Mandie Collection, The: 8 (16 page)
Read Mandie Collection, The: 8 Online
Authors: Lois Gladys Leppard
Mandie was disappointed, but she picked up the pages of the diary book from where she had laid them on a table and handed these to the old man. “Can you tell us what this is?” She explained how they found it.
Uncle Ned scanned the pages and said, “Book for farm. Father of John Shaw make this.”
“I figured it was,” John Shaw said, standing nearby. “So it was my father’s.”
“Yes, old book,” Uncle Ned agreed.
Mandie looked at her friends and said, “Well, that solves all the mysteries except the quilt. I hope we hear from Uncle Ned on that.” She smiled up at the old Cherokee man.
“Fast,” he agreed.
It was late that night when everyone went to bed. Mandie couldn’t go to sleep. She kept thinking about Joe leaving the next day. The days would be long before she saw him again. She wished she could just go on to the university with Joe, but Joe was two years older and two years ahead of her in school. Then, too, she might not go to the same college. Oh, she was going to miss him more than she would let anyone know. And she secretly believed that Joe would miss her, too. At least she hoped so.
Everyone was up early the next morning, since Dr. Woodard and Joe would be going to the depot. Mandie wished she could have some time alone with Joe, but the house was full of people who wanted to tell Joe good-bye. Then she had a wonderful surprise.
As soon as breakfast was finished, John Shaw rose, looked around the table, and said, “I don’t know about you people, but I think I’d rather just tell Joe good-bye right here and not tramp down to that smoky old depot.”
Everyone agreed, but everyone also looked at Mandie, who had not said a word. She understood that they were all allowing her to have her own private good-bye with Joe. She felt a rush of love for them all.
So Abraham drove them to the depot in John Shaw’s rig. Dr. Woodard sat on the front seat and kept talking to Abraham. Mandie, with Snowball in her lap, and Joe sat in the back, and neither one could
think of a single word to say. Joe reached and squeezed her hand as he helped her down at the depot.
“Here she comes!” Dr. Woodard said loudly to Abraham, who was unloading their luggage.
Abraham took the bags inside and checked them. Dr. Woodard walked down the platform. Mandie and Joe stood silently watching the train come in.
“Cheer up, it’ll be summertime before we know it,” Joe told her. “Maybe Jonathan will come back, and we can go see his father’s mica mine. That would be interesting.”
“Yes,” Mandie replied, dropping her gaze so Joe wouldn’t see the tears rapidly filling her blue eyes. Snowball clung to her shoulder, the noise of the train frightening him.
The conductor jumped down from the train and yelled, “All aboard! All aboard!”
Dr. Woodard was down the platform and motioned for Joe to come. Joe looked down at Mandie and said over the noise of the hissing train, “Behave yourself and don’t get caught up in any mysteries you can’t solve while I’m gone.” He quickly planted a kiss on her cheek and raced off down the platform to join his father.
Mandie stood there alone, watching Joe enter the train. As the train started pulling out of the station, he appeared at an open window and yelled back at her, “I forgot to tell you—”
The next few words were indistinguishable above the roar of the train, but she caught the end of it, “I will write to you about this.” He leaned out and threw a kiss with his fingers.
Mandie burst into tears as she watched the train disappear down the long tracks. Joe was gone.
Abraham softly came up beside her and asked, “Miss ’Manda, you be wantin’ to go back home now?”
Mandie nodded and turned to walk with the old man toward the rig. What had Joe been trying to tell her? She couldn’t make any sense out of it as she kept repeating the only words she could understand. He had said he would write, but it would probably take a long time for a letter to get to her from all the way down in New Orleans.
In the meantime, it was going to be a long good-bye.
For
Lance Wubbels,
who has the patience
of Job.
CONTENTS
MANDIE AND THE BURIED STRANGER
Chapter 6 The Stranger in the Woods
Chapter 8 Separated in the Mountain
Chapter 9 The Long, Long Trail
“Difficulties are the stepping stones to success.”
—Anonymous
CHAPTER ONE
SECRET PLANS
Mandie and Celia rushed into their room at the Misses Heathwood’s School for Girls in Asheville, North Carolina, threw their books on a chair, and danced around the room.
“Two whole weeks of holiday!” Mandie exclaimed.
“Two whole weeks without books!” Celia added.
Spring in 1902 had arrived and all the students were leaving the next day for a two-week break. Mandie Shaw was going home to Franklin, North Carolina, and Celia Hamilton to Richmond, Virginia, but Mandie had other plans for the time.
“I hope Joe Woodard gets home from college by the time I get to his house,” Mandie said, calming down to walk around the room. “But, you know, New Orleans is such a long way off. I don’t know why he couldn’t have found a college nearer home.”
“Oh, Mandie, you do know,” Celia said, frowning as she stood still to look at her friend. “The college down there let him in early, and it also teaches what Joe needs to learn to become a lawyer.”
“Yes, I know,” Mandie said with a sigh, stopping to pick up her books.
“How will you know whether he is home or not?” Celia asked.
Mandie laid her books on the desk in their room and replied, “Well, you see, I have to go home first, and then Uncle John will take me to
the Woodards’ house. I’m sure Uncle John will know. Dr. Woodard will probably send him a message. I wish you could go with me.”
“Not this time. I have to go home,” Celia told her, sitting down in the chair with her books. “But I promise I will go to your house when school is out for the summer.” She pushed back her long, curly auburn hair as she looked at Mandie.
“I hope Jonathan will be able to come down from New York,” Mandie said. “And that Sallie can join us, too. We’re going to have an exciting summer if we can all get together. I know for sure Joe will be around.”
“Do you think Jonathan’s father will come down with him? Will your grandmother be at your house then?” Celia asked.
Mandie sat on the window seat and smiled as she said, “I have no idea. But I do know my grandmother doesn’t like Jonathan Guyer’s father for some reason or other. One of these days I’m going to find out why.”
“I hope you do because I’d like to know, too,” Celia said, grinning at her friend.
Suddenly there was a loud banging noise and then a sharp hissing sound. Both girls jumped up, startled.
“Oh shucks!” Mandie said with a frown as she looked around the room. “That was that crazy old radiator acting up!”
“Sure it was,” Celia agreed. “I’ll just never get used to that noise.”
“Me either,” Mandie agreed. “But you’ve got to admit our room has been warmer since we came back from Christmas holidays and the furnace had been installed. If it just wouldn’t make that terrible noise.”
“I know, but I still think I would rather have kept the fire in the fireplace,” Celia said. She looked overhead to a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. “And that stupid way of having a light is dumb. Why couldn’t they wire the room so we could have some electric lights on the walls down here or lamps or something instead of sticking the light all the way up to the ceiling?”
Mandie grinned mischievously at her friend and said, “We should have been here while they were working on all this and told them how we wanted everything. At least Miss Prudence has let us keep our oil lamps in our rooms.”
“Thank goodness,” Celia said. “Why, I can’t even see good enough to read by that light bulb up there. You know that.”
“Yes, and I think that’s why we are allowed to keep our lamps,” Mandie agreed. “I suppose the next thing will be installing a telephone here in the school, but that will probably be put in Miss Prudence’s office downstairs so they won’t bother us with that.”
“Maybe they can do that while we’re on break the next two weeks,” Celia said.
“Right,” Mandie agreed as she jumped up. “Right now I’m going to pack my things so I’ll be ready when Grandmother sends Ben for me in the morning.”
After an evening of packing and talking, the girls were up early the next morning. The furnace acted like an alarm clock. When Uncle Cal, the janitor, built up the fire downstairs in the furnace, the heat would rise to the rooms upstairs, and the radiators would start banging and hissing. This usually happened around five o’clock every morning. Mandie and Celia would stay snuggled under the quilts for about thirty minutes after this started, and by that time their room would be warm enough for them to step down on the cold floor and get dressed. But they were in a hurry this particular morning and didn’t wait for the temperature to rise in their room.
“You know even though we’re in the first sitting for breakfast at seven-thirty, we still have to eat before we can leave,” Mandie reminded her friend as she quickly pulled on a navy dress with white lace trimming. “And that means we have to stay here until at least eight-thirty. So I don’t know why we got up so early.”
“Oh, Mandie, I couldn’t have slept another wink,” Celia replied. She was buttoning up the front of her dark brown dress. “I’m as anxious as you are to get home. So just as soon as Aunt Rebecca gets here, I’ll get the train with her back to Richmond.”
“And Ben will probably be waiting for me as soon as we have breakfast,” Mandie said, quickly brushing her long blond hair. “And Grandmother and I will be leaving on the train to Franklin.”
Mandie’s grandmother, Mrs. Taft, lived in Asheville, and Ben was her driver. She always sent him in the rig to pick Mandie up from school when Mandie was coming to visit her. And sometimes Mrs. Taft kept Snowball, Mandie’s cat, because Mandie boarded at the school and there had to be a special reason for him to be allowed to stay at
the school, such as the time a mouse got in Mandie and Celia’s room while the workmen were boring holes to install the furnace and the electrical wiring.
“I know Snowball will be glad to see you,” Celia remarked as she, too, began brushing her hair. “He’s been at your grandmother’s ever since we came back from the Christmas holidays, and you haven’t been to her house since then.”
“And I’ll be glad to see Joe Woodard to find out what he was trying to tell me when he left on the train to go to college and we said good-bye at the first of the year. He was yelling something at me out the train window when it pulled out of the station, and he promised to write. The only thing I’ve heard from him was the note the other day saying he would be home for the spring holidays,” Mandie said with a frown.
“He’s probably been awfully busy getting settled into college,” Celia said. She tied her hair back with a ribbon to match her dress.
“Anyhow, I’ll find out what it was just as soon as I see him, which shouldn’t be too much longer,” Mandie replied, turning in front of the full-length mirror to inspect her dress. “Let’s go downstairs and see if anyone else is up. That way we’ll be first in line for breakfast.”
When Mandie and Celia got down to the main hallway, they were surprised to see other students waiting around. Everyone seemed in a hurry to leave school. Even Miss Prudence, the head schoolmistress, who presided over the first sitting for breakfast, seemed in a hurry to get the pupils on their way. It was the shortest meal Mandie had ever sat through at the school.
When Mandie and Celia left the dining room, they glanced out the front door.
“Ben is already out there!” Mandie exclaimed, going to open the door.
“Celia!” someone called from behind them, and the two girls turned around to find Celia’s aunt Rebecca waiting for them in the little alcove at the front window. “The train was early,” the lady said, rising to come toward them.
“Oh, Aunt Rebecca, I’m so glad. Maybe the train home will be early, too,” Celia said, going to embrace her aunt.
“I’m glad to see you, Aunt Rebecca,” Mandie greeted the woman and was immediately hugged by her. Even though she was no kin to
Mandie, Mandie called her “Aunt Rebecca” with her permission, since Mandie had no aunts of her own.
“I hope you have a nice journey home, dear,” Aunt Rebecca told her.
“Thank you,” Mandie replied. “Ben is out there waiting, so I’ll let him know he can get my trunk now. See y’all in two weeks.”
“Have fun,” Celia called to her as Mandie went out the front door to speak to Ben.
When Mandie got to her grandmother’s house, and the maid opened the door, Snowball came rushing out and went wild rubbing around Mandie’s ankles. She stooped and picked him up. “So you are glad to see me,” Mandie told him as she rubbed her cheek on his soft white fur.