The Boarded-Up House

Both girls gasped and stared incredulously

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 2014, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by the Century Co., New York, in 1915.

International Standard Book Number

eISBN-13: 978-0-486-79862-2

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation
78188701      2014

www.doverpublications.com

Both girls gasped and stared incredulously

A flight of stairs could be dimly discerned

They stared with the fascination of horror

“Well, what do you suppose that can be?” queried Cynthia

“Do you know any real elderly people, father?”

“Oh, I
wish
I were Sherlock Holmes!”

There was nothing to do but sit and enjoy the spectacle

Then, with one accord they began to steer their way around the furniture

C
YNTHIA sat on her veranda steps, chin in hand, gazing dolefully at the gray September sky. All day, up to half an hour before, the sky had been cloudlessly blue, the day warm and radiant. Then, all of a sudden, the sun had slunk shamefacedly behind a high rising bank of cloud, and its retiring had been accompanied by a raw, chilly wind. Cynthia scowled. Then she shivered. Then she pulled the collar of her white sweater up to her ears and buttoned it over. Then she muttered something about “wishing Joy would hurry, for it's going to rain!” Then she dug her hands into her sweater pockets and stared across the lawn at a blue hydrangea bush with a single remaining bunch of blossoms hanging heavy on its stem.

Suddenly there was a flash of red on a veranda farther down the street, and a long, musical whistle. Cynthia jumped up and waved madly. The flash of red, speeding toward her, developed into a bright red sweater, cap, and skirt.

“Don't scold! Now you mustn't be cross, Cynthia. Anne was just putting a big batch of sugar-cookies in the oven, and I simply
had
to wait till they were done! I've brought a lot over for you. Here!” The owner of the red sweater crammed a handful of hot cookies into Cynthia's pocket.

“You did keep me waiting an age, Joy,” Cynthia began, struggling with a mouthful of cooky; “but I forgive you. I'd almost begun to be—angry!” Joy (her right name was Joyce) ignored the latter remark.

“We can't go! Momsie positively forbade it. Why on earth could n't it have kept sunny a little longer? It'll rain any minute now, I suppose.”

“I know,” Cynthia sympathized. “Mother forbade me too, long before you came out. And we counted on it so! Won't be much more chance to go canoeing
this
season.” They sat down listlessly on the veranda steps, and solaced themselves with the last remnants of the cookies. Life appeared a trifle drab, as it usually does when cherished plans are demolished and the sun goes in! Very shortly there were no more cookies.

“What on earth has happened to your hydrangea bush? It was full of blossoms yesterday,” Joyce suddenly exclaimed.

“Bates's pup!” replied Cynthia, laconically. There was no need of further explanation. Joyce giggled at its shorn appearance, and then relapsed into another long silence. There were times when these two companions could talk frantically for hours on a stretch. There were other seasons when they would sit silent yet utterly understanding one another for equally prolonged periods. They had been bosom friends from babyhood, as their parents had been before them. Shoulder to shoulder they had gone through kindergarten and day-school together, and were now abreast in their first high-school year. Even their birthdays fell in the same month. And the only period of the year which saw them parted was the few weeks during vacation when their respective parents (who had different tastes in summer resorts) dragged them unwillingly away to mountain and sea-shore. Literally, nothing else ever separated them save the walls of their own dwellings—and the Boarded-up House.

It is now high time to introduce the Boarded-up House, which has been staring us out of countenance ever since this story began! For the matter of that, it had stared the two girls out of countenance ever since they came to live in the little town of Rockridge, one on each side of it. And long before they came there, long before ever they were born, or Rockridge had begun its mushroom growth as a pretty, modem, country town, the Boarded-up House had stared the passers-by out of countenance with almost irritating persistence.

It was set well back from the street, in a big inclosure guarded by a very rickety picket-fence, and a gate that was never shut but hung loosely on one hinge. Unkempt bushes and tall, rank grass flourished in this inclosure, and near the porch grew two pine-trees like sentinels at the entrance. At the back was a small orchard of ancient cherry-trees, and near the rear door a well-curb, with the great sweep half rotted away.

The house itself was a big, rambling affair of the Colonial type, with three tall pillars supporting the veranda roof and reaching above the second story. On each side of the main part was a generous wing. It stood rather high on a sloping lawn, and we have said that it “stared” at passers-by—with truth, because very near the roof were two little windows shaped like half-circles. They somehow bore a close resemblance to a pair of eyes that stared and stared and
stared
with calm, unwinking blankness.

As to the other windows and doors, they were all tightly boarded up. The boards in the big front door had a small door fashioned in them, and this door fastened with a very rusty lock. No one ever came in or out. No one ever tended the grounds. The place had been without an occcupant for years. The Boarded-up House had always been boarded up, as long as its neighbors could recollect. It was not advertised for sale. When the little town of Rockridge began to build up, people speculated about it for a while with considerable interest. But as they could never obtain any definite information about it, they finally gave it up, and accepted the queer old place as a matter of course.

To Cynthia Sprague and Joyce Kenway, it had, when they first came to live on either side of it, some five years before, afforded for a while an endless source of attraction. They had played house on the broad veranda, climbed the trees in the orchard, organized elaborate games of hide-and-seek among the thick, high bushes that grew so close to the walls, and in idle moments had told each other long stories about its former (imaginary) inmates. But as they grew older and more absorbed in outside affairs, their interest in it ceased, till at length it came to be only a source of irritation to them, since it separated their homes by a wide space that they considered rather a nuisance to have to traverse,

So they sat, on this threatening afternoon, cheated of their anticipated canoe-trip on the little stream that threaded its way through their town to the wide Sound,—sat munching sugar-cookies, glowering at the weather, and thinking of nothing very special. Suddenly there was a flash of gray across the lawn, closely pursued by a streak of yellow. Both girls sprang to their feet, Joyce exclaiming indignantly:

“Look at Bates's pup chasing Goliath!” The latter individual was the Kenways' huge Maltese cat, well deserving of his name in appearance, but not in nature, for he was known to be the biggest coward in cat-dom. The girls stood on tiptoe to watch the chase. Over the lawn and through an opening in the picket-fence of the Boarded-up House sped Goliath, his enemy yapping at his heels, and into the tangled thicket of bushes about the nearer wing. Into the bushes also plunged Bates's pup, and there ensued the sound of sundry, baffled yelps. Then, after a moment, Bates's pup emerged, one ear comically cocked, and ambled away in search of other entertainment. Nothing else happened, and the girls resumed their seat on the veranda steps. Presently Joyce remarked, idly:

“Does it strike you as queer, Cynthia, what could have become of Goliath?”

“Not at all,” replied Cynthia, who had no special gift of imagination. “What
could
have happened to him? I suppose he climbed into the bushes.”

“He could n't have done that without being in reach of the pup,” retorted Joyce. “And he could n't have come out either side, or we‘d have seen him. Now where can he be? I vote we go and look him up!” She had begun with but a languid interest, seeking only to pass the time, and had suddenly ended up with tremendous enthusiasm. That was like Joyce.

“I don't see what you want to do that for,” argued Cynthia. “I don't care what became of him as long as he got away from Bates's pup, and I'm very comfortable right here!” Cynthia was large and fair and plump, and inclined to be a little indolent.

“But don't you see,” insisted Joyce, “that he must have hidden in some strange place,—and one he must have known about, too, for he went straight to it! I'm just curious to find out his ‘bunk.'” Joyce was slim and dark and elfin, full of queer pranks, sudden enthusiastic plans, and very vivid of imagination, a curious contrast to the placid, slow-moving Cynthia. Joyce also, as a rule, had her way in matters, and she had it now.

“Very well!” sighed Cynthia, in slow assent. “Come on!” They wandered down the steps, across the lawn, through the gap in the fence, and tried to part the bushes behind which Goliath had disappeared. But they were thick lilac bushes, grown high and rank. Joyce struggled through them, tearing the pocket of her sweater and pulling her hair awry. Cynthia prudently remained on the outskirts. The quest did not greatly interest her.

“There's nothing back there but the foundation of the house,” she remarked.

“You're wrong. There is!” called back Joy, excitedly, from the depths. “Crawl around the end of the bushes, Cyn! It will be easier. I want to show you something.” There was so much suppressed mystery in Joy's voice that Cynthia obeyed without demur, and back of the bushes found her examining a little boarded-up window into the cellar. One board of it had, through age and dampness, rotted and fallen away. There happened to be no glass window-frame behind it.

“Here's where Goliath disappeared,” whispered Joyce, “and he's probably in there now!” Cynthia surveyed the hole unconcernedly.

“That's so,” she agreed. “He will probably come out after a while. Now that you‘ve discovered his ‘bunk,' I hope you're coming back to the veranda. We might have a game of
tennis, too, before it rains.” Joyce sat back on her heels, and looked her companion straight in the eye.