CHAPTER VOFF FOR NEW YORK
“Seems’sif Europe time wouldn’t ever, ever come,” complained Weezy again and again. For it was settled now that they were to go in June at the beginning of the summer vacation.
The golf cape for the bisque Araminta had long been finished, and Weezy having nothing in particular to do spent hours in watching the hands of the clock.
“They go creep, creep, creepmouse, just as slow as ever they can,” she said to Kirke one morning. “Can’t you put some of that oil on them? I ’spect that would make them turn ’round quicker.”
Kirke was in the yard cleaning his wheel,and Weezy on the doorstep dividing her attention between him and the hall clock behind her.
“Don’t look at the hands for five minutes, Weezy. See if that doesn’t make them travel faster,” returned Kirke, setting down his little oil-can with a knowing smile. “How would you like it yourself to have anybody staring at you every second?”
Weezy laughed. It was pleasant to have Kirke at home again. For weeks he had spent half his time out of school hours at the ranch, for of course he must see that well finished. After quite a long illness, Yeck Wo had recovered and come to the aid of Sing Wung, who could drill hard pan well enough, but would not light another fuse.
“It will never do to trust Sing Wung with gunpowder again,” Mr. Keith had said in confidence to the boys; “he is too excitable, he loses his head.”
From first to last the sinking of the well had caused Mr. Keith great anxiety, and it was a matter of rejoicing to him that the explosions were now safely over and the hard pan penetrated to a copious supply of water beneath.
“Shot stares at me and stares at me, and barks for nothing; but I don’t mind,” said Weezy, stroking the little terrier as he frisked up to her to be petted.
Kirke smiled approvingly. Shot was, indeed, a privileged character in these days and received few rebukes. He might even have been allowed to accompany his master to the Old World had not Captain Bradstreet looked upon the proposal with disfavor. Dogs were a nuisance in travelling, he said. They were a trouble and an expense, and always liable to get lost or stolen.
This settled it, and after mature reflection Kirke arranged to leave his dog and hisburro with Manuel Carillo, a humble Spanish boy whom he liked very much. Manuel was fond of animals and would be kind to these, Kirke felt sure.
Kirke and Molly made numerous calls in the next few weeks, remarking to their friends,—
“We came to bid you good-by before we sail for Europe.”
And everybody said, “Oh, how I wish I were going too!”
Vacation came at last, and with it the long-looked-for day of departure. The party was to go by rail to New York, and after resting in that city a week take the steamer for Havre, France.
In New York the Rowes were to visit Mrs. Tracey, Mrs. Rowe’s sister, and she had promised to provide a nurse-girl to go to Europe with them and assume the care of little Donald.
It was nine o’clock in the morning when the travellers arrived at the railway station at Silver Gate City. Captain Bradstreet and Mr. Rowe checked the baggage, while Mrs. Rowe entered the car followed by The Happy Six.
“I’ve seen a worse-looking half-dozen before now, Mr. Rowe,” whispered the captain, looking after the children with a proud smile.
“But never a merrier one, I’ll warrant, Captain,” returned Mr. Rowe, his eyes fixed on bright-eyed Weezy, who led the procession.
At her heels strutted little Donald in his first sailor-suit. Then came flaxen-haired Paul and his brunette sister, and behind them fair, freckled Molly and brown, wide-a-wake Kirke.
After they were all seated and the car had begun to move, Molly gave a deep sigh of satisfaction.
“We’ve started on our travels, Polly, do you know it?” she said with a playful pinchof her friend’s arm. “Doesn’t it seem too good to be true?”
That first day’s ride was bliss to The Happy Six. They entertained themselves by gazing from the car window, telling stories and getting acquainted with some young girls bound for Chicago.
But when at the approach of night the colored porter came to make up the sleeping-berths, Donald cried for his own little “cribby,” and objected to going to bed in “a cupboard with a curtain to it.”
“’Tisn’t a cupboard, it’s a berth, you dear littleniggeramus,” explained Weezy; and when the others laughed at the miscalled word, she thought they were laughing at Donald.
The little maid was drowsy herself by this time, and quite willing to be helped to her own berth above that of her little brother, where she undressed behind the swaying draperies, grumbling in an undertone because thetrain wouldn’t stop jolting while she put on her pink “slumber-wrapper.” She awoke next morning grumbling at the heat of the car.
Kirke was dressed and stood waiting to take her down in his arms.
“Yes, it’s warm, but what are you going to do about it, Miss? We’re crossing the desert, you see, and didn’t think to take along any good cool air for you to breathe.”
“Kirke, Kirke, no teasing,” said the mother from her seat in front of them where she sat with her bonnet on, entertaining Donald. “Weezy means to be a good girl to-day, I hope, and not to fret at what can’t be helped.”
“But I’m so sticky, mamma, and so dusty,” murmured the little girl when she stood upon the floor.
“Yes, dear, so was I before I bathed. Look at Kirke.”
After one glance, Weezy forgot her grievances and laughed outright, for dark rings ofdirt had settled under her brother’s eyes and a speck of soot upon the tip of his nose.
“The rest of us are ready for breakfast, Kirke, and you must hurry to make yourself presentable. The conductor says we eat at the next station.”
Concealing his grimy face behind his pocket-handkerchief, Kirke rushed past the seated passengers to the men’s toilet-room, while Weezy hastened to that of the women, where Molly assisted her in dressing. To comb Weezy’s fine, fluffy hair was never an easy task, as she seldom stood still half a minute at a time. To-day it was peculiarly trying, because the motion of the train jolted her about even when she would have been quiet.
“Oh, oh, Molly, you are most pulling my head off!” she wailed, at a sudden lurch of the car that tangled her ringlets into the comb.
Whereupon, Molly nervously set about repairingthe mischief, declaring she was sorry, and hadn’t meant to hurt Weezy.
Which of the sisters suffered the more before the toilet was made, it were difficult to tell; but I rather think it was Molly; and I suspect that Molly told Pauline she did “hope the nurse-girl from New York would take it upon herself to attend to that child’s hair.”
However, by dint of haste, Weezy was dressed at last, and on the arrival of the train at the breakfast-station the whole party went out to the dining-room and made a hurried meal.
“They are to put on a dining-car at noon, I’m happy to say, and we shall have our dinner on the train,” remarked Mr. Rowe. “I dislike this rapid eating.”
It was a nice dinner, well served, and The Happy Six enjoyed it immensely. They supped that night from their luncheon-basket and called it a picnic. They had adjoiningtables by themselves, and the three parents were at a table farther down the aisle. They were now beyond the desert, at Laguna, where the train had been delayed for some hours by an accident to the engine.
From the window at which Paul was seated they caught a glimpse of the Indian city with its clustering adobe houses and brown church surmounted by a cross.
“Not much of a city,” commented Paul, opening a box of sardines. “It looks more like a village, a tiny, half-grown one into the bargain.”
“But for all that, papa says it holds thousands of Indians, just thousands!” said Kirke. “They must be packed snug, like those little fishes.”
“They’d pack better if they were longer lengthwise and shorter widthwise,” laughed Paul, glancing at a group of thick-set Indians parading along the track.
“Why are those red men like heavy biscuits?” asked Pauline, helping Donald to orange marmalade.
“Because they’re ill-bred,” responded her brother. Pauline shook her head.
“I know why they’re like heavy biscuits,” exclaimed Weezy confidently. “Because you can’t eat ’em.”
“Very bright, little Miss Weezy, but not the answer,” returned Pauline amid general merriment. “Kirke, you haven’t guessed. Tell me this minute why those Indians are like heavy biscuits?”
“Because”—Kirke thoughtfully squeezed lemon juice upon his sardine—“because every one of them is good for a shot.”
“No, no; you’re far from the mark! Molly, now it’s your turn.”
“Is it because they’re both such a miserable lot?” asked Molly dubiously.
“Oh, you stupid guessers!” Pauline cantedher head saucily. “Why, listen now, my children. Those Indians and heavy biscuits are alike because neither have been properly raised.”
“They’re ill-bred, then, aren’t they, just as I said,” retorted Paul, twisting his neck to look at three Indian girls coming toward the car. All wore blankets, not folded, but hanging from their necks by the hems; and their flowing, black hair was straight and coarse, like a horse’s mane.
“Out with your camera, Paul!” said Kirke, while Molly whispered,—
“Do look at their faces, a bright vermilion!”
“From their foreheads down to their chins. What a waste of good paint!” Kirke whispered back.
“Let’s take them something to eat,” said Pauline, gathering up the fragments of the luncheon.
“Yes, yes, so we will,” cried Molly.
And the gay little party hurried forth to feed the young squaws, and buy some of the curious specimens of rocks they had brought to sell.
Paul seized the opportunity to take a “snap-shot” at the dusky damsels. Kirke purchased of them several bits of colored stone for his cabinet, and remarked later to Paul that if those squaws couldn’t speak English, they could tell a nickel from a dime with their eyes shut.
This meeting with the Indians was a pleasant experience to The Happy Six,—a much pleasanter one than that which Kirke was doomed to pass through on the morning they entered New York.
Kirke’s experience occurred in this wise: The night before they reached New York he and Paul occupied a section at the front of the sleeping-car next the door, Paul having the lower and Kirke the upper berth.
After undressing, Kirke had rolled all his clothes together into a bundle, which he placed at the foot of his berth, where he might lay his hands on it in the morning; for he meant to be up early to see whatever was to be seen.
But when he opened his eyes at sunrise, the bundle had mysteriously disappeared.
“Paul has hidden it for a joke,” was his first thought; and he leaned over the edge of his berth, and in an explosive whisper charged his comrade with the theft.
“Taken your clothes? No; what did I want of your clothes?” answered sleepy Paul, a little cross at being roused from a pleasant dream. “Why don’t you ring for the porter?”
There was no mistaking the honesty of Paul’s tone. Kirke began to be nervous. He pressed the electric bell by his window, and the colored porter presently appeared.
“Want anything, sah?” he asked, thrusting his woolly head between Kirke’s curtains.
“Yes, porter, I want my clothes! They were in a bunch at the foot of my bed. Haven’t you seen them?”
“No, sah; but I’ll try to find them, sah.”
Meanwhile Mr. Rowe, Captain Bradstreet, and Paul had dressed in haste, and were now ready to join in the search.
But though they hunted all through the car, their quest was in vain. The missing garments were not to be found.
“The conductor thinks the thief must have sneaked in and stolen them at the station where we stopped at midnight,” said Paul, coming back to Kirke with the unwelcome news. “It seems the porter left the door unlocked a minute while he ran out to send a telegram for somebody.”
“And here I am in my night-gown, Paul!What on earth am I going to do?” groaned Kirke behind his curtains.
These were the only curtains now visible in the sleeper. The berths of all the other sections had been put up for the day.
“It’s an outrageous shame, Kirke, an everlasting, heathenish shame!” vociferated Paul; but in the midst of his condolence he had to burst out laughing at the sad predicament.
Kirke relieved his own feelings by throwing a pillow at his friend. To himself the situation was far from ludicrous, it was appalling. The train was steaming on at the rate of forty miles an hour; it would soon land him in New York. Then what?
“Your father has gone to look up your trunk and get out another suit for you,” continued Paul, catching his breath.
“Good! But, oh dear, how can he open the trunk without the key? The key was in my pocket!”
But the key was not needed; the baggage was not on that train.
A moment later, Mr. Rowe appeared at the section, carrying on his arm a pair of checked blue-and-white overalls.
“Well, Kirke, I’ve done my best for you,” said he cheerily. “I’ve bought these of a brakeman. By rolling up the hems, I think you can manage to wear them.”
“Oh, those are a bonanza, Kirke.”
It was his mother’s voice at the boy’s elbow. “And I’ve brought you other things to put on. We’ll leave you now to dress. Be as quick as you can.”
As the train ran into the New York station, a rough-looking lad emerged from the curtains clad in a brakeman’s overalls turned up at the hem, Molly’s ulster, Mrs. Rowe’s overshoes, and Captain Bradstreet’s smoking-cap.
“O Kirke, you look like”—Mrs. Rowecut short Weezy’s comparison by a warning glance.
“Like a California freak, Weezy. Why, I knew that; did it on purpose,” retorted Kirke, assuming an air of bravado.
“Oh, no, Kirke, you look like a precious mosaic,” said Pauline lightly, while the whole party managed to crowd closely about the nondescript boy.
Partially screened by his friends, the “precious mosaic” of many colors skulked along to a carriage and vaulted into it. Here the little company separated for the present, the Bradstreets proceeding to a hotel in the city, and the Rowes to the home of Mrs. Tracey, where they were to remain till the sailing of the steamer.
“Auntie’ll think you’re bringing her an almshouse boy, mamma,” Kirke said ruefully, as they alighted before the Tracey mansion.
To greet his aunt and cousins in such aplight, and to be laughed at the livelong day, was an embarrassing ordeal to the lad; but he bore it manfully, and if afterwards he made wry faces and stamped his foot, he did it in the privacy of his own room, and nobody was the wiser. And in the evening, with the arrival of his trunk, the prolonged and disagreeable trial came to an end.