CHAPTER VIA LITTLE LUNCH
“Well! I’m mighty glad that’s over. But now what are we going to do?”
It was Step who spoke thus, addressing Poke and Sam and Varley, as they stood grouped in the road before the house in which they had left the injured man. Nearly an hour had passed since they brought him home on the extemporized stretcher, and it had been a busy hour at that. Dr. Emery had not hesitated to press the boys into service. They had gone on errands to neighbors’ houses; they had assisted in the transfer of the victim of the accident from the stretcher to his bed; they had brought in a supply of fire-wood for the woman of the house; Poke had driven away in the doctor’s sleigh and returned with a nurse of much experience in caring for the sick of the countryside. At last, though, all that could be done had beendone. The doctor had resumed his interrupted round; the nurse of experience had taken charge of the distracted household; the sufferer was resting as comfortably as one might hope to rest with fractured ribs and bruised body and limbs.
“Boys, you’ve behaved like trumps,” had been Dr. Emery’s parting words. “It has been a good morning’s work for all of you. Guess I’ll have to enroll you as my first-aid detachment.”
With that he clucked to his horse, and rode off, leaving the four in the road. There followed a long silence, which Step ended. The boys looked at each other. Step had uttered the thought of all of them. What were they to do next?
The strain and the excitement were over. Not one of them but felt the reaction. Varley gave a queer little laugh.
“Fellows, this sort of thing’s all new to me. I—well, it’s taken all the ginger out of me. I feel like a—a——”
“Like a rag?” Sam suggested.
Varley nodded. “That’s it! Like a rag, and a wet rag, to boot.”
Poke wagged his head solemnly. “I know! Been there myself. Sort of gets you here——” and he laid a hand on his stomach.
“That’s just it! It isn’t exactly as if you were hungry, but like it, somehow.”
Sam, the practical, pulled out his watch, and whistled softly.
“Whew! No wonder you chaps feel that way. It’s twenty minutes to twelve.”
“And dinner’s six or seven miles away!” gasped Poke.
“Nearer eight.”
This time Poke didn’t gasp; he groaned. “I see where somebody I know gets mighty unpopular at our house. Confound fussy folks, anyway!”
“Same thing at our place,” quoth Step and drew a long face. “If a fellow’s late for a meal they act as if they thought he ought to be in jail.”
“Well, it’s up to us to make tracks,” said Sam, then cast a half dubious glance at Varley; a hurried march back to town would be no joke for the novice on snow-shoes.
Varley noted the glance, and read it aright.“Wait a minute, fellows,” he said. “I’ll own up. I’m almost all in. No, I don’t mean I’m leg-weary exactly; it’s more wear and tear on nerves, I guess. If I could have a bite to eat and a chance to sit down by a fire for a while, I’d be all right.”
“Huh! I guess that’s what Jonah said when he found himself inside the whale!” jeered Step.
Sam spoke quickly. “Varley’s hit it! I feel the same way, only I didn’t know enough to say so. I don’t hanker for that tramp home, but what else is there to do?”
“Nothing,” agreed Poke gloomily. “We might as well start.”
But again Varley delayed them. “Hold on! Parker, you told me about a hotel at the foot of Rainbow Mountain, didn’t you? Unless I’m all wrong in my geography, we must have been traveling toward it, and it can’t be very far away.”
“Not more than a mile,” said Sam.
The other’s face brightened. “Then I’ve a scheme. Let’s go there and get something to eat.”
“Oh!” said Sam doubtfully.
Step shook his head, and Poke slapped a pocket, from which came no cheering jingling of coin.
“My treat, of course!” cried Varley hastily.
“I guess we’d better not—thank you, of course, though.”
That was Sam’s instinctive observation. Step shook his head harder than ever. Poke rubbed his chin uncertainly; at that moment he was conscious of a peculiarly vigorous appetite.
Varley seemed to know how to meet the objections of the others.
“Oh, come now!” said he persuasively. “You fellows have been doing things for me, and helping me out with these contraptions——” he glanced at his snow-shoes. “You’ve given me a lot of pointers. Give me a show to even up part of it. Parker tells me the hotel is open. We’ll go there and get a little lunch, and loaf around for a while, and start for town when we feel like it. It’s the one sensible thing to do. Why not?”
None of the others found it easy to explain why it was not the sensible thing. And Varley’s careless reference to the proposed refreshmentas a “little lunch” certainly did seem to throw new light on the case and remove in some degree the sense of incurring undue obligation.
“Why—why—I don’t know—that is, I don’t see——” Poke began.
“’Twould be fun,” Step admitted.
“Certainly it will—come along!” Varley urged.
Sam hesitated. The case was of a sort to perplex an older and wiser head than his. On the one hand was reluctance to accept hospitality he might not be able to return; on the other was dread of appearing boorishly unresponsive. His pocket money chanced to be low; and he was quite sure Step and Poke were in the same plight. So it couldn’t very well be a “Dutch treat.” And pride revolted a bit—town pride, perhaps—at being at a disadvantage, compared with the city youth. But Sam was hungry. Poke was hungry, too, and so was Step.
Varley tugged at Sam’s sleeve. “Let’s trot along!” he urged. “Just a little lunch, you know. Make us feel like fighting cocks, it will. And I don’t mind telling you I needsomething like grub to take away that goneness.”
It was the repetition of the “little lunch” which turned the scales with Sam. Rather vaguely he pictured light refreshment—sandwiches, maybe, and a boiled egg or two—to be enjoyed picnic fashion.
“All right, I’m with you, Varley—and much obliged,” he said. “Do as much for you some day. And I’d be glad to have a look at the Rainbow Mountain House. They say it’s a very good hotel.”
“Well, we’ll find out how good it is!” cried Varley jubilantly. “Come ahead!”
It was a generous mile that lay between the boys and the hotel, but with the spur of hunger and the equally encouraging sense of mild adventure, they covered the distance briskly enough. On the road Varley was a humble follower of his companions, but when they entered the big lobby of the hostelry, he took command of the expedition.
The others hesitated briefly, glancing about them at the great fire blazing cheerily, at the many easy chairs, at the tables on which were ranged newspapers and magazines, at the deerheads on the wall, at the half dozen guests who were in evidence, some of them in the fur coats in which they had just returned from a long drive in sleighs. But Varley unconcernedly crossed to the desk, and addressed the clerk on duty.
“Lunch for four,” he said. “And we’d like it at once, if we can have it.”
The clerk pushed forward the big register, and offered Varley a pen.
“Certainly,” said he. “Luncheon is served in the main dining-room.”
Varley entered the names of the party in the book—he had to ask Step and Poke’s initials, but he wrote “Samuel Parker” without hesitation. Then he stepped back, smiling cheerily.
“We’ll freshen up a bit, and then go right in,” said he.
Both Sam and Step had been studying the lobby and the people, but Poke was staring, in a sort of fascination, at a tall vase at an end of the desk. It was slender and graceful of line, and was made of a prismatic glass, which caught the light and reflected it in many-hued brilliance.
“Golly! Look at the sparkle!” he exclaimed.
“That’s our mascot—our luck piece,” the clerk explained. “Odd thing, isn’t it? You’re quite right about the sparkle—regular rainbow effect, in fact. That’s why it fits the Rainbow Mountain House, you see.”
Poke wagged his head in his solemn fashion. “I do see it. And it is—er—er—it is mighty—er—er—appropriate.”
But Varley was tugging at his sleeve. “Oh, come along! A plate with a lot on it would look still more appropriate.”
Poke yielded to the pull. “There’s room for more than one good thing in the world at a time,” he remarked philosophically. “I’ll be glad enough to eat, but that—that sparkler—say, somehow it takes my fancy a lot.”
“Well, you can sit down after lunch and admire it,” Varley reminded him. “Just now your first duty to yourself is to play an engagement in the dining-room.”
The Rainbow Mountain House was a very comfortable, well-managed hotel, whose landlord had a theory that people liked good things to eat. His winter guests especiallywere likely to be blessed with vigorous appetites, and he took especial pains not to disappoint them. So, while the midday meal was known as luncheon, it was, in fact, a substantial repast, daintily served in the big, sunny dining-room. Sam’s first glimpse of the bill of fare made him glance swiftly, and suspiciously, at Varley. A little lunch, forsooth! Why, this was a dinner of half a dozen courses. But Varley met the glance blandly and with no recognition, apparently, of the fact that it was suspicious. He was entirely at his ease in presiding over the table to which the boys had been conducted; and what was more, he put his guests at their ease.
Truth to tell, the four had an excellent time. All of them had been at still larger and more pretentious hotels than the Rainbow Mountain House, but always in company with their elders; and this little party had the agreeable tang of novelty and independence. Varley kept the talk going briskly. He told a story or two of his misadventures at boarding-school. He added another of an odd experience while traveling in Europe,but gave no hint of regarding himself as a person of superior talents or attainments; for quite as cheerfully he related some of the amusing blunders into which he had been led by ignorance of the ways of the country. Then the other boys recalled tales to cap his, so that, altogether, it was a very merry group about the table.
Finally the meal was over, and Varley tipped the waitress with a practiced ease which vastly impressed the observant Poke. The four went out into the lobby, and found chairs near the great fire. They were filled with the comforting sense of ease and refreshment, and nobody was disposed to suggest an early start on the long tramp to town. It was much better fun to toast before the fire and watch the people come straggling in, some from snow-shoe expeditions, others from coasting. There was a pleasant murmur of talk, with a deal of rippling laughter and a subdued bustle, very restful and soothing to the well-fed listener.
Varley sauntered over to the desk. There he paid the bill. The other boys saw him draw a roll of notes from his pocket, pass oneto the clerk, and stow away his change with barely a glance at the silver.
“Gee! but he’s well heeled!” Poke whispered to Sam, admiringly.
Sam nodded, but said nothing. It was clear that Varley was well supplied with spending money; but he was not moved to comment on the fact.
“Say! He knows how to do things up brown!” Poke insisted.
“Indeed he does!” Sam agreed heartily enough.
Poke stretched himself luxuriously. “This is one bully place! I like everything about it. Cracking good feed, wasn’t it? And that shiny vase over there—— Say, somehow I can’t keep my eyes off it!”
“It is pretty.”
“Pretty!” Poke’s tone was protesting. “That’s a mild way to put it. I could sit and look at it for an hour at a time.”
Sam made no reply. He was watching Varley, who was talking to the clerk, but who finally wheeled, and returned to his companions, smiling a trifle uncertainly.
“I hope you won’t think I’m too much of aquitter,” he said, “but I may as well own up. I don’t fancy that hike back. So I’ve made a deal with that fellow to send us home in a sleigh. We can start whenever we’re ready. And—and I hope you won’t mind.”
It was on the tip of Sam’s tongue to make protest, but Step spoke first.
“Mind? Not I! I’m not too proud to ride—not by a long shot.”
“Good! Then we’ll consider that settled,” said Varley quickly.
Poke shot a glance at Sam. “What did I tell you about doing things up brown?” he queried with a chuckle.
Again Sam said nothing. As it happened, it did not occur to him that he needed to say anything.