“‘She starts! she moves! she seems to feelThe thrill of life along her keel.’”
“‘She starts! she moves! she seems to feelThe thrill of life along her keel.’”
“‘She starts! she moves! she seems to feelThe thrill of life along her keel.’”
“Well, Zebedee does bubble and Hiram G. Parker doesn’t; neither does a boat, so there. Oh, oh! Look at the goodies. How on earth do you make such cute edges to your tarts? Just see them, girls!”
“I did mine with a broken fork but Mammy Susan says she knows an old woman who always did hers with her false teeth.” After the shout that went up from this had subsided, Helen begged to know more of Mr. Parker.
“Is he a great friend of your father?”
“Why no, that is the reason I can’t divine why he is bringing him up here. I believe Zebedee likes him well enough—at least I never heard him say anything to the contrary. There is no harm in the dude that I ever heard of. Of course he is the Lord High Muck-a-Muck with the buds. He decides which ones are to ornament society and which ones to be picked for funerals. He has already looked over Dum and me at a hop last Thanksgiving at the Jefferson; Page, too. I believe he thinks we’ll do, at least he danced us around and wrote on our back with invisible chalk: ‘Passed by the Censor of Society.’ I believe he thinks a lot of Zebedee, but then everyone does who has even a glimmering of sense,” and Dee reread her father’s letter, a joint one for her and her sister, with a postscript for Page.
“Well, all he says is that he is coming and going to bring the immaculate Hi and we must behave,” declared Dum, reading over Dee’s shoulder. “I don’t know whether I am going tobehave or not. That Mr. Parker gets on my nerves. He’s too clean, somehow. I’m mighty afraid I’m going to roll him down the mountain.”
“Mis’ Carter is fixin’ up a lot for the gent,” said Susan, who had been busily engaged with her wash tub while the girls were talking, “if it’s Mr. Hiram G. Parker you is a-speakin’ of. She done say he is a very high-up pusson. I do believe it was all on account of him that she done made Miss Douglas look after her hide so keerful this week.”
“Why, does mother know he is coming up?” asked Helen. “She never told me. Nan, did you know he was coming?”
Nan hadn’t known, but she had a great light break on her mind when she heard that her mother knew he was to come: Mr. Tucker had certainly used this visit of Mr. Parker’s to persuade her mother to give up the trip to White Sulphur.
“No! I never heard a word of it,” Nan answered sedately but her eyes were dancing andit was with difficulty that she restrained a giggle.
How could her mother be so easily influenced? She must consider Mr. Parker very well worth while to stay at camp just to see him. That was the reason for all of this extra washing and ironing Susan had on hand. Nan loved her mother devotedly but she had begun to feel that perhaps she was a very—well, to say the least—a very frivolous lady. Nan’s judgment was in a measure more mature than Helen’s although Helen was almost two years her senior. Where Helen loved, she loved without any thought of the loved one’s having any fault. She wondered now that her mother should have known of Mr. Parker’s coming without mentioning it, but as for that little lady’s dressing up to see this society man, why, that was just as it should be. She had absolutely no inkling of her mother’s maneuvering to push Douglas toward a successful debut. Susan’s intimation that Douglas was to preserve her complexion for Mr. Parker’s benefit was simply nonsense. Susanwas after all a very foolish colored girl who had gotten things mixed. Douglas was to protect her delicate blond skin for all society, not for any particular member of it.
The train arrived bearing many week-enders and among them Zebedee and the precious Mr. Hiram G. Parker, looking his very fittest in a pearl gray suit with mauve tie and socks and a Panama hat that had but recently left the block. Zebedee could not help smiling at the fine wardrobe trunk that his companion had brought and comparing it with his own small grip with its changes of linen packed in the bottom and the boxes of candy for Tweedles and Page squeezed on top.
“Thank Heaven, I don’t have a reputation to keep up!” he said to himself.
The wardrobe trunk was not very large, not much more bulky than a suitcase but it had to be carried up the mountain by Josephus and its owner seemed to be very solicitous that it should be stood on the proper end.
“One’s things get in an awful mess from thesemountain roads. A wardrobe trunk should be kept upright, otherwise even the most skillful packing cannot insure one that trousers will not be mussed and coats literally ruined.”
Mr. Tucker felt like laughing outright but he had an ax to grind and Hiram G. Parker was to turn the wheel, so he bridled his inclination. He had asked the society man to be his guest for the week-end, intimating that he had a favor to ask of him. Parker accepted, as he had an idea he would, since the summer was none too full of invitations with almost no one in town. His position in the bank held him in town and he must also hold the position, since it was through it he was enabled to belong to all the clubs and to have pressed suits for all occasions. He had no idea what the favor was but he liked to keep in with these newspaper chaps since it was through the newspapers, when all was told, that he had attained his success, and through the society columns of those dailies that he kept in the public eye. He liked Jeffry Tucker, too, for himself. There was somethingso spontaneous about him. With all of Hiram Parker’s society veneer there was a human being somewhere down under the varnish and a heart, not very big, but good of its kind.
On the train en route to Greendale Mr. Tucker had divulged what that favor was. He led up to it adroitly so that when he finally reached it Mr. Parker was hardly aware of the fact that he had arrived.
“Long list of debutantes this season, I hear,” he started out with, handing an excellent cigar to his guest.
“Yes, something appalling!” answered Mr. Parker, settling himself comfortably in the smoker after having taken off his coat and produced a pocket hanger to keep that garment in all the glory of a recent pressing. “I see many hen parties in prospect. There won’t be near enough beaux to go round.”
“So I hear, especially since the militia has been ordered to the border. So many dancing men are in the Blues. I heard today that young Lane is off. He is Robert Carter’s assistantand since Carter has been out of the running has been endeavoring to keep the business going. I fancy it will be a blow to the Carters that he has had to go.”
“Yes, too bad! Quite a dancing man! He will be missed in the germans.”
Jeffry Tucker smiled as he had been thinking the Carters might miss the assistance that Lane rendered their father, but since Mr. Parker’s mind ran more on germans than on business that was, after all, what he was bringing him up to Greendale for.
“Lewis Somerville has enlisted, too.”
“You don’t say! I had an idea when he left West Point he would be quite an addition to Richmond society.”
“I think Mrs. Carter thought he would be of great assistance to her eldest daughter,” said Mr. Machiavelli Tucker.
“Oh, I hadn’t heard that one of Robert Carter’s daughters was to make her debut. I haven’t seen her name on the list. Is she a good looker?”
“Lovely and very sweet! I think it is a pity for her to come out and not be a success, but her mother is determined that she shall enter the ring this winter.”
“Yes, it is a pity. This will be a bad year for buds. There are already so many of them and such a dearth of beaux I have never beheld. I don’t care how good-looking a girl is, she is going to have a hard time having a good time this year,” and the expert sighed, thinking of the work ahead of him in entertaining debutantes. He was not so young as he had been and there were evenings when he rather longed to get into slippers and dressing gown and let himself go, but a leader must be on the job constantly or someone else would usurp his place. Many debutantes and a few society men meant he must redouble his activities.
“I hope you will be nice to this girl, Hi. She is a splendid creature. Since her father has been sick, she has taken the burden of the whole family on her shoulders. All of the girls help and the second one, Helen, is doing wonders,too—in fact, all of them are wonders.”
“So——” thought the leader of germans, “we are coming to the favor. Tucker wants me to help launch this girl. Well, I’ll look her over first. No pig in a poke for me!” He took another of the very good cigars, not that he wanted it at that moment, but he might need it later on.
“Now this is what I want you to do, this is how I want you to be good to her.” Hi Parker smiled a knowing smile. How many times had he been approached in just this way? “I don’t want you to ask her to dance a german with you——”
Oh, what was the fellow driving at, anyhow?
“No, indeed! There is no man living that I would ask to do such a thing. I feel it is a kind of insult to a girl to go around drumming up partners for her.”
Mr. Parker gasped.
“What I want you to do for me is to persuade Mrs. Carter that this is a bad year to bring a girl out. You have already said you think it is,so you would be perfectly honest in doing so. The Carters’ finances are at a low ebb and this fine girl, Douglas, is doing her best to economize and have the family realize the importance of it, and now her mother is determined that she shall stop everything and go into society.”
Mr. Tucker, during the journey to Greendale, succeeded in convincing Mr. Parker that it was an easy matter to persuade Mrs. Carter to give up the project.
“I’ll do what I can, but if you take the matter so much to heart why don’t you do it yourself, Tucker? I make it a rule not to butt in on society’s private affairs if I can possibly keep out of it.”
“I ask you because I believe in getting an expert when a delicate operation is needed. You are a social expert and this is a serious matter.”
The upshot was that Mr. Hiram G. Parker was flattered into making the attempt and Mrs. Carter’s opinion of that gentleman’s social knowledge was so great and her faith inhim so deep-rooted that she abandoned her idea of forcing Douglas out for that season. She gave it up with a sigh of resignation. Anyhow, she was glad she had made Douglas bleach her complexion before Mr. Parker was introduced to her. The girl was looking lovely and the shyness she evinced on meeting that great man was just as it should be. Too much assurance was out of place with a bud and this introduction and impression would hold over until another year.
“Softly a winged thingFloats across the sky,And earth from slumber wakethAnd looketh up on high,Sees it is only a bird—A great white bird—That floating thro’ the darkness undisturbedFloats on, and on, and on.”
“Softly a winged thingFloats across the sky,And earth from slumber wakethAnd looketh up on high,Sees it is only a bird—A great white bird—That floating thro’ the darkness undisturbedFloats on, and on, and on.”
“Softly a winged thingFloats across the sky,And earth from slumber wakethAnd looketh up on high,Sees it is only a bird—A great white bird—That floating thro’ the darkness undisturbedFloats on, and on, and on.”
Late sleeping in a tent is rather a difficult feat as the morning sun seems to spy out the sleeper’s eyes and there is no way to escape him. Some of the campers tied black ribbons around their eyes and some even used black stockings, but the first rays of the sun always found Nan stirring. It was not that she was especially energetic, she was indeed rather lazy, according to her more vigorous sisters, but the charm ofthe early morning was so wonderful that she hated to miss it lying in bed. It was also such a splendid time to be alone. The camp was a bustling, noisy place when everyone was up, and early morning was about the only time the girl had for that communing with herself which was very precious to one of her poetic temperament.
She slept in a tent, not only with her sisters but with Lil Tate and Tillie Wingo, now that the week-enders had swarmed in on them at such a rate, stretching their sleeping accommodations to the utmost. Of course it was great fun to sleep in a tent but there were times when Nan longed for a room with four walls and a door that she could lock. The next best thing to a door she could lock was the top of the mountain in the early morning. Unless some enthusiastic nature-lover had got up a sunrise party she was sure to have the top of the mountain to herself.
Mr. Tucker had divulged to her the night before that her mother had abandoned the designsshe had been entertaining for Douglas, and she in turn had been able to pass on the good news to Douglas. Mrs. Carter had not told her daughter herself but was evidently going to take her own good time to do so. Their mother’s being a bit cattish was not worrying either Douglas or Nan. They were too happy over the abandonment of the plan. Of course they could not help feeling that since the plan was abandoned, it would have been sweet of their mother to let Douglas know immediately since she was well aware of the fact that the idea was far from pleasing to her daughter. And since it would have been sweet of her to let her know the moment she had abandoned the plan, it was on the other hand slightly cattish of her to conceal the fact. Of course the girls did not call it cattish even in their own minds—just thoughtlessness. Douglas had no idea of how the change had come about, and Nan held her counsel. It was Mr. Tucker’s and her secret.
As she crept out of the cot on that morning,before the sun was up, she glanced at her elder sister and a feeling of intense satisfaction filled her heart to see how peacefully Douglas was sleeping. Her beautiful hair, in a great golden red rope, was trailing from the low cot along the floor of the tent; her face that had looked so tired and anxious lately had lost its worried expression—she looked so young—hardly any older than Lucy, who lay in the next bed.
“Thank goodness, the poor dear is no longer worried,” thought Nan devoutly as she slipped on her clothes and crept noiselessly out of the tent.
What a morning it was! The sun was not quite up and there was a silver gray haze over everything. The neighboring mountains were lost, as were the valleys. The air had a freshness and sweetness that is peculiar to dawn. “‘The innocent brightness of a new-born day is lovely yet,’” quoted Nan. “If I can only get to the top of the mountain before the sun is up!” She hurried along the path, stopping a moment at the spring to drink a deep draft ofwater and to splash the clear water on her face and hands. She held her face down in the water a moment and came up shaking the drops off her black hair, which curled in innumerable little rings from the wetting. She laughed aloud in glee. Life was surely worth living, everything was so beautiful.
The sides of the mountain were thickly wooded but at the top there was a smooth plateau with neither tree nor bush. One great rock right in the middle of this clearing Nan used as a throne whereon she could view the world—if not the world, at least a good part of Albemarle county and even into Nelson on one hand and Orange on the other. Sometimes she thought of this stone as an altar and of herself as a sun-worshipper.
On that morning she clambered up the rock just a moment before the sun peeped through a crack in the mist. She stood with arms outstretched facing the sun. The mists were rolling away and down in the valley she could distinguish the apple orchards and now a fence,and now a haystack. There a mountain cabin emerged from the veil and soon a spiral of thin blue smoke could be spied rising from its chimney.
“I wonder what they are going to have for breakfast!” exclaimed the wood nymph, and then she took herself to task for thinking of food when everything was so poetical. Just as she was wondering what the mountaineers who lived in that tiny cabin were going to cook on the fire whose smoke she saw rising in that “thin blue reek” the sun came up. A wonderful sight, but the sun has been rising for so many æons that we have become accustomed to it. Something else happened at that moment, something we are not quite accustomed to even yet: Far off over the crest of a mountain Nan thought she saw an eagle. The first rays of the sun glinted on the great white wings. For a moment it was lost to view as it passed behind a cloud and then it appeared again flying rapidly.
“It is coming this way, a great white bird! I am almost afraid it might pick me up in itshuge talons and carry me off, carry me ’way up in the air—I almost hope it will—it would be so glorious to fly!”
She stood up on her throne and stretched her arms out, crying an invocation to the winged thing.
She heeded not the buzzing of the aeroplane as it approached. To her it was a great white bird and she only awakened from her trance when the machine had actually landed on her plateau.
The humming had stopped and it glided along the grass, kept closely cropped by Josephus, as this was his grazing ground when he was not busy pulling the cart. Nan stood as though petrified, a graceful little figure in her camp-fire girls’ dress. Her arms were still outstretched as when she cried her invocation to the great white bird.
The machine came to a standstill quite close to her altar and a young man in aviator’s costume sprang from it. Taking off his helmet and goggles, he made a low bow to Nan.
“Oh, mountain nymph, may a traveler land in your domain?”
“Welcome, stranger!”
“And may I ask what is this enchanted land?”
“This is Helicon—and you—who are you?”
“I am Bellerophon and yonder winged steed is Pegasus. Maid, will you fly with me?”
He held out his hand and Nan, with no more thought of the proprieties than a real mountain nymph would have had, let him help her into his machine. He wrapped a great coat around her, remarking that even nymphs might get cold, and seemingly with no more concern than Bill Tinsley felt over starting the mountain goat, he touched some buttons and turned some wheels and in a moment the aeroplane was gliding over the plateau and then floating in the air, mounting slowly over the tree tops. Up, up they went and then began making beautiful circles in the air. Nan sighed.
“Are you scared?” and the aviator looked anxiously at his little companion. He had not resumed his helmet and goggles and his eyeswere so kind and so merry that Nan felt as though she had known him all her life.
“Scared! Of course not! I am just so happy.”
“Have you ever flown before?”
“Not in reality—but it is just as I have dreamed it.”
“You dream then a great deal?”
“Yes! ‘In a dream all day I wander only half awake.’ I am sure I must be dreaming now.”
“I, too! But then the best of life is the dreams, the greatest men are the dreamers. If it had not been for a dreamer, we could not have had this machine. Look! Isn’t that wonderful?”
Nan was looking with all eyes at the panorama spread out below them. The sun was up now in good earnest and the mountains had shaken off the mist as sleepers newly aroused might throw off their coverlids. The orchards in the valleys looked like cabbage beds and the great mansions that adorn the hills and are the pride andboast of the county seemed no larger than doll houses. From every chimney in the valley smoke was arising. Nan was disgusted with herself that again the thought came to her:
“What are all of these people going to have for breakfast?”
They dipped and floated and curvetted. Nan thought of Hawthorne’s description of Pegasus in the “Chimæra” and the very first opportunity she had later on she got the book and reread the following passage:
“Oh, how fine a thing it is to be a winged horse! Sleeping at night, as he did, on a lofty mountain-top, and passing the greater part of the day in the air, Pegasus seemed hardly to be a creature of the earth. Whenever he was seen, up very high above people’s heads, with the sunshine on his silvery wings, you would have thought that he belonged to the sky, and that, skimming a little too low, he had got astray among our mists and vapors, and was seeking his way back again. It was very pretty to behold him plunge into the fleecy bosom of abright cloud, and be lost in it for a moment or two, and then break forth from the other side.”
Once they went through a low-hanging cloud. Nan felt the drops of water on her face.
“Why, it is raining!” she cried.
“No, that was a cloud we dipped through,” laughed her companion. “Are you cold?”
“Cold? I don’t know! I have no sensation but joy.”
The young man smiled. There was something about Nan’s drawl that made persons want to smile anyhow.
“You forgot your hat and goggles,” she said as she noticed his blue eyes and the closely cropped brown hair that looked as though it had to be very closely cropped to keep it from curling.
“That’s so! Some day maybe I shall go back after them. Now shall we fly to ’Frisco? How about High Olympus? Remember we are on Pegasus now and he can take us wherever we want to go.”
“Breakfast first,” drawled Nan. “Come withme and I can feed you on nectar and ambrosia.”
“Oh what a wonderful wood nymph! She understands that mortal man cannot feed on poetry alone.”
They glided to the plateau and landed again by the great rock.
“This is a wonderful place to light,” said the birdman. “And now, fair mountain nymph, please tell me who you are when you are not a nymph—and what you are doing on the top of a lonely mountain before the sun is up.”
“Nan Carter! And if you think this is a lonely mountain, you ought to try to get by yourself for a few minutes on it. Before sunrise, on the tip top point, is the only place where one can be alone a minute——”
“And then great creatures come swooping down out of the clouds and carry you off. It was very kind of you to go with me.”
“Kind of me! Oh, Mr. Bellerophon, I never can thank you enough for taking me. I have never been so happy in all my life. It is perfect, all but the noise— I do wish it wouldn’tclick and buzz so. I know Pegasus did not make such a fuss—only the swish of his wings could be heard and sometimes, as the maiden said, the brisk and melodious neigh.”
“Don’t you want to know my name, too, Miss Nan Carter? I have a name I use sometimes when I am not mounted on Pegasus.”
“I don’t want to know it at all, but perhaps my mother, who is chaperoning the camp and who is rather particular, might think Mr. Bellerophon sounded rather wily Greekish.”
The young man laughed. Such a nice laugh it was that Nan could not help thinking it sounded rather like a melodious neigh. He was possessed of very even white teeth and a Greek profile, at least it started out to be Greek but changed its mind when it got to the tip of his nose which certainly turned up a bit. On the whole he was a very pleasant, agreeable-looking young man, tall and broad-shouldered, clean-limbed and athletic-looking. What Nan liked most about him were his eyes and his hands.
“I hate to tell you my name, wood nymph. Itsounds so commonplace after what we have done this morning. I am afraid when you hear it you will simply knock on one of these great oak trees and a door will open and you will disappear from my eyes forever.”
“Not before breakfast,” drawled Nan. “But you must tell me your name before breakfast because I shall have to introduce you to the others.”
“What others? Not more wood nymphs!”
“More Carters—and week-enders!”
“You don’t mean I have actually landed at Week-End Camp? Why, that is what I have been looking for, but I had no idea of striking it the first thing, right out of the blue, as it were. I heard about the camp at the University, and want to come board there for a while.”
“Well, I am the one to apply to,” said Nan primly.
“Apply to a wood nymph for board! Absurd!”
“Not at all! Of course, I can’t take you to board without knowing your name and—er—number.”
“Well, if you must, you must—Tom Smith is my name—as for my number—there is only one of me.”
“I mean by your number, where you live.”
“Oh, I live in the air mostly. Sometimes I come down to have some washing done and to vote—at least, I came down once to vote—that was last June, but as no elections were going on just then and as my having arrived at the age of twenty-one did not seem to make them hurry, I went up in the air again. When I do vote, though, it will be out in Louisville, Kentucky. That’s where I have my washing done. You don’t say what you think of such a name as Tom Smith.”
“It is not very—romantic, but it must have been a nice name to go to school with.”
“Great! There were so many of us that the lickings didn’t go round.”
The girl was leading the way down the mountain path and they came to the spring where she had performed her ablutions earlier.
“This is the fountain of Pirene.”
“Ah! I fancied we would come to it soon,” and he stooped and drank his fill, shaking the drops from his crisp curls as he got up.
“I love to drink that way,” cried Nan. “I had a big deep drink as I went up the mountain.”
“Of course you drink that way! How else could a wood nymph drink? You might make a cup of your little brown hand, but even that is almost too modern. Ah, there is the camp! How jolly it looks! Are there any people there? It looks so quiet.”
“Any people there? Quiet! It is running over with people. They are all asleep now, that is the reason it is so quiet. There will be noise enough later.”
As she spoke there were shouts from the shower bath where some of the youths from the camp had assembled for a community shower, and as the cold mountain water struck them they certainly made the welkin ring.
“There is father! Come, and I’ll introduce you.”
Mr. Carter was coming from the kitchen bearinga cup of coffee for his wife, who stuck to the New Orleans habit of black coffee the first thing in the morning, and Mr. Carter loved to be the one to take it to her bedside.
“Father, this is Mr. Bel—Smith. He flew over here this morning,” and Nan suddenly remembered that she was not a wood nymph and that this mountain in Albemarle was not Helicon. Also that it was not a very usual thing for well-brought-up young ladies to go flying with strange young men before breakfast, even if strange young men did almost have Greek profiles. For the first time that morning Nan blushed. Her shyness returned. She could hardly believe that it was she, Nan Carter, who had been so bold. Her Bellerophon was plain Tom Smith and Pegasus was a very modern flying machine lying up in Josephus’s pasture, that pasture on top of a prosaic mountain in Albemarle County and not Mount Helicon. The fountain of Pirene was nothing but the spring that fed the reservoir from which they got the water supply for the shower bath where those boys were making suchan unearthly racket. She was not a wood nymph—there were no wood nymphs—but just a sentimental little girl of sixteen who no doubt needed a good talking to and a reprimand for being so very imprudent. What would her mother say to such an escapade?
With all of Mrs. Carter’s delicate spirituelle appearance there was nothing poetical in her make-up. She would never understand this talk of forgetting that one was not a wood nymph. There was more chance of the father’s sympathy. Nan took the bull by the horns and plunged into her confession.
“Father, I have been up in Mr. Bel—Smith’s flying machine. I don’t know what made me do it except I just—it was so early—I—I forgot it wasn’t a flying horse.”
Mr. Carter looked at his little daughter with a smile of extreme tenderness. He had taken flights on Pegasus himself in days gone by. He seldom mounted him now—the burden of making a living had almost made him forget that Pegasus was not a plough horse—not quite, however,and now as his little girl stood in front of him, her hair all ruffled by her flight, her cheeks flushed and in her great brown eyes the shadow of her dream, he understood.
“It is still early in the morning, honey, for you—no doubt the aeroplane is Pegasus. I envy you the experience. Everyone might not see it as I do, however, so you and Mr. Belsmith and I had better keep it to ourselves,” and he shook the birdman’s hand.
“Smith is my name—Tom Smith,” and the young man smiled into the eyes of the older man.
“I am very glad to see you, and just as soon as I take this coffee to my wife, I will come and do the honors of the camp,” and Robert Carter hastened off, thinking what a boon it would be to be young again in this day of flying machines.
Nan found her tent about as she had left it. The inmates were still asleep. “How strange,” she said to herself, “that I should have been to the top of Helicon and taken flight with Bellerophon on Pegasus while these girls have slept on not knowing a thing about it! I wonder wheretheir astral bodies have been! Douglas looks so happy, poor dear, I fancy hers has been in heaven.”
Aloud she cried: “Get up, girls! Wake up! It is awfully late—the camp is stirring and there is a lot to do. I have found a new boarder! He dropped from the clouds and is starved to death.”
Of course everyone was vastly interested in Mr. Tom Smith and his aeroplane. That young man, however, exhibited a modest demeanor which was very pleasant to members of his sex. He promised to take any and all of the campers flying if his machine was in good order. He thought it needed a little tinkering, however, as he had noticed a little clicking sound above the usual clack and hum of the motor.
“How on earth did you happen to land here?” asked someone.
“Airman’s instinct, I reckon. I was looking for the camp and had heard there was a mountain with a smooth plateau around here somewhere. A place to land is our biggest problem. The time will come when there will be landing stations for flyers just as they have tea housesfor automobilists now. There is great danger of becoming entangled in trees and telegraph wires. A place looks pretty good for lighting when you are up in the clouds and then when you get down you find what seemed to be a smooth, grassy plain is perhaps the top of a scrub oak forest.”
After breakfast the whole camp of week-enders marched to the top of the mountain to view the great bird, but the Carter girls had to stay behind to prepare for the picnic. Many sandwiches must be made and the baskets packed. Nan had her usual bowl of mayonnaise to stir. She looked very demure in her great apron but her eyes were dancing with the remembrance of her morning’s escapade.
“You look very perky this morning, honey,” said Douglas, as she packed a basket of turnovers and cheese cakes with great care not to crush those wonders of culinary art.
“You look tolerable perky yourself,” retorted her sister. Just as the sophomores and seniors of a college seem to fraternize, so it is often the case with the first and third members of a family.Douglas and Nan hit it off better with one another than they did with either Helen or Lucy.
“I feel like flying!” declared Douglas. “I don’t mean in an aeroplane but just of my own accord. I am so happy that mother has given up that terrible plan for me, given it up without father’s knowing anything about it. I wish I knew who had persuaded her or how it came about. She is rather—well, not exactly cold with me—but not exactly chummy. She has not told me yet, but if you say it is so, I know it is so. I went to her room this morning so she could tell me if she wanted to, but she didn’t say a thing about it. She got a lot of letters from New York by the early mail. I am mighty afraid they are bills.”
“Pretty apt to be,” sighed Nan. “I hope she won’t give them to father.”
“Oh, she mustn’t do that. I shall have to ask her for them. I hate to do it. She thinks I am so stern.”
“Let me do it,” said Nan magnanimously. “I wonder how much they amount to.”
“Oh, Nan! Would you mind asking for them?”
“Well, I am not crazy about it, but I’ll do it,” and do it she did.
She found her mother in a dainty negligee writing notes at a little desk her devoted husband had fashioned from a packing box.
“Ah, Nan, how sweet of you to come to me! I see so little of my girls now, they are so occupied with outside interests. Here, child, just run these ribbons in my underwear. It really takes a great deal of time to keep one’s clothes in order. Susan should do such things for me, but she is constantly being called off to do other things, at least she says she is. What, I can’t for the life of me see.”
Nan dutifully began to do her mother’s bidding, but when she saw the drawer full of things she was supposed to decorate with ribbons she had to call a halt.
“I am very sorry, mumsy, but I am helping Douglas pack the lunch baskets. This is a day for a picnic, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know. Who is going?”
“Everyone, we hope, as that gives Oscar and Susan a chance to get a thorough cleaning done, with no dinner to cook.”
“Oh, how absurdly practical you girls have become! I just hate it in you. What business has a girl of your age to know about who does thorough cleaning and when it is done?” Nan restrained a giggle. She had come to a full realization of what a very frivolous person her little mother was and while it made her sad in a way it also touched her sense of humor irresistibly.
“I am deeply disappointed in the fact that Douglas is not to come out next winter. Mr. Parker advises me strongly against trying to launch her. He says there are so many debutantes already and that he is engaged up to every dance and that all of the dancing men are in the same fix. Of course if I should go against his advice Douglas would fall as flat as possible. She has no desire to come out as it is and no doubt would do nothing to further her cause. I do not feel equal to the task of bringing her outand of putting spirit into her at the same time. She has been so lifeless and listless lately.”
Nan smiled, thinking of how she had left Douglas actually dancing as she packed the goodies and smiling all over her happy face.
“What a lot of letters you have, mumsy! You are almost as busy as I am with letters. It takes me hours every day answering applications for board.”
“Oh, yes, I have many notes to answer—friends, welcoming me back to Virginia. This pile over here is nothing but bills—things bought in New York, on my way home. I think it is most impertinent of these tradespeople to send them so promptly. They were so eager for me to open accounts, and now they write to me as though I were a pickpocket. ‘Please Remit’ at the bottom of every bill, and one man actually accuses me of being slow in payment. He says he understood I was to send money as soon as I reached Virginia. I have no money myself. I shall just have to hand them over to your father——”
“Oh, mother, please don’t do that!”
“Why not? How else am I to get them paid?”
“But, mother, the doctor said no money matters must be brought to father for at least a year and maybe not then. It was bills that made him ill, and bills would be so bad for him now.”
“Bills, indeed! It was overwork! I did my best to make him relax and not work so hard, but he would not listen to me. Many a time I tried to make him stop and go to the opera with me or to receptions, but it was always work, work, work!—day and night. I’m sure no one can accuse me of selfishness in the matter—I did my best.”
“Yes, dear, I know you did,” said Nan solemnly and gently, as though she were soothing a little child who had dropped a bowl of goldfish or done something equally disastrous and equally irreparable. “I tell you what you do, though, honey, you give me the bills. You see, I write all the letters for the camp and I will attend to them.”
Mrs. Carter handed over the offensive pile ofenvelopes with an air of washing her hands of the matter.
“There is one thing, mumsy: if I were you, I’d withdraw my patronage from such persons. I’d never favor tradespeople like these with another order.”
“Never!” exclaimed the mother. “‘Please Remit,’ indeed! I never imagined such impertinence.”
Nan bore off the sheaf of bills. They were not quite so large as they had feared. Mrs. Carter had unwittingly managed very well since she had accidentally struck August sales in New York and the things she had bought really were bargains.
“We will pay them immediately, Nan,” said Douglas. “I am so thankful that father did not see them. It would be so hard on him that I am sure much of the good that has come to him from the long rest would be done away with.”
“Do they make you blue, these bills?”
“No, indeed! Nothing will make me blue now that mother has given up making me be a debutante.I can go on working and make more money to take the place of this we shall have to take out of the bank to pay for these things mother bought. But just suppose she had carried her point and forced me into society. I could have earned no money and would have had such a lot spent on me. Why can’t she see, Nan?”
“She is color blind, I think, unless it is couleur de rose. We must be patient with her, Douglas.”
“All right, grandma!” And if Mrs. Carter could have heard the peal of laughter from Douglas, she would not have thought her lifeless and listless. “You are such a dear little wise old lady, Nan!”
The fallen tree where Nan and Dum Tucker had chosen to have the picnic proved to be most attractive. It was a great oak that had attained its growth before it had been felled in some wind storm, and now it lay like some bed-ridden old giant who refuses to die. Part of the roots held to the soil while part stood up like great toes, poking their way through the blanket of ferns and moss that were doing their best to cover them. This tree not only clung to its old branches but had actually the hardihood to send out new shoots. These branches were not growing as the limbs of an oak usually grow, with a slightly downward tendency from the main trunk, but shot straight to the sky, upright and vigorous.
“It is just like some old man who has to stay in bed but still is open to convictions of all kinds,who reads and takes in new ideas and is willing to try new things and think new thoughts,” suggested Page Allison.
“Yes, that strong green branch struggling to the light there might be equal suffrage,” teased Mr. Tucker.
“Yes, and that one that has outstripped all the others is higher education of women,” declared Douglas.
“These little ferns and wild flowers that are trying to cover up his ugly old toes are modern verse. He even reads the poetry of the day and does not just lie back on stuffy old pillows and insist that poetry died with Alfred Tennyson,” whispered Nan, who did not like much to speak out loud in meetin’. Tom Smith heard her, however, and smiled his approval of her imagery.
“Well, I only hope while we are picnicking on his bed he won’t decide to turn over and go to sleep. It would certainly play sad havoc with cheese cakes,” laughed Helen.
Much to the satisfaction of the Carter girls, all the week-enders did decide to come on the picnic,also their mother. They knew very well that had that lady made up her mind to remain in camp, Susan’s time would have been taken up waiting on her and the thorough cleaning that the pavilion and kitchen were crying out for would never be accomplished.
Mr. Hiram G. Parker, in faultless morning costume, had proffered himself as squire of dames and was assisting that dainty little lady on the rough journey to the fallen tree. She, too, had attired herself with thoughtful care in sheer white linen lawn with a large picture hat of finest straw and a ruffled lace parasol. The girls were in strong contrast to their chaperone, since one and all, even Tillie Wingo, were dressed in khaki skirts and leggins. The only variation in costume was that some wore middies and some sport shirts.
First a fire must be built and a big one at that, as it takes many hot coals to roast potatoes. Lucy and Lil Tate, with their faithful followers, Skeeter and Frank, had gone on a little ahead, and when the rest of the crowd reached the spotthe fire was already burning merrily. In a short time it was ready to drop the potatoes in, Irish potatoes and great yams that looked big enough for the bed-ridden giant himself to make a meal of. Then the roasting ears of corn must be opened, the silk removed and the ears wrapped carefully in the shucks again and placed in just exactly the right part of the fire to cook but not to burn.
There was some kind of work for all of those inclined to usefulness, and any who were not so inclined could wander around admiring the scenery or climb up in the tree to secure the choice seats. There were seats for all and to spare in the gnarled old limbs of the giant oak. Mrs. Carter was enthroned in a leafy armchair while Hiram G. perched beside her. Evidently he was prepared to be waited on and not to wait. Bobby climbed to the tiptop of one of the great branches where he looked like a “little cherub that sits up aloft.”
“I’m a-gonter let down a string and pull my eats up here,” he declared.
“Oh, Bobby!” shuddered his mother. “Don’t say such words!”
“What I done now?” cried that young hopeful, peeping down through the leafy screen, with an elfish, toothless grin.
“Don’t say eats! Say luncheon!”
“Yes, I won’t! If I say luncheon, they’ll send me up ’bout ’nough to put in my eye. I’ve a great mind to say victuals like Oscar and then they’ll send me up something sho’. Hi, Helen! Put my victuals in a bucket and tie it to this string!” he cried, dangling a string before Helen’s eyes as she stooped under the tree, unpacking the basket containing the paper plates and Japanese napkins.
“I won’t put anything in the bucket unless you mind mother,” said Helen severely, but her eye was twinkling at Bobby’s philological distinction.
“Well, then, Helen dear, be so kind as to put my luncheon in that there little bucket what you see turned up over yonder by the fire. But, Helen,” in a stage whisper, “please don’t putit in like a luncheon but like it was jes’ victuals. Luncheons ain’t never ’nough for workin’ mens.” So all in good time Helen packed a hefty lunch in the bucket for her darling and he drew it up to his castle in the tree and feasted right royally.
When everyone was too hungry to stand it another moment the potatoes were done, all burnt on the outside and delicious and mealy within. There never were such sandwiches as Helen’s; and the corn, roasted in the shucks, was better than corn ever had been before. The cheese cakes and fried turnovers proved very good for tree eating and not too squashy. Boxes of candy appeared like magic from the pockets of masculine week-enders. Mr. Tucker produced three, one for each of his girls.
“Oh, Zebedee!” exclaimed Dum. “I am so relieved. I thought you were getting hippy. It was candy all the time.”
When every vestige of food was devoured and all the paper plates and papers carefully burned, as Nan said, to keep from desecrating Nature, someone proposed that they should play games.
“Let’s play teakettle!” exclaimed Skeeter, so teakettle it was. Some of the company had to be enlightened as to the game and perhaps some of my readers may have to be also. This is the way: whoever is “It” or “Old Man” must go out of ear shot and then the company selects a word. The “Old Man” then returns and asks a question to each one in turn. The answer must contain the chosen word, but in place of the word, “teakettle” must be inserted.
“You go out, Zebedee, you are so spry,” suggested the irreverent Dum.
“No, that’s not fair! We must count out,” declared Dee, determined that her parent must be bossed only by her own sweet self.
“I bid to count!” from Lucy. “‘Eny, meny, miny mo, cracker, feny, finy, fo, ommer noocher, popper toocher, rick, bick, ban, do, as, I, went, up the, apple, tree, all, the, apples, fell, on, me, bake a, pudding, bake, a, pie, did, you, ever, tell, a, lie, yes, you, did, you, know, you, did, you, broke, your, mammy’s, tea, pot, lid, did, she, mind?’”She stopped at Lil Tate, who was equal to the occasion.
“No!” cried Lil; and Lucy took up her counting out in the sing-song we hear from children engaged in that delightful occupation of finding out who is to be “It.” No matter where one lives—east, west, north or south—it is the same except for slight variations in the sense of the incantation.
“N, o, spells, the, word, no, and, you, are, really—It!” An accusing finger was pointed at Nan, who perforce must crawl from her comfortable perch and go around the side of the mountain while the assembled company chose a word.
After much whispering, Mr. Tucker hit on a word that appealed to all of them, and Nan was whistled for to return.
“Helen, what do you enjoy most in camp life?”
“Teakettles!” was the prompt response.
“Skeeter, did you and Frank get any squirrels yesterday?”
“No, not one! We told them if they would letus shoot them that they could come with us on the picnic—but they said: no teakettles for them!” Indignant cries from Skeeter’s chums ensued.
“You came mighty near giving us away, you nut!”
Nan thought a moment.
“Is it pies? Helen certainly enjoys pies, and if the squirrels had come on the picnic it would have been in a pie.”
“No; guess again! Guess again!”
“Mother, are you comfortable up there?”
“Yes, my dear; I had no idea one could have an armchair at a teakettle.”
“‘Picnic!’ ‘Picnic!’ I know that is the word. Mumsy gave it away. You have to go out, mumsy.”
“Picnic” was the word and everyone thought Nan very clever to guess it so quickly. Mrs. Carter was loath to leave her leafy bower, so Mr. Parker gallantly offered to take her place and be “It.”
A word was quickly chosen for Mr. Parker although they feared it would be too easy. That gentleman was really enjoying himself very much. Climbing trees was not much in his line, but he congratulated himself that while his suit no doubt looked perfectly new, it was in reality three years old and was only his eighteenth best. The lapels were a little smaller than the prevailing mode and the coat cut away a bit more than the latest fashion. He could not wear it much longer, anyhow, and in the meantime he was having a very pleasant time. The girls were a ripping lot and he would no doubt have the pleasure of bringing them out in years to come. He might even stretch a point and ask some of them to dance the german with him before they made their debuts. That little Allison girl from the country was a charmer and as for the Tucker twins—the only trouble about them was he could not decide which one would take the better in society. Helen Carter was sure to win in whatever class she entered. Douglas Carter had deceived him somewhat. The evening before, while lookingvery pretty she had lacked animation. He had been quite serious in his advice to Mrs. Carter not to bring her out that year. With the scarcity of beaux only a girl who was all animation had any show of having a good time in her debutante year. Now today this girl had thrown off her listlessness and was as full of life as anyone. She was really beautiful. If a complexion could show up as well as hers did in the sunlight what would it not do in artificial light? And her hair! Hair like that could stand the test of dancing all night, and Mr. Hiram G. Parker had found out from long experience that not much hair could stand the test.
“Always coming out of curl and getting limp!” he muttered, but just then they whistled for him and he returned to the tree.
“Ahem! Miss Douglas, are you expecting to miss the boys who have gone to the border with the Blues?”
“Yes, indeed!” blushed Douglas; “but if I were a teakettle it would be even worse.”
“Is it a mother? Of course it would be worseif you were a mother! Ah, maybe you have been promising to be a sister to one of them.”
Douglas blushed so furiously that she almost fell off her precarious perch.
“‘Mother’ isn’t the word—neither is ‘sister’!” shouted the crowd. “Guess again!”
“Miss Dum Tucker, are you going to remain long in camp?”
“I am afraid I shall have to leave on Monday, but if the teakettle fancier is no longer here, I don’t believe I should care to remain.”
“Teakettle fancier! Sounds like spinsters. I can’t see what it is. Miss Dee, what are these teakettles like?”
“There are as many styles of teakettles as there are teakettles, tall and narrow, short and squat, with snouts of all shapes.”
“Heavens! Still no light on the subject! Tucker, what is your opinion of the war? Will it last much longer?”
“I hope not, although I hear it is an excellent way to dispose of last year’s teakettles. Theyare using so many of them in the Red Cross service.”
“Oh, come now! I must do better than this. Mrs. Carter, have you any of these teakettles about you?”
“No, Mr. Parker, I haven’t a single teakettle—ye-et,” rather sadly.
“Mr. Smith!” That young aviator, not expecting to be called on, almost fell out of the tree, which would have been an ignominious proceeding for one accustomed to the dizzy heights of the clouds. “Do you come across any of this stuff, whatever it is that these crazy folks call teakettles?”
“Yes, I do occasionally. Even here in this camp there is a lot of the stuff that teakettles are made of—the raw material, I might say, but if I should, no doubt future teakettles would climb up the tree and mob me.”
“‘Debutantes!’ ‘Debutantes!’ That is the word! Stupid of me not to guess it sooner. Thank you, Miss Dum, for the compliment you just paid me, or did you mean your father? Because I understandthat he is somewhat fond of young girls himself.”
“I meant you in the game—but Zebedee in reality,” declared Dum, who had no more idea of coquetting than a real teakettle.
“Mr. Smith is ‘It’!” shouted Lucy. “We are going to get a hard one for him.”
Skeeter wanted to take “flying machine” but that was too easy. Many suggestions were made but Nan finally hit on a word that they were sure he could never guess.
“The trouble is it is hardly fair to take a word that is so obscure,” objected Mr. Carter, who had been quietly enjoying the fun as much as any of the party.
“Well, it is a compliment to give him a hard one,” declared Mr. Tucker. “It means we have some reliance on his wit.”
Tom Smith was proving himself a very agreeable companion and old and young were feeling him to be an acquisition to the camp.
“You youngsters up there in the top of the tree, come down and be questioned!” cried the“Old Man.” “You, Bobby, what are you doing up there?”
“I’m a-playin’ I’m one er them there teakettles,” said that ready-witted infant. Everyone shouted for joy at his answer.
“And you, Frank Maury! Do you want to take a trip with me some day?”
“Sure! I’d ruther be a birdman than—a—teakettle,” said Frank lamely.
“Did you ever see one of these teakettles, Skeeter?”
“Naw, and nobody else.”
“But you didn’t use the word, Skeeter,” admonished Lil.
“Then you use it for him,” suggested the questioner. “I take it then if he never saw a teakettle and no one else has ever seen one, that it is some kind of mythological creature. Am I right?” he appealed, following up the advantage Skeeter had given him.
“Yes, a teakettle is a mythological being,” said Lil primly.
“Skeeter can give more things away withoutusing the word than most folks can using it,” declared Lucy cruelly.
“Miss Nan, did I ever see a teakettle that you know of?”
“I have an idea you thought you saw a teakettle once,” drawled Nan.
“‘Wood nymph!’” exclaimed Tom Smith.
Everyone thought he was very clever to have guessed a very difficult and obscure word in five questions.
“Nan’s turn again! That isn’t fair when Skeeter really and truly was the one who got him going. You’ve got to go, Skeeter,” and Frank and Lil and Lucy pounced on their chum and dragged him from the tree.
“Yes, I haven’t! I’d never guess c-a-t. Get somebody else.”
“I’ll go,” Mr. Tucker volunteered magnanimously.
“Let him; he’s dying to!” exclaimed the twins in one breath.
“Well, don’t tweedle!” commanded their father. He always called it tweedling when histwins spoke the same thing at the same time.
A word was hard to hit on because as his daughters said Mr. Tucker had what men call feminine intuition.
“You can’t keep a thing from him,” Dum said.
“And sometimes he sees something before it happens,” declared Dee.
“Oh, spooks!” laughed Page.
“‘Spooks’ would be a good word,” suggested someone, but Mrs. Carter had a word which was finally determined on. Zebedee was whistled for and came quickly to the front.
“Mr. Smith, tell me, while flying through the air would you like to have one of these teakettles with you? I mean would it be the kind of thing you could carry with you? Would it be of any value on the journey?”
“We—el, I can’t say that a teakettle would be of any great practical value on a flight, but it would certainly be great to have one. I believe I’d rather have one than anything I can think of. In fact, I mean to take one with me some day.”
Mr. Tucker looked into the glowing countenance of the young birdman. He saw there youth, character, romance.
“A ‘teakettle’ is a ‘sweetheart,’” he said simply.
“Talking about spooks—what do you know about that?” cried one of the crowd.
“Well, what did I tell you? Didn’t I say you couldn’t keep anything from Zebedee?” said triumphant Dee.
“I betcher I ain’t a-gonter take no sweetheart with me when I gits me a arryplane,” shouted Bobby from his vantage ground. “I’m a-gonter take Josh and Josephus, ander—ander—father.”
The picnic in the tree had been a decided success. It was one more perfect day for the week-enders to report as worth while to the possible future boarders. Even Mr. Parker was enthusiastic, although he was not as a rule much of an outdoor man. He was conscious of the fact that he shone in a drawing room, and under the “great eye of Heaven” did not amount to quite so much as he did under electric lights with pink shades.