sir!” gasped Lyddy.
“Nor is that the best for him. He ought to be out of the city altogether–country air and food–mountain air especially – ”
“Hillcrest!” exclaimed Lyddy, aloud.
“What’s that?” the doctor snapped at her, quickly.
She told him about the farm–where it was, and all.
“That’s a good place for him,” replied the physician, coolly. “It’s three or four hundred feet higher above sea-level than the city. It will do him more good to live in that air than a ton of medicine. And he can go in two weeks, or so. Good-morning, Miss Bray,” and the busy doctor hurried away to his multitude of duties, having disposed of Mr. Bray’s case on the instant.
CHAPTER IV
THE PILGRIMAGE
Lydia Bray was shocked indeed when they allowed her in the ward to see her father. A nurse had drawn a screen about the bed, and nodded to her encouragingly.
The pallor of Mr. Bray’s countenance, as he lay there with his eyes closed, unaware of her presence, frightened the girl. She had never seen him utterly helpless before. He had managed to get around every day, even if sometimes he could not go to work.
But now the forces of his system seemed to have suddenly given out. He had overtaxed Nature, and she was paying him for it.
“Lyddy!” he whispered, when finally his heavy-lidded eyes opened and he saw her standing beside the cot.
The girl made a brave effort to look and speak cheerfully; and Mr. Bray’s comprehension was so dulled that she carried the matter off very successfully while she remained.
She spoke cheerfully; she chatted about their last night’s experiences; she even laughed over some of Aunt Jane’s sayings–Aunt Jane was always a source of much amusement to Mr. Bray.
But the nurse had warned her to be brief, and soon she was beckoned away. She knew he was in good hands at the hospital, and that they would do all that they could for him. But what the house physician had told her was uppermost in her mind as she left the institution.
How were they to get to Hillcrest–and live after arriving there?
“If that man paid me twenty dollars for our furniture, I might have fifty dollars in hand,” she thought. “It will cost us something like two dollars each for our fares. And then there would be the freight and baggage, and transportation for ourselves up to Hillcrest from the station.
“And how would it do to bring father to an old, unheated house–and so early in the spring? I guess the doctor didn’t think about that.
“And how will we live until it is time for us to go–until father is well enough to be moved? All our little capital will be eaten up!”
Lyddy’s practical sense then came to her aid. Saturday night ’Phemie would get through at the millinery shop. They must not remain dependent upon Aunt Jane longer than over Sunday.
“The thing to do,” she decided, “is for ’Phemie and me to start for Hillcrest immediately–on Monday morning at the latest. If one of us has to come back for father when he can be moved, all right. The cost will not be so great. Meanwhile we can be getting the old house into shape to receive him.”
She found Aunt Jane sitting before her fire, with a tray of tea and toast beside her, and her bonnet already set jauntily a-top of her head, the strings flowing.
“You found that flat in a mess, I’ll be bound!” observed Aunt Jane.
Lydia admitted it. She also told her what the second-hand man had offered.
“Twenty dollars?” cried Aunt Jane. “Take it, quick, before he has a change of heart!”
But when Lyddy told her of what the doctor at the hospital had said about Mr. Bray, and how they really seemed forced into taking up with the offer of Hillcrest, the old lady looked and spoke more seriously.
“You’re just as welcome to the use of the old house, and all you can make out of the farm-crop, as you can be. I stick to what I told you last night. But I dunno whether you can really be comfortable there.”
“We’ll find out; we’ll try it,” returned Lyddy, bravely. “Nothing like trying, Aunt Jane.”
“Humph! there’s a good many things better than trying, sometimes. You’ve got to have sense in your trying. If it was me, I wouldn’t go to Hillcrest for any money you could name!
“But then,” she added, “I’m old and you are young. I wish I could sell the old place for a decent sum; but an abandoned farm on the top of a mountain, with the railroad station six miles away, ain’t the kind of property that sells easy in the real estate market, lemme tell you!
“Besides, there ain’t much of the two hundred acres that’s tillable. Them romantic-looking rocks that ’Phemie was exclaimin’ over last night, are jest a nuisance. Humph! the old doctor used to say there was money going to waste up there in them rocks, though. I remember hearing him talk about it once or twice; but jest what he meant I never knew.”
“Mineral deposits?” asked Lyddy, hopefully.
“Not wuth anything. Time an’ agin there’s been college professors and such, tappin’ the rocks all over the farm for ‘specimens.’ But there ain’t nothing in the line of precious min’rals in that heap of rocks at the back of Hillcrest Farm–believe me!
“Dr. Polly useter say, however, that there was curative waters there. He used ’em some in his practise towards the last. But he died suddent, you know, and nobody ever knew where he got the water–’nless ’twas Jud Spink. And Jud had run away with a medicine show years before father died.
“Well!” sighed Aunt Jane. “If you can find any way of makin’ a livin’ out of Hillcrest Farm, you’re welcome to it. And–just as that hospital doctor says–it may do your father good to live there for a spell. But me– it always give me the fantods, it was that lonesome.”
It seemed, as Aunt Jane said, “a way opened.” Yet Lyddy Bray could not see very far ahead. As she told ’Phemie that night, they could get to the farm, bag and baggage; but how they would exist after their arrival was a question not so easy to answer.
Lyddy had gone to one of the big grocers and bought and paid for an order of staple groceries and canned goods which would be delivered at the railroad station nearest to Hillcrest on Monday morning. Thus all their possessions could be carted up to the farm at once.
She had spent the afternoon at the flat collecting the clothing, bedding, and other articles they proposed taking with them. These goods she had taken out by an expressman and shipped by freight before six o’clock.
In the morning she met the second-hand man at the ruined flat and he paid her the twenty dollars as promised. And Lyddy was glad to shake the dust of the Trimble Avenue double-decker from her feet.
As she turned away from the door she heard a quick step behind her and an eager voice exclaimed:
“I say! I say! You’re not moving; are you?”
Lydia was exceedingly disturbed. She knew that boy in the laboratory window had been watching closely what was going on in the flat. And now he had dared follow her. She turned upon him a face of pronounced disapproval.
“I–I beg your pardon,” he stammered. “But I hope your father’s better? Nothing’s happened to–to him?”
“We are going to take him away from the city–thank you,” replied Lyddy, impersonally.
She noted with satisfaction that he had run out without his cap, and in his work-apron. He could not follow her far in such a rig through the public streets, that was sure.
“I–I’m awful sorry to have you go,” he said, stammeringly. “But I hope it will be beneficial to your father. I–I – You see, my own father is none too well and we have often talked of his living out of town somewhere–not so