Part 14 (1/2)

”Katherine,” hesitated Peggy, right in sight of their goal, ”have you-have you thought how much heavier the jug will be to carry back when it is full?”

Katherine cast at her one withering glance, seized her arm, and the two ran now, the jug b.u.mping as it would against their knees, and the perspiration bright on their foreheads.

”It looks like a deserted castle,” panted Peggy when they turned up the worn pathway to the entrance of the mill. ”And isn't it quiet? Doesn't it usually make some kind of noise?”

”You're thinking of the planing mill, infant,” mocked Katherine.

”Well,-I-anyway, Katherine, the door is shut.”

”It won't be hard to open,-why can't you-?”

”Yes, I can open it,” Peggy answered, stepping into the entrance hall where the gla.s.ses of cider and the little packs of ginger cookies were usually sold, ”but there's no one here now that we're in, and it looks more deserted than ever and there isn't even a _crumb_ of a ginger cooky-and I'm starved, nor a _sip_ of cider-and I'm _thirsty_!”

”Why, this is Sat.u.r.day, too. What do you suppose is wrong, Peggy? I'm absolutely dead, if I must confess it. I can't possibly walk home without a cool drink of cider to brace me up. I never was so hungry and tired in my life.”

”That's his house, I think,” Peggy nodded across the road toward a comfortable-looking farm house.

”Do you suppose the cider man would be home?”

”Anyway,” Peggy said faintly, ”his wife would, and she might have some ginger cookies.”

They hurried down the walk and shuffled across the dusty road, feeling that if they were disappointed now they could scarcely bear it.

They went to the side door of the farm house and knocked timidly.

”Oh, Peggy, they're _eating_!” gasped Katherine. ”I feel like a tramp. I almost wish I was one, too, and then maybe they'd invite us in. But isn't it a late time to be having dinner?”

The cider man's wife stood in the doorway now, smiling at them somewhat impatiently.

”Did you come for cider?” she asked. ”Well, about ten others have been here before you to-day, on the same errand, but he didn't make any to-day. And there aren't any ginger cookies. We didn't have anything for the other girls, either. I never saw anybody like you college girls-a person feels guilty if he rests one day,-what with you all being hungry and thirsty just the same. I'm real sorry.”

”We-we brought a jug,” said Peggy pathetically.

”Brought a jug? Ernie!” (raising her voice, and calling back into the room where the table was). ”They brought a jug.”

Ernie called back something, and a smile flitted across his wife's face.

”He says if you want to wait till he's through dinner, he'll go over and make some,” she interpreted. ”We're very late getting dinner to-day-we've had so many interruptions. But if you want to wait---?”

”We'll wait!” cried Peggy and Katherine in the same breath.

”It will be about an hour,” said the woman, closing the door.

”An hour!” Peggy and Katherine exchanged glances with deep sighs, and trudged down the steps, and slowly back toward the mill.

The cider mill was an important inst.i.tution to Hampton girls-and to Amherst boys, if they cared to walk so far. The man who owned it seemed to feel an especial responsibility toward college girls-as every one does near a college town-and so he kept a counter in the entrance hall over which he sold as much cider as a girl wanted to drink, for five cents. One of his stalwart young helpers would fill her gla.s.s as many times as she wished, for the single first payment.

Then there were the ginger cookies, done up in oiled paper, in packages of a dozen, that his wife had made, and these the hungry young invaders could purchase at ten cents a package. They seemed so much a part of it all that cider never tastes quite perfect to Hampton graduates, to this day, without ginger cookies. Any of the Hampton girls would have been surprised to visit any other cider mill and find that their order for ginger cookies was not understood.

Opposite the mill, on the same side as the farmer's house, but farther back, and screened all around by a circlet of trees, so that it sparkled in the midst of them like a Corot painting, was the cool mill-pond, with reeds and rushes growing out into it, and shady branches overhanging it.