CHAPTER X
CAROLYN MAY IS PUZZLED
The closing day of Carolyn May's school was so close at hand that she could not get to see the pale lady again. There was, too, something about the Bassetts, whom the little girl knew as "the Lairds," that made further association with them quite impossible as far as Carolyn was concerned.
She could not at all understand it. She heard more of the discussion between her father and mother about the "Lairds" than her parents dreamed. And she was vastly puzzled thereby.
Carolyn learned that Mr. Bassett, or Mr. Laird, or whatever his real name was, had done something very wrong indeed. Papa Cameron considered him unworthy of any help or consideration whatsoever. Nor could Mamma Cameron, after hearing the report of his interview with the Griffin, disagree with her husband on this point.
Be that as it may, the little girl could not understand why the pale lady and the poor little baby should be made to suffer for Mr. Laird's wrongdoing. Mrs. Laird was in a very bad way and her baby was panting his life out in those close, hot rooms.
Hannah Cameron had even suggested that evening after Carolyn's friend had suffered such a serious turn, that the little family be allowed to occupy the Cameron apartment while she and Carolyn were away in the country and at the seashore. But after Papa Cameron had interviewed the father of Joe Bassett, nothing more was said about that.
"I have offered Joseph Laird Bassett the loan of a hundred dollars, if he will take it, to get his wife and child out of that place and to send them out of town. That, I think, Hannah, should end our interest in their affairs. Like enough I shall never see the hundred again. If he had ten thousand dollars, come by either honestly or dishonestly, and wasted it gambling in stocks, he is not much to be pitied."
"Oh, the poor baby!" murmured Carolyn's mother.
"I know. But there are thousands of other babies in this city quite as deserving of pity. And to help a wastrel like Joe, and that woman who is evidently the cause of his downfall, seems to me to be positively wrong. Such a fellow as he, is not to be trusted in any particular. I shall watch him very closely as long as he remains with the Beacon. And unless he shows more promise than he has so far, he won't last long."
"The poor woman!" murmured his wife.
"As for that," said Papa Cameron, "taking all Henry Bassett says about her with more than a grain of salt, it was her influence that caused Joe Bassett's downfall. And—well, it makes me wonder now what ever became of that twenty-dollar note I gave him for the broken go-cart. We don't know that it was returned to the man who gave it to Carolyn. Not at all! Of course, it was his wife's to do with as she pleased. But—but—Well! I am sorry Snuggy ever got acquainted with her."
"It is what I have always said," declared Hannah Cameron. "Letting her go about so much alone, with only Prince, as we do, and picking up acquaintances just as she sees fit, is all wrong."
"Oh, now, Mamma!" exclaimed Mr. Cameron. "Snuggy doesn't often pick 'em wrong."
This all puzzled Carolyn May very much. The poor little baby! And the pale lady whom she had last seen so weak and wan! Why should they be made to suffer if Mr. Laird had been naughty? Why, it was just as though Prince should be punished because she did wrong!
Faithful as Carolyn May was in her friendships, she could not give her thoughts entirely to the pale lady and her troubles just at this time. Carolyn and her particular friend, Edna Price, who lived across the hall from the Camerons, were having dresses made for graduation day, just alike. Their mothers had used the same pattern in cutting out the frocks, the material was the same, the trimming was the same, and the only difference was in the hue of the broad sashes the little girls wore—Edna's being cherry-red and Carolyn's blue.
"If we aren't twins," Carolyn observed, "our dresses are. So of course they must have different coloured ribbons so as to tell 'em apart."
Carolyn May stood well in her classes. She was, indeed, a prize scholar, and even Johnny O'Harrity had to admit her high standing.
"For Johnny, you know," whispered Carolyn to her mother, as they came home from the school exercises, "didn't get a prize at all. He only got horrible mention!"
The very next day Carolyn and her mother and Prince started for the country. The apartment was made dark for the summer, with covers on the furniture, and each picture in its own particular fly net.
It seemed too bad that the comparatively cool rooms would be almost disused while the pale lady and her baby must suffer so in their hot little apartment. For Carolyn had learned that "Mr. Laird" had refused the loan of the hundred dollars her papa had offered him.
"I don't know why," Mr. Cameron told Carolyn's mother. "He certainly can't hope to get more out of me by holding off. I don't understand the fellow. He seems as proud as Lucifer; yet he certainly cannot be trusted, according to his own father's story. And the Griffin must know what he is talking about."
Mr. Cameron was only to sleep in their apartment, taking all his meals out of the house. Later, when Carolyn and her mother would be established at the island summer resort where a reservation had been made for them at a hotel, Mr. Cameron would sometimes spend Saturday and part of Sunday with them.
This going away for the long vacation was a gay adventure indeed for Carolyn May. She began to meet people she knew almost as soon as they started. There was the nice man in the baggage car who had taken Prince under his special protection when first the little girl and her dog entrained for Sunrise Cove and the Corners. That time Carolyn had to ride in the baggage coach a part of the way herself, to keep Prince quiet.
But the dog was an old traveller now, and he settled down quite resignedly in the car when Carolyn and her father went back to the coach where Mrs. Cameron and the little girl were established for the long ride.
Papa Cameron kissed them and bade them a cheerful good-bye. He expected to see them at Block Island in a fortnight. The long train, filled with vacationists for the most part, pulled out of the Grand Central Terminal. On the platform of the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street station stood Edna Price and her mother and lame Johnny O'Harrity who had insisted on coming to bid Carolyn May good-bye.
"And it's a wonder that red-haired Sade Gompretz isn't here, too," sniffed Carolyn. "I know she would be if she had known about it."
But she waved gaily to her friends as the train quickly started again. They were really off now. The conductor came through to punch their tickets, and who should he prove to be but the same conductor who had been so very kind to Carolyn on a previous occasion when the little girl had run away from Sunrise Cove, all alone and so very, very miserable.
All such troubles were ancient history now to Carolyn May. She had, indeed, almost forgotten about that adventure. But she had not forgotten any of her friends, however, and late in the afternoon, when they arrived at the Sunrise Cove station the little girl was all eagerness to get out and hail those whom she knew so well.
Of course, first of all there was Uncle Joe Stagg, looking wonderfully young and prosperous, ready to hand them into Tim the hackman's turnout for the drive to the Corners.
"You're looking well, Hannah," said Uncle Joe. "And if Car'lyn looked any better we should have to take her to the doctor at once."
"Pitcher of George Washington!" gasped the hack driver, "how that young 'un has growed! And here's Prince that tackled that consarned wood-pussy that time. Lively as one of his own fleas, ain't he? Wal, Hannah Stagg, I admire to see ye. This here model of yourn is better knowed in Sunrise Cove and at the Corners than ever you was when you was a gal."
"Yes, Uncle Tim. I fancy Carolyn is more popular up here than I ever was. But, then, Carolyn May is popular everywhere."
The little girl did not notice this. She rode with half of her body out of the carriage window, waving her hand and calling greetings to people whom she knew along the main street.
And when they came to Uncle Joe's hardware store there was Chet Gormley, one huge and complete smile, standing on the porch beside the agricultural tools and rolls of poultry netting, and looking, as Uncle Joe said, almost as fat as a rake handle. He wore a starched white suit and a flowing red tie and shoes that were very yellow. It was evident that Chet had dressed for the occasion.
"Oh, Chet," cried Carolyn May, "how nice you look! And you've gro-o-own—"
"Up and down ways—ye-as," agreed the gangling youth. "They don't make overalls no longer than I be now. Maw's got to buy bed tickin' and make 'em for me herself if I grow any more."
While Mr. Stagg was in the store for a moment and Hannah Cameron was speaking with somebody she knew through the other window of Tim's hack, Chet drew near to Carolyn May and confided to her:
"You see how your uncle trusts things to me now, don't you? Sometimes I'm here all day by myself. Why, if I didn't know my job as well as I do, folks might think Mr. Joseph Stagg was neglectin' his business since he got married."
"Oh, I am sure you are perfectly able to tend the store, Chet," said the little girl admiringly.
"Of course. I'm ready any time Mr. Stagg wants to change the sign to 'Stagg and Gormley' to do my full share," declared the lanky youth, nodding his head seriously.
If Chet really was of as much importance as he thought he was to the hardware dealer, the latter could not have done business when the youth was not in the store. Nevertheless, Chet was to be commended for his faithfulness and for the interest he took in his employer's affairs.
It was very surprising to see Joseph Stagg leave the store a full two hours before supper time and ride home with his sister and Carolyn, as though such neglect of business was quite a matter of course.
Carolyn was kept busy nodding to people on the way, or calling out greetings to them. Mrs. Maine, the dressmaker, peered near-sightedly through her blinds as they drove by, and Carolyn could imagine the woman biting off her threads and her words together, as she commented on the arrival of the little girl and her mother.
A few steps beyond the dressmaker's was Jedidiah Parlow's carpenter shop. And here Tim, the hackman, positively had to stop, for the carpenter was Mrs. Amanda Stagg's father and one of Carolyn's very closest friends.
"I declare, Hannah!" Mr. Parlow said, warmly shaking the hand of the woman he had known as a girl, "you'd be a sight for sore eyes in any case. But you air twice welcome, comin' as you do with Car'lyn. Car'lyn May jest about owns us, up along this road, and no two ways about it!"
Carolyn kissed his wrinkled cheek warmly. "I hope you've got lots of nice long, curly shavings for me and Prince, Mr. Parlow," said the little girl. "I'm going to bring Freda Payne, too, and we'll play in your shavings—if you please."
"You shall have 'em," replied the old carpenter, his eyes twinkling. "If there ain't enough I'll shave up a hull spruce board for ye."
As Tim, the hackman, drove on Mrs. Cameron mentioned to her brother the change she observed in Mr. Jedidiah Parlow.
"And it's no 'leventh hour conversion, Hannah, that your Car'lyn brought about in his case—believe me!" said Mr. Stagg energetically. "He's a vigorous old man yet. He's taken in a worthy woman and her son to do for him, and keeps on about his work just as he used when Mandy was with him. Only a sight more pleasant and neighbourly. Mandy says her father's taken a new lease on life."
Prince was growing more restive as they approached the little hamlet of the Corners. He was out and in the hack half a dozen times, and finally, when Hiram Lardner's blacksmith shop and the store and the church and parsonage came into view, the dog ran barking ahead, displaying the fact that he recognized the locality.
When Tim's hack stopped before the Stagg homestead they heard a great commotion among the poultry in the rear—the cackling of hens, quacking of ducks, the honking of the big gander, the squawking of guinea fowl, and over all the "Gobble! Gobble! Gobble!" of General Bolivar, the White Holland turkey.
"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Carolyn May, flashing out of the carriage. "That bad, bad Prince has run to talk to the hens and all, and he ought to know by this time that they don't like him. And old Bolivar will chase him and maybe get spanked again, if Aunty Rose hears it."
She started around the house on the run to quell the panic among the feathered denizens of the rear premises, and to scold Prince. Aunty Rose did not appear and the little girl thought she must be at her own little house around the corner from the Stagg homestead. And where was Aunt Mandy? There was nobody on the back porch to welcome their arrival!
She heard Uncle Joe and her mother coming around from the front of the house. The main door of the Stagg homestead was seldom opened, except when the minister came to call. Carolyn bounded upon the porch, with Prince crazily barking beside her. And then with her hand upon the latch she halted, transfixed by a sound from within the kitchen.
"Down, Prince! Be still!" Carolyn May murmured, with a gesture to silence the dog. She clutched the latch almost as though to keep herself from falling, and her ear remained close to the panel.
She heard it again—a thin, wailing sound that signalled unmistakably the discomfort of an infant. Then came the tap, tap, tapping of a soft-shod foot upon the kitchen floor and the crooning voice of Aunty Rose.
Carolyn burst open the door. Round-eyed and quite speechless for the moment, she peered in at the picture there displayed.
The old woman, in her very plain, quakerish garb, sat in a low chair by the dresser, with a squirming bundle which she was jogging on her knee. At her elbow was a cup and spoon, and the smell of anise was strong in the room.
"A baby!" gasped Carolyn May. "Oh, Aunty Rose Kennedy! where did you find a baby?"
Aunty Rose smiled kindly above the infant's puckered little face.
"Come here, Car'lyn May," she said, "and look at your little cousin. Her name is Car'lyn, too."