautiful and have long discussions about which young lady is the most beautiful of some sisters, the Misses Carter, who are coming up here to be the mistresses of this camp. I am very eagerly awaiting their arrival. I am to be employed regularly by them, so Mr. Somerville has just informed me, and I am going to make a great deal of money, enough to enable me to buy the books I need and have some warm clothes for next winter and to pay for my schooling. I appreciate the kindness of the Mission School in giving me my tuition so far, and now I am extremely happy that I will be able to pay something, and that will give the chance to some other child in the mountains to get an education. The young ladies are to give me ten dollars a month for four months. Don’t you consider this a rare opportunity? Josh and Josephus are also employed by the month.

I am afraid that my letter is composed in a stilted manner. You remember that is the complaint you have always made in my compositions, but I find it impossible to be free and easy in my writing.

Very sincerely and affectionately,

Gwendolin Brown.