CHAPTER XNICKNACK RUNS AWAY
Clover Lakewas not far from the farmhouse where the Curlytops were spending their happy vacation days in the country. Nor was it far from the Home where Hal Chester and other crippled boys and girls were staying until they were made well and strong. The Curlytops and Daddy Martin drove over to the Home in Grandpa Martin’s big wagon and there found Hal, all ready and eagerly waiting. He had been sitting on the steps with his little packet of lunch ever since sunrise, one of the nurses said.
“Oh, we’ve got some lunch, too!” cried Janet. “We’ve got sandwiches, and a bottle of milk and——”
“We’ve got enough so we can be shipwrecked if we want to,” interrupted Teddy eagerly.
“That will be heaps of fun,” agreed Hal.“I never was really shipwrecked, though I’ve often pretended to be with the Princess. On a desert island, too.”
Some of the other lame boys and girls wished they, too, might go off in a boat for a day’s picnic, and Daddy Martin promised to take them some other time.
Hal climbed up into the wagon, and off they started, driving through a shady lane down toward the lake. A big, safe rowboat was waiting for them, and in this the children took their places.
“Please may I help row?” asked Hal of Daddy Martin.
“Do you think you can?”
“Oh, yes! My arms are strong. It’s only one leg that I’m weak in, and I’m glad of that, for I don’t row with my legs,” and he laughed in a very jolly way.
“You’d never know he was crippled to hear him,” whispered Ted to his sister.
“He’s such a nice boy,” said Janet. “I like him.”
“Well, you may row a bit,” agreed Daddy Martin, when he noticed that Hal knew just how to get into a boat, not stepping on the edges and almost tipping the boat over the way some people do, but putting his foot exactlyin the middle to balance it properly.
Then they started out on the lake. The sun shone, the waters sparkled, there was just a little wind—not a bit too much—and all along the shore were green trees, leaning over, some with their branches in the water as though they were whispering to the little waves that reached up to kiss the green leaves.
“Now we’ll see who’ll get the first bite,” said Daddy Martin, when the hooks were baited and tossed over the side of the boat. “We must all sit quietly so as not to scare the fish.”
“Trouble would like it here,” said Jan, in a low voice, when she had waited patiently for some time for a bite. “He loves the water and lots of times he fishes with a bent pin in our brook at home.”
“Yes, and he falls in, too,” added Teddy. “But we mustn’t talk and scare the fish. Must we, Daddy?”
“Well, perhaps it would be better to keep quiet, though I hardly imagine a fish can hear a whisper. Still it’s just as well Trouble stayed at home with his mother. He’d be wiggling about and maybe he’d fall out of the boat.”
In silence they all watched their lines, each one hoping for a bite. Suddenly Ted gave his pole an upward jerk. So unexpectedly did he do it that he fell over backward off the seat, and he might have toppled into the lake, only that his father quickly put out his arm and caught the little boy.
“Why, The-o-dore!” exclaimed Mr. Martin, in the way Ted’s mother sometimes spoke to him. “Whatareyou trying to do?”
“I—I had a fish on my hook, and I pulled up quick so he wouldn’t get off. But he did. Oh, he was a big one!”
“But you nearly went overboard,” returned his father, “and then you would have been shipwrecked, whether you wanted to or not. Besides, it wasn’t a fish you caught.”
“It wasn’t?” cried Ted. “What was it? It pulled like a fish.”
“It was that big bunch of weeds,” went on Mr. Martin, laughing and pointing to some green ones slowly floating away from the boat. “Your hook caught in them, Teddy, and the motion of the water, down near the bottom of the lake, made it feel, I suppose, as though a fish were nibbling. But never pull your line up so suddenly asyou did, even if you think you have a fish.”
“I won’t,” promised Ted. “I don’t want to fall into the water.”
When his hook caught in the weeds the bait had been torn off, but when some fresh had been put on the little boy once more tossed his line into the water and again waited.
Pretty soon Jan moved slowly in her seat and whispered:
“Daddy! Daddy! I’m not sure, but IthinkI’ve got a bite!”
Mr. Martin looked at the cork float on Jan’s line. It was pulled down under the water a little way, and then bobbed up again. It did this several times, and then, finally, it went all the way under and Jan’s pole bent.
“Oh, I have got a fish!” she cried, not whispering this time.
“Yes, you have!” exclaimed Daddy Martin. “Pull in, Jan! Pull in, but not too suddenly!”
Jan raised the tip of her pole in the air. This brought the line closer to the side of the boat, and, reaching over, Mr. Martin caught the string and pulled on it. Out of the water he lifted a good-sized fish, wiggling and trying to get off Janet’s hook.
“That’s the first,” said Daddy Martin, as he put the fish in a little water-box under one of the seats. “Now let’s see who’ll get the next.”
To Hal’s delight he was the lucky one, and then they each caught a fish, Janet landing a very large one, which her father had to help pull in. In about an hour there were enough fish caught for two large meals.
“We’ll go ashore and have lunch now,” said Daddy Martin. “There is no use in catching more fish than we really need.”
“Are you going to cook some of them?” asked Hal. “I’d like to do that. It would be just like camping out, and, oh! I would like to camp out. Sometimes at night when I can’t sleep, I pretend I’m camping on an island with Princess Blue Eyes.”
“Well, that would be nice,” said Daddy Martin. “But I didn’t bring along anything with which to cook the fish, and, though I might manage to start a fire and broil some fish over it with a sharp stick for a fork, we don’t need to. We have a nice lunch all ready put up for us.”
“Maybe we can go camping some day,” suggested Ted.
“Maybe,” his father agreed.
“I know a fine place!” exclaimed Hal. “It’s on Star Island.”
“Where’s that?” Ted asked.
“Over there in the middle of the lake. You can just see it—that patch of green in the blue water,” and Hal pointed.
“Let’s go there now!” proposed Janet.
“It’s too far,” her father said. “Some other time we may go.”
“Let’s eat,” suggested Ted. “I’m hungry.”
“Well, then we’ll get out the lunch,” decided his father, and they were soon having a little picnic on the shore.
“It would be great to go camping on that island,” said Ted to Hal a little later, as they sat down near the edge of Clover Lake to finish the last of their sandwiches. “Were you ever there?”
“Never camping. But I’ve been on Star Island. It’s a queer place. Some folks say it isn’t a good place.”
“Not good? What do you mean?”
“Well,” and Hal dropped his voice to a whisper. “Some folks say there’s ghosts on the island.”
“Pooh! Ghosts! There aren’t any! My mother and daddy wouldn’t let us believe insuch silly things as ghosts!” and Ted laughed.
“Oh, I don’tbelievein ’em myself—though I do pretend lots of fairy stories with Princess Blue Eyes,” said Hal quickly. “But I’ve heard fishermen who come to the Home tell about seeing queer blue lights on Star Island at night.”
“Fireflies, maybe.”
“Fireflies don’t make a blue light,” Hal said. “But don’t tell anybody, and maybe some day you and I’ll go there and find out what it is.”
“Maybe! That would be great!” cried Ted.
After the lunch, the little picnic party walked about in the woods, had a drink at a cool spring and then started to row back toward home with the fish they had caught. Hal was allowed to pull the oars part of the way. Ted tried it, but he was not as strong in his arms as was the lame boy, who was older than Ted and who showed that he did know something about handling a boat.
Some of the fish were given to Hal to have cooked at the Home, the superintendent promising that this would be done, and the rest were taken to Cherry Farm.
“Let’s go over and see how fast the cherries are getting ripe,” said Ted to Janet one day, about a week after the fishing party. “We can tell grandpa then, and he can get ready to sell ’em so he won’t lose his farm.”
“Is grandpa really going to lose the farm?” asked Janet of her mother.
“Well, we’re not sure yet,” was the answer. “He is working hard to get money to pay what he owes, and we are all helping him. But don’t you little tots worry about that.”
“Oh, we want to help, too!” declared Ted. “We’re going to help bring in the cherries when they’re ripe enough to sell. That’s where we’re going now—to look at them.”
“Well, be careful,” cautioned his mother. “Are you going in the goat wagon?”
“Yes. It’s such fun driving Nicknack,” replied Jan. “I can make him go as good as Ted, and even Trouble holds the reins sometimes.”
“Yes, he is a good goat,” said Mother Martin. “Well, drive along with you, if you’re going, but don’t eat any green cherries.”
The Curlytops promised they would not, and they were soon on their way down theroad toward the part of the farm where the most of the cherry trees were ripening their red and black fruit.
“There’s Hal!” cried Jan, as she saw the lame boy sitting under a tree beside the road. “Let’s take him with us—there’s lots of room.”
“An’ I dot two-ten tookies!” added Trouble, as if eating was all they ever went out to do.
“That’s enough for a fine meal!” laughed Hal, who heard what Baby William said.
“Want to come?” cried Ted.
“I should say I did! I came out here to meet Princess Blue Eyes, but I guess she must have a party at her castle, or else she has to hide away from the Mosquito Dwarf, so she won’t be here to-day.”
“Who is the Mosquito Dwarf?” asked Jan, as Hal took his place in the goat wagon, and Nicknack, with a little “Baa-a-a!” started off again.
“Oh, he’s a bad chap who’s always buzzing around Princess Blue Eyes,” answered the lame boy. “He bothers her terribly, and sometimes she has to call in the Chinese Giant to drive away the Mosquito Dwarf. Then he has to go and hide in the swamp.”
“Dat’s a nice story—me like—go on!” ordered Trouble, who had nestled in Hal’s arms, and seemed to think the lame boy was telling a fairy tale as Mother Martin often did.
“That’s all to the story this time,” laughed Hal. “There’ll be more later. Where are you Curlytops going?” for he, too, as had nearly everyone around Cherry Farm, had learned to call Jan and Ted that.
“Just going over to see if the cherries are ripe,” explained Ted.
“An’ we dassen’t eat no dreen ones,” said Trouble, “’cause if we does we dets de tummy-tummy ache.”
“I’ll be careful,” promised Hal with a laugh.
Up little hills and down little green dales went Nicknack, drawing the wagon load of little children, until, after a while, he came to a stop in the farthest end of the cherry grove, more than a mile from grandpa’s farmhouse.
“Yes, the cherries are getting ripe,” said Hal, as he and Ted walked under the trees. “In another week or so they ought to be ready to pick. My! what a lot there’s going to be!”
“Yes, grandpa will have piles of cherries,” said Teddy. “And I guess he’ll need ’em, too—or the money he can get when he sells ’em.”
“I thought your grandpa didn’t need money because he was rich,” said Hal.
“He used to be,” explained Jan. “But he lost a lot of money when the floods came this spring, and now maybe he’ll lose the farm.”
“Oh, I hope not!” cried Hal. “I wish I could help,” he said softly, as he looked back over the rolling fields of green. “But a lame boy can’t do much.”
“We’re going to help gather the cherries and bring them in with Nicknack’s cart,” explained Janet.
“Oh, couldn’t I do some of that?” begged Hal, his eyes shining.
“Course you can!” declared Ted.
They got out of the little wagon, leaving the goat to nibble grass under the trees, and walked along through the grove. Trouble, who was toddling along, his hand in one of Jan’s, was eating a molasses cookie, getting almost as much on the outside of his mouth as he did on the inside. But he was happy.
“Oh, ’ook at de funny bug on my tookie!” suddenly called the little fellow, speaking ina mumbled voice, for his mouth was half full. “I dess he wants a bite, too.”
“That’s not a bug! It’s a big bumble bee and he might sting you,” said Hal.
“There’s a lot of bees around here!” called Ted. “I guess they come to get honey from the flowers.”
“Well, I hope they don’t sting us,” and Jan brushed her handkerchief around her head, for a bee was buzzing near her.
“Oh, look at your goat!” suddenly cried Hal. “I guess a bee must have stung him!”
Nicknack was acting in a queer manner. He was running around in a circle, dragging the wagon after him, almost turning it over at times, and, all the while he was crying:
“Baa! Baa-a-a! Baa-a-a-a-a-a-a!”
“Whoa there! Whoa!” called Ted.
But the goat did not mind. With a kick of his heels, and a last “Baa-a-a-a!” Nicknack ran away, down through the cherry grove and out toward the road.