The Carter Girls.

by Nell Speed.

CHAPTER I.

THE CARTERS.

"I don't believe a word of it!"

"But, Helen, the doctor ought to know."

"Of course he ought to know, but does he know? If doctors agreed among themselves, I'd have more use for them. A poor patient has to submit to having everything the doctors are interested in for the time being. A specialist can always find you suffering with his specialty. Didn't old Dr. Davis treat Father for malaria because he himself, forsooth, happened to be born in the Dismal Swamp, got malaria into his system when he was a baby and never got it out? All his patients must have malaria, too, because Dr. Davis has it."

"Yes, Helen, that is so, but you see Father's symptoms _were_ like malaria in a way," and Douglas Carter could not help laughing at her sister, although she well knew that the last doctor's diagnosis of her father's case was no laughing matter.

"Oh, yes, and then the next one, that bushy-whiskered one with his stomach pump and learned talk of an excess of hydrochlorics! Of course he found poor dear Daddy had a stomach, though he had never before been aware of it. All the Carters are such ostriches----"

"So we are if we blindly bury our heads in the sand and refuse to see that this last doctor is right, and----"

"I meant ostrich stomachs and not brains."

"Shhh! Here come the children! Let's don't talk about it before them yet. They'll have to know soon enough." And Douglas, the eldest of the five Carters, tried to smooth her troubled brow and look as though she and Helen had been discussing the weather.

"Know what? I'm going, too, if it's a movie," declared Lucy, a long-legged, thirteen-year-old girl who reminded one of nothing so much as a thorough-bred colt--a colt conscious of its legs but meaning to make use of those same legs to out-distance all compet.i.tors in the race to be run later on.

"I don't believe it's movies," said Nan, the fifteen-year-old sister, noting the serious expression of Douglas's usually calm countenance. "I believe something has happened. Is it Bobby?" That was the very small brother, the joy and torment of the whole family.

The Carters formed stair steps with a decided jump off at the bottom.

Douglas was eighteen; Helen, seventeen; Nan, fifteen; Lucy, thirteen; and then came a gap of seven years and Bobby, who had crowded the experiences of a lifetime into his six short years, at least the life-long experiences of any ordinary mortal. He was always having hair-breadth escapes so nearly serious that his family lived in momentary terror of each being the last.

"No, it's not Bobby," said Douglas gravely. "It's Father!"

"But nothing serious! Not Daddy!" exclaimed the two younger girls and both of them looked ready for tears. "Can't the new doctor cure him?"

"Yes, he thinks he can, but it is going to be up to us to help," and Douglas drew Lucy and Nan down on the sofa beside her while Helen stopped polishing her pretty pink nails and planted herself on an ottoman at her feet. "All of you must have noticed how thin Father is getting and how depressed he is----"

"Yes, yes! Not a bit like himself!"

"Well, it wasn't malaria, as Dr. Davis thought; and it wasn't stomach trouble, as Dr. Drew thought; and the surgeon's X-ray could not show chronic appendicitis, as Dr. Slaughter feared,----"

"Feared, indeed!" sniffed Helen. "Hoped, you mean!"

"But this new nerve specialist that comes here from Washington, so highly recommended----"

"If he was doing so well in Washington, why did he come to Richmond?"

interrupted the scornful Helen, doubtful as usual of the whole medical fraternity.

"I don't know why, honey, but if he can help Father, we should be glad he did come."

"If, indeed! Another barrel of tonics and bushel of powders, I suppose!"

"Not at all! This new man, Dr. Wright, says 'no medicine at all.' Now this is where we come in."

"Mind, Helen, Douglas says 'come in,' not 'b.u.t.t in,'" said Lucy pertly.

"You interrupt so much that Nan and I don't know yet what's the matter with Daddy and how we are to help him."

"Well, who's interrupting now? I haven't said a word for half an hour at least," said Helen brazenly.

"Oh, oh, what'll I do?" which was Carter talk for saying, "You are fibbing."

"You're another!"

"Girls, girls, this is not helping. It's just being naughty," from the eldest.

"Go on, Douglas, don't mind them. Helen and Lucy would squabble over their crowns and harps in Heaven," said the peace-loving Nan. And the joke of squabbling in Heaven restored order, and Douglas was able to go on with what she had to tell.

"Dr. Wright says it is a case of nervous prostration and that a complete change is what Father needs and absolute rest from business. He thinks a sea trip of two months, and a year in the country are absolutely essential."

"And will that make him all the way well?" asked Helen. "If it does, I'll take off my yachting cap to this Dr. Wright as having some sense, after all. I mean to have a lovely new yachting suit for the trip."

Helen was by all odds the most stylish member of the family, and, some thought, the beauty; but others preferred the more serene charm of Douglas, who was a decided blonde with t.i.tian hair and complexion to match. Helen's hair was what she scornfully termed a plain American brown, neither one thing nor the other, but it was abundant and fine and you may be sure it was always coiffed in the latest twist.

Nan had soft dark curls and dreamy dark eyes and spoke with a drawl. She did not say much, but when she did speak it was usually to say something worth listening to.

Lucy was as yet too coltish to cla.s.sify, but she had a way of carrying her bobbed head with its shock of chestnut hair and tilting her pretty little pointed chin which gave her sisters to understand that she intended to have her innings later on, but not so very much later on.

"A new yachting suit! Just listen to Helen! Always got to be dressing up!" declared Lucy, ever ready for battle with the second sister. "I should think you would blush," and, indeed, Helen's face was crimson.

"Oh, I did not mean to forget Father, but if I have to have a new suit, I just thought I would have it appropriate for the sea trip."

"I'm going to learn how to climb like a sailor," from Lucy.

"I'm going to take a chest full of poetry to read on the voyage," from Nan.

"But, girls, girls! We are not to go,--just Father and Mother! The way we are to help is to stay at home and take care of ourselves and Bobby.

How do you think Father could get any rest with all of us tagging on?"

"Not go! Douglas Carter, you are off your bean! How could we get along without Mother and Father and how under Heaven could they get along without us? What does Mother say?" asked Helen.

"She hasn't said anything yet. The doctor is still with Father. Dr.

Wright says Father must have quiet and no discussions going on around him. He says every one must be cheerful and arrangements must be made for the trip without saying a word to Father."

"Is Mother to make them?" drawled Nan, and everybody laughed.

It was an excruciating joke to expect Mrs. Carter to make a move or take the initiative in anything. Her role was ever to follow the course of least resistance, and up to this time that course had led her only by pleasant places. Like some pretty little meadow stream she had meandered through life, gay and refreshing, if shallow withal, making glad the hearts of many just by her pleasant sweetness; but no one had expected any usefulness from her, so she had given none.