CHAPTER XVIII
THE QUEER CLOUD
“We’ll help you look for your glasses, Mrs. Martin,” offered Nan, though she wished very much to finish her story. “Won’t we, Bert?”
“Sure, we will,” he answered, boy-fashion. And, though he very much wanted to go fishing, he gave up his pleasure for the time being to help the old lady.
Mrs. Martin was really quite distressed about losing her glasses, as most people are whose eyes are so poor that they cannot see well nor read without the help of spectacles.
“Where did you have them last?” asked Nan, as she had often heard her mother ask when one of the children lost a toy.
“I had them on my head, over my nose, and in front of my eyes,” Mrs. Martin answered. “Then, all of a sudden, I heardMrs. Watson cry out about the cattle coming into the garden, and I grabbed off my glasses to get the broom. I was afraid I’d break them chasing after the cows.”
By this time Mrs. Watson, who had been putting the baby to sleep, came out on the side porch.
“Yes, I saw your glasses on you just before the cattle began running wild,” said Jenny’s mother. “Then so much happened all at once that I don’t know what you did with them.”
“Maybe they’re still up on top of your head,” suggested Bert. “Once Charlie Mason’s grandmother lost her glasses and we looked all over for them, and, all the while, she had them pushed up on top of her head.”
“Well, mine aren’t there,” Mrs. Martin replied, putting up her hand, however, to feel and make sure. “I don’t see what I did with them!”
Then the search began, with the older Bobbsey twins and Mrs. Watson helping. The porch was searched carefully, and the children looked on the ground around it, stepping carefully so they would not tread on and break the glasses if they should have happenedto fall. But the glasses could not be found.
Then Mrs. Bobbsey came and helped, but she was no more successful than the others had been. Inside and outside the house the search went on, but the spectacles could not be found.
“Maybe they’ll turn up after a while,” said Mr. Watson, when he came in from the peach sorting to get washed for dinner.
“Well, I hope they will,” his wife’s cousin said. “Meanwhile I can’t read a word, and I can’t see very well. I declare, I can hardly tell one Bobbsey twin from the other!” she said with a sigh.
“We can tell you our names,” Freddie suggested. He and Flossie had come back from sailing their toy boats and had taken part in the hunt for the glasses.
“Yes, my dear, that’s kind of you, and I suppose you could do that,” murmured the old lady. “But I would like to see.”
When a further search did not bring the missing glasses to light Mr. Watson said:
“Can’t you mail the prescription to the people who made them and have another set made?”
“Yes, I could do that if I had the prescription,” agreed Mrs. Martin. “But I haven’t got that paper. I lost it. If I only had it things wouldn’t be so bad, for it would mean only a few days before I could order new spectacles by mail. But I’ve lost the prescription.”
“Your doctor has a copy,” Mr. Watson said. “Eye doctors always keep copies of the prescriptions they give their patients.”
“Probably Dr. Bangert has a copy of mine,” Mrs. Martin agreed, with a sigh. “But he has gone away on his summer vacation and I don’t know where to reach him. When he gave me the prescription he told me to take good care of it, as he was going away and could not be reached until the fall. I think he has gone hunting in the wilds of Canada.”
“Then it looks as if you would either have to go to another doctor around here and get him to fit you with glasses,” said Mr. Watson, “or else find those that are lost.”
“I don’t want to go to another doctor,” said Mrs. Martin. “I don’t believe anybody but Dr. Bangert could fit my eyes. Oh, I must find those glasses! They can’t be far away.”
“Maybe they got caught on one of the horns of the cows and carried off,” suggested Freddie.
“You think of the funniest things!” laughed Mrs. Watson. “But the cows didn’t come near enough the porch to take my cousin’s glasses. She must have dropped them in some out-of-the-way corner.”
Though once again they searched all over, even in places where Mrs. Martin said she had never been with her glasses, the spectacles could not be found and she was quite in despair.
Having done all he could to help the old lady, Bert decided that he would spend the afternoon fishing, for he was fond of this sport and Mr. Watson had said that in a creek across the meadow from the brook there were good fish to be had.
He had brought his fishing outfit with him, so that all he needed now was some bait, and on the advice of Zeek he took both worms and grasshoppers. The worms he and his brother and Nan dug in the garden, putting the crawling creatures in a baking-powder box, with some earth. To give the worms air Bert punched holes in the top and bottom of the tin box.
“Sometimes when the fish won’t bite on worms they will on grasshoppers,” suggested the hired man. “Just take another box with you and walk through the lower hay meadow. The grasshoppers are thick there. You can catch them in your hand as you walk along and pop them in the box. But you want to be careful how you do it.”
“Why, will grasshoppers bite?” asked Bert, though he had never heard of them doing that.
“No,” answered the hired man, with a laugh. “But after you catch one grasshopper and put it in the box, when you take off the cover to put in another, often the first one will jump out. And you can’t catch many fish on one hopper.”
“Oh, I see what you mean,” laughed Bert.
He found it just as Zeek had said. It was easy enough to grab a green grasshopper off a head of timothy grass in the hay field, but when he caught his second one and opened the box cover to slip the creature in, out jumped the first one.
But Bert made a prisoner of the second one, and when he had his third he was more careful in opening the box. He raised the lid only a little way, and through the crackhe shoved the green insect. Soon he had enough, he thought, with the worms he had brought, and he made his way to the edge of the creek, picking out a spot where the water foamed and bubbled over the stony bottom.
As worms were easier to put on the hook than the grasshoppers, which were very lively, Bert baited with one of the crawling creatures and cast in his hook. The Bobbsey boy was about as patient as most lads, but when he had pulled out several times, thinking he had bites, and found nothing on his hook, Bert began to think perhaps it would be well to change the bait.
He opened his other tin box to get one of the grasshoppers, but no sooner was the lid raised than, with one accord, every grasshopper in the container leaped out and sailed away.
“Well—say—that wasn’t very polite!” laughed Bert. “Still, I can’t blame you!” he went on. “I guess it isn’t much fun to be stuck on a hook and swallowed by a fish. I’ll catch my grasshoppers right here, one at a time, as I need them,” he said.
He had noticed that in the field just back ofthe place he had picked out for fishing, many grasshoppers were jumping from weed to weed. Bert laid aside his pole, having noted that the worm had been nearly nibbled off the hook now by small fish, too little to land, and, going back, he caught a grasshopper in his hand.
“Now for a big fish!” said the lad.
But after waiting some time and getting no bites, Bert was inclined to think that he had chosen a wrong spot or else that his bait or the day was wrong. His first guess was borne out a little later when a voice hailed him, saying:
“You’ll never get any fish there!”
Bert Bobbsey turned and saw a country lad of about his own age standing on the edge of the weed-grown field. The boy was barefooted, his clothes were ragged, and he had a torn straw hat on his head. Over his shoulder was a crooked stick cut from a tree, and fastened to it was a line with many knots in it, as if it had been broken and tied a number of times.
“Why won’t I get any fish here?” asked Bert.
“’Cause there aren’t any there—it’s tooshallow. If you want to get big ones you’ll have to go up above to the eddy, where the water’s deep.”
“Well, I must say I haven’t had much luck here,” admitted Bert. “I’ve tried worms and grasshoppers, and the only bites are little nibbles.”
“Those are just baby fish. They suck off the bait without getting caught on the hook,” said the country lad. “Come on with me if you want to, and I’ll show you a good place.”
“Thanks,” answered Bert. “Do you live around here?”
“Yes, just over that hill. My name’s Sam Porter. What’s yours?”
“Bert Bobbsey,” was the answer.
“You live around here?” asked Sam. “I never saw you before that I know of.”
“No, I don’t live here,” Bert said. “I’m visiting at Cloverbank.”
“Oh, yes, I know Mr. Watson!” exclaimed Sam. “My father works for him. He’s picking peaches now.”
Sam proved to be a nice lad, and he and Bert soon became good friends, talking about fishing and other outdoor sports. Sam ledthe way up the bank of the creek to a quiet, shady spot beneath some overhanging willow trees.
“There’s the eddy,” he said, pointing to where the water ran deep and quiet. The stream had washed out a place in the earth bank, making a deep pool where the water swirled around in a circle, or “eddy,” as the country lad called it. On the other side of the creek, opposite this point, the stream was shallow and ran rapidly over the stones.
“But the big fish come to this pool,” Sam said. “You’ll soon have a big one!”
He was right. Bert had only thrown his worm-baited hook in the water and waited a few minutes before the bobber on his line dipped suddenly under water.
“You’ve got him! A big one!” whispered Sam. “Pull up!”
Neither Sam nor Bert were doing fishing in a scientific way with a reel, and the only way to land a fish, once he was hooked, was to pull up the pole quickly.
This Bert Bobbsey did. He felt a weight on his bamboo rod, and as it went in a sweeping circle over his head he had a glimpse of something flashing like silver in the sun.
“You got him! A beauty!” yelled Sam. “A big one!”
When Bert ran to look in the grass, where he had landed his catch, he was delighted to find that he had caught a good-sized chub, as Sam named the fish.
“Say, you brought me to a good place all right!” cried Bert in delight to his companion. “There’s fish here all right! I hope you get one!”
“Oh, I’ll get one all right,” said Sam. “I hardly ever come here without getting as many as we can use at home. My mother likes fish, and about twice a week I come here to get a mess.”
He had retained his seat on the bank, his line dangling in the water, while Bert landed his catch, and he watched the Bobbsey boy as he took the chub off the hook—which was not easy to do, since the fish had swallowed the hook in its eagerness to get the bait. When Bert had his prize loose, he strung a string through the gills and then, fastening on a cross-stick so the fish would not slip off, he put it back in a little pool, tying the shore end of the string to a tree.
The chub feebly flapped its tail and triedto swim away, but he was held a prisoner. In the water he would be kept fresh until Bert was ready to go home with any others he might land.
Sam caught the next one, tossing back on the grass a fish not quite as big as Bert’s, but fair in size.
“Now my luck’s beginning!” exclaimed Sam, as he fastened his fish to another string and let it swim about in a pool. His fish had only been hooked through the lip and was hardly hurt at all.
The two lads then “took turns,” so to speak, in landing fish. It was a fine day and a good place, and first Bert would land one and then Sam would follow.
“Well, I guess I have enough,” Bert said, after a while.
“And I have, too,” agreed Sam. “We might as well clean ’em and wash ’em here and then there won’t be such a mess around the house.”
The boys prepared the fish for cooking and then put them with wet grass in baskets they had brought for that purpose.
“If you come with me across this field, I’ll show you a short cut back to Cloverbank,”suggested Sam, when they were ready to go.
“All right.”
The two boys were going across a green meadow in a little valley between two low hills, when Bert suddenly heard a low, humming sound in the air. At first he thought it was a distant aeroplane, but on looking around he saw what seemed to be a small black cloud coming toward him and Sam.
“Look!” cried Bert, pointing.
“Golly! We’d better duck!” exclaimed Sam.
He dropped his pole and basket of fish and began running toward a low clump of bushes, calling to Bert as he ran:
“Come on! Come on in here until it gets past!”