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+Project Gutenberg's A House Party with the Tucker Twins, by Nell Speed
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A House Party with the Tucker Twins
+
+Author: Nell Speed
+
+Illustrator: Arthur O. Scott
+
+Release Date: July 9, 2011 [EBook #36671]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSE PARTY WITH TUCKER TWINS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Rod Crawford, Dave Morgan,
+Emmy and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: Italic text is indicated by _underscores_ and bold
+text by =equal signs=.]
+
+[Illustration: SLEEPY TOOK HER BY THE ARM AND CARRIED HER OFF,
+PROTESTING, * * * BUT HAPPY IN BEING COERCED. Page 37.]
+
+
+
+
+A HOUSE PARTY WITH THE TUCKER TWINS
+
+By
+
+NELL SPEED
+
+        _Author of "The Molly Brown Series," "The Carter
+        Girls Series," "At Boarding School With
+        the Tucker Twins," etc., etc._
+
+        With Four Illustrations
+        by
+        ARTHUR O. SCOTT
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+        NEW YORK
+        HURST & COMPANY
+        PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+        Copyright, 1921
+        BY
+        HURST & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+      I. MAXTON                                             7
+     II. THE COUNTRY STORE                                 19
+    III. ENGAGING IN MERCANTILE PURSUITS                   35
+     IV. DEE TUCKER MAKES A SALE                           51
+      V. THE HUMAN FLY                                     63
+     VI. "BIG MEETIN'"                                     78
+    VII. THE REASON WHY                                    96
+   VIII. THE CIRCUS                                       113
+     IX. THE PERFORMANCE                                  128
+      X. THE GHOST OF A GHOST                             140
+     XI. THE PICNIC                                       148
+    XII. THE SHOPPER-ROON                                 165
+   XIII. TANGLEFOOT                                       185
+    XIV. A YOUNGER SON                                    203
+     XV. SLEEPY WAKES UP                                  219
+    XVI. THINGS HAPPENING                                 231
+   XVII. MORE THINGS HAPPENING                            246
+  XVIII. THE END OF AN EVENTFUL DAY                       259
+    XIX. PLANS FOR THE FUTURE                             271
+     XX. A LETTER FROM ANNIE PORE TO PAGE ALLISON         283
+    XXI. A LETTER FROM GEORGE MASSIE TO PAGE ALLISON      296
+   XXII. A LETTER FROM PAGE ALLISON TO THE TUCKER TWINS   300
+
+
+
+
+
+A House Party With the Tucker Twins
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+MAXTON
+
+
+THERE may be more fun than a house-party, but I doubt it. Certainly I,
+Page Allison, have never had it. What could be more delightful than to
+spend two weeks in a beautiful old country home with such a host as
+General Price, and to have as fellow guests all the girl friends you
+care for most in the world,--to say nothing of some of the male
+persuasion that at least you don't hate?
+
+Harvie Price had been promised this house-party by his grandfather as
+reward of merit, and, like most things earned by hard labor, it proved
+to be worth the work expended. The Tucker Twins of course were there,
+Mary Flannagan, Shorty Hawkins, George Massie (alias Sleepy), Wink
+White, Jim Hart, and Ben Raglan, whose other name was Rags. There were
+two men from the University whom we did not know before, but it did not
+take long for us to forget that they were new acquaintances. They fitted
+in wonderfully well and a few hours found them behaving like old and
+tried friends. Their names were Jack Bennett and Billy Somers, and both
+of them hailed from Kentucky. There was a new girl in the party, Jessie
+Wilcox. She wasn't quite so easy to know as the new boys.
+
+I always feel like crying when I think of dear little Annie Pore's
+connection with that house-party. She was of course the very first
+person Harvie asked, the one he wanted most. I think in his mind the
+party was given to Annie, and when Mr. Pore with characteristic
+selfishness and stubbornness refused to let her go, it was a blow
+indeed.
+
+His plea was that he needed her to keep the store for him. He had hired
+a clerk after Annie went to boarding-school, and owing to his growing
+business, had kept the boy on through vacation, but on the eve of the
+house-party had seen fit to get rid of him, having sent him on an
+unasked for and undesired holiday.
+
+"I found it out only this morning," said Harvie gloomily.
+
+He had come to meet us at the landing, most of us having arrived by boat
+from Richmond. He was doing his best to look cheerful, feeling that a
+cloud must not be cast over the entire party because one member could
+not be there. He said he felt he knew me well enough to speak out on the
+subject of Mr. Pore, and speak out he did.
+
+"But has your grandfather tried to persuade him to let her come?"
+
+"No! You see Grandfather is a great believer in State's Rights, and he
+carries his theories down to the individual. He says that Mr. Pore is a
+wrong-headed father but it is his own affair and he refuses to
+interfere. He takes the stand that he has no more right to dictate to
+Mr. Pore how to run his household, than Massachusetts had to interfere
+in our own little matter of slavery here in Virginia, back in the
+sixties."
+
+"Poor Annie! We shall have to work out some kind of a scheme for her.
+I'll tell Mary and the Tuckers. I am sure we can get the tiresome old
+Englishman to come around somehow."
+
+"I wish I thought so, but I tell you that Mr. Arthur Ponsonby Pore has
+never been known to change his mind. Besides he is leaving to-day for
+Richmond to be gone several days."
+
+That is often the way with persons who have not much mind to change;
+they seem to have none to spare; but Mr. Pore was a cultivated, learned
+gentleman,--surely he was amenable to reason.
+
+Price's Landing was a quiet little wharf almost hidden by the
+overhanging willows. It took the boat only a moment to drop one mail bag
+and take on another, or to do the same by the occasional passengers. It
+seemed hardly worth while to go through the motions of landing for such
+small traffic, but Harvie assured us that in watermelon time or when
+tobacco was being shipped they were a very important trading point, one
+of the busiest along the James.
+
+The village was about an eighth of a mile back from the landing and it
+looked as though not even watermelon time could wake it up. There were
+two stores, Mr. Pore's and a rival concern; a blacksmith shop, sprawling
+far out in the road; a schoolhouse; three churches; a post-office; and
+four residences.
+
+"I'd like to stop and have all of you see Annie now, but Grandfather is
+expecting us and perhaps we had better come back later on," said Harvie,
+who was driving one of the vehicles sent to meet us.
+
+The road to Maxton, the Prices' place, skirted the village and then went
+directly up quite a steep elevation. The house was built on top of the
+hill commanding a fine view of the river. The lawn sloped down to the
+water's edge where one could see a very attractive boat-house and
+several boats riding at anchor.
+
+"Lovely! Lovely!" we exclaimed.
+
+"I'm mighty afraid I'm going to run down that hill and jump in the
+water," cried Dum.
+
+"Well, hills are certainly made to run down and water to jump in,"
+declared one of the new acquaintances, Billy Somers, who was standing on
+the springs of the vehicle in the rear holding on by the skin of his
+teeth and the back seat. "I bid to do what you do."
+
+The mansion (one could not call it just plain house) was a perfect
+specimen of colonial architecture, red brick of a rich rare tone with a
+great gallery across the front, the roof of which was supported by huge
+white pillars. The front door was a marvel of beautiful proportions,
+line and detail. A great ball might have been given on the porch, or
+gallery, as it is called in the South. Indeed, a sizable party might
+have been held on each one of the broad stone steps that led to the
+lawn. Only a very long-legged person could go up or down those stairs
+without taking two steps to a tread.
+
+A house like Maxton is very wonderful and beautiful but somehow never
+seems very homelike to me. Every time you go in and out of your front
+door to have to tackle those stairs would take from the homey feeling.
+Now at my home, Bracken, you are closer to Mother Earth and not nearly
+so grand and toploftical.
+
+Standing on the gallery to greet the guests were General Price and his
+maiden sister Miss Maria, the general tall and stately and Miss Maria
+short and fat. It was easy for the brother to look aristocratic and
+dignified, in fact he could not have looked any other way, so deserved
+no credit; but for the sister to look equally so was a marvel. Her
+figure reminded me of Mammy Susan's tomato pincushion, a treasure I had
+been allowed to play with in my childhood. She was quite as round in the
+back as the front and her waist was like the equator: an imaginary line
+extending from east to west. Her face was in keeping with her figure,
+round and fat, but through those rolls of flesh the high born lady
+looked out. Her voice was very sweet and the hand that she extended to
+us was as white as snow. She must have been about seventy years old, but
+thanks to her rotundity there were no wrinkles on her pink and white
+face. Of course she was dressed in black silk and old lace! How else
+could she have been clothed?
+
+The general would have served as a model for the make-up of a movie
+actor in a before-the-war film. The Tuckers and Mary and I decided later
+on that we felt just like a movie as we went up those grand broad steps
+with our host and hostess at the top.
+
+The hall carried out our feeling of being on the screen.
+
+"My, what a place to dance!" whispered Dee to me, but General Price
+heard her and smiled his approval. He was dignified himself but we were
+thankful he did not expect us to be.
+
+"You shall dance here to your heart's content, my dear. Many a measure
+has been trod in this hall."
+
+Dee looked a little depressed at being expected to tread a measure. That
+sounded rather minuetish to the modern ear. We wondered what he would
+think of the dances of the day.
+
+Maxton was laid out in the form of a cross with two great wings, one on
+each side of the hall. The girls were lodged upstairs in one wing, the
+boys in the other. Downstairs in the boys' wing were the parlors and
+smoking room and General Price's chamber and office; in the girls', the
+dining room, breakfast room, sewing room, chamber, linen room,
+storeroom, Miss Price's chamber and her small sitting room where she
+directed her household. There was a basement with more storerooms,
+pantries, a billiard room and a winter kitchen, but in the summer an
+outside kitchen was used. All of these things we found out later on a
+tour of inspection with our hostess.
+
+The great hall ran through the house and the back door was exactly like
+the front. Thanks to the lay of the land, however, there was not quite
+such a formidable array of steps. It seemed much more homelike in the
+back than the front. From the rear gallery one stepped into a formal
+garden, gravel paths, box hedges, labyrinth and all.
+
+"Oh, ain't it great, ain't it great?" cried Mary, dancing up and down
+the waxed floor of the great bedroom she and I were to occupy. Dum and
+Dee Tucker were put in the room with the other girl, Jessie Wilcox. If
+Annie could have come she was to have been with Mary and me.
+
+"I've got no business calling it great, though," she said as she stopped
+prancing, "when Annie can't be here. What are we to do about it, Page
+Allison?"
+
+"Let's call Tweedles in consultation. They can think up things."
+
+Tweedles were very glad to come. Miss Wilcox, who had motored over to
+Maxton several hours ahead of us, had already taken possession of the
+room and had begun to unpack her many fluffy clothes. Miss Maria had
+introduced all of us to our fellow visitor and had graciously expressed
+a desire that we should be good friends. We were willing, but it
+remained to be seen whether the stranger would meet us half way. She was
+a beautiful little creature with dark eyes and hair. Evidently she was
+very dressy or she would not have had to take up two double beds and
+all the chairs with her clothes. She seemed to have no idea of making
+room for the Tuckers nor did she make any excuse for spreading herself
+so promiscuously.
+
+"She needn't think I am going to move them," said Dum. "If they aren't
+off my bed by bedtime, I'll just go to sleep on them. I wish we could
+come in with you girls."
+
+"Of course that would never do," declared Dee. "We must stay where Miss
+Price put us."
+
+"Maybe Miss Wilcox will turn out to be fine," I suggested, hoping to
+turn the tide of Dum's disapproval.
+
+"Fine! She's too fine. I wish you could see her fluffy ruffles. But this
+isn't thinking up something to do about poor little Annie. My, I wish
+Zebedee could have come!"
+
+We all wished the same thing, but since he couldn't come we felt we must
+think up something for ourselves.
+
+"He could have talked old Ponsonby Pore into letting Annie come, I just
+know," said Dee.
+
+"Maybe we could do the same thing," I suggested.
+
+"Harvie says nothing will move him."
+
+"Well, one thing sure, we can go to see Annie and he can't drive us out,
+not after he has visited us at the beach. He'll just have to be polite
+to us."
+
+"Can't she come up in the evening? Surely she must stop keeping store
+sometimes," asked Mary.
+
+"Country stores never close. At least the one near us never does. They
+might miss the sale of a box of matches or a stick of candy. I used to
+think, when I was a little girl, that I would rather keep a store than
+do anything in all the world. I talked about it so much that Mammy Susan
+got right uneasy about me."
+
+"Well, Harvie and Sleepy are blue enough about it, so we must cheer up,"
+said Dee. "We are to be here two weeks and if we behave real well maybe
+they will ask us for longer, and surely in that time we can make that
+old stickinthemud come around. Zebedee could think up a way in a
+minute."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE COUNTRY STORE
+
+
+THE Prices had the right idea about entertaining a crowd of young
+people: that was to let them entertain each other. If a dozen boys and
+girls can't have a good time just because they are girls and boys then
+there is something very dull about them and the combination is hopeless.
+There was nothing dull about this crowd gathered in the hospitable Price
+mansion. Harvie was too well bred to let the disappointment about the
+non-appearance of one guest make him neglect the others. Poor George
+Massie was the one who could not conceal his feelings. Annie was the
+first and only girl he had ever cared for and now he sat, a mountain of
+woe, consuming large quantities of luncheon as though the business of
+eating were the only solace in life.
+
+"Wake up, Sleepy, the worst is yet to come!" teased Rags.
+
+Sleepy only groaned and dismally accepted another hot biscuit. The funny
+thing about Sleepy was that he was so in love with Annie that he did not
+at all mind being teased.
+
+"I am going down to see Annie right after luncheon. Don't you want to go
+too?" I whispered to Sleepy who was next to me.
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"We are trying to think up a plan by which we can get her hateful old
+father to let her join us here."
+
+"Brute!"
+
+"Don't you think the girl is pretty, sitting next to Wink?"
+
+Miss Wilcox had plunged into a flirtation with that budding young
+doctor, placed on her right, not forgetting to turn to her left quite
+often to include Jack Bennett in her chatter.
+
+"No! Like blondes best!"
+
+Miss Wilcox looked up quickly. I was almost sure she had heard Sleepy.
+She glanced quite seriously around the table, regarding each girl
+intently. Certainly there were no decided blondes there except Mary
+Flannagan, whose hair was red, and even the best friends of dear old
+Mary could not call her beautiful. The Tucker twins were more brunette
+than blonde, Dum's hair being red black and Dee's blue black. As for me,
+Page Allison, I was neither one thing nor the other. My hair was neither
+light nor dark and my eyes were grey. She need not look at me so hard. I
+wasn't the blonde that Sleepy liked best.
+
+Farther acquaintance with Jessie Wilcox explained her concern over
+Sleepy's remark. She was a very nice girl just so long as she was "it,"
+but she could not brook a rival of any sort. She must be the center of
+attraction, admired by all, praised by all. The minute she felt that
+there was someone who was considered more beautiful than she was, could
+dance better, sing better, do anything better, that minute she was a
+changed being.
+
+Her previous visits to Maxton had been very delightful as she had always
+been praised and petted to her heart's content. Both General Price and
+his sister were devoted to her and she was ever a welcome visitor. Her
+grandfather's home was about ten miles from Price's Landing, and
+whenever she came from New York to see him she must spend part of her
+time with the old people at Maxton. Harvie admired her very much, as who
+would not? She was beautiful, intelligent, very quick-witted and
+charming. He had never seen her with any other girl except her best
+friend, who on one occasion had been at Maxton with her, and this
+friend, being hopelessly plain and rather slow of wit, but served as a
+foil to the little beauty.
+
+After overhearing Sleepy's announcement about blondes, she looked at me
+so steadily that I began to blush. I was suddenly very conscious of my
+tip-tilted nose and of the added toll of freckles that the summer always
+exacted from it. I wondered if anyone else was noticing the almost
+disagreeable expression of her usually sweet countenance.
+
+I was glad when Miss Maria arose as a signal for us to leave the table.
+
+"Make yourselves at home!" the general said in his hospitable way.
+"Maxton is yours to do with as you please. There are horses in the
+stables for any of you who want to ride or drive; there are boats on the
+river; there are swings on the lawn; the tennis court is in condition
+for matches if you care to play. All I ask of you is not to fall off the
+horses or let them run away with you and kill you; and not to tumble
+into the river and drown."
+
+"That seems a reasonable request," I laughed. "How about falling out of
+the swings or beating each other up with tennis rackets?"
+
+"Oh, well! I must not put too many restrictions on youth," he said,
+pinching my ear.
+
+Jessie looked at me again rather severely and once more I felt mighty
+freckled.
+
+"Let's get a rig and go see Annie," suggested Sleepy.
+
+"All right! Tweedles and Mary want to go, too."
+
+"Let's get in ahead of them," he pleaded.
+
+"Come on, Page!" shouted Dum. "We want you in a set of tennis."
+
+"Now I was just going to ask her to come for a row," cried Dee. "Wink
+and Jim told me to engage you. They have gone to see about the boat."
+
+"Sorry, but I've got a date with Sleepy."
+
+"Humph! Miss Allison seems to be rather in demand," said Jessie to Jack
+Bennett. She said it in a low voice but I heard quite distinctly.
+
+"Yes! They say she is the most popular girl at her school."
+
+"Oh, is that so? I can't see the attraction."
+
+"Well, she must have it because girls like her as well as the fellows.
+They say Dr. White is terribly smitten on her."
+
+"Absurd!"
+
+I quite agreed with her. The sooner Wink White stopped hypnotizing
+himself into thinking he was in love with me, the better I would have
+liked it. Of course every girl likes to have attention, but I thought
+entirely too much of Wink to be pleased to have him looking at me like
+a dying calf. He was such a nice boy, so good looking, so clever, so
+agreeable,--except when he was alone with me. Then his whole nature
+seemed to undergo a change. I dreaded being left with him and usually
+managed to avoid it. He was my fly in the ointment of this house-party.
+I did not at all relish having this young Kentuckian state it as a fact
+that Wink was interested in me. Jessie Wilcox was welcome to him if she
+could persuade him to transfer his affections.
+
+Sleepy and I skimmed away in a spruce red-wheeled buggy with a young
+horse that evidently liked to be moving.
+
+"Fierce about Annie!" he said. "I'd like to wring that old duffer's
+neck."
+
+"I hope he has gone before we get there, then," I laughed. "If Mr.
+Tucker could only get hold of him, I bet he could bring him around."
+
+Mr. Pore had not gone, however, when we drew up at the cross roads where
+the country store stood. He was engaged in trying to sell a large rake
+to a farmer, while Annie was busily employed in measuring off two yards
+and three-quarters of unbleached cotton for the farmer's wife and then
+computing the amount due when the cotton was worth eight and two-third
+cents a yard. She completed the calculation just as we came in.
+
+How glad she was to see us! Mr. Pore seemed pleased to renew my
+acquaintance, too. He gave only a formal greeting to Sleepy but shook my
+hand in what he meant to be a cordial way. The fact that I was part
+English and that part of me came up to his idea of social equality, made
+him look upon me as desirable. He had not forgotten that my mother and
+his wife had been friends in England. He honestly felt that there were
+no Americans who were his equals. General Price might be almost so, but
+not quite. He saw no reason why his beautiful daughter should not spend
+her young life weighing out lard and measuring calico for negroes, but
+every reason why she should not demean herself by mixing socially with
+any but the highest.
+
+Mr. Pore's store was like every other country store except that it was
+perhaps a little more orderly, not much though. Order in a country store
+seems to be impossible. The stock must be so large and so varied to suit
+all demands that there never is room for it. I have never seen a country
+store that was not crowded. How the keepers of such stores ever take
+stock of their wares is a mystery to me. Perhaps they never do, but just
+go on buying when the supply gets low, and selling off as they can,
+putting money in the till until it gets full and then sending it to the
+bank. Usually they run their affairs in a haphazard manner and their
+books would defy an expert to straighten out. No matter from what walk
+of life the country storekeepers are drawn, they are all more or less
+alike, whether they are younger sons of the nobility as was Mr. Pore or
+elder sons of the soil (with much soil sticking to them) as was old
+Blinker, who ran the rival emporium at Price's Landing. They always have
+more stock than they have store, and their books usually look as though
+entries had been made upside down.
+
+The Pores' store had shelves stretching from one end to the other, down
+both sides and reaching as high as the ceiling. On these shelves were
+piled dry-goods of all grades and material, lamps, shoes, harness,
+hardware, canned goods of every description, crackers, soap, starch,
+axle grease, false hair, perfume, patent medicines, toys, paint brushes,
+brooms, tobacco, writing paper, china and glass ware, jars, pots and
+pans, pokers, baseball bats, millinery, overalls, etc., etc.
+
+The things that were too tall for the shelves, like Grandfather's clock,
+consequently stood on the floor. The aisle between the counters was
+blocked with sewing machines, kitchen tables, chairs, lawn mowers,
+crates of eggs and cases of ginger ale and sarsaparilla. There were
+barrels of coarse salt and great tins of lard, firkins of mackerel and
+herring, barrels of flour and sacks of meal. One would think that
+everything in the world that could be bought or sold was in that little
+store, but no! A door to one side led into another room and this room
+was also full to overflowing. There were more barrels of provisions for
+man and beast; sacks of chicken feed and bran; stoves of all kinds;
+poultry netting; coils of wire fencing; gardening implements and away
+back in a corner I spied a coffin.
+
+What a setting for such a jewel as Annie Pore! Her beauty shone
+resplendent from its background of apron gingham and butter crocks. I
+fancied I could detect a little redness to her eyelids as though the
+disappointment in not being at Maxton with her friends had caused some
+weeping, but her manner was calm and her expression one of resignation
+to fate and the decrees of a selfish father. I could not help thinking
+how I would have behaved under the circumstances, or the Tucker twins. I
+would not have cried, to be sure, but neither would my expression have
+been resigned. As for Dum and Dee: they would no doubt have broken up
+the shop.
+
+"We are so sorry Annie can't come to the house-party," I ventured as the
+farmer who had been haggling for the rake decided not to take it.
+
+Why Mr. Pore was ever able to sell anything I could not see. His manner
+was so superior and condescending. Harvie told me afterwards that Mr.
+Pore had succeeded in spite of himself. He was scrupulously honest in
+the first place and then he always carried the best line of goods. As
+for the science of salesmanship: he had yet to learn its rudiments. He
+looked sore and irritated at having failed to make the sale but put on
+more than ever the manner of insulted royalty. I saw the farmer making
+for the rival store where a little later he emerged. Blinker had made
+the sale.
+
+When I ventured the above remark, Annie looked as though she wished I
+wouldn't, and her father, I am sure, regretted the fact that I was part
+English, and that English of good blood; otherwise he could easily have
+annihilated me.
+
+"It is a matter I do not care to discuss," he said with a freezing
+hauteur.
+
+"Oh, I am not discussing with you, my dear Mr. Pore! I am merely telling
+you. All of us are so devoted to Annie and we have looked forward to
+being with her on this house-party all summer. I am sure if Harvie had
+known earlier that you would not be able to spare Annie at this time,
+he would have been glad to postpone the party."
+
+"Ahem--I--am compelled to take this occasion for a business trip. When
+one is engaged in mercantile pursuits, it is necessary to make
+periodical visits to the city to replenish one's wares."
+
+"Oh, certainly, I understand, but we still are dreadfully sorry about
+Annie. Of course we know that you want her to have all the pleasure on
+earth. That is the way fathers are made. We are sure you will make your
+stay as brief as possible so that Annie can join us at Maxton."
+
+He looked somewhat taken aback and murmured something more about
+mercantile pursuits. Sleepy sat on a keg of nails with eyes as big as
+saucers while Annie had the startled expression of one who sees her
+friend enter the cage of a man-eating lion.
+
+"You see I am an only child, too, Mr. Pore, and my mother is dead, just
+like Annie's. I know better than anyone how much a father can be to a
+little motherless daughter, and how that father can plan and deny
+himself for his child. You can't tell me anything about the love of a
+father."
+
+As Mr. Pore had never attempted to tell of any such thing, this was most
+audacious of me. Annie was actually gasping and Sleepy choked, but Mr.
+Pore looked at me quite solemnly through his gold-rimmed glasses.
+
+"Sometimes my father is called away; you see a country doctor's time is
+not his own, either, and he has had to leave me just when I felt I most
+needed him--on birthdays--and--and--all kinds of holidays, but he comes
+back to me just as fast as he can. My father is thinking of getting an
+assistant and then he can have more time, I hope. You have had an
+assistant, too, have you not?"
+
+He bowed gravely.
+
+"Where is he, then?"
+
+"He is away on leave."
+
+"Ill? That is too bad!"
+
+"No, not ill! He is having a much-needed holiday."
+
+"Oh, then he has gone on a trip?"
+
+"I fancy not."
+
+"Why, then I am sure he would be glad to come back and relieve Annie so
+she can come to Maxton. Oh, Mr. Pore, do please write for him to come on
+back and take his holiday later!"
+
+"Really, Miss Allison----" he began in his most dignified Oxford donnish
+manner.
+
+"Oh, I just know you will! You and Father and Mr. Tucker are all just
+alike. You can't bear to deny your girls any pleasure."
+
+His expression was comical at having these virtues thrust upon him.
+
+"I--er--I--shall endeavor to return from this enforced journey,
+necessary to replenish the stock which one engaged in mercantile
+pursuits in the rural districts finds it expedient to carry, and on my
+return if all goes well with the business, I shall permit my daughter to
+enjoy the hospitality extended to her by my neighbor, General Price."
+
+"I knew you would! I knew you would!" and I shook his limp hand which
+Dee Tucker had once said reminded her of nothing so much as an old pump
+handle that had lost the sucker. Everybody knows how that feels, at
+least everybody who has had dealings with pumps. You grasp the handle
+expecting some resistance and a flow of water in response; but when the
+sucker has disappeared, the handle will fly up in a strange limp manner
+and unless the pumper is wary there is danger of getting a lick in the
+nose.
+
+I cared not for a response. If no flow of kindliness was the result of
+my enthusiasm, I cared not a whit. Annie was to be one of the
+house-party and I had saved the day. I remembered how Mr. Tucker, dear
+old Zebedee, had declared that he had won over Mr. Pore by treating him
+like a human being, that time he had persuaded him to let Annie come to
+Willoughby to the vacation party. I had treated him as I would any
+ordinary kind father and he had been so astonished and pleased at his
+portrait that he had unconsciously accepted it as a likeness and begun
+to pose to look like it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ENGAGING IN MERCANTILE PURSUITS
+
+
+A WARNING whistle from the up-going steamboat made the dignified Mr.
+Pore step lively. With admonitions to Annie to keep an eye to business
+and with a limp handshake to Sleepy and me, a peck of a kiss on Annie's
+white brow, he seized his ancient Gladstone bag and made for the
+landing. That bag must have been a leftover from the old days in
+England, and more precious it was in its owner's eyes than the finest
+new suitcase that money might buy.
+
+All of us were relieved that he was gone. I giggled with joy and Annie
+smiled at Sleepy and me as she had not done since we arrived.
+
+"All the gang is coming down soon to see you, honey. They would have
+come with us but we slipped off," said I, going behind the counter to
+hug my little friend. I always have had a way of calling Annie my
+little friend, which is most absurd as she is inches taller than I am,
+but there has been a feeling somehow that she must be protected, and
+persons who must be protected seem little even when they are big.
+
+"Gee, I wish I could take you on a little drive before they come!"
+exclaimed Sleepy.
+
+"That is very kind of you but of course I can't leave the shop," sighed
+Annie.
+
+"Yes, you can! I am here!"
+
+"But I wouldn't let you keep shop for me," laughed Annie.
+
+"I'd like to know why not--I bet I can sell more things than you can.
+Just you try me."
+
+"It isn't that! I just couldn't let you. It is something I have to do
+but it is not right for you to do it."
+
+"Such nonsense! You just put on your hat and go with Sleepy. How do you
+know what is the price of things?"
+
+"Almost all the goods have marks on them but here is a list of prices,
+besides,--but Page, dear,--I just couldn't let you do it."
+
+"Well, you just can!" and I took off my own hat and put it on her head.
+I hadn't known before what a pretty hat it was. Any hat would be
+glorified by Annie's wonderful honey-colored hair. "Now give me your
+apron!" and I untied the little frilly affair that Annie wore to keep
+shop in and put it on myself.
+
+Sleepy took her by the arm and carried her off, protesting, laughing,
+holding back, but happy in being coerced.
+
+"Take her for a long drive, Sleepy! I can run this store and sell it out
+of supplies in no time, I am sure."
+
+I heard the sound of the red wheels of the spruce little buggy die away
+as the driver let the young horse have free rein. I gave a sigh of joy.
+Here I was keeping store at last! What would Mammy Susan say? It is not
+often that the acme of one's ambition is reached so young. I smoothed
+down my apron and slipped in behind the counter just as a customer
+entered.
+
+It was a farmer's wife who had driven over to the landing for
+provisions. She hitched her horse and ramshackle buggy in front of the
+store and came in prepared to spend a delightful hour. Going to the
+store in the country is the event of the week. Her eye had an eager
+gleam and there was a flush on her high cheek bones. She was a
+gaunt-looking woman with hair slicked up so tight under her stiff straw
+hat that it looked as though it must hurt. The hat had all the flowers
+that grow in an old-fashioned garden bedecking it, to say nothing of
+spiky bows of green ribbon and a rhinestone buckle. She had on a linen
+duster which had evidently been hastily donned over a calico house
+dress.
+
+"Where's Mr. Pore?"
+
+"He has gone to Richmond."
+
+"Where's Annie?"
+
+"She has stepped out for a moment. Please may I serve you?"
+
+"No, I reckon I'll come again when some of them are in. I'll go over to
+Blinker's and trade this morning."
+
+Heavens! Was I to stand still and see customers go over to the rival
+store? Had I missed my vocation after all my dreams? Was storekeeping
+not what I was cut out for?
+
+"I'm sorry you won't stay and see these new ginghams," I faltered. A
+gleam in her eye emboldened me to proceed. "They are making them up so
+pretty in Richmond now."
+
+"Well, I wonder if they are! Are you from Richmond?"
+
+"I have been visiting there but I am from Milton. I love to visit in
+Richmond. Don't you? It is such a good way to get the new styles."
+
+That had fetched her. She gave up all idea of trading with Blinker. What
+did he know of styles and the way ginghams were being made up in the
+city? I got down stacks of dry-goods and with my first customer began to
+plan a wonderful garment for the protracted meeting soon to take place.
+Gingham was decided not to be fine enough for the occasion and a pretty
+piece of voile was chosen instead. A silk drop skirt must go with it and
+bunches of velvet ribbon must set it off. The farmer's wife was having
+the time of her life and I was enjoying myself to the utmost. I
+measured off the material in a most professional manner, trembling for
+fear the customer would find out what a novice I was. I was thankful
+that she was to make it instead of me. With all of my learned talk about
+clothes, I could not have sewed up a pillowslip and had it fit the
+pillow.
+
+Next on the program was chicken feed. The rats had devoured her supply
+of wheat saved for the poultry and the corn had not yet been harvested.
+We had to go in the adjoining room for that and I had a chance to peep
+at my price list on the way. I persuaded her also into laying in a
+supply of canned soups and got her interested in a lawn mower and a
+patent churn. She declared she was coming over the next day with her
+husband and try to persuade him to purchase both of them for her.
+
+"Men-folks are mighty slow to get implements for the women. I ain't
+complaining of my old man, but he thinks he must have every new-fangled
+bit of farming machinery that comes along while I am churning with the
+same old big-at-the-bottom-and-little-at-the-top-little-thing-in-the-
+middle-goes-flippityflop churn that my mother had. As for the bit of
+lawn around the house that he 'lows me,--that has to be cut with a
+sickle just when I can catch a hand to do it. Now if I had that little
+lawn mower I could run it myself and keep things kind of tidy like
+'round the house."
+
+"Of course you could," I assented. "Now don't you want some of this
+cheese? It is right fresh." I had noted a great new cheese in a glass
+case that had evidently been cut only that morning. "Do you ever make
+polenta? This cheese would be fine for that."
+
+"No, do tell! I never even heard of it."
+
+"Why, it is a great dish among the Italians and is the best thing you
+ever tasted."
+
+"I'm a great hand for cooking and sho' do relish a new recipe."
+
+"Take three cups of boiling water and one cup of corn meal and one cup
+of grated cheese, and a teaspoon of salt. Stir the meal into the
+boiling water and let it cook until it begins to get thick and then put
+in the cheese and salt and bake it in a well-greased pan. It is dandy
+eating."
+
+"Well now, doesn't that sound nice? Give me a pound of the cheese and
+one of those new pans to bake it in. My pans are all pretty nigh burnt
+out."
+
+"Did you ever try any of this glassware for baking? It is so nice and
+clean and the crust looks so pretty showing through. To be sure it is
+more expensive than tin, but it is so satisfactory."
+
+"I never heard of such a thing! Show it to me."
+
+I had noticed with some surprise that Mr. Pore had a supply of the
+fire-proof glass just coming into general use. He was certainly a
+progressive buyer for one who was such a poor salesman. I sold her two
+glass baking dishes and then more dry-goods. It took three trips for us
+to carry out all her packages to the buggy. More purchasers had arrived
+in the meantime. I foresaw a busy time.
+
+A little colored girl with three eggs tied up in a rag wanted to trade
+them for flour.
+
+"My maw is makin' a cake fur the barsket fun'ral an' she ain't got a
+Gawd's mouth er flour in the house. She say if'n she can trade these
+here fur some flour she'll be jes' a-kitin'."
+
+"Whar you git them aigs?" asked an old uncle suspiciously. I had just
+sold him a plug of "eatin' terbaccer."
+
+"I git 'em out'n the nesses, whar they b'long," she asserted, tossing
+her wrapped plaits scornfully.
+
+"Yer ain't got but one hen an' I done see yo' maw a-wringing her naick
+this ve'y mawnin'."
+
+"What'n if'n yer did? That ole blue hen been layin' two three times er
+day lately, an' my maw she says she mus' about laid out by this time, so
+she up'n kilt her fer the barsket fun'ral goin' on at de same time of de
+big meetin'. But laws a mussy! Do you know she was that full er aigs
+that it war distressful?" The child's eyes were wistful at the
+remembrance.
+
+"Well, well! Nobody can't tell 'bout women an' hens. It seems lak
+nobody don't speak up an' testify how much good they is in some sisters
+'til they is dead an' gone. Same way with hens! Same way with hens! Is
+yo' maw gwinter bile it or bake it?"
+
+"Sh'ain't 'cided. If'n yer bile it yer gits soup extry an' if'n yer bake
+it yer gits stuffin' an' graby."
+
+I was thankful for the little training I had in mathematics when it was
+up to me to convert eggs into flour. Some problem! I put in a little
+extra flour to make sure and the child skipped off.
+
+At this juncture the Tucker twins, Mary Flannagan, and a troop of young
+men from Maxton blew in. I was secretly relieved that Miss Wilcox was
+not of the party. Not that I minded her seeing me keep store, but I had
+a feeling she might be a little scornful of Annie Pore.
+
+"Where is Annie?" cried Dum.
+
+"We are nearly dead to see her," declared Dee.
+
+"Gone driving with Sleepy. I am keeping store in her absence. His Lord
+High Muck-a-Muck has embarked for Richmond."
+
+"What fun! What fun! We bid to help!"
+
+"Maybe only one had better help, as purchasers coming in might be
+overcome by too many clerks," I laughed.
+
+"You are right! Dee must be the one because she is so tactful," said Dum
+magnanimously.
+
+So Dee took off her hat and got behind the candy and ginger ale side of
+the counter, and then such a buying and selling ensued as that country
+store had never witnessed.
+
+Of course everybody treated everybody else and then had to be treated in
+turn. I stayed on the dry-goods side, and while I was not doing such a
+thriving business as Dee, still I had my hands full. The farmer's wife
+had met some acquaintances and sent them to Pore's to see the new clerk
+who could tell them so much about Richmond styles. I had to draw a
+gallon of kerosene for one customer, but Wink insisted upon doing this
+for me. I did not want him to one little bit. If I was to be
+storekeeper, I preferred being one, not just playing at it.
+
+"I think you are wonderful, Page, to do this for Annie," he whispered to
+me as we made our way to the coal oil barrel.
+
+"Nonsense! What is wonderful about it?"
+
+"You are always kind to everybody but me."
+
+"Do you want me to keep store for you?"
+
+"No, I want you to keep house for me," he muttered.
+
+"But I did not know you had a house," I teased.
+
+He pumped vigorously at the coal oil.
+
+"I intend to have one some day."
+
+"A grand one, surely, if you expect to have a housekeeper!"
+
+"Page, you know what I mean!" He looked longingly into my eyes that I
+knew were full of mischievous twinkles.
+
+"All I know is, you have wasted about a quart of kerosene."
+
+The floor was flooded. It is a difficult thing to pump coal oil and make
+love at the same time. Poor Wink had done both of his jobs badly. He
+looked aghast at the havoc he had caused.
+
+"I am a bungling fool!" he cried.
+
+"No, Wink, you are not that. You are just not an adept at--pumping coal
+oil."
+
+"Why are you always different with me? You don't treat other fellows the
+way you do me."
+
+"You don't treat other girls the way you do me," I retorted.
+
+"Of course not! I don't feel towards them as I do towards you."
+
+"Well, it is a good thing your feelings don't make you grouchy with
+everybody. You just exude gloom as soon as you get with me. But this
+isn't keeping shop for Annie," and I grabbed the oil can from him and
+ran back into the store.
+
+I was very glad to see Wink make his way to Dee. He usually went to her
+after a bout with me. They were great friends and seemed to have a
+million things of interest to discuss and nothing to disagree about. I
+could have been just as good a friend to him if he had only dropped the
+eternal subject and treated me as he did Dee: like an ordinary girl who
+was ready for a good time but had no idea of a serious attachment. We
+were nothing but chits of girls, after all, and only out of school
+because Gresham happened to burn down before we had time to graduate.
+
+"Umm! How you do smell of coal oil!" cried Dee. "Don't dare to touch
+anything in my line of groceries until you have washed your hands.
+There's a basin back there."
+
+Wink laughed and washed his hands as commanded. Now if I had said to him
+what Dee had he would have been furious, and gloom impenetrable would
+have ensued.
+
+That afternoon I cut off and planned four different dresses for four
+farmers' wives, selling trimming and ribbons and fancy buttons. I made
+many trades with persons bringing in eggs and chickens and carrying off
+various commodities in exchange. I was never so busy in my life. Dee was
+equally so, even after we had persuaded the noisy crowd from Maxton to
+depart.
+
+"Goodness! I feel as though I had been serving at a church fair," cried
+Dee, sinking down exhausted on a soap box.
+
+She had just wheedled a shy young farmer into thinking that existence
+could not continue without a box of scented soap and a new cravat,
+although he had made a trip to the store for nothing more ornate than
+salt for the cattle.
+
+"How do you reckon Annie ever gets through the day if this one is a
+sample? I haven't stopped a minute and here come some more traders."
+
+The fact was that Dee and I had done about three times as much selling
+as the Pores usually accomplished. Word had gone forth that we were
+keeping shop, and everybody hastened to the country store. Dee found
+this out by accident over the telephone. There was such a violent
+ringing of the bell that she hastened to answer it, not being on to the
+country 'phone where everybody's bell rings at every call. This is what
+she overheard:
+
+"Say, Milly! Pore's have got some gals from Richmond clerking there.
+They can put you on to the styles."
+
+"So I hear! I'm gettin' the mule hitched up fast as I can to go over."
+
+And then a masculine voice took it up evidently from another section:
+
+"They say they are peaches, too!"
+
+"That you, Dick Lee? Where'd you hear about them?"
+
+"Saw Lem Baker on the way, goin' for salt. He got it from Jim Cullen."
+
+"I bet you'll be there soon yourself," broke in the voice of Milly.
+
+"Sure! My car is already cranked up gettin' up speed for the run.
+S'long!"
+
+"Wait! What you goin' to buy, Dick? Your sister told me you went to the
+store yesterday and laid in enough for a week."
+
+"Well, I may get a coffin," laughed the gay voice of Dick as he hung up
+the receiver.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+DEE TUCKER MAKES A SALE
+
+
+"PAGE! I've been eavesdropping! I declare I never meant to do it. I got
+into the swim of the conversation and somehow couldn't get out of it,"
+cried Dee, blushing furiously. "I don't know what Zebedee would say if
+he knew it."
+
+"Why, honey, that isn't eavesdropping!" I laughed. "Country people
+always listen to everything they can over the 'phone. That is the only
+way we have of spreading the news. I can assure you that perfectly good
+church members in our county make a practice of running to the telephone
+every time a neighbor's bell rings. How many were on the line when you
+cut in?"
+
+"Three or four, I should say, I couldn't quite tell."
+
+Then Dee told me the conversation she had overheard, making me a party
+to the crime of eavesdropping.
+
+"Here comes Dick now, I do believe. He was the one who was all cranked
+up ready to come."
+
+There was a great buzzing and hissing on the road as a disreputable
+looking Ford came speeding down the hill. I have never seen such a
+dilapidated car, and still it ran and made good time, too. There was not
+a square inch of paint left on its faithful sides, and the top was
+hanging down on one side, giving it the appearance of a broken-winged
+crow. The doors flapped in the breezes, and the mud-guards were bent and
+twisted as though they had had many a collision.
+
+Dick, however, was spruce enough to make up for the appearance of his
+car. He had on a bright blue suit, the very brightest blue one can
+imagine coming in any material but glass or china; a necktie made of a
+silk U. S. flag, with a scarf pin which looked very like an owl with two
+great imitation ruby eyes; but I found on inspection it was the American
+Eagle. His shoes were very gay yellow and his socks striped red and
+white, carrying out the color scheme of his cravat.
+
+I ducked behind my side of the counter leaving the field clear for Dee.
+She stood to her guns and gave the newcomer a radiant smile. She was
+there to sell goods for Annie Pore and sell them she would.
+
+"Evenin'!"
+
+"How do you do? What can I do for you?"
+
+"Pretty day!"
+
+"Yes, fine! Is there something I can show you?"
+
+"Not so warm as yesterday and a little bit cooler than the day before!"
+
+"Yes, that is so. We've got in a fresh cheese,--maybe you would like a
+few pounds of it."
+
+"Looks like rain but the moon hangs dry."
+
+"Oh, I hope it won't rain,--but maybe it will--let me sell you an
+umbrella,--they are great when it rains."
+
+"We don't to say need rain for most of the crops, but it wouldn't hurt
+the late potatoes."
+
+"Oh, I'm glad of that!"
+
+"But the watermelons don't need a drop more. They are ripening
+fine,--rain would make them too mushy like. I'm going to ship a load of
+them next week. I 'low I'll get about three hundred off of that sandy
+creek bottom."
+
+"Fine! Watermelons are my favorite berry."
+
+Right there I exploded and the young man let out a great haw! haw! too
+that helped to break the ice, and also enabled Dee to stop her painful
+rejoinders to his polite small talk, and then he began to buy. I heard
+Annie and Sleepy as they hitched the horse at the post and I hoped
+devoutly the festive Dick would buy out the store before they got in.
+
+Already he had purchased six cravats, a new coal skuttle, a
+much-decorated set of bedroom china, a bag of horse cakes, some canned
+salmon and a box of axle grease when Annie made her appearance.
+
+She was looking so lovely that I did not blame Sleepy for having the
+expression of a hungry man. She was certainly good enough to eat.
+
+"Oh, Page, we had such a wonderful drive! I am so afraid we were gone
+too long, but George simply would not turn around." Annie was the only
+person who always called Sleepy by his Christian name.
+
+"He was quite right. I have had the time of my life. Dee is helping me.
+She is in the other room now, selling a young man named Dick everything
+in the store. Don't butt in on her; let her finish her sales. Here come
+the others! They said they would be back to see you."
+
+In came all the house-party and such a hugging and kissing and
+handshaking ensued as I am sure that little country store had never
+before witnessed.
+
+"Oh, Annie, we miss you so!" cried Mary.
+
+"Indeed we do!" from the others.
+
+"Maybe I can be with you in a day or so," said Annie. "Father is going
+to try to return in a very little while."
+
+"Well, until he does come back one of us is going to be with you every
+day," declared Dum. "Page and Dee need not think they are the only ones
+who are going to help."
+
+Annie's eyes were full of happy tears. "What have I done to deserve so
+many dear friends?" she whispered to me.
+
+"Nothing but just be your sweet self!" I answered. "I must peep in and
+see what Dee is doing to that poor defenseless Dick. I bet she has sold
+him a kitchen stove by this time."
+
+Annie and I made our way into the outer room, where at the far end we
+could see Dick and Dee in earnest converse.
+
+"It is a very excellent one," she was declaiming. "In fact, I am sure
+there is not a better one to be bought. It is air tight and water tight;
+of the best material; the latest style; the workmanship on it is very
+superior; the price is ridiculously low. Really I think all country
+people ought to have one in the house for emergencies. One never can
+tell when one will be needed and sometimes they are so difficult to get
+in a hurry."
+
+"That's so!" agreed the enamored Dick. "But I reckon I could get this
+any time from old man Pore if I should need it."
+
+"Oh, no! You see this is the only one in stock and somebody might come
+for this this very night, and then where would you be if you needed it?
+Then even if you could get another one, it might not be nearly so
+attractive as this one. They are going up, too, all the time,--effect of
+the war. Of course this was bought when they were not so high, and I am
+letting you have advantage of the price we paid for it. After this they
+will be up at least forty per cent.--that's the truth. The war prices
+are something fierce."
+
+"Ain't it the truth?"
+
+"Yes, and then you might not be able to get another lavender one. I just
+know lavender would be becoming to you. I'd like to see you in a
+lavender one."
+
+"Would you really now? That settles it then! I'll have to get old Pore
+to trust me, though, until I sell my melons."
+
+"Oh, that's all right. Just whenever you feel like paying."
+
+I was completely mystified. What on earth was that ridiculous girl
+selling to the young farmer? Annie was reduced to the limpness of a wet
+dishrag by what we had overheard. The giggles had her in their clutches
+and she could not speak.
+
+"Do you think you can help me out with it?" asked the young man.
+
+"Sure! It is not heavy yet."
+
+Around the labyrinth made by the farming implements, stoves, etc., came
+the buyer and seller, he backing and she carefully guiding him. Between
+them they carried a long something; I, at first, could not make out
+what.
+
+"A coffin!" I gasped.
+
+Through the door they made their way into the store proper. Some colored
+customers had just come in and these fell back with expressions of
+curiosity and awe equally mingled on their black faces.
+
+"Who daid? Who daid?" they whispered, but no one vouchsafed any
+information. Dee looked supernaturally solemn and Dick only wanted to
+get his latest purchase safely landed in his car.
+
+The house-party had adjourned to the porch in front, and when the
+lugubrious procession emerged from the store the gaiety suddenly
+ceased. As Dick backed out, the young men doffed their caps and the
+girls bowed their heads. What was their amazement when Dee turned out to
+have hold of the other end. Every man sprang forward to take her place,
+but she sadly shook her head and held on to her job.
+
+"It isn't heavy," she whispered.
+
+Dum's eyes filled with tears. She thought with sadness that in a short
+while it would be heavy when it fulfilled its destiny. She was very
+proud of her twin that she should be so kind and helpful at such a time.
+How like Dee it was to be assisting this poor young man, who had perhaps
+lost some one near and dear to him!
+
+No one spoke, but all remained reverently uncovered while the coffin was
+hoisted on the back seat of the ragged old car. The young men assisted
+in this, although Dee would not resign her place as chief mourner.
+
+"Who daid? Who daid?" clamored the darkies who seemed to spring up from
+the ground, such a crowd of them appeared in the twinkling of an eye.
+
+"I don't know," said Dum in a teary voice, "but isn't it sad?"
+
+"'Tain't Miss Rena Lee 'cause I jes' done seed her headin' fer the
+sto'," declared a little pickaninny.
+
+"She ain't a-trus'in' her bones ter Mr. Dick's artermobe. She done sayed
+she gonter dribe her ole yaller mule whar she gwinter go."
+
+"Ain't de Lees got a boardner? Maybe it's de boardner," suggested a
+helpful old woman.
+
+"Well, I wonder if it is! Here he come! I'm a-gwinter arsk him."
+
+Dick came out laden with his other purchases.
+
+"Lawsamussy! It mus' be de boardner an' all er her folks is a-comin'
+down, 'cause how come Mr. Dick hafter buy all them things otherwise?
+Look thar chiny an' coal skuttles an' what not!"
+
+"Who daid, Mr. Dick? Who daid?"
+
+"Nobody I know of!" grinned the young man.
+
+"Ain't it de boardner?"
+
+"What boarder?"
+
+"Miss Rena's boardner!"
+
+"Sister Rena hasn't any boarder that I know of. Here, get out of the
+road or I'll let you know who is dead!"
+
+He took a fond farewell of Dee and cranking up his noisy car, he jumped
+to his seat and speeded home with the coffin and the coal skuttle
+bouncing up and down right merrily.
+
+"Ain't nobody daid?" grieved a sad old woman.
+
+"No! Nobody ain't daid!" snapped an old man. "Nobody ain't eben a-dyin'.
+Now that thar Dick Lee done bought up th' only carsket in the sto' an'
+my Luly is mighty low--mighty low."
+
+"Sho-o' nuf I ain't heard tell of it. Is she in de baid?"
+
+"Well, not ter say in de baid--but on de baid, on de baid. Anyhow
+'tain't safe to count on her fer long. White folks is sho' graspin'
+these days. They is sho' graspin'."
+
+The old man departed on his way grumbling.
+
+"Caroline Tucker, what did you sell that coffin to that young man for?"
+demanded Dum sternly.
+
+"Just to see if I could, Virginia Tucker. I told him I'd like to see him
+in a coffin lined with lavender, and he was so complimented, he
+immediately bought it to keep for a rainy day."
+
+Dee and I had made so many sales that Annie had to send a telegram
+informing her father of the diminished stock. It was necessary to order
+another coffin immediately in case the ailing Luly might need it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE HUMAN FLY
+
+
+GENERAL PRICE was vastly amused over the account of Dee's sale of the
+coffin to the amiable Dick. Miss Maria was frankly shocked, and Miss
+Wilcox amazed and a little scornful.
+
+"I never cared for slumming," she announced that night when we had
+retired to the girls' wing.
+
+"But helping Annie Pore keep store is not slumming," said Dee, the
+dimple in her chin deepening.
+
+Dee Tucker had a dimple in her chin just like her father. When father
+and daughter got ready for a fight, those dimples always deepened.
+
+"Most kind of you, I am sure, although that sort of adventure never
+appealed to me. I have taught in the mission school in New York's East
+Side, but when the class is over I always leave. I can't bear to mix
+with the lower classes. It is all right to help them but not by
+mixing."
+
+"But you don't understand,--Annie Pore is one of our very best friends.
+She is not the lower classes. She is better born than any of us and
+prettier and better bred and more accomplished----"
+
+"Ah, indeed! I should like to behold this paragon."
+
+"Well, you shall behold her all right! She is going to join us here in a
+day or so."
+
+Jessie Wilcox looked very much astonished and quite haughty. She could
+not understand the Prices asking such a person to meet her. The daughter
+of a country storekeeper was hardly one whom she cared to know socially.
+Dee had gone about it the wrong way to make the spoiled beauty look with
+favor on the little English girl:--prettier, better born, better bred,
+indeed! As for accomplishments: what accomplishments could a dowdy
+little country girl have that she had not?
+
+The Tuckers and Jessie Wilcox were not hitting it off very well in the
+great bedroom which they shared. Dum had declared she would not move
+the fluffy finery which was spread out on her bed and she stuck to her
+word.
+
+"What are you going to do with these duds?" she asked rather brusquely.
+
+"Oh, you just put them back in my trunk," drawled the spoiled roommate.
+
+"Humph! You had better ring for your maid. I'm not much on doing valet
+work."
+
+With that she caught hold of the four corners of the bedspread and with
+a yank deposited the whole thing adroitly on the floor, butter side up.
+
+Dee told me afterwards that Jessie's expression was one of complete
+astonishment. She was not used to being treated like the common herd.
+Much Dum cared! She got into the great four-posted bed with perfect
+unconcern, while Dee tactfully helped the pouting Jessie to hang up her
+many frocks.
+
+"She had better be glad I didn't go to bed on them," stormed the
+unrepentant Dum when she told me about it. "As for Dee: I was disgusted
+with her for being so mealy-mouthed. Catch me hanging up anybody's
+clothes! I bet you one thing,--I bet you she keeps her fripperies off
+my bed after this."
+
+I was in a way sorry for Jessie. I know it must be hard to be a spoiled
+darling turned loose with the Tucker twins. They were always perfectly
+square and fair in all their dealings, but they demanded squareness and
+fairness in others. Jessie was evidently accustomed to being waited on
+and admired, and the Tuckers refused to do either of these things
+necessary for the happiness of their roommate. She had always chosen her
+friends with a view to setting off her own charms, girls who were
+homely, less vivacious, duller. It did not suit her at all to be
+outshone in any way. She was certainly the prettiest girl in the
+house-party, that is, before Annie arrived, but she was not the most
+attractive. There never were more delightful girls in all the world than
+the Tucker twins, witty, charming, vivacious, and very handsome. I could
+see their development in the two years I had known them and realized
+that they were growing to be very lovely women.
+
+Mary Flannagan was nobody's pretty girl but she had something better
+than beauty, at least something that proves a better asset in life:
+extreme good nature and a sense of humor that embraced the whole
+universe. She had humor enough to see a joke on herself and take it.
+That, to me, is the quintessence of humor. Wherever Mary was there also
+were laughter and gaiety. She had a heart as big as all Ireland, from
+which country she had inherited her wit as well as her name.
+
+Mary was not quite so bunchy as she had been. Two years had stretched
+her out a bit, but she would always be something of a rolypoly. She was
+as active as a cat, and so determined was she to end up as a character
+movie actress she never stopped her limbering-up exercises. After I
+would get in bed at night she would begin. She would turn somersaults,
+stand on her head, walk on her hands, do cart-wheels, bend the crab,
+fall on the floor at full length and do a hundred other wonderful
+stunts.
+
+"I am so plain I'll have to go in for slap-stick comedy and maybe work
+up to the legit., but go in I will. Why, Page, there is oodlums of
+money in movies and think of the life!"
+
+"I can see you, Mary, as a side partner to Douglas Fairbanks. Can you
+climb up a wall like a fly?" I laughed.
+
+"No-o, not yet but soon! I can't get much practice in wall scaling. I am
+dying to try this wall outside our window. It is covered with ivy and
+would be easy as dirt, I know," and she poked her head out the window,
+gazing longingly at the tempting perpendicularity of the wall beneath.
+
+Mr. Thomas Hawkins, alias Shorty, thought Mary was just about the best
+chum a fellow could have, and great was his joy when Fate landed him at
+the same country house with the inimitable Mary. Shorty, too, had made
+out to grow a bit since first we saw him make the great play in the
+football game at Hill Top. He was a very engaging lad with his tousled
+mane, rosy cheeks and clear boy's eyes.
+
+"Is Shorty going to get into the movies, too?" I teased.
+
+"No,--navy!"
+
+"Oh, how splendid! I didn't know he had decided."
+
+"Yes! He has talked to me a lot about it," said Mary quite soberly.
+
+"What do you think about it?"
+
+"Me? Why, I think our navy is going to have to be enlarged and I can't
+think of anybody better suited to it than Shorty. He is a descendant of
+Sir John Hawkins, you know, and that means seafaring blood in his
+veins."
+
+How little did Mary and I think, as we lay in that great four-post bed
+and wisely discussed preparedness, that our country would really be at
+war in not so very many months, and that Shorty's entering the navy
+would be a very serious matter to all of his friends, if not to him.
+
+No thoughts of war were disturbing us. The great war was going on, but
+then we were used to that and we were too young and thoughtless for it
+to bother us. It was across the water and no one we knew personally was
+implicated. Maxton was too peaceful a spot for one to realize that such
+a thing as bloodshed could go on anywhere in all the world. Our great
+room with its two huge beds and massive wardrobe, bureau and washstand,
+had once sheltered Washington and later on Lafayette; and then as the
+ages had rolled by, General Lee had visited the Prices and had slept in
+the very bed where Mary and I were lying so sagely and smugly arguing
+for preparedness. Perhaps the mocking-bird that every now and then gave
+forth a silvery trill in the holly tree near our window was descended
+from the same mocking-bird that no doubt had sung to the great warrior
+as he lay in the four-poster.
+
+How quiet it was! A whippoorwill gave an occasional cry away off in the
+woods, and once I heard the chugging of a small steamboat puffing its
+way up the river, and then a little later the swish swash on the shore
+of the waves made by the stern wheel. But for that, the night was
+absolutely still.
+
+"Page," whispered Mary, "are you asleep?"
+
+"Fortunately not, or I'd be awake," I laughed.
+
+"I'm thinking about getting up and trying to scale that wall. I am
+'most sure I could do it with all that ivy to dig my toes in."
+
+"Why don't you wait until morning?"
+
+"Because I don't want an audience. It is best to practice these stunts
+without anyone looking."
+
+"Suppose you fall!"
+
+"That's something movie actresses have to expect. I won't fall far if I
+do fall."
+
+"Will you mind if I look on?"
+
+"No, indeed! I can pretend you are the director."
+
+Everything was as quiet as the grave when Mary bounced out of bed to
+practice her stunt. I followed, nothing loath to see more of the
+wonderful night. Some nights are too beautiful to waste in sleeping. It
+has always seemed such a pity to me that we could not fill up on sleep
+in disagreeable weather, and then when a glorious moonlight night
+arrives, be able to draw on that reserve fund of sleep and just sit up
+all night.
+
+"Isn't it splendid out on the lawn? And only look at the river in the
+moonlight. I'd certainly like to be out there in a boat this minute
+with some very nice interesting person to recite poetry to me," I mused.
+
+"I heard Wink White begging you to take a row with him."
+
+"Yes, but I see myself doing it."
+
+"Don't you like him?" asked Mary, sitting in the window ready for the
+trial descent.
+
+"Of course I like him, but he's such a goose."
+
+"Shorty thinks he is grand."
+
+"So he is--grand, gloomy, and peculiar. If he'd only not be so sad and
+lonesome when he is with me."
+
+"Of course all of us have noticed how different he is with you, never
+laughing and joking as he does with us but sighing like a furnace. But
+here goes! This is no time for analyzing the character of young Doctor
+Stephen White,--this is a play of action."
+
+"But, Mary, ought you try to climb down in your nighty? It might get
+tangled around your feet."
+
+"Oh, but the movie ladies always have to get out of windows in their
+nighties. I must practice in costume to get used to it."
+
+"Barefooted, too?"
+
+"Of course! I need all these toes to hang on by. Next time I am going to
+have my ch-e-i-ild, but this first time perhaps I had better not try to
+carry anything."
+
+"I should think not,--but, Mary, do be careful."
+
+I was looking down the perpendicular wall and it began to seem to me to
+be a crazy undertaking. The vines were very thick and would no doubt
+offer a foot-rest to the daring girl, but suppose she lost her head or
+the vine pulled loose from the wall!
+
+It is a much easier matter to climb up and get in a window than it is to
+get out of one and climb down. There is something very scary about
+projecting one's bare foot into the unknown. Mary, however, was too
+serious in her desire to perfect herself for her chosen profession to
+stop and wiggle her toes with indecision. She was out of the window in a
+moment. I held my breath.
+
+"Oh, God save her! Oh, God save her!" I whispered.
+
+"Fireman, save my ch-e-i-ild!" came back in sibilant tones from Mary.
+
+I couldn't help laughing although I was trembling with fright. I almost
+beat Mary to the ground I leaned so far out of the window. Sometimes the
+thick ivy hid her from my sight and again she would loom out very white
+in the moonlight.
+
+Down at last! I felt like shouting for joy. Now began the ascent which
+was a small matter compared to the descent.
+
+When the climber was about half-way up, I suddenly became aware of
+figures on the edge of the lawn. "The servants returning from church," I
+thought. Harvie had told me that "big meetin'" was going on and his aunt
+was quite concerned about her servants, as they had a way of taking
+French leave at "big meetin'" time. With the house-party in session, a
+paucity of servants would be quite serious. Extra inducements had been
+offered and the whole corps had promised to remain, taking turn about
+in getting off early for night church.
+
+[Illustration: I ALMOST BEAT MARY TO THE GROUND I LEANED SO FAR OUT OF
+THE WINDOW.
+
+Page 74.]
+
+Anyone who has lived in the country, where colored servants are the only
+ones, knows what a serious time "big meetin'" can be. The whole negro
+population seems to go mad in a frenzy of religious fervor. Crops that
+are inconsiderate enough to ripen at that period remain ungathered; the
+washwoman lets soiled clothes pile up indefinitely; cooks refuse to
+cook; housemaids have a soul above sweeping; cows go dry for lack of
+milking; horses go uncurried and vehicles unwashed and ungreased.
+
+I smiled when I saw that straggling group returning from church, knowing
+they would not be fit for any very arduous tasks the next day. I
+remembered how Mammy Susan used to berate our darkies for their
+delinquencies on days following meetings. As the churchgoers approached
+the house, which they had to pass to reach the quarters on the other
+side of the great house, they suddenly became aware of Mary's white
+figure hanging midway between heaven and earth.
+
+Shouts and groans arose! One woman fell to the ground and, regardless of
+her finery, rolled on the grass imploring her Maker to save her. I
+trembled for fear Mary would fall, but she clung to the vine and
+scrambled up and in the window. The darkies ran like frightened rabbits.
+
+"They thought you were a ghost, I believe."
+
+"Well, I came mighty near giving up the ghost. When I heard those groans
+I thought something had me sure," panted the great actress, looking
+ruefully at a long rent in her very best nighty. "I did it all right,
+but being a great movie actress who is to play opposite Douglas
+Fairbanks is certainly hard on one's rags. Look, here's another tear!
+Another and another! I did that when the first darky squealed."
+
+Of course we went to bed giggling.
+
+"I wish Tweedles had seen you, but they would not have been willing to
+be mere audience. As for me,--I have no desire to be classified as a
+human fly. I wonder if we will hear some wild tale from those silly
+darkies."
+
+But Mary was fast asleep before she could express her opinion. I could
+not sleep until I got the following limerick out of my system:
+
+
+THE HUMAN FLY
+
+        Our Mary, an actress so flighty,
+        Scaled a wall in her very best nighty.
+            A nail proved a snag
+            And tore her fine rag,
+        She came back a la Aphrodite.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+"BIG MEETIN'"
+
+
+I AWAKENED early the next morning in spite of having been manager of a
+movie studio at all hours of the night. Mary was sleeping heavily. After
+all, I fancy climbing up and down a brick wall is harder than merely
+watching someone else do it. She had a big scratch across her cheek and
+her thumb had bled on the pillow. She must have snagged it on the same
+nail she had her best nighty. I peeped out of my eastern window and
+found Dum Tucker was doing the same thing from hers.
+
+"Hello, honey! I'm so glad you're awake," she whispered. "Let's dress
+and go out."
+
+"Is Dee asleep?"
+
+"Sound! And the Lady Jessie is likewise snoozing, not looking nearly so
+pretty with her hair up in curl papers and her face greased with cold
+cream. I bet I can beat you dressing!"
+
+We sprang from our doors into the hall at the same time and feeling sure
+we were the only ones awake in all the great mansion, we had the
+never-to-be-scorned joy of sliding down the bannisters. I'd hate to
+think I could ever get so old I wouldn't like to slide down bannisters.
+Of course I know I shall some day get too old to do it, but not too old
+to want to.
+
+We ran out the great back door which opened on the formal garden.
+
+"My, I'm glad we waked! I was nearly dead to sit up all night," said
+Dum.
+
+"Me, too! Mary and I were awake very late. Did you hear anything?"
+
+"Did I!"
+
+"What did you hear?"
+
+"A strange scratching along the wall,--I thought it was a whole lot of
+snakes climbing up to our window. There is only one thing in the world I
+am afraid of, and that is snakes."
+
+"Mammy Susan says that 'endurin' of the war, they is sho' to be mo'
+snakes than in peaceable times.' Of course she has no idea that this war
+is away off across the water, and if it were inclined to breed snakes,
+it wouldn't breed them over here. But that snake you heard last night
+was Mary Flannagan scaling the wall. She is practicing all the time for
+the movies."
+
+"Pig, not to call us!"
+
+"I was dying to, but was afraid of raising too much rumpus."
+
+The garden was beautiful at all times, but at that early hour it was so
+lovely it made us gasp. A row of stately hollyhocks separated the flower
+garden from the vegetables. Banked against the hollyhocks were all kinds
+of old-fashioned garden flowers: bachelor's buttons, wall-flowers,
+pretty-by-nights, love-in-a-mist, heliotrope, verbena, etc. There was a
+thick border of periwinkle whose glossy dark green leaves enhanced the
+brilliancy of the plants beyond. One great strip was given up entirely
+to roses,--and such roses!
+
+"Gee! This is the life!" cried Dum, kneeling down among the roses, going
+kind of mad as usual over the riot of color. Dum's love of color and
+form amounted to a passion. "Only look at the shape of this bud and at
+the color way down in its heart. Oh, Page, I am so glad we came out!
+Only think, this rosebud might have opened and withered with not a soul
+seeing it if we had not happened along:
+
+         "'Full many a gem of purest ray serene
+        The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear--
+          Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
+        And waste its sweetness on the desert air.'"
+
+"I wonder where the servants are?" I queried. "At this hour in the
+country they are usually beginning to get busy. I tell you, Mammy Susan
+has 'em hustling by this time at Bracken."
+
+"I'm hungry as a bear! Don't you think we might get the old cook to hand
+us out a crust?" suggested Dum. "Getting up early always makes me
+famished."
+
+"Sure! She is a nice-looking old party and no doubt would be as pleasant
+as she looks. Her name is Aunt Milly."
+
+We made our way to the kitchen, determined to return to the garden to
+enjoy the crust or whatever the cook might see fit to give us. A
+covered way connected the summer kitchen with the wing of the house
+where the dining-room was. This open passage was covered with a lovely
+old vine, one not seen in this day and generation except in old places:
+Washington's bower. It is a very thick vine that sends forth great
+shoots that fall in a shower like a weeping willow. It has a dainty
+little purple blossom that the bees adore, and these turn later into
+squishy, bright red berries. The trunk of this vine is very thick and
+sturdy and twists itself into as many fantastic shapes as a wisteria.
+
+The kitchen was built of logs; in fact it was the original homestead of
+the family, having been erected by the earliest settlers at Price's
+Landing. Later on it had been turned into a kitchen when the mansion had
+been built. The great old fireplace with its crane and Dutch oven was
+still there, although the cooking was now done on a modern range. This
+black abomination of art, but necessity of the up-to-date housekeeper,
+was smoking dismally as we came in.
+
+"Aunt Milly, please give me a biscuit!" cried Dum to a fat back bending
+over the table.
+
+The owner of the back straightened up and turned. It was not Aunt Milly,
+but Miss Maria Price!
+
+"Oh!" was all we could say.
+
+The sedate black-silked and real-laced lady of the day before presented
+a sad spectacle when we made that early morning raid on the Maxton
+larder. In place of the handsome black silk she wore a baggy lawn
+kimono, and the fine lace cap had given place to a great mob cap that
+set off her moon-like face like a sunflower. Her countenance was so
+woebegone that it distressed us and two great tears were squeezing their
+way from her sad eyes.
+
+"Why, Miss Price! Please excuse us," I said, seeing that Dum was
+speechless.
+
+"Oh, my dear, it is all right now that you have seen me out here in this
+wrapper. These good-for-nothing darkies have one and all sent me word
+they are sick this morning and cannot come to work, and here I am with
+no breakfast cooked. I am so distressed that Harvie's friends should
+not be well served. What shall I do? What shall I do?"
+
+"Do! Why, let all of us help," exclaimed Dum.
+
+"Let his guests help! Why, my dear, I could not bear to do such a
+thing."
+
+"Well, you could bear to let us help a great deal better than we could
+bear having you work yourself to death and let us be idle," said I,
+putting my arm around her fat neck, that was just about the right height
+to put one's arm around. Her waist was out of the question, being not
+only so low down that I should have had to stoop to reach it but
+invisible at that, since it was, as I have said before, only an
+imaginary line.
+
+"I have never before in all the fifty years I have been keeping house at
+Maxton had to make a fire. I have done the housekeeping since Ma died.
+My sister-in-law, Harvie's grandmother, was too delicate to keep house,
+so I have always done it. I know exactly how things should be done but I
+have never had to do them. There has always been a cook in the kitchen
+at Maxton.--This is the first time.--And to think it should come to pass
+when Harvie's friends are here. I was opposed to having the house-party
+during big meeting. There is never any depending on the darkies at that
+time.--Oh me! Oh me!"
+
+"Now, Miss Price," I said, placing a chair behind her and gently pushing
+her heaving bulk into it, "you are to sit right here and tell Dum Tucker
+and me what to do. We love to do it."
+
+"But, child----"
+
+"First, let me pull out the dampers," I suggested, suiting the action to
+the word and thereby stopping the smoking of the range. "Now mustn't the
+rolls be made down?" I asked, seeing a great pan on the table with the
+lid sitting rakishly on one side of a huge mass of dough, already risen
+beyond its bounds.
+
+"Yes, but I----"
+
+"Let me do that. I love to fool with dough."
+
+"But do you know how?"
+
+"Of course I know how."
+
+After a scrubbing of hands made grubby by a weed I had pulled up in the
+garden, I began to make down the rolls after the manner approved by
+Mammy Susan, that most exacting of teachers.
+
+"Now what can I do?" demanded Dum.
+
+"You must sit still and tell us what next, and after we get things under
+way if you want the other girls to help, I'll call them."
+
+"The breakfast table must be set,--but, my dears, I can't bear to have
+guests working! Such a thing has never been known at Maxton!"
+
+Dum hastened to the dining-room where she exercised her own sweet will
+in the setting of the table. First she had the joy of cutting a bowl of
+roses for the center. She found mats and napkins in the great old
+Sheraton sideboard, and Canton china that Miss Price told her was the
+kind to use. The silver was still in the master's chamber where it was
+taken every night by the butler and brought out every morning by that
+dignified functionary. I think the non-appearance of the butler was
+almost as great a blow to Miss Price as the defection of the cook.
+
+"Jasper has been with us since before the war and the idea of his
+behaving this way!" she moaned. "I did not expect anything more from
+these flighty maids and the yard boy,--they have only been here five or
+six years,--but Milly and Jasper!"
+
+"But maybe they are ill," I said, trying to soothe her hurt feelings.
+
+"I don't believe a word of it! How could five of them get ill at once?
+More than likely that trifling Willie, the yard boy, has got religion.
+Milly told me he was 'seeking' and I have known there was something the
+matter with him lately, he has been so utterly worthless," and our
+hostess heaved a sigh with which I could thoroughly sympathize. I well
+knew that a "seeking" servant was but a poor excuse.
+
+"How well you do those rolls, my child! Who taught you?"
+
+Then I told Miss Maria of my old mammy who had been mother and teacher
+and nurse for me since I was born.
+
+I shaped pan after pan of turnovers and clover-leaves and put them aside
+for the second rising.
+
+"What next?"
+
+Miss Maria had decided to give over sighing and bemoaning, also
+apologizing for letting us work. She evidently came to the conclusion
+that the headwork had to go on and it was up to her to get busy in that
+line, at least. Dum and I were vastly relieved that she consented to sit
+still, as she took up so much room when she moved around that she
+retarded our progress quite a good deal. Seated in a corner by the
+table, she could tell us what to do without interrupting traffic.
+
+Herring must be taken out of soak and prepared for frying; batter bread
+must be made; apples must be fried (she did the slicing); coffee must be
+ground; chicken hash must be made after a recipe peculiar to Maxton,
+with green peppers sliced in it and a dash of sherry wine.
+
+The cooking part was easy, but keeping up the fire has always been too
+much for my limited intelligence. Wood and more wood must be poked in
+the stove at every crucial moment. In the midst of beating up an
+omelette one must stop and pile on more fuel. Peeping in the oven the
+rolls may be rising in regular array with a faint blush of brown
+appearing on each rounded cheek; the batter bread may be doing as batter
+bread should do: the crust rising up in sheer pride of its perfection
+sending forth a delicious odor a little like popcorn;--but just then the
+joy of the vainglorious cook will take a tumble,--the fire must be fed.
+
+"Now is this what you had planned for breakfast, Miss Maria? You see we
+have got everything under way, and if there was anything else I can do
+it," I asked.
+
+"Of course no breakfast is really complete without waffles," sighed the
+poor lady, "at least, that is what my brother thinks. He will have to do
+without them this morning, though."
+
+"Why? I can make them and bake them!"
+
+"But, child, you must be seated at the table with the other guests. I
+could not let you work so hard."
+
+"But I love to cook! Please let me!"
+
+"All right, but who can bring the hot ones in? It takes two to serve
+waffles. I, alas, am too fat to go back and forth."
+
+"Of course I am going to wait on the table," cried Dum, "and when I drop
+in my tracks, the other girls can go on with the good work."
+
+"Well, well, what good girls you are! I have been told that the girls of
+the present time are worthless and I am always reading of their being so
+inferior to their mothers, but I believe I must have been misinformed."
+
+"I hope you have been," laughed Dum. "My private opinion is that we are
+just about the same,--some good and some not so good; some bad and some
+not so bad. Anyhow, I am sure that there is not a girl on this party who
+would not be proud to help you, or boy, either, for that matter."
+
+"We shall have to call the boys to our aid, too, I am afraid," said
+Miss Maria, glancing ruefully at the wood-box. "The wood is low and we
+can't cook without wood, eh, Page?"
+
+"Won't I love to see them go to work," and Dum danced up and down the
+kitchen waving a dish-cloth.
+
+The quiet mansion was astir now. The rising bell had routed the sleepy
+heads out of their beds, and from the boys' wing came shouts of the
+guests who were playing practical jokes on one another or merely making
+a noise from the joy of living. Dee and Mary found us in the kitchen and
+roundly berated us for not calling them in time to help. Dee reported
+that Jessie Wilcox was still in the throes of dressing.
+
+"One of you might go pull some radishes and wash them and peel them,"
+suggested Miss Maria.
+
+Dee was off like a flash and came back with some parsley, too, to dress
+the dishes.
+
+"Mary, get the ice and see to the water," was the next command from our
+general. "I must go now and put on something besides this old wrapper,"
+and our aristocratic hostess sailed to the house, her lawn wings spread.
+
+Our next visitor was General Price himself, very courtly and very
+apologetic and very admiring. He had just learned of the defection of
+the servants when he called for his boots and they were not forthcoming.
+Jasper had blacked his boots and brought them to his door every morning
+for half a century, but no Jasper appeared on that morning. The boots
+remained unblacked.
+
+Another duty of the hitherto faithful butler had been to concoct for his
+master and the guests a savory mint julep in a huge silver goblet. This
+was sent to the guest chambers and every lady was supposed to take a sip
+from the loving cup. It was never sent to the boys, as General Price
+frequently asserted that liquor was not intended for the youthful male,
+and that he for one would never have on his soul that he had offered a
+drink to a young man. He seemed to have a different feeling in regard to
+the females, thinking perhaps that beautiful ladies (and all ladies were
+beautiful ladles in his mind) would never take more than the proffered
+sip.
+
+On that morning during the big meeting General Price must make his own
+julep. This he did with much pomp and ceremony, putting back breakfast
+at least ten minutes while he crushed ice and measured sugar and the
+other ingredients which shall be nameless. A wonderful frost on the
+silver goblet was the desired result of the crushed ice. The mint
+protruding from the top of the goblet looked like innocence itself. The
+odor of the fresh fruit mingling with the venerable concoction of rye
+was delicious enough to make the sternest prohibitionist regret his
+principles.
+
+"Now a sip, my dear; the cook must come first," he said, proffering me
+the completed work of art.
+
+"Oh no, General Price! I might not take even a sip if I am to cook
+waffles. I might fall on the stove."
+
+"A sip will do you good, just a sip!" he implored.
+
+It was good and just a sip did not do me any harm. I had not the heart
+to deny the courtly old man the pleasure of indulging in this rite that
+was as much a part of the daily routine as having his boots blacked and
+brought to his door or conducting family prayers.
+
+"Delicious!" I gasped.
+
+"More delicious now than it was," he declared, "since those rosy lips
+have touched the brim," and then he quoted the following lines with
+old-fashioned gallantry:
+
+        "'Drink to me only with thine eyes,
+           And I will pledge with mine;
+         Or leave a kiss but in the cup
+           And I'll not look for wine.
+         The thirst that from the soul doth rise
+           Doth ask a drink divine;
+         But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
+           I would not change for thine.
+
+        "'I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
+           Not so much honoring thee
+         As giving it a hope that there
+           It could not withered be;
+         But thou thereon didst only breathe,
+           And sent'st it back to me;
+         Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
+           Not of itself but thee!'"
+
+He bowed low and handed me a beautiful rosebud, the same, I believe,
+before which Dum had stood so enthralled earlier in the morning. I took
+a long sniff and then pinned it in my hair, much to the old gentleman's
+delight.
+
+He turned away to have another fair guest take the prescribed sip, and
+that naughty Mary Flannagan buried her nose in my beautiful rose and
+whispered:
+
+        "But thou thereon didst only breathe,
+           And sent'st it back to me;
+         Since when it blows and smells I swear,
+           Not of itself but whiskee!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE REASON WHY
+
+
+THAT was a very merry breakfast. From my kitchen fastness I could hear
+the peals of laughter as Mary pretended to be a field hand, brought into
+the dining-room for the first time, to wait on the table. I even left my
+waffles for a moment to peep in the door. Dee, who was helping with the
+waiting, spied me and gave the assembled company the tip, and before I
+could get away they grabbed me and pulled me into the room where I had
+to listen to three rousing cheers for the cook. A batch of waffles burnt
+up in consequence, although I ran down the covered way like Cinderella
+when the clock struck twelve. A warning smell of something burning gave
+me to understand my time was up.
+
+Baking waffles is a very exciting pastime. The metamorphosis that batter
+undergoes in almost a twinkling of an eye into beautiful crisp brown
+beauties is a never ending delight and joy to the cook. With irons just
+hot enough (and that is very hot indeed) and batter smooth and thin,
+smooth from much beating and thin from much milk and many eggs, I
+believe a baker of waffles can extract as much pure pleasure from her
+profession as a great musician can from drawing his bow across a choice
+Cremona; or a poet can from turning out successful verse; or a painter
+from watching his picture grow under his skilled hands.
+
+The house-party was full up at last, and then the cook and waitress must
+be seated in the places of honor and be waited on by the whole crowd.
+Not quite all of the crowd, I should have said, as Jessie was superior
+to waiting on anybody. She seemed quite scornful of us for being able to
+help Miss Maria.
+
+"I have never been an adept at the domestic arts," she said somewhat
+stiffly. "I could not cook or wash dishes if my life depended on it."
+
+"Humph!" sniffed Dum, "I reckon you could if you got good and hungry.
+Of course you couldn't do it well, that is, not as well as Page, for she
+can't be equalled. As for washing dishes,--you can take your first
+lesson after Page and Mary and Dee finish breakfast. All of these dishes
+have to be washed and there is no one to do it but the house-party."
+
+"Well, I guess not!" and Jessie looked at her pretty soft, beringed
+hands.
+
+"Very well then, you can do the upstairs work! Beds must be made, you
+know!"
+
+"Absurd! Do you take me for a housemaid?"
+
+"No, I wouldn't have you for one, but you might get a job for a few
+hours before the folks found out about you."
+
+Dum's tone was rollicking and good-natured. She seemed to have no idea
+that she was insulting the pretty Jessie. It never entered Dum's head
+that anyone would shirk a duty that was so apparent as taking the work
+of Maxton in hand.
+
+I enjoyed that breakfast very much. Harvie baked waffles for us and Wink
+White brought them in. The young men from Kentucky ran back and forth
+waiting on us, all of them making more noise and having more collisions
+than would have been the case had a regiment been feeding.
+
+Shorty had already begun to grease the buck-saw preparatory to sawing up
+wood for Miss Maria. He and Rags had volunteered to supply the fuel.
+Then the cows must be milked; the horses curried and fed; in fact, all
+the farm work must be done.
+
+I never saw nicer, more considerate boys than were on that party. They
+vied with one another in briskness and efficiency. They wanted to help
+us with dishwashing and housework, but there was enough outside work to
+keep them busy, and with all good intentions in the world, most
+men-folks are a hindrance rather than a help when it comes to so-called
+woman's work.
+
+How we did fly around! Miss Maria got real gay and giddy in the general
+whirlwind that ensued. Dum and Mary undertook to be housemaids, and such
+a spreading up of beds and flicking of dusters was never known. The beds
+did look a little bumpy, but what difference did it make? The dust they
+swished off with the feather dusters settled quietly back on the things,
+but why not? Maxton was beautifully kept and very clean but there is
+always dust on furniture in the morning, no matter how well it has been
+cleaned the day before. Jessie's bed they left unmade, declaring that
+she could sleep in the same hole for a month before they would even
+spread it up for her.
+
+"Lazy piece!" cried Dum. "I actually believe she does not mean to turn a
+hair."
+
+That young lady had taken herself off to the parlor where she was
+singing in the most operatic manner with a very well-trained strong
+voice with about as much sweetness to it as cut glass. The accompaniment
+she was rendering on the piano was brilliantly executed, so much so that
+I thought for a moment she had in a pianola record. I peeped in the
+parlor and smiled at her, fearing somehow that she must feel herself to
+be an outsider and that was why she was not entering into the fun of
+helping. I got no answering smile but something of a cold stare, so I
+beat a hasty retreat and hastened off to consult with Miss Maria about
+future meals.
+
+I found that lady sitting on a bench in the covered passage leading to
+the kitchen. Her spirit was willing but her flesh was too much for her.
+She must rest. I sank by her, not sorry at all to indulge in a little
+sly resting of my own. Cooking is great fun but certainly exhausting.
+
+"What for dinner, Miss Maria?"
+
+"Oh, my dear, I can't contemplate your helping about dinner, too!"
+
+I couldn't help having a little inward fun with myself over her speaking
+of my helping. I had certainly cooked breakfast myself, but since she
+fooled herself into thinking that I had only helped to cook it, it made
+no difference to me.
+
+"But someone will have to cook it unless the servants are miraculously
+cured in time for it."
+
+"That's so!" and she sighed a great sigh.
+
+"I know you wish we would all of us go home, but please don't wish it.
+We are having such a good time and don't want to leave one little bit."
+
+"Oh, my dear! Don't think I could have such inhospitable sentiments. My
+brother would be deeply distressed if he thought you thought I thought
+such things."
+
+Both of us laughed at her complicated thinks and then began the serious
+matter of dinner.
+
+"Thank goodness, I had those trifling creatures dress the chickens
+yesterday. That, at least, is out of the way."
+
+"Oh, good! Have you got them all dressed? Then let's have chicken gumbo.
+If we make enough of it, it will be the dinner, with a great dish of
+rice to help in each soup plate."
+
+"Splendid!" declared Dee, pausing for a moment to listen to the proposed
+menu. "And it will be such an economy in dishes, too. Just a plate and
+spoon all around and no frills."
+
+Dee had been as busy as possible washing dishes while Miss Maria wiped,
+and I cleared the table.
+
+"But, child, can you make a gumbo? It is very difficult, I am afraid."
+
+"Not a bit of it. I have Mammy Susan's recipe tucked away somewhere in
+my brain. I can get to work on it immediately and then it will be done
+for dinner. It can't cook too long."
+
+Dee and Wink undertook to gather the vegetables, but they took so long
+that a relief and search party had to be sent to the garden after them.
+
+They were so busy discussing the different kinds of bandages that they
+had forgotten their mission. Wink had taken a leaf from
+Adam's-and-Eve's-needle-and-thread and was demonstrating on Dee's arm
+the reverse bandage. Her other arm was already decorated with the figure
+eight style made from a long green corn leaf. How I wished Wink would
+treat me as sensibly as he did Dee. They seemed to be having such a good
+time as I, who was one of the search party, discovered them in the
+tomato patch solemnly debating the values of the various styles. Now if
+Wink had ever agreed to discuss such a thing as that with me he would
+have felt compelled to say all kinds of silly things, and as for
+bandaging my arm,--it would have been out of the question, as he would
+have felt it necessary to ask to kiss my hand or some such stuff.
+
+The right kind of gumbo must have tomatoes, okra, potatoes, onions and
+corn in it, and anyone who has served apprenticeship under Mammy Susan
+will make the right kind of gumbo. Miss Maria and I started in preparing
+those vegetables at nine o'clock and it took us one solid hour to
+finish, working as hard as we could go. I was beginning to be very fond
+of the old lady. She was so gentle and sweet. I asked her many questions
+about Maxton and its history, and since, like many gentlewomen of her
+age, she lived in the past, she was most happy to recount to me tales of
+the lovely old place and its aristocratic founders.
+
+"Oh, yes, we have a ghost," she laughed, when I asked her to tell me if
+there were any such inhabitants. "It is a lady ghost, too, and inhabits
+your wing of the house, as is the way with all the ladies of Maxton. It
+is the young sister of my great grandfather,--that makes her my great,
+great aunt."
+
+"Oh, please tell me about her!"
+
+"Well, all right, if you promise not to get scared. The darkies keep
+such tales going. They firmly believe in ghosts, and when they tell a
+ghost story they always say either they themselves have seen the dread
+shape or they know someone who has seen it. This ghost has not been seen
+at Maxton in my generation, but Jasper and Milly have heard the tale
+from their grandparents and they see that it is duly handed down to
+their grandchildren. The appearance of this spectre is supposed to
+presage dire calamity."
+
+"Do you know anyone who has seen it?" I asked, testing the skillet to
+see if it was hot enough to begin frying the chicken. Chicken for gumbo
+must be fried before you start the soup, if anything so rich and thick
+as gumbo could be called soup.
+
+"I knew an old man who thought he had seen it. Well, to go on with my
+tale:--this young great, great aunt of mine was engaged to be married to
+a gentleman of high degree, much older than herself. This of course was
+back in Colonial days. She had consented to the match in obedience to
+her father's commands, but she evidently did not relish it very much.
+The day came for the wedding and she was dressed in her white gown and
+veil. The company had assembled from miles around. A boat load of guests
+from Williamsburg had arrived and the feasting and dancing had begun.
+Among them was a young blade from over the seas who had paid court to
+the fair Elizabeth,--that was her name. It was whispered that she
+returned his love and that was the real reason for her reluctance to
+mating with the lord of high degree.
+
+"After being clothed in the wedding gown, Elizabeth had sent the women
+from her room on a plea that she must be alone to pray. She locked the
+door the moment they were gone and rushed to the window which was open,
+it being a warm moonlight night. Standing below the window was the
+lover. He called up to her to come down to him. The ivy was thick on the
+wall, as it is now, and for an agile young girl I fancy it was not such
+a very difficult climb. It must have taken a brave soul though to make
+the start. Many a time in my youth," and here Miss Maria blushed as red
+as one of the tomatoes she was peeling, "I have sat in that window, it
+is the room you are occupying, and tried how it would seem to climb down
+that wall. I have never done more than poke my foot out about an inch,
+though. Perhaps if the lover had been calling to me, it might have given
+me courage. Elizabeth got about half-way down when her long satin dress
+and veil got caught on a nail or snag of some sort, and no matter how
+she pulled she could not get loose. Just think of it! There the poor
+girl hung, with her lover frantically calling to her and the precious
+moments flying. Already they were knocking on the door of her chamber
+and crying out for admission. His steed was ready to fly with her if
+only she could get the gown loose. Material in those days was stouter
+than now. I'll wager anything that a piece of white satin could not be
+found now that would not tear, or any other material, for that matter."
+
+Remembering Mary's gown of the night before, I readily agreed with her.
+
+"Before the miserable lover could mount to her side to cut the dress
+loose, the plot was discovered and the poor girl had the agony of seeing
+her true love killed by the infuriated bridegroom to be. She swooned and
+it is said she never regained consciousness. Her poor little heart must
+have snapped in two. And now it is said that sometimes her white figure
+can be seen hanging from the ivied wall. Once in my youth the darkies
+thought they saw it as they were coming home from church on a moonlight
+night, but on investigation it turned out to be a towel that had blown
+out of the window and hung, perhaps on the identical nail that was the
+undoing of poor Elizabeth. I remember well," and she laughed like a girl
+again, "how scared they all of them were. It was in slave days and they
+were forced to come to work the next day, but nothing but being slaves
+could have made them come."
+
+"Oh, Miss Maria, Miss Maria!" I cried, dropping the potato I was
+peeling, "I know now what is the matter with your servants. They are not
+ill but they have seen the ghost!"
+
+And I told her about Mary's ambition and her escapade of the night
+before. The old lady almost rolled off her chair she laughed so. She was
+not one bit shocked but vastly interested.
+
+"To think of her doing it! No lover was calling her, either."
+
+"I don't know about that. How about it, Mary?" I called to my friend who
+had come down to help pick up chips now that the chamber work was
+accomplished.
+
+When I told Mary about the family ghost story and that she was no doubt
+responsible for the non-appearance of the servants, she was overcome
+with confusion. Miss Maria begged her to treat the matter as a joke.
+
+"Why, my dear, I never would have known all you dear girls as I now do
+if it had not happened. You would have come and gone as nothing but
+Harvie's guests, and now you are my own true friends. I am glad the
+reason why is unearthed, though, because now we can at least make those
+good-for-nothings come and wash the dinner dishes." She drew Mary down
+beside her on the bench.
+
+"But, Mary, you didn't answer me," I teased. "I asked you if a lover was
+calling you when you climbed down the wall."
+
+"Yes! He is calling me all the time!" cried Mary, striking an attitude
+of one being called by a lover. "His name is Douglas Fairbanks."
+
+"Douglas Fairbanks? I don't know the family," said dear old puzzled Miss
+Maria. "Who is Douglas Fairbanks?"
+
+"Why, Miss Maria, he is a movie actor, the very best ever!" explained
+Mary.
+
+"Where did you get to know him, child? Who introduced you?"
+
+"I don't know him, never saw him except on the screen!"
+
+"Ah, I see, a hero of romantic fiction!"
+
+"But he's not fiction--he's the realest flesh and blood person you ever
+saw in your life."
+
+Then Mary tried to tell our hostess of the wonders of the movie where
+Douglas was the star. The old lady endeavored to take it all in, but not
+having been to the city since the perfecting of the cineomatograph, it
+was up-hill work. Of course she knew that movies existed, but she could
+not grasp the joy of them, as she had nothing to go upon but the memory
+of a magic lantern.
+
+"Don't you like the theatre?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, indeed, I like it very much. To be sure I have never seen but two
+performances, but I got great enjoyment from them. You must remember, my
+dears, that I am country bred and have had little chance to see the city
+sights."
+
+I never realized before how cut off from the world persons are who
+depend on steamboats. Here was this dear lady, born and bred one of the
+finest ladies of the land, but being of a naturally retiring disposition
+and always having been occupied from her girlhood with keeping house she
+had let the world pass her by.
+
+"What were the two things you saw, Miss Maria?" asked Mary gently.
+
+"Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch and the Old Homestead. I was quite
+shocked at the latter, was really glad I was with a lady. I think I
+would have sunk through the floor from mortification had there been a
+gentleman with me."
+
+"The Old Homestead shocking?" I asked wonderingly. "Not the Old
+Homestead! It must have been something else."
+
+"Oh, no, I remember the title distinctly. It was when they had that
+scene with that naked statue in the parlor. It was terrible to me."
+
+What a compliment to have paid the author and actor of that time-honored
+play! Actually the statue of the Venus de Milo had shocked this simple
+soul from the country just exactly as Denman Thompson had made it do the
+old man in the melodrama. Mary and I didn't laugh, but we almost burst
+from not doing so.
+
+"And now I must send Harvie down to the quarters to make those
+good-for-nothings return. Sick, indeed! I intend to make every last one
+of them take a dose of castor oil and turpentine!"
+
+And the intrepid lady was as good as her word.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CIRCUS
+
+
+THE gumbo being made and nothing to do but cook it, and that quite
+slowly, I was able to run from my self-imposed duties for a while and
+join the crowd that had formed to go to the negro quarters and persuade
+them that they were not sick, that there was no ghost, and that their
+duty and interests lay at Maxton.
+
+The cabins were at least a quarter of a mile from the great house, and
+very comfortable and picturesque they were. The road lay through a
+beautiful oak forest and then skirted a corn field. Each cabin had a
+good piece of ground around it and from every chimney there arose a curl
+of blue smoke. They were evidently expecting a visit from the family,
+because there were several little pickaninnies waiting at a turn in the
+road, and when they saw us they set off in a great hurry shouting:
+
+"Dey's a-comin'! Dey's a-comin'!"
+
+"That's to give them time to get into bed before we get there," said
+Harvie sagely. "I wish I knew Latin and Greek as well as I do the
+coloreds' methods."
+
+Sure enough, we could see the little nigs running from house to house
+shouting the warning.
+
+"I reckon we would all learn Latin and Greek if it was as simple as our
+friends' machinations," I said. "I bet you this minute Aunt Milly is
+stirring up a cake or something for big meetin' and she will have to
+hurry up and get it out of sight."
+
+It so happened Aunt Milly's house was the first one we entered. Harvie
+knocked on the door gently and then more briskly when there was no
+answer. Finally a smothered sound penetrated the closed door and
+windows. "Ummmm! Ummmm!" Taking it to mean we must enter, we opened the
+door. I sniffed pound cake.
+
+Aunt Milly's cabin boasted but one room and an attic and a lean-to
+kitchen. The old woman, whose bulk was only equalled by Miss Maria's,
+was lying in bed. Her coal black face had no look of illness but one of
+extreme determination. She was showing the whites of her eyes like a
+stubborn horse.
+
+"How you do, Mr. Harbie?" she said thickly. "An' all de yuthers ob you?
+Won't you take some cheers and set a while?"
+
+"No, thank you, Aunt Milly, we only came to see how you were getting on
+and to tell you that Aunt Maria hopes you will be up in time to wash the
+dinner dishes."
+
+"Me? No, Mr. Harbie! I'm feared I is seen my last days er serbice."
+
+"Why, Aunt Milly, are you so ill as all that?"
+
+"Yessir! Yessir! I got a mizry in my back an' my haid is fittin' tow
+bus'. I ain't been able to tas'e a mouthful er victuals sence I don'
+know whin. My lim's is all of a trimble and looks lak my blood is friz
+in my gizzard."
+
+"Have you had the doctor?"
+
+"No, not to say recent! I was that sorry tow lay up whin yo' comp'ny
+was a-visitin' of yo' grandpaw, but whin mawnin' come I jes' warn't
+fitten tow precede."
+
+"It is strange that all of you should have got sick the same day, Aunt
+Milly," said Harvie, his eyes twinkling with his knowledge of the
+subject.
+
+"You don't say that that there Jasper an' them gals didn't go do they
+wuck?" asked the old woman, but her tone was somewhat half-hearted. She
+was evidently not an adept at dissembling.
+
+"Now, Aunt Milly, you know that not a single servant turned up at the
+great house this morning, and these young ladies had to do all the
+cooking and housework, and we boys did the outside work. You need not
+try to make me think you didn't know it. We know exactly what is the
+matter with all of you----"
+
+"Laws-a-mussy, Mr. Harbie! Th' ain't nuthin' 'tall the matter with me,
+but I's plum wo' out. I been a-cookin' nigh onter mos' a hunnerd years."
+
+"But all these other servants haven't been cooking or anything else
+anywhere near that long. We all of us know what is the matter: last
+night coming home from big meeting there wasn't a thing the matter. You
+all of you meant to come back to work this morning. You came home late,
+but you had promised Aunt Maria to stay on while my guests were here,
+and you meant to do it. The moon was shining bright and just as you came
+over the hill and got out of that bit of pine woods, off there towards
+the landing, you saw a ghost----"
+
+"Gawd in heaben, Mr. Harbie! Did you see her, too?" Poor old Aunt
+Milly's eyes were almost popping out of her head.
+
+"No, I didn't see her; I wish I had," and Harvie gave Mary a nudge. "But
+Miss Page Allison here saw it, and Miss Mary Flannagan knows all about
+it because she was the ghost."
+
+"She--she--she was which?"
+
+"It was this way, Aunt Milly," said Mary, going over close to the old
+woman's bed. "I wanted to see if I could climb down the ivy on the wall
+outside of our window, and just as all of you came home from church
+my--my--garment got hung on a nail and I couldn't budge for a moment. I
+snagged my thumb, too, see!"
+
+"Well, if that don't beat all!" was all the old woman had strength to
+say. She threw back the bedclothes and disclosed her ample person fully
+clothed in a purple calico dress. "Hyar, gimme room tow git out'n this
+hyar baid. I's got a poun' cake a-cookin' in de oben an' I s'picion it
+nigh 'bout time ter take it out." She rolled out of bed and waddled to
+the stove. "I's moughty skeered the fire done gonter git low while Mr.
+Harbie was a-argufyin'. It would 'a' made a sad streak in my cake, an'
+that there is somethin' I ain't never been guilty ob yit."
+
+"Now, Aunt Milly," said Harvie, when our minds were set at rest as to
+the perfection of the cake which was done to a beautiful golden brown,
+"you send for the rest of the servants and tell them the truth about the
+ghost and let them know they must be up at the great house within an
+hour."
+
+"Sho'! Sho', child!" she assured him.
+
+Grabbing a broom from the corner she jabbed it under the bed, thereby
+causing much squealing. Three little darkies rolled out, looking very
+much like moulting chickens from the combination of dust and feathers
+they had picked up from their hiding place.
+
+"Here you lim's er Satan! Run an' fotch all de niggers on de plantation
+and tell 'em I say come a-runnin' tow my cabin as fas' as they laigs kin
+a carry 'em. You kin tell 'em I'se in a fit an' that'll fetch 'em." She
+chuckled and sank on a chair to have her laugh out.
+
+The three emissaries made all haste with the joyful news and in an
+incredibly short time the cabin was full to overflowing. We went out in
+Aunt Milly's little yard and Harvie mounted an old beehive so he could
+make a speech. Aunt Milly drove her black guests out, and they, feeling
+they had been cheated of their natural rights since she wasn't having a
+fit, stood sullenly at attention while the young master told them the
+truth about the ghost and gave them the ultimatum about returning to
+Maxton.
+
+They were not so easy to convince as Aunt Milly. Mary's thumb might have
+been snagged in some other way. Had they not seen the ghost with their
+own eyes, the ghost they had been hearing of ever since they were
+children? When news came of Aunt Milly's being in a fit they were sure
+that the prophetic calamity was upon them presaged by the appearance of
+the ghost. Mr. Harvie could talk all he wanted to, but they were from
+Missouri. They had seen and were convinced by what they saw. They were
+respectful but firm in their attitude of unbelief. Jasper spoke:
+
+"I ain't a-gibin' you de lie, Mr. Harbie, but I've done seed de ghoses
+an' you ain't. I's plum skeered ter go up ter de gret house. My
+gran'mammy done tell me yars an' yars gone by dat whin dat ghoses comes
+fer me to clar out. She say she after some nigger, my gran'mammy did. De
+tale runs dat it war a nigger what tole de bridegroom dat her beau lover
+was a-fixin' ter tote her off, an' whin dat ere ghoses comes she ain't
+come fer no good."
+
+"What would make you believe that it was not a ghost, Uncle Jasper?"
+asked Mary, who seemed to feel it was up to her to prove the falsity of
+the ghost story.
+
+"Nothin' but seein' it warn't. I b'lieve it war a ghoses 'cause I seen
+it war a ghoses, an' whin I see it ain't a ghoses I gonter b'lieve it
+warn't, an' not befo'."
+
+Mary drew Tweedles and me off in whispered conference and then mounted
+the beehive by the side of Harvie and made her maiden stump speech. The
+darkies clapped with delight. They had never seen a female prepare to
+make a speech except under the stress and excitement of getting
+religion.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen----" she began.
+
+"Do she mean us?" came in a hoarse whisper from Willie, the yard boy,
+who was trying to get religion but who experienced great difficulties
+because of certain regulations in the way of not eating and not
+laughing.
+
+"Yes, I mean you," cried the orator. "Since I am the person who was
+climbing out of the window last night when you were coming from church,
+and since you will not believe it was not a ghost unless you see me do
+it, I will take the liberty to invite all of you up to the big house to
+see the show. It will be a free show, a circus in fact, and there may be
+a few other attractions, too. Will you come?"
+
+"Sho' we'll come!" came in a chorus.
+
+"How 'bout big meetin'?" asked one of the housemaids doubtfully.
+
+"Pshaw! This kin' er circus ain't no harm," declared one of the field
+hands. "Didn't de young miss say it war a free circus?"
+
+"Sho' it's free an' ain't we free, an' who gonter gainsay us?" and the
+other housemaid tossed her bushy head saucily.
+
+"Yes, an' free and free make six an' six days shall we labor an' do all
+the wuck, also the play, fur the sebenth is the sabbath of the Lawd my
+Gawd!" cried a voice from behind the cabin, and then there came into
+view the strangest figure I have ever beheld. It was a tall gaunt old
+colored man with a straggly grey beard. He was dressed in wide corduroy
+trousers and top boots; instead of a coat he wore a green cloth basque
+with a coarse lace fichu and tied around his waist was a long gingham
+apron. His hat was a wide brimmed black straw trimmed in purple ribbons
+with a red, red rose hanging coyly down over one ear. He was smoking a
+corn-cob pipe. In his hand he carried a covered basket.
+
+"Lady John!" exclaimed Harvie. "I am very glad to see you."
+
+"Well, now ain't you growed!" said the crazy old man in a voice as soft
+and feminine as one could hear in the whole south; but at that moment
+one of the little pickaninnies tried to peep in his basket, and with a
+masculine roar, he laid about him vigorously with his stick, and with a
+deep bass voice gave the little fellow a tongue lashing that drove him
+back into Aunt Milly's cabin.
+
+It seems that the old man had lost his reason many years before and was
+now obsessed with the desire to be considered a woman. He lived alone in
+a cabin some miles from Price's Landing, growing a little tobacco,
+enough corn for his own meal, a little garden truck and a few fruit
+trees. He had some chickens and when he could save enough eggs he would
+bring them over for Miss Maria Price to buy. The news of the ghost seen
+at Maxton had traveled to his cabin in that wonderful way that news in
+the country does travel, and he had come over to add his quota of
+superstition to the general store.
+
+Harvie introduced the old man to the members of the house-party. He
+caught hold of his apron as though it had been a silken gown and made a
+curtsey to each one.
+
+"Lady John, we are just asking all of these friends of ours to come up
+to the great house to a kind of circus. They won't believe that it was
+not a ghost they saw last night clinging to the ivy on the east wall and
+we are going to prove it to them. We shall be very glad to see you, too,
+if you want to come."
+
+"Thank you kindly, young marster, thank you kindly! I was on my way up
+there whin the crowd concoursing here distracted my intention. I'll be
+pleased to come, pleased indeed." He spoke in a peculiarly mincing way
+in a high voice.
+
+"I thought you was too pious like to go to the circus, Lady John,"
+giggled the frivolous housemaid.
+
+"Well, you thought like young niggers think--buckeyes is biscuit!" he
+declared in his natural bass. "The Bible 'stinctly states that there was
+circuses in them days, an' I ain't never heard er no calamities
+a-befallin' them what was minded to intend 'em."
+
+"Is that so?" asked Dee. "I can't remember where it said so, but then I
+do not know the Bible as I should."
+
+"Child! Look in the hunnerd chapter er Zekelums an' there you'll fin' at
+the forty-'leventh verse that Gawd said to Noah: 'Go ye to the circus
+tents of the Fillystimes an' get all the wile animiles that there ye
+fin' an' have a p'rade 'til ye gits to the ark of the government.' Now
+if'n the Lord Gawd warn't a-tellin' Noah to git them animiles together
+for a show, what was it for? What was it for, I say?"
+
+There was no answer to this pointed remark, so he continued:
+
+"An' Brother Dan-i-el! Brother Dan-i-el, I say! What was he a-doin' in a
+cage of man-eatin' lions for if he warn't in a circus? Answer me that!
+And Brother 'Lige! Who ever hearn tell of a gold chariot out of a circus
+p'rade? A chariot of fire! I tell you they was monstous shows in them
+days. If them Bible charack'-ters warn't too good to ack in a circus, I
+reckon this po' ole nigger ain't a-goin' to set up himanher self as
+bein' above lookin' on."
+
+"Maybe you will act in our circus then," suggested one of the boys.
+
+"No, sir! No, sir! I an' Brother 'Lish will be contentment jes' to look
+on. Brother 'Lish, he didn't make no move to jine the p'rade whin
+Brother 'Lige wint by in his gran' chariot. He was glad to stan' aside
+and let Brother 'Lige git all the glory. He caught the velvet cloak with
+all the gran' 'broidry and was glad to get it. I bet nobody shouted
+louder than him whin Brother 'Lige stood up 'thout no cloak in his pink
+tights. I b'lieve that Brother 'Lish was glad to get that cloak an' it
+come in mighty handy, 'cause they do say that whin he was a-sittin' in
+Brother 'Lige's cabin that very night, the mantel fell on him. No, sir,
+it never hurt him at all, but I reckon they couldn't have much fire 'til
+they got it put back. But he had the cloak to wrop up in."
+
+This delightfully original interpretation of the scriptures fascinated
+all of us. I could see Mary was listening very attentively to Lady John.
+He would be another stunt for the clever girl. Mary was a great
+impersonator and could mimic anything or anybody.
+
+"Are you going to have the circus after dinner or before?" asked one of
+the party.
+
+"Before!" cried Mary. "I'd be afraid to trust the ivy with my weight
+plus the gumbo I intend to eat."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE PERFORMANCE
+
+
+WHEN we got back to Maxton, whom should we find sitting on the bench by
+Miss Maria but Mr. Jeffry Tucker? He looked as though he had known her
+all her life and no one would have dreamed that this was his second
+meeting with her. His first had been the summer before when that
+enterprising gentleman had made a trip to Price's Landing to persuade
+Mr. Pore to wake up to the fact that Annie was invited to go to
+Willoughby on a beach party and that all he had to do was let her go.
+
+"Zebedee, darling! Where did you come from?" cried Dee, breaking away
+from the crowd as she spied her youthful father and racing like a wild
+Indian to get the first hug.
+
+"Richmond via Henry Ford!" he managed to get out as Dum scrouged in for
+her share of hugging.
+
+"And, Page! Little friend!" he said, freeing one of his hands and
+clasping mine.
+
+How I did love to be called his little friend! He never called me that
+in a way that made me feel young and silly, either, but somehow he gave
+me the impression that he was depending on me, I don't know just for
+what but for something. I was as glad to see him as his own Tweedles
+were, I am sure.
+
+"Did you come down alone?" I asked.
+
+"No, indeed, I had the pleasure of the learned discourse of Mr. Arthur
+Ponsonby Pore on my journey hither."
+
+"Oh, good! He is back, then, and maybe we can have Annie," said Dee.
+
+"She is upstairs now," announced that wonderful man.
+
+"Oh, Zebedee! I just knew you could work it!" and Dee gave him another
+bear hug for luck.
+
+Dee had sent a telegram to her father asking him to get hold of Mr. Pore
+and persuade him to hurry back and release Annie.
+
+Miss Maria was anxious to hear of our success with the servants and was
+delighted to know of their contemplated return. When we told her that
+the only way to get them back was to have a circus, she was greatly
+amused. Zebedee, of course, entered into the scheme with his usual
+enthusiasm.
+
+"When is it to be?"
+
+"Now!" I answered. "The darkies are on their way, ten thousand strong."
+
+"But, my dear, there are only five house servants," said Miss Maria.
+
+"Yes, but all the field hands had laid off, too, because of the ghost. I
+fancy all of the colored people from the quarters are coming up to be
+convinced against their will that the ghost was not a ghost."
+
+"But suppose Mary can't climb down again. She might kill herself this
+time," wailed the poor hostess.
+
+"Not at all!" I reassured her. "It will be much easier to do it in
+daylight than in darkness."
+
+"Of course it will!" declared the intrepid movie star. "And, besides,
+last night was only the dress rehearsal, and all actors say that the
+dress rehearsal is much more nervous work than the real performance. Now
+I must go dress my part," and so we raced up to our room where we found
+dear Annie unpacking her suitcase with such a happy smile on her face
+that she looked like an angel.
+
+How we did chatter! We had to tell her all about our plan for the
+society circus. Looking out of the window where Mary was to make her
+fearsome descent, Annie shuddered.
+
+"I don't see how you can do it."
+
+"If _you_ only could, what a bride you would make!" exclaimed Mary.
+
+Mary had determined to dress as a bride and now began the work of
+finding suitable duds. Miss Maria came in to assist just when we were
+beginning to despair. None of us was blessed with enough clothes to be
+willing to spare any of them for such a hazardous undertaking, none save
+Jessie Wilcox and she had them to spare, but we would not have asked her
+for any to save her. That superior young lady had been quite scornful
+of us while we were working and then afterwards on the walk to the
+quarters. Now she had gone off for a row on the river with Wink, who
+seemed to think that when I was so enthusiastic over the arrival of the
+father of my best friends he had a personal grievance. He liked Zebedee
+a great deal himself but seemed to think I did not have the same right.
+I am sure Jessie was a brave girl to go rowing with a man who had such a
+one-sided way of looking at things. Anyone with such a biased judgment
+could not be trusted to trim a boat, I felt.
+
+When Miss Maria found out our trouble, she had Harvie bring from the
+attic a little old haircloth trunk, and throwing it open, told us to
+help ourselves. It was filled with all kinds of old-fashioned gowns,
+some of them of rich brocade and some of flowered chintz. At the very
+bottom we unearthed a wedding dress which had belonged to some dead and
+gone Price, Miss Maria did not even know to whom. It was yellow with
+age but had not a break in it. It was some squeeze to get the bunchy
+Mary in it, but with much pulling in and holding of the breath we
+finally got it hooked.
+
+"And here's a veil!" cried Dum, who had been standing on her head in the
+trunk hunting for treasures.
+
+It was nothing but a piece of white mosquito netting that had been put
+in this trunk by mistake evidently, but it was quite a find to us, and
+with a few dexterous twists we had Mary standing before us a blushing
+bride.
+
+"How about your shoes, Mary?" I asked. "Last night you said you had to
+have bare toes to dig in the wall."
+
+"So I have! Gee, what are we to do about it? It would never do to have a
+barefoot bride; but I simply could not climb down in shoes."
+
+"I have it!" cried Dum. "Let's have a cavalier down on the ground, your
+'beau lover,' you know, like the Elizabeth of long ago, and you take off
+your slippers and throw them down to him."
+
+"Good! Page, please go tell Shorty I need him."
+
+Shorty was game and in a twinkling of an eye we had him rigged out as a
+very presentable if rather youthful "beau lover."
+
+The darkies had come and were seated on the ground about twenty feet
+from the house. News of a free show had spread like wildfire and I am
+sure at least fifteen were gathered there. It seemed hard that we must
+amuse fifteen to get five.
+
+The show opened with a boxing match between the young men from Kentucky,
+Jack Bennett and Billy Somers. This was most exciting and nothing but
+the presence of General Price kept the darkies from putting up bets on
+the fight.
+
+Next on the program was the Tuckers' stunt: Dum and Dee, back to back,
+were buttoned up in two sweaters which they put on hind part before and
+then fastened on the side, Dum's to Dee's and Dee's to Dum's.
+
+"This, Ladies and Gentlemen," said Zebedee, who was doing the part of
+showmaster, "is Milly Christine, the two-headed woman. She is the most
+remarkable freak of nature in the world to-day. She has two heads, four
+legs, four arms, but only one body. She is very well educated and can
+speak several languages at the same time. She also can sing a duet with
+herself (at least she thinks she can). Fortunately she is in love with
+herself, otherwise she would get very bored with herself. There is only
+one difficulty about being this kind of a twin: if you don't like what
+your twin likes you have to lump it. Now Milly, here, sometimes eats
+onions and poor Christine has to go around with the odor on her breath;
+and Christine got her feet wet and poor Milly has caught a bad cold from
+it." With this Dee sneezed violently, a regular Tucker sneeze which was
+as good as a show any time. "Milly is always getting sleepy and wanting
+to go to bed when Christine feels like dancing." Dee put her head on her
+breast and gave forth stertorous snores while Dum gaily waltzed around
+dragging the sleeping twin. There were roars of applause.
+
+Next Harvie came around the house walking on his hands and Jim Hart
+doing cartwheels. Rags had the stunt known as "Come on, Eph!" It is a
+strange thing, where the performer wiggles and shakes himself until his
+clothes seem to be slipping off. All the time he emits sounds from which
+one gathers that he wants Eph to come on. This brought down the house
+and Rags had an encore.
+
+I had to dance "going to church" while the twins patted for me. I never
+did have any little parlor tricks but they would not let me off. The
+darkies treated it quite seriously and when I went around shaking hands,
+which is part of the dance, they arose and joined the dance. This broke
+the ice and warmed them up for the ghost scene soon to follow.
+
+The circus was proving a great success. The rows of happy black faces
+gave evidence of that. We had decided to have some music next, but made
+the great mistake of putting Annie on the program ahead of Jessie. It
+was taken as an insult and that spoiled piece refused to sing at all.
+Annie sang charmingly, however. She accompanied herself on a banjo, and
+if my dance had started the darkies, her song got them all going. She
+sang, "Clar de Kitchen." I wonder if my readers know that old song. It
+was famous once on every plantation but in this day of rag time and
+imitation darky songs one hardly ever hears it.
+
+
+CLAR DE KITCHEN
+
+      In ol' Kentuck, in de arternoon,
+      We sweep de flo' wid a bran new broom,
+      And arter dat we form a ring,
+      And dis de song dat we do sing:
+
+  _Chorus_--
+
+      O, clar de kitchen, ol' folks, young folks,
+      Clar de kitchen, ol' folks, young folks,
+      Ol' Virginy never, never tire.
+
+      I went to de creek, I couldn't get across,
+      I'd nobody wid me but a ol' blin' horse;
+      But ol' Jim Crow come a-ridin' by,
+      Says he, "Ol' fellow, yo' horse will die."
+        It's clar de kitchen, etc.
+
+      My horse fell down upon de spot.
+      Says he, "Don't you see his eyes is sot?"
+      So I took out my knife, and off wid his skin,
+      When he comes to life I'll ride him agin.
+        So clar de kitchen, etc.
+
+      A jay-bird sat on a hickory limb--
+      He winked at me and I winked at him;
+      I picked up a stone and I hit his shin,
+      Says he, "You'd better not do dat agin."
+        So clar de kitchen, etc.
+
+      A bull-frog, dressed in soger's clothes,
+      Went in de field to shoot some crows;
+      De crows smell powder and fly away--
+      De bull-frog mighty mad dat day.
+        So clar de kitchen, etc.
+
+      I hab a sweetheart in dis town,
+      She wears a yaller striped gown;
+      And when she walks de streets around,
+      De hollow of her foot makes a hole in de ground.
+        Now clar de kitchen, etc.
+
+      Dis love is a ticklish ting, you know,
+      It makes a body feel all over so;
+      I put de question to Coal-Black Rose,
+      She's as black as ten of spades, and got a lubly flat nose.
+        Now clar de kitchen, etc.
+
+      "Go away," says she, "wid your cowcumber shin,
+      If you come here agin I stick you wid a pin."
+      So I turn on my heel, and I bid her good-bye,
+      And arter I was gone she began for to cry.
+        So clar de kitchen, etc.
+
+      So now I'se up and off you see,
+      To take a julep sangaree;
+      I'll sit upon a tater hill
+      And eat a little whip-poor-will.
+        So clar de kitchen, etc.
+
+      I wish I was back in ol' Kentuck,
+      For since I lef' it I had no luck--
+      De gals so proud dey won't eat mush;
+      And when you go to court 'em dey say, "O, hush!"
+        Now clar de kitchen, etc.
+
+Of course before Annie got through, everybody was joining in the chorus,
+and the darkies were patting and some of them dancing. There wasn't the
+ghost of a ghost in their minds now and really we might have dispensed
+with the grand finale as far as they were concerned. Maxton was no
+longer a place to be shunned; but Mary was to go through with her act
+before lunch and I for one knew that that gumbo was stewing down mighty
+thick. I stole off once and stirred it and put it back a little.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE GHOST OF A GHOST
+
+
+THE last patter occasioned by Annie's spirited tune had died away and a
+sudden hush fell upon the seated throng. It was time for the great act.
+We thought the impressiveness of the scene would be heightened if
+someone would tell the story. General Price suggested Lady John as the
+best raconteur of the neighborhood. Of course Lady John was more than
+pleased to comply. He loved to be in the lime light and to show off.
+This was his opportunity.
+
+"Ladies, gemmen an' niggers, what ain't neither, some er you," he
+declaimed, standing up on an ivy-covered stump and making his inimitable
+curtsey, "I is a-makin' this speechifying at the inquest of the white
+folks an' if respec' is not handed to me it is also infused to them."
+That rather silenced the tittering that Lady John's elevation had
+caused.
+
+"Gen'l Price is inquested me to lay befo' de meetin' de gospel of de
+ghoses what is thought by some to hant these here abode of plenty.
+Without more pilaverin' I'll lay holt the shank of the tale.--Mos' about
+a thousan' years ago whin my gran'mammy warn't mo'n a baby an' Gen'l
+Price here, savin' his presence, warn't even so much as thought about
+although his amcestroms were abidin' here, the tale runs they war a
+young miss of the family by name Lizzy Betty. Miss Lizzy Betty war that
+sweet an' that putty that all the young gemmen war mos' ready to eat her
+up. Ev'y steamboat that come a-sailin' up de ribber brought beaux for
+Miss Lizzy Betty. One young man come all dressed in gold an' wid a long
+feather in his hat an' a sword as long as a hoe han'le. He had no land
+an' he had no boat but he come on his hoss a-ridin' ober de hills, an'
+Miss Lizzy Betty she done tol' him she would be his'n through sickness
+an' through healthfulness.--But, ladies an' gemmen an' you niggers what
+is 'havin' better'n I ever seed you 'have befo', ol' Marse Price he got
+yuther notions in his haid. He see no reason why Miss Lizzy Betty
+shouldn't marry to suit him stid er herse'f. They was a rich ol' man
+what didn't carry all his b'longin's on his back, an' ol' Marse Price he
+go to de sto' an' come back with a dress an' veil for Miss Lizzy Betty
+an' he say fer her to go put it on an' he'd fotch the preacher. An'
+'twas all the po' young thing could do to git word to her beau lover.
+All the comp'ny was dissembled an' de bride had comb out her har an' put
+on de dress an' veil, whin she say to her frien's an' de nigger maid fer
+them to lef her alone fer a moment so she could wrastle in prayer. So so
+soon as they got out her room, she locked de do' an' thin she peeped
+out'n de winder, an' thar, kind an' true, was de beau lover."
+
+At this point Mary poked her head out of the window and Shorty appeared
+below brave in all his finery, although it was not of pure gold as in
+Lady John's version. This was some astonishment to the old tale teller
+and he stopped in his narrative.
+
+"Hist!" called the bride to Shorty below. "Are you there, sweetheart?"
+
+"Aye, aye!" answered the future bluejacket. "Can you climb down the wall
+or shall I come up to you and carry you off in my flying machine?"
+
+"I am coming down!" choked Mary. "But, Algernon, I cannot scale the
+fearsome wall in shoes and hose; what must I do?"
+
+"Take them off, fair Lizzy Betty, and throw them down to me."
+
+With that, Mary threw down to the faithful Shorty some huge tennis
+shoes, the property of Harvie. Shorty caught them, one at a time, and
+each catch felled him to the earth, much to the delight of the audience.
+
+Then began the dangerous act. The agile Lizzy Betty was out of the
+window in a twinkling of an eye. Her mosquito net veil floated in the
+breezes. Her satin train she managed with great dexterity, kicking it
+from her, thereby disclosing to view the blue serge gym bloomers she was
+wearing. She swung herself down until midway she came upon the fated
+snag; there she paused and deliberately hooked her veil in the nail.
+
+Here old Lady John, seeing his chance, took up the tale and began:
+
+"As Miss Lizzy Betty was a-hurryin' down, an' she sho' could clam like a
+cat, she got her finery cotched on a rusty nail, an' thar she hung as
+helpless as a ol' coon skin tacked on de barn do'. De beau lover he
+dance up an' down like he goin' crazy."
+
+Shorty began to prance and cry out to his lady love; but she hung there
+weeping in loud boo hoos.
+
+"Bymby ol' Marse Price 'gun ter 'spicion sompen, an' he up'n bang on de
+chamber do'. 'Hyar there, Lizzy Betty! Come on an' git married! The
+victuals is a-gittin' col' whilst you is a-prayin'.' Po' Miss Lizzy
+Betty could a-hear 'em hollerin' and beatin' an' bangin', an' still her
+dress it cotch on de nail. Jes' then de rich ol' bridegroom come
+a-shamblin' roun' de house, an' he an' de beau lover clasp one anudder
+in mortal death grips. De ol' man, he got so clost to him dat de sword
+what was as long as a hoe han'le didn' do de beau lover no good
+whatsomever, but de lil' penknife what de ol' man carry for to whittle
+with went clean home to de beau lover's heart."
+
+At the proper cue, Wink, who had submitted to be dressed up in a red
+table cover with a Santa Klaus beard made out of a switch borrowed from
+Miss Maria, came sidling around the house.
+
+"Vilyun!" he cried, and grabbing Shorty around the waist, they wrestled
+and swayed until Shorty's long silk stockings, borrowed from Dum, came
+down and hung around his feet, and his fancy trunks, nothing more nor
+less than a bathing suit carefully rolled up, came unrolled and hung
+down in a most ludicrous manner. Finally the deadly penknife was dug
+into his ribs and he expired, calling to the lovely Lizzy Betty.
+
+"An' de lubly Miss Lizzy Betty, she tuk a fit then an' thar an' if'n her
+paw hadn't er got a ladder an' gone up'n unhooked her, she'd a-been
+hangin' thar yit, same as in dis hyar circus," and Lady John pointed
+impressively at the bunchy figure of Mary clinging to the ivy with
+fingers, teeth and toe-nails.
+
+The applause could have been heard down at the landing, I am sure. Mary
+unfastened her mosquito net veil from her head and finished her descent,
+leaving the veil caught to the snag.
+
+"Now, you black rascals," cried General Price, "you can see the ghost
+any night you've a mind. There she hangs, and I reckon I'll leave her
+there to shame you with. Now get to work!"
+
+His words were stem but his face wore a smile and his tone was kindly.
+The field hands went off to work, the uninvited guests melted away, and
+the house servants took up their tasks where we had left off.
+
+Willie, the yard boy, wore a broad grin on his countenance. I heard him
+say to one of the housemaids:
+
+"I done mist my chanst for de kingdom dis year. I 'lowed I'd come
+through to-night, but these hyar carryin's on done flimflammed me. I
+been a-laughin' an' singin' an' what's more a-dancin', an' 'twarn't no
+David a-dancin' befo' de Lord, nuther. 'Twas jes' a-pattin' an' Clar de
+Kitchen dance. I hear rumors of gumbo for dinner, too, an' I sho' is
+glad I done turned from grace. I hope de young misses what concocted of
+de gumbo done put my name in de pot. Dis here seekin' is pow'ful
+appetizin'."
+
+Our circus had been a decided success. Old and young, black and white
+had enjoyed it. Mary felt that she had redeemed herself. Had she not
+scared the servants off and then wiled them back? Had she not held
+thousands thrilled and breathless while she made her perilous descent?
+
+"It is wonderful for you to be able to climb that way," said our courtly
+host. "I have never seen a young lady so agile."
+
+"But I shall have to learn to climb in shoes," sighed our movie star.
+"Douglas Fairbanks can."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE PICNIC
+
+
+WHEN a crowd of young people get together there is sure to be a picnic
+if there is a spark of life in them. There were many sparks of life in
+this crowd, enough to supply many picnics.
+
+We had been at Maxton ten days when the picnic came off, and we had had
+ten days of unalloyed fun. Of course, we had many gags on each other and
+jokes that were only jokes because we were on a house-party together.
+Those jokes if told would sound very flat, indeed. I believe there is no
+bore so great as the person who has been off with a crowd for a
+fortnight and comes back and tries to bring to life all the silly jokes
+that were perpetrated. They may have been brilliant and witty at the
+time, but it takes the setting and the circumstance to make them appear
+so to someone not blessed with an invitation to said house-party.
+
+Mr. Tucker had come and gone and come again when we decided to go on the
+picnic. His faithful Henry Ford could bring him to Price's Landing in
+about one-fourth of the time it took if one trusted to the deliberate
+meanderings of the steamboat. He was a favorite with all of the party,
+young and old, and his arrival was hailed with delight. Miss Maria put
+on her best and filmiest lace cap for his benefit, and to her delight,
+that wonderful man noticed it and talked to her about old lace with a
+knowledge that astounded her.
+
+He told me afterwards he found lace a topic which always interested old
+ladies, so he had deliberately made it his business to find out about
+lace and be prepared to converse on the subject. He also had some
+general knowledge of crochet stitches, and knew how much yarn it took to
+knit a sweater. It was too ludicrous to see him solemnly talking fancy
+work with some ancient dame. Tweedles and I have been sent off into
+hysterics when we have found him bending over a rainbow afghan, with
+some old lady eagerly asking his advice as to the depth of the border
+or something else equally feminine. He seldom went home, after a
+week-end spent at some resort, that he did not have a commission to
+match embroidery silk for some lady who had calculated wrong, or send
+back a bale of wool for some energetic person who had suddenly decided
+to knit socks for the poor Belgians or a sweater for a long-suffering
+male relative. Certainly Zebedee's interest and knowledge on the subject
+of lace caps would have won Miss Maria's affections had they not already
+been his.
+
+General Price was as glad to see him as was his old sister. Of course,
+the European war was of paramount interest to everyone during those
+years, and Jeffry Tucker always brought some item of news to be
+recounted and discussed. He came laden with newspapers and magazines,
+and the general would bury himself under them, only emerging for meals.
+He and Zebedee would spend hours discussing the situation. Topographical
+maps were studied until one would think those two gentlemen could have
+found their way blindfolded over every inch of the western front.
+
+The Mexican situation, too, must be thoroughly threshed out. The old
+warrior was like some ancient war horse that sniffs the battle from
+afar. As a veteran of the Civil War he had many experiences to recount
+and analogies to bring forth. Mr. Tucker listened to him with an
+attention that was most flattering. Naturally General Price freely
+announced that Tucker was the most agreeable man of his acquaintance.
+
+Mr. Arthur Ponsonby Pore spent one evening with us at Maxton and the
+general and Zebedee hoped to get some new outlook from their English
+acquaintance on the subject of the war that so nearly touched him, since
+many of his kinsmen must surely be in the trenches; but Mr. Pore's
+interest seemed purely academic, and as his knowledge was principally
+gained from two- and three-week-old London _Graphics_, those voracious
+gentlemen got but little satisfaction from the hours spent with Arthur
+Ponsonby.
+
+"He cares more about what language will finally be spoken on the
+Servian border than he does about the submarine menace!" cried Zebedee
+indignantly, coming out on the gallery where I was getting a breath of
+air after a particularly trying dance with poor Wink, who never had
+learned how. We danced almost every night at Maxton,--tread many a
+measure, as our dear old host put it. Dee said she thought Wink was a
+good dancer and she seemed to be able to keep step with him very well,
+but the Gods evidently had ordained that Wink and I could do nothing in
+harmony. He either stepped on my toes or I stepped on his,--the latter
+arrangement I much preferred.
+
+"Well, when you come right down to it," I said, defending poor Mr. Pore,
+"that is, after all, a very important thing. What language is to be
+spoken there will mean which side is victorious."
+
+"I know that, little Miss Smarty, but I also know if I have to listen
+any longer to that Britisher's rounded periods, what language will be
+spoken here,--it will not be fit to print, either. How can a man sit
+still down on the banks of a river in a foreign country and feel that it
+is not up to him to do a single thing for his country when her very
+existence is in peril!"
+
+"But what can he do?"
+
+"Do? Heavens, Page, he can do a million things!"
+
+"He is too old to fight."
+
+"No one is ever too old to fight,--that is, to put up some kind of a
+fight. He does not even contribute to a relief fund! He as good as told
+me he did not. He says he is afraid that what he sent might fall into
+the hands of the Germans and help them, so he considers it more
+patriotic not to send anything. I've been taking up for that man against
+Tweedles, but ugh! I'm through now."
+
+"Oh no, you are not," I laughed; "if Mr. Pore should come out on the
+porch this minute and ask a favor of you, I bet you would be just as
+nice to him as you always have been."
+
+"Never! Five pounds of Huyler's if I am not as cold as a fish to His
+Nibs!"
+
+At this psychological moment His Nibs appeared.
+
+"Aw, I say, Mr. Tucker, when you return to Richmond, will you be so kind
+as to do a little commission for me?"
+
+Zebedee made inarticulate noises in his throat and Mr. Pore continued:
+
+"Some freight has gone astray and if you could look it up from that end,
+it would be of great assistance to me."
+
+"Have you written about it?" Zebedee's manner was not quite so
+Zebedeeish as I could have wished, since five pounds of Huyler's was at
+stake.
+
+"No, I have not corresponded with the wholesale firm from whom I
+purchased the goods, as I heard from my daughter that you were expected,
+and I considered that it would be much more satisfactory to all
+concerned if you could give it your personal attention."
+
+As soon as Mr. Pore mentioned Annie, Zebedee seemed to have a change of
+heart. He evidently felt that Annie's father must be cajoled into good
+behavior, and nothing must be done or said to make that stubborn parent
+have an excuse for taking any pleasures from Annie.
+
+"Certainly, Mr. Pore," he said politely, if a little distantly. "Just
+give me your bill of lading and I will look into the matter for you."
+
+In my mind's eye I saw the five pounds of candy. I had certainly won.
+But was it fair of me to take advantage of poor Zebedee's tender heart?
+Certainly not!
+
+"Shall it be chocolates?" he asked, when Mr. Pore had finished his
+transaction and taken himself off.
+
+"It shall be nothing!" I exclaimed. "Don't you know I know why you were
+decent to the old fish? It was not just plain politeness that made you
+do it, it was your feeling for Annie, poor little thing!"
+
+"How do you know so much?"
+
+"Why, I saw you change your mind the moment he dragged in Annie, and I
+knew what you were thinking just as much as though you had said it
+aloud: 'Don't do anything to make things hard for Annie.' Now isn't that
+so?"
+
+"Page, you are uncanny! Can you read everybody's mind?"
+
+"Of course not! Only yours," I laughed.
+
+"Do you know what I am thinking now?" He looked at me very intently. The
+light from the hall was flooding the gallery and I could see way down
+into his clear blue eyes.
+
+"N-o!" I hesitated, and I am afraid blushed, too. "But I wish you would
+think that it would be nice to go try that new wiggly dance Jessie
+Wilcox has just brought from New York."
+
+"I see, if you can't read my mind all the time, you can at least make me
+think what you want me to. Come on, honey, and show me the dance."
+
+I got the candy in spite of my protestations of not deserving it.
+
+The picnic was to be at Croxton's Ford, a beautiful spot about three
+miles down the river. The naphtha launch held eight quite comfortably
+and the rest were to go in rowboats. Mary and Shorty insisted upon
+paddling the canoe, although they were warned that it would be a tiring
+job, especially coming back.
+
+Miss Maria had planned to go with us although an all day picnic was a
+great undertaking for one of her shape, but she was very particular with
+girls intrusted to her and chaperoned most religiously. On the very
+morning of the picnic, sciatica seized her and she simply could not get
+out of bed. The general had business at the court-house and was off very
+early in the morning, so his going was out of the question. Miss Maria
+lay there groaning and moaning, miserable that her conscience could not
+consent to our going on such a jaunt, unchaperoned. As Tweedles and I
+had never been overchaperoned, in fact knew very little about such
+necessities, it seemed absurd to us.
+
+"Do you really mean we can't go without a chaperone?" wailed Dum, who
+had set her heart on a long row in a little red boat that appealed to
+her especially.
+
+"My dear, I am so sorry! I would get up if I could."
+
+"But I wouldn't have you get up, dear Miss Maria. I just want you to lie
+still and get well. We don't need a chaperone!"
+
+"I know you don't need one, my child, but I have never heard of a picnic
+at Croxton's Ford without a chaperone."
+
+"But Zebedee's a grand chaperone," put in Dee. "He is that particular!
+Why, Dum and Page and I have never been chaperoned in our lives."
+
+"Zebedee's the strictest thing!" maintained Dum.
+
+"So he may be," smiled the old lady, although one could see that the
+twinges in her poor hip were giving her great agony, "but as perfect as
+he is, he is not a woman."
+
+"No,--he is certainly not that."
+
+"Jessie Wilcox has never been on a picnic in her life without a
+chaperone, and I could not consent to one from Maxton unless it was
+perfectly regular."
+
+A tap on the door disclosed the sympathetic Zebedee.
+
+"Please let me come in," he begged.
+
+After a hasty donning of boudoir cap and bed sacque, he was admitted.
+
+"Mr. Tucker, I am so sorry, but I cannot let the girls go on a picnic
+without a chaperone," said the old lady.
+
+"Of course not!" and his eyes twinkled. "I'm going, though, and I am a
+perfect ogre of a chaperone, eh, Page?"
+
+"Yes, something fierce, but Miss Maria says you are not a woman."
+
+"That's so!" he said, puckering up his brows. We were mortally sure he
+was going to find a way. He always did. "How about Aunt Milly? She is
+perfectly respectable and would guard the young ladies like gold, I am
+sure."
+
+"We-ll, I remember before the war we often went great distances with our
+maids. I think she would do. Please send her to me."
+
+Zebedee rushed to do her bidding, but he evidently had an interview with
+Aunt Milly before he sent her to Miss Maria, as that old darky entered
+the bed chamber in a broad grin, tying something up in the corner of
+her bandanna handkerchief as she came.
+
+"Milly, I want you to chaperone for me to-day," said the poor invalid,
+groaning as she tried to move a bit in her great mahogany bed.
+
+"Sho', Miss Maria! Does you want me to do it wif goose grease? Or maybe
+you'd like dat mixture er coal ile an' pneumonia? Dat's a great mixture.
+'Twill bun you up but it sho' do scatter de pain."
+
+"I don't mean massage, I said chaperone," and Miss Maria laughed in
+spite of her sciatic nerve.
+
+"Yassum! I 'lowed you meant rub, an' I's mo'n willin' to rub. You'll hab
+to 'splain. I ain't quite sho' in my min' what shopper-roonin' is, but
+if it'll ease yo' pain, you kin jes' call on ol' Milly."
+
+"It would ease my pain greatly if you would go with the young ladies on
+the picnic."
+
+"Cook for 'em?"
+
+"Oh no, Aunt Milly," I interrupted, "we never let the chaperone
+cook,--just to look after us and keep us straight."
+
+"Lawsamussy, chile! You all don't need nobody to keep you straight. Th'
+ain't nothin' wrong wid you all but jes' you's a little coltish."
+
+"I know they don't need anyone, Milly, but I have never heard of a
+picnic at Croxton's Ford without a chaperone, and I wouldn't be willing
+for them to go without one."
+
+"All right, Miss Maria! But you ain't thinkin' 'bout sendin' me nowhar
+in one er them thar skifty boats, is you?"
+
+"Oh no, Aunt Milly!" said Dee reassuringly. "You must have a comfortable
+seat in the stern of the naphtha launch. We will give you the place Miss
+Maria would have had could she have gone."
+
+"Well, Gawd save us! I ain't nebber set foot on or in the ribber in all
+my life an' I been born an' bred on its banks, too," and the old woman
+drew forth a big red bandanna handkerchief and wiped her eyes.
+
+As she did so she came upon the something round and hard tied up in its
+corner, and at the same time she glanced up at Mr. Tucker. He, in a
+seemingly absent-minded way, put his hand in his pocket and jingled his
+keys and coin.
+
+"Well, all right, Miss Maria! If you say I mus' go, I reckon 'tain't fer
+me to gainsay you. Who gonter do my wuck at home?"
+
+"There won't be much work to do, Milly, since all of the young people
+are going away, and the general has planned to spend the day at the
+court-house. The lunch baskets are ready, are they not?"
+
+"Yassum! I been up sence sunup a-packin' 'em. It seemed like ol' times
+to be a-packin' all them victuals. I 'member what a gret han' you was
+for pickaniggers whin you was a gal. I reckon it's a-cuttin' all them
+samwidges yistiddy dat done combusticated yo' hip now. You better let me
+rub you befo' I go a shopper-roonin'."
+
+"Thank you, Milly, but if you chaperone, that will be work enough for
+you for to-day. You had better get ready now. Tell Willie to take you to
+your cabin in the buggy and wait and drive you back. You must hurry and
+not keep the young ladies waiting."
+
+Aunt Milly waddled off, filled with importance and pride but secretly
+dreading a water trip. Dee insisted upon massaging the poor invalid, who
+really was suffering intensely. Dee was a born nurse and was never so
+happy as when she could take command in a sick room. She drove all of us
+out, insisting the patient must be quiet. Wink, who was really and truly
+a doctor now, was called in and readily prescribed and what's more
+produced the medicine from a little kit he carried about with him. Dee
+rubbed and rubbed until it was time to start on the picnic. Miss Maria
+was so soothed that she dozed off and Dee tiptoed out of the room
+without making a sound.
+
+No doubt the poor old lady enjoyed her day of quiet and rest. We must
+have been a great trial to her, because we were a noisy, hoydenish lot.
+Those of us who didn't sit up late at night making a racket, got up
+early in the morning to do so, and vice versa. She was so sweet and
+good-natured about us that she never let us feel we were a nuisance, but
+I am sure we must have been.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE SHOPPER-ROON
+
+
+OF course Aunt Milly kept us waiting. There is no telling what rite she
+performed in her cabin in preparation for the momentous occasion of
+chaperoning. We were all seated in the boats waiting, the lunch stowed
+carefully in the locker of the launch and the bathing suits tucked under
+the seats, when Willie came racing up in a light red-wheeled buggy, one
+side so bent down with Aunt Milly's great weight that the springs were
+touching.
+
+"Gawd pertec' me!" she prayed as Harvie and Zebedee between them handed
+her into the launch. The little craft did some perceptible sinking with
+the extra load and had to be lightened a bit.
+
+"Sleepy, you had better get out," teased Rags.
+
+Poor Sleepy had been having a strenuous week trying to monopolize Annie
+Pore. This was a difficult thing to do, as Annie seemed to attract the
+male sex willy nilly. She had no idea of flirting and never meant to
+hurt anyone, but there was something about her that appealed to the
+masculine element irresistibly. Wherever she went she made conquests by
+a certain clinging vine attitude she had towards the whole world. Mere
+man likes to be looked upon as a protector and Annie's timidity was meat
+and drink to his vanity. George Massie, alias Sleepy, was her slave;
+Harvie Price thought he looked upon her as a little sister, but I have
+never yet seen a big brother quite so anxious for the comfort of nothing
+but a sister; Jack Bennett seemed to find her very attractive and
+divided his allegiance between her and Dee; nothing but his loyalty to
+Sleepy kept Ben Raglan from entering the lists for the favor of the
+little English maid. He occasionally teased poor Sleepy, but that young
+giant never did know what I knew: that Rags really cared for Annie.
+
+Sleepy, knowing that the launch was the safest place in which to embark
+for a picnic and understanding how timid Annie was and how poor a
+swimmer, had ensconced her in that vessel in a protected spot, and had
+found a place at her feet where he could look up into her pretty face.
+
+"Me get out? Get out yourself!" he cried indignantly.
+
+"But it is not quality they want out but quantity," answered Rags. "You
+and Aunt Milly, being in the same boat, can't ride in the same boat."
+
+Now George Massie was not really fat, but because of his great bulk he
+was usually thought of as being so. Certainly his bones were well
+covered but his muscles were hard as iron. What fat was there was well
+hammered down. He must have weighed at that time at least two hundred
+and twenty pounds, but then his six feet two inches could carry a good
+many pounds. He was cursed with money if ever a young man was. His
+father was very wealthy and George had never been denied a single thing
+in all his life. His principal ambition had been to make the football
+team at the University and even that had been granted him,--not because
+of money but because of brawn.
+
+He was studying medicine in a desultory way, taking a year longer to
+finish his course than the more ambitious Wink, who was not cursed at
+all with money but had unbounded energy and ambition. Sleepy's friends,
+and he had many of those necessary things, all adored him. He was so
+honest, so straightforward, so sympathetic. They deplored his lack of
+ambition, however. I used to feel that Sleepy was a lesson to all of the
+young men in his set because they realized that after all too much money
+often had a softening effect on character. There seemed to be no
+especial use for George Massie to graduate, because after he got his
+diploma what difference would it make whether he got patients or not?
+His adoration of Annie Pore had had a good effect on him, so Jim Hart
+had told me. The last year at the University he had done better studying
+than he ever had in his life, and his friends had hopes of his waking up
+to the fact that the world might need him, even if he did not need the
+world's money in doctor's fees.
+
+"Yes, Sleepy! You'll have to vamoose," insisted Jack Bennett, trying to
+squeeze himself down between George Massie and Annie.
+
+"You are as big as any two other passengers," declared Rags.
+
+"If that is the case, then suppose two other passengers take to the
+life-boats," suggested Zebedee. "Come on, Page, you are light and easy
+to row and there is a nice little brown boat waiting for us."
+
+Dum and Billy Somers had already started in their picturesque red skiff,
+and Mary Flannagan and Shorty were well on their way in the canoe. They
+had been independent and had not had to wait while Aunt Milly arrayed
+herself in all the glories of a brand new purple calico and bright plaid
+head handkerchief.
+
+"All right!" I acquiesced to Mr. Tucker's proposal.
+
+After we were transferred to the little brown boat and on our way to
+Croxton's Ford, he said:
+
+"I am afraid I was selfish to ask you to come with me. I know I should
+not have taken you away from all of your young friends."
+
+"Why, Zebedee! How absurd! You are the youngest friend I have, much the
+youngest."
+
+"But you gave a very sad and unenthusiastic 'all right' to my
+proposition to come by skiff. Now, didn't you?"
+
+"But it wasn't that I didn't want to come with you," I declared.
+
+"Perhaps not, but merely that you didn't want to leave someone else to
+come with me. Now fess up, honey!"
+
+"I have nothing to fess up about."
+
+"Well, then, why did you look so crestfallen when I put it up to you to
+leave the launch?" and Zebedee dug his oars in the water with some
+viciousness.
+
+"I didn't mean to. I--I----"
+
+"You what?"
+
+"I had a reason for wanting to stay in the launch."
+
+"Didn't I say so? Who was the reason?"
+
+"It wasn't a who, at all--it was a which."
+
+"A which?" he asked somewhat mystified.
+
+"Yes, a which! If you must know, I wanted to be under the awning because
+of my freckled nose," and I blushed until it hurt. My nose was a great
+annoyance to me. It was such a little nose to get so many freckles on
+it. The fact that they disappeared in the winter was but cold comfort to
+me.
+
+"But I like freckles," he said quite solemnly, but his eyes were dancing
+with amusement.
+
+"But I don't, and it's my nose. You are the only person who does like
+'em."
+
+"Who has been telling you he doesn't like them?"
+
+"Nobody to my face, or rather to my freckles, but I heard Jessie Wilcox
+talking to someone about me and she called me a speckled beauty,--just
+exactly as though I were a trout or a coach dog or a turkey egg or
+something. And I know after this day on the water I'll be a sight."
+
+"Do you care what she says?"
+
+"I care what anybody says."
+
+"Why, little friend, I did not dream you put so much value on the
+opinion of others, especially where mere personal appearance is
+concerned." I thought I detected a note of disappointment in his voice.
+
+"I don't about everything, but one's nose is mighty close to one,
+somehow."
+
+"So it is," he laughed, "and I am so sorry to have been the means of
+injuring that touchy member. I can't help feeling kind of happy, though,
+that it was the awning you were loath to leave and not some one of those
+boys. Here's a nice linen handkerchief; why don't you tie that over your
+nose?"
+
+Mr. Tucker always had the nicest linen handkerchiefs I ever saw, and he
+seemed to have clean, folded ones ready to produce for every emergency.
+I accepted his offer and tied it over the lower part of my face.
+
+"Now you look like a little Turkish lady. Please say you are glad you
+came in the little brown boat," and my boatman shipped his oars and
+drifted with the current.
+
+It was a very easy thing to say because I was very glad. Now that my
+poor little nose was protected, I was perfectly happy. I always enjoyed
+being with Zebedee. We never talked out and we seldom had a
+disagreement; not that we agreed on every subject by any means, but we
+could disagree without having a disagreement. We talked about everything
+under the sun from Shakespeare to the musical glasses. I couldn't help
+comparing this boat ride to the one I had been overpersuaded to take
+with Wink only a few days before. We had started out with the best of
+intentions on my part to avoid all shoals in conversation, but before we
+had been out ten minutes Wink was gnawing his little moustache in fury
+and I was wishing I had stayed on shore. A row with Wink was sure to end
+in a row (pronounced rou).
+
+The launch arrived at Croxton's Ford long before we did, but we came as
+fast as the current allowed, having drifted a good part of the way. The
+party had landed and had begun to make the camp for the day. It was a
+wonderful spot chosen for the picnic. A large creek, flowing into the
+river, broadened out almost into a lake, and in the mouth of this creek
+were innumerable small islands. Some of them had large trees growing on
+them, lovely sandy beaches and strips of verdure; others were too young
+to have trees but were covered with grass. The camp was pitched on the
+largest island, right at the mouth of the creek that afforded a landing
+for the launch. There was a famous spring on this island that was
+thought by the county people to have some great curative power. What it
+cured you of I don't know, but it tasted too good to be much good as a
+medicine, I imagine.
+
+Aunt Milly, who had proven herself to be an ideal chaperone, having
+slept during the entire journey, was now ensconced under a water oak on
+a warm sand bank with nothing to do but enjoy herself. This she did
+immediately by falling asleep again.
+
+"Whin I ain't a-wuckin', I's a-sleepin'," she droned as slumber enfolded
+her.
+
+Of course the camp fire must be made and potatoes and corn put to roast
+and the coffee-pot filled with the sparkling spring water. The trip down
+had made everybody hungry, whether accomplished without exertion as by
+those in the launch; or with the sweat of the brow as by Mary and Shorty
+in the canoe, or Dum and Billy Somers in the red skiff; or with just
+enough work to keep the boat in the current which was Zebedee's and my
+method of locomotion: one and all were hungry.
+
+"While dinner is cooking, let's have a swim," suggested Harvie. "You
+girls take this side of the island for a dressing-room and we'll take
+the other. Here are some low willows that make splendid walls."
+
+Bathing suits were produced and while our chaperone slumbered and slept,
+we got into them and then into the water. Such water! It was clear and
+soft, so much more so than the water of the big river. The bottom was
+clean sand with no disturbing rocks and snags. The trees shaded the
+place chosen for our swim where the sloping beach made it safe for the
+timid close to shore, but ten yards of perseverance plunged the bold
+swimmer into really deep water.
+
+The shouts of joy would have waked the dead had there been any on the
+island, but nothing waked the sleeping Aunt Milly. She had burrowed down
+in the unresisting sand almost as deep as some meteoric stone might have
+done. There she lay, having the rest that she deserved after the "mos' a
+hun'erd years er cookin'" that she declared she had served at Maxton.
+
+"This is my island!" cried Dum, swimming over to a beautiful spot about
+twenty yards from camp. She clambered out on the strip of sand and stood
+with arms outstretched looking very handsome, her lithe young figure
+drawn up to its full height. "I am monarch of all I survey! I'm queen of
+this land!"
+
+"Let me come help you rule," pleaded Billy Somers, who had followed her.
+
+"I don't need a prime minister just now, thank you, but you might get in
+the waiting list."
+
+"Thanks awfully!" and the young Kentuckian threw himself on the warm
+sand at her feet. What nice fellows those Kentuckians were, anyhow!
+They were full of life and fun, clean minded, clear thinking,
+well-mannered boys. Dum and Billy were friends from the moment they met
+and were usually the ringleaders in any larks that were started on the
+house-party. The strange thing about the friendship was that they looked
+alike, so very much alike that I believe some pioneer ancestor of
+Billy's must have come from the Tucker stock.
+
+Billy's hair had a bit more red in it than Dum's, not much, just enough
+to make his hair in the shade about the color Dum's was in the sun.
+Their foreheads were identical and their chins had the same tendency to
+get square when an argument was under way. They really looked quite as
+much alike as the twins themselves did. Zebedee declared that Billy made
+him feel a hundred years old because he looked so like his son, if he
+had ever had one. Billy was about three years older than the twins, and
+when we consider that the twins were born when their father was only
+twenty, no wonder the possibility of a son at seventeen made poor Mr.
+Tucker blue.
+
+[Illustration: "THIS IS OUR ISLAND AND WE ARE GOING TO PERMIT NO ALIENS
+TO LAND HERE."
+
+Page 178.]
+
+"This is our island and we are going to permit no aliens to land here,"
+called Dum as a challenge to all of us. "I am Queen Dum and Billy is
+General Billdad. We have held counsel and herewith make the proclamation
+that there is to be no immigration to this kingdom."
+
+It took only a moment for us to answer the challenge. Dee headed the
+opposing forces, making a long dive that brought her up almost on the
+beach of the little kingdom. Dum was ready to push her back in the water
+and kerflop! she went before Zebedee could come to her aid. Then ensued
+such a battle as had not been fought in the United States since Custer's
+last rally.
+
+Of course Dum and Billy had the advantage of position, but we so far
+outnumbered them that it took all of their strength to keep us from
+landing.
+
+"Mary! Mary! You and Shorty come be our allies!" called Queen Dum to the
+couple who had gone to housekeeping on a small island near her own.
+Mary slid into the water like a turtle and Shorty followed. They landed
+from the rear and now the battle raged fiercely.
+
+I know I got pitched back into the water at least a dozen times. Having
+learned to swim only the summer before at Willoughby, I was not a past
+master in the art, but I could keep above water indefinitely, thanks to
+Zebedee, my instructor, who had made floating the first requisite.
+
+The odds were in our favor but the vantage they had in position was
+well-nigh discouraging us, when Zebedee and Wink made a flank movement
+and landed on the other side of the island, immediately pushing over the
+opposing forces into the foaming torrent and then pulling all of us onto
+dry land.
+
+"Victory! Victory!" we shouted; and then for the first time since the
+battle began to rage we remembered our chaperone. She had awakened and
+dug herself out of her warm sand nest. What were her charges up to? It
+never entered the old woman's head that we were playing a game, and I
+fancy we looked in dead earnest.
+
+When she had dozed off after landing we were all of us clothed and in
+our right minds, and suddenly she awoke to find us anything but clothed,
+according to her strict ideas of propriety among the quality, never
+having seen girls in bathing suits; and not only were we in disgraceful
+dishabille, but we were engaged in a distressing brawl.
+
+"My Gawd! My Gawd!" she wailed. "Here I been a-slumberin' an' sleepin'
+an' Miss Maria done tol' me to shopper-roon. I trus'ed de white folks
+an' look at 'em!" She covered her face with her hands and wept aloud.
+
+I fancy we were something to look at. Bathing caps were off and hair wet
+and tangled streaming down our backs. Dee had lost a stocking in the
+tussle and Rags had been bereft of more than half of his shirt, so that
+his white back gleamed forth in a most immodest abandon. Shorty had
+tapped Harvie on the nose and that scion of a noble race was bleeding
+like a stuck pig. The gore added color to the scene, and had not Aunt
+Milly already been certain that this was a real war we were raging, the
+blood of her young master would have convinced her.
+
+"Hi, you! You!" she called. "Quit dat!"
+
+The battle being won, we had stopped for repairs but there were still
+here and there some fitful hostilities. For instance: Shorty had
+determined that Harvie needed some cold water on his bleeding nose and
+was rolling him into the creek. Both of them were shouting and
+pommelling each other as they rolled.
+
+As they approached the large island where our camp was pitched, Aunt
+Milly became very much excited. Who were these vile wretches who had
+accepted the hospitality of the Prices and then turned against them, and
+while she, the natural protector of the young master, was sleeping, had
+well-nigh stripped him of his clothes and then bloodied him all over
+with his own blue blood, which was certainly flowing very redly?
+
+"Hi, you! You little low flung, no 'count, bench-legged trash! What you
+a-doin' ter Mr. Harbie?" she called to the all-unconscious Shorty, who
+was having the time of his life as he and his friend wallowed in the
+water, wrestling as they swam.
+
+But Aunt Milly saw no joke in such doings. She looked around for
+something to use as a weapon and spied the camp fire where the corn and
+potatoes were being prepared to fulfill their mission. They were done to
+a turn by that tune and the fire had died down to a bed of red embers.
+The old woman grabbed from the ashes a great yam and with an aim that
+astonished one, she threw it and hit Shorty a sounding whack on his
+back.
+
+"Wow!" yelled that young warrior.
+
+"You'd better wow! An' don' you lan' here; you go back ter dem Injuns
+whar you come wid."
+
+"Why, Aunt Milly! What on earth?" gasped Harvie as he saw the old woman
+stooping for more ammunition.
+
+"Yo' ol' Milly gwine he'p you, dat's what!" She aimed another at the
+astonished Shorty, but that young man turned himself into a submarine
+and disappeared.
+
+Harvie clambered out of the water spluttering and laughing. His nose had
+stopped bleeding now and the water had washed off all traces of the gory
+disaster. He caught the rampant Milly by the arm:
+
+"Aunt Milly, it's all a joke, a game! Nobody was abusing me. Don't throw
+away the potatoes, we are so hungry."
+
+"Lawsamussy, chile! You can't fool this ol' nigger. I's seen folks
+a-playin' an' I's a-seen folks a-fightin', an' if'n that there warn't a
+battle royal, I neber seed one."
+
+By this time all of us were headed for camp. As we came ashore her
+expression was still a belligerent one and she had a hot potato which
+she tossed from hand to hand ready for an emergency.
+
+It took all the tact the Tuckers could muster among them to convince
+Aunt Milly that we had not been fighting, and even after she seemed to
+be convinced, she growled a bit when Shorty appeared all dressed and
+spruce, with his hair plastered down tight and his arm linked in
+Harvie's. She had the fidelity of some old dog for its master and it
+would take some time to erase from her mind and heart that terrible
+scene of Mr. Harbie being beaten and blooded and pitched into the water.
+
+We led her back to her seat in the sand and brought her dinner to her.
+We would not let her help cook or serve, but treated her like a real
+chaperone and waited on her right royally. She rolled her eyes a bit
+when to Shorty was relegated the task of taking her a cup of coffee. He
+pretended to be very much frightened and trembled violently as he handed
+her the brimming cup.
+
+"Aunt Milly, how did you learn how to throw so well? You hit me with
+that potato just as though you belonged to a baseball nine."
+
+"I been a-practicin' all my life a-throwin' at rats," she growled.
+
+This brought down the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+TANGLEFOOT
+
+
+A SUFFICIENT time having elapsed since dinner, we decided to go in
+swimming again; at least the Tuckers decided to and all of us followed
+suit (bathing suit!). Aunt Milly was becoming accustomed to the ways of
+her charges and gave her gracious consent when we humbly asked it. She
+even stopped rolling her eyes at Shorty when she saw that Harvie was not
+injured, after all, and that he himself bore no malice towards his
+friend.
+
+Mary, too, had something to do with mollifying the old woman. She went
+and sat on the sand bank by her side and explained to her how the battle
+royal started and what fun it had been. Of course ever since the circus,
+Mary had been a great favorite with all the servants. They looked upon
+her as a real celebrity. Mary had so many stunts and was always so
+willing to amuse persons that she was constantly being called on to do
+her dog fight or get off a feat of ventriloquism or something else.
+
+"Aunt Milly, if you forgive poor Mr. Hawkins for bloodying up Mr.
+Harvie, I'll go like a little pig caught under the gate for you."
+
+"Lawsamussy, chil', kin you do that?"
+
+"Sure! Will you forgive him if I do it?"
+
+"Lemme hear you do it fust an' I'll see," said Aunt Milly with a sly
+look. She was getting too much capital out of the grudge she had against
+Shorty to give it up too readily.
+
+So Mary went through all the agony of a little pig caught under the gate
+and even improved upon it to the extent of introducing another character
+into the act: she went like two pigs caught under the gate.
+
+Aunt Milly sat in her sand hole entranced.
+
+"Well, bless Bob! If it ain't it to the life! How you do it, honey?" So
+Mary had to do it once more and then Aunt Milly promised to forgive and
+forget.
+
+"Come on and help clear up the remains of the feast, Mary," insisted
+Dum, who was ever determined that there should be no shirkers.
+
+"I'm busy mollifying," declared Mary. "My talents lie more in this
+direction," and she could not help mimicking Jessie Wilcox just enough
+to give Dum the dry grins. Jessie had not helped at all about luncheon
+but had insisted that Aunt Milly should be made to do whatever we had
+the hardihood to suggest that she might do. Aunt Milly, however, having
+been told that she was to do no "wuck," did none, and presented a duck
+back to all insinuations from the haughty Jessie.
+
+"I don't care where your talents lie," insisted Dum, "you are going to
+come help clear these dishes off the cloth so I can fold it up."
+
+Mary began to sing to a catchy tune this music-hall ballad:
+
+       "I want to be a actress, a actress, a actress,
+    I tell you I won't live and die a common serving gal.
+        I feel I've got the natur'
+        To act in a the-a-ter,
+    I'm just the kind of stuff to make a star profession-a-l-l."
+
+"Well, now ain't she cute?" and Aunt Milly shook her fat sides with
+laughter. "She ain't ter say purty but she is sho' got a way wid her.
+She ain't so handsome as some but she gonter keep her takin' ways til'
+Kingdom Come, whilst some folks what ain't nothin' but purty won' hab
+nothin' lef' a tall whin the las' trump soun's. I ain't a got no
+'jections ter purty folks,--now that there little Miss Annie Po' is sho'
+sweet lookin' an' sweet tas'in', too, but she is wuth somethin' sides.
+But some ain't." A glance of her rolling eyes in the direction of Jessie
+gave us to understand who "some" meant.
+
+Jessie and Wink were having a most desperate flirtation. He had not left
+her side a moment during the whole day. Jessie glanced occasionally in
+my direction with a little exultant toss of her head as much as to say:
+"See, miss, I've got your beau!" She was more than welcome to him, but I
+didn't think it kind to lessen her delight in her conquest, so I did my
+best to make her happy by sighing deeply every time I caught her looking
+at me.
+
+The pleasure of going in swimming is going in again, so as I said
+before, as soon as a reasonable time had elapsed since our very filling
+dinner we again retired to our several tree-formed bath-houses and
+donned our suits for a farewell dip.
+
+"No more fights now!" commanded Zebedee sternly, just as though he had
+not been among the mighty warriors of the last fray.
+
+Tweedles promptly caught him and gave him a good ducking until he yelled
+for mercy and help from Aunt Milly, but that model chaperone had gone
+off to sleep again and was deaf to his cries.
+
+"That's what you get for being Mr. Tuckerish," declared Dum.
+
+Jessie Wilcox was a good swimmer but was determined not to get her hair
+wet, so had not entered very largely into our water sports. Tweedles and
+Mary and I had lost our bathing caps in the great naval battle, and
+since our heads were already wet, we decided to get them wetter and let
+our hair dry on the trip home. As for Annie, getting her feet wet was
+about all she could make up her mind to do, although her coils of
+honey-colored hair got a little damp. She would take shuddering steps
+into the water and when she got about knee-deep would lie down and go
+through the motions of swimming with one foot on the bottom. She had
+really learned to keep up on top of the water at Willoughby the summer
+before, but now had lost all confidence in herself and was content just
+to paddle around in the shallows.
+
+From one side of our large island there stretched a long narrow sand
+bar. The water just trickled through there, while the great volume of
+the creek flowed on the other side where we were swimming. There were
+many shallow spots where Annie could be perfectly safe, but she decided
+to walk out on the sand bar and there let down her hair and dry it in
+the sun. Her cavaliers who seldom left her alone for a moment happened
+to be engaged in some swimming stunts just then, so unattended she
+crossed the bar and, seating herself on the end of the neck of sand, she
+let down her beautiful hair and spread it out in the sun.
+
+"Only look at Annie! Isn't she lovely?" whispered Dum to me. "She looks
+like a mermaid or a Rhine maiden."
+
+"Please sing something, Annie!" I called.
+
+"What shall I sing?" laughed Annie, combing her hair with one of her
+side-combs and peeping at me through its golden glory.
+
+"Anything, so it has water in it!"
+
+Annie's voice had grown in richness and volume since the days at
+Gresham, although she had had no lessons since that time. She had taken
+advantage of the teaching she had received from Miss Cox and kept up her
+practicing by herself as best she could. Of course she should have been
+under some good master, and all of us felt indignant with Mr. Pore that
+he did not realize this and make some arrangement for his daughter. The
+outlay of money necessary for her musical education would have been
+great, but the returns would surely have been fourfold. Everyone who
+heard Annie sing could not but admire her voice. Even Jessie Wilcox
+praised it, although that young lady was not inclined to think anybody
+but herself worthy of compliments.
+
+The lovely thing about Annie was she was always ready to be obliging,
+and if her singing gave any pleasure, she was perfectly willing to
+contribute it to the general welfare. She never said she didn't have her
+music and could not sing without notes; she never gave the excuse of not
+being able to sing without accompaniment. When Annie sang, her shyness
+left her. She seemed to forget herself and lose all self-consciousness.
+As her clear soprano notes arose on the air, the noisy bathers quieted
+down and everyone listened.
+
+        "On the banks of Allan Water
+         When the sweet spring-time did fall,
+         Was the miller's lovely daughter,
+             Fairest of them all.
+
+         For his bride a soldier sought her,
+         And a winning tongue had he,
+         On the banks of Allan Water,
+             None so gay as she.
+
+         On the banks of Allan Water
+         When brown autumn spreads his store,
+         There I saw the miller's daughter,
+             But she smiled no more.
+
+         For the summer grief had brought her,
+         And the soldier false was he,
+         On the banks of Allan Water,
+             None so sad as she.
+
+         On the banks of Allan Water,
+         When the winter's snow fell fast,
+         Still was seen the miller's daughter,
+             Chilling blew the blast.
+
+         But the miller's lovely daughter,
+         Both from cold and care was free;
+         On the banks of Allan Water,
+             There a corse lay she."
+
+"Bully!" exclaimed the audience.
+
+"I'd like to meet that soldier," muttered Sleepy.
+
+"Please sing some more," begged Rags.
+
+And so she sang again. Now she stood up, took a few steps, and faced us
+as we paddled around.
+
+"Look what a big hole Annie made in the sand, almost as big as Aunt
+Milly's," whispered Dee to me.
+
+"Yes, the sand must be awfully soft. I'm glad it's not quicksand,
+though. That's so dangerous." But what I knew about the dangers of
+quicksand I kept to myself, as Annie had begun:
+
+        "To sea, to sea! The calm is o'er;
+           The wanton water leaps in sport,
+         And rattles down the pebbly shore;
+           The dolphin wheels, the sea-cow's snort,
+         And unseen mermaids' pearly song
+           Comes bubbling up the weeds among----"
+
+And just then a strange thing happened: Annie began to sink. The little
+sand island she had chosen as a place of refuge where she might dry her
+hair was evidently only an island in the making, and the sand had not
+packed down. It was quicksand, but not so quick as it might have been,
+as she had been on it some minutes before it began to give way under her
+weight. She looked frightened and tried to pull her one foot up, but it
+stuck. The last lines of her song were in a fair way to be enacted
+before our very eyes if haste was not made.
+
+Annie gave a scream and made desperate struggles to extricate herself.
+The swimmers all started to her rescue, George Massie leading the way,
+shooting through the water like a shark.
+
+I clutched Zebedee as he went by me. "Get the little brown boat and I'll
+help! The sand may be dangerous all around there."
+
+He was a quick thinker and turned without a word, landed on the big
+island and I followed. We launched the little brown boat that we had
+shoved up among the weeds and in a very short time were floating out
+into deep water. With a few strong strokes of the oars we had arrived at
+the spot where we were in truth much needed.
+
+Sleepy had grasped Annie, who was now engulfed up to her knees. Of
+course he was about the worst person among us to have got first to her
+rescue because of his great weight. He gave a tremendous pull, grasping
+Annie around her waist. She came out of the sand making a noise like a
+whole drove of cattle lifting their hoofs out of the mud. Annie was
+perfectly limp with fright. She clung to George Massie like some little
+panic-stricken child.
+
+The frantic Rags reached the sand bar immediately behind Sleepy, and
+Harvie swam him a close second. The water was quite deep within a few
+feet of the fatal spot that the innocent Annie had chosen as the best
+place to dry her hair. The beach of quicksand shelved suddenly into
+swimming depth. As Harvie and Rags stepped from this swimming hole into
+shallow water they realized that they, too, had hurled themselves into
+danger. They stuck fast.
+
+Annie clung desperately to George. Her eyes were closed and she was so
+pale I thought she must have fainted. It was a few moments before the
+rest of the party realized that the three youths were being slowly
+sucked down. They knew it, however, from the moment they touched the
+bar.
+
+"Throw Annie out into the water!" said Harvie hoarsely. Annie had not
+fainted as I had thought, for at these words she clung so desperately to
+poor Sleepy that he could not loose her hands.
+
+Harvie reached over and unclasped them, holding them tightly until
+Sleepy could raise her up farther in his arms to throw her.
+
+"Float, Annie! You can float!" shouted Dee. "Do as I tell you!"
+
+Annie, ever inclined to obedience, spread her arms out as she struck the
+water and floated off as neatly as some well-built yacht launched for
+the first time. Of course the others grabbed her as soon as she got to
+them.
+
+By this time Zebedee and I had the little brown boat to the rescue. We
+came alongside the poor stick-in-the-muds.
+
+"Take Sleepy first!" cried the other two. "He's in worse than we are."
+
+Taking Sleepy first was no joke. He had sunk at least a foot and a half.
+Zebedee tugged at him and Sleepy tugged at himself. The little boat
+almost capsized and still the young giant could not pull his feet out of
+the treacherous mire.
+
+"You are not in far, Rags; come on and help trim the boat," I insisted,
+paddling the stern around in reach of Rags. He caught hold and with a
+quick spring was in the boat.
+
+"Now, Harvie!" I commanded. "We can't get Sleepy unless you come help."
+I knew perfectly well that Harvie had a notion he must not get in the
+boat until his friend was saved. In the meantime, Zebedee was
+struggling to raise Sleepy and the boat was in sad need of ballast.
+Harvie did as I bade him and with a mighty effort extricated himself and
+landed in the boat. The legs of both the boys were covered with mire up
+to their knees.
+
+All the time we were doing this, the rest of the party was not idle. Of
+course some of them had to look after the frightened Annie. Dum and
+Billy Somers had struck out immediately for the red boat which was
+beached on the far side of the island, realizing as they soon did that
+the only way to get the boys out of the quicksand was by boat. Mary and
+Shorty also made for the canoe, thinking it might be needed, too.
+
+Glad we were when the red boat came alongside of ours and we could lash
+them together to make more purchase for Sleepy. The little brown boat
+did not have weight enough to do the job alone. And now with a long pull
+and a strong pull and a pull all together, we at last got him out.
+
+If when Annie got her feet out of the sand she made a noise like a
+drove of cattle lifting their hoofs out of the mud, you can fancy what
+the noise was when Sleepy came out. It was like a great ground swell,
+and so much water had that young giant displaced, when he removed his
+bulk I am sure the depth of the creek was perceptibly lowered.
+
+Now it was all over we could giggle, which Dum and I did until Zebedee
+got really outdone with us and threatened to box us both. It had been a
+close shave and he felt it was not a time for giggling, but Dum and I
+were no respecters of time or place. When the giggles struck us, giggle
+we must.
+
+"If it had not been for your quickness, Page, it might have been a very
+serious tragedy," he said solemnly. "I never thought of the boats but
+was going to swim to Annie's assistance."
+
+"I have seen this quicksand before. I almost lost one of my dogs several
+years ago. He started out in the creek to get a stick I had thrown for
+him and as soon as he touched the sand he began to sink. I never heard
+such cries as he gave trying to pull his feet out. I got two fence-rails
+and crawled out to him and pulled him in. Father nearly had a fit when I
+told him about it. He sent men down and had the creek dredged."
+
+"I think we should put a sign up here," said Harvie, and a few days
+later he did paint "Danger" on a sign and came back to Croxton's Ford
+and planted it at the fatal spot.
+
+It had been a very trying experience, but young people don't brood over
+things that might have been serious. That is something left to the
+so-called philosophy of old age. By the time we were in dry clothes and
+on our way home, the fact that some of our party had been in a fair way
+to losing their lives seemed something to be joked about.
+
+Of course poor Sleepy came in for his share, but much he cared. He
+stretched himself at Annie's feet, and possessing himself of a little
+corner of her sweater, which he clutched tightly in his great hand just
+as a little baby might cling to its mother's dress, he dropped off into
+a sleep of exhaustion. He looked very peaceful and happy as he lay there
+and Annie looked down on his handsome head with affection and admiration
+in her blue eyes.
+
+"I know one thing," announced Rags; "I'll never see sticky fly-paper
+again without thinking of this day. I felt exactly like a poor fly stuck
+fast in tanglefoot. I am sure my legs are a foot longer than they were
+when I left Maxton this morning." As Ben Raglan's legs were abnormally
+long, we all devoutly hoped that the stretching was not permanent.
+Proportioned somewhat like a clothes-pin, he could not stand much
+lengthening of limb.
+
+"Shorty, it's too bad you weren't first aid man this time," teased
+Harvie. "It might have made a man of you. All you need is a good
+stretching."
+
+"Wait until I get you where Aunt Milly can't help you and I'll give you
+the pounding you need," answered the boy, as he paddled the canoe in the
+wake of the launch.
+
+Aunt Milly was comfortably ensconced in the seat of honor, sleeping the
+sleep of the just and generous chaperone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A YOUNGER SON
+
+
+WE found Miss Maria much improved but still bed-ridden. She said Wink's
+medicine was the most efficacious she had ever had, as it had given her
+a day of rest free from pain. I fancy the quiet had done her as much
+good as the medicine. She regretted to report that Mr. Pore had
+telephoned a peremptory message to the effect that Annie should come
+home the first thing in the morning and bring her clothes.
+
+"Now isn't that the limit?" stormed Dum. "What on earth can he want? We
+haven't but three more days here and it seems to me he might----" But
+Annie looked so pained that Dum didn't say what he might do.
+
+"He needs me, I fancy," said Annie sadly.
+
+"So do we need you! And how about Sleepy and Harvie and Rags?" But
+Annie didn't know how about them, so she only blushed.
+
+"Maybe you can come back," I suggested.
+
+"No, I fancy not, or why should he say I must bring my clothes?"
+
+All of us were at a loss to fathom the behavior of Mr. Pore, but we were
+too tired to discuss it farther. We were thankful for the time we had
+been able to wrest Annie from his selfish demands. I was sorry, indeed,
+that Zebedee had attended to his old freight for him. I heartily agreed
+with Dum's sentiments which she muttered under her breath:
+
+"Pig!"
+
+"Anyhow, we are going down with you," declared Mary.
+
+"But I must go before breakfast," said Annie.
+
+"Well, we can travel on an empty stomach quite as well as you can and a
+great deal weller," insisted Dum, and Dee and Mary and I agreed.
+
+"Please don't awaken me," said Jessie as she twisted her hair into the
+patent curlers that she managed so well nobody but a girl could have
+told that her curls were not natural. "I certainly want to sleep in the
+morning. Dr. White begged me to go rowing with him before breakfast, but
+I can't bear to get up so early in the morning. It seemed to distress
+him terribly but then he is such a flirt one can never tell." All this
+with many glances in my direction.
+
+We had gathered in the room occupied by Tweedles and Jessie for a little
+chat before turning in for the night.
+
+"How cr-u-le!" exclaimed Mary. "What makes you think he is such a
+flirt?"
+
+"Ah, that would be telling!" and Jessie began dabbing on the cold cream.
+
+It is strange how indifferent some girls are to what other girls think
+of them. Jessie Wilcox, the most careful person in the world to look
+well when any males were around, did not mind in the least letting us
+see her with her hair twisted up in little wads and clasped with
+innumerable arrangements made of wire covered with leather. The things
+looked like huge ticks sticking out from her head, not such a shapely
+head, either, now that one saw it with the hair drawn back so tightly.
+Cold cream may be a future beautifier but certainly not a present one.
+She laid it on in generous hunks and then massaged herself, contorting
+her countenance in a most disconcerting manner.
+
+"I don't think Wink is a flirt at all," said Dee stoutly. "He is a very
+good friend of mine and I reckon I know him about as well as anybody in
+the world. Of course he will flirt if it is up to him, but that is not
+making him a flirt."
+
+"Ah, indeed!" and Jessie began rubbing cocoa butter on her neck.
+"Perhaps you don't know the flirtatious side of him."
+
+"Thank goodness, I don't. He and I talk sense to each other," and Dee
+scornfully sniffed the air. She and Dum hated the odor of cocoa butter,
+declaring it made their room smell like an apothecary's shop.
+
+"Why don't you and Dum come in our room for to-night?" I suggested,
+scenting mischief as well as cocoa butter in the air, since the usually
+tactful Dee was on the war-path. "You will be sure to disturb Jessie in
+the morning if you sleep in here. Come on! I'll sleep three in the bed
+with you and get in the middle at that," and so they came, expressing
+themselves privately as glad to get away from their roommate, who did
+smell so of cocoa butter and also looked so hideous with her hair done
+up in those tick-like arrangements and her face shiny with grease.
+
+"Cat! What does she mean by calling Wink a flirt?" raged Dee, who was
+surely a loyal friend.
+
+"Maybe he is one," suggested Dum.
+
+"Virginia Tucker, I am tired unto death but I'll challenge you to a
+boxing match if you say that again."
+
+"You are no more tired than I am and I'll say it again!" maintained Dum.
+"All I said was: 'Maybe he is,' and maybe he is!" No one of the name of
+Tucker ever took a dare, and the twins crawled out of the great bed
+where I had taken my place in the middle.
+
+"Girls! Girls! You are so silly," I cried wearily. "You haven't your
+boxing gloves and you know you might beat each other up with your bare
+fists. This is no fighting matter, Dee, at least nothing to fight Dum
+about. Go fight Jessie Wilcox! She is the one who has the proof of
+Wink's ways."
+
+We were relieved that my reasoning powers quelled the disturbance.
+Tweedles got back into bed. The twins very rarely resorted to trial by
+combat now. It had been their childish method of settling difficulties,
+as their father had brought them up like boys whose code of honor is to
+stop fussing and fight it out.
+
+"I can't see why you think it is such an awful thing to call Wink a
+flirt," I said, when all danger of a battle had subsided. "You certainly
+flirt sometimes yourself."
+
+"When?" indignantly.
+
+"When you sell coffins to healthy young farmers," I asserted.
+
+No more from Dee that night.
+
+We were up early the next morning to escort Annie home, so early that no
+one was stirring, not even the servants. It seemed ridiculous for her
+to go so early, but the message from her father was one not to be
+lightly ignored. She had told Miss Maria and the general good-by the
+night before and Harvie was to drive her home, but when we crept
+downstairs there was no Harvie to be found; so we made our way out to
+the stable where Mary and I hitched up. As we drove off, all five of us
+crowded into a one-seated buggy, we beheld a very sleepy Harvie waving
+frantically from the boys' wing and vainly entreating us to wait; but we
+weren't waiting for sleepy-heads that morning, and drove pitilessly
+away.
+
+There was an air of bustling in the store when we piled out of our small
+buggy. Mr. Pore was in his shirt sleeves, his glasses set at a rakish
+angle on his aristocratic nose and an unaccustomed flush on his usually
+pale countenance. He was busy pulling things off of the shelves and
+piling them up on the counters. The clerk (he called him a "clark," of
+course, after the manner of Englishmen), was just as busy.
+
+To my amazement I heard Mr. Pore say to a little boy who had been sent
+to the store on a hurry call for matches: "Haven't time to wait on you;
+go over to Blinker's."
+
+What did this mean? Actually sending customers to the rival store!
+
+"Father!" exclaimed Annie, as Mr. Pore gave her his usual pecky kiss. "I
+didn't know you were going to take stock to-day."
+
+"Neither did I, my dear." His tone was a bit softer than I had ever
+heard it. And "my dear"! I had never heard him call Annie that before.
+
+"What is it, Father?"
+
+"I have news from England."
+
+"Not bad news, I hope!"
+
+"Well, yes! I might call it bad news."
+
+"Oh, Father, I am so sorry!"
+
+"Ahem! My brother, the late baronet, is--er--no more."
+
+"You mean Uncle Isaac is dead?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"What was the matter? When did you hear?"
+
+"A cablegram states he was killed in a recent battle," and Mr. Pore went
+on making neat piles on the counter with cans of salmon. I wanted to
+shake him for more news that I felt sure he had.
+
+Annie took off her hat and tied on an apron ready to help in the arduous
+task of taking stock. Tweedles and Mary and I stood in the doorway as
+dumb as fish. Why should a man whose brother had recently died in
+England feel a necessity of taking stock in a country store? It was too
+much for us. Suddenly it flashed through my brain that maybe Mr. Pore
+was going to England. His brother, Sir Isaac Pore, had a son, so Annie
+had told me, who was, of course, in line for the title.
+
+Mr. Pore finished with the salmon and then spoke with his usual
+pomposity: "The message also states that my brother's only son has met
+with an untimely death in the Dardanelles."
+
+Annie dropped a box of soap and stood looking with big eyes at her
+father.
+
+"I find it necessary that we go to England, and before we go, I deem it
+advisable to make an inventory of our goods and chattels."
+
+"Go to England! When?" gasped Annie.
+
+"I fancy we can arrange to be off in about a week."
+
+This was news that touched all of us. Annie going to England! We might
+never see her again, and her dried-up old father was standing there
+announcing this fact with as much composure as though he had decided to
+move his store across the road or do something else equally ordinary.
+
+"You see," he continued with his grandiloquent manner, "the demise of my
+brother and his son, who is unmarried, advance me to the baronetcy,
+and----"
+
+"Then you are Sir Arthur Ponsonby Pore!" blurted out Dum.
+
+"Exactly!" he announced calmly, as though he had been inheriting titles
+all his life.
+
+"Is Annie Lady Anna then?" asked Mary.
+
+"No, she is still Miss Pore. Only a son inherits a title from a
+baronet," he said with a trace of bitterness. I remembered what Annie
+had told me of her brother's death and her father's resentment of her
+being a girl.
+
+"Well, she would make a lovely Lady Annie all the same," said Dee. "I
+bet everybody in England will just about go crazy about her."
+
+"Ah, indeed!" was his supercilious remark to this effusion.
+
+"We are going to come down and help you, Annie," I whispered. "I know
+there are lots of things we can do. You will need help about your
+clothes. I can't sew, but I can count clothes-pins and chewing-gum while
+you sew. Don't you want us to help, Mr. Pore?"
+
+That gentleman was as usual quite dumbfounded by being treated like an
+ordinary human being, and with some hemming and hawing he finally
+acknowledged that our assistance would be acceptable. His idea was to
+sell his business and stock to the highest bidder.
+
+Great was the consternation and surprise at Maxton when we announced the
+choice bit of news that we had picked up that morning before breakfast.
+Sleepy looked as though he might have apoplexy, his face got so red and
+his hand trembled so. Harvie got pale and suddenly realized that Annie
+was not just a little sister. Poor Rags put maple syrup in his coffee
+and cream on his waffle in the excitement occasioned by the unwelcome
+news.
+
+They were at breakfast when we burst in on them, at breakfast and rather
+sore with all of us for having run off without them. Jessie was holding
+the fort alone, the only female present, as Miss Maria was still unable
+to get up. That beautiful young lady was looking lovelier than ever in a
+crisp handkerchief-linen frock. Her curls were very curly and her lovely
+brunette complexion not at all the worse for the scorching sun of the
+day before. My poor nose had six more freckles than when I came to
+Maxton, six more by actual count, and there was not room for the extra
+ones at all. Mary's freckles were like the stars in the sky, every time
+you looked you could find another; Dee had her share, too; and Dum had
+begun to peel as was her habit. Jessie was pretty, very pretty, but the
+picture of her with her face all greased up and the tick-like curlers
+covering her head would arise whenever I looked at her.
+
+"Why doesn't Mr. Pore leave Annie here with us until the submarine
+warfare is over with?" asked Mr. Tucker.
+
+"We never thought of suggesting it," tweedled the twins.
+
+"I did think of it but I knew she wouldn't be willing to have Sir Arthur
+go alone," I said, rather proud of myself for being the first one to
+give him his title.
+
+"How much more suited he is to being a member of English aristocracy
+than engaging in mercantile pursuits in America," laughed the general.
+"I only wish his lovely wife might have shared the honor with him. Ah
+me, what a woman she was!"
+
+"He was mighty cold and clammy about his brother's death," said Dee.
+"When Annie asked if it was bad news he had he said he might call it
+bad news; but his tone was far from convincing."
+
+"He hasn't seen his brother for over twenty years and he rowed with all
+his family before he left England, so I reckon it was hard to squeeze
+out many tears over his death. I felt awful bad about the poor young
+son," and Dum looked ready to shed tears herself without having to
+resort to the squeezing process. "'An untimely death in the
+Dardanelles!' That sounds so tragic."
+
+"Yes, that made me feel like crying, too," said Dee. "Just think of a
+splendid young Englishman, handsome and brave and charming, being shot
+to pieces by German bullets! I have an idea he had succeeded to the
+title and estates only a few days before, and while he was sad about his
+father, he still was looking forward to being the baronet when he got
+home."
+
+"What makes you think he was handsome?" put in the more matter-of-fact
+Mary.
+
+"I am sure he must have looked like Annie, and just think what a
+wonderfully handsome man he must have been! He had her lovely hair, I
+almost know he did, and great blue eyes and a strong, straight back,"
+and Dum wiped her own eyes that would fill when she thought of the
+splendid young Englishman gone to his death.
+
+"I don't like to break in on this grand orgy of feeling," I said, "but
+you must remember that Annie got her looks from her mother, as her
+father had none to spare. This poor young man may have been all the
+things you girls picture him to be, but he is just as likely to have
+inherited his looks from Uncle Arthur Ponsonby. He may have had no chin
+at all and have had champagne-bottle shoulders and a long neck."
+
+"Page, how can you? Don't you know that people who meet untimely deaths
+in the Dardanelles are always brave and handsome?" teased Zebedee. "For
+my part, I am sorrier for the present baronet, Sir Arthur, than for the
+late lamenteds. Only think how far the poor man has drifted from all the
+manners and customs of his race!"
+
+"Not manners, maybe customs! His manners are quite the thing to go with
+titles, I think. As for Annie,--she has a way with her that will make
+her shine in any society," I asserted.
+
+Everyone agreed with me audibly but Jessie. She had not yet adjusted
+herself to look upon Annie as anything but the badly-dressed daughter of
+a country storekeeper, who could sing better than she could and had
+attracted three out of the nine beaux on the house-party.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SLEEPY WAKES UP
+
+
+HOUSE-PARTIES have to end sometime and the one at Maxton was no
+exception. We had been invited for two weeks, and although Miss Maria
+graciously asked us to extend the time of our stay, we felt that the old
+lady had had enough of high jinks for a while. We had become very fond
+of her and I think she liked us, too. The general was in love with the
+whole bunch, he declared. He made his gallant, bromidic speeches to each
+one in turn, playing no favorites.
+
+"If I were fifty years younger I would show these chaps a thing or two,"
+he would say.
+
+My private opinion was that the chaps did not need a thing or two shown
+them, as they seemed quite on to the fact that Maxton was a romantic
+spot and that there is no time like the present for getting off tender
+nothings. There being Jacks to go around for the Jills and some to
+spare, if there were any heartaches they were among the males, as there
+were no wallflowers among the girls.
+
+If the death of Sir Isaac Pore and his son and heir did not cause
+overmuch grief in the heart of the storekeeper at Price's Landing, it
+had a dire effect on three young men in the great house on the hill. The
+only way in which they could give vent to their feelings was in heroic
+attempts to assist in the inventory of the stock. That meant at least
+that they could be near Annie and gain her gratitude. Annie's gratitude
+was not a difficult thing to gain. She was in a state of perpetual
+astonishment that all of us loved her so much.
+
+"What have I done to make all of you so kind to me?" she would ask. And
+the answer would be:
+
+"Everything, in that you are your own sweet self."
+
+Mr. Pore, or rather Sir Arthur, seemed to think we were helping in the
+shop because of our admiration and respect for him, and since he thus
+flattered himself we let him go on thinking so, and even encouraged him
+in this delusion since it simplified matters for all of us. Sleepy even
+sneaked the daughter off on a lovely long buggy ride while Dum checked
+up a shelf full of dry-goods, supposed to be done by Annie.
+
+The seemingly impossible was accomplished and that before we left
+Maxton: a complete inventory of the stock of a crowded country store was
+made and in order, all because of the many helpers. A purchaser was
+found by the expeditious Zebedee, and everything, including the good
+will, sold, lock, stock, and barrel, at a very good price considering
+the haste of the transaction.
+
+Annie and her father actually did get off within the week. How it was
+accomplished I can't see, and as we had left Maxton before they made
+their getaway I shall never know. Harvie, who was the only one of us
+left, said that Sir Arthur was as standoffish and superior as ever. He
+started on his journey with the same old Gladstone bag and, as far as
+Harvie could make out, the same English clothes he had brought to
+Price's Landing all those years and years ago.
+
+"If they weren't the same, where on earth could he have bought any like
+them? They don't make them in this country," he said, when he told me of
+it.
+
+Harvie, having awakened to the fact that Annie was a very charming,
+beautiful girl, whom he had for years looked upon as a kind of sister
+but who was not a sister and was moreover very much admired by other
+members of his sex, now was making up for lost time as fast as possible.
+He had no feeling of _noblesse oblige_ in regard to Sleepy. He surely
+had as much right to love Annie as George Massie had and more right to
+tell her of it, since she was almost his sister. He hovered around her
+to the last, doing a million little things to help her and assuring her
+in the meantime of his undying affection, but Annie never did seem to
+understand that he was being any more than a big brother to her. Never
+having had a big brother, she did not know that big brothers do not as
+a rule express their love for the little sisters in such glowing terms.
+
+George Massie went gloomily off when the house-party broke up. He felt
+that he could not in decency stay longer at Maxton since all the others
+were leaving, although he longed to be near Annie. He sought me out on
+the boat when we were bound for Richmond and sighing like a furnace sank
+down by my side. If it had been a sailboat we were traveling in instead
+of an old side-wheel steamboat, I am sure the great sigh he heaved would
+have sent us faster on our way.
+
+"Something fierce!" he muttered.
+
+"Yes, it is hard, but maybe they will come back sometime, or perhaps
+when you get your degree you can go over to England and see her."
+
+"Get my degree! Do you think I am going back to the University? Not on
+your life!"
+
+"But what will you do? You must have some ambition," I said rather
+severely.
+
+"Yes, I've got ambition all right; I'm going to do my bit in France as
+stretcher bearer. I decided last night."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Sure! I'm just wasting my time at the University. I talked it out with
+Annie. She has lots of feeling about England and the war, and if she
+cares, then it is up to me to help her country some."
+
+"Oh, Sleepy! I think that is just splendid of you," I cried. "When will
+you go?"
+
+"Ahem--I'm thinking of going on the same boat with Mr.--Sir Arthur
+Pore."
+
+I could not help laughing.
+
+"Does Annie know?"
+
+"No, I was afraid she might make some objection. I think I'll just
+surprise her on the steamer."
+
+"Won't you have to get passports and permits and things before you can
+go?"
+
+"Yes, I'll set the ball rolling as soon as I get to Richmond. Mr. Tucker
+is attending to Sir Arthur's and I guess I'll go see him as soon as we
+land. He knows how to do so many things."
+
+That was certainly so. Mr. Jeffry Tucker not only could and would match
+zephyr for old ladies, but he knew just how to get passports for
+pompous English noblemen who had but recently kept country stores on the
+banks of the river, and for the lovely daughters. He also knew how to
+get rushed-through passports for rich young medical students who had
+taken sudden resolutions to do a bit in France because of a kind of
+vicarious patriotism.
+
+George Massie had a busy week. He must rush off to see his people, who
+no doubt were quite confounded by his unwonted energy. He must get the
+proper clothing for his undertaking and also make his will, since he had
+quite an estate in his own name. He must tell many relations farewell
+and explain as best he could his sudden passion for carrying the wounded
+off of the battle fields.
+
+When he came in to tell the Tuckers good-by before he went to New York
+to embark on the steamer with the unsuspecting Pores, he looked almost
+thin and quite wide awake, so they told me.
+
+The Tuckers had tried to persuade me to wait in Richmond with them for
+a few days before going to Bracken so that together we could see the
+last of our little English friend, for Sir Arthur and Annie were to take
+a train in Richmond for New York. But I had been too long away from my
+father and felt that I must hasten home to him.
+
+Needless to say that Zebedee had the passports all ready for them to
+sign and berths engaged on the New York sleeper and passage on an
+English vessel, sailing the following Saturday.
+
+Tweedles told me that Annie clung to them at parting as though they had
+been a life rope. The poor girl felt that she was going into a strange
+cold world. It must have been even worse for her than the memorable time
+when she started on what she thought was going to be that lonesome,
+forlorn journey to Gresham. That trip had proven to be very enjoyable in
+spite of all her fears; and perhaps this journey across the ocean was
+not going to be so very forlorn, either.
+
+I should not relish much the idea of a trip with Sir Arthur Ponsonby
+Pore. I can fancy his aloof manner with fellow passengers, who perhaps
+were seeking acquaintance with his lovely daughter; his disregard for
+the comfort of others; his haughtiness with the steward. The only way to
+travel in peace with the baronet would be to have him get good and
+seasick before the vessel got out of sight of Sandy Hook, and stay so
+until she was docked at Liverpool. Then he might prove a very pleasant
+traveling companion, provided he was so ill that he had to stay in his
+bunk.
+
+Of course as the days passed we became desperately uneasy about Annie.
+It seemed a perfect age since they had sailed and still no news of the
+safe arrival of the vessel. I was at Bracken, away from the constant
+calling of extras that was the rule in the city during those stirring
+war times. Tweedles told me they rushed out in the night to purchase a
+paper every time an extra was called, fearing news of a disaster to the
+_Lancaster_, the old-fashioned wooden boat the Pores had taken.
+
+Zebedee had promised to telephone to them if news came to his paper
+concerning the steamer, news either of disaster or safety. The following
+is the letter I received from Dee written in the excitement of a message
+but that moment received from her father.
+
+                                             _Richmond, Va._
+
+      DEAREST PAGE:
+
+      Zebedee has just cabled me that he has had a telephone
+      message from Liverpool that a mine had struck the
+      _Lancaster_ about five hours out from port and the
+      open boats had to take to the passengers. All on board
+      were saved although some of the passengers were much
+      shaken up. (I hope Arthur Ponsonby was one of the much
+      shaken.) We are greatly excited about poor Annie. She
+      is so afraid of water. It is feared all baggage is
+      lost. (Good-by to the Gladstone bag!)
+
+      Dum and I can hardly wait for the cable that we just
+      know Sleepy will send us as soon as he can. Aren't we
+      glad, though, that Sleepy was along? He will take care
+      of Annie no matter what happens. It may be weeks and
+      months before we can get a letter from Annie, telling
+      us all about it. We are awfully sorry it should have
+      happened to Annie, but Dum and Zebedee and I just wish
+      we had been along. I bet you do, too!
+
+      These times are so stirring, I don't see how we can
+      all of us sit still. If our country ever gets pulled
+      into the mix-up I tell you I'm going to get in the dog
+      fight, too. Zebedee says he is, too, and so is Dum. I
+      want to study veterinary surgery so I can help the
+      poor horses when they get wounded and look after the
+      dear dogs who work so hard to bring in the wounded.
+      Zebedee is afraid that is man's work but I tell him
+      bosh! plain bosh! There is no such thing as man's work
+      any more in this world. He says I'm an emancipated
+      piece and I tell him I'm glad he realizes it. Dum and
+      I are hard at work at war relief work. We go three
+      times a week and roll bandages. I like the work but
+      Dum sits up and lets tears drop on the bandages,
+      thinking about all the poor soldiers they are to bind
+      up. I cry a little, too, sometimes. Zebedee says if we
+      bawl over new bandages, what would we do over real
+      wounds? I tell him salt is a good antiseptic and a few
+      sincere tears won't hurt the poor wounded.
+
+      Dum and I have adopted a French war orphan between us.
+      Ten cents keeps one for a day and it does seem mean of
+      us not to give that much. We always waste that much
+      money, and more, every day of our lives. It means only
+      letting up a bit on the movies or drinking water
+      instead of limeade when one is thirsty. Zebedee has
+      got himself one all by himself and he is going to keep
+      it by letting up on one cigar a day. He says his smoke
+      is bitter to him now that he realizes that every time
+      he lights a ten cent cigar he might be feeding a
+      little Belgian baby. We offered to get him some rabbit
+      tobacco and dry it nicely so he could smoke it in a
+      pipe, but he said never mind. Poor Zebedee is so
+      choosey about his smoke that he would rather give it
+      up altogether than not have it good.
+
+      We've got a scheme on hand for a jaunt but I'm going
+      to let Zebedee have the pleasure of springing it on
+      you if the plan works out. Dum says I'm not leaving a
+      thing for her to tell. She says it is not ethical for
+      one member of a family to write such a long letter to
+      a person that other members correspond with, but I
+      tell her I have told you very little news and that my
+      letter has been more taken up with psychology and the
+      conduct of life.
+
+      Of course I started this letter to tell you about
+      Annie and the good ship _Lancaster_, but since all I
+      know about it is that it hit a mine and all hands were
+      saved in open boats I could not enlarge on that bit of
+      news much. We will let you know when we hear more.
+
+      Zebedee and Dum and Brindle send you much love. Give
+      mine to Dr. Allison and Mammy Susan, also many hugs to
+      the dogs.
+
+                                Affectionately,
+                                                DEE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THINGS HAPPENING
+
+
+ONE of the delights of leaving home is coming back, at least so I always
+felt about my beloved Bracken. I indulged in many little jaunts during
+the summer but each home-coming was as pleasant as the trips. First
+there had been the house-party at Maxton, which had been so full of good
+times, then a short stay at home and almost before I had settled myself,
+a hurry call from the Tuckers to go to a mountain camp run by some very
+spunky girls from Richmond, the Carters.
+
+Those days in camp were a delightful experience and quite an eye-opener
+as to what girls can do if it is up to them. The Carter girls had been
+brought up in extravagant luxury, but when their father had a nervous
+breakdown and they suddenly found themselves with no visible means of
+support, they jumped in and ran a week-end boarding camp on the side of
+a mountain in Albemarle, and actually supported the whole family and
+made some money besides.
+
+They were the busiest people I ever saw, but they managed to tuck in a
+lot of fun along with it. I certainly hope to see more of those girls,
+as they interested me tremendously. Douglas was the oldest; she seemed
+to be the balance wheel for the family. I never saw such poise in a
+young girl,--not a bit "society," either. She had given up college and
+was going to stay at home and help. Helen was the next, a stylish
+creature with more clash and swing to her than even my beloved Tweedles.
+She was the one who directed the cooking as though she had been catering
+to boarders all her life, and I was told that she had never thought of
+such a thing until the spring before, when her father got ill. She
+evidently had no head for money and I am afraid had an extravagant way
+with her that gave poor Douglas some trouble.
+
+Then came Nan, a perfect love of a little thing, all poetry and charm
+but with a conscience that made her do her duty in spite of preferring
+to live in the clouds. Lucy was the youngest girl and showed promise of
+being perhaps the best-looking of all the very handsome sisters, but she
+was too young to say for certain. At any rate, she was a very attractive
+child. Then there was Bobby, the little brother, an _enfant terrible_
+and a perfect little duck.
+
+Mr. Carter was the most pathetic figure I have ever seen: a big, strong
+man, accustomed to action and power, reduced to letting his daughters
+make a living for him. He seemed to have lost the power of
+concentration, somehow. Mr. Tucker said he thought he would get well but
+it was going to take a long time. He had worked beyond mental endurance
+trying to keep his family in luxury.
+
+Mrs. Carter was the kind of woman who reconciles one to being a
+half-orphan, not that my little mother would ever have been that kind,
+but I mean it is better to be motherless than to have the kind she was.
+I thought she was very pretty, very gracious, with a wonderful social
+gift, but the kind of woman who flops at the first breath of disaster.
+Those Carter girls will have her on their hands just like a baby until
+the end of time. Whenever she was crossed, she simply went to bed in a
+ravishing boudoir cap and bed sacque and there she lolled until she
+carried her point.
+
+The Carters were so interesting to me that I should like to tell more
+about them but they really should be in a book all to themselves, they
+and their week-end camp. I had never been right in the mountains before,
+but after my stay among them I felt that I liked it even better than the
+seashore. Father said that the last wonderful thing I saw was always the
+most wonderful thing in the world. He also said that that was just as it
+should be. That when persons begin to look backward all the time instead
+of forward, the sutures of their skulls are too firmly knit together and
+all of their pleasures have to be of memory. New things make no
+impression on their brains. He said he intended to keep his skull in a
+semi-pliable state like a baby's and go on looking at the world as a
+rattle for him to have a good time with.
+
+I had often thought that my dear father spent a terribly humdrum
+existence for a man of his ability and intense interest in current
+events. While I loved the country in general and Bracken in particular,
+I also loved to get out into the world occasionally and get a new
+outlook, a different view-point as it were; get somewhere where things
+were happening. Nothing much ever seemed to me to happen in the country.
+
+One day I said as much to him. He smiled and drew me to him.
+
+"Why, honey, things are happening all the time in the country just as
+much as in town. I like to get away occasionally, too, but not because I
+want to be where things are happening,--in fact, I like to get away from
+so many things happening at once as they do in my life here as a country
+doctor. The things that happen in cities I feel more impersonal about."
+
+"But you like to read about the things that happen in cities."
+
+"Yes, and city people like to read about the things that happen in the
+country, too. Aren't all the popular magazines filled with stories of
+rural life?"
+
+"Ye-s! But they are romances that are made up."
+
+"But not made up out of whole cloth! Come and go with me to-day on my
+rounds."
+
+"Oh, I'd love to, but Miss Pinkie Davis has come to sew for me and I
+have to be here to help."
+
+"Let her stay and we will give her a holiday. Poor Miss Pinkie has
+precious few holidays. She can read all the new magazines and rest her
+busy fingers."
+
+Of course Miss Pinkie was agreeable to the arrangement. She did have
+very few holidays and no time to read the romances she craved. We left
+her ensconced in a hammock on the shady porch with a pile of magazines
+beside her and a beatific smile on her paper doll countenance. Something
+interesting was already happening in the country, at least something
+interesting to Miss Pinkie.
+
+It was a wonderful day in late September. The winter corn had been cut
+and stacked in shocks that always reminded me of Indian wigwams. The
+tobacco had been housed the week before and now from each tobacco barn
+arose a mist of blue smoke. Groups of men could be seen standing around
+every barn gathered there to take part in the sacred rite of curing the
+green tobacco. A steady fire must be kept up day and night, and all the
+men in the countryside seemed to feel it could not be done without the
+personal supervision of each and every one of them.
+
+"Suppose the women had some important steady cooking to do where the
+fire had to be kept up day and night, do you think they would have to
+call in all the other women in the county to assist?" laughed Father.
+"Men are funny animals."
+
+"The tobacco crop was pretty good, wasn't it?" I asked.
+
+"Fine! Never saw a better. I guess many a poor soldier in the trenches
+will be thankful that it is so. They say this war is being fought on
+the wheat and tobacco crops." I thought Father gave me a sly glance,
+but when I asked him what he was looking at he said nothing much, he
+only thought my nose was growing a little.
+
+Everybody had a word of greeting for Dr. Allison as we drove by. We were
+stopped again and again, sometimes for a word of advice from the family
+physician as to Jim's sore throat or Mary's indigestion; sometimes to
+prescribe for a hog or cow that was indisposed, and once to decide if
+San Jose scale had attacked a peach orchard. We could not stop long with
+each person as we were on a hurry call, but Father always had a moment
+to spare; and then the colt had to make up for lost time and was given
+free rein at every good stretch of road.
+
+The colt was the colt by courtesy and habit. He had long ago passed the
+skittish age, but his spirit was one of eternal youth and his ways so
+coltish that no other name seemed to suit him. One could as soon think
+of Cupid's growing up to be an old gentleman as the colt's ever becoming
+a safe, steady nag. Enough things happened in the country for him, and
+he thought that each thing that happened was something for him to dance
+and prance about. A flock of belated blackbirds twittering in an oak
+tree was enough to make him get the bit in his teeth and run a quarter
+of a mile. A rabbit running across the road was something to shy
+over,--and I agree with the colt in that. As many times as I have seen
+it, there is something about a Molly Cottontail as she lopes across the
+road that always startles me. She bobs up so suddenly from nowhere and
+disappears as rapidly into the nowhere.
+
+Driving the colt was an excitement in itself that must have kept life
+from becoming dull to my dear father. There could be no loafing on that
+job. Reins had to be well up in hand and the driver must be fully
+cognizant of things that the imaginative animal no doubt looked upon as
+possible enemies. Sometimes I think he was playing a game with himself
+and making excitement to keep his existence from being humdrum. At any
+rate, it was great fun to be behind the spirited animal on that crisp
+September morn. No one could drive so well as Father. He had a sure,
+steady, gentle but firm touch on the rein that soothed the most nervous
+horse. Father's driving always reminded me of Zebedee's dancing.
+
+Our hurry call was to a young farmer's wife. The gates were wide open as
+though we were expected and no obstacles were to delay us. The husband,
+Henry Miller, was waiting for us at the stile block. His face was drawn
+and white and great tears were rolling down his weather-beaten cheeks.
+
+"She's awful bad off, Doctor. I'm afraid she's gonter die," he whispered
+huskily.
+
+"Oh no, my son! I have no idea of such a thing. Maybe you had better
+unhitch my horse. He is not much on the stand. Page, you help him,
+please."
+
+Now Father knew perfectly well that I could look after the colt by
+myself, but he simply wanted to occupy Mr. Miller. Silently we undid the
+straps and led him to the stable. I realized he was feeling too deeply
+to listen to my chatter, so I kept very quiet. When we started back to
+the house I told him he must not bother about me,--that I had a book and
+would just make myself at home out in the summer-house.
+
+"I will come, too," he faltered. "Looks like I'll go crazy if I have to
+stay alone."
+
+"Oh, do come! Maybe you would like me to read to you."
+
+"No, Miss Page! Just let me talk to you. You see I feel so bad about
+Ellen because she ain't been back to see her folks. I didn't know she
+wanted to go, but it seems she did and didn't like to say so. I ought to
+have known about it. If I hadn't have been a numskull I would a-known.
+I've been so happy just to be with her that I never thought she wasn't
+just as happy to be with me."
+
+"Why, Mr. Miller, I am sure she was. Everybody is always saying how
+happy Mrs. Miller is. Only the other day I heard Sally Winn declare she
+never saw such a contented young married woman. Sally says lots of
+young married women are not happy; that it takes a long time for them
+to get used to husbands instead of sweethearts; but that your wife
+didn't have to do that because you seemed just like a sweetheart all the
+time."
+
+"Did she say that,--did she truly? I wonder what made her think it."
+
+"Something your wife told her, I reckon!"
+
+"Oh, thank you! Thank you for that! She could have gone to her mother if
+I had known she wanted to."
+
+"Of course she could, but maybe she did want to go to her mother and
+didn't want to leave you. I bet that was the reason she didn't tell you
+she wanted to see her mother. She knew you would insist upon her going,
+and then she would have had to leave you."
+
+Now the poor anxious young man was smiling. He wiped his eyes and
+grasped my hand.
+
+"You are powerful like Doc Allison, Miss Page. He knows how to cure a
+sick spirit just as well as a sick body, and you sure can comfort a
+fellow, too."
+
+There was the creak of a screen door being hastily opened on the side
+porch of the farmhouse and an old colored woman came running out. Henry
+Miller jumped to his feet but could not go to meet her. Fear seemed to
+grip him. What news was she bringing?
+
+"Marse Hinry, it's a boy! It's a boy!"
+
+"A boy?"
+
+"Yassir, a boy, an' jes' as peart as kin be, an' Miss Ellen----"
+
+"Is she dead?"
+
+"Daid! Law, chile, she is the livinges' thing you ever seed an' what's
+mo' she is a-axin' fer you jes' lak she can't stan' it a minute longer
+'thout she see you. Baby cryin' fer you, too!" and sure enough we did
+hear a faint squeaky cry issuing from an upstairs room.
+
+The newly-made parent sprinted to the house as though he were in a
+Marathon race, and the old colored woman and I looked at each other and
+wiped the tears off that would roll down our cheeks.
+
+"Young paws allus is kinder pitable," she remarked, and then hastened
+back to her labors.
+
+Father came out soon, his lean face beaming with smiles, his arm thrown
+around the shoulders of the ecstatic Henry. We were to stay to dinner at
+the farmhouse, much to the delight of the old colored cook. It was
+deemed a great privilege in the county to have Doc Allison stop for
+dinner.
+
+"I done made a dumplin' fer Marse Hinry," she said, as we were sitting
+down to the hospitable board. "In stressful times men-folks mus' eat or
+they gits ter broodin' on they troubles, an' whin men-folks gits ter
+broodin' if'n they ain't full er victuals fo' yer know it they is full
+er liquor."
+
+As Henry Miller was a most respectable, church-going young man this
+amused Father very much.
+
+"That's so, Aunt Min, so you feed him up. He had better look out,
+anyhow, because before you know it that young man upstairs will be
+whipping him."
+
+This delighted the negress, who chuckled with glee as she passed the
+dumplings.
+
+"I is glad it's a boy 'cep'n' they is been so many boys born here lately
+that this ol' nigger is beginning ter s'picion that these here battles I
+hear 'bout is goin' ter spread this-a-way. In war time all the gal
+babies is born boys."
+
+"Oh, I hope not, Aunt Min," said Father gravely.
+
+"Yassir! An' the snakes! I never seed the like of snakes this summer
+gone by. That means the debble is busy an' the debble is the father of
+war."
+
+"True, true!" sighed the doctor. "Well, I hope it won't come to us until
+the youngster upstairs is able to help defend us."
+
+While we were at dinner, Father was called up on the Millers' telephone.
+Mrs. Reed, an old lady on the adjoining farm, was very ill and the
+doctor must leave his dumpling unfinished and fly to her. The colt was
+harnessed with the expedition used in a fire engine house and we were on
+our way in an incredibly short time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+MORE THINGS HAPPENING
+
+
+THE Reeds were aristocrats of the first rank. There were no men in the
+family at all, no one but old Mrs. Reed, who had been a widow for at
+least forty years, and her two old maid daughters, Miss Elizabeth and
+Miss Margaret.
+
+Weston was a beautiful place if somewhat gone to seed by reason of the
+impossibility of obtaining the necessary labor to keep it up. The house
+was a low rambling building, part brick and part frame, where rooms had
+been added on in days gone by when the family was waxing instead of
+waning, as was now the case.
+
+Miss Elizabeth insisted upon my coming in the house although I longed to
+be allowed the privilege of exploring the garden, which I had remembered
+with great pleasure from former visits with my father. No matter if
+potatoes had to go unplanted and wheat uncut, the ladies of Weston had
+never permitted the flower garden to be neglected. I could see it from
+the window of the parlor through the half closed blinds. Cosmos and
+chrysanthemums were massed in glowing clumps, holding their own in spite
+of a light frost we had had the night before. The monthly roses, huge
+bushes that looked as though they had been there for centuries, were
+blooming profusely.
+
+Mrs. Reed was very, very low, so low that her daughters feared the
+worst. A door opened from the parlor into her bedroom, which the
+daughters spoke of always with a kind of reverence as "the chamber."
+Through this door I could hear the low clear voice of the old lady as
+she greeted the doctor.
+
+"How do you do, James? I am glad to see you once more."
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Reed, I am more than glad of the privilege of seeing you. May
+I feel your pulse?" His tone was that of a man who requests to kiss
+one's hand.
+
+"You may, James, but there is no use. I am quite easy now, but only a
+few moments ago my heart quite stopped beating. Each time I swing a
+little lower. Did I hear someone say you had little Page with you?"
+
+"Yes, madame! She is in the parlor."
+
+"I want to see the child."
+
+I heard quite distinctly but I did not want to go in, shrinking
+instinctively from the ordeal of speaking to the old lady who was
+swinging so low.
+
+Miss Elizabeth came for me. It seemed impossible to me that anyone could
+be older than Miss Elizabeth, who looked a hundred. She was in reality
+almost seventy. The mother was ninety but did not look any older than
+the daughter nor much more fragile. Miss Margaret was much more buxom
+than Miss Elizabeth and perhaps ten years younger. She was regarded by
+the two older ladies as nothing more than a child.
+
+"Mother wants to see you," whispered the weeping Miss Elizabeth. Miss
+Elizabeth always did weep about everything. In fact, in the course of
+her threescore years and almost ten, so many tears had flowed down her
+cheeks that they had worn a little furrow from the corner of her eye to
+the corner of her mouth, where it made a neat little twist outward just
+in time to keep the salt water out of her mouth. These wrinkles in the
+poor lady's cheeks gave to her countenance a whimsical expression of
+laughter. The little twist at the end of the furrow was responsible for
+this.
+
+I went as bidden and hoped no one knew how I hated it.
+
+"Page, Mrs. Reed wants to see you a moment," said Father very gently.
+
+"How do you do?" I whispered in such a wee voice that I felt as though
+someone away off had said it and not I. I knew that Mrs. Reed was deaf,
+too, and that I should have spoken in a loud tone.
+
+"I'll be better soon, child," answered the old lady, who did not seem to
+be deaf at all. They say sometimes just before death that faculties
+become quite acute.
+
+"How pretty you are, my dear, almost as pretty as your mother. I hope
+you appreciate what a good man your father is." Her voice was very low
+and I had to lean over to catch what she was saying. Her thin old hands
+were lying on the outside of the counterpane and they seemed to me to
+look already dead. I had never seen a dead person but I fancied that
+their hands must look just that way. I was deeply grateful to Fate that
+I did not have to take one of those hands.
+
+"Yes; ma'am--I--believe I do. He is the best man in the world."
+
+"He is so honest. Now he knows I am almost gone and he would not tell me
+a lie about it for anything,--would you, James?"
+
+"No, madame!" and Father put his finger again on her wrist. Miss
+Elizabeth wept silently and Miss Margaret sobbed aloud.
+
+"Tell me, has Ellen Miller's baby come?"
+
+"Yes, I have just come from there. It is a fine boy and mother and baby
+doing well."
+
+"Good! I am glad when I hear some men are being born into the county.
+Too many women! Too many women! What are you girls crying for?" she
+asked, turning her head a little on the pillow and looking with wonder
+at the two old ladies she called girls. "There is no use in crying for
+me. I am glad to die,--not that I have not been happy in my life,--yes,
+very happy! But there are more on the other side than this side now for
+me. Your father and brothers, my father and mother and brothers and
+sisters, all my friends. Do you think I'll know them, James?"
+
+"Yes, madame, I think you will."
+
+"I don't expect them to know me," the faint old voice went on. "How
+could they know me, so old and wrinkled and feeble? My husband was only
+fifty-five when he died and I was still nothing more than a child of
+fifty. My hair had not turned and I was very lively. Do you think he
+will be disappointed to find me so old?"
+
+Her mind was wandering now and her voice trailed off to the finest
+thread. Father motioned me to go, but before I could turn the old lady
+suddenly sat up in bed and called to her daughters:
+
+"Don't forget to have the giant-of-battle rose trimmed back and those
+hollyhocks transplanted!" Then she fell back on her pillow and closed
+her eyes.
+
+I slipped out of the room and ran into the garden where Father found me
+a half hour later.
+
+"How is Mrs. Reed, Father?" I asked. He looked at me wonderingly.
+
+"She is well again," he answered gently. "She was dead, my dear, before
+you left the room."
+
+"Oh, Father!" I gasped.
+
+"I was sorry for you to be there, but I got fooled. I thought the old
+lady was going to live a few hours longer, but doctors know mighty
+little when you come down to life and death. Come, honey! We must go. I
+have a sick child to see on my way home."
+
+We had to stop at a little country store on the way to see the sick
+child to get some chewing-gum for the youthful patient. Father always
+had chewing-gum for the sick kiddies and that kept him in high favor
+with them. Doc Allison was looked upon as a kind of concrete Santy who
+gave un-Christmas presents. He carried peppermints always in his pocket,
+and when a child was told to poke out his tongue he more than likely
+would find a peppermint on it before he pulled it in again.
+
+The child was better and our stay did not have to be very lengthy. All
+the children in the family had insisted upon showing their tongues to
+the giver of peppermints, which delayed us a few moments.
+
+"And now for home!" said Father, who was looking tired. He actually
+handed the reins to me to drive while he filled his pipe for a peaceful
+smoke.
+
+We were passing through a settlement where there was the usual
+post-office, country store, church and schoolhouse, with a few houses
+straggling around, when a young man ran out into the road and called
+desperately to Father to stop. I drew rein and he came panting to the
+buggy.
+
+"Doc Allison, please come be witness for us!"
+
+"Witness? What for?"
+
+"Well, Julia and I have walked off to get married. I won't say 'run off'
+because both of us are of age and have been of age for a good five
+years. But Julia's mother is that cantankerous that she won't let her
+get married if she knows about it, and so we have come to the parson's
+with license and all; but he says we must have witnesses and there's no
+one in the settlement right now but the postmaster and the storekeeper
+and they can't leave their jobs, and besides they are afraid of the old
+lady. She is on her way here now, I believe, so you'll have to hurry."
+
+We found the bride in the parson's parlor looking nervously out of the
+window. She, too, was afraid of the old lady. I was sorry for the parson
+because he must have been afraid, too, but he went manfully through the
+ceremony. He had hardly finished with: "Whom God hath united let no man
+put asunder," when there was a terrible commotion in the road. An old
+lady came driving up in a spring wagon. She had blood in her eye, a
+terribly rampagious old lady. She stepped out of the wagon and I noticed
+she had on top boots. She wore a short, scant skirt and a workman's blue
+chambray shirt and a man's hat pulled down over as determined a
+countenance as I have ever seen.
+
+"Mrs. Henderson!" gasped the preacher, turning pale, and well he might
+as Mrs. Henderson was someone to stand in awe of.
+
+"Come on home here, girl!" she said roughly, as she made her way into
+the parson's parlor.
+
+"Her home is where I live now," said the young man, putting his arm
+around the bride.
+
+"Nonsense! I never got too late to anything in my life. I telephoned
+these folks over here that they had better not stand as witness to any
+ceremony until I got here, and I know they wouldn't do it." She had been
+too enraged to notice Father and me, but now when Father stepped up and
+spoke to her, she fell back in confusion.
+
+"My daughter and I were fortunately in time to witness the ceremony," he
+said quietly. "It is all over now and your daughter is safely married."
+
+"Married!"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Henderson, and I advise you to sit still a moment and compose
+yourself. You will have apoplexy some of these days flying off in these
+rages." He looked at her very sternly. "Your daughter has married a good
+young fellow and she will be much happier than she would be remaining
+single."
+
+"What business is it of yours, I'd like to know?"
+
+"No business at all, except that I was asked to witness the ceremony by
+your son-in-law; and if you should get sick from the excitement you are
+working yourself into, you will send for me post haste," answered Father
+coolly.
+
+"Never! Not after the bad turn you have done me!"
+
+"Well, that's as you choose," he laughed.
+
+Then he kissed the bride, who had said never a word but clung to her
+husband; shook hands with the groom and the parson; held out his hand to
+the irate, booted old woman. She would have none of him, however, but
+folded her arms and sniffed indignantly. She made me think of:
+
+        "But Douglas 'round him drew his cloak,
+         Folded his arms and thus he spoke:"
+
+One couldn't help laughing at her but feeling sorry for her, too.
+
+"She'll have to pay for this," said Father, as we started again for
+home. "She has been going into rages like this all her life and usually
+has a spell of sickness after one like to-day's."
+
+"But, Father, you surely would not go to her after the way she spoke to
+you!"
+
+"Of course I would if she needs me. Country doctors can't be too touchy.
+It isn't as though she could get someone else as she could in town. In
+cities a doctor isn't so important as he is in the country. There are
+always plenty more to answer a call that he turns down. I have never in
+my life refused a patient."
+
+We had a quiet drive home, Father smoking his pipe, while I gave
+undivided attention to the prancings and shyings of the colt. I was
+thinking of all the happenings of the day.
+
+"A penny for your thoughts!" he said, pinching my ear. "I bet I know
+what you are ruminating."
+
+"Well!"
+
+"You have come to the conclusion that a good deal can happen in a
+country neighborhood in a day: a birth, a death, a marriage and a
+quarrel."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE END OF AN EVENTFUL DAY
+
+
+THINGS kept on happening. When I got out of the buggy to open the big
+gate leading into the avenue, a gate that was supposed to work by
+pulling a string but which never did, I saw some peculiar tracks in the
+dust of the road.
+
+"An automobile has gone in," I exclaimed, "and hasn't gone out, either!
+Look, the tracks don't come back!"
+
+"Heavens! I do hope I am not to go out again," said Father wearily. "I'd
+like to sit on the back of my neck in my sleepy-hollow chair and talk or
+listen as the case might be. I am too tired even to read."
+
+"Me, too! And hungry's not the word!"
+
+"A midday dinner gets mighty far off by supper time. I hope Susan
+realizes that."
+
+A dusty Ford car was drawn up near the stile block. It looked familiar,
+but then all Fords have a way of looking that.
+
+"Who on earth can it be? Well, if I have to go out again at least you
+and the colt won't," sighed the poor country doctor. "I am going to make
+the owner of that car carry me wherever I am to go and what's more bring
+me back. I am not going to sit on the front seat with him, either, and
+listen to his jabber. Me for the rear and a whole seat to myself. I
+might even get a nap."
+
+A sudden opening of the front door and who should come tearing out but
+Dum and Dee Tucker and Zebedee? Of course the lines of the dusty car
+were familiar: Henry Ford himself, faithful servitor!
+
+The tired feeling vanished very quickly in our joy at the disclosure of
+the owner of the car. Father was always glad to see the Tuckers but was
+doubly glad now, because it being the Tuckers, meant it was not someone
+to snatch him away from his sleepy-hollow chair.
+
+At Mammy Susan's instigation the twins were already installed in my
+room. There were plenty of guest chambers at Bracken, but we always
+liked to be in the same room. Whenever we had tried sleeping in separate
+rooms we felt we had missed something.
+
+"How did it happen?" I cried, hugging the twins again as we hastened to
+my room to make ourselves fit for the supper that Mammy Susan warned us
+she was a-dishin' up.
+
+"Well, we are having a Tucker discussion and we thought you and Dr.
+Allison should be called in consultation, especially as you are one of
+the parties concerned," answered Dum.
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes, you! We'd like to know what plan we could make where you were not
+concerned," put in Dee.
+
+"Please tell me what it is!"
+
+"Wait until after supper, and when the men-folks light their pipes, then
+we can talk it out. You can do twice as much with Zebedee when he is
+fed," said the knowing Dee.
+
+"Father, too, is more amenable to reason," I laughed.
+
+Mammy Susan had fully realized that a midday dinner is a long way from
+supper and had planned a royal feast for us, and when the Tuckers
+arrived she added to her menu to suit their tastes and appetites. Mammy
+Susan always remembered what guests liked best, and no matter how much
+trouble it was to her, usually managed to have that particular dish. The
+Tuckers were prime favorites with the dear old woman and she could not
+do enough for them.
+
+Supper over, we adjourned to the library where a cheery wood fire was
+crackling in the great fireplace. There was frost in the air and a fire
+was quite acceptable, although we had the windows wide open. Father and
+I loved to make up a big fire and then have plenty of cold fresh air.
+
+"I can't see the use er heatin' up the whole er Bracken, but if
+Docallison is a-willin' ter pay fer cuttin' the wood, 'tain't fer me ter
+'jec'," said Mammy Susan as she peeped in to see that there was plenty
+of wood, hoping in her secret soul that there would not be so she could
+have some excuse for quarreling with the yard boy. Mammy Susan waged an
+eternal warfare with the yard boy, whoever he might be. We had so many
+it was hard to keep up with their changing names, so Father called them
+all George.
+
+It was dear Mammy's one failing. She simply could not live in peace with
+other servants. We had long ago given up trying to have a housemaid, as
+Mammy Susan would have complained of the lack of efficiency of a
+graduate of a domestic science school of the first standing. No one
+could help her cook. Mrs. Rorer herself would have been found wanting in
+the culinary department of Bracken.
+
+"Humph! Wood enough fer onct!" she grumbled. "If'n I hadn' er got right
+behin' that there so-called George there wouldn' er been. He is the
+triflinges' nigger," she mumbled, as she went through the hall. Zebedee
+ran after her and her grumblings were changed to chucklings by something
+that passed between them.
+
+"Poor old Susan!" said Father, as he sank into the deepest hollow of his
+chair. "She is so capable herself that she expects all of her race to
+toe the mark, too. She is very lenient with the white people whom she
+loves and absolutely adamantine with the coloreds. The white folks can
+do no wrong and the black folks can do no right."
+
+Pipes were filled for the two parents and a box of candy opened for the
+daughters, and then we were ready for the business of the day to be
+discussed.
+
+"Dr. Allison, what are you going to do with Page this winter?" asked Mr.
+Tucker.
+
+"Do with Page! Why--nothing but--nothing at all."
+
+"Oh, but, doctor----" broke in Dum and in the same breath Dee clamored:
+
+"We want----" but nobody heard what we wanted as I had to put in my oar
+saying I thought I ought to stay at home.
+
+"Now, see here, if we all of us talk at once we won't get anywhere, and
+we might just as well have stayed in Richmond," complained Zebedee.
+
+"Well, let's appoint a chairman then," I suggested, "and everybody
+address the chair. I nominate Mr. Tucker chairman pro tem."
+
+He was duly elected.
+
+"Nominations are in order for chairman," and the chairman pro tem rapped
+for order.
+
+"I nominate Mr. Tucker for chairman," said Father contentedly from his
+easy chair.
+
+"I second the nomination," from me.
+
+"I nominate Dr. Allison!" cried Dum.
+
+"Second the nomination!" said Dee, jumping to her feet for a speech.
+"Zebedee is too Mr. Tuckerish when he gets in the chair to suit me, and
+besides he will have to be talking too much in this meeting to occupy
+the chair with any grace."
+
+"I withdraw my name as candidate," said the first nominee graciously.
+"Any other nominations? The chair hears none,--then it is in order to
+make the election of Dr. Allison unanimous." It was done so with three
+rousing cheers.
+
+Father always enjoyed the Tuckers' foolishness and he was now in a
+state of relaxation and contentment, after a strenuous day spent in
+doing his duty, that fitted in well with our cheerful guests.
+
+"Well, I'm glad to have the chair if I can sit in it," he said.
+"Friends, since there are no minutes, we can dispense with the reading
+of them. What is the business of the day?"
+
+"Mr. President, what are we going to do with our daughters this coming
+winter?" said Zebedee, rising to his feet and speaking after due
+acknowledgment from the chair. "'The time has come' the walrus said, 'to
+talk of many things,' but this business of occupying these girls, whom a
+Merciful Providence has confided to our care, is a serious matter. They
+are too young to stop school altogether, especially since they don't
+want to make debuts----"
+
+"Who said we didn't? We'd do anything rather than go back to school,"
+interrupted Dum.
+
+"Mr. Tucker has the floor," said Father with mock severity.
+
+"I rise to a question of privilege," announced Dee solemnly. "We are
+'most as old as Zebedee was when he got married and quite as old as our
+mother was." At this Zebedee laughed a little and wiped his eyes once.
+He always had a tear ready for his young wife who was spared to him such
+a little while.
+
+"Well, honey, even if you are, times have changed. Young folks don't
+stop school as soon as they used to."
+
+"Didn't I tell you he would get Mr. Tuckerish? Just listen to him!
+Talking about young folks as though he were a million."
+
+"Address the chair!" and Father rapped for order.
+
+"May I ask your indulgence for a moment, Mr. President?" asked Zebedee
+meekly. "As I was saying, when the gentleman from nowhere interrupted
+me: our daughters are too young to stop studying altogether. Don't you
+think so?"
+
+"If you will allow the chair to express an opinion, I am afraid they
+are."
+
+"Of course Gresham's burning down was most inopportune, as they would
+have been safely placed for another year there, but now that it is
+burned and not rebuilt yet----"
+
+"We wouldn't go back there, anyhow, with that old Miss Plympton bossing
+things," asserted Dum.
+
+"Now what I want to find is some way to have them go on studying and
+learning and still not be bored to death," and Zebedee sat down.
+
+"A Daniel come to judgment!" I whispered.
+
+"Are you addressing the chair?" asked Father.
+
+"No, I was just talking to myself."
+
+"Of course, I want to study art more than anything in the world!"
+exclaimed Dum, bouncing on her feet and forcing an acknowledgment from
+the chair before Dee had time to get it. "I can't see the use in
+burdening myself with Latin and math when I am nearly dead to model
+things."
+
+"Well, you haven't overburdened yourself with knowledge yet, I am glad
+to say," teased her father.
+
+"Are you addressing the chair?" asked our president sternly. "If not,
+pray do so."
+
+"Well, Mr. President, I want to study physiology and anatomy," said Dee.
+"And for the life of me I can't see what good ancient history and French
+would do me."
+
+"And I want to be a writer, and it seems to me the best way to be one
+is--just to be one," I remarked.
+
+"Exactly!" smiled Father.
+
+"And now we want to talk over what is the best way for these girls to
+get what they want and still not be idle," said Mr. Tucker. "I should
+like to hear what our honored president has to say."
+
+"Well, friends, this has kind of been sprung on me. I have been living
+in a kind of fool's paradise, thinking that maybe our girls knew enough
+to stop; but I see that I was wrong. Girls never know enough to stop.
+I'll let my third do whatever you let your two-thirds do, if it isn't
+too wild."
+
+"But, Father, I am going to stay right here at Bracken with you! You
+know you need me."
+
+"Of course I need you, but you don't think I need you any more than
+Tucker needs his daughters. You will settle down soon enough and now is
+the time to gather material for writing. Things make an impression on
+you now that wouldn't when you are older. One can put off writing longer
+than getting experience," and Father drew me down on the arm of his
+chair.
+
+"Where do you think these monkeys should go to get these varied
+industries they are longing for, Tucker?"
+
+"New York, I should say."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+PLANS FOR THE FUTURE
+
+
+NEW YORK! The very sound of the name thrilled me. It was all I could do
+to keep from following the twins in their demonstration of joy and
+gratitude lavished on their father. I contented myself, however, by
+rumpling up my father's hair.
+
+"When?" gasped Father, when I had finished with him.
+
+"Immediately if not sooner!" said Zebedee, coming out unscathed from the
+embraces of his girls. "I have been thinking a lot about it and I really
+believe it would be the best thing for them. They can in a way find
+themselves, and they don't get in any more scrapes without us than they
+do with us."
+
+"That's so," agreed Father.
+
+"Oh, we won't get in any scrapes at all!" declared Dee.
+
+"Not a single one, if you only trust us!" maintained Dum.
+
+"I'm not going to take my oath upon it that you won't get into some, but
+if you talk over anything you are contemplating, in the way of
+adventure, with wise little Page, I don't believe your scrapes will
+amount to much."
+
+Zebedee always complimented me by insisting that my judgment was good,
+and for a wonder, the girls did not mind when he praised me. They were
+very jealous of their father's praise when it was laid on too thickly,
+except where I was concerned, but they agreed with him heartily when he
+lauded me to the skies.
+
+"You shouldn't say that," I said, blushing. "I might prove myself
+unworthy of the trust imposed in me,--and then what?"
+
+"Then I shall have to declare myself at fault in character reading."
+
+"But, Page, you know you always hold us down! When we get into trouble
+it is against your judgment. If we listen to you, we keep straight,"
+said Dum.
+
+"You mean I preach!"
+
+"That's the funny thing about you, Page: you give us sage, grown-up
+advice without preaching. We wouldn't listen a minute if you preached."
+
+"All right, I promise never to do that objectionable thing," I laughed.
+"But really and truly, I don't think Father ought to afford this trip
+for me."
+
+"Child, it's not a trip," and Father put his arm around me again. "It's
+part of your education. New York need not be such an expensive place if
+you girls go there with economical ideas in your heads, instead of
+extravagant ones."
+
+"Certainly! We had better allowance them and that will be part of their
+training, as well as what they will get from the several schools. My
+girls know very little about finances and it is high time they learned.
+Experience is the only way for them to learn, as whenever I try to
+instill in them principles of economy they say I am Mr. Tuckerish," and
+Zebedee tried to look stern.
+
+The idea of his instilling principles of economy in anybody's mind was
+so funny all of us had to laugh. One thing Mr. Tucker insisted on was
+not spending money until you had it; but the minute you did have it,
+what was it meant for but to spend? "Easy come, easy go!" was the motto
+for the whole Tucker family.
+
+"Oh, we will live so cheap I haven't a doubt we'll save oodlums of
+money!" cried Dum. "Mrs. Edwin Green told me a lot about how cheap one
+can live in Bohemia. She told us whenever we went to New York she was
+going to give us a letter of introduction to her brother and
+sister-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Kent Brown."
+
+Mrs. Edwin Green was the lovely young woman we had met in Charleston
+when we took our famous trip down there. She was a Miss Molly Brown of
+Kentucky who had married Professor Edwin Green of Wellington College.
+They were the very nicest couple I ever knew and we became great friends
+with them. We corresponded with her and a letter from "Molly Brown" was
+highly prized by all of us.
+
+"Yes, and she said we were to visit her at Wellington if we got anywhere
+near. Won't it be great?" and Dee danced around the library from pure
+glee.
+
+"How will we live in New York?" I asked. "Shall we board or what?"
+
+"Board, by all means! If you try to live any other way you will run into
+debt, I am afraid," said Zebedee.
+
+"But we just naturally despise boarding," pouted Dum. "We've been
+boarding all our lives, it seems to me."
+
+"But when you board, you are in a measure chaperoned," said her cautious
+parent.
+
+"Chaperoned! Oh, Zebedee, you make me laugh. What boarding-house keeper
+has time to chaperone? Besides, isn't Page along to chaperone?"
+
+"What do you think about it, Page? Come along now with that sage
+advice," teased Father.
+
+"I have never boarded and don't know how I'd like it, but it seems to me
+the best thing for us to do would be to board when we first get there,
+and then if we can't stand it, take a little flat and keep house, or
+rather, flat."
+
+"Ah, I see why your advice is so sought after by our worthy friends, the
+Tuckers; you are as wise as Solomon and cut the baby in two and satisfy
+all parties. You will go to boarding to suit Tucker and then get a flat
+to suit the daughters, eh, honey?"
+
+"Fifty-fifty is a safe course to pursue, and safety first is best and
+wisest for an official umpire," I maintained.
+
+"I must say that the oracle has spoken well," said Zebedee. "Of course,
+if they are not happy boarding they must not keep to it, but it is
+better for them to start that way. They can learn the ropes and decide
+later on to get a flat if it seems wiser. We can go on with them and
+establish them, eh, doctor?"
+
+"I reckon so, if my patients behave. Now that old Mrs. Reed is dead, I
+can leave perhaps--Ellen Miller's baby safely here, too!"
+
+"Oh, Father, that will be simply grand, if you can only go!"
+
+"I haven't had a trip for a long, long time, and I think it is up to me
+to treat myself."
+
+All of us thought so, too. It made it easier for me if Father was
+contemplating going with us for a little recreation. He worked so hard,
+had so little fun in his life. What fun there was he made for himself by
+treating life as something very amusing when all was told. His patience
+was only equalled by his sense of humor.
+
+"Don't give out that you are going on a trip, Father, and then all of
+your cranky patients won't have time to trump up any illnesses. If Sally
+Winn hears of your intended departure, she will get up seven fits of
+heart failure and more fluterations and smotherines than enough to keep
+you at home."
+
+"Poor Sally! I wish she could go on a trip herself. It would do more
+towards curing her than all the pink, pump water in the world."
+
+Sally Winn was Father's hypochondriacal patient who called him up at all
+hours of the day and night for an imaginary heart trouble that was
+supposed to be carrying her off. She did not feel safe with Father out
+of the county and never let him get away if she could help it.
+
+"Why don't you suggest it to her? She might come on and visit her
+cousin, Reginald Kent."
+
+"Reginald Kent! By Jove, I forgot that fellow when I proposed New York
+as a good place for you girls to top off your very incomplete
+education," and Zebedee groaned.
+
+"Well, what is the matter with Reginald Kent?" bridled Dum.
+
+"Matter! Nothing's the matter, that's what's the matter. See here, Dum
+Tucker, if you go to New York and fall in love with that good-looking,
+clever young man I'll kill myself," declared the desperate Zebedee,
+always afraid that some man would come along and cut him out with his
+girls.
+
+"Nonsense, Zebedeedlums! Reginald Kent will have to fall in love with me
+before I fall in love with him."
+
+"Well, if that's so, I'll fix him! I'll tell him what a bad proposition
+you are: mean, ungenerous, deceitful, secretive. I'll put him on to
+you." As these were all the things Dum was not, we felt safe.
+
+"Shan't we let Mary Flannagan know our plans? She may want to join us
+there," suggested Dee.
+
+"Of course we want dear old Mary," Dum and I cried together.
+
+We all of us thought with regret of what a winter like the one we were
+planning to have would have meant to Annie Pore.
+
+Mary was a great favorite with both Father and Mr. Tucker, so they
+readily consented to our writing to her, suggesting that she should join
+us in New York if her mother thought well of the plan.
+
+"She can go on with her movie stunts, and take up dancing and gym work
+in real earnest under the right instructors," said Dee.
+
+"I hope she won't try to climb down any walls in New York," I laughed.
+"We mustn't get in a flat with ivy on the walls."
+
+"Oh, so it is to be a flat, is it? I understood you were to board
+first," said Zebedee, pretending to be insulted.
+
+"So we are, but of course we will end up in a flat, and I fancy Mary
+will stand in awe of the boarding-house keeper enough to keep her from
+scaling her walls."
+
+Our whole evening was spent in talking over our plans for topping off
+our education in New York. Father and Zebedee were like two boys in the
+suggestions they made. They had perfect faith in us, knowing that we had
+sense enough to bring us safely through the experience. I have wondered
+since if our mothers had been alive if they would have consented to the
+plan, but, of course, if our mothers had been alive, our education would
+not have been quite so loose-jointed. Mothers are much more particular
+than fathers about their daughters' education.
+
+To be sure, Mrs. Flannagan did consent to Mary's going, but then she was
+rather a haphazard lady herself, looking upon life with a humorous
+twinkle in her Irish eye. She believed heartily in the doctrine of live
+and let live, and, forsooth, if Mary had mapped out for herself a
+career as a movie actress, why let her work it out! She, her mother, was
+certainly not going to block her game.
+
+Mammy Susan was the one who kicked up about my going. For once she and
+Cousin Park Garnett were of the same mind. Cousin Park almost got out an
+injunction on Father to restrain him as one who was not in his right
+mind. A lunacy commission would have had him locked up in the State
+Asylum, according to that irate dame.
+
+She never would have known about my going if she had not chosen to make
+a visitation at Bracken just when I was in the throes of getting ready
+to spend the winter in New York. Her own house was having some repairs,
+so she had made a convenience of our hospitality to escape the
+discomforts of paperhangers and painters. I was afraid at first that she
+would stay so long Father could not get away, but a lawsuit she was
+engaged in came to court and she was forced to cut her untimely visit
+short. I found out afterwards that the case, which was a trifling
+matter of back-yard fences, was put up first on the docket by some
+adroit wire-pulling done by no less a person than Mr. Jeffry Tucker, the
+ever ready. It was done so silently that Cousin Park never found it out.
+She was forced to return to her dismantled house, much to the regret of
+the workmen who were revelling in the absence of an exacting
+housekeeper.
+
+Mammy Susan, however, had her say out in regard to my going away from
+home: "I's gonter speak my min' if'n it's the las' ac' er my life. Gals
+ain't called on ter be a-trapsin' all the time. Mammy's baby ain't never
+gonter be content at Bracken no mo'. Always a-goin' an' never a-comin'.
+An' me'n Docallison so lonesome, too. I wisht you was twins--I 'low I'd
+keep one er you at home."
+
+"Which one, Mammy Susan?"
+
+"T'other one!"
+
+[Illustration: MAMMY SUSAN, HOWEVER, HAD HER SAY OUT IN REGARD TO MY
+GOING AWAY FROM HOME.
+
+Page 282.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A LETTER FROM ANNIE PORE TO PAGE ALLISON
+
+
+                                _Grantley Grange,_
+                                     _Grantley, England._
+
+      MY DEAREST PAGE:
+
+      It takes such an interminable time to get mail in
+      these war times that I am afraid my letter will seem
+      like last year's almanac by the time it reaches you. I
+      must begin at the beginning and tell you of our
+      journey across the ocean, but before I plunge into the
+      lengthy recital I must inform you that I am very happy
+      in my new home. I could not be anything but happy when
+      I realize how much better off poor Father is. Of
+      course the family is in the deepest mourning because
+      of the death of Uncle Isaac and my cousin Grant, and
+      there is an air of sadness in the whole village of
+      Grantley; but everybody is very kind to us and I am
+      sure I shall soon grow to love my aunts, the Misses
+      Grace and Muriel Pore. These ladies are older than my
+      father but they are quite strong and robust and it is
+      wonderful what they can accomplish in the way of work.
+
+      All the women of England are busy at one thing or
+      another. Women, great ladies who have never done any
+      form of work before, not even dressed their own hair,
+      are washing dishes in hospitals or doing other menial
+      tasks.
+
+      Uncle Isaac was a widower, so the aunts have had
+      entire charge of the housekeeping at Grantley Grange
+      for many years. I think they are very kind to me in
+      not looking upon me as an interloper.
+
+      Aunt Grace tells me that their father, my grandfather,
+      bitterly regretted his sternness towards my father and
+      mother and was willing at any time to make amends, but
+      my father would never answer his letters. Poor Father
+      is so sensitive. That has always been his trouble. I
+      live in constant terror now for fear someone will hurt
+      his feelings and he will refuse to see people or make
+      himself miserable. He is to make himself useful and
+      serve his country by teaching the boys in a school at
+      Grantley. All of the young teachers have gone to the
+      front and the nation needs teachers for the boys and
+      girls. I am so happy that Father is to serve his
+      country, somehow, and this is, after all, a very noble
+      service as it is for the future good of the British
+      Empire.
+
+      I know you wonder what I am going to do. I was willing
+      to nurse if my aunts thought it wise, but was relieved
+      when they decided that I could be of more use doing
+      other things that life has already trained me to do. I
+      know I should fail at the crucial moment as a nurse. I
+      am so timid and do not seem to be able to shake off
+      this shyness. It has been decided that I shall go
+      every day to sing to the soldiers in the neighboring
+      hospitals. That sounds like very little to do but when
+      I tell you that I spend on an average of seven hours
+      a day going to the various hospitals, you will realize
+      that while it is very little to do, it takes a great
+      deal of time to do it.
+
+      So many of the old estates near here have been turned
+      over to the Government for hospitals that one can
+      motor from one to the other in a short time. The
+      wounded soldiers are very kind to me and express
+      themselves as liking very much to hear me sing. They
+      like the American songs, especially the darky songs. I
+      sang "Clar de Kitchen" to them yesterday and they made
+      me give them three encores. I thought of the last time
+      I sang it when we had the circus at Maxton, and I
+      choked with emotion at the remembrance of all of my
+      dear friends.
+
+      Life at Price's Landing seems very far off and unreal,
+      although there are times when this life seems to be
+      the unreal thing and I expect any moment to awaken and
+      find it all a dream. I remember in my little room over
+      the store how low the ceiling was, so low over my bed
+      where it sloped to the dormer window that I could lie
+      there and touch it with my hand, and many a time have
+      I bumped my head when I sprang too hurriedly from my
+      bed. I learned to put up my hand and gauge the
+      distance before I got up, in that way saving my poor
+      head many a bump. I find myself now, when morning
+      comes and the sun peeps in the windows of my great
+      bedroom, reaching up expecting to touch the low
+      ceiling of my little room in Virginia. It gives me a
+      strange sensation, almost as great a shock as when you
+      take one more step up when you have reached the top of
+      the stairs.
+
+      The ceilings at Grantley Grange are quite as high as
+      any I have ever seen. Too high for beauty, I think,
+      but I don't dare say so. My aunts think perhaps there
+      are more wonderfully beautiful places than the Grange,
+      but they have never seen them,--except the great show
+      places, of course. It is very beautiful and the time
+      may come when I shall feel at home, but I still feel
+      strange and something of an alien.
+
+      Father is as at home as though he had never left
+      England. I wish all of you could see poor Father in
+      his proper surroundings. He always was so out of place
+      in the store. I think he felt irritated all the time
+      that he was doing what he was doing, but a certain
+      obstinacy in his character kept him from seeking more
+      congenial employment. His sisters are very tender with
+      him and I am hoping that he will begin to show to them
+      the affection that I am sure he feels.
+
+      Now haven't I put the cart before the horse? I
+      intended first to tell you all about our voyage over,
+      and then lead up to conditions here, but I have left
+      the first to the last.
+
+      In the first place poor Father was dreadfully seasick
+      from the moment we got on the steamer, even before we
+      started. There is something about the smell of
+      machinery and rigging that makes him very ill. I tried
+      to persuade him to stay on deck, but he would go to
+      his stateroom, and there he stayed for the entire
+      crossing.
+
+      I was anxious to see the last of my country. (I
+      realize now that United States is my country. I
+      realized it the moment I knew I was to live in
+      England.) I stayed on deck as we steamed out of the
+      harbor and kissed my hand good-by to New York's sky
+      line and the Statue of Liberty. I felt very lonesome
+      and very far away from all of my dear friends. There
+      were letters down in my stateroom and I turned to go
+      get them, when whom should I find at my side but
+      George Massie? Page, I was never more astonished in
+      all my life! I was glad, too, very glad. All the
+      lonesome feeling left me. He told me that you and the
+      Tuckers knew all about his coming and approved, so
+      that was enough for me. The ocean did not seem near so
+      vast nor the sky so high up.
+
+      Father was very miserable, so miserable that I had to
+      call in the ship's surgeon. The doctor made light of
+      his malady but that did not make it any easier to
+      bear. I had to nurse him a great deal, and as he
+      shared his stateroom with another man it was rather
+      embarrassing for me to go in at night and attend to
+      poor Father's many wants. In fact, the man objected.
+
+      Then it was I decided to tell Father of George
+      Massie's presence on board. Of course, he had no way
+      to know my friend was there. He was very angry at
+      first, but I had sudden courage and told him that we
+      had not chartered the ship and other passengers had as
+      much right there as we had, and that Mr. Massie was
+      going abroad to serve the Allies. I also told him that
+      George was willing to do anything for him he could,
+      and would attend to him during the night when I could
+      not come in his stateroom. Father became reconciled to
+      George's presence then, and he could hardly have kept
+      up his anger after the faithful way in which he
+      nursed him for the rest of the journey.
+
+      Of course, he did not have to be nursed all the time
+      and we had much time on deck. The weather was perfect
+      and I was not ill one moment. I had a seat at the
+      captain's table and that dear old man saw to it that I
+      was bountifully served. He was so kind to me, and to
+      everyone in fact, but he seemed to think I needed
+      especial care and my own father could not have been
+      more attentive to me.
+
+      I know that the news of our boat having struck a mine
+      must have been a great shock to all of my friends. I
+      am sure that George's cablegram that all was well must
+      have set your minds at rest, however.
+
+      It happened just at dusk after a wonderfully calm day.
+      The sea had been like a mill-pond all day and the sun
+      very hot, so hot that we had sought the shade of the
+      boats on deck. Towards sunset the wind had suddenly
+      risen and the waves had begun to look very high. Of
+      course all waves look high to me, as I am fully aware
+      that I am the most timid person in all the world. It
+      turned quite cold, so cold that I put on my heavy
+      coat. We were almost at the end of our journey. I had
+      everything packed and in order; and at last we had
+      persuaded Father to dress and come on deck. He had
+      been much better for days and had been able to retain
+      nourishment, which meant a return of his normal
+      strength. He had even ventured down to dinner on that
+      evening.
+
+      We had hoped to arrive in Liverpool by eight o'clock
+      but we were proceeding very slowly and cautiously as
+      the danger zone was filled with possible disaster. The
+      captain assured us that we would land sometime during
+      the night but he advised all of us to go to bed at the
+      usual hour. Our voyage had been a very pleasant one. I
+      had made many friends and was glad to feel that I had
+      been able to throw off some of the miserable shyness
+      that has always been such a handicap to me.
+
+      For several days we had been wearing life-preservers
+      by command of the captain. Of course we felt confident
+      that there was no use in it, but still we had to do
+      it. George was too big for any of those furnished by
+      the ship's company, the straps refusing to meet; but I
+      had pieced out the straps with some stout cotton
+      cloth.
+
+      We were at dinner on that eventful day, all of us
+      looking very strange and bulky in our safety-first
+      garb, when suddenly there was an explosion that shook
+      all of us out of our seats. I was dreadfully
+      frightened but managed to appear calm for Father's
+      sake, who because of his recent illness was much
+      unnerved.
+
+      "Get your warm coats and any small hand baggage with
+      your valuables!" the captain shouted, "and report on
+      deck immediately."
+
+      I tell you we obeyed without any demur! Many of the
+      passengers hurried up, not going to their staterooms
+      at all, but Father felt he must get his Gladstone bag
+      and I had a small satchel all packed, which I took. I
+      never heard so much shouting in all my life. The women
+      were screaming and the men shouting. There was only
+      one child on board, a dear little girl of seven, and
+      she and I were the calmest ones among the females. I
+      was frightened at first but a sudden courage came to
+      me. It may have been because the little girl slipped
+      her hand in mine. Her mother had fainted and her
+      husband was carrying her up on deck. The child's name
+      was Winnie. She was a gentle little thing. We had made
+      friends the very first day on board and had had many
+      long talks together. Her mother was ill most of the
+      time and Winnie and I had time to become very
+      intimate. When she slipped her hand in mine, I knew
+      that she expected me to look after her, and then it
+      was God sent me strength to do it.
+
+      The engines stopped the moment we hit the mine and the
+      boat was listing so that when we got on deck we found
+      a decided slant, so much so that it was difficult to
+      walk. The life-boats were being loaded and launched. I
+      was shocked to see how some of the men crowded in. The
+      sailors were a rude lot from all the quarters of the
+      globe, and few of them showed any desire to save
+      anything but their own skins.
+
+      George Massie was everywhere. I was astounded at his
+      powers of swearing, but he said afterwards that it was
+      the only way to control people in times like that. He
+      simply took command of the boats, for which the
+      captain had no time. The officers were a rather weak
+      lot and one and all concerned for their own safety.
+      They say so many of the good seamen have enlisted that
+      many of the passenger ships are manned by weaklings.
+      The captain was splendid and did his duty like the
+      English gentleman he was.
+
+      Of course at first we feared it was a submarine that
+      had hit us. Its being a mine that we had hit made us
+      much more comfortable. At least, we were not to fall
+      into the hands of the Germans.
+
+      "The ship is sinking so slowly that I can assure you
+      there is no immediate danger," George had had time to
+      tell Father and me. "It is safe to wait for the last
+      boat, so let me help launch these others first and
+      then I can get into the boat with you. These sailors
+      are too crazy to trust without a commander."
+
+      The captain had determined not to leave the ship until
+      he was sure there was no chance of saving it. The
+      chief engineer was to stay with him and several
+      sailors volunteered. It so happened that they were
+      able to get into port on their own steam and we might
+      have stayed safely on board, but of course the chances
+      were that she would sink and it was deemed wiser for
+      us to take to the boats.
+
+      I wish all of you might have seen Father. He was very
+      calm and brave after the first shock was over. He was
+      not strong enough to help much but he was willing to
+      help, and when the men crowded into the boats leaving
+      women shrieking for places, he swore with almost as
+      much fervor as George Massie himself. Do you know,
+      Page, I know it sounds silly, but I believe I love my
+      father more and am closer to him since I know he can
+      swear a little? He swore to some purpose, too, as he
+      called the selfish men such terrible names that two of
+      them were actually abashed and got out of the first
+      boat to give their places to two women.
+
+      To make the scene more dismal it had begun to rain,
+      such a cold, penetrating rain! Poor little Winnie
+      clung to me and I could hear her praying: "Please God,
+      save Mamma, and Papa, and me, and Miss Pore, and her
+      papa, too, and the giant." She always called George
+      the giant. "Don't let us get drownded dead!"
+
+      We got off at last! Winnie and her mother and father
+      were in the boat with us. That was something George
+      Massie managed. He saw that the father, Mr. Trask, was
+      a good, reliable man and could help with the boat, and
+      he also felt that Mrs. Trask and Winnie would need me,
+      which they did. There were five other men in the boat
+      with us and one other woman: a nice old Irish
+      chambermaid, who never stopped praying a single moment
+      until we were safe on the high seas in our tiny boat
+      with the waves dashing all around us and the rain
+      pouring on us.
+
+      I felt much safer on the steamer, although when we
+      left her she had listed until her decks were at an
+      angle of forty-five degrees. Of course the wireless
+      had been busy sending appeals for help but we were
+      three hours getting any. Mrs. Trask was very ill and
+      had to lie in the bottom of the boat, where her
+      husband and Father made her as comfortable as
+      possible. Winnie sat in my lap and I wrapped her in a
+      great rug that George had thrown around me. We kept
+      each other warm under the rug and gave each other
+      courage, too.
+
+      The vessel that picked us up was not very gracious
+      about it. They had picked up so many shipwrecked
+      persons since the war began that it was an old story
+      to them and not at all interesting. It was a fishing
+      smack and smelled worse than anything I have ever
+      imagined in the way of odors. Poor Mrs. Trask actually
+      fainted again from the stench of fish offal.
+
+      True to the captain's promise, we did land sometime
+      during the night, but we were not safely in bed as he
+      had hoped, but propped up in the foul little cabin of
+      the fishing smack trying to choke down some vile black
+      coffee that one of the men, not so hardened to
+      shipwrecks as the rest, had humanely concocted for us.
+
+      This is about all, dear Page! We got to bed when we
+      reached Liverpool and stayed there for twenty-four
+      hours. I kept Winnie with me, thereby saving the poor
+      little thing the agony of seeing her mother die. Poor
+      Mrs. Trask passed away the day after we landed. She
+      was not strong enough to stand the shock and exposure.
+      Mr. Trask is an Englishman and was going home to
+      enlist and leave his wife and child with his own
+      people. His wife thought it right but was evidently in
+      the deepest misery over his decision. Maybe she was
+      not sorry to die. I am so sorry for him and for the
+      dear little girl. She is to come to Grantley Grange to
+      visit me soon.
+
+      I can never tell you how splendid George Massie was.
+      He was so brave and so determined. I did not dream he
+      could command men as he did. He says it is football
+      training that made him know what to do and how to do
+      it. He is going to France next week to join the Red
+      Cross as a stretcher bearer, I think. I shall miss
+      him ever so much but know it is right for him to help
+      if he can. Service is in the air here in England.
+      There is no more talk of who you are or what you own
+      or what your ancestors have done. It is: _What can you
+      do? Then do it!_
+
+      It is a tremendous experience to be in the midst of
+      this war. No one talks anything but war. There are no
+      entertainments of any sort except the theatres. I
+      believe they keep them open to cheer up the people.
+      The fields are full of women; the factories are kept
+      up by them; the trams and busses are run by them,--in
+      fact they do anything and everything that men did
+      before the war.
+
+      You remember, do you not, how I was so afraid my
+      clothes would look poor and mean and out of style?
+      Well, on the contrary, for once in my life, I am
+      better dressed than the persons with whom I come in
+      contact. I am really ashamed to be so much better
+      dressed than the other girls. It seems so frivolous of
+      me. I know you can't help smiling to think of what the
+      others' clothes must be.
+
+      I am writing to my dear Tuckers, too, and if you read
+      their letter and they read yours you can piece
+      together what my life here is. Please send them on to
+      Mary Flannagan when you have finished reading them. I
+      have not time to write another long letter just now.
+
+      Besides singing to the soldiers, I am to teach music
+      to the children in Father's school. You can readily
+      see how busy I am to be.
+
+      I shall never cease to miss my dear friends in
+      Virginia. Some day I hope to come back to America, but
+      in the meantime I am going to do my bit here in
+      England. Please write to me!
+
+                                Your devoted friend,
+                                             ANNIE PORE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+A LETTER FROM GEORGE MASSIE TO PAGE ALLISON
+
+
+                                    _Paris, France._
+                                          _Poste Restante._
+
+      MY DEAR PAGE:
+
+      I left England last week after having stopped with the
+      Pores at Grantley Grange for ten days or so. Say,
+      Page, the old one ain't half bad! If you could have
+      heard him swear when the beasts crowded in the
+      life-boats ahead of the women, you would have forgot
+      the grouch we had on about the way he has always done
+      Annie. Say, that man can swear! I wonder where he has
+      kept it all these years.
+
+      Of course, if a fellow ever is going to swear, it will
+      be at a time like that, and if he doesn't swear some,
+      it is because he is dumb. It is the kind of time when
+      some women pray and some weep and most men swear. They
+      don't mean anything, but it is just a kind of safety
+      valve. Annie says I swore like a trooper, but I wasn't
+      conscious of it at all. It just popped out of me. You
+      see I had to intimidate the men who were behaving like
+      cads, and the only way I knew how to do it was to
+      swear, unless it was to biff them one with the oars,
+      and I did not want to do that except as a last resort.
+      The swearing worked.
+
+      It was a very terrible experience and one I hope never
+      to have to undergo again. It was not only terrible to
+      think that all of those people might be at the bottom
+      of the ocean in a short while, but it was almost worse
+      to see the way people can be so scared that they think
+      only of themselves. I reckon a fellow ought not to
+      blame them. It seemed just blind animal instinct for
+      self-preservation. My Annie was a trump. She was as
+      calm and quiet as though shipwrecks had been an
+      every-day experience with her. She looked out for a
+      little child and its sick mother and helped people and
+      quieted women and men, and after we had been afloat in
+      our life-boat for hours and it was cold and rainy and
+      the poor sick woman and an old Irish chambermaid began
+      to despair and the kid began to cry, what should my
+      Annie do but begin to sing "Abide With Me." I have
+      never heard her sing better than she did out in the
+      middle of that dirty sea. It did all of us good, and
+      before you knew it, a little fishing smack almost ran
+      us down in the darkness and then had the decency to
+      stop and haul us aboard.
+
+      I reckon you think I'm pretty gaully to be saying "my
+      Annie" so glibly. She's not really my Annie but she is
+      going to be if I can make good. Of course I know she
+      is too young to make her give an answer to me yet, but
+      this war is going to age all of us, and when it is
+      over I'll be a steady old man with white whiskers, and
+      if Annie likes 'em, I'm going to get her answer then.
+      I don't want to tie her up but leave her free. She
+      might see a handsome Johnny that will put crimps in
+      my plans and I want her to take him if she likes him,
+      but I tell you, Page, I'm going to pray every day and
+      all day from now until the war is over that she will
+      like me best. The old man likes me. It seems I earned
+      his undying gratitude by waiting on him when he was
+      seasick and the doctor on board had made light of his
+      ailment. I made out he was sick unto death and worked
+      my fool fat self to a shadow fetching and carrying for
+      him. Then when the explosion came and I did my best to
+      keep order, he kind of cottoned to me more. I believe
+      when I come back from the wars and beg an answer from
+      Annie that His Nibs will be willing.
+
+      He is much more attractive in his English setting. He
+      really isn't half bad. His sisters are making a lot
+      over Annie and now he is kind of getting stuck on her
+      himself. 'Tain't so bad to be a woman in England now.
+      Folks are thinking a good deal of women, and I tell
+      you they should do so. Annie says he has always been
+      sore that she was not a boy. Looks as though he had a
+      hunch that he might inherit the title some day. I call
+      him the old man right to his face, as somehow I can't
+      school myself to say Sir Arthur. It is too story booky
+      for me.
+
+      I am here in France waiting to be sent out with the
+      Red Cross. I may drive an ambulance and I may just be
+      a stretcher bearer. I will do whatever they see fit to
+      put me to doing. There is plenty to do, they tell me,
+      and they welcome every American who comes over with
+      joy and gratitude. I wish we were in it as a nation. I
+      believe we will end there, and if we do, I tell you
+      someone else can drive the ambulance, as I mean to get
+      in the game without a red cross on my sleeve.
+
+      You don't know what I feel towards all of you girls,
+      all of Annie's friends. I have lived to bless the day
+      that I met you, although on that day I did anything
+      but bless it. You remember how you bundled me up in
+      the soiled clothes ready to send me to the laundry?
+      I'll never forget it! Also, I'll never forget that you
+      and the Tucker twins never told the rest of the
+      fellows about it. That was sure white of you! Please
+      put in a good word for me when you write to Annie, my
+      Annie.
+
+                                  Yours truly,
+                                       GEORGE MASSIE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A LETTER FROM PAGE ALLISON TO THE TUCKER TWINS
+
+
+                                      _Bracken, Va._
+                                             _Milton P. O._
+
+      MY DEAREST TWEEDLES:
+
+      I am sending you letters from Annie and from Sleepy. I
+      am awfully excited about Sleepy. He seems to be wide
+      awake. Father says he will come through the war and be
+      a distinguished person of some sort, he believes. I
+      think Annie's letter is awfully interesting. Isn't it
+      fun for old Sir Arthur Ponsonby Pore to have won the
+      love of the Lady Annie by swearing? I know your father
+      will die laughing over it.
+
+      I am up to my neck with Miss Pinkie Davis in the
+      house, getting some sewing done so I won't have to be
+      worried with shirt-waists and things when we get to
+      New York. Mammy Susan is still miffed with me for
+      going, and I feel awfully bad about it. Isn't it great
+      that Mary can go, too? Do you reckon we'll see Jessie
+      Wilcox in New York? Not if she sees us first, I fancy!
+      Four girls in a flat and that flat not so very swell
+      wouldn't appeal to Miss Wilcox, I think.
+
+      Father is giving iron tonics right and left, and has
+      made up a gallon of pump water with a beautiful pink
+      vegetable dye in it for Sally Winn so she won't have
+      to die before he gets back. Poor Joe Winn is very sad
+      that I did not let him know you were here on the last
+      trip. I really forgot to do it. We were having such a
+      wildly exciting time making our plans for New York
+      that poor Joe never came into my head.
+
+      It is so splendid that Father is going, too. If these
+      people will only stay well until he can get started,
+      then they can be sick all they want and have a doctor
+      over from the crossing. There is a perfectly good
+      doctor there, that is, a perfectly good doctor if one
+      is prepared for death!
+
+      Good-by! I must stop and help Miss Pinkie. How I do
+      hate to sew! To think in a few days almost I'll be IN
+      NEW YORK WITH THE TUCKER TWINS.
+
+                                Your best friend,
+                                         PAGE ALLISON.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+HURST & COMPANY'S BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
+
+NEW BOOKS FOR GIRLS
+
+TUCKER TWINS BOOKS
+
+By NELL SPEED
+
+Author of the Molly Brown Books.
+
+Cloth Bound. Illustrated.
+
+[Illustration: AT BOARDING SCHOOL WITH THE TUCKER TWINS]
+
+=At Boarding School with the Tucker Twins=
+
+There are no jollier girls in boarding school fiction than Dum and Dee
+Tucker. The room-mate of such a lively pair has an endless variety of
+surprising experiences--as Page Allison will tell you.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+=Vacation with the Tucker Twins=
+
+This volume is alive with experiences of these fascinating girls. Girls
+who enjoyed the Molly Brown Books by the same author will be eager for
+this volume.
+
+The scene of these charming stories is laid in the State of Virginia and
+has the true Southern flavor. Girls will like them.
+
+
+        HURST & COMPANY, Publishers, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+HURST & COMPANY'S BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
+
+  NEW BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND OLD PEOPLE
+  WHO FEEL YOUNG
+
+
+PAUL AND PEGGY BOOKS
+
+By FLORENCE E. SCOTT
+
+Illustrated by ARTHUR O. SCOTT
+
+_Cloth Bound._
+
+[Illustration: HERE AND THERE WITH PAUL AND PEGGY]
+
+  _Here and There with Paul and Peggy_
+  _Across the Continent with Paul and Peggy_
+  _Through the Yellowstone with Paul and Peggy_
+
+These are delightfully written stories of a vivacious pair of twins
+whose dearest ambition is to travel. How they find the opportunity,
+where they go, what their eager eyes discover is told in such an
+enthusiastic way that the reader is carried with the travellers into
+many charming places and situations.
+
+Written primarily for girls, her brothers can read these charming
+stories of School Life and Travel with equal admiration and interest.
+
+  HURST & COMPANY, Publishers, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+HURST & COMPANY'S BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
+
+STORIES OF COLLEGE LIFE FOR GIRLS
+
+MOLLY BROWN SERIES
+
+By NELL SPEED
+
+Cloth. Illustrated.
+
+[Illustration: Molly Brown's Freshman Days]
+
+_Molly Brown's Freshman Days_
+
+Would you like to admit to your circle of friends the most charming of
+college girls? Then seek an introduction to Molly Brown. You will find
+the baggagemaster, the cook, the Professor of English Literature and the
+College President in the same company.
+
+
+_Molly Brown's Sophomore Days_
+
+What is more delightful than a reunion of college girls after the summer
+vacation? Certainly nothing that precedes it in their experience--at
+least, if all class-mates are as happy together as the Wellington girls
+of this story. Among Molly's interesting friends of the second year is a
+young Japanese girl, who ingratiates her "humbly" self into everybody's
+affections.
+
+
+_Molly Brown's Junior Days_
+
+Financial stumbling blocks are not the only thing that hinder the ease
+and increase the strength of college girls. Their troubles and their
+triumphs are their own, often peculiar to their environment. How
+Wellington students meet the experiences outside the class-rooms is
+worth the doing, the telling and the reading.
+
+
+_Molly Brown's Senior Days_
+
+This book tells of another year of glad college life, bringing the girls
+to the days of diplomas and farewells, and introducing new friends to
+complicate old friendships.
+
+
+_Molly Brown's Post Graduate Days_
+
+"Book I" of this volume is devoted to incidents that happen in Molly's
+Kentucky home, and "Book II" is filled with the interests pertaining to
+Wellington College and the reunions of a post graduate year.
+
+
+_Molly Brown's Orchard Home_
+
+Molly's romance culminates in Paris--the Paris of art, of music, of
+light-hearted gaiety--after a glad, sad, mad year for Molly and her
+friends.
+
+If you do not know Molly Brown of Kentucky, you are missing an
+opportunity to become acquainted with the most enchanting girl in
+college fiction.
+
+  HURST & COMPANY, Publishers, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+HURST & COMPANY'S BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
+
+REX KINGDON SERIES
+
+By GORDON BRADDOCK
+
+Cloth Bound. Illustrated.
+
+[Illustration: REX KINGDON of RIDGEWOOD HIGH GORDON BRADDOCK]
+
+_Rex Kingdon of Ridgewood High_
+
+A new boy moves into town. Who is he? What can he do? Will he make one
+of the school teams? Is his friendship worth having? These are the
+queries of the Ridgewood High Students. The story is the answer.
+
+
+_Rex Kingdon in the North Woods_
+
+Rex and some of his Ridgewood friends establish a camp fire in the North
+Woods, and there mystery, jealousy, and rivalry enter to menace their
+safety, fire their interest and finally cement their friendship.
+
+
+_Rex Kingdon at Walcott Hall_
+
+Lively boarding school experiences make this the "best yet" of the Rex
+Kingdon series.
+
+
+_Rex Kingdon Behind the Bat_
+
+The title tells you what this story is; it is a rattling good story
+about baseball. Boys will like it.
+
+Gordon Braddock knows what Boys want and how to write it. These stories
+make the best reading you can procure.
+
+
+  HURST & COMPANY, Publishers, NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Varied hyphenation was retained. This includes cart-wheels and
+cartwheels. Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 82, "squshy" changed to "squishy" (later into squishy)
+
+Page 86, "Shereton" changed to "Sheraton" (great old Sheraton sideboard)
+
+Page 260, word "have" inserted into text (She would have none)
+
+Illustration after page 282, "MAMY" changed to "MAMMY" (MAMMY SUSAN,
+HOWEVER, HAD HER)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A House Party with the Tucker Twins, by Nell Speed
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSE PARTY WITH TUCKER TWINS ***
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