The Sherwood Ring Read Online Free Page A

to himself — apparently he did not even realize that I was still in the room — and his face looked so white and miserable that I could not help going to him and putting my hand on his shoulder.
    "Dear Uncle Enos," I begged, "can't you possibly tell me what's the matter?"
    But Uncle Enos was already recovering himself. He twitched his shoulder away from my touch and pulled his chair around to the desk, turning his back on me altogether.
    "I thought I told you I was not going to discuss the subject." He reached for his pen and letter pad with an impatient jerk. "Run along now like a good child, and don't bother me. I have work to do. If you'll just go back to the hall and speak to the butler, he'll take you up to your room."
    The butler, however, had gone away and there was nobody in the hall when I came out but a maid winding the grandfather clock — a very pretty girl in a long, full-skirted dress of flowered chintz with a ruffled cap and an organdy apron. She told me her name was Petunia, and she was the "downstairs" maid at Rest-and-be-thankful. She had an older sister, Zinnia, who attended to the "upstairs," and a younger sister, Gladiola, who helped the cook in the kitchen. All three were daughters of the butler, Christopher Seven — so called because he was descended from the original Christopher who had been butler in the days of the first Enos Grahame and had died in 1792, leaving a son, Christopher Two, and a grandson, Christopher Three, to carry on the line. The present Christopher was the seventh and last of the family. "And Mr. Enos has gone and got him so stuck-up about that name that he won't even let his own children call him Daddy no more," concluded Petunia, with a disrespectful giggle. "Did you say you wanted to go up to your room now, Miss Peggy? Dinner won't be till seven o'clock if you'd like to lie down a while first. You must be mighty tired after all that trip."
    Suddenly I realized that I was tired — cruelly tired — so tired that it seemed a long way across the hall to the stairs. The strain and excitement and confusion of the afternoon had worn me out completely. Everything that had happened was whirling and jumbling incoherently through my mind — the walk through Martin's Wood; the mysterious girl on the horse; Pat and the curious story he had told me; my first glimpse of Rest-and-be-thankful among the apple trees; the scene in the study when Uncle Enos had so strangely refused to have anything more to do with Pat and had driven him out of the house . . .
    Maybe it will get clearer tomorrow, I thought foggily as I trailed behind Petunia up the stairs. Anyway, I can ask Uncle Enos about the girl on the horse. She must live somewhere around here . . . he probably knows who she is.
    But as it turned out, I did not have to ask Uncle Enos after all. The next moment I had come around the bend of the stair into the landing; and there, gleaming down from the paneled wall, hung a great life-size portrait in a carved and gilded frame. It was the portrait of a girl wearing a long crimson cloak — a beautiful girl, dark and proud, with wide-set gray eyes that were brilliant as jewels. One of her hands rested on the shoulder of a tall black horse, just visible behind her in the shadows; the other hand was lifted to tuck back a dark curl that was blowing out of her hood. On the frame under the picture was a small square plaque with an inscription:

    BARBARA GRAHAME
    At the Age of Sixteen
    Painted by
    John Singleton Copley
    1773

    I stood staring at the portrait for a long time before I could get it through my head that I had already met my first ghost at Rest-and-be-thankful.

The Scrap of Tartan

    I WAS SITTING on the floor in the library at Rest-and-be-thankful, sulking. Theoretically I was tidying up the bottom drawer of the big Chippendale cabinet, but actually I was sulking. Outside the sun was shining and the birds were singing and the open windows were clustered round with yellow roses — it