Ruth actually went back, groping through the gathering smoke, for the doll. With it she scrambled out upon the shingles.
The Overlook House was nearest. Mr. Harrod made arrangements for the girls to go there and occupy several rooms. At least, he presumed he had made that arrangement with Mr. Severn when he left on the forenoon train for Bloomingsburg to arrange his insurance and hire mechanics to at once repair the bungalow.
The Spoondrift cottage was really not fit for occupancy and there seemed nothing else for the girls to do but follow his advice and go over to the Overlook. But Ruth Kenway had her doubts.
After the excitement of the fire, and the general “stir-about” which ensued, Pearl Harrod had quite forgotten that the Corner House girls were not on terms of intimacy with Trix Severn, the hotel keeper’s daughter. It probably never entered her good-natured mind that Trix would behave meanly when all hands from the Spoondrift had escaped the peril of the fire.
The girls trooped over to the hotel, after repacking their baggage, to look at the rooms which had been secured for them. Mr. Severn was not there, nor was the clerk on duty. Their schoolmate, Trix, was behind the desk.
“Oh, yes,” she said carelessly, “I presume we can find rooms for you. But father doesn’t care much to take in people who won’t stay the season out—especially at this time of the year. It’s a great inconvenience.”
“Pooh!” said Pearl, frankly, “I guess your father is running his hotel for money—not for sport. And Uncle Phil is going to pay him for all the accommodation we get.”
“Indeed?” returned Trix. “You seem to know a lot about our business, Miss Harrod.”
“Don’t you put on any of your high and mighty airs with me, Miss!” snapped Pearl. “For they don’t go down, let me tell you! Didn’t Uncle Phil secure rooms for us?”
“Well—he spoke of your coming here. There is Number 10, and 11, and 14; they’re all three double rooms, so you and Ann can have one, Maud and Lulu another, and Carrie and Lucy the third.”
“But, goodness gracious! there are ten of us!” cried Pearl. “You know that very well.”
“Those three rooms,” said Trix, with elaborate carelessness, “are all your uncle provided.”
“Why, Uncle Phil must be crazy! Didn’t he get a big room for the Kenways?”
“Humph!” said Trix, maliciously. “Are they with you, Miss Harrod? Your uncle must have quite overlooked them. All the rooms I know anything about his securing for your party are the three I’ve mentioned.”
“Well, where’s your father——”
“He’s gone fishing,” said Trix, promptly, and with a flash of satisfaction in her eyes. “He won’t be back till late to-night.”
“Then, where’s the clerk?” demanded Pearl, much worried.
“Mr. Cheever doesn’t know anything about it. I was here when your uncle made his bargain. Nothing was said about those Corner House girls—so there! There is no room for them here.”
“Well! I call that the meanest thing!” began Pearl, but Ruth, who had stood close by, interrupted:
“Don’t let it worry you in the least, Pearl. We have plenty of time to find accommodations before night.”
“You won’t find them here, Miss!” snapped Trix.
“Nothing would make me remain under this roof for a night,” said Ruth, indignantly. “My sisters and I have never done you any harm, Trix; quite the contrary, as you would remember had you any gratitude at all. This hotel is not the only place at Pleasant Cove where we can find shelter, I am sure.”
“Oh, Ruth! don’t go!” begged Pearl. “This mean girl is not telling the truth, I am sure. You’ll break up our party,” Pearl wailed.
“I couldn’t stay here now,” the oldest Corner House girl declared. “I am going to secure a tent for us. I am quite sure we will be comfortable in one. If other people can stand it under canvas, of course we can.”
She took Agnes by the hand and they went out of the hotel. Tess and Dot had not come with them, but had been left at the neighbor’s where they had all spent the night.
Pearl and the other girls could not very well follow them; they were not so independently situated as the Corner House girls. Ruth had a well filled pocket-book, as well as checks from Mr. Howbridge and an introductory letter to the branch bank at Pleasant Cove.
She had been so used to going ahead, and arranging matters for the whole family, during the past three years, that she was not troubled much by this emergency. She was sorry that the pleasant party had to be broken up, that was all. She was not sure that she and her sisters knew any of the campers along the riverside.
There were two men who supplied tents and outfits for those who wished to live under canvas, and so there were two distinct tent colonies, though they were side by side.
One was called Camp Enterprise, and the other Camp Willowbend. The latter was just at the bend of the river, and there were a few willows on the low bluff back of it.
There were not more than a dozen tents erected in either camp as yet, for it was early in the season. The Corner House girls rode quite a mile from the hotel to Willowbend Camp and selected a tent that was already erected.
It was a large wall-tent and it was divided in half by a canvas partition that made a bedroom of one end and a living-room of the front part. In the latter was a small sheetiron cookstove, with a pipe that led the smoke outside of the tent. But there was an oilstove, too, and Ruth decided that they would make arrangements for buying most of their food cooked, so as to reduce the details of housekeeping.
Agnes cheered up at once when she saw the tent-cities. And the smaller girls were delighted with the prospect of living under canvas.
There were four cots in the tent, with sheets and blankets, and apologies for pillows; there was matting laid down on the sand, too, in this bedroom part of the tent.
The remainder of the furnishings consisted of four camp-chairs, a plain deal table, a chest of drawers that contained the chinaware and cooking utensils, and a small icebox. This front apartment had a plank floor, made in sections.
It was a rough enough shelter, and the camping arrangements were crude; nevertheless, the Corner House girls saw nothing but fun ahead of them, and they were as busy as bees all that day “getting settled.”
There were pleasant people in the other tents of Camp Willowbend, but none of them chanced to be Milton people. There were several girls of ages corresponding to those of the Corner House girls, and the latter were sure they would find these neighbors good sport.
The Kenways were so busy at noon that they only “took a bite in their fists,” as good Mrs. MacCall would have expressed it. Ruth had been wise enough to buy some cooked food in the village before they came over to the camp, but she learned from some of the ladies in the tents that there was a woman in the neighborhood who baked bread to sell, and sometimes cookies and pies.
“You go to see Mrs. Bobster. She’s the nicest old lady!” declared one city matron. “Make your arrangements for bread now, Miss Kenway, for after she takes orders for as many as she can well supply, she wouldn’t agree to bake another loaf. She has a real New England conscience, and she wouldn’t promise to bake a single biscuit more than she knows she can get in her oven.”
The directions for finding Mrs. Bobster interested and amused the Corner House girls.
“She is the little old woman who lives in the shoe,” laughed their informant. “You can’t miss the house, if you go along the beach road toward town. It’s just beyond the other camp.”
“Oh!” cried Dot, eagerly, “I want to see the lady who lives in a shoe. She must have lots of children, for they were a great bother.”
“And,” said Tess, “do you suppose she does whip them all soundly and send them to bed with a piece of bread to eat?”
“We’ll discover all that,” promised Ruth, and soon after luncheon, having fixed up the tent, and set to rights their things that the expressman had brought over from the Spoondrift bungalow, the four sisters set out to find Mrs. Bobster.
The girls had ridden over from the village along the highroad, on which they had traveled two days before in the auto-stage. This lower, or “beach” road was a much less important thoroughfare. In places it followed the line of the shore so closely that the unusual high tides that had prevailed that spring, had washed a great deal of white sand across the swamp-grass and out upon it.
So, in places, the girls plodded through sand over their shoe tops. “Might as well go barefooted,” declared Agnes, sitting down for the third time to take off her oxfords and shake out the sand.
“You’d find it pretty different, if you tried it,” laughed Ruth. “This sand is hot.”
“It does seem as though you slipped back half a step each time you tried to go forward,” said Tess, seriously. “Aren’t we ever going to get there, Ruth?”
“Oh!” cried Dot, suddenly, “isn’t that a giraffe? And there’s a camel!”
“For goodness’ sake!” gasped Agnes, plunging to her feet, and hopping along after her sisters, trying to get on her left shoe. “Is this the African desert?”
“It looks like it,” said Ruth, herself amazed.
“And it’s hot enough,” grumbled Agnes. “Oh! I see! it’s a wrecked carousel.”
There were decrepit lions and tigers, too; the rain-washed and broken animals were the remains of a carousel, the machinery of which had been taken away. Once somebody had tried to finance a small pleasure resort between the real village of Pleasant Cove and the two tent colonies, but it had been unsuccessful.
The wreck of a “shoot the chutes,” the carousel, a dancing pavilion and a short boardwalk with adjacent stands, had been abandoned by the unfortunate promoters. There was a tower—now a “leaning” tower; broken-down swings; an abandoned moving picture palace; and back from the rest of the wreckage, several hundred yards from the sandy shore, the girls saw a rusty looking frame structure, shaped like a shoe, with a flagstaff sticking out of the roof.
“There it is!” cried Tess, eagerly. “And it does look like a shoe.”
Originally the house had been a tiny brown cottage set in the midst of a garden. The fence surrounding the place was still well kept. The second story of the cottage had been transformed into the semblance of a congress-gaiter, with windows in the sides and front. It looked as though that huge shoe had been carefully placed upon the rafters of the first floor rooms of the cottage.
“What a funny looking place!” exclaimed Agnes. “Did you ever see the like, Ruth? I wonder if Mrs. Bobster is as funny as her house.”
At that moment a figure bobbed up among the beanpoles in the garden, and the girls saw that it was a little woman in a calico sunbonnet. Her face was very small and hard and rosy—like a well-shined Baldwin apple. She had twinkling blue eyes, as sharp as file-points.
“Shoo!” exclaimed the little woman. “Shoo, Agamemnon! Git aout o’ them pea-vines like I told you!”
For a moment the Corner House girls did not see Agamemnon; they could not imagine who he was.
“Shoo, I tell ye!” exclaimed the little old woman who lived in a shoe, and she struck out with the short-handled hoe she was using.
There was a squawk, and out leaped, with awkward stride, a long legged rooster—of what “persuasion” it was impossible to tell, for he was swathed from neck to spurs in a wonderful garment which had undoubtedly been made out of a red flannel undershirt!
Two or three bedraggled tail-feathers appeared at the aperture in the back of this garment; otherwise Agamemnon seemed to be quite featherless. And when, clear of his mistress’ reach, he flapped his almost naked wings and crowed, he was the most comical looking object the Corner House girls had ever seen.
“You see, gals, Agamemnon’s been the most unlucky bird that ever was hatched,” said the little old woman, coming across the tiny lawn to the fence where the Corner House girls were staring, round-eyed, at the strange apparition of a rooster in a red-flannel sleeping-suit.
“But he’s the pluckiest! Yes, ma’am! He was only a pindling critter when he pipped the shell, an’ the vi-cis-si-tudes that bird’s been through since he fust scratched would ha’ made a human lay right down and die.
“The other chickens never would let him raise a pin-feather ter cover his nakedness; they picked on him suthin’ awful. I shet him up till his wings and tail growed, an’ a rat got in an’ gnawed the feathers right off him in one night; but Agamemnon picked and clawed so’t the old rat didn’t bleed him much.
“And now here, lately, a neighbor got a half-breed game rooster, an’ thet pesky fightin’ bird got down here an’ sasses Agamemnon on his own premises.
“Ag wouldn’t stand for that,” said the old lady, her blue eyes fairly crackling. “He sailed right inter that game chicken—an’ Neighbor Lincoln et his rooster the nex’ Sunday for dinner. ’Twas all he could do with the critter after Agamemnon got through with him.
“But that game rooster had tore ev’ry important feather off’n poor Agamemnon’s carcass. I had to do suthin’. ’Twarn’t decent for him to go ’round bare. So I made him that smock out of one o’ poor Eddie’s old shirts. And there ye be!” she finished breathlessly, smiling broadly upon the interested Corner House girls.
“I guess you are Mrs. Bobster?” asked Ruth, smiling in return.
“Are you really the—the lady who lives in the shoe?” asked Dot, round-eyed.
“That’s what they call me, pet,” said Mrs. Bobster, smiling at the smallest Kenway. “I’m the only little old woman who lives in this shoe. Poor Eddie thought we’d make a mint of money if we built over the top of our house like that, and I sold gingercakes and sweeties to the children who came down here to the beach. Eddie was allus mighty smart in thinkin’ up schemes for me to make money. But the Beach Company went up in smoke, as the sayin’ is; so we didn’t make our fortun’ after all.”
She laughed. Indeed, this little, apple-faced old lady was almost always laughing, it seemed.
“Poor Eddie!” she added. “I guess the Beach Company failin’ took about all the tuck out o’ him. He said himself it was the last straw on the camel’s back. He jest settled right down inter his chair, like; and he didn’t last that winter out. He was allus weakly, Eddie was.”
The Corner House girls knew she must be speaking of her husband. So now she was all alone in the house that had such a grotesque upper story.
“No. There ain’t no children here—only them that comes in to see me,” Mrs. Bobster said in answer to a question from Tess. “We never did have no children; but we allus loved ’em.”
Meanwhile she had opened the gate and invited the Corner House girls into the yard. There was an arbor which was already shaded by quick-growing vines. The little kitchen garden, with its border of gooseberries and currants, was as neat as it could be.
“I gotter cow of my own out back, and hens, too. I make a bare livin’ in winter, and put frills onto it in summer,” and the old lady laughed. “These folks from the city that come livin’ in tents here, like my bread and cookies.”
“That is what we have come to arrange for, Mrs. Bobster,” said Ruth.
“I dunno. Most all I can comferbly bake three times a week, is bespoke,” said the little old woman who lived in a shoe. “How many is there in your fam’bly, Miss?”
When she heard that there were just four of them—these girls alone—and that they were to live by themselves in a tent, she grew greatly interested.
“Surely I’ll bake for you—and cookies, too. Maybe a fruit pie oncet in a while—’specially if you’ll go over beyond the bend when berries is ripe and pick ’em yourself. And you gals a-livin’ all alone? Sho! I’d think you’d be scaret to death.”
“Why, no!” said Ruth. “Why should we?”
“After dark,” said the old woman, shaking her hand.
“Who would hurt us?” asked the Corner House girl in wonder.
“Can’t most always sometimes tell,” said the old woman, shaking her head.
“But you live here alone!”
“No,” she said, quickly. “Not after dark. I ain’t never alone. Oh, no!”
She spoke as though she were afraid Ruth might not believe her, and repeated the denial several times.
Tess and Dot were very anxious to go upstairs and see the rooms in the “shoe,” and they made the request to Ruth in an audible whisper.
“For sure!” cried Mrs. Bobster. “All the children that come here want to go upstairs. If I had ’em of my own, that’s where I’d put ’em all to bed after I’d fed ’em bread and ‘whipped ’em all soundly,’” and she laughed.
“I don’t believe you’d have whipped the children, if you’d been the really truly little old woman that lived in the shoe,” quoth Dot, putting a confiding hand into the apple-faced lady’s hard palm.
“I bet you wouldn’t have had to be whipped,” laughed Mrs. Bobster, leading Dot away, with Tess following.
Later the hostess of the shoe-house brought out a pitcher of milk and glasses with a heaping plate of ginger cookies—the old-fashioned kind that just melt on your tongue!
“Sho!” she said, when Ruth praised them. “It’s easy enough to make good merlasses cookies. But ye don’t wanter have no conscience when it comes to butter—no, indeed!”
Agamemnon came to the feast. In his ridiculous red flannel suit he waddled up to his mistress and pecked crumbs off her lap when she sat down on the bench in the arbor.
“He looks just like a person ready to go in swimming,” chuckled Agnes. “It’s a red bathing suit.”
“That’s one thing Agamemnon can’t stand. He don’t like water,” said Mrs. Bobster. “But if I let him out at low tide he’ll beau a flock of hens right down to the clamflats. But now, poor thing! they won’t go with him.”
“Who—the hens!” asked Ruth, wonderingly.
“Yes. They don’t think he looks jest right, I s’pose. If he chassés up to one of my old biddies, she tries to tear that flannel suit right off’n him. It’s hard on poor Agamemnon; but until his feathers start to grow good again, I don’t dare have him go without it. He’d git sunburned like a brick, in the fust place.”
This tickled Agnes so that she almost fell off the bench.
“But I should think the red flannel would tickle him awfully,” murmured Tess, quite seriously disturbed over the plight of the rooster.
“Sho! keeps away rheumatics. So poor Eddie allus said,” declared the widow. “That’s why he wore red flannel for forty year—and he never had a mite of rheumatism. Agamemnon ought to be satisfied he’s alive, after all he’s been through.”
It was really very funny to see the rooster strutting about the yard in what Agnes called his red bathing suit.
The Corner House girls remained for some time with Mrs. Bobster. When they went back to the camp at the bend they carried their first supply of bread and cookies.
They arrived at their tent to find a wagonette Pearl had hired in the port, and all the other girls who had been at the Spoondrift bungalow had come visiting.
The crowd was delighted with the way Ruth and her sisters were situated. It looked as though to live under canvas would be great fun indeed.
“Wish I’d spoken to Uncle Phil about it, and gotten him to hire tents instead of putting us up at that old hotel,” declared Pearl. “And do you know, girls, that Trix Severn told a story?”
“I didn’t suppose she’d be above being untruthful,” Ruth said, rather indignantly.
“And you’re quite right. We found out that her father set aside a big, double-bedded room for you four girls. Trix says she did not know anything about it. But of course Uncle Phil would not have forgotten you.”
“Never mind,” said Agnes. “I’m glad she acted so. We’re a whole lot better off here.”
“I believe you!” said Carrie Poole.
“You going to have Rosa Wildwood here in the tent with you when she comes?” asked Ann Presby.
“I’m afraid she ought to have a better place,” said Ruth. “And I believe I know just where she would get the attention—and food—that she needs,” and the oldest Corner House girl told the crowd about Mrs. Bobster—the little old lady who lived in a shoe.
“If I can get the dear old thing to take Rosa to board, I know she’ll give her just what she needs—good food, plenty of it, well cooked, and Rosa will be in a quiet place where she can rest all she wants to,” said Ruth.
She had no idea at the time of the strange adventure that would arise out of this plan of hers to bring Rosa Wildwood to stay for a part of the summer with the little old woman who lived in a shoe.
“Ruthie! there’s another man wants to sell you a boat.”
“Ruthie! there’s another man wants to sell an elephant—and it’s so cute!”
“For the land’s sake!” gasped Ruth, throwing down a sputtering pen, where she was writing on the chest of drawers in the tent. “How can a body write? And an elephant, no less!”
She rushed out to see Dot’s elephant, as that seemed more important than Tess’ announcement that a man had merely a boat for sale. Dot’s man was a gangling young fellow with a covered basket from which he was selling sugar cakes made into fancy shapes. So Dot had her elephant for the Alice-doll (almost everything that appealed to Dot was bought for that pampered child of hers!) and was appeased.
But the man with the boat was a different matter. He proved to be a boat owner and he wanted to hire one of his craft to the Corner House girls by the week. Agnes was just crazy (so she said) to add rowing to her accomplishments, and Ruth thought it would be a good thing herself.
The boat was a safe, cedar craft, with two pairs of light oars and a portable kerosene engine and propeller to use if the girls got tired of rowing. Ruth made the bargain after thoroughly looking over the boat, which had had only one season’s use.
There was a chain and padlock for mooring it to a post at the edge of the water just below the tent.
The older girls had already learned to swim in the school gymnasium at Milton. Milton was pretty well up to date in its school arrangements.
Tess had been taught to “strike out” and could be left safely to paddle by herself in shallow water while Ruth and Agnes taught little Dot.
The latter refused to own to any fear of the water. Up here in the river the waves were seldom of any consequence, and of course on stormy days the girls would not go bathing at all.
Others of the Willowbend campers had rowboats for the season; and some even owned their own motorboats. The girls were well advised regarding fishing-tackle and the like. Crabbing was a favorite sport just then, for several small creeks emptied into the river nearby and soft-shell crabs and shedders were plentiful.
“I’d be afraid of these crabs if their teeth were hard,” Dot declared, for she insisted that the “pincers” of the crustaceans were teeth.
“They are dreadfully squirmy, anyway,” sighed Tess. “Just like spiders. And yet, we eat them!”
“But—but I always shut my eyes when I eat them; just as I do when I swallow raw oysters,” confessed Dot. “They taste so much better than they look!”
Having the boat, the Corner House girls rowed to the village for their supplies and to visit their friends. They did not go to the Overlook House; but Pearl Harrod and her party were at the burned bungalow almost all day. They always bathed there, and the Corner House girls went down to bathe with them. The beach was better there than at the camp.
It was Monday when Ruth Kenway and her sisters were established in their tent. On Thursday of that week they rowed over to Spoondrift bungalow in the morning. Pearl greeted them before they got ashore with:
“Oh, Ruth! The funniest thing has happened. You’d never guess.”
“Trix Severn has the mumps!” exclaimed Agnes. “I knew she was all swelled up.”
“Not as good as that,” laughed Pearl. “But worse may happen to that girl than mumps. However, it’s nothing to do with Trix.”
“What is it?” asked Ruth, calmly. “I’m not a good guesser, Pearl.”
“You remember those Gypsies?”
“That are camped up in the woods!”
“Yes.”
“If they are Gypsies,” said Ruth, doubtfully.
“Of course they are!” cried Pearl. “Well, they’ve been around here looking for you.”
“For goodness’ sake!” gasped Agnes. “What for?”
Ruth herself looked startled. But Pearl began to laugh again.
“At least, that queer old woman has been asking for you,” she explained.
“Zaliska!” exclaimed Ruth, although she was very sure that was not the person’s name. Of course the name was part of the strange girl’s masquerade.
“It was this morning,” Pearl went on to say. “We didn’t see many of the women of the tribe when we came past that camp last week. But a number of them came down into the village this morning—selling baskets and telling fortunes from door to door. We saw them over by the hotel—didn’t we, girls?”
“Yes. I bought a basket from one of them,” admitted Carrie Poole.
“But when we came up here to the bungalow,” pursued Pearl, “one of the men working here asked me if I’d seen ‘my friend, the Gypsy queen’? So, I said ‘No,’ of course.
“Then he told me that that Zaliska had asked him where the girl was who was called Ruth Kenway. He told her that after the bungalow got afire, all the girls went to the hotel.”
“Then she’ll never find you there, Ruth,” interposed Agnes, with satisfaction.
Ruth was not sure that she did not wish the supposed Gypsy queen to find her. She knew that “Zaliska” was really the very pretty, dark-skinned girl whom she had been so much interested in on the train coming down from Milton.
And that strange girl was interested in Rosa Wildwood. Of that Ruth was as sure as she could be.
“Maybe she’ll follow you up to the camp,” said Lucy Poole. “I’d be afraid to live all alone in that tent if I were you girls.”
“Pooh!” exclaimed Agnes. “What’s going to hurt us!”
“The crabs might come up the beach at night and pinch your toes,” laughed Maud Everts.
“I don’t know,” Pearl said, seriously. “I wouldn’t want those Gyps interested in me.”
“Now you are trying to frighten us,” laughed Ruth. “We have plenty of neighbors. Don’t you come up there and try to play tricks on us in the tent. You might get hurt.”
“Bet she has a gatling gun,” chuckled Carrie Poole.
“I’m going to have something better than that,” declared Ruth, smiling. But she refused to tell them what.
Ruth remembered that the little old woman who lived in a shoe had spoken of being afraid, too; so the oldest Corner House girl made her plans accordingly, but kept them to herself.
After their bath the sisters dressed in the Harrod tent that had been pitched on the lawn behind the bungalow, and then went on to the village. Ruth and Agnes rowed very nicely, for the former, at least, had had some practise at this sport before coming to Pleasant Cove.
They tied the painter of their boat to a ring in one of the wharf stringers, and went “up town” to the stores. The village of Pleasant Cove was never a bustling business center. There were but few people on the main street, and most of those were visitors.
“There are two of those Gypsy women, Ruth!” hissed Agnes in her sister’s ear, as they came out of a store.
Ruth looked up to see the woman who had been in the train, and another. They were both humbly dressed, but in gay colors. Ruth looked up and down the street for the disguised figure of the young girl, but she was not in sight.
“My goodness, Ruth!” said Agnes, “what do you suppose that old hag of a Gypsy wants you for?”
“She isn’t——” began Ruth. Then she thought better of taking Agnes into her confidence just then and did not finish her impulsively begun speech, but said:
“We won’t bother about it. She probably won’t find us up at Willowbend Camp.”
“I should hope not!” cried Agnes. “I don’t want to get any better acquainted with those Gyps.”
The matter, however, caused Ruth to think more particularly of Rosa Wildwood. She had not yet found a boarding place for the Southern girl, and Rosa was to come down to Pleasant Cove the next Monday.
Ruth wanted to see Mrs. Bobster, and she did so that very afternoon. On their way back to the camp they tied the boat up at the foot of the wrecked pleasure park and walked up the broken boardwalk to the shoe-house.
“Here’s your bread, girls—warm from the oven,” said the brisk little woman. “And if you want a pan of seed cookies——”
“Oh! don’t we, just!” sighed Agnes.
The girls sat down to eat some of the delicacies right then and there, and Mrs. Bobster brought a pitcher of cool milk from the well-curb. Ruth at once opened the subject of getting board for Rosa with the little old woman who lived in a shoe.
“Wal, I re’lly don’t know what ter say to ye,” declared Mrs. Bobster. “I ain’t never kalkerlated ter run a boardin’ house——
“But one young lady! I dunno. They wanted me to take old Mr. Kendricks ter board last winter; the town selectmen did. But I told ’em ‘No.’ I warn’t runnin’ a boardin’ house—nor yet the poorfarm.”
“Poorfarm?” questioned Ruth, puzzled by the reference.
“Yep. Ye see, there ain’t been no town poor here in Pleasant Cove for a number o’ years. Last winter old Mr. Kendricks see fit to let the town board him. He’s spry enough to go clammin’ in the summer; an’ he kin steer a boat when his rheumatics ain’t so bad. But winters is gittin’ hard on him.
“It didn’t seem good jedgment,” Mrs. Bobster said, reflectively, “to open the poorfarm jest for him. B’sides, they’d got the old farm let to good advantage for another year to Silas Holcomb. So they come to me.
“Now, Mr. Kendricks is as nice an old man as ever you’d wish ter see,” pursued Mrs. Bobster. “He comes of good folks—jest as good as my poor Eddie’s folks.
“The town selectmen had consid’rable trouble gettin’ Mr. Kendricks took, ’count o’ his being so pertic’lar. Yeast bread seemed ter be his chief objection. He couldn’t make up his mind to it on account of havin’ had sour milk biscuit all his life; but finally, after I’d said ‘No,’ they got Mis’ Ann ’Liza Cobbles to agree to give him hot bread three times a day like he was used to.
“But, lawsy me! She ain’t a com-plete cook—no, indeed! Mr. Kendricks said her cookin’ warn’t up to the mark, an’ if he has to go on the town this comin’ winter he shouldn’t go to Mis’ Cobbles.
“The selectmen may be driv’ to open the poorfarm ag’in, an’ to gittin’ somebody ter do for Mr. Kendricks proper.
“Maybe it’s a sort of lesson to the folks of Pleasant Cove,” sighed Mrs. Bobster, “for bein’ sort o’ proud-like through reason of not havin’ no town poor for endurin’ of ten years. I view it that way myself.
“Mr. Kendricks says he feels as if he was meant ter be a notice to ’em; ter be ready an’ waitin’ ter help people in a proper way; not to be boardin’ of ’em ’round where they might git dyspepsia fastened on ’em through eatin’ of unproper food.”
Agnes was giggling; but Ruth managed to get the talkative old lady back into the track she wanted her in. The Corner House girl expatiated upon how little trouble Rosa would be, and what a nice girl she was.
“Well!” said Mrs. Bobster, “I might try her. You offer awful temptin’ money, Miss. And poor Eddie allus said I’d do anything for money!”
It had been fortunate for the deceased Mr. Bobster, as Ruth had learned, that his wife had been willing to earn money in any honest way; for Mr. Bobster himself seldom had done a day’s work after his marriage to the brisk little woman.
So the matter of Rosa Wildwood’s board and lodging was arranged, and the Kenways went back to their boat. Evening was approaching, and with it dark clouds had rolled up from the horizon, threatening a bad night.
Ruth and Agnes found a head wind to contend with when they pushed off the cedar boat. Ruth had learned to run the little motor propeller, and she started it at once. Otherwise they would have a hard time pulling up to Willowbend Camp.
During the week there were few men at the tent colonies. On Saturdays and Sundays the husbands and fathers were present in force; but now there was not a handful of adult males in either the Enterprise or Willowbend encampments.
The Corner House girls were helped ashore, however, and they hauled their boat clear up to the front of their tent. There was quite a swell on, and the waves ran far up the beach, hissing and spattering spray into the air. The wind swept this spray against the tents in gusts, like rain.
But there was no rain—only wind. The black clouds threatened, but there was no downpour. There was no such thing as having a coal fire, however; the wind blew right down the stack and filled the tent with choking smoke.
They lit a lantern and ate a cold supper. The flaps of the tent were laced down, for they had been warned against letting the wind get under. Now and then, however, a chill draught blew over them and the partition creaked.
“It’s just like a storm at sea,” said Agnes, rather fearfully, yet enjoying the novel sensation. “We might as well be on a sailing ship.”
“Not much!” exclaimed Ruth. “At least, we’re on an even keel.”
They agreed to go to bed early. Lying in the cots, well covered with the blankets, seemed the safest place on such a night. There was no shouting back and forth from tent to tent, and no visiting.
Lights went out early. The wind shrieked in the treetops back from the shore, and in the lulls the girls could hear the breakers booming on the rocks outside the cove.
Tess and Dot went to sleep—tired with the day’s activities. Not so the older girls. They lay and listened, and shivered as the booming voice of the wind grew in volume, and the water seemed to drive farther and farther up the beaches.
Forever after, this night was known at Pleasant Cove as “the night of the big wind.” But as yet it had only begun and the Corner House girls had no idea of what was in store for them.
Agnes did fall asleep; but Ruth only dozed, if she closed her eyes at all. The rumble of the storm shook the nerves of the oldest Corner House girl—and no wonder!
Ruth felt the weight of responsibility for her sisters’ safety. If anything happened while they were under canvas she knew that she would be blamed.
Sometimes the spray swept in from the river and spattered on the canvas like a drenching shower. The walls of the tent shook. She heard many sounds without that she could not explain—and some of these sounds frightened her.
Suppose the tent should blow down? The way the wind sometimes shook it reminded Ruth of a dog shaking a bit of rag.
Then, when the wind held its breath for a moment, the roaring of the sea in the distance was a savage sound to which the girl’s ears were not attuned.
She had left the lantern lit and it swung from a rope tied to the ridgepole of the tent, and beyond the half partition of canvas. Its flickering light cast weird shadows upon the canvas roof.
Now and then the spray beat against the front of the tent, while the roof shook and shivered as though determined to tear away from the walls. Ruth wished she had gone all around the tent before dark to make sure the pegs were driven well into the sand.
Occasionally children cried shrilly, for the noise of the elements frightened them; Ruth was thankful that Tess and Dot slept on.
She slept herself at last; how long she did not know, for when she awoke she was too greatly frightened to look at her watch. The wind seemed suddenly to have increased. It seemed struggling to tear the tent up by the roots!
And as the canvas shook, and swelled, and strove to burst its fastenings, there came a sudden snap on one side and one of the pegs flew high in the air at the end of its rope, coming down slap on the roof of the tent!
“The peg has pulled out!” gasped Ruth, sitting up in her cot and throwing off the blanket.
The canvas was straining and bellying fearfully at the point where the peg had drawn. It was likely to draw the pegs on either side. Ruth very well knew that if a broad enough opening was made for the wind to get under, the tent would be torn from its fastenings.
She hopped out upon the matting and shook Agnes by the shoulder.
“Get up! Get up, Ag!” she called, breathlessly. “Help me.”
She ran to the front of the tent for the maul—a long-handled, heavy-headed croquet-mallet. When she returned with it, Agnes was trying to rub her eyes open.
“Come quick, Ag! We’ll be blown away,” declared Ruth.
“I—I——What’ll we do?” whimpered Agnes.
“We must hold the tent down. Come on! Get into your mackintosh. I’ll get the lantern.”
Around the upright pole in the sleeping part of the tent were hung the girls’ outer garments. Ruth got into her own raincoat and buttoned it to her ankles. She left Agnes struggling with hers while she ran to unhang the lantern. She knew the night must be as black as a pocket outside.
“Wha—what you going to do?” stuttered Agnes.
“Drive the pegs in deeper. One of them pulled out.”
“Oh, dear! Can we?”
“I guess we’ll have to, if we don’t want to lose our tent. Hear that wind?”
“It—it sounds like cannon roaring.”
“Come on!”
“But that isn’t the front flap——”
“Think I’m going to unlace that front flap when the wind’s blowing right into it?”
“Can’t we get out yonder, where the peg has been pulled?”
“But how’ll we get in again when all the stakes are driven down hard?” snapped Ruth, beginning to unlace the flaps of the rear wall of the tent.
“Oh! oh!” moaned Agnes. “Hear that wind?”
“I wouldn’t care if it only hollered,” gasped Ruth. “It’s what it will do if it ever gets under this tent, that troubles me!”
She unlaced the flaps only a little way. “Come along with that lantern, Ag. We’ve got to crawl under.”
“‘Get down and get under,’” giggled Agnes, hysterically.
But she brought the lantern and followed Ruth out of the tent, on hands and knees. When they stood up and tried to go around to that side of the tent where the peg had pulled out, the wind almost knocked them down.
“And how the sleet cuts!” gasped Agnes, her arm across her eyes for protection.
“It’s sand,” explained Ruth. “I thought it was spray from the river. But a good deal of it is sand—just like a sand-storm in the desert.”
“Well!” grumbled Agnes, “I hope it’s killing a lot of those sandfleas that bother us so. I don’t see how they can live and be blown about this way.”
Ruth tackled the first post at the corner and beat it down as hard as she could, Agnes holding the lantern so that the older girl could see where to strike.
They went from one peg to the next, taking each in rotation. And when they reached the one that had pulled out entirely, Ruth drove that into the ground just as far as it would go.
Strangely enough, throughout all this business, Tess and Dot did not awake. Ruth went clear around the tent, driving the stakes. The wind howled; the sand and spray blew; and the voices of the Night and of the Storm seemed fairly to yell at them. Still the smaller Corner House girls slept through it all. Ruth and Agnes crept back into the tent and laced the flaps down in safety.
A little later, before either of them fell asleep again, they heard shouting and confusion at a distance. In the morning they learned that two of the tents in the Enterprise Camp had blown down.
The shore was strewn with wreckage, too, when daybreak came; but the wind seemed to have blown itself out. Many small craft had come ashore, and some were damaged. It was not often that the summer visitors at Pleasant Cove saw any such gale as this had been.
Everything was all right with the Corner House girls, and Ruth decided they would stick to the tent, in spite of the fact that some of the camping families were frightened away from the tent colonies by this disgraceful exhibition of Mr. Wind!
The smaller Kenways, as well as the bigger girls, were enjoying the out-of-door life immensely. They were already as brown as berries. They ran all day, bare-headed and bare-legged, on the sands. It was plain to be seen that the change from Milton to Pleasant Cove was doing all the Corner House girls a world of good.
And during the extremely pleasant days that immediately followed the night of the big wind, many new colonists came to the tents. Two big tents were erected in the Willowbend Camp, for Joe Eldred and his friends—and that included, of course, Neale O’Neil. But the Milton boys would not arrive until the next week.
On Monday afternoon the Corner House girls walked down to the railroad station to greet Rosa Wildwood. It had been a very hot day in town and it was really hot at Pleasant Cove, as well.
“Oh! you poor thing!” gasped Ruth, receiving Rosa in her strong arms as she stumbled off the car steps with her bag.
“I’m as thin as the last run of shad, am I not?” asked Rosa, laughing. “That train was awful! I am baked. It’s never like this down South. The air is so much dryer there; there isn’t this humidity. Oh!”
“Well, you’re here all right now, Rosa,” cried Ruth. “We have a nice, easy carriage for you to ride in. And the dearest place for you to live!”
“And scrumptious eating, Rose,” added Agnes.
“With the little old woman who lives in a shoe,” declared Tess, eager to add her bit of information.
Dot’s finger had strayed to the corner of her mouth, as she stared. For she had never met Rosa before, and she was naturally rather a bashful child.
“Now!” cried Ruth, again. “Where is he?”
“Who?” demanded Agnes, staring all about. “Neale didn’t come, did he?”
“Oh, he’s up in the baggage-car ahead,” said Rosa, laughing.
“You sit right down here till I get him,” Ruth commanded.
“Here’s the check,” Rosa said, and to the amazement of the other Corner House girls Ruth ran right away toward the head of the train with the baggage check, and without saying another word.
There were two baggage cars on the long train and from the open door of the first one the man was throwing trunks and bags onto the big wheel-truck.
So Ruth ran on to the other car. The side-door was wheeled back just as she arrived, and a glad bark welcomed her appearance.
Tom Jonah stood in the doorway, straining at his leash held in the hands of the baggageman. His tongue lolled out on his chest like a red necktie, and he was laughing just as plainly as ever a dog did laugh.
“I see he knows you, Miss,” said the man. “You don’t have to prove property. He sure is glad to see you,” and he accepted the check.
“No gladder than I am to see him,” said Ruth. “Let him jump down, please.”
She caught the leather strap as the baggageman tossed it toward her, and Tom Jonah bounded about her in an ecstasy of delight.
“Down, sir!” she commanded. “Now, Tom Jonah, come and see the girls. But behave.”
He barked loudly, but trotted along beside her most sedately. Tess and Dot had heard him, and deserting Rosa and Agnes, they came flying up the platform to meet Ruth and the big dog.
The two younger Corner House girls hugged Tom Jonah, and he licked their hands in greeting. Agnes was as extravagantly glad to see him as were the others.
“How did you come to send for him, Ruthie?” Agnes cried.
“I thought we might need a chaperon at the tent,” laughed Ruth.
“The Gyps!” exclaimed Agnes, under her breath. “Let them come now, if they want to. You’re a smart girl, Ruthie.”
“Sh!” commanded the older sister. “Don’t let the children hear.”
They helped Rosa into the wagonette and then climbed in after her. Ruth had taken off Tom Jonah’s leash and the good old dog trotted after the carriage as it rolled through Main Street and out upon the Shore Road toward the tent colonies.
Rosa brought all the news of home to the Corner House girls and many messages from Mrs. MacCall and Uncle Rufus. Of course, they could expect no word from Aunt Sarah, for it was not her way to be sympathetic or show any deep interest in what her adopted nieces were doing.
The girls from the old Corner House might have been a little homesick had there not been so much to take up their attention each hour at Pleasant Cove.
They brought Rosa to the little old woman who lived in a shoe, and the moment Mrs. Bobster saw how weak and white she was her sympathy went out to her.
“Tut, tut, tut!” she said, clucking almost as loudly as Agamemnon himself. “We’ll soon fix you up, my dear. If you stay long enough here at the beach, you’ll be as brown and strong as these other gals.”
Rosa put her arm about Ruth’s neck when the Corner House girls were about to leave.
“This is a heavenly place, Ruth Kenway, and you are an angel for bringing me down heah. I don’t know what greater thing anybody could do fo’ me—and you aren’t even kin!”
“Don’t bother, Rosa. I haven’t done much——”
“There’s nothing in the world—but one thing—that could make me happier.”
Ruth looked at her curiously, and Rosa added:
“To find June. I hope to find her some day—yes, I do.”
“And suppose I should help you do that?” laughed the oldest Corner House girl.
“Oh, Dot! do come here. Did you ever see such a funny thing in all your life?”
Tess Kenway was just as earnest as though the discovery she had made was really of great moment. The two bare-legged girls were on the sands below the tent colony of Willowbend, and the tide was out.
The receding waves had just left this wet flat bare. Here and there the sand still dimpled to the heave of the tide, and little rivers of water ran into the hollows and out again.
“What is the matter, Tess?” asked Dot, wonderingly.
“See!”
Tess pointed down at her feet—where the drab, wet sand showed lighter-colored under the pressure of her weight.
“What is it?” gasped the amazed Dot.
There was a tiny round hole in the sand—just like an ant hole, only there was no “hill” thrown up about it. As Tess tip-tilted on her toes to bring more pressure to bear near the orifice in the sand, a little fountain of water spurted into the air—shot as though from a fairy gun buried in the sand.
“Goodness!” gasped Dot again. “What is that?”
“That’s what I say,” responded Tess. “Did you ever see the like?”
“Oh! here’s another,” cried Dorothy, who chanced to step near a similar vent. “See it squirt, Tess! See it squirt!”
“What kind of a creature do you suppose can be down there?” asked the bigger girl.
“It—it can’t be anything very big,” suggested Dot. “At least, it must be awfully narrow to get down through the little hole, and pull itself ’way out of sight.”
This suggestion certainly opened a puzzling vista of possibilities to the minds of both inland-bred girls. What sort of an animal could possibly crawl into such a small aperture—and yet throw such a comparatively powerful stream of water into the air?
They found several more of the little air-holes. Whenever they stamped upon the sand beside one, up would spring the fountain!
“Just like the books say a whale squirts water through its nose,” declared Tess, who had rather a rough-and-ready knowledge of some facts of natural history.
A man with a basket on his arm and a four-pronged, short-handled rake in his hand, was working his way across the flats; sometimes stooping and digging quickly with his rake, when he would pick something up and toss it into his basket.
He drew near to two Corner House girls, and Dot whispered to Tess:
“Do you suppose he’d know what these holes are for? You ask him, Tess.”
“And he’s digging out something, himself. Do you suppose he’s collecting clams? Ruth says clams grow here on the shore and folks dig them,” Tess replied.
“Let’s ask about the holes,” determined Dot, who was persistent whether the cause was good or bad.
The two girls approached the clam-digger, hand in hand. Dot hugged tight in the crook of one arm her Alice-doll.
“Please, sir,” Tess ventured, “will you tell us what grows down under this sand and squirts water up at us through such a teeny, weeny hole?”
The man was a very weather-beaten looking person, with his shirt open at the neck displaying a brawny chest. He smiled down upon the girls.
“How’s that, shipmet?” he asked, in a very husky voice. “Show me them same holes.”
The sisters led the way, and the very saltish man followed. It was not until then that Tess and Dot noticed that one of his legs was of wood, and he stumped along in a most awkward manner.
“Hel-lo!” growled the man, seeing the apertures in the sand. “Them’s clams, an’ jest what I’m arter. By your lief——”
He struck the rake down into the sand just beyond one of the holes and dug quickly for half a minute. Then he tossed out of the hole he had dug a nice, fat clam.
“There he be, shipmets,” declared the clam-digger, who probably had a habit of addressing everybody as “shipmate.”
“Oh—but—did he squirt the water up at us, sir?” gasped Dot.
The wooden-legged man grinned again and seized the clam between a firm finger and thumb. When he pinched it, the bivalve squirted through its snout a fine spray.
“Oh, mercy!” exclaimed Tess, drawing back.
“But—but how did he get down into the sand and only leave such a tiny hole behind him?” demanded Dot, bent upon getting information.
“Ah, shipmet! there ye have it. I ain’t a l’arned man. I ain’t never been to school. I went ter sea all my days till I got this here leg shot off me and had to take to wearin’ a timber-toe. I couldn’t tell ye, shipmets, how a clam does go down his hole an’ yet pulls the hole down arter him.”
“Oh!” sighed Dot, disappointedly.
“It’s one o’ them wonders of natur’ ye hear tell on. I never could understand it myself—like some ignerant landlubbers believin’ the world is flat! I know it’s round, ’cos I been down one side o’ it an’ come up the other!
“As for science, an’ them things, shipmets, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout ’em. I digs clams; I don’t pester none erbout how they grows——”
And he promptly dug another and then a third. The girls watched him, fascinated at his skill. Nor did the “peg-leg” seem to trouble him at all in his work.
“Please, sir,” asked Tess, after some moments, “how did you come to lose your leg—your really truly one, I mean?”
“Pi-rats,” declared the man, with an unmoved countenance. “Pi-rats, shipmet—on the Spanish Main.”
“Oh!” breathed both girls together. Somehow that expression was faintly reminiscent to them. Agnes had a book about pirates, and she had read out loud in the evenings at the sitting-room table, at the old Corner House. Tess and Dot were not aware that “the Spanish Main” had been cleared of pirates, some years before this husky-voiced old clam-digger was born.
The clam-digger offered no details about his loss, and Tess and Dot felt some delicacy about asking further questions. Besides, Tom Jonah came along just then and evinced some distaste for the company of the roughly dressed one-legged man. Of course, he could not dig clams in his best clothes, as Tess pointed out; but Tom Jonah had confirmed doubts about all ill-dressed people. So the girls accompanied the dog back towards the tents.
The big girls had been out in the boat and Ruth had left Agnes to bring up the oars and crab nets, as well as to moor the boat, while she hastened to get dinner.
The tide being on the turn they could not very well pull the boat up to the mooring post; but there was a long painter by which it could be tied to the post. Agnes, however, carried the oars up to the tent and then forgot about the rest of her task as she dipped into a new book.
Tess and Dot came to the empty boat and at once climbed in. Tom Jonah objected at first. He ran about on the sand—even plunged into the water a bit, and put both front paws on the gunwale.
If ever a dog said, “Please, please, little mistresses, get out of the boat!” old Tom Jonah said it!
But the younger Corner House girls paid no attention to him. They went out to the stern, which was in quite deep water, and began clawing overboard with the crab nets. With a whine, the dog leaped into the craft.
Now, whether the jar the dog gave it as he jumped into the boat, or his weight when he joined the girls in the stern, set the cedar boat afloat, will never be known. However, it slid into the water and floated free.
“We can catch some crabs, too, maybe, Tess,” Dot said.
Neither of them noticed that the oars were gone, but had they been in the boat, Tess or Dot could not have used them—much. And surely Tom Jonah could not row.
They did not even notice that they were afloat until the tide, which was just at the turn, twisted the boat’s nose about and they began drifting up the river.
“Oh, my, Dot!” gasped Tess. “Where are we going?”
“Oh-oo-ee!” squealed Dot, raking wildly with one of the nets. “I almost caught one.”
“But we’re adrift, Dot!” cried Tess.
The younger girl was not so much impressed at first. “Oh, I guess they’ll come for us,” she said.
“But Ruth and Aggie can’t reach us—’nless they swim.”
“Won’t we float ashore again? We floated out here,” said Dot.
She refused to be frightened, and Tess bethought her that she had no right to let her little sister be disturbed too much. She was old enough herself, however, to see that there was peril in this involuntary voyage. The tide was coming in strongly and the boat was quickly passing the bend. Before either Tess or Dot thought to cry out for help, they were out of sight of the camp and there was nobody to whom to call.
Tom Jonah had crouched down in the stern, with his head on his paws. He felt that he had done his duty. He had not allowed the two small girls to go without him on this voyage. He was with them; what harm could befall?
“I—I guess Alice would like to go ashore, Tess,” hesitated Dot, at last, having seized her doll and sat down upon one of the seats. The boat was jumping a good deal as the little waves slapped her, first on one side and then on the other. Without anybody steering she made a hard passage of it.
“I’d like to get ashore myself, child,” snapped Tess. “But I don’t see how we are going to do it.”
“Oh, Tess! are we going to be carried ’way out to sea?”
“Don’t be a goosey! We’re going up the river, not down,” said the more observant Tess.
“Well, then!” sighed Dot, relieved. “It isn’t so bad, is it? Of course, we’ll stop somewhere.”
“But it will soon be dinnertime,” said her sister. “And I guess Ruth and Aggie won’t know where we’ve gone to.”
In fact, nobody about the tent colony had noticed the cedar boat floating away with the two girls in it—to say nothing of the dog!