The Carter Girls' Mysterious Neighbors

Now Douglas Carter was no weeper. I doubt if her little brother had ever seen her shed a tear in all of his seven years. And he, Robert Carter, Jr., had done this thing! He had made his sister Douglas cry. When she was playing teacher, she had feelings just as much as she did when she turned into his sister Douglas again. And what was this thing she was saying about his having to give back the blood money? Had he told on the boys after having received pay for taking the blame? Why, that was a low-down, sneaky trick!

“Don’t cry, Douglas, please don’t cry! I’m a-gonter take back all the things – ’cep’n the apple – I done et into that a leetle bit.”

But the flood gates were opened and Douglas could not stop crying. Like most persons who cry with difficulty, when she once began she kept it up. Now she was crying for all the times she might have cried. She had had enough to make her cry but had held in. She was crying now for all the days and nights of anxiety she had spent in thinking of her sick father; she was crying for the stern way in which she had been forced to deal with her mother over extravagancies; she was crying for having to make Helen understand that there was no money for clothes; she was crying for having to be the adamant sister who forced Nan and Lucy to go on to school; she was crying because her own dream of college was to come to nothing; she was crying very little because of Bobby’s naughtiness, but he, of course, thought that it was all because of him.

One of her biggest grievances was against herself: why had she been so priggish with her cousin, Lewis Somerville? Last August he had come to her on the eve of his enlistment to go with the troops to the Mexican border and had plead so earnestly with her to try to love him just a little bit and to let him go off engaged to her, and she had turned him down with absurd talk of friendship and the like. He had astonished her when he made love to her, but she knew perfectly well in her heart of hearts that it would have astonished her a great deal more if he had made love to someone else.

No doubt that was what he was doing that minute: making love to someone else. A young man who looked like a Greek god was not going to be turned down by every girl. How good Lewis had always been to her and how well he had understood her! He thought she was cold and unfeeling now, she just knew he did. She had received no letters from him for weeks, at least it seemed weeks. Oh well, if he wanted to make love to other girls, why she wasn’t going to be the one to care!

“Douglas, I hear a auto a-comin’. If’n you don’t stop bawlin’ folks will see you.”

A car was coming! She could hear its chug as it climbed the hill half a mile off.

“Please wet my handkerchief in that little branch so I can wash my face,” she begged Bobby, while she smoothed her ruffled hair and wished she had one of Helen’s precious dorines to powder her red nose.

“Yo’ hankcher is as wet as water already. I don’t see what you want it any wetter for,” said Bobby, who might have quoted: “‘Too much of water hast thou, my poor Ophelia,’” had he known his Hamlet.

“I ain’t a-gonter be bad no mo’, Douglas,” declared Bobby as he brought the little handkerchief back from the brook dripping wet. “You mos’ cried yo’ face away, didn’t you, Dug?” and with that Douglas had to laugh.

“Feel better now?” he said with quite the big brother air. “That there car is jes’ roun’ the bend. I reckon if you turn yo’ face away the folks in it won’t know you is been a-bawlin’.”

The car slowed up, then stopped when the driver recognized Douglas, and Count de Lestis sprang out to greet her. The signs of the recent storm were still visible on her pretty face in spite of all the water Bobby had brought from the brook. Douglas tried to hold her head down so the count could not see her disfigured countenance, but such floods of weeping could not but be noticed.

“My dear Miss Carter, you are in distress!” He looked so truly grieved and anxious that already Douglas felt somewhat comforted. Sympathy is a great balm.

“It is nothing! I am a foolish, weak girl.”

“Not that! You are very intelligent and far from weak. Are you not the staunch ally? The poor Kaiser would not find you weak.”

“I done it all! I made her cry!” declared Bobby.

The count looked at the youngster, amused. “And so! Do little American gentlemen make their sisters cry?” Bobby hung his head. “Well, come on and let me take you home, and then I’ll take your sister for a little ride and wipe all the tears away with the wind.”

“Let me go riding, too. I don’t want to go home.”

“No, not this time. My little red car doesn’t like to take for long rides boys who make their sisters cry.”

So Bobby had to climb meekly in to be ignominiously dumped at the yard gate while Douglas was whisked off in the count’s natty little red roadster.

“Now you are looking like your beautiful self,” he declared, slowing down his racer and turning to gaze into Douglas’s face. “What is it that made you weep so profusely? Not the little brother. Beautiful damsels do not weep so much because of little brothers.”

Douglas smiled.

“Ah, the sun has come out! Now I am happy. I am so distressed by tears that I can hardly bear it.”

“You must have a very tender heart.”

“Yes, perhaps! Now tell me what caused your grief.”

How handsome this man was and how kind! He seemed like an old friend. He really did care what was troubling her and it would be a relief to pour out all of her foolish griefs. Douglas missed her father’s sympathy. She knew that he was as ready as ever with his love and solicitude for her, but she felt that she must not add to his worries one iota. Her mother was out of the question and Helen was too young. Before she knew it, she was trying to tell Count de Lestis all about it, all but about Lewis Somerville – somehow that was something she could not mention. Her grievances sounded very small when she tried to put them into words. Naturally she could not dwell upon her mother’s extravagancies or this man would think her poor little mother was selfish; Helen was such a trump, the fact that she longed for stylish clothes certainly was not enough to make a grown girl sit on the roadside and dissolve in tears; while Nan and Lucy were commuting to school like little soldiers. It ended by being a humorous account of Bobby and his blame pay.

Of course the count knew perfectly well that that was not all that had made this lovely girl give way so to grief. No doubt Bobby’s misbehavior was the last straw, but there had been a heavy load to carry before Douglas’s camel of endurance had got his back broken. He laughed merrily over the fleas and Douglas forgot all about her worries and laughed, too.

“Poor little Minnie! She did squirm so, and think of her being too ladylike to scratch, and how she must have disappointed those bad boys by refraining!”

“Yes, if all women would just squirm and not scratch it would take much from the pleasure of teasing them,” laughed de Lestis. “What amuses me is how boys are alike all the world over. The discipline of my school days was very strict, but a thing like that might have happened among boys in Berlin as much as here in a rural school in Virginia.”

“Berlin! But you are Hungarian!”

“So! So – but Hungarians can go to school in Berlin. Even Americans have profited by the educational advantages offered there.”

Douglas thought her companion’s tone sounded a little harsh. She bent her candid gaze on him and met his glowing eyes. Blue eyes looked unflinchingly into black until the steering of the red car forced him to give his attention to the wheel.

“I wish the count’s moustache did not turn up quite so much at the corners,” thought the girl. “It makes him look a wee bit like the Kaiser; of course, though, he is kind and the Kaiser is cruel.”

“Perhaps we had better turn around now,” she suggested gently, contrite that even for a moment she had thought this kind friend could resemble the hated Kaiser.

Certainly the wind had wiped away all traces of the emotional storm from Douglas’s countenance. The young man by her side could but admire the pure profile presented to him, with its soft, girlish lines but withal a look of strength and determination. Her loosened hair was like sunlight and her cheeks had the pink of the Cherokee rose. Profiles were all well enough, but he would like another look into those eyes as blue as summer skies after a shower.

“Of course, my dear Miss Carter, I know that the little rascal Bobby must have been very annoying but I cannot but think that you have not entrusted to me your real troubles.”

Douglas stiffened almost imperceptibly.

“When one finds a beautiful damsel sitting by the roadside in such grief that her charming face is convulsed with weeping, one cannot but divine that some affair of the heart has touched her. Tell me, has some bold cavalier trifled with her affections?”

Douglas stiffened more perceptibly.

“Your father told me of a young cousin, a Mr. Somerville, who is now on the Mexican border – ”

“Father told you! I don’t believe it.”

“My dear young lady, he only told me there was such a cousin; you have told me the rest. Now! Now! Don’t let your sweet eyes shed another tear for him. He is not worth it! If he can find amusement in the ladies of Mexico, who are, when all is told, an untidy lot, why should you worry? There are other fish in the sea!”

If the Count de Lestis wished to see something more of Douglas’s eyes he had his desire fulfilled now. She turned and once more blue eyes looked unflinchingly into black. This time the black eyes had a mischievous gleam and the blue ones looked more like winter ice than summer skies.

“Now I have made you angry.” Once more his car took his attention for the moment.

“Not at all!” icily.

“You wish you had not come with me.”

“I appreciate your kindness in bringing me for the drive very much,” still cold and formal in tone.

“I guessed too well, that is where I sinned.”

Douglas was silent, but she still looked at her companion.

“She is like the little Minnie: she squirms but will not scratch.”