The Girl at Cobhurst. Frank Richard Stockton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ a girl who wants to get out of bed as soon as she can."

      Miriam looked full into the bright black eyes, and then took the bowl, and drank every drop of the contents.

      "Thank you," she said. "It is perfectly horrid, but I must get up."

      "Now you take a good long nap, and then I hope you will feel quite able to go down and begin to keep house for your brother."

      "The first thing to do," said Miriam, as Miss Panney carefully adjusted the bedclothes about her shoulders, "is to see what sort a house we have got, and then I will know how I am to keep it."

      When her young patient had dropped asleep, Miss Panney went downstairs.

       In the lower hall she found Ralph walking up and down.

      "There is no earthly need of your worrying yourself about your sister. I am sure the doctor would say she is in no danger at all," said the old lady. "And now, if you don't mind, I would like very much to go up into the garret and see what frightened your sister."

      "It was apparently a box of human bones," he said, "but I barely glanced at it. You are perfectly welcome to go up and examine."

      It was a quarter of an hour before Miss Panney came down from the garret, laughing.

      "I studied anatomy on those bones," she said. "Every one of them is marked in ink with its name. I had forgotten all about them. Mathias' brother Reuben was a scientific man, and he used the skeleton. That is, he studied all sorts of things, though he never did anything worth notice. I took a look round the garret," she continued, "and I tell you, sir, that if you care anything for family relics and records, you have them to your heart's content. I expect there are things up there that have not been touched for fifty years."

      "I should suppose," said Ralph, "that the servants of the house would have had some curiosity about such objects, if no one else had."

      Miss Panney laughed.

      "There hasn't been a servant in that garret for many a long year," said she. "You evidently don't know that this house is considered haunted, particularly the garret; and I suppose that box of bones had a good deal to do with the notion."

      "Well," said Ralph, "no doubt the ghosts have been a great protection to our family treasures."

      "And to your whole house," said the old lady; "watch-dogs would be nothing to them."

      Miss Panney and Ralph ate dinner together. The old lady would not leave until the doctor had come; and the conversation was an education to young Haverley in regard to the Butterwood family and the Thorbury neighborhood. At the conclusion of the meal, Phoebe came into the room.

      "I went upstairs to see how she was gettin' on, sir," she said; "an' she was awake, an' she made me get a pencil an' paper out of her bag, an' she sent you this note."

      On a half-sheet of note-paper, he read the following: "Dear Ralph, I went upstairs and looked at the third floor and a good deal of the garret, without you being with me. I really want to be perfectly fair, and so you must not stop altogether from looking at things until I am able to go with you. I think good things to look at by yourself would be stables and barnyards, and the lower part of barns. Please do not go into haylofts, nor into the chicken-yard, if there is one. You might keep your eyes on the ground until you get to these places and then look up. If there are horses and cows, don't tell me anything about them when you see me. Don't tell me anything. I think I shall be well to-morrow, perhaps to-night. Miriam."

      Ralph laughed heartily, and read the note aloud.

      "I should say," said Miss Panney, "that that girl has a good deal more conscience than fever. She ought to have slept longer, but as she is awake I will go up and take a look at her; while you can blindfold yourself, if you like, and go out to the barns."

      The doctor did not arrive until late in the afternoon, and it was nearly half an hour after he had gone up to his patient before he reported to Ralph.

      "She is all right," said he, "but I am not."

      The young man looked puzzled.

      "By which I mean," continued the other, "that Miss Panney's concoction and the girl's vigorous young nature have thrown off the effects of her nap in the haunted garret, and that I am an allopathist, whereas I ought to be a homeopathist. The young lady and I have had a long conversation on that subject and others. I find that she is a Nonconformist."

      "What?" asked Ralph.

      "I use the word in its political and social, as well as its religious meaning. That is a sister worth taking care of, sir. Lock her up in her room, if she inclines to any more midnight wanderings."

      "And now, having finished with the young patient," said Miss Panney, who was waiting with her bonnet and shawl on, "you can take up an old one, and I will get you to drive me home on your way back to Thorbury."

      The doctor had been very much interested in Miriam, and talked about her to Miss Panney as he drove her to the Witton house, which, by the way, was a mile and a half out of his direct road. The old lady listened with interest, but did not wish to listen very much; she wished to talk of Ralph.

      "I like him," she said; "he has pluck. I have had a good deal of talk with him, and he told me frankly that he could not afford to put money into the place and farm it as it ought to be farmed. But he was born a country man, and he has the heart of a country man; and he is going to see if he can make a living out of it for himself and his sister."

      "Which may result," said the doctor, "in his becoming a mere farm laborer and putting an end to his sister's education."

      "Nonsense!" exclaimed the old lady. "Young fellows—college men—go out on ranches in the West and do that sort of thing, and it lowers them in nobody's estimation. Let young Haverley call his farm a ranch and rough it. It would be the same thing. I've backed him up strongly. It's a manly choice of a manly life. As for his sister, she has been so long at school that it will do her more good to stop than to go on."

      "It will be hard scratching," said the doctor, "to get a living out of Cobhurst, and I hope these young people will not come to grief while they are making the experiment."

      Miss Panney smiled without looking at her companion.

      "Don't be afraid of that," she said presently; "I have pretty good reason to think that he will get on well enough."

      That evening Miriam sat up in bed with a shawl about her shoulders and discoursed to her brother.

      "Now, Ralph," said she, "you must have seen a lot of things about our place, because, when I came to think of it, it was plain enough that you couldn't help it. I am crazy to see what you saw, but you mustn't tell me anything except what I ask you. Please be particular about that."

      "Go on," said Ralph. "You shall not have a word more or less than you want."

      "Well, then, is your bed comfortable?"

      "Perfectly," he answered.

      "And have you pillows enough?"

      "More than I want," said Ralph.

      "And are the doors and windows all fastened and locked downstairs?"

СКАЧАТЬ