“I hope you have some extra help. You and Jenny and Liza can’t cook for all those people who are coming to stay a few days,” Mandie said.
“Don’t worry ’bout dat,” Aunt Lou told her. “Miz Lizbeth done rounded up de Burnses and a couple more to help us. In fact, dey gwine be so many workers I kin jes’ stand back and be de boss.” She laughed.
Mandie laughed, too, and said, “You are the boss, Aunt Lou. You shouldn’t have to do so much work yourself.”
Liza, the young maid, came hurrying through the door and exclaimed, “Dere you be! I ben huntin’ fo’ you all over dis heah house.” She danced around the room.
“Yes, here I am, Liza, and I’m glad to be home,” Mandie told her.
“I’se jes’ wantin’ to tell you dat Miss Pritty Thang, she done come home yesterday,” Liza leaned over to say in a loud whisper.
Mandie smiled as she knew Liza was talking about their next-door neighbor’s daughter, Polly Cornwallis, who went to the same school as Mandie. “I don’t know how she does it but she is always getting special concessions for time off from the school,” Mandie said. “She probably won’t come over here after the trouble she got into back in the summer with that newspaper reporter trying to get into our tunnel.”
“Dat girl ain’t got no memory,” Liza said, shaking her head. “Betcha she be over here when she hear Joe is here.”
“There are going to be a lot of boys here this time,” Mandie told her. “Besides Joe, there will be Jonathan, Riley O’Neal from the Cherokee school, Dimar, my Cherokee friend, and possibly some others.”
“My, my! Wid all dem boys dat Miss Pritty Thang, she be comin’ over here,” Liza replied.
Mandie turned back to Aunt Lou and said, “I have to go back to the parlor now because everyone else is in there, but I’ll be back to visit as soon as I get a chance.”
“You do dat, my chile. Now git on in dere wid dem people,” Aunt Lou said, shaking her big white apron at Mandie. “ ’Sides, we’se got to git some food cooked heah now.”
Mandie blew her a kiss as she went out into the hall. When she got back to the parlor, all the adults were talking and Joe was sitting on a nearby settee waiting for her.
“Your college must give you extra days for the holidays,” Mandie remarked as she sat down beside him. “We weren’t dismissed until today.”
Joe smiled at her and said, “That’s because I go to college and you’re still in that young ladies’ school.” Then he quickly added, “I hope you have decided to come to my college next year.” He seemed to be holding his breath as he waited for her reply, Mandie noticed.
“Sorry, Joe, but Celia and I have both signed up for the College of Charleston,” Mandie said with a weak smile. “We decided to get out completely on our own, with no old friends around, and see if we can rush through college and be done with all that education.”
“Oh, Mandie,” Joe said, his face showing his disappointment.
“You know that the main reason for my going to college is to learn how to handle the family business, which I will inherit someday—if I survive all those mysteries I get in to—even though it is a business I don’t really want. It sounds overpowering just to think about it,” Mandie told him, blowing out her breath. Leaning closer to him she whispered, “And don’t dare tell Grandmother, but once I get all that money I’ll probably give it all away.”
“If you marry me, Mandie, remember I will be an attorney someday and I could handle your business for you,” Joe replied, gazing into her blue eyes.
Mandie straightened up and moved back into her seat. She finally looked him in the eye and said, “Now, Joe Woodard, we keep going through this every now and then and I keep telling you I may never get married. I have decided lately I might just hang out my own shingle and become a lady detective.” She grinned at him.
Joe smiled and quickly said, “Yes, you would make a good lady detective, but you could still be married.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Mandie said. “Being a detective would require odd hours of work, which would be hindered by being married.”
“Mandie, it’s a long time before you graduate from college and you could change your mind about a whole lot of things,” Joe reminded her, then added, “At least I hope so.” He smiled at her.
“Amanda,” Elizabeth Shaw, Mandie’s mother, spoke across the room to her. “Aunt Lou has your graduation dress all done except for the hemming. She needs to measure the length to be sure you haven’t grown a few inches, which I don’t believe you have. So when you find her with a few minutes free you need to try it on and let her measure it.”
“Oh, really, Mother?” Mandie said excitedly. “I’ll ask her about it.” Turning back to Joe, she said, “I’m going to have the prettiest dress in my class if Aunt Lou has made my dress like we talked about.”
“Now, how do you know that? All the girls are having their dresses made and I understand none of them are alike,” Joe replied with a smile.
“No, we don’t have to wear the same dress to graduate at our school, you know, like a uniform, or something. After Miss Hope ran away and got married, she managed to change some of the rules. She doesn’t wear black now, either, and in fact doesn’t even look like a schoolteacher is supposed to look anymore.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Do Miss Hope and her new husband still live in that old house they fixed up?” Joe asked.
“Oh yes, and they have made it a beautiful place,” Mandie replied.
There was a knock on the front door down the hall, and Mandie listened to see who was there as Liza came hurrying by the doorway to answer it.
“Y’all come right in now, you heah?” Liza was saying.
Then she heard Uncle Ned, her father’s old Cherokee friend, say, “I put wagon in barn. Be right back.”
Liza said, “And de rest of y’all come right in de parlor. Everybody in dere.”
Mandie quickly stood up as Uncle Ned’s wife, Morning Star, and his granddaughter, Sallie, and their friend Dimar Walkingstick appeared in the doorway.
Elizabeth met them across the room, “Oh, how nice to see y’all. Come on in and sit down, Morning Star and Sallie and Dimar. We’re so glad you were able to come.” She motioned to seats.
Mandie ran to Sallie and Dimar. “Come over here with Joe and me,” she said, motioning to the other side of the parlor.
Morning Star, who could understand most English but could not speak much English, replied as she took a seat near the other adults. “Thank you,” she said with a nod and a smile.
Sallie and Dimar sat down near Joe. Mandie was excited to see her friends, whom she very seldom saw during the school year because they all lived out at Deep Creek. Only Uncle Ned managed to travel wherever Mandie was because he had promised her father when he died that he would look after Mandie. He had been a lifetime friend of Jim Shaw, Mandie’s father.
Mandie and Sallie tried to bring each other up-to-date on everything since they had last seen each other. Joe and Dimar talked.
“Did Riley O’Neal not come with y’all?” Mandie asked. Riley was the schoolmaster for the Cherokee school.
Sallie shook her head and said, “He got delayed and said he would join us tomorrow.”
“Are you still helping teach at the school?” Joe asked her.
“Yes, I still help, and the children are learning fast, most of them,” Sallie replied. “Their parents finally relented and let the children come to the school when they saw what a wonderful thing it was to be educated. In fact some of the parents come and sit with us and listen and watch.” She smiled, looked at Mandie, and said, “That school is the best thing that ever happened to the Cherokee people and I know they all thank you, Mandie, for getting it built for us.”
“Oh, remember the gold we found really belonged to the Cherokee people, and when your people wouldn’t accept it I decided the school would be a way to give it to them,” Mandie replied. “I’m coming over to visit as soon as I get out of school in
the spring.”
“Before you go to Europe?” Joe asked.
Mandie looked at him in surprise and said, in a whisper, as she glanced across the room where Mrs. Taft was deep in conversation with the other adults, “But Grandmother hasn’t said yet whether she will take us to Europe.”
“She’d better say so soon or all your friends will have other plans for the summer,” Joe reminded her.
“You know I can’t rush Grandmother. She has to at least think whatever we do for the summer was her idea,” Mandie said, grinning at her friends, and then asked, “Sallie and Dimar, I do hope you can both go with us if we go to Europe. Have y’all discussed it with your families yet?”
Sallie quickly nodded and said, “Yes, my grandfather and my grandmother say I may go with you.”
“I’m so glad,” Mandie said with a big smile, and then turning to Dimar, she waited for his reply.
Dimar nodded and said, “My mother gave me permission to go with all of you, but I am not sure I will go.”
“Why not?” Joe asked. “You have to go. I can’t go all around the world with just girls.”
Dimar smiled and said, “I will think about it and let you know. I have never been so far away from my home in the mountains.”
“I have not, either, Dimar,” Sallie quickly told him. “You must go because you may never have another opportunity to do so, to see the other side of the world.”
Dimar smiled at her and said, “I am thinking on it.”
Uncle Ned came into the parlor and Mandie quickly rose and went to greet him. “Come on in, Uncle Ned,” she said. “Thank you for bringing Morning Star and Sallie and Dimar.” She took his old hand in hers as she looked up at him. Uncle Ned was well over six feet tall.
“Papoose, glad to see you,” he said and waved at Joe as Elizabeth and John Shaw both rose to come and greet him. He went over to sit with the adults.
Mandie looked across the room at her mother and asked, “Mother, is anyone else coming tonight?”
“No, dear, but I imagine the train tomorrow will bring quite a few more of our friends,” Elizabeth Shaw answered.
Mandie would be glad when everyone who was expected finally arrived. She hoped Celia and her mother would be on the train the next day, and Jonathan Guyer and his father, Lindall Guyer, and Senator Morton, Mrs. Taft’s special friend. The other friends expected would probably travel across the mountain on horseback or by wagon.
“This is going to be the best Christmas I ever had,” Mandie said to her friends.
“Yes,” they all agreed together. But no one knew the mystery that would befall them before the holidays were over.
CHAPTER TWO
TROUBLE
The train the next day brought Celia Hamilton; her mother, Jane; her aunt Rebecca and Mollie; Senator Morton; Jonathan; and his father, Lindall Guyer.
John Shaw went with Jason Bond in the rig to meet the train. Abraham, the Shaws’ handyman, drove the wagon to pick up the luggage. Mandie, with her friends, Joe, Sallie, and Dimar, were allowed to go to the depot with the understanding they would have to walk home if too many of their guests arrived to fit into the rig.
The young people eagerly waited on the platform as they heard the train’s whistle in the distance, and it soon came flying down the track, slowing to a creep as it neared the station.
“Let’s stand back here where we can see who gets off,” Mandie told her friends as they moved back against the wall of the building on the platform.
“Oh, I see Lindall Guyer is on here. That’s his special train car up there,” John Shaw remarked as he walked toward it.
Mandie squealed with delight and she and her friends followed. “Jonathan is here,” she said.
The doors of the train opened and they watched the private car. Sure enough, Lindall Guyer was stepping down and helping Celia’s mother, Jane Hamilton, down the steps. As she stepped aside, Mr. Guyer reached up to assist Aunt Rebecca down. Mollie held tightly to her hand. Celia came close behind them, then Senator Morton hurriedly descended to the platform with Jonathan following and anxiously looking around. Seeing Mandie and her friends, he yanked at Celia’s hand and said, “Over here. They’re all over here.”
Everyone was talking at once until John Shaw stepped over to them and said to Mandie, “Straight home now and don’t take too long.”
“Yes, sir, we’ll hurry,” Mandie replied with a big grin.
They didn’t exactly hurry back to Mandie’s house because they kept stopping along the way to talk. After all, it was impossible for six people to walk along together and everyone had to talk to everyone else, she explained to John Shaw when they finally reached the house and found him on the porch watching the road for them. The rig and the wagon were not in sight so all the luggage and guests were already in the house.
“I was beginning to think I should send Mr. Bond back with the rig to pick you all up and get you back here,” John Shaw told the young people with a smile.
As they all began to answer at once, he interrupted to say, “If y’all want coffee and chocolate cake you’d better make haste to the parlor.” He went inside.
Mandie and her friends gathered at one end of the huge parlor and watched and waited as Liza pushed the tea cart into the room and began serving the adults.
Mollie stayed right beside Aunt Rebecca and seemed shy of the whole room full of people. She was usually talking all the time and curious about everything.
“I’m glad Mollie is behaving,” Mandie remarked to Celia.
“Aunt Rebecca has been quite successful at teaching her to be still and to stop asking a question every time she breathes,” Celia replied with a smile. She looked at Mandie and asked, “What have y’all been doing? Did everyone else get here yesterday?”
“Yes, everyone who is here now came yesterday. However, we’re still expecting Mr. Jacob Smith and Riley O’Neal,” Mandie replied.
“They will be coming on horseback,” Sallie added.
“I hope they get here before it starts to snow,” Joe remarked, glancing out the window near where he sat.
“Snow?” Mandie asked, turning to look outside.
“Yes, didn’t you notice the clouds when we were outside?” Joe replied.
“Not really. I was too busy greeting everyone to notice,” Mandie said.
“Oh, I hope it does snow. Christmas without snow wouldn’t seem like Christmas,” Celia said.
“Don’t forget your uncle said yesterday that we would wait until everyone got here to go cut a tree for Christmas,” Joe reminded Mandie.
“It won’t matter if it snows on us while we do that,” Mandie said with a laugh. “This may be our last Christmas together for a while since we will be going off in different directions.”
Jonathan quickly asked. “Did you girls decide to come to New York and go to college with me?”
Joe quickly spoke, “No, they didn’t, and they aren’t going to my college, either. They’ve decided to abandon all of us and go down to Charleston, South Carolina, to college.”
“To the College of Charleston,” Mandie explained.
“Aha! There are lots of boys down there at the Citadel. Are you girls aware of that?” Jonathan said, pretending to be serious.
“Yes, and Tommy Patton lives down there, also,” Joe added.
“Oh, phooey on y’all,” Mandie said. “Tommy Patton won’t be in Charleston because he will be away at college.”
“And I had not even thought about the Citadel. There will also be boys at our college, you know,” Celia said, smiling at the boys.
“All right, enough about college,” Jonathan said. “What mystery are we involved in this time?”
“Mystery?” Mandie and Celia said in unison, with surprise.
“You know, one of those problem things you girls are always trying to solve,” Jonathan replied with a big grin. “Now don’t tell me you don’t have a mystery here to solve.”
“Now, why did you mention such a thing,
Jonathan?” Joe said with a loud groan. “Now they’ll be chasing all over the place looking for one.”
Liza finally got to them with the tea cart. She reached down on the bottom shelf and began passing out plates of chocolate cake. “Y’all see, I done went and looked out fo’ you. I hid these heah pieces with the extra outside icing on them, jes’ fo’ y’all.”
“Oh, Liza, we thank you,” Jonathan quickly replied as he accepted one of the plates and a cup of coffee.
“Thank you, Liza, we appreciate that,” Mandie said with a big grin as the other young people took cake and coffee from the tea cart.
Liza bent over to look at all the young people and whispered, “I’se lookin’ out fo’ y’all ’bout Missy Pritty Thang, too.”
“Polly hasn’t been over here, has she?” Mandie asked in surprise.
“No, but she’s wantin’ to,” Liza whispered.
“How do you know?” Joe asked.
“Have you seen her?” Jonathan asked.
“I kin read dat girl’s mind,” Liza replied, “Once she find out you boys are heah, she’ll be right over.”
All the young people laughed.
“I don’t think she’d dare after all the trouble she caused with that newspaper reporter when they tried to get into our tunnel,” Mandie said.
“The tunnel where my ancestors hid during the terrible removal,” Sallie added.
Aunt Lou appeared in the doorway to the parlor and called, “Liza.”
Liza quickly straightened up and said, “I jes’ leave dat cart heah wid y’all. I’se got to go to work.” She hurried from the room and disappeared with Aunt Lou.
“What if her mother decides to come over and visit? I doubt whether she knew anything about what Polly was doing when the men were working on y’all’s tunnel,” Celia said to Mandie.
“Well, if Polly does come over here, let’s all just sit around like dummies and not speak a word to her,” Mandie said with a laugh.
“That would be a good idea,” Dimar agreed.
“You are a quiet one anyhow. You never talk much,” Mandie said.
The Mandie Collection Page 14
