CHAPTER VAT THE BEACH
“I wonderwhat you’ll think of our camp, Molly.”
Pauline and Molly were swinging in a hammock on the front veranda of The Old and New, chattering like spring chickadees.
Pauline and Molly were swinging in a hammock“Pauline and Molly were swinging in a hammock.”Page53
“Pauline and Molly were swinging in a hammock.”Page53
“Pauline and Molly were swinging in a hammock.”
Page53
The Bradstreets had arrived from Silver Gate City the previous evening, bringing Harry Hobbs with them; and Captain Bradstreet had gone on to the canyon that morning with Hop Kee.
“Papa has a wooden building up there,—sort of a shanty, where he stores the furniture every winter,” went on Pauline. “It is near to Mr. Arnesten’s cottage, and Mr. Arnesten sees to things when papa is away.”
“Are the Arnestens all the neighbors you have, Pauline?”
“Yes, unless you count the Wassons. But the Wassons are three miles away, on papa’s bee-ranch. We’ll go to see them, Molly, when you’re at the camp.”
“Oh, that’ll be delightful!” Molly pushed her heavy auburn hair away from her face, a habit of hers when things pleased her.
“Right after breakfast every morning, Molly, we’ll put on our sunbonnets,—you can borrow auntie’s,—and we’ll march over to Mr. Arnesten’s for the eggs, and see him feed the chickens. He has turkeys besides, and one proud old gobbler that struts about as if he owned all the gold mines of California.”
“Didn’t you say the Arnestens had a little girl, Pauline?”
“Yes, Olga, the old-fashionedest little soul! She has eyes just the color of a grindstone,but her lashes are yellow, and her skin is yellow too. She used to trudge over with buttermilk last summer.”
“Then the Arnestens have a cow?”
“I should say they do! It’s always breaking into the garden and eating up the pease. We mind that, because Mr. Arnesten supplies us with vegetables.”
“And with chickens too, I suppose, Polly?”
“Yes; Hop Kee cooks chickens beautifully.”
“Doesn’t he? It seems odd enough, Pauline, to think of your having our Chinaman.”
“He came to our house in just the right time, Molly. Mrs. Cannon was so sick she couldn’t have worked for us another day.”
“Hop Kee is a diamond, Polly.”
“A topaz, you mean, dear, a yellow topaz. How we shall hate to give him back to you!”
Molly snuggled her dimpled chin into her friend’s neck.
“I wouldn’t worry about that, Pauline. We sha’n’t go home these two months.”
“Neither shall we, I hope. Papa told me yesterday that we should stay in the canyon all during vacation. Then, if Uncle John isn’t back from the East, auntie will go home with us to Silver Gate City.”
“I’m just longing to see your Auntie David. Are you sure she’ll come to-day, Pauline?”
“She wrote that she should come to-day, and spend a week here at The Old and New with Paul and me. Papa can take us all out to the camp together.”
“Oh, dear, Polly! you won’t be here but just seven days. And I haven’t entertained you at all. What shall we do this afternoon? Shall we go to the bath-house?”
“I’d rather fish,” answered Pauline promptly. “If there’s anything I dote on, it’s fishing.”
“I want to fish,” cried Harry Hobbs, from the corner of the veranda. “Can’t I fish?”
The little newcomer was tired of stringing sea-shells with Weezy. Sewing was girls’ work.
“Don’t you and Weezy want to dig in the sand?” asked Molly, in her sweetest tones. “I’ll find you the dearest little pails and shovels.”
“I can dig at ’ome,” responded Harry, with a grieved look. But he did not tease Molly. He had promised his Aunt Ruth that he wouldn’t be troublesome.
“Oh! let him go fishing, Molly,” said Pauline, stepping out of the hammock. “And let’s ask the boys too. They’ll take care of him.”
“If they can leave their stilts, Pauline. They’re stalking round the back yard like—like”—
“Like storks, of course,” concluded Pauline, leaning over the veranda rail to see the lads better. “Come, boys, won’t you go fishing?”
“Do you want to, Paul?” asked Kirke aside; for was not Paul his especial chum?
Paul nodded, and strode to the back porch in order to dismount on its high platform.
“Paul and I’ll meet the rest of you at the wharf, Molly,” called Kirke, already upon the ground. “You’ll take the fishing-tackle, won’t you? We’ll bring the bait.”
The bait was little crawfishes. The boys had to buy these of an old fisherman on the flats, who kept a supply of live ones in a pail covered with wet seaweed.
“It’s fun to see Mr. Tarbox catch the crawfish,” said Paul, when they were near the fish-house. “I saw him do it last summer.”
“How does he go to work?”
“Oh! he treads a circle about six feet across in the mud. Pretty soon the water soaks into this ring, and the little crawfish’ll crawl in. All Mr. Tarbox has to do is to scoop them up.”
“That’s why he can afford to sell them cheap,” said Kirke.
“But he asks more in the winter,” said Paul.
Kirke bought two dozen crawfish for a nickel; and he and Paul carried them back to the beach, where the girls and Harry were waiting.
After the hooks had been baited, the three boys and the three girls walked out upon the wharf, Molly holding Harry by the hand. He was a clumsy little fellow, and she was afraid he might fall over the edge. She had no such fear for nimble-footed Weezy. Then they threw in their lines, and waited and waited, while the sun grew hotter and hotter. They waited in vain. Nobody had a nibble.
At last Pauline reeled in her line with a petulant motion.
“Supposing we give up fishing, and go around Bird Rocks to hunt for abalones.”
“A good idea,” said Paul. “The tide is low, and maybe we can find abalones enough for a soup to-morrow.”
“A soup, indeed!Willyou hear the boy?” cried lively Pauline. “Paul thinks only of soup, and not at all of the beauty of the shells.”
“I’d rather have one large abalone shell than forty herrings,” said Molly, escorting Harry to the mainland.
“Especially than forty herrings that won’t be caught,” added Kirke, dropping his tackle into the basket. “Perhaps we shall have better luck after the tide begins to come in.”
“I shouldn’t wonder. We’ll try again later,” said Pauline, lingering at the end of the wharf while Kirke concealed the basket beneath it.
Then the two hastened forward to overtake Paul and Molly, who had set out for the rocky cave beyond Bird Rocks. Weezy and Harry lagged behind the others, Harry’s short fatlegs being already weary of ploughing through the sand.
Weezy was very polite to her little guest, and very proud to show him the wonders of Santa Luzia, which she seemed to regard as the especial property of herself and her family.
“This is one of our owl shells,” said she presently, bringing Harry a limpet shell about as large as the palm of her hand.
Harry eyed it sharply.
“Where’s thehowl?”
“On the inside. Don’t you see, Harry?”
“That? That isn’t ahowl. It hasn’t any ’ead, Weezy.”
“Why, yes, it has, Harry. I think it has a good head, a very good head indeed.”
What did Harry mean by finding fault with her lovely shell? For a moment Weezy was too vexed to remember that he was her company.
By this time the others had passed beyond the ledge which shut off the beach from the rocky cove, and Harry and Weezy were alone on the sandy shore. Before them was the ocean, behind them the high bluff, climbed by a wooden stairway. Near the foot of this stairway stood the wharf where the children had just been fishing.
Weezy looked back at the wharf regretfully. She wished that she had stayed there, instead of walking on the tiresome beach with a little boy only six years old,—a tiny boy that didn’t like her owl shells!
Why shouldn’t she go back now to the wharf? Nobody had said she mustn’t; and if she should go that minute nobodycouldsay it, because there was nobody to see her. She would catch a big herring all her own self, that she would, and make everybody stare.
Weezy’s eyes sparkled like the waves inthe sunlight, her cheeks glowed like the beach pea-blossoms at her feet.
“I’m going to fish, Harry. You can come if you want to,” said she, turning briskly on her heel.
She wore that day a cap and dress of navy blue trimmed with bands of gilt braid. Harry was dressed in brown, and as he bobbed along behind her he resembled a dorbug chasing a butterfly.
“Here’s a hook with a baby crawfish on it, Harry.Youmay have that,” she said, with an excited air.
Then, having selected a second baited hook for herself, she skipped along the wharf, swinging her line. This was something worth while, to fish on her own account, without Molly or Kirke at her elbow to cry out,—
“Take care, Weezy, don’t stick the hook into you. Take care, Weezy, don’t fall overboard.”She hated “don’ts.” She was vexed now to hear Harry calling out, yards behind her,—
“Don’tgo so fast, Weezy, I’m hawful scared!”
He had reached a broad crack that yawned between the planks, and there he stood trembling till Weezy danced back to him.
“O Harry, before I’d be such a baby! Come along, I’ll lead you.”
But once having seen the waves tossing beneath that dreadful crack, Harry could not be persuaded to cross it; and much against her will Weezy stayed beside him, and fished near the shore.
“You can hold on to the post, Harry,” she said generously. “I don’t want it, I’m not afraid.”
Harry held on like a barnacle while Weezy sat on the edge of the wharf, dangling herfeet, and moving her line slowly up and down in the way she had seen fishermen do.
The beach was unusually deserted that afternoon, because of a railway excursion which had attracted many people to the neighboring city. Weezy, sitting and gazing down into the restless green water, while she waited in vain for a nibble, began to grow sleepy. Suddenly Harry shouted boisterously,—
“I’ve caught a fish, Weezy! Oh, oh! I’ve caught a fish!”
Weezy was at once broad awake.
“Have you, Harry? Oh, have you? Let me pull him in.”
She spoke a second too late. Harry had given the line a quick jerk toward her, and the next thing she knew a wriggling sculpin was flapping its slimy scales right in her face.
“Ugh! Ugh! Take it away, Harry!”she cried, dropping her own line, and beating the fish back with both hands. “Oh, take the horrid”—
She never finished the sentence. At the last word she lost her balance, and toppled headlong into the ocean.