29CHAPTER IV“LONESOME LIZ”
“Oh, galloping grasshoppers!” gasped Bobby Hargrew, clinging tight to Laura and Nellie Agnew in the dressing-room. “Do you hear what she says?”
“What language, Bob!” said Nellie, in horror. “Howcanyou?”
“Of whom are you speaking?” asked Laura, with an admonishing look.
“That Lil Pendleton. The gall of her!”
“Stop, Bob!” commanded Laura. “You talk like a street urchin.”
“I don’t care if I talk like a sea urchin,” complained the smaller girl. “She says she’s going with us.”
“Where?” asked Nell.
“Camping.”
“Who?” exclaimed Laura, promptly.
“That Pendleton girl. Says her mother just told her.Yourmother said so, Laura Belding. So there!”30
“Why—why––”
“I don’t want to complain of your mother, Laura,” said the grocer’s daughter, “but it seems too bad we can’t pick and choose whom we’ll have go camping in our crowd.”
“Mother doesn’t understand! I am sure she never meant tomakeus take Lil if we didn’t want her.”
“And surely wedon’t,” declared the doctor’s daughter, with more emphasis than she usually used in commenting upon any subject.
“Let’s put the rollers under her and let her zip,” exclaimed the slangy Bobby.
“If Gee Gee should hear you,” laughed Laura, referring to one of the very strict lady teachers of Central High, Miss Grace Gee Carrington.
“She’s too busy with Margit Salgo—Beg pardon!” exclaimed Bobby. “Margaret Carrington, as she will in future be known. Gee Gee has scarcely called me down this week.”
“Now, if it was Margit who wanted to go,” sighed Nell Agnew, speaking of the half-Gypsy girl who had just come under the care of Miss Carrington.
“Or Eve Sitz,” added Bobby. “But Eve says she gets out-of-door work enough on the farm in the summer. Camping out is no fun for her.”
“I don’t know what to say about Lily,” began31Laura. “I cannot understand mother promising such a thing. If anybody should decide, it should be Jess’ mother.Sheis going with us.”
“Oh! there’s another thing,” interrupted the fly-away Bobby. “If Lil goes, she’s going to take along a lady’s maid.”
“What?” gasped the other girls.
“Mrs. Pendleton is going to pay the wages of a girl to go with us and do the camp work,” announced Bobby, and now she spoke with some enthusiasm.
“Goodness!” exclaimed Laura.
“Not so bad,” sighed Nellie, who really didnotlike hard work and had dreaded that division of labor which she knew must fall to her if they went camping without “help.”
“Having a girl along to cook and do up the beds and wash dishes and the like wouldn’t be so bad,” announced Bobby, growing braver as Nell seemed to encourage the idea.
“Well! Miss Hargrew!” accused Laura. “I believe you have gone over to the enemy.Youreally want Lil to go with us to Acorn Island.”
“No. But I’d be glad to have her mother pay the wages of somebody to do most of the hard work,” grinned Bobby.
There was a regular “buzz society,” as Bobby called it, after the girls were dressed. The original32six who had planned to go camping on Acorn Islanddidhum like a colony of bees when they all learned that Lily Pendleton was likely to be foisted upon them.
“It’s a shame!” exclaimed Jess, angrily. “She knows well enough we don’t want her.”
“Well,” murmured one of the Lockwood twins. “She asked us and we said the invitation would have to come through Laura.”
“Cowards!” exclaimed Mother Wit, dramatically. “That’s why she got her mother to go tomine. And I am real angry with mother––”
“Oh, Laura! we wouldn’t offend your mother for anything,” said Nell, hastily.
“Or put her in an uncomfortable position,” Bobby added. “She’s been too nice to us all.”
“And, of course, we have to stand Lil in the school and gymnasium. She won’t kill us; she’s only silly,” went on Nell.
“I believe you’re all more or less willing to have Lil go,” declared Laura, in wonder.
“We-ell,” drawled Bobby. “There’s the chance of having somebody to do the camp work for us––”
“Not Lil!” shrieked Jess. “She never lifts her hand at home.”
“No,” said Nell. “But Mrs. Pendleton will pay a maid’s wages.”33
“Ah—ha!” ejaculated Jess Morse. “I smell a mice, as the Dutchman says. We are to be bribed.”
And bribed they were. At least, none of them wished to put Laura’s mother to any trouble. So they agreed to let Lily Pendleton go camping with them. Mrs. Pendleton left it to the girls to find anyone they wanted to help about the camp, and promised to pay good wages.
“I know just whom we can get,” Bobby said, eagerly, that evening when the girls—and some of the boys—were assembled as usual on the Belding front porch.
“Who’s that?”
“That Bean girl,” said the groceryman’s daughter.
“Who’s she? Miss Boston Bean?” chuckled Chet.
“Lizzie Bean! I know who she is,” exclaimed Laura.
“She’s the girl who’s been helping the Longs since Alice came back to school. Now Alice will keep house for her father and the other children again, and Lizzie will be out of a job,” explained Bobby.
“Whew! ‘Lonesome Liz?’” ejaculated Lance Darby. “Short and Long calls her that. Says she’s about half cracked––”34
“I guess she isn’t cracked enough to hurt,” said Dora Lockwood, quickly. “Is she, Dorothy?”
“Of course not,” agreed her twin. “And she keeps the house beautifully clean, and looks after Tommy fine.”
“Let me tell you Master Tommy Long is some kid to look after,” chuckled Chet.
“And that’s no dream,” agreed his chum, Lance.
Bobby began to laugh, too. “Did you hear his latest?” she demanded of the crowd.
“Who’s latest,” asked Jess.
“Tommy Long—the infant terrible?”
“Let’s hear it, Bobs,” said Jess. “If he can say anything worse thanyoucan––”
“But this break on Master Tommy’s part was entirely unintentional. Alice was telling me about it. She sends him to Sunday School and he has to memorize the Golden Text and repeat it to her when he comes home.
“The other Sunday he had been skylarking in Sunday School, it was evident, for when she asked him to tell her the text, he shot this one at her: ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get the blanket.’”
“What?” gasped Laura.
“That’s a teaser,” said Lance. “What did the kid mean?”
“That’s what troubled Alice,” chuckled Bobby.35“She couldn’t get it at all; but Tommy stuck to it that he had given her the text straight. So she looked it up herself and what do you suppose Tommy had twisted into ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get the blanket?’”
“Give it up,” said Jess. “Let’s have it.”
“Why, the text was,” said Bobby, more seriously, “‘Fear not; the Comforter shall come unto you.’”
“That kid is a terror,” said Chet, when the laugh had subsided. “And so’s Short and Long. I believe he agreed to let Pretty Sweet go along with us to Lake Dunkirk just because he likes to play jokes on Purt.”
“Dear me!” sighed Bobby, with unction. “With Pretty in your camp and Lil in ours, the sun of no day should go down upon us without, seeingsomefun.”
“And if you have ‘Lonesome Liz’ along,” chuckled Lance, “you girls certainly won’t forget how to laugh.”
It was agreed that Laura and Jess should see Lizzie Bean the next morning and engage her for the position—if she would accept. They started early, for although they were only juniors and would have another year to attend Central High before graduation, this last day of school would be a busy one for them as well as for the graduating class.36
Billy and Alice Long, who were their schoolmates, lived in a much poorer quarter of the town; it was down toward the wharves, and not far from the Central High’s boathouses.
The street was a typical water-side street, with small, gaily painted cottages, or cottages without any paint at all save that put on lavishly by the ancient decorating firm of Wind & Weather. Each dwelling had its own tiny fenced yard, with a garden behind. The Longs’ was neatly kept both front and rear, and the house itself showed no neglect by the tenants.
Mr. Long was a hard working man, and although the children were motherless, Alice, the oldest, kept the home neat and cheerful for her brothers and sisters. All the children were old enough to go to school save Tommy; and he had been to kindergarten occasionally this last term and would go to school regularly in the fall.
Laura and Jess, hurrying on their errand, came in sight of the Long cottage abruptly, and of a wobegone little figure on the front step.
“Why, it’s Tommy!” exclaimed Laura Belding. “Whatever is the the matter, Tommy?” for the little fellow was crying softly.
He was a most cherubic looking child, with a pink and white face, yellow curls that swept the clean collar of his shirt-waist, and a plump, “hug-able” little body.37
“Yes, whatisthe matter, dear?” begged Jess Morse.
“H-he’s gone an’ cut off th-the tails of the pu-puppies,” sobbed Master Tommy, his breast heaving.
“Who has?” demanded Laura.
“He. That man what co-comed here,” choked the little fellow.
“What a pity! I’m awfully sorry,” Laura pursued, soothingly. “The poor little puppies.”
“Ye-yes. Pa s-saidIshould chop ’em off myself!” concluded Master Tommy in a burst of anger.
“My goodness me!” gasped Jess, horror-stricken. “Will you hear that boy talk? He’s a perfect little savage.”
“No, he isn’t,” said Mother Wit, shaking her head. “He’s only a boy—that’s all. You never had a brother, Jess.”
“I know well enough Chet was never likethat,” declared Josephine, confidently.
They went in by the front gate and walked around the house, leaving the disappointed youngster wiping his eyes. They expected to find Lizzie Bean at the back.
In that they were not mistaken. At the well-curb was a lank, bony girl, who might have been Laura’s age, or perhaps a couple of years older.38She was dreadfully thin. As she hauled on the chain which brought the brimming bucket to the top of the well, she betrayed more red elbow and more white stockinged ankle-bone than anyoneperson should display.
“My goodness, she’s thin!” whispered Jess.
“We are not looking for a Hebe to help us at the camp,” Laura returned in the same low tone.
Lizzie Bean turned to see who was approaching. Her face was as thin as the rest of her figure. Prominent cheek bones, a sharp, long nose, and a pointed chin do not make a beautiful countenance, to say the least.
Besides, the expression of her face was lachrymose in the extreme. It did seem, as Jess afterward said, that Lizzie must have lost all her relatives and friends very recently, and was mourning for them all!
“Goodness me!” she whispered to Laura. “No wonder they call her ‘Lonesome Liz.’ She’s so sad looking she’s positively funny.”
39CHAPTER VTHE START
“What do you girls want?” drawled the lean girl, resting her red elbows on the well-shelf and looking down at Laura and Jess Morse.
She did not speak unpleasantly; but she was very abrupt. Laura saw that Lizzie Bean’s flat, shallow appearing eyes were of a greenish gray color—eyes in which a twinkle could not possibly lurk.
“We understand that you are not going to help Alice much longer,” Laura said, pleasantly. “So we have come to see if you would like another position for a few weeks?”
“What d’ye mean—ajob?” proposed Liz-Bean, bluntly.
“Ye-yes,” said Laura, rather taken aback.
“What doin’?”
“Why, we girls are going camping. There are seven of us—and Mrs. Morse. Mrs. Morse is the mother of my friend, here, Josephine Morse––”40
“Please ter meet yer,” interposed Liz, bobbing a little courtesy at the much amused Jess.
Laura went on steadily, and without smiling too broadly at Liz:
“There are seven of us girls and Mrs. Morse. We shall live very simply—in tents and in a cabin, on Acorn Island.”
“Eight in fam’bly, eh?” put in the thin girl. “Eight is a bigger contract than I got here.”
“Oh! in camping out we don’t expect anything fancy,” Laura hastened to say. “We want somebody to make beds, and wash dishes, and clean up generally. Of course, the cooking will notallfall on your shoulders––”
“I sh’d hope not,” said Liz, briskly. “Not if it was as solid as some folkses’ biscuits. One woman I worked for once made her soda-riz biscuits so solid that if a panful had fell on yer shoulders ’twould ha’ broke yer back.”
Jesshadto explode at that, but the odd girl did not even smile. She only stared at the giggling Jess and asked:
“Ain’t ye well?”
“Oh, yes!” gasped Jess.
“Well, I didn’t know,” drawled Liz. “My a’nt what brought me up useter keep a bottle of giggle medicine for us gals. An’ it was nasty tastin’ stuff, too. She made us take a gre’t41spoonful if we laffed at table, or after we gotter bed nights. There was jala inter it, I b’lieve. I guess I could make ye some.”
Jess stopped laughing in a hurry. Laura tried to ignore her chum’s indignant look; but it was quite plain that Lizzie Bean “had all her wits about her,” as the saying is.
“Then you can cook?” Laura observed.
“Well, I can boil water without burnin’ it,” declared the odd girl. “But I ain’t no Woodruff-Wisteria chef.” Afterward the chums figured it out that Liz meant “Waldorf-Astoria.”
“Do you think you would like to go with us?” Laura asked.
“I dunno yet. Where is it?”
Laura explained more fully about the camping site, how they were to get there, and other particulars of the project.
“It listens good,” Liz said, reflectively. “Though I ain’t never cooked nothin’ but soft-soap over a campfire.”
“Oh! there will be a portable stove,” Laura said.
“When ye goin’?” asked the girl.
“Day after to-morrow.”
“What’ll ye pay?” was the next bluntly put question.42
Laura told her the weekly wage Mrs. Pendleton had guaranteed. Although Lizzie Bean’s face was well nigh expressionless at all times, the girls saw at once that something was wrong.
“I dunno,” said Liz, slowly. “I have worked mighty cheap in my life—and I ain’t got no job when I leave here—an’ I gotter eat. But thatdoesseem anaw-ful little wages.”
“Why! I think that is real liberal,” declared Jess, with some warmth.
Liz eyed her again coldly. “You must ha’ worked awful cheap in your life,” she said.
“I know,” Laura explained, quietly, laying an admonitory hand upon her chum’s arm, “You know, that is what you will receive each week.”
“What’sthat?” demanded Liz, with a jump, “Say that again, will ye?”
“We will pay you that sum weekly,” repeated Laura.
“Say—say it by the month!” gasped the lean girl, her eyes showing more surprise than Laura had thought them capable of betraying.
Laura did as she was requested. A slow, faint grin dawned on Liz Bean’s narrow countenance.
“I been useter gittin’ paid by the month—and sometimes notthen. Some ladies has paid me so43little for helpin’ them that I wisht they’d paid me only everythreemonths, so’s ’twould sound bigger!
“I gotter take ye up before somebody pinches me.”
“Pinches you? What do you mean?” asked Jess, doubtfully.
“I don’t want to wake up,” declared Liz. “I never got so much money since I was turned adrift when my a’nt died. Don’tyouwake up, neither, and forgit to pay me!”
“I promise not to do that,” laughed Laura. “Then you’ll come with us?”
“If I don’t break an arm,” declared Lizzie Bean, with emphasis.
They told her how to meet them at the dock, and the hour they expected to start. “And bring your oldest clothes,” warned Jess.
“What’s that?” demanded Liz.
“We just about live in old clothes—or in a bathing suit—in camp,” explained Laura.
“Bless your heart!” exclaimed Liz. “I ain’t never had nothin’ but old clo’es. Been wearin’ hand-me-downs ever since I can remember.”
“My goodness gracious!” said Jess, and she and Laura hurried off for school. “Did you ever see such an uncouth creature? I don’t wonder Billy Long says she’s cracked.”44
“I don’t know about her being cracked, as you call it,” laughed Laura. “Just because she’s queer is no proof that she is an imbecile. You know the old parody on ‘Lives of Great Men All Remind Us,’ don’t you?” and she went on to quote:
“‘Lives of imbeciles remind usIt may some day come to pass,We shall see one staring at usFrom our trusty looking-glass!’”
“Shucks!” responded Jess. “You’ll get to be as bad as Bobby Hargrew with those old wheezes. But, did youeversee such a girl before?”
“No,” admitted Laura. “I honestly never did. But I am quite sure she is in the possession of all her senses––”
“She may be; but I bet her senses are not like other folks’,” chuckled Jess.
“She surely won’tbite, Jess,” responded Laura, smiling.
“Hope not! ‘Boil water without burning it!’ What do you know aboutthat?”
“I think it’s funny,” said Laura.
“Well! I only hope we get something to eat in camp,” murmured Jess.
“We can’t expect her to do all the cooking,” Laura said. “And I shall tell the girls so.”45
“Goodness! I don’t know whether I want to go camping with this bunch, after all,” said Jess. “What some of them will do to the victuals they have to cook will be a shame!”
However, the prospect of indifferent cookery made none of the girls of Central High less enthusiastic in the matter of the preparations for camping out on Acorn Island, in the middle of Lake Dunkirk.
They were all as busy as bees the next day, packing their bags and flying about from house to house, asking each other: “What you going to take?”
“Goodness me!” cried Laura, at last; “it isn’t what do wewant, but how little can we get along with! Discard everything possible, girls—do!”
Bobby Hargrew declared Lil Pendleton had started to pack a Saratoga trunk, and that she had been obliged to point out to Lil that neither of the motorboats was large enough to ship such a piece of baggage.
Their gymnasium suits would be just the thing in camp. And of course they all had bathing suits. Otherwise most of the girls got their apparel down to what Jess Morse called “an insignificant minority.”
“If the King of India, or the Duke and46Duchess of Doosenberry, comes calling at our camp, we shall have to put up a scarlet fever sign and all go to bed,” said Bobby. “We’ll have nothing to receive them in.”
“But not Purt Sweet,” chuckled Billy Long. “Purt’s packed a dinner jacket and a pair of spats. How much other fancy raiment he proposes to spring on us the deponent knoweth not. He’ll be just a scream in the woods.”
“He asked me if there were many dangerous characters lurking in the woods around Lake Dunkirk,” chuckled Lance. “Somebody has been stringing him about outlaws.”
“Short and Long looks guilty,” said Chet, suspiciously. “What you been stuffin’ Purt with, Billy?”
Billy Long, who straddled the piazza rail, swinging his feet, showed his teeth in a broad smile. “You read about that Halliday fellow, didn’t you?” he asked.
“Oh! the chap they say stole the money from that Albany bank?” responded Lance.
“It was securities he stole—and forged people’s names to them so as to get money,” said Laura. “The Lockwood girls’ Aunt Dora lost some money by him.”
“That is—if he did it,” said Chet, doubtfully.
“Well, the newspapers say so,” Jess observed.47
“What if they do?” demanded Billy, belligerently. “They all saidIhelped burglarize that department store last summer—didn’t they? And I never did it at all.”
“No. It was another monkey,” chuckled Lance.
The others laughed, for Billy Long had gotten them into serious trouble on the occasion mentioned, and it was long enough in the past now to seem amusing. But Chet added:
“It’s a wonder to me that Norman Halliday had a chance to get hold of all those securities and forge people’s names to them. And he knew just which papers to take. Looks fishy.”
“Well, he ran away, anyhow,” Lance said.
“So did Billy,” Bobby said. “And for the same reason, perhaps. He was scared.”
“My father says,” Chet pursued, “he has his doubts about Halliday’s guilt. He believes he is a catspaw for somebody else.”
“Anyhow,” said Billy, “the papers say he’s gone into the Big Woods south of Lake Dunkirk. And Purt wants to carry a gun to defend himself from outlaws.”
“If he does,” Chet said, seriously, “I’ll see that there are no cartridges in the gun. Huh! I wouldn’t trust Purt Sweet with a pop-gun.”
Bobby, meanwhile, was saying to Laura: “I48wonder why Old Dimple was interested enough in that Albany bank robbery to carry around that clipping out of the paper?”
“Maybe he lost money, too,” Laura suggested.
“What’s that about the old Prof?” put in Chet. “Do you know he’s gone out of town already?”
“No!” was the chorus in reply.
“Fact. I saw him with his suitcase this forenoon. He took the boat to Lumberport.”
“Well, as we shall all start in that same direction to-morrow morning, bright and early––”
“Not all of us bright, but presumably early,” put in Bobby, sotto voce.
“Anyway, it’s time we were in bed,” finished Mother Wit. “Off with you all!”
Whether Laura’s advice had a good effect, or not, nobody was really late at the rendezvous the next morning. Prettyman Sweet’s motorboatDuchess, a very nice craft, and the larger powerboat belonging to Chet Belding and Lance Darby, namedBonnie Lass, were manned by the boys before the girls appeared.
These two boats were large enough to transport both parties of campers, and would likewise tow the flotilla of canoes. TheDuchesstailed behind it three double canoes belonging to49the girls and theBonnie Lasstowed five belonging to their boy friends.
It was a fine day and the lake was as blue as the sky—and almost as smooth to look upon. A party of parents and friends came to see the campers start. The girls and Mrs. Morse went aboard theBonnie Lass. Lizzie Bean, with a bulging old-fashioned carpet-bag, appeared in season and joined the girls.
In the bustle of departure not many noticed the odd looking maid. The girls and boys were too busy shouting goodbyes to those ashore, and the crowd ashore was too busy shouting good wishes, or last instructions, to the campers.
Mrs. Pendleton had been driven down to the wharf, early as the hour was, to see her daughter off.
“And be sure to wear your rubbers if it rains, Lily!” the lady shrieked after the departingBonnie Lass.
“Gee!” whispered Bobby, to Jess. “I s’pose somebody’ll have to hold an umbrella over her, too, if it starts to shower.”
50CHAPTER VIPRETTYMAN SWEET MAKES A FRIEND
Lake Luna was a beautiful body of water, all of twenty miles long and half as broad, with Centerport on its southern shore and Lumberport and Keyport situated at either end.
The first named stood at the mouth of Rocky River which fed the great lake, while Keyport was at the head of Rolling River through which Lake Luna discharged its waters.
Centerport was a thriving and rich city of some 150,000 inhabitants, while the other two towns—although much smaller—were likewise thriving business communities. There was considerable traffic on Lake Luna, between the cities named, and up and down the rivers.
Cavern Island was a beautiful resort in the middle of Lake Luna; but man’s hand was shown in its landscape gardening and in the pretty buildings and the park at one end.
Acorn Island, in Lake Dunkirk (thirty miles51above Lumberport, and connected with Lake Luna by Rocky River) was a very different place. It was heavily timbered and had been held by a private estate for years. Therefore the trees and rubbish had been allowed to grow, and one end of the island, as the girls of Central High knew, was almost a jungle.
But at the eastern end—that nearest the head of Rocky River—was a pleasant grove on a high knoll, where the old cabin stood. There they proposed to camp.
Indeed, Mr. Tom Hargrew, Bobby’s father, had been kind enough to send the girls’ tents up to the island with the men he had directed to repair the cabin, and the party expected to find the camp pitched, and everything ready for them when they arrived at Acorn Island.
This would scarcely be before dark, for there was some current to Rocky River, although its channel was deep and there were no bridges or other barriers which the powerboats and their tows could not easily pass.
The boys expected to have to rough it at the site oftheircamp for the first night, and they had come prepared for all emergencies of wind and weather.
All, did we say? All but one!
In the confusion of getting under way the52details of Prettyman Sweet’s outing suit, and his general get-up for camping in the wilds, was scarcely noticed. Once the boats were steering up the lake toward Lumberport, a sudden shriek from Billy Long drew the attention of the girls and Mrs. Morse to the object to which he pointed.
“It’s not! it’s not! my eyes deceive me!” panted Short and Long, who was the third member of the crew of boys aboard theBonnie Lass, Chet and Lance being the other two.
Short and Long was pointing to the other powerboat that was drawing in beside theBonnie Lass, Pretty himself was at the wheel of theDuchessfor he had learned to manage her.
“Whatisthe matter with you, Billy?” Chet demanded.
“Whatisit I see?” begged the younger boy, wringing his hands and glaring across the short strip of water between the powerboats. “I know there ain’t no sech animile, as the farmer said when he first saw the giraffe at the circus.”
“What’s eating you, Billy?” asked Lance, who was giving his attention to the steering of theBonnie Lass. “Don’t frighten the girls and Mrs. Morse to death.”
“It’s just some joke of Billy’s,” began Jess, when the very short boy broke in with:
“Ifthat’sa joke, may I never see another!53It is a phantom! It’s a nightmare! It’s something that comes to you in a bad dream.”
“What?” demanded Chet, suddenly shaking Short and Long by the collar.
“Don’t, Chetwood,” begged Billy. “I’m not strong. I’m sea-sick. That thing yonder has queered me––”
“What thing?” asked Laura. “We don’t see the joke, Billy.”
“There you go again—calling a serious thing like that a joke,” cried the small boy. “Look at it—at the wheel of theDuchess! How ever did it crawl aboard? I bet a cent it’s been living in the bottom of the lake for years and years, and has come up to the light of day for the first time now.”
“You ridiculous thing!” snapped Lily Pendleton. “Do you mean Prettyman Sweet?”
“My goodness gracious Agnes!” gasped Billy. “That’s never Purt Sweet?Don’ttell me he’s disguised himself for a nigger minstrel show in that fashion?”
They were all laughing at the unconscious Purt by now—all save Lily; and Chet said, gravely:
“There is something the matter with your eyesight, Short and Long. That’s Purt in a brand new outing suit.”
“He didn’t dress like that to go camping?”54murmured Billy. “Say not so! Somebody dared him to do it!”
It was a fact that the exquisite of Central High had decked himself out in most astonishing array—considering that he was expected to “rough it” in the woods instead of appear at a lawn party on the “Hill.”
“His tailor put him up to that suit,” chuckled Lance. “He told me so. As he expects to live in the sylvan forest, as did the ‘merrie, merrie men’ of Robin Hood, Purt is dolled up accordingly.”
“Gee!” breathed Bobby. “Do you suppose Robin Hood ever looked like that?”
“That’s Lincoln green,” announced Lance, trying to keep his face straight. “You notice that the pants are short—knickerbockers, in fact. They are tied just below the knee with ‘ribbands’ in approved outlaw style.”
“Oh, my!” giggled Dora Lockwood. “Do you suppose they hurt him?”
“What hurts him most is the leather belt at which is slung a long-bladed hunting knife so dull that it wouldn’t cut cheese! But the knife handle gets in his way every time he stoops.”
“Oh! he’s so funny!” gasped Dorothy Lockwood. “You boys are certainly going to have a great time with Pretty Sweet on this trip.”55
“I don’t think it is funny at all,” muttered Lily Pendleton. “That rude little thing, Billy Long, tries to be too smart.”
“But look at the cap!” gasped Laura, who was herself too much amused to ignore the queer get-up of their classmate. “Where did he get the idea ofthat?”
“It’s a tam-o’-shanter,” said Lance. “Another idea of the tailor’s. That tailor, I think, tries things out on Pretty. If Pretty doesn’t get shot wearing them, then he puts similar garments on his dummies and risks them outside his shop door.”
“But what has he got stuck into the cap?” pursued Laura.
“A feather. Rather, the remains of one,” chuckled Lance. “It was quite a long one when he started for the dock this morning; but he crossed the street right under the noses of Si Cumming’s team of mules that draws the ice-wagon, and that off mule grabbed the best part of the feather. You know, that mule will eat anything.”
“Well, one thing is sure,” drawled Bobby. “If Purt is supposed to represent a Sherwood Forest outlaw, and he ever meets one of the outlaws of the Big Woods that he’s been worried56about, the latter ‘squashbuckler’ will be scared to death.”
“‘Squashbuckler’ is good!” chuckled Jess. “Some of those old villains I expectweresquashes.”
“My dear!” ejaculated her mother. “I fear the language you young folk use does not speak well for your instructors of Central High.”
“I guess we do not cast much glory upon our teachers, Mrs. Morse,” rejoined Laura, laughing.
“It’s only Short and Long, here, who ‘does the teachers proud,’” said her brother, with a grin. “Hear about what he got off in Ancient History class the other day? Professor Dimp pretty nearly set him back forthat.”
“Aw—now,” growled Billy. “He asked for a date, didn’t he?”
“What’s the burn?” demanded Bobby, briskly.
“Why, Old Dimple asked Billy to mention a memorable date in Roman history, and Billy says: ‘Antony’s with Cleopatra.’”
“Oh, oh, oh!” gasped Jess. “That’s the worst kind of slang.”
Mrs. Morse paid the young folk very little attention. She had withdrawn from the group and was busy with pencil and notebook.
“When mother gets to work that way, she heeds neither time, place, nor any passing event,”57laughed Jess. “She expects to sketch out her whole book while she is at camp with us.”
“She’s going to be a dandy chaperone,” declared Chet. “Suppose we’d had Miss Carrington along?”
“Goodness!” groaned Bobby. “Don’t let’s mention that lady again this summer.”
“And we can cut out Old Dimple, too,” grumbled Billy Long.
“He’s off somewhere on a trip, so we won’t have to bother about him,” said Chet, with confidence.
The girls had begun to compare notes regarding what they had packed in their suitcases, long before the boats reached Lumberport; and some of them discovered that they had neglected to bring some very essential things.
“You’ll just have to tie up beyond the Main Street bridge, and give us a chance to shop, Chet,” announced Laura. “We’re making good time as it is.”
“Isn’t that just like a parcel of girls?” grumbled Billy. “Now, we fellows didn’t forget a thing—you bet!”
“Wait till we unpack at camp,” chuckled Chet. “We’ll see about that, then.”
He and Lance agreed to make the halt as the girls requested; and they shouted to the crowd on58the smaller boat to do the same. As Lily Pendleton was one of the girls who must shop in Lumberton, Purt Sweet was most willing to tarry and accompany the girls ashore.
He was, in fact, the only escort the girls had when they went up into the town in search of the several articles they needed. The dude was evidently proud of his outing suit and, as Billy suggested, “wanted to give the people of Lumberport a treat.”
So he swaggered along up Main Street with the girls. Not a block from the wharf at which the boats were tied he met with an adventure.
“Whatever impression Purt is making on the good people of this town,” whispered Nellie Agnew to Laura, “he has certainly smitten a four-footed inhabitant with a deep, deep interest.”
“What’s that?” asked Laura, turning swiftly to see. Bobby Hargrew looked, likewise. Purt and Lily were behind, and Bobby immediately shouted:
“Say, Purt who’s your friend?”
“What’s that, Miss Hargrew?” asked Purt staring. “I weally don’t get you—don’t you know?”
“But he’ll getyouin a minute,” chuckled Bobby.59
“Don’t pay any attention to her, Mr. Sweet,” said Lily. “She’s a vulgar little thing.”
But just then Purt felt something at his heels and turned swiftly. One of the homeliest mongrel curs ever seen was sniffing at Purt’s green stockings.
“Get out, you brute!” gasped the dude, rather frightened.
But the dog didn’t seem to have any designs upon Purt’s thin shanks. Instead, he jumped about, foolishly stiff-legged as a dog will when he thinks he has found a friend, and barked.
“Gee! he’s glad to see you,” said Bobby. “Where’d you find him, Purt?”
“Weally!” declared the dude, trying to shoo the dog off. “I—I never did see the horrid brute before—I never did.”
“Don’t call him names. You’ll hurt his feelings,” suggested one of the Lockwood twins, while Laura said, seriously: “That dog certainly does know you, Mr. Sweet.”
“I declare, I never saw him before,” said Purt, making frantic efforts to frighten the dog away.
He was a snarly haired dog, with one ear cocked up and the other half chewed off, his coat muddied, only half a tail, which he wiggled ecstatically, and the most foolish looking face that was ever given to a dog.60
“Did you ever see such a looking thing?” gasped Bobby, half choked with laughter.
“And how well he matches Purt’s suit,” said Nellie, demurely.
“I’m not going to walk with you if you don’t get rid of that dog!” declared Lily, seeing that many bystanders were laughing at the boy and the mongrel.
She went ahead with the other girls while poor Purt remained in the rear, trying his best to chase away the friendly animal. But the more Purt shooed him, or attempted to hit him, or strove otherwise to send the brute about his business, the more the latter considered that the boy was playing with him, and he welcomed the game with loud and cheerful barks.
Soon a small crowd was collected, watching the performance with broad grins. The girls, giggling, but rather worried by the attention that was being attracted to their escort, darted into a store and left Purt to settle the matter by himself.
61CHAPTER VIITHE BARNACLE
The crowd was laughing loudly and Purt Sweet (although he was frequently the source of mirth for his companions) did not enjoy it. He began to hate that mongrel cur with an intense hatred.
“Get away from me, you brute!” he exclaimed, trying to kick the dog.
“Look out there, son,” drawled one on-looker. “If you abuse your dog the S. P. C. A. will do something to you that you won’t like.”
“It isn’t my dog! I weally never saw it before,” gasped the dude, growing very warm and red as the dog leaped about him in delight.
“You’ll have to tell that to the judge,” the man assured him.
This really scared Purt. He did not want to be arrested for abusing the strange dog. But he could not allow it to follow him, that was sure. The girls were already disgusted with him for having attracted the brute.62
“And I never meant to!” thought the boy, in despair. “Oh! if I only had him out in the woods, and had a good rock!”
But he dared not pelt the mongrel after what the bystander had said. The crowd became so numerous that a policeman came strolling that way. He saw Purt with the dog dancing about him.
“Here! this is no place for a circus. You and your dog get out!” commanded the officer of the law. “Move on!”
He flourished his baton; the horrified Purt made off around the nearest corner; the dog stuck like a porous plaster.
“If I only had a club!” groaned Purt.
He escaped the crowd and sat down upon a dwelling house stoop. At once that imbecile dog rushed upon him, leaped into his lap, and lapped Purt’s face!
“Get out! You nawsty, nawsty brute you!” wailed the dude, beating the dog off weakly.
The latter considered it all in the game. He had taken a decided liking to the boy from Central High, and nothing would drive him away.
Purt had never really cared for dogs. Most boys are tickled enough to get a dog—even a mongrel like this one. But the dude found himself with a possession for which he had never longed.63
The dog lay down on the walk in front of him, his tongue hanging on his breast like an inflammatory necktie, and laughing as broadly as a dogcouldlaugh. He evidently admired Purt greatly. Whether it was the Lincoln green suit, or the tam-o’-shanter cap, or the dude’s personal pulchritude, which most attracted his doggish soul, it was hard to say.
Suddenly a window went up behind Purt and a lady put out her head.
“Little boy! Little boy!” she called, shrilly. “I wish you’d take your dog away from here. I want to let my cat out, and dogs make her so nervous.”
“It isn’t my dog—weally it isn’t!” exclaimed Purt, jumping up. Immediately the dog leaped about, barking fit to split his throat.
“You naughty boy!” gasped the lady in the window. “I have seen you with that dog go past here hundreds of times!” and she immediately slammed down the sash before Purt could further defend himself.
However the lady could have made the mistake of thinking she had seen Purt before, is not easily explained. Perhaps she was very near sighted.
The Central High dude “moved on,” with the mongrel frisking about him. Purt heartily wished the animal would have a sunstroke (for it was64high noon now, and very warm) or would be taken with an apoplectic stroke, or some other sudden complaint!
Purt wanted to get back to Main Street and rejoin the girls; but he knew it would be no use in trying that unless he could “shake” the dog. The girls (especially Lily Pendleton, whom he so much admired) would not stand for that mongrel brute following in their train.
So, finding that the dog was fastened to him like a new Old Man of the Sea, Prettyman Sweet decided to sneak back to the dock, by the way of back streets, and escape the beast by going aboard theDuchess.
He set off, therefore, through several byways, coming out at last on a water-front street of more prominence. Here were stores and tenements. The gutters were crowded with noisy children, and the street with traffic.
A fat butcher stood before his shop, with his thumbs in the string of his apron. When he spied Purt and his close companion, he gave vent to an exclamation of satisfaction and reached for the Central High boy with a mighty hand.
“Here!” he said, hoarsely, his fat face growing scarlet on the instant. “I been waiting for you.”
“Waiting for me, Mister?” gasped Purt.65“Weally—that cawn’t be, doncher know! I never came this way before.”
“No, ye smart Ike! But yer dog has,” growled the man, giving Prettyman a shake that seemed to start every tooth in his head.
“Oh, dear me!” cried Purt. “I never saw you before, sir.”
“But I’ve seen yer dog—drat the beast! And if I could ketch him I’d chop him up into sassingers—that’s what I’d do tohim.”
“He—he’s not my dog,” murmured Purt, faintly.
Fido had scurried across the street when he spied the butcher; but he waited there, mouth agape, stump of tail wagging, and a knowing cock to his good ear, to see how his adopted master was coming out with his sworn enemy, the butcher.
“I tell yer what,” hoarsely said the butcher, still gripping Purt’s shoulder, “a boy can deny his own father, but ’e can’t deny his dawg—no, sir! That there brute knows ye, bub. Only yisterday he grabbed several links of frankfurter sassingers off’n this hook right overhead ’ere.
“I ain’t goin’ to have no dumbed dawg like him come an’ grab my sassingers an’ make off with ’em, free gratis for nothin’.”
A little crowd—little, but deeply interested—had66gathered again. Had Purt been seeking notoriety in Lumberport, he was getting it without doubt!
The grocer next door, with a great guffaw of laughter, cried:
“Hey, Bill! don’t blame the dawg. He smelled some o’ his relatives, it’s likely, in the frankfurters, an’ set out to rescue ’em!”
“I do-ent care,” breathed the fat butcher, growing more and more excited. “No man’s dawg ain’t goin’ ter do what he done ter me an’ git away with it. This boy has got ter pay for what the dawg stole.”
Purt did not like to let go of money—among his school chums he was considered a notorious “tight-wad”—but he was willing to do almost anything to get away from the greasy-handed butcher.
“What—what did the dog take? How much were the frankfurters worth?” he stammered. “The dog isn’t mine—weally!—but I’ll pay––”
“A dollar, then. And I’ll lose by it, too,” said the butcher, but with an avaricious sparkle in his eye.
“A dollar’s worth of frankfurters!” gasped Purt.
“Yes. An’ I wish they’d ha’ chocked the brute,” complained the butcher.67
“I wish they had—before he ever saw me,” murmured Purt.
He paid over the money and hurried away from the laughing crowd. And there, within a block, the dog was right at his heels again—rather slinkingly, but with the joy of companionship in his eye.
Now Purt was nearing the dock above the Main Street bridge where the motorboats were tied up. Whether the girls had returned or no, he hated to face the other fellows with this mongrel trailing at his heels.
The situation sharpened Purt’s wits. Here was a store where was sold rope and other ship-chandlery. He marched in and bought a fathom of strong manilla line, called the foolish dog to him, found that he wore a nondescript collar, and hastily fastened the line to the aforesaid collar.
It was in the boy’s mind to tie the dog somewhere and leave it behind. If he had dared, he would have tied a weight to the other end of the rope and dropped both weight and dog overboard.
Just then, however, he met a group of ragged, barefooted urchins—evidently denizens of the water-front. They hailed the gaily dressed Purt and the ragged mongrel, with delight.
“What yer doin’ wid the dawg?” inquired one.68
“Takin’ him to the bench-show, Clarence? He’ll win a blue ribbon,hewill.”
“Naw,” said another youthful humorist. “They don’t let Clarence out without the dawg. That’s to keep Clarence from gettin’ kidnapped. Nobody would wanter kidnap him if they had ter take that mutt along, too.”
Purt was too anxious to be offended by these remarks. He walked directly up to the leader of the gang.
“Say!” he exclaimed, breathlessly. “Do you want a dog?”
“Not ifthat’swhat yer call a dawg, Mister,” said the other boy. “I’d be ashamed to call on me tony friends wit’ that mutt. What I needs is a coach-dawg to run under the hind axle of me landau.”
“Say!” breathed Purt, heavily, and paying no attention to the gibes. “You take this dog and keep it—or tie it up somewhere so he can’t follow me—and I’ll give you a quarter.”
“When do I git the quarter?” demanded the boy.
“Right now,” declared Purt reaching into his pocket with his free hand.
“Hand it over,” said the other, snatching away the rope.
The dude sighed to think how this strange and69unknown cur had already cost him a dollar and a quarter. A dollar and a quarter would have been far too much to pay for a dozen similar mongrels, and well Purt knew it.
But the instant the quarter was transferred to the other boy, the Central High exquisite traveled away from there just as fast as he could walk.
At once a mournful and heart-rending howl broke out. He looked back once; the dog was leaping at the length of his rope, nearly capsizing the holder of the same with every jump, and wailing hungrily for his fast disappearing friend.
Purt set off on a run. He did not know how soon that rope might break!
He reached the dock just after the girls, who had arrived breathless with laughter, and full of the tale of Purt Sweet’s new friend.
“Where is he?” was the chorus that welcomed Purt.
“I—I got rid of him,” panted Purt.
“Sure?” laughed Chet, as they began to cast off.
“I—I hope so,” returned the worried Purt. “I neverdidsee such a cweature—weally.”
“He must have been an old friend of yours, Purt,” said Reddy Butts. “Dogs don’t follow folks for nothing.”70
“But weally, I never saw him before,” Purt tried to explain.
“Aw, that’s all very well,” Billy Long sang out. “But it’s plain enough why he followed you.”
“Why?” asked Reddy, willing to help the joke along.
“It was Purt’s shanks in those green socks that attracted the dog. I suppose the poor dog was hungry, and a hungry dog will go far for a bone, you know.”
Purt was hurrying to get hisDuchessunder way, and he was so glad of getting rid of the dog that he did not mind the boys’ chaffing. Suddenly a wild yell arose from some of the boys on the dock.
“What’s this? See who’s come!” yelled Billy Long.
“The Barnacle!” quoth Chet, bursting into a roar of laughter.
Even Lily Pendleton could not forbear giving vent to her amusement, and she laughed with the others. Down the dock tore the ragged coated dog, with a fathom of rope tied to his collar.
He leaped aboard theBonnie Lassand then, with a glad yelp, sprang to the decked-over part of theDuchess.
Purt Sweet looked up with a cry of amazement71and received the delighted dog full in his chest. They rolled together in the cockpit of the boat, the dog eagerly lapping Purt’s face, while the boy tried to beat him off with his fists.
“The Barnacle!” yelled Chet again, and that name stuck.
So did the dog. He refused to leave. The party left Lumberton with the foolish beast sitting up in the prow of theDuchess, wagging his ridiculous tail and barking a last farewell to the amused spectators gathered along the edge of the dock.