“‘The world is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:Little we see in Nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!This sea that bares her bosom to the moon,The winds that will be howling at all hours,And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;For this, for everything, we are out of tune;It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather beA pagan suckled in a creed outworn;So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.’”
“‘The world is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:Little we see in Nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!This sea that bares her bosom to the moon,The winds that will be howling at all hours,And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;For this, for everything, we are out of tune;It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather beA pagan suckled in a creed outworn;So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.’”
“‘The world is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:Little we see in Nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!This sea that bares her bosom to the moon,The winds that will be howling at all hours,And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;For this, for everything, we are out of tune;It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather beA pagan suckled in a creed outworn;So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.’”
She intended to whisper it to herself but as the march of the lines took possession of her, she spoke them out loud without knowing it. On the ninth line she came out strong with, “‘Great God! I’d rather be—’” Miss Somerville and Susan looked at her in amazement. Her dark eyes were fixed on the despised view with a look of a somnambulist.
“Lawd a mussy! Miss Nan done got a tech er heat!”
“Blow your horn, Lewis. Didn’t you hearNan?” from Miss Somerville. “She must see something coming.”
Nan went off into such a peal of laughter that Bill Tinsley himself could not have vied with her. She blushingly admitted it was just some poetry she was repeating to herself, which made Miss Somerville agree with Susan that Miss Nan had a “tech er heat.”
“You had better have a dose of that aromatic ammonia and lie down for a while when we get to the top,” suggested Miss Lizzie dryly.
The road stopped at the cabin some distance from the pavilion, so they alighted and Lewis turned the car on a seemingly impossible place and careened down the mountain to pick up the others before they were exhausted with the climb.
The cabin was in perfect order and so clean that even Miss Lizzie was destined to find it difficult to discover germs. Gwen had rubbed and scrubbed and then beautified to the best of her ability. She had purchased a few yards of coarse scrim at the store and fresh curtains were at the windows. The white iron bed was made up inspotless counterpane and pillows, and on the freshly scrubbed pine floor was a new rag rug of her own weave. The open fireplace was filled with fragrant spruce boughs, and on the high mantel and little deal table she had put cans of honeysuckle and Cherokee roses. She had longed for some vases but had not liked to ask the young men to buy them. She felt that the curtains were all the expense she should plunge them into.
When Gwen had seen the car approaching she had shyly gone behind the cabin. She dreaded in a measure meeting these girls and their cousin. She had become accustomed to the presence of the young gentlemen, but what would the girls think of her? Wouldn’t they think she was odd and funny looking? She was quite aware of the fact that she was very different in appearance from the girls in cities. She had pored over too many illustrated papers not to know how other girls her age dressed and looked. Her scant blue dress was made after a pattern sent to the Mission School by some interested ladies. It was supposed to be the best pattern for children touse where the cloth must be economically cut. So it was and singularly picturesque in its straight lines, but Gwen was but human and now that fashion sheets plainly said wider skirts and flaring, here she was in her narrow little dress! She hated it. Bare legs and feet, too!
Her instinct was to turn and flee around the mountain to the arms of Aunt Mandy, who thought she was the most wonderful little girl in all the world. But there was the kind of fighting blood in her that could not run. The spirit of a grandfather who had been one of the heroes of Balaclava made her hold up her proud little head and go boldly around to the front of the cabin to face the dreadful ladies.
“Oh, you must be Gwen!” exclaimed Douglas, coming forward with both hands to greet the girl. “Mr. Somerville has told us how splendidly you have taken care of them and I know you must have arranged this room for Cousin Lizzie. It is lovely.”
Gwen no longer felt like one of the Light Brigade. This was not the jaws of Death and themouth of Hell. This sweet young lady didn’t even notice her bare feet, and the scanty skirt made no difference at all. She introduced her to Miss Somerville and to her sister, Nan, who was also graciousness itself. Miss Somerville was a little stiff, reminding Gwen of the old ladies on the hotel piazza who bought the lace and tatting that she and Aunt Mandy made on the long winter evenings when the sun went down behind the mountains so early.
“Yes, the room will do very well.”
It was rather faint praise and took very little time to say when one considered that Gwen had spent days on her task. But Nan and Douglas made up to her for their cousin’s seeming coldness by going into raptures over the cabin.
“Lewis did not tell us he was going to whitewash the room for Cousin Lizzie,” said Nan.
“I whitewashed it myself. The young gentlemen were so occupied with constructing the pavilion that I could not bear to interrupt them.” Nan and Douglas could not help smiling at the little English girl’s stilted language but they hidtheir amusement. “I prepared the attic room for the negro maid. Would you like to go up and see that?”
“Yes, indeed! Come on, Susan, and see your room. It is to be right up over Cousin Lizzie’s.”
“Well, praise be to my Maker that I ain’t goin’ to have to sleep in the air. My lungs is weak at best an’ no doubt the air would be the death of me.”
Susan’s figure belied her words, as she was an exceedingly buxom girl with a chest expansion that Sandow might have envied her.
The attic was entered by a trap door from the room below and in lieu of stairs there was nothing but a ladder made chicken-steps style: small cross pieces nailed on a board.
The attic room was scrubbed as clean as Miss Lizzie’s. The low ceiling and very small windows certainly suited Susan’s idea of sanitation, as very little air could find its way into the chamber. A rough wooden bed was built against the wall, as is often the way in mountain cabins, more like a low, deep shelf than a bed. Gwenhad stuffed a new tick with nice clean straw and Susan bid fair to have pleasant dreams on her fresh bed. A night spent without dreams of some kind was one wasted in the eyes of the colored girl who consulted her dream book constantly.
Josh had railed at Gwen for putting a bunch of black-eyed Susans in the attic room.
“Waitin’ on a nigger! Humph! You uns ain’t called on to lower yo’sef that a way. Niggers is niggers an’ we uns would ruther to bust than fetch an’ carry fer ’em.”
“This seems a very small thing to do,” Gwen had answered. She did not share the mountaineer’s prejudice against the black race. “I have no doubt this girl will like flowers just as much as Miss Somerville.”
So she did and a great deal more, as she expressed her appreciation of the tomato can of posies, and Miss Somerville had not even noticed the bouquets in her room. As Susan followed the girls up the funny steps and her head emerged through the trap door, her eyes immediately fell on the flowers.
“Well, Gawd be praised! My dream is out! I done fell asleep in the cyars an’ dream I see little chillun picking flowers in a fiel’. My book say that is one er two interpretations: you is either goin’ ter have fresh flowers laid on yer grabe er some one is goin’ ter make you a prisint er flowers. I thank yer, little miss, fer the bowkay.”
“Indeed, you are welcome,” and Gwen gave her a grave smile.
Susan had been quite doubtful at first what her attitude should be with this white girl who went barefooted and whitewashed cabins herself. She knew very well how to treat po’ white trash: like the dust under her feet. There was no other way for a self-respecting colored girl to treat them. But this white girl was different, somehow.
“She got a high steppin’ way that is mo’ like quality,” she declared to Oscar later. “She calls that slab-sided, shanty-boat ’ooman Aunt Mandy, but I ’low they ain’t no kin. Now that there Josh is low flung. I think Miss Douglas is crazy to let Bobby run around with him as much as shedo. I bet his maw would stop it fast enough.”
The Carter girls’ enthusiasm and praise for the camp fully repaid the young men for their untiring labor. The pavilion was really a thing of beauty, built right up in the trees, as it were, like a great nest. It had no walls, but the roof projected far enough to keep out anything short of horizontal rain. An artistic rustic seat encircled the great poplar trunk in the centre and rough benches were built around three sides of the hall. Stairs went down on the fourth side to the kitchen in the basement, and outside, steps gave entrance to the pavilion. The whole building was screened. This was to be dining-room, living-room, dance hall and everything and anything they chose to make of it. The girls had reserved their victrola in renting the house and it now had the place of honor near the circular seat.
“We just unpacked it this morning,” said Lewis. “There was no use in music with no girls to dance with.”
“Aren’t men strange creatures?” laughedHelen. “Now girls love to dance so, they dance with each other, but two men would just as soon do fancy work as dance with one another.”
“Sooner,” muttered Bill. “Let’s have a spin!”
So a spirited “one-step” was put on and then the youths felt themselves to be overpaid for their work as they danced over the floor that had been the cause of many an aching joint and mashed thumb. Joints were not aching now and mashed thumbs were miraculously cured by clasping the hands of these pretty girls.
That first supper in the mountains was a very merry one. Miss Elizabeth was much refreshed by a nap and came to the pavilion quite resigned to life. She had nothing but praise for the handiwork of her beloved nephew, and even included the laconic Bill in her compliments. She wished, however, he would not be so sudden in his laughter as she was afraid it betrayed the vacant mind.
Gwen had made a delicious fricassee of chicken in the fireless cooker, the mysteries of which she had been taught at the mission school. Hot biscuitand honey from Aunt Mandy’s hive completed the feast.
“What delicious biscuit!” exclaimed Douglas. “Isn’t Gwen a wonder?”
“’Scuse me, Miss Douglas, but I made them biscuit,” said Susan, who was waiting on the table.
“But, Susan, I thought you said you couldn’t cook a thing!”
“That was in Richmond. I ain’t boun’ by no regulations of no club whin I leaves the city. You see in my club, which is called the Loyal Housemaids, we swars never to ’tend to two ’fessions at onct. When we is housemaids, we is housemaids, but out here where th’ain’t ter say no house, I kin do as I’s a mind, and I sho’ did want ter make some biscuit ter go with that there fricassy. Uncle Oscar an’ I is goin’ ter share the cookin’. An’ Miss Gwen is goin’ ter do the haid wuck. We ain’t conversant with the fi’less cooker an’ we don’t know nothin’ ’tall ’bout lightin’ kerosene stoves.”
Our girls were much gratified by Susan’s willingnessto turn in and be of some real assistance. The work when only the family were there would be light, but if the many week-enders who had announced their intention of coming to their camp materialized, they well knew that it would take the combined efforts of them all to feed the hungry hordes and to wash the many dishes and make up the many cots. The laundering of the bed linen and towels would amount to more than they could cope with, so they had decided to patronize a laundry in Charlottesville, for all the flat work.
Bobby was in a state of extreme bliss. He had been allowed to help Josh feed Josephus and now he was permitted to come to supper without doing more towards purifying himself than just “renching the Germans” off his hands and face. He was to sleep in the tent with his Cousin Lewis, too.
The girls’ tent was pitched just behind the Englishman’s cabin, while the masculine quarters were nearer the pavilion.
“We will put up other tents as we need them,”said Lewis. “We have chopped down enough trees and cleared enough ground to camp the whole of Richmond.”
“Thank goodness, our boarders won’t come for a week yet and we can have time to enjoy ourselves for a while,” sighed Douglas.
She was very tired but it was not the miserable fatigue she had felt in town. It was a good healthy tired that meant a night’s rest with nothing to think about but how good life was and how kind people were. Everything was certainly working out well. Cousin Lizzie was behaving in a wonderful way for an old lady who thought much of her ease and had no love of Nature. Helen and Lucy were too interested to squabble at all and so were getting on splendidly. Bobby was behaving himself beautifully, and even the servants were rising to the occasion and evidently intending to do their best. The only fly in the ointment was their attitude towards Josh and his towards them. He openly called them “niggers,” and they called him “po’ white” right to his face. Gwen, they seemed to have accepted at her facevalue and not judged by her bare feet and scanty frock.
“Niggers, an’ min’ you, Miss Douglas, we don’t ’low nobody but us to call us out of our names that way,” said Oscar. “Niggers is reg’lar bloodhoun’s an’ they kin smell out quality same as geologists kin. Me’n Susan knows that that there little Miss Gwen is a lady bawn.”
“I believe she is, Oscar, and I hope you and Susan will be just as nice to her as you can be.”
“We’ll do our best, but land’s sake, Miss Douglas, don’ arsk us to be gentle with that there Josh. He is low flung and mischeevous to that extent.”
“All right, Oscar,” laughed Douglas, “but don’t be too hard on him.” Lewis had told her that Josh was fully capable of taking care of himself and in the trial of wits Josh would certainly come out ahead.
“He already done scart Susan to death, tellin’ her about hants in the mountings. He says that Miss Gwen’s paw was pestered by a ringin’ an’ buzzin’ in his haid that drove him ’stracted, and he used to roam the mountings trying to git shetof the sound, til bynby he couldn’t stan’ it no mo an’ up’n jumped off’n a place called the Devil’s Gorge and brack ev’y bone in his body. An’ he sayed the Englishman still hants these here parts an’ you can hear the buzzin’ an’ ringin’ sometimes jes’ as plain as the po’ man uster hear it in his life time. He say he won’t come over here arfter nightfall to save yo neck.”
“What nonsense!” declared Douglas. “Well, all the buzzing on earth won’t keep me awake,” but before she went to sleep, she recounted the ridiculous tale to her three sisters, who shared the tent with her.
They agreed that they would have to ask Lewis to speak to Josh about telling such things to poor Susan, who was already eaten up with superstition.
“Ain’t it grand to sleep in a——?” but Lucy was asleep before she said what it was grand to sleep in. Nan tried to recall some lines of Wordsworth that Gwen reminded her of, but “The sweetest thing that ever grew,” was all she could think of before sleep got her, too. Helenforgot to put olive oil on her eyebrows, a darkening process she was much interested in, and went off into happy, dreamless slumber. Douglas shut her tired eyes and sleep claimed her for its own before she could count ten.
“Help! Help!” The call was followed by a blood-curdling shriek that drowned the noise of tree frogs and whip-poor-wills.
Douglas and Nan both awoke with a start and Helen stirred in her sleep. Lewis, over at the men’s tent, made a mental note that he must go out with a gun early in the morning and try to shoot that screech owl. Bill, whose passion next to soldiering was base ball, muttered an unintelligible something about: “Ball two! Strike one! Rotten umpire!”
Oscar heard it, and remembering the terrible tales Josh had been telling, drew his blanket up close over his wool. “Walls don’t keep hants out no better’n canvas, but all the same I’d like to know they was somethin’ more substantiated around this nigger than jist a dog tent. I’s gontergit some cotton to stuff in my years ’ginst anudder night,” he said to himself.
“Help! Help!” again rang out. “The debble is got me! Gawd in Hebben help me!”
“Susan!” gasped the three older girls. They were out of their cots and into kimonos by the help of a flash light Helen had under her pillow, before the call came again. The three-quarter moon had set but the stars gave light enough for them to see the two young men in full tilt, coming to their assistance, rifles in hand and striped bath gowns flapping around bare legs.
“Help! My sweet Gawd, help!”
Miss Somerville had more fear of germs than anything else, so slept with her door wide open. Being a very thorough person in anything she undertook whether it was solitaire, knitting scarves, chaperoning or sleeping, Miss Somerville was now sleeping with all her might. She had pitched her—what would be called a snore in a plebeian person, but we will call it her breathing,—she had pitched her breathing in harmony withthe tree frogs and katydids and was now hitting off a very pretty tune.
Up the chicken steps the young folks trooped, Lewis in front with the flash light, Miss Somerville still sleeping the sleep of the virtuous and just. Poor Susan was lying on her shelf-like bed, her head covered up, having emerged only for yelling purposes and then quickly covering herself again. Her great feet were sticking out at the bottom and on them were perched three large hornets, stinging at their ease. A kerosene lamp, turned down too low and smelling at an unseemly rate, was on the box that served as a table. The windows were tightly closed because of her weak lungs and the air could almost have been cut with its combination of odors, cheap-scented soap, musk and just plain Susan.
“Susan, Susan! What is the matter?” demanded Douglas.
“Oh, little Mistis! That English hant has got me by the toe. I was expecting him after what that there po’ white boy done tol’ me, but I thought maybe he would be held off by MissLizzie Somerville. Hants ain’t likely to worry the quality.”
“Nonsense, Susan, nothing has you by the toe,” said Helen sternly. “You must have had nightmare.”
“But look at the hornets!” exclaimed Nan. “Why, the room is full of them.”
Then such an opening of windows and tumbling down that trap door as ensued! Susan had bounced out of bed to join them, regardless of the young men, but since she was enveloped in a high-necked, very thick pink outing flannel gown she was really more clothed than any of them.
“I’d fight ’em if I had on more clothes,” declared Bill, as he landed on the floor below.
“Ouch! One got me on the shin then,” from Lewis.
“One’s down my neck!” squealed Helen.
“Shut the trap door so they won’t disturb Cousin Lizzie,” commanded Douglas.
They got out of doors without Miss Somerville’s even dropping a stitch from the raveled sleeve of care she was so industriously knitting.“You could almost two-step to it,” drawled Nan, nursing a stung finger.
Bill went off into one of his uncontrollable bursts of laughter and the peaceful sleeper stirred.
“Shh! Bill, you must dry up,” warned Lewis. “I’ll get out another cot and Susan can finish the night in Aunt Lizzie’s room.”
“Oh, Mr. Lewis, please don’t make me go back in yonder. The debble will git me sho next time. I’s safter out under the ferment of the stars.”
“You can come into our tent, Susan,” said Helen kindly. “We are not going to have you scared to death.” So the extra cot was brought and room was made for the poor, trembling vision in pink outing flannel.
“Tell us what it was that got you scared,” asked Nan when they had once more settled themselves and the young men had gone back to their quarters, much relieved at the way things had turned out.
“Well, that there low-flung Josh was tellin’ me ’bout a English hant what had suffered with abuzzin’ an’ roarin’ in his haid ter that extent he done los’ his reason an’ one dark night he up’n kilt hissef. An’ they do say that the po’ man still ain’t got no rest from the buzzin’ an’ he hants these parts, and sometimes them what is ‘dicted ter hants kin hear de buzzin’ and roarin’, ’cause even though the hant is laid the buzzin’ an’ roarin’ roams the mountings lak a lost soul. Whin I gits in the baid, I was plum tuckered out so I didn’ wase no time but was soon sleepin’ the sleep that falls alike on the jest an’ the onjest. I wuck up with a smotherin’ feelin’.”
“I should think you would, with not a bit of air in your room!”
“I wuck up, as I say, kinder smotherin’ like an’ then I hears the English hant as plain as day. Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Brrrr! Brrrr! ‘My Gawd,’ says I, ‘pertect me.’ I tun over in the baid an’ then the buzzin’ sounded lak the rushin’ of mighty water. ‘Mebbe he will pass on by me an’ go to Uncle Oscar,’ thinks I. ‘He was the one what scoffed at Josh’s tellin’ of the tale.’ I kivered my haid an’ then that hant got me by the toe.”
“But, Susan,” laughed Douglas, “of course you know it was a hornet that had you by the toe.”
“You mought think it, Miss Douglas, but hants is powerful slick the way they kin change theysefs ter natural things. That debble jes’ changed ter hornesses ter mysterfy all of you white folks. He was a debble hant up ter the physological moment all of you appeared. I knows lots about hants from my books.”
“Well, I know a lot about hornets from experience,” said Helen, trying to reach the stung place between her shoulders.
“Me, too,” drawled Nan. “My finger is twice its natural size.”
“Well, let’s all of us go to sleep now,” said Douglas. “You are not afraid in here, are you, Susan?”
“No’m——” and the girl was off asleep in less time than it had taken her to arouse most of the campers.
“Helen,” whispered Douglas, “I am afraid Josh is responsible for the hornets. It sounds asthough he had prepared his way to scare Susan by telling the ghost story first.”
“I am afraid it is so. We will have to see to that youngster.”
“I think Lewis can handle him. I’ll ask him in the morning. In the meantime, I will tell Susan not to mention the ‘hants’ and maybe Josh will give himself away with curiosity.”
It was a hard task her young mistresses had set Susan.
“Thain’t nothin’ ’tall ter hants if you cyarn’t tell about ’em,” she grumbled.
“Well, just wait a day, Susan, and then you can tell all you’ve a mind to.”
At breakfast that morning Miss Somerville complained that her rest had been very much broken but that she had slept much better than she had ever expected to.
“I am at best a light sleeper,” she remarked. “The smallest thing disturbs me. Now I distinctly heard Mr. Tinsley laugh, although he must have been in his own tent.”
This was too much for poor Bill, who went off into one of his specialties.
“I’d ruther to laugh like that than sing like Robinson Crusoe in the victrola,” said Bobby. “I kin holler real loud but I ain’t nothin’ of a big laugher. Josh, he don’t make no noise ’tall when he laughs. He jist shakes his innards. He was shakin’ em this morning ’cause Susan said she had a bee sting on her toe, the reason she is a-limpin’ so.”
Helen and Douglas exchanged glances with the young men, whom they had informed of their suspicions regarding the humorous Josh.
“Douglas,” said Miss Somerville, “I can’t see why Bobby should use the language of a negro. He is quite old enough to begin to speak properly.”
“Well, you see, Cousin Lizzie, he is really nothing but a baby, and Mother and Father have never corrected him because Father said he would drop it soon enough and he thinks it is so amusing.”
“Baby, your grandmother! I am ’most a manan’ Josh is goin’ ter learn me how to say we uns an’ you uns like he does. He says his teacher an’ Gwen is tryin’ to make him talk properer, but he ain’t goin’ to talk no way but what his four bears talks. I wish I had four bears what could talk. I forgot to ask Josh to tell me about them bears but I will, some time.”
“Josh,” said Lewis to the mountain boy, whose blue eyes had an extra twinkle in them that morning as he hitched his mule to a nearby pine tree, waiting for orders, “are you afraid of hornets?”
“Not if we uns kin git some kerosene smeared on in time.”
“Well, you smear on some kerosene in time and go get that hornet’s nest out of Susan’s room.”
“Well, bless Bob! How did you uns know we uns put it thar under her bed?”
“Never mind how I knew it. You just go and get it and take it far from the camp and then come back here and report for work.”
Josh winked at Josephus and went to do Mr. Somerville’s bidding.
“He don’t look mad,” thought Josh. “I hope he ain’t mad with we uns.” Josh had met his idolin Lewis Somerville. Boylike he admired strength more than anything in the world, and could not this young giant lift a log and place it on his shoulders and carry it to the desired spot as easily as he himself could carry a twig? There was a poetical streak in this mountain boy, too, that saw in Lewis the young knight. “’Tain’t nothin’ to fool a nigger,” he comforted himself by saying.
“Well, sir,” he said cheerfully to Lewis, “the hornets is all good as dead. What must we uns do now?”
“Now you are going to take your punishment for being no gentleman.”
“Gentleman! Huh! We uns ain’t never set up to be no gentleman.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that. When I hired you to come work for my cousins, I understood, of course, that you were a gentleman. Otherwise I would not have considered you for a moment. Do you suppose I would have any one come around these ladies who are everything in the world to me if he were not a gentleman?”
“There’s that nigger, Oscar! We uns is as good as he is. He ain’t no gentleman.”
“He is as good a gentleman as there is in the land. He came up here with these young ladies whom he has known ever since they were babies rather than desert them when he thought he might be needed. I have never known Oscar to say a coarse word or do an ungentle act. I, too, have known him all my life. He is a good, clean man, inside and out, and would cut off his hand before he would scare a helpless woman.”
“’Twan’t nothin’ but a nigger ’ooman!”
“You say nothing but a negro as though that were the lowest thing in the world, and still just now you spoke with a certain pride of being as good as one. Now I tell you, you are not as good as one unless you act better. You have a long line of free English ancestors behind you and these poor things are but recently out of slavery. Now you come with me and take your punishment if you want to stay and work for this camp.”
Josh looked rather startled. Did this younggentleman mean to beat him, and all because he had put a hornet’s nest under a silly colored girl’s bed? Josh had received many a licking from his raw-boned mother, and when Aunt Mandy whipped, she whipped. He was not afraid of the physical hurt of a beating, but that line of English ancestors of which Lewis had spoken all rebelled in this, their little descendant, against being beaten by any one who was no blood kin.
“March!” said Lewis.
Well, if he were to go to execution like a soldier, he could stand it better. With flashing eyes and head well up, Josh walked on by Lewis’s side.
The camp builders had fashioned, with great ingenuity, a shower bath to one side of the kitchen and store-room under the pavilion. The mountain spring was dug out into a very respectable reservoir, and this was piped down to furnish running water in the kitchen and a strong shower in this rough lean-to of a bath-room. The water was cold and clear and the fall was so great that the spray felt like needles. Theyoung men reveled in this vigorous bathing and the Carter girls had taken a go at it and one and all pronounced it grand.
Josh looked upon this enthusiasm on the subject of mere bathing as affectation. Miss Somerville might have had the same attitude of mind towards persons who liked Limberger cheese or read Sanskrit for pleasure.
Lewis directed his prisoner to this bath-house.
“Anyhow, we uns ain’t gonter git licked befo’ the niggers,” thought Josh with some satisfaction.
“Now take off your clothes,” said Lewis sternly.
So he was more thorough than his mother. She contented herself with tickling him on his bare legs, and if the black snake whip could cut through the thin rags he called clothes, all well and good. Josh never remembered her having tackled him in a state of nature. He made no demur, however. If this, his idol, chose to beat him naked, he could do it. He hoped he would draw the blood just so he, Josh, could show thesepeople from the valley how a mountain boy could take what was coming to him without a whimper.
He dropped the ragged shirt and trousers that constituted his entire clothing and stood before the avenging hero, a thin, wiry little figure about the color of a new potato that has but recently left its bed.
“Now, sir!” he flung out defiantly.
“Stand in the middle of the room,” and Lewis began to roll up his shirt sleeves. Josh closed his eyes for a moment. Where was the stick or whip? Did the young gentleman mean to spank him like a baby? That would be too much. Even Aunt Mandy had given up spanking years and years ago.
“Ugh!”
Josh jumped as something struck him suddenly and remembered, as a drowning man might, an incident in his childhood when Aunt Mandy was still in the spanking era. She had gone for him with a hair brush and had inadvertently turned the brush up-side-down and hehad got the full benefit of the bristles on his bare hide.
Lewis had turned on the shower full force and the little new potato was emerging from its coating of Mother Earth. Gasping and spluttering, Josh stood his ground. He wanted to run into a far corner to escape this terrible fusillade, but an inward grit that was greater than the outward show made him stay in the spot where his commander had first placed him. Lewis gradually lessened the force of the shower and once more the culprit could breathe. He gave a long, gasping sigh and then grinned into the face of his monitor.
“Gee, that was the wust beatin’ we uns ever got! Somehow all the nigger-hate ain’t washed out’n we unses’ hide yit. Mebbe you uns had best turn it on agin.”
“All right, but take this soap first and lather yourself all over.”
That was more than Josh had bargained for, but the soap was nice and fresh smelling and the lather came without labor. This form of ablutionwas very different from what Josh had been accustomed to. His idea of a bath had always been first the toting of much water from the spring, a truly difficult task, for, with the short sightedness of country people, of course their cabin was built far above the spring instead of below it. This letting gravity help do the work is a comparatively new thing and one that country people have not generally adopted. Then, to Josh, the bath meant chopping of more wood to make the fire to heat the water. Then a steaming wash tub and the doughty Aunt Mandy equipped with a can of foul-smelling, home-made soft soap and a scrubbing brush.
This delightful tingling of his unaccustomed skin with the nice white soap was a sensation that seemed to Josh the most wonderful he had ever experienced. All of these delights with no labor attached to the enjoyment of them! Just turn a handle and there you are, clean and cool, laundried while you wait.
“Kin we uns do this every week?”
“Every day, if you’ve a mind to. It certainlyimproves your appearance. Don’t you feel good?”
“Yessirree! Jes’ like a mockin’ bird sounds on a mornin’ in May when his wife wants him to come on and help her build the nes’ aginst the time when she has got to lay the eggs, and he wants to sing all day and jes’ use las’ year’s nes’. Don’t know as we uns ever did feel quite so like a—a—gentleman.”
“Good for you, Josh! Now put on your clothes. Here’s a towel. We’ve got a lot of work to do to-day, and you and Josephus must help.”
“All right, sir! Wish Josephus could a had the beatin’ we uns done got. ’Twould sho have made him feel like he had a extra feedin’ er oats. We uns is ’bliged to you uns, sir. You uns done made a gentleman out’n we uns an’ mebbe a few more showers will turn we uns into a nigger lover,” and Josh’s blue eyes twinkled merrily from the setting of a clean, pink face.
Bobby was the only person not pleased by the improvement in Josh. “Grown-ups is all timewantin’ to clean up folks. Josh was a million times prettier dirty, an’ now he can’t make choclid milk no mo’. I think Cousin Lewis is done ruint him.”
After that morning, whenever Josh was wanted and not to be found he could usually be discovered taking a shower bath. He evidently felt he must make up for lost time, all those years when he had gone crusty, as he expressed it.
“If the weather only holds!” exclaimed Douglas. “This first week-end is the most important of all. If the boarders have a good time they will want to come back, and then they will give us such a good name that others will want to come, too.”
“People who can’t rise above mere weather should be taught a lesson,” declared Helen.
“Nonsense, child!” from Miss Somerville. “Weather is something no one can rise above. A week of rain in these mountains would make all of us ready to kill each other and then commit suicide.”
“I hope we won’t be put to the test,” said Nan.
“I should hope not! ‘Continual dripping on a rainy day’ is a proverbial evil. I hope some bridge players will be numbered among the guests. I am hungry for a game.”
“Why, Cousin Lizzie, you know we don’t mind playing a bit,” said Helen. “Why don’t you ask us whenever you want to?”
“Don’t mind playing? Bless you, child! Who wants to play with people who play because they ‘don’t mind playing’? I can see that game now! ‘What’s trumps?’ ‘Whose play is it?’ ‘I thought I had played!’ ‘I must have reniged as I find I have a heart, after all.’ No, no! When I play cards, I want the game made up of devotees. How would you like a partner in the dance who danced merely out of good-nature and kept forgetting whether he was dancing the schottische or mazurka?”
As no one had danced either of those obsolete dances for at least thirty years, the girls could not help a few sly smiles.
How rapidly that first week had flown! They had settled now into regular camp life, even Miss Somerville. She had secretly decided that Nature was not half bad and had once found herself admiring a sunset. She had kept her admiration to herself, however, for fear some over-zealousperson might make her get up and see a sunrise.
Oscar and Susan, with Gwen doing the head work, had managed the cooking beautifully for the few people they had to serve. It remained to be seen how things would go when the boarders poured in for the week-end.
Pour in they did, six more than the girls had prepared for; but Lewis and Bill with their ready inventions made beds for the boys of spruce boughs, and immediately put in an order for more cots and an extra tent.
There were two careful mammas who had come along to look after their daughters and an old bachelor who had a niece in tow; so Cousin Lizzie made up her table of bridge and every one was happy, especially the daughters of the careful mammas and the niece who was in tow. If one must be chaperoned, it is certainly pleasant to have the chaperone interested in something besides chaperoning.
The Mountain Goat made three round trips to the station to meet passengers on the afternoon train on that first Friday, and other enthusiasticcampers walked up the mountain. Josephus was very busy with a cart full of bags and bundles. One of the stipulations that the girls had made in their advertisements was that every one must bring his or her own blankets. This was at the instigation of Dr. Wright, who said it would be very difficult to furnish blankets enough; and also for sanitary reasons he knew it to be wise. Sheets are easy to have washed, but blankets are not so simple a proposition.
The twenty week-enders were all young with the exception of the two careful mammas, the old bachelor with the niece in tow, and two stiff-backed spinsters who must have had some good reason of their own for coming to camp in the mountains but they did not give it. They looked very grim and uncompromising as they sat on the back seat of the Goat with a plump and pleasing little stenographer, who was to take her much-needed holiday at the camp, wedged in between them.
“They must be geologists,” whispered Douglas to Lewis. Douglas and Lucy had gone to thestation to meet the newcomers, while Helen and Nan were to receive them at camp. “One of them had a little hammer sticking out of her pocket.”
“Well, let’s hope they will keep their hammers for rocks and not knock the camp with them.”
“Do you know, I did an awfully foolish thing? I put Tillie Wingo on the front seat with Bill and forgot to introduce them. Helen would never have done such a tactless thing.”
“Well, a small thing like an introduction here or there won’t stop Tillie. I bet she talks poor Bill blue in the face,” laughed Lewis.
So she did. Miss Hill, the pleasant stenographer, told Helen that not for one moment did Tillie stop talking on that zig-zag ride up the mountain. She poured forth a stream of delightful high-pitched nothings into Bill’s crimson ear. Bill, as was his habit, said nothing, and, like the tar baby, kept on saying nothing. She had his ear; his eye must perforce remain on the perilous road; his tongue was his to hold, and he held it. Once he let forth a great laugh which had theeffect of shutting Tillie up for almost thirty seconds; but it was not time to go to sleep yet and Tillie was accustomed to talk until she went to sleep and sometimes even afterwards.
“A week-end camp is a most original idea and every one in Richmond is simply wild about it. You see, the Carters are very popular and if they decide to do something, lots of people will want to be doing it, too. Helen Carter is considered the best dressed girl in Richmond, not that she dresses more than any of the other girls but she has such good taste. All of us girls are wild about her clothes. I adore camping! I’d join the Camp-Fire but somehow khaki is not becoming to me. Do you know, I do not think that muddy tan is becoming to decided blondes—not that I am such a very decided blonde. I know lots of girls who wear it who are not near so highly colored as I am—but somehow I think tan takes all the life out of a blonde. Of course, one can wear white up close to the face, but even then the tan kind of ruins a blonde complexion. I prefer blue and pink and lavender and green and, ofcourse, yellow, and I think grey is just sweet for a blonde. I am wild for a black dress but my mother is so old-fashioned she thinks no one under thirty should wear black unless, of course, there happens to be a death in the family. Under those circumstances, I fancy she would let me wear black. I would not wear heavy mourning but just some diaphanous, gauzy thing with tulle—although I do think that organdy collars and cuffs set one off terrifically well. I think I would make a splendid widow—don’t you?”
It was here that Bill gave his great guffaw, but it was also at a particularly ticklish place in the road, so he could not look at his blonde passenger.
Tillie stopped for the aforesaid thirty seconds and then decided that the dumb young man running the car was a common chauffeur and perhaps she had better change her form of conversation to one not suggesting equality. It never entered her head to stop talking.
“Richmond is just running over with jitneys now. They make such a dust you can’t seewhether they are coming or going. Did you ever run a jitney? They say there is lots of money in them. I should think you would do better doing that than doing this—of course, though, you know best, and perhaps you get your board thrown in up here. Mamma said she knew that the Carter girls would not know how to feed people because they have always led such soft lives, but I said I was coming, anyhow. I am dying to fall off. I really should have walked up the mountain instead of riding as that would be a good way to start, but I had on my best shoes and I knew it would ruin them. Douglas Carter wrote me to be sure and bring a blanket, but I simply could not get one in my grip and I said I would sleep cold before I would be seen carrying a great old blanket over my arm like lots of these people. It was horribly hot in Richmond and I did not think it could be cold coming just this little way. I think it is so brave and noble for the Carter girls to try to help their father this way. They do say he is dippy and was quite wild-eyed. I have a friend who was on the sleeper with Mr. and Mrs.Carter when they went to New York, and he says they shut themselves up in the drawing room and acted awful queer. He didn’t say just how, but it must have been something fierce. What is this funny looking place? Is this the camp? My, ain’t it odd? I am very much obliged to you for bringing me up. Please look after my suitcase for me—it is the large one, really a small trunk, but I had no idea of mashing my new pink into a pulp just for the sake of reducing my luggage. Here, this is for you—and please get my baggage,” and Tillie handed the astonished Bill a quarter.
“Didn’t know what to say, so I just took it,” Bill told Lewis afterward. “First money I’ve earned since I was a kid and picked blackberries for Grandmother to jam, at five cents a quart. Dog, if I would not rather pick the berries, briars and all! I felt like hollering to somebody to throw something over the cage, that the canary was making such a fuss I couldn’t think.”
Josh, too, was the victim of tips but he indignantlyreturned the money that was proffered him with this remark:
“We uns ain’t beholden to nobody, but is employed regular by Mr. Somerville, we uns and Josephus.”
That is often the spirit of the mountaineer. He will sell anything but cannot stomach a tip.
Helen and Nan received the guests as they piled out of the Mountain Goat or came up the winding road on foot. It was a very exciting moment for our girls. This was really the beginning of their great adventure. Were they to succeed or not? The week-enders were there, for once at least, but could these girls make it so agreeable that they would want to come back?
“Do look at Tillie Wingo, Nan! Did you ever see such a goose? She has on ten dollar champagne shoes and a blue Georgette crêpe that would melt in a mist!”
“Yes, she is some goose, but she will pay us just as sensible board as anybody else, so we must not be too critical,” and Nan went forward to meet the pretty blonde Tillie and the stiff-backedspinsters and the pleasant Miss Hill, and Helen smothered her indignation at Tillie’s bad taste in being so unsuitably dressed for camping and did her best to make it pleasant for her, Georgette crêpe, champagne shoes and all.
There was much enthusiasm from the new arrivals as they inspected the camp. Every one went into ecstasies over the view and the arrangements. Miss Somerville awaited them in the pavilion, where she stood as at a reception, receiving the guests with great formality.
“These young persons must understand fully that I am the chaperone, and I think a dignified reception of them will be conducive to good behavior on their part,” she had said to Helen as she dressed herself in a black silk afternoon gown and arranged her beautiful white hair in its shining puffs.
At Gwen’s instigation, afternoon tea was served as soon as the formal reception was over—tea for those so inclined and grape-juice-lemonade for the more frivolous.
A card table was unfolded for Miss Somerville,the two anxious mothers and the old bachelor with a niece in tow.
“Quite like the springs,” whispered Cousin Lizzie to Helen, as she got brand new packs of cards for the opening game of the season.
Our girls had thought they would have to be quite busy entertaining the week-enders, but they found to their delight that they could entertain themselves. There were more than enough of the male element to go around and in an incredibly short time they had sorted themselves to their mutual satisfaction and were either dancing to the latest record, which Tillie Wingo had put in her bursting semi-trunk, in lieu of a blanket, or were roaming over the mountain side.
Lil Tate, Lucy’s boon companion and school-mate, had come and the two girls had gone off arm in arm, while Frank Maury, a callow youth of fifteen, walked shyly after them, hoping they would take him in their train and fearing every moment that they might. His hopes and fears were both realized and by supper time the three were sworn allies; Frank had determined to comeup the next week and bring Skeeter, his chum, and Lil had declared she was going to make her mother let her spend the whole summer with Lucy.
“Mamma’s an awful ’fraid cat about me and just would come along. Thank goodness, she and Miss Somerville have got cards to occupy ’em and she has forgotten there isn’t but one of me,” laughed Lil, who was a sprightly little brunette. “I wisht I had been born triplets and then she wouldn’t have to be so particular.”
“Gee, I’m glad I ain’t a girl—but I like girls a lot—” stammered Frank. “Skeeter and I think they are just great,” and so they chattered on.
Bobby was not so happy. His friend Josh was too busy with Josephus and the luggage to have him around, and no boon companion had arrived for him. He had been made to wash and dress, which, he considered, was a great breach of faith on the part of his sisters. He had it firmly placed in his memory that he had been promised by some one that when he got to the mountains he would never have to wash and dress. He satwith a very disconsolate mien in a corner of the pavilion, watching Tillie’s pretty little feet in their champagne shoes twirling round and around, every few moments with another pair of masculine shoes accompanying them, as Tillie was never long without a flock of the opposite sex in her wake. She could hardly get around the pavilion before the dance was broken into by some eager swain. She was noted as being able to dance down more partners than any girl in Richmond, and it was slyly hinted that she was so long-winded because of her never ceasing practice in conversation.
Bobby looked gloomily at the twinkling feet. They were too clean for him, those champagne-colored shoes. His own feet were disgustingly clean, too. Maybe he could rectify that with a judicious sprinkling of grape juice and then some clay sifted over them. He would try! Just then the stiff-backed spinsters, who turned out to be educators off on a botanical and geological spree, bore down on him and seating themselves on each side of him began:
“Little boy, are you enjoying your stay in the mountains?”
“Naw!”
“Ah, perhaps you are too idle and need occupation. Can you read and write?”
“Naw, I can’t read writin’ but I can read readin’.”
“You should have a task set you every day and then vacation would not hang so heavily on your hands. Some useful bit of information imparted to you would be edifying and useful.”
“Pshaw! That’s the way Cousin Lizzie talks. She’s our chapel roan an’ knows mo’n anybody ’bout Solomon an’ all his glory. She done learnt me a verse already onct this mornin’.”
“Ah, indeed! And can you repeat it to us?”
“Yes! I reckon ’twas the grape juice an’ victrola that made her choose this one: ‘Wine is a mucker an’ strong drink is rag time.’ I kin learn mos’ anything,” and Bobby hastened off to put the clay on his feet before the grape juice bath had time to dry.
From Tillie Wingo to Her Best Friend Grace.