CHAPTER IIITHE CARDWELL ALBUMS
Ted Martinwas in no danger in the dry well. His father and mother knew this as soon as they had looked down at him. There was not a drop of water in the well, and the sides were well walled up so they wouldn’t cave in.
“Don’t ever do anything like this again, Theodore!” his father said quite sternly to the little chap, as the ladder was being put into place.
“No, sir,” answered Teddy.
“We didn’t mean to do it,” said Janet.
“I know you didn’t,” her mother admitted. “But just think what would have happened if there had been water in the well?”
“I wouldn’t have gone down if there had been water in,” Teddy called up, for he could hear what was being said.
“Well, I’m glad you have that much sense,” his father told him. “Now, Patrick, you hold the upper end of the ladder steady and I’ll put this end down in.”
Slowly the ladder was lowered into the well, Teddy crowding back against the stones as he stood on the leafy bottom, so as to be out of the way. At last the ladder was in place.
“Now can you climb up, Ted?” called his father.
“Sure I can climb up,” was the answer, and a little later the head of the Curlytop lad appeared above the curbing. There were leaves and dirt and cobwebs in Teddy’s hair, but he didn’t mind that. “I brought the end of the rope up with me,” he said, showing it to his father. “You can fasten it to the windlass if you want to.”
“I don’t want to,” declared Mr. Martin. “And, just so you and Janet won’t be tempted to play diamond mine again, we’ll drop this old rope back to the bottom of the well. And you must start at once, Patrick, to fill it up.”
“Yes, sir, I will,” was the answer.
Mr. Martin took the end of the rope from Ted and let it drop back into the blackdepths where it fell on the bucket, already on the bottom.
Then the ladder was pulled up, and as Mr. Martin walked back toward the house with his wife and children Patrick got a shovel and began tossing dirt and rocks into the well, to fill it up level.
“There’ll be no more Curlytops down in you!” said the man, as he labored away. The wooden curbing was torn loose and the windlass broken. It was the end of the old well.
“But, anyhow, I got down it all right,” declared Ted, as he looked back and saw Patrick filling up the hole.
“Yes, but you might not have gotten out so easily if we hadn’t come to help you,” suggested Mrs. Martin.
“I guess that’s right,” agreed Ted. “I tried to climb out, but it was hard work.”
“He was like ‘ding-dong bell, pussy in the well,’ wasn’t he, Mother?” laughed Trouble, as he stumbled along beside his father.
“Yes, and daddy was Big Johnnie Stout who got Teddy out!” added Janet. “But what’s the good news?” she asked. “You said you had good news, Daddy.”
“It’s about our summer vacation,” repliedMr. Martin. “You know, my dear,” he went on, turning to his wife, “we haven’t been able to make any plans for the vacation, because I didn’t know how matters were going at the store. Well, I have just found out that I can get away next week, and be gone for a month, so I hurried home to let you know. We shall have a fine vacation this season!”
“Where are we going?” asked Ted, brushing some of the well dirt from his clothes.
“To the seashore?” asked Janet.
“No, we aren’t going any special place,” her father replied.
“Oh, I thought you said we were going to have a fine vacation!” objected Ted.
“So I did, and so we are. But we aren’t going to any special place. What do you say to touring around—going from place to place in our auto, and perhaps taking a trip in a motor boat? How would my Curlytops like that?” and Mr. Martin ruffled first the hair of Janet and then that of Teddy.
“I think that will be lots of fun!” cried Janet.
“Do you mean touring around in our carand sleeping in it and camping out and all that?” asked Ted.
“Well, something like that,” agreed Mr. Martin. “Of course we can’t exactly sleep in our auto, as it isn’t a Gypsy wagon. But we can take along a tent that can be fastened to the auto, and we can sleep in that if we wish. Or we can put up at hotels along the way. It will be partly a camping trip.”
“Oh, that’ll be dandy fun!” cried Ted. “When can we start?”
“Next week. But in the meanwhile don’t go climbing into any more wells,” urged his father.
“No, sir, I won’t!” the Curlytop boy promised. “Oh, hurray for touring around! Hurray for touring around!” he cried, turning a somersault on the grass.
“’Ray! ’Ray!” echoed Trouble, trying to do as he saw his brother do. But Trouble toppled over to one side, laughing as he fell.
“We’ll have lovely fun!” confided Janet to her mother. “I think daddy is just wonderful, don’t you, Mother?”
“He is, indeed, quite wonderful,” agreed Mrs. Martin, with a smile.
From then on, as you can imagine, there were busy times in the home of the Curlytops.Once it was decided that they would spend part of the summer vacation touring around, going to no particular place, but stopping wherever they felt like it, many preparations had to be made.
Mr. Martin owned a big touring car, and he bought a camping outfit and tent to go with it. The tent could be fastened to one side of the car, and cots put beneath the canvas covering.
“The children can sleep in the car, when it rains too hard,” decided Mrs. Martin.
“And can we cook, and eat and everything like that out of doors?” Janet wanted to know.
“Of course we have to cook!” declared Ted. “I’m going to make the campfires,” he declared.
“We’ll see about that,” Mr. Martin said. “Very likely we’ll take along an alcohol stove. That’s more certain for cooking than wet wood. But we can have a campfire once in a while.”
Ted and Janet told their many boy and girl chums about the coming touring trip, and all the lads and lassies wished they were as lucky as were the Curlytops.
It was one evening, about four days afterTed had gone down into the well which was now filled up, that, as the Curlytops and the others of the family were talking about the coming trip, a ring sounded at the front door.
“I wonder who that can be?” said Mrs. Martin.
“Well, it’s pretty hard to guess,” her husband answered, with a laugh. “But we’ll soon see, for Nora is opening the door.”
In came Mr. James Cardwell, an elderly neighbor who lived two or three houses down the street. Under his arm Mr. Cardwell carried two large books, which, a second look told Janet and Ted, were old-fashioned photograph albums.
“Good evening, Mr. Cardwell,” said Mr. Martin. “Have a chair.”
“Thanks, but I didn’t come to stay long,” said Mr. Cardwell, as he put his albums down on the table. “I came to ask you to do me a favor.”
“Did you want our pictures to put in your album, Mr. Cardwell?” asked Ted, for he and Janet had had their photographs taken the week before.
“Thank you, little man, but these albums are filled,” was the answer. “I’d like toget your pictures, though, for another album I have at home. What I came over for,” he went on, “is to see if you would take these albums to my brother Reuben in Bentville, Mr. Martin. I hear you are going on a long auto tour, and that you will pass through Bentville. Is that right?”
“Yes, we planned to make Bentville one of our stops,” said Mr. Martin, naming a town about three hundred miles away.
“That’s my old home,” said Mr. Cardwell. “There is going to be a reunion of the Cardwell families there in the fall. We have it every year. All the Cardwells for miles around come to this reunion.
“Now in this album are a lot of pictures of Cardwells that are dead and gone—dead and gone,” and the old man’s voice trembled. “Some of their relatives would like to look at these pictures. I thought it would be a good plan to have them at the reunion.”
“Very nice, I should say,” remarked Mrs. Martin.
“That’s what I thought. Well, I want to send my albums on ahead, before I start, which won’t be until fall. I want to send them to my brother, Reuben Cardwell of Bentville. The albums have been in thefamily many years. I’d hate to see them lost, or have anything happen to them. I’m afraid to send them by mail or express. But I thought, as long as you’re going to tour out that way, you wouldn’t mind, Mr. Martin, leaving these albums with my brother.”
“I shall be glad to do that,” replied the Curlytops’ father. “If you think you can trust me with them,” he added.
“Of course I’ll trust you,” said Mr. Cardwell. “Though we think so much of these albums in our family that I wouldn’t trust every one. I don’t know what would happen if they got lost or were destroyed. See, here are pictures of my dear little twin girls, who died when they were ten years old. They’re the only pictures we have of them—Mary and Alice.”
He turned the heavy pages and showed pictures of two pretty girls, with long, curling hair. The pictures were of a bygone time, old-fashioned and rather strange to the Curlytops. But they could see that Mr. Cardwell thought a great deal of them and of the albums.
“And here is another picture we prize highly,” said the elderly neighbor. “It’s a picture of my brother’s boy Tom. He wasonly eighteen,” and he turned to the photograph of a fine-looking lad.
“Did he die, too?” asked Mrs. Martin softly.
“Yes—at least, we suppose so,” said Mr. Cardwell gently. “He went away to be a sailor. His ship was sunk and we never heard anything more from him. I suppose the poor young fellow died at sea. This is the only picture of him, and I know how badly my brother would feel if it were lost. So will you take charge of these old family albums, Mr. Martin, and deliver them in Bentville?”
“Yes, I’ll be very careful of them,” promised Mr. Martin. “I know what it means to lose such things.”
“Didn’t they ever find the boy who was lost at sea?” asked Ted, to whom this little story appealed greatly.
“No, Ted, we never heard a word from him,” sighed Mr. Cardwell. “I suppose the sea has him. He is as much lost as my dear little twin girls are,” and he turned back to the pictures of the children.
“I have a small chest, or box, down at the store, Mr. Cardwell,” said Mr. Martin, asthe caller was about to leave. “I’ll put your albums in that chest so they will be safe.”
“Thank you. Tell my brother, when you see him, why I sent them to him this way—I didn’t like to trust the mails or the express, and I won’t be out to Bentville myself until fall.”
“I’ll tell him,” was the promise.
Ted and Janet were looking at the queer, heavy covers of the old books and wondering what games the pictured children used to play when they were on earth, when suddenly from outside came a number of sounds.
There was the sound of the clanging of bells, the blowing of whistles and the shouting of men and boys.
“It’s a fire! A fire down the street!” cried Ted, as he raced to the door. “Oh, Mr. Cardwell, I guess your house is on fire!”