Rosa Wildwood quickly showed improvement after her arrival at Pleasant Cove. Under the ministrations of the little old woman who lived in a shoe the Southern girl could not help feeling a measure of contentment, if nothing else.
Her hostess was such a cheerful body! And, as Agnes had promised, Rosa was supplied with good, hearty food—and plenty of it.
There was a glass of warm milk, fresh from the cow, on the stand beside the head of her little chintz-hung bed every morning when Rosa awoke. For Mrs. Bobster was up and about by daybreak.
When Rosa came down to the sunlit kitchen, breakfast was ready and the little old woman who lived in a shoe declared she had all her “outside” chores done, saving her regular work in her garden.
Rosa sometimes helped about the housework. The doctor had told her that certain forms of housework would be good for her. But she had to be very exact and careful in doing the work about the shoe-house, for Mrs. Bobster was a New England housekeeper of the old school and was as methodical as Grandfather’s Clock.
The girls from Milton did not neglect Rosa Wildwood. At least, the Corner House girls and their friends did not. Pearl Harrod and the girls at Spoondrift Bungalow came with a wagonette and took her driving. The repairs had been made upon the bungalow and Pearl’s party was there again—all but the Corner House girls.
Ruth had decided to stick to the tent for the remainder of their stay at Pleasant Cove. And Willowbend Camp was becoming the liveliest spot along the entire beach-front.
Ruth and her sisters came after Rosa and took her out in their boat. The boys who were living at Willowbend, too, took an interest in the frail Southern girl. For Rosa Wildwood, with the color stealing back into her cheeks and lips, and her eyes bright again, was a very attractive girl indeed!
Dot Kenway’s birthday came at this time, and that was the date set for the Frankfurter Party. Dot’s guesses about the origin and nature of the hearty and inviting, if not delicate, frankfurter, had delighted the campers who heard the story; and Dot’s sisters and Neale spent some time and a good deal of ingenuity in preparing for the festive occasion.
Rosa came over to the tent colony and helped the girls prepare for the party. Moreover, she had a secret to impart to Ruth.
“Don’t let the other girls hear, Ruth Kenway,” she said, with much mystery. “But Mrs. Bobster is the oddest thing!”
“Well! I guess she is,” laughed Ruth. “But she’s good.”
“Good as gold,” agreed Rosa. “But she has some funny ways. Of course I go to bed early. The doctor told me I should.”
“Well?”
“You’d think she’d go to bed early, too, when she’s up so soon in the morning?”
“Well——I suppose that’s a matter of taste,” Ruth observed.
“Anyway, you know how lonesome it is over there?”
“I guess there are not many people about—after dark.”
“That’s just it!” cried Rosa. “Mrs. Bobster scurries around and does all her out of doors chores before dark. And she locks and bolts all the doors. She is really afraid after dark.”
Ruth nodded. She remembered how once the little old woman who lived in a shoe had spoken to her about being afraid.
“Well, she locks and bolts the doors,” said Rosa, “and then we have supper and I go to bed. Sometimes, like a good child, I go right to sleep. Sometimes, like a bad child, I don’t.”
“Well—what then?”
“Then I hear Mrs. Bobster talking. She has company. I never hear the company come in, or go out; but she has it every night.”
“And never says anything about it?”
“Not a word,” said Rosa. “I hinted once or twice that she must have company every night, and all she said was that she didn’t like sitting alone.”
“Is it a man or a woman?” asked Ruth.
“I don’t know,” laughed Rosa. “That’s one of the funny things about it. Although I hear Mrs. Bobster sometimes chattering like a magpie, I never hear an answer.”
“What?” gasped Ruth, in amazement.
“That’s right,” said Rosa, nodding confidently. “Whoever it is talks so low that I haven’t heard his, or her, voice yet!”
“A dumb person?” suggested Ruth.
“Maybe. At any rate, I couldn’t tell you for the life of me whether it is a man or a woman that comes to see the little old woman who lives in a shoe. Isn’t it odd, Ruth?”
“I should say it was,” admitted Ruth.
“But she treats me well,” sighed Rosa. “I wouldn’t do her any harm for the world. But I am awfully curious!”
It was this day, too—the day of Dot’s party—that the wooden-legged clam-digger came along through the Willowbend tent colony again. He always came to the tent of the Corner House girls when he appeared; Ruth was a regular customer, for she and her sisters were fond of shellfish.
“I’ll have fifty to-day, Mr. Kuk,” she said to the saltish individual when he hailed her from outside the tent. Ruth had learned that his name was Habakuk Somes; everybody along the beach called him “Kuk,” and Ruth, to be polite, tagged him with “Mister” in addition.
Tom Jonah appeared and showed his disapproval of the clam man by a throaty growl. “That thar dawg don’t like me none too well,” said the clam man. “What d’yeou call him?”
“Tom Jonah.”
“Thet’s enough to sink him,” said the man with a grin. “How’d ye come ter call him that?”
“It’s his name,” said Ruth. “It was engraved on his collar when he came to our house in Milton.”
“Oh! then he ain’t allus been your dawg, shipmet?” demanded the man.
“No. He came to us. We don’t know where from. But he is a gentleman, and he is going to stay with us as long as he will.”
The clam man blinked, and said nothing more. But he cast more than one glance at Tom Jonah before he went away.
The preparations made for the birthday party included the purchase of a good many pounds of first quality frankfurters. And when they were delivered to the Corner House girls’ tent, the fun began.
Tess and Dot were sent away for the morning to play with some of the children at Enterprise Camp. Then Ruth and Agnes and Rosa and Neale set to work to make frankfurters into the very funniest looking things that you could imagine!
With bits of tinsel and colored paper and pins and other small wares, the young folks set to work. They made frankfurters look like caricatures of all kinds of beasts and birds, and insects as well. One was the body of a huge, gaily-winged butterfly. Another was striped and horned like a worm of ferocious aspect.
They were made into fishes, with tails and fins. Neale made a nest with several “young” frankfurters poking their heads out for food, while the mother frankfurter was just poised upon the edge of the nest, her wings spread to balance her.
There were short-legged frankfurters, with long, flapping ears, like dachshunds, and long, stiff-legged frankfurters, with abbreviated tails, and appearing to gambol like lambs. There were several linked together and apparently creeping about like a species of jointed, horrid caterpillar.
Then they actually were bunched like bananas! while some grew, husked, like sweetcorn, and some had the green, fluffy tops of carrots cunningly fastened to them and were tied together as carrots are bunched in the market.
Neale’s ingenuity, however, rose to its height when he stretched a slanting wire across the tent, higher than the partition, and made several “aeroplanes” with bodies of the succulent sausage, which he could start at one end of the wire to “fly” to the other end.
The young folks came to Willowbend Camp about five o’clock to enjoy the festivities. The older Corner House girls, with the help of some of their friends, served the crowd a hearty supper, the main course of which was hot frankfurters, prepared by the “frankfurter man” whose acquaintance Tess and Dot had made.
When the fun was over the guests took the fancy-dressed sausages home as souvenirs.
Neale and Agnes and Ruth went home with Rosa, for it was a long walk, and part of the way it was lonely. One of the ladies who had chaperoned the party remained with Tess and Dot while their sisters were absent.
The young folk had a pleasant walk, for there was a moon. Coming finally in sight of the home of the little old woman who lived in a shoe, Ruth said to Rosa, who walked with her:
“It is a lonely spot, isn’t it?”
“But I never feel afraid. Only I’m curious about Mrs. Bobster’s friend——There! See it?” she cried, suddenly, but under her breath.
“See what?” Ruth asked.
“The shadow on the curtain,” said Rosa.
At the same moment Agnes said: “Hello! Mrs. Bobster has company.”
There was a lamp lit in the tiny front room of the cottage. Plainly silhouetted upon the white shade was a man sitting in a chair.
“What! With his hat on?” exclaimed Ruth. “Who can it be?”
“He isn’t very polite, whoever he is,” said Neale.
“Let’s see about it,” suggested Agnes. “Do you know anything about him, Rosa?”
“I only know she has had a visitor sometimes—after I’m in bed,” said the Southern girl.
“Come on! let’s go in the side door,” said Agnes, in a low voice.
But when they had tiptoed to the door they found it locked. Rosa laughed. “I tell you she never leaves a door or window unfastened after dark,” she said.
They heard the little old woman who lived in a shoe coming to the door to let them in. But Rosa had to assure her who it was before Mrs. Bobster unlocked the door.
“But you had company?” said Agnes, rather pertly.
“Eh?” returned Mrs. Bobster, setting the broom behind the hall door. “Oh, yes! I don’t never kalkerlate ter be alone many evenings.”
“Is he here now?” demanded Neale, laughing.
“Who? Him? No,” said the widow, calmly. “He’s bashful. He went out jest as you young folks come in. Sit right down, children, an’ I’ll find a pitcher of milk an’ some cookies.”
The Corner House girls and Rosa—to say nothing of Neale O’Neil—were amazed. They looked at each other wonderingly as the widow bustled out to the pantry.
“I’d give a penny,” murmured Rosa Wildwood, “to know who her mysterious friend is.”
The wooden-legged clam digger, Habakuk Somes, seemed suddenly to have acquired a great interest in Tom Jonah.
He appeared almost every day at the tent of the Corner House girls and did his best to become friendly with the dog. Tom Jonah grew used to his presence, but he would allow no familiarities from the dilapidated waterside character.
The girls thought “Kuk” Somes only queer; the boys “joshed” him a good deal. Nobody minded having him around, considering merely that he was a peculiar fellow, and harmless.
His tales of sea-going and sea-roving were wonderful indeed. How much of them was truth and how much pure invention, the older Corner House girls and Neale O’Neil did not know. However, they forgave his “historical inaccuracies” because of the entertainment they derived from his yarns.
Tess and Dot listened to the old fellow with perfect confidence in his achievements. Had he not known—in a moment—what it was that shot water up through the holes in the clam flat? The smaller girls listened to old Kuk Somes with unshaken confidence.
“And how did the pirates get your leg, Mr. Kuk?” asked Tess. “Your really truly leg, I mean.”
She and Dot were sitting on the edge of the tent-platform, under the awning, with their bare feet in the sand, with Tom Jonah lying comfortably between them. The dog had a brooding eye upon the clam digger, who sat on a broken lobster trap a few feet away.
“Huh! them pi-rats?” queried the clam digger. “Well—er—now, did I say it was pi-rats as got my leg, shipmet?”
“Yes, you did, sir.” Dot hastened to bolster up her sister’s statement of fact. “And you said it was on the Spanish Main.”
“Well!” declared the old man, “so it was, an’ so they did. Pi-rats it was, shipmet. An’ I’ll tell yer the how of it.
“I was carpenter’s mate on the Spankin’ Sal, what sailed from Bosting to Rio, touchin’ at some West Injy ports on the way—pertic’larly Porto Rico, which is a big merlasses port. We had a good part of our upper holt stowed with warmin’ pans for the merlasses planters——”
“Oh, Mr. Kuk!” ejaculated Tess in rather a pained voice. “Isn’t that a mistake? Warming pans?”
“Not by a joblot it ain’t no mistake!” returned the old man. “Warming pans I sez, an’ warming pans I sticks to.”
“But my geogoraphy,” Tess ventured, timidly, and mispronouncing the word as usual, “says that the West Indies are tropical. Porto Rico is near the Equator.”
“Now, ain’t that wonderful—jest wonderful?” declared the clam digger, smiting his knee with his palm. “Shows what it is to be book l’arned, shipmet.
“’Course, I knowed them was tropical places, but I didn’t know ’twas all writ down in books—joggerfries, do they call ’em?”
“Yes, sir,” said Tess, seriously. “And it is so hot down there they couldn’t possibly need warming pans.”
“Now, ye’d think that, wouldn’t ye, shipmet? And I’d think it. But the skipper of the Spankin’ Sal, he knowed dif’rent.
“A master brainy man was Captain Roebuck. That was his name—Roebuck,” declared the clam digger, solemnly. “Hev you ever seen a warming pan, shipmet—an old-fashioned warmin’ pan?”
“Oh, yes!” cried Tess and Dot together. “There’s one hangs over the mantelpiece in the sitting-room of the old Corner House,” added Tess. “That’s where we live when we’re at home in Milton.
“And it is a round brass pan, with a cover that has holes in it, and a long handle. Mrs. MacCall says folks used to put live coals in it and iron the beds before folks went to bed, in the cold weather. But we got furnace heat now, and don’t need the warming pan.”
“Surely, surely, shipmet,” agreed the clam digger. “Them’s the things. And Cap’n Roebuck of the Spankin’ Sal, plagued near crammed the upper holt with them.
“It looks right foolish, shipmet; but that skipper got a chancet ter buy up a whole lot o’ them brass warmin’ pans cheap. If he’d seen ’em cheap enough, he’d bought up a hull cargo of secon’ hand hymn books, and he’d took ’em out to the heathen in the South Seas and made a profit on ’em—he would that!” pursued Kuk, confidently.
“He must have been a wonderful man, sir,” said Tess, while Dot sat round-eyed and listened.
“Wonderful! wonderful!” agreed the clam digger. “But about them warmin’ pans. When we got ter Porto Rico we broke out the first of them things. Looked right foolish. All them dons in Panama hats and white pants, an’ barefooted comin’ aboard to look over samples of tradin’ stock, an’ all they can see is warmin’ pans.
“‘What’s them things for?’ axed the first planter, in the Spanish lingo.
“‘Them’s skimmers,’ says Cap’n Roebuck, knowin’ it warn’t no manner o’ use to try to explain the exact truth to a man what ain’t never seed snow, or knowed there was a zero mark on the almanack.
“He grabbed up one o’ them warmin’ pans and made a swing with it like you’d use a crab-net. ‘See! See!’ says the dons. ‘Skim-a da merlasses.’ That’s Spanish for ‘Yes, yes! skim the merlasses,’” explained Kuk, seriously.
“‘But what’s the cover for?’ axed the don. ‘Ye don’t hafter have no cover,’ says Cap’n Roebuck, and he yanks the cover off the warmin’ pan an’ throws it away.
“And there them dons had the finest merlasses dipper that ever went inter the islan’s. Cap’n Roebuck seen their eyes snap an’ put a good, stiff price on the things, and inside of a week there warn’t a warmin’ pan left on the Spankin’ Sal.
“Then,” pursued the clam digger, “we stowed away in our upper holt goods what would bring a fancy price at Rio, and laid our course for the Amazon.
“But we was all hands mighty worritted,” admitted Kuk, lowering his voice mysteriously. “Ye see, ye never could tell in them old days, an’ in the West Injies, who it was safe to trust, an’ who it was safe ter dis-trust.
“Yer see, so many of them snaky Spanish planters was hand an’ glove with the pi-rats. And ev’rybody on the island knowed the Spankin’ Sal was takin’ away a great treasure that had been exchanged for them warmin’ pans. We was a fair mark, as ye might say, for them pi-rats.”
“Oh!” gasped Dot, hugging her Alice-doll the tighter.
“How much treasure was there, Mr. Kuk?” asked the ever-practical Tess.
“A chist full,” announced the clam digger without a moment’s hesitation. “A reg’lar treasure-chist full. All them planters hadn’t had ready cash money to pay for the warmin’ pans, and they’d give in exchange di’monds and other jools—and the exchange rates for American money was high anyway. So the Spankin’ Sal was a mighty good ketch if the pi-rats ketched her.
“So, when we sailed from Porto Rico we kep’ a weather eye open for black-painted schooners with rakin’ masts an’ skulls and shinbones on their flags. When we seed them signs we’d know they was pi-rats,” declared Kuk, gravely.
The small Corner House girls sighed in unison—and in delight! “The plot thickens!” whispered Agnes to Ruth behind the flap of the tent where they were listening, likewise, though unbeknown to Kuk and the children.
“Go on, please, Mr. Kuk,” breathed Tess.
“Oh, do!” said Dot.
“Well, shipmets,” said the old clam digger, “bein’ peaceful merchantmen, as ye might say, we hadn’t shipped aboard the Spankin’ Sal to fight no pi-rats,” declared Kuk, with energy. “We wasn’t no sogers, and we told the skipper so.
“‘We’ll fight,’ says I. Bein’ an officer—carpenter’s mate, as I told ye—I was spokesman for the crew. ‘But we wants ter fight with weepons as we air fermiliar with. Let you and the ossifers fire the cannon, skipper,’ says I, ‘and give us fellers that was bred along shore an’ on the farms some o’ them scythes out’n the lower holt.
“‘Cutlasses an’ muskets,’ says I, ‘is all right for them as has been brought up with ’em,’ says I, ‘but, skipper, me an’ my shipmets has been better used ter cuttin’ swamp-grass an’ mowin’ oats. Give us the weepons we air fermiliar with.’
“And he done it,” declared Kuk, wagging his sinful old head. “We broke out some cases of scythes and fixed ’em onto their handles after grindin’ of ’em sharp as razers on the grin’stone in the waist of the Spankin’ Sal.
“Pretty soon we seen one o’ them black-hulled schooners comin’. She couldn’t be mistook for anythin’ but a pi-rat, although she didn’t fly no black flag yet.
“‘Let ’em come to close quarters, skipper,’ says I. ‘Let ’em board us. Then me an’ my shipmets can git ’em on the short laig. We’ll mow ’em down like weeds along a roadside ditch.’
“He done it, an’ we did,” pursued Kuk, rather heated now with the interest of his own narrative. “When they run their schooner alongside of us and the two ships clinched, and they broke out the black flag at their peak, me an’ my shipmets stood there ready to repel boarders.
“Them pi-rats,” proceeded Kuk, “fought like a passel of cats—tooth an’ nail! They come over aour bulwarks jest like peas pourin’ out o’ a sack. ‘Steady, lads!’ I sings out. ‘Take a long, sweepin’ stroke, an’ each o’ ye cut a good swath!’
“An’ we done so,” the clam digger said, nodding. “Our scythes was longer than the cutlasses of them pi-rats; and before they could git at us, we’d reach ’em with a side-swipe of the scythes, and mow ’em down like ripe hay.”
“Oh, dear, me!” gasped Dot.
“How awful!” murmured Tess.
“’Twas sartain sure a bloody field of battle,” declared the clam digger, nodding again. “If it hadn’t been for my leg I wouldn’t never have fought no pi-rats again. A man has his feelin’s, ye see. Our scuppers run blood. The enemy was piled along the deck under our bulwarks in a reg’lar windrow.”
“And did you kill them all—every one?” demanded Tess, in amazement.
“No. We jest cut ’em down for the most part,” explained Kuk. “Ye see, we cut a low swath with our scythes; mostly we mowed off their feet and mebbe their legs purty near to their knees. After that there battle there was a most awful lot o’ wooden legged pi-rats on the Spanish Main.
“An’ that,” declared the clam digger, rising and getting ready to move on, “was the main reason why I left the sea; leastwise I never wanted to go sailin’ much in them parts again.
“In the scrimmage I got a shot in this leg as busted my knee-cap. I kep’ hoppin’ ’round on that busted leg as long as there was any pi-rats to mow down; and I did the knee a lot of harm the doctors in the horspital said.
“So I had ter have the leg ampertated. That made folks down that-a-way ax me was I a pi-rat, too. I’m a sensitive man,” said Kuk, wagging his head, “an’ it hurt my feelin’s to be classed in with all them wooden-legged fellers as we mowed down in the Spankin’ Sal. So I come hum an’ left the sea for good and all,” concluded Habakuk Somes, and at once pegged off with his clam basket on his arm.
“What an awful, awful story!” cried Dot.
“Too awful to believe,” answered Tess, wisely.
The four Corner House girls planned to start for town one morning early, and they were going by road instead of by boat.
Agnes ran over to the boys’ tents to ask Neale O’Neil to see that their fresh fish was put upon the ice in the icebox when the fishman came; and she found Neale doing duty on the housekeeping staff that morning, being busily engaged in shaking up the pillows and beating mattresses in the sun. The latter exertion was particularly for the dislodgment of the ubiquitous sandflea!
“Hello, Ag! What’s the good word?” cried Neale.
Agnes told him what they were going to do and asked the favor.
“I’ll see that you get the fish all right,” Neale agreed. “But what about the iceman? He’ll never come near your tent with Tom Jonah there.”
“Tom Jonah is going with us,” Agnes said, promptly. “Did you suppose we’d leave him all day alone, poor fellow?”
When they started Tom Jonah showed his delight at being included in the girls’ outing by the most extravagant gyrations. As they went up the shaded lane toward the auto-stage road, he chased half a dozen imaginary rabbits into the woods in as many minutes.
It was right at the head of the lane that they met the man. He was not a bad looking man at all, and he was driving a nice horse to a rubber-tired runabout.
He drew in the horse, that seemed to have already traveled some miles that morning, and looked hard at Tom Jonah.
“Well,” he said, cheerfully, “there’s the old tramp himself. How long have you girls had him?”
The four Corner House girls stood stock-still, and even Ruth was smitten dumb for the moment.
“Tom Jonah, you rascal!” said the man, not unkindly. “Don’t you know your old master?”
At first the dog had not seen him; but the moment he heard the man’s voice, he halted and his whole body stiffened. The plume of his tail began to wave; his jaws stretched wide in a doggish smile. Then, as the man playfully snapped the whip at him, Tom Jonah barked loudly.
“Where did you get him!” the man repeated, looking at the Corner House girls again.
Tess and Dot were clinging to each other’s hands. Agnes stared at the man belligerently. Ruth said—and her voice was not quite steady:
“Do you think you know Tom Jonah, sir?”
“What do you think yourself, Miss?” responded the man, rather gruffly. “I guess there’s no mistake about whether he knows me and I know him.”
“No, sir,” said Ruth, bravely. “But lots of people may know him.”
“Do you mean to put in a claim for the dog?” interrupted the man, quickly.
“Tom Jonah came to our house in Milton,” began Ruth, when again the man interrupted with:
“Of course. He was on his way home to me. I sold him to a man who lives forty miles beyond Milton.”
“Then you do not own him?” Ruth said, with a feeling of relief.
The man looked at her steadily for a minute. Ruth had recovered her self-possession. Tess and Dot were now on either side of Tom Jonah, with their arms about the dog’s neck. Agnes was very angry, but remained silent.
“I raised that dog from a pup, Miss. I owned his mother. I raised him. I put his name on his collar. He has it there yet, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, sir,” admitted Ruth.
“He’s always been a good dog. He’s a gentleman if ever a dog was! He had the run of the house. My wife and the girls made a great pet of him. But by and by they said he was too big and clumsy for the house. They have a couple of little fice—lap-poodles, or the like. Tom Jonah was put out, and he got jealous. Yes, sir!” and the man laughed. “Just as jealous as a human.”
“Oh!” gasped Agnes. She disliked that man!
“My name’s Reynolds,” said the man. “Everybody knows me about Shawmit. I run a lumber-yard there.
“Well! Tom Jonah got to running away to the neighbors. Stayed a while with one, then with another. Always liked kids, Tom Jonah did, and he’d stay longest where there were kids in the family.
“But it got to be a nuisance. I didn’t know whether the dog belonged to me or somebody else. So I sold him to a relative of my wife’s who came on visiting us, and took a fancy to Tom Jonah, and who lives—as I said—forty miles beyond Milton. So the old fellow was on his way back home when you took him in, eh?”
“He came to us at Milton,” Ruth replied. “He wanted to stay. I brought him down here to take care of my little sisters. We’re living in a tent down on the shore yonder——”
“And we’re going to keep him!” interrupted Agnes, angrily.
“Hush! Be still, Aggie!” begged Ruth, in a low tone.
“You don’t claim you bought him, I suppose?” said the man who called himself Reynolds.
“But we will!” cried Ruth, instantly. “We will gladly pay for him.”
“Oh, he’s not for sale again,” laughed the man. “I sold him once and he wouldn’t stay sold, you see.”
“Then he doesn’t belong to you now, any more than he does to us, really,” Ruth hastened to say.
“Well——that’s so, I suppose,” admitted the man.
“We won’t give Tom Jonah up to anybody,” said Agnes again.
Dot was crying and Tess could scarcely keep from following her lead. Tom Jonah stood solemnly, his eyes very bright, his tail waving slowly. He looked from the girls to the man in the runabout, and back again. He knew they were discussing him; but he did not know just what it was all about.
“If we have to,” said Ruth, with much more confidence in her voice than she felt in her heart, “we will give Tom Jonah up to the person who really owns him. We do not know you, sir. We do not know if what you say is true. You must prove it.”
“Well! I like that!” said the man in a tone that showed he did not like it at all. “You are a pretty pert young lady, you are. I guess I’ll take my own dog home. I heard he was over here to the beach and I drove over particularly to get him.”
“Take him, then!” exclaimed Ruth, desperately. “If Tom Jonah will go with you, all right. You call him.”
“Come here, boy!” commanded the man.
Tom Jonah did not move. Ruth took a hand of each of the smaller girls and led them away from the big dog.
“Come, children,” she said. “We’ll go on. If Tom Jonah really loves us, he’ll come, too.”
The dog whined. He looked from the red-faced, angry man to the four girls who loved him so well.
“Come here, Tom Jonah!” commanded the man again. He had turned his horse and was evidently headed for home. “Come, sir!”
The Corner House girls were moving sadly away. Agnes glanced back and actually made a face at the man in the runabout. Fortunately he did not see it.
“Come on, Tom Jonah!” said the man for the third time.
The dog was perplexed. He showed it plainly. He started after the man; he started back for the girls. He whined and he barked. He was torn by the conflicting emotions in his doggish soul.
“What’s the matter with him?” exclaimed the man, and snapped his whiplash at Tom Jonah.
At that, Dot uttered a shriek of anguish. Tess burst into tears. Agnes started back as though to protect the dog. Even Ruth could not forbear to utter a cry.
“Here, Tom Jonah! here, sir!” Agnes shouted. “Come on, you dear old fellow.”
The dog barked, circled the moving carriage once, and then raced down the road toward the Corner House girls. The man shouted and snapped his whip. Tom Jonah did not even look back at him when he caught up with the girls.
The dog was perplexed. He started after the man; started back for the girls. He whined and he barked.
“Hurry up! let’s run with him, Ruthie,” begged Agnes.
But there was no need of that. The man did not turn his horse and follow. He was quickly out of sight and Tom Jonah gave no sign of wishing to follow his old master.
The incident troubled the Corner House girls vastly. Even Ruth was devoted to the good old dog by this time. If he were taken away by this Mr. Reynolds, it would be like losing one of the Corner House family.
Ruth feared that Mr. Reynolds would find some legal way of getting possession of Tom Jonah. She wished Mr. Howbridge were here to advise them what to do. She even wished now that she had not brought Tom Jonah to Pleasant Cove to act as their “chaperon.”
The smaller girls dried their eyes after a time. Agnes, “breathing threatenings,” as Ruth said, promised Tess and Dot that the man never should take Tom Jonah away. But Ruth wondered what they would do about it if Mr. Reynolds came to Willowbend Camp with a police constable and a warrant for the dog?
And, too, who had sent Mr. Reynolds word that Tom Jonah was at the beach? He particularly said that he had been informed of the fact. It seemed to Ruth that the informer must be their enemy.
Then, out of a dust cloud that had been drawing near the Corner House girls for some few moments, appeared the forefront of a big touring car. In it were Trix Severn and some of her friends from the Overlook House.
“Oh! there’s Trix!” murmured Agnes to her older sister.
The hotel-keeper’s daughter would not look at the Corner House girls. She, certainly, had proved herself their enemy. Ruth wondered if Trix had had anything to do with bringing Mr. Reynolds to Pleasant Cove, searching for his dog.
Ruth knew that the hotel-keeper’s daughter often rode over to Shawmit; she was probably on her way there now with her party. And after the way Trix had acted at the time the Spoondrift bungalow was burned, one might expect anything mean of Trix. For once Ruth allowed her suspicions to color her thoughts.
“She has awfully good times, just the same,” murmured Agnes.
“Who does?” demanded Ruth, tartly.
“Trix.”
“I declare!” exclaimed Ruth, with more vexation than she usually displayed. “I’d be ashamed that I ever knew her after the way she’s acted. And I believe, Agnes, that we can thank her for setting that man after Tom Jonah.”
“Oh, Ruth! Do you believe so?”
“I do,” said the older Corner House girl, and she explained why she thought so.
Mr. Severn bought many of his supplies in Shawmit, and Trix was forever running over there in the car. It did not strain one’s imagination very much to picture Trix hearing about Mr. Reynolds’ dog and recognizing Tom Jonah from the description. Besides, the Severns had been coming to Pleasant Cove for several seasons, and Trix might easily have seen the dog when he lived with his first master.
“Oh, dear me!” sighed Agnes. “It does seem too bad that one’s very best friends sometimes turn out to be one’s enemies. Who’d have thought Trix Severn would do such a thing?”
“Of course, we don’t know,” admitted Ruth, trying to be fair. “But who else could have told Mr. Reynolds about Tom Jonah?”
Ruth went into the first store in the village that sold such things and bought a new leash. This she snapped into the ring of his collar and made the old dog walk beside them more decorously.
Tess and Dot could scarcely keep from hugging him all the time; they wanted Ruth to agree to take the very next train back to Milton, for they thought with the dog once at the old Corner House, nobody could take him away from them.
“I didn’t like that man at all, anyway,” Tess declared. “He had red whiskers.”
“Is—is that a sign that a man’s real mean if he has red whiskers, Tess?” asked Dot, wonderingly.
“It’s a sign Tess doesn’t like him,” laughed Agnes. “But I don’t like that Reynolds man myself. Do you, Ruthie?”
“We’re all agreed on that point I should hope,” said Ruth. “But we won’t run away with Tom Jonah. If that man comes for him again, I’ll find some way to circumvent him. The good old dog belongs to us, if he does to anybody. And as long as he wants to live with us, he shall. So now!”
The other Corner House girls finally forgot their worriment about Tom Jonah. Ruth warned them not to talk about it to the girls they met. They did their errands in the village and then went on to Spoondrift bungalow where they spent a very enjoyable day.
Neale O’Neil and Joe Eldred came after supper to escort the Corner House girls back to Willowbend Camp. Tess and Dot had taken a nap during the afternoon, so were not a drag on the procession, going home.
They went around by the home of the little old woman who lived in the shoe. Ruth and Agnes had been talking with the boys about the mystery of the strange girl who had shared in the adventures of Tess and Dot on Wild Goose Island. They all agreed she must be a Gypsy; but Ruth had kept to herself the knowledge of the girl’s identity as the Gypsy “queen.”
“I saw several of the Gypsies about the beach to-day,” Joe Eldred said. “That snaky, scarred-faced fellow was one of them.”
“He’s the ring-leader, I believe,” Ruth hastened to say.
“Can’t just see what they are after, hanging about here,” Neale observed. “There isn’t much to steal. Everybody’s brought just the oldest things they own down here to the beach.”
“And there are no hens to steal,” chuckled Agnes.
“I bet none of them will come near the tents while Tom Jonah is on guard,” Neale added, snapping his fingers for the dog who was running ahead in the moonlit path.
Suddenly Tom Jonah stopped and growled. They had arrived in sight of the queer little cottage where Rosa Wildwood lived with Mrs. Bobster. The young folk could even see the drawn shade of the sitting-room window.
“There’s that man again!” exclaimed Agnes.
“What man?” Joe Eldred asked.
“Mrs. Bobster’s mysterious friend,” giggled Agnes. “See his shadow on the curtain?”
“And he’s sitting there with his hat on,” murmured Neale.
But it was Ruth who saw the other—and more important—shadow. This was the figure of a tall man slipping along the outer side of Mrs. Bobster’s picket fence. It was this shadow at which Tom Jonah was growling.
The man came to the gate, opened it softly, and stole in. His furtive movements gave the big dog his cue. He leaped forward, barking vociferously, leaped the fence, and followed the running figure around the corner of the house.
Mrs. Bobster shrieked—the young folk outside could hear her. But her “company” did not move. He still sat there with his derby hat on.
The boys started after the dog. The girls stood, clinging to one another’s hands, at the corner of the fence.
From around the house appeared another running figure; but this was a girl. She flung herself headlong over the fence, and her skirt caught on a picket. Ruth ran forward to release her.
“Oh, my dear!” she gasped. “Where did you come from?”
It was the girl she had first noticed in the train with the Gypsy woman—the very girl who had been on Wild Goose Island with Tess and Dot. It was she who had masqueraded as Zaliska, the Gypsy queen.
“Let me go! Let me go!” gasped the girl in Ruth’s arms. “He will get me.”
“Who’ll get you?” demanded the wondering Agnes.
“Big Jim, the Gypsy. He’s after me,” said the strange girl.
“And Tom Jonah and the boys are after him,” declared Ruth. “Don’t you fret; Big Jim won’t come back here.”
“Who is she, Ruth?” asked Agnes.
“Never mind who I am,” said the girl, rather sharply. “Let me go.”
“I know why you were lurking about here,” Ruth said, calmly. “You heard that Rosa Wildwood is stopping here.”
“Well?” demanded the other.
“Then you are June Wildwood. You’re her sister. I don’t know how you came to be with those Gypsies, and masquerading as an old woman——”
“My goodness!” gasped Agnes. “Was she that Gypsy queen?”
“Yes,” Ruth said, confidently. “Now, weren’t you?” to the strange girl. “And aren’t you Rosa’s sister who ran away two years ago?”
“Oh, I am! I am!” groaned the girl.
“Well, Rosa’s just crazy to see you. And your father has been searching for you everywhere,” said Ruth, quickly. “You must come in and see Rosa. There’s Mrs. Bobster opening the front door.”
The shadow of the man with the derby hat on his head still was motionless upon the shade; but the widow had opened the front door on its chain, and now demanded:
“Who’s there? what do you want?”
“It’s only me, Mrs. Bobster,” cried Ruth.
Tess and Dot were already running toward the cottage door. “Oh, Mrs. Bobster!” Tess cried, “here’s the girl that helped us on the island—me and Dot.”
“And my Alice-doll,” concluded Dot, likewise excited. “And Ruthie says she’s Rosa’s sister.”
“For the good land of liberty’s sake!” ejaculated Mrs. Bobster, throwing wide the door. “Come in! Come in!”
The girl whom Ruth had seized hesitated for a moment. Ruth whispered in her ear:
“Rosa is wearing her heart out for you, June Wildwood. And your father isn’t drinking any more. He has a steady job. You come back to them and you needn’t be afraid of those Gypsies.”
“They’ll try to get me back. Doc. Raynes’ wife was one of them. The old doctor died a year ago, and since then I’ve been with that gang,” said June Wildwood.
“Were the doctor and his wife the folks you ran away with?”
“Yes. I danced and sang and dressed up in character to help entertain their audiences when he sold bitters and salve,” the girl explained. “The old doctor treated me all right. But these thieving Gypsies are different. Mrs. Doc. Raynes is Big Jim’s sister.”
“Don’t you be afraid of them any more. We’ll set the police after them,” Ruth declared. “Where have you been since the day my sisters were with you?”
“I’ve been washing dishes at a hotel here in Pleasant Cove. But I kept under cover. I was afraid of them,” said the girl.
They reached the door then, and went into the cottage. Mrs. Bobster ushered them right into the sitting-room and at once all the girls halted in amazement. There was an armchair standing between the window and the center table, where the lamp sat. Leaning against the chair was the broom, and on the business end of that very useful household implement was a hat that had probably once belonged to the husband of the little old woman who lived in a shoe.
“My goodness sake!” ejaculated Agnes, the first to get her breath. “Then it was not company you had at all, Mrs. Bobster?”
“No,” said the widow, in a business-like way, removing the hat from the broom and standing the latter in the corner. “But I didn’t want folks to know it. There’s some stragglers around here after dark, and I wanted ’em to think there was a man in the house.”
At that moment Rosa Wildwood came running downstairs in wrapper and slippers. “I heard her! I heard her!” she shrieked, and the next moment the two sisters were hugging each other frantically.
Explanations were in order; and it took some time for the little old lady who lived in a shoe to understand the reunion of her boarder and the girl who had lived with the Gypsies.
The boys and Tom Jonah came back, having chased the lurking Big Jim for quite a mile through the woods. “And Tom Jonah brought back a piece of his coat-tail,” chuckled Neale O’Neil. “He can consider himself lucky that the dog didn’t bite deeper!”
“I guess that dog doesn’t like Gypsies,” said June Wildwood, patting Tom Jonah’s head.
The boys were just as much interested as their girl friends in the reunion of Rosa and her sister. Meanwhile Mrs. Bobster bustled about and found the usual pitcher of cool milk and a great platter of cookies. The young folk feasted beyond reason while they all talked.
Ruth arranged with the little old woman who lived in a shoe to let June stay with her sister, and she promised June, as well, that if she would return to Milton with Rosa, employment would be found for her so that she could be self-supporting, yet live at home with Rosa and Bob Wildwood.
The Corner House girls offered to leave Tom Jonah to guard the premises for that night. But Mrs. Bobster said:
“I reckon I won’t be scaret none with two great girls in the house with me. Besides, when I am asleep, being lonesome don’t bother me none—no, ma’am!”
“Well, we don’t know how long we’re going to have old Tom Jonah ourselves,” sighed Agnes, as the party bound for the tent colony started on again.
“How’s that!” demanded Neale, quickly.
They told him about the man named Reynolds, from Shawmit, and the claim he had made to the big dog. Neale was equally troubled with the Corner House girls over this, and he advised Ruth and Agnes to take the dog wherever they went.
“Don’t give the fellow a chance to find Tom Jonah alone, or with the little girls,” said Neale. “I don’t believe he can get the dog legally without considerable trouble. And Tom Jonah has shown whom he likes best.”
This uncertainty about Tom Jonah, however, did not keep the Corner House girls from continuing their good times at Pleasant Cove. With one of the ladies of the tent colony for chaperon the girls and their boy friends had many a “junket”—up the river, down the bay, and even outside upon the open sea.
It was on one of these latter occasions that Ruth and Agnes joined Neale and his friends on the “double-ender,” Hattie G., and with her crew spent a night and a day chasing the elusive swordfish.
That was an adventure; and one not soon to be forgotten by the older Corner House girls. Of course Tess and Dot were too small to go on this trip and they were fast asleep in one of the neighboring tents when Neale O’Neil came and scratched on the canvas of that in which Ruth and Agnes slept.
“Oh!” gasped Agnes. “What’s that!”
“Is that you, Neale?” demanded Ruth, calmly.
“Of course. Get a bustle on,” advised the boy. “The motorboat will be ready in ten minutes.”
“Mercy!” ejaculated Agnes, giggling. “You know we don’t wear bustles, Neale. They are too old-fashioned for anything.”
She and Ruth quickly dressed. There wasn’t much “prinking and preening” before the mirror on this morning, that was sure. In ten minutes the two Corner House girls were running down the beach, with their bags (packed over-night) and their rain-coats over their arms. Tom Jonah raced after them.
Everywhere save on the beach itself the shadows lay deep. There was no moon and the stars twinkled high overhead—spangles sewed on the black-velvet robe of Night.
Out upon the quietly heaving waters sounded voices—then the pop of a launch engine.
“Come on!” urged Neale’s voice. “They’re getting the boat ready, girls.”
“But we’re not going out to the banks in the Nimble Shanks—surely!” cried Agnes.
“No. But we’re going down the cove in her to catch the Hattie G. Skipper Joline sent up a rocket for us half an hour ago. The tide’s going out. He won’t wait long, I assure you.”
“It would be lots more comfortable to go all the way in the motorboat—wouldn’t it?” asked Ruth, stepping into the skiff after Agnes and the dog.
“Skipper Joline would have a fit,” laughed Joe Eldred. “A motorboat engine would scare every swordfish within a league of the Banks—so he says. He declares that is what makes them so hard to catch the last few seasons. These motorboats running about the sea are a greater nuisance than the motor cars ashore—so he declares.”
“I suppose the swordfish shy at the motorboats just like the horses shy at automobiles!” giggled Agnes, as Neale and Joe pushed off and seized the oars.
“Yep,” grunted Neale O’Neil. “And the motorboats have frightened all the horse-mackerel away. That’s a joke. I’ll tell the Skipper that.”
Several shadowy figures—being those of the other boys and Mr. and Mrs. Stryver, who were members of the swordfishing party, too—were spied about the deck and cockpit of the Nimble Shanks. The boys shot the skiff in beside the motorboat and helped the girls aboard. Then they moored the skiff to the motorboat’s buoy and soon the Nimble Shanks was away, down the cove.
It was past two o’clock—the darkest minutes of a summer’s morning. Seaward, a light haze hung over the water—seemingly a veil of mist let down from the sky to shut out the view of all distant objects from the out-sailing mariners.
As the party neared the fishing fleet, voices carried flatly across the water, and now and then a dog barked. Tom Jonah answered these canines ashore with explosive growls. He stood forward, his paws planted firmly on the deck, and snuffing the sea air. Tom Jonah was a good sailor.
“Got your scare?” a voice came out of the darkness, quavering across the cove. “Going to be thick outside.”
Neale grabbed the fish-horn and blew a mighty blast on it. Similar horns answered from all about the fleet.
A towering mast, with its big sail bending to the breeze, shot past them—the big cat-boat, Susie, bound for her lines of lobster-pots just off the mouth of the cove. Her crew hailed the launch and her party—four sturdy young fellows in jerseys and high sea-boots.
“Whew!” said Joe. “Smell that lobster bait! I’d hate to go for a pleasure trip on the Susie.”
The Hattie G. was just ahead and Mr. Stryver shut off the engine. The drab, dirty looking old craft tugged sharply at her taut mooring cable. She had two short masts, and on these heavy canvas was being spread by the crew, which consisted of five men and a boy.
One of the men was the skipper, another the mate, a third the cook; but all hands had to turn to to make sail. There were several sweeps (heavy oars) held in bights of rope along the rail. Both ends of the Hattie G. were sharp; in other words she had two bows. Thus the name, “double-ender”—a build of craft now almost extinct save in a few New England ports out of which ply the swordfishermen.
Skipper Joline came to the rail. He was a hoarse, red-faced man with a white beard, cut like a paintbrush, on his chin.
“Climb aboard, folks,” he said. “Steve will get breakfast shortly. There’s a bit of fog and some swell outside. Better all lay in a good foundation of scouse and sody biscuit. Ye’ll need it later.”
“That sounds rather suggestive, Ruth,” whispered Agnes. “Do you suppose he expects us landlubbers to be really sick?”
“I hope not,” replied her sister. “But I don’t care! I’m going to eat that breakfast if it kills me! I was never so hungry in all my life before.”
They left the Nimble Shanks moored at the double-ender’s anchor-buoy, and the latter lurched away on the short leg of her tack for the entrance to the cove. There was a fresh breeze and the water began to sing under the sharp bows of the Hattie G.
The cook got busy in the galley and the fragrance of coffee and fried fish smothered all other smells about the craft—for it must be confessed that the double-ender had an ancient and fishy smell of her own that was not altogether pleasant to the nostrils of a fastidious person.
These hearty boys and girls were out for fun, however, and they had been long enough at Pleasant Cove to get used to most fishy odors. Before breakfast was over the Hattie G. had run through the “Breach,” as the cove entrance was called, and they were sailing straight out to sea.
The mournful wail of a horn in the fog now and then announced the location of some lobsterman. The Hattie G. answered these “scares” with her own horn and swept on through the fog.
But now the mist began to lift. A golden glow rose, increased, and spread all along the eastern horizon. Suddenly they shot out of the fog and sailed right into the bright path of the rising sun.
This wonderful sight of sunrise at sea delighted Ruth and Agnes intensely. It was just as though they had sailed suddenly into a new world.
The fog masked the land astern. Ahead was nothing but the heaving, greenish-gray waves, foam-streaked at their crowns to the distant skyline, with only a few sails crossing the line of vision. Not a speck of land marred the seascape.
Later, when the Hattie G. reached the Banks, there was something beside the view to interest and excite the Corner House girls.
The big sails were lowered and only a riding sail spread to keep the Hattie G. on an even keel. A “pulpit” was set up on each of her short booms—both fore and aft.
At the top of a mast was rigged a barrel-like thing in which the lookout stood with a glass, on the watch for the swordfish.
These can only be caught asleep on the surface of the sea. When one is sighted either the sails are hoisted, or the sweeps are used, to bring the vessel near enough for the skipper or his mate to make a cast of the harpoon.
Once one of the huge fish was spied, everybody aboard the Hattie G. was on the qui vive. The boys climbed the ratlines to see. The girls borrowed the cook’s old-fashioned spyglass to get a better view of the creature.
The Hattie G. was brought softly near the fish. Skipper Joline had warned his guests to keep quiet. Ruth kept her hand upon Tom Jonah’s collar so that he should not disturb the proceedings.
The skipper stepped into the pulpit—a framework of iron against which he leaned when he cast the harpoon. All was ready for the supreme moment.
The coil of the line was laid behind him. The crew brought the Hattie G. just to the spot Skipper Joline indicated with a wave of his hand.
Back swung the mighty arm of the skipper, the muscles swelling like cables under the sleeve of his blue jersey.
“Now!” breathed the mate, as eager as any of the boys or girls among the spectators.
Ping!
The skipper had let drive. The harpoon sank deeply into the fish. For a brief instant they saw blood spurt out and dye the sea.
Then the huge fish leaped almost its length from the sea. The crew drove the Hattie G. back. Good reason why the swordfishing craft are built sharp at both ends!
How the fish thrashed and fought! Its sword beat the water to foam. Had it found the double-ender, the latter’s bottom-planks would have been no protection against the creature’s blows.
A swordfish has been known to thrust its weapon through the bottom of a boat and break it off in its struggles to get free.
“Oh, Agnes!” gasped Ruth, when the fight was over and the huge fish killed. “Who would ever believe, while buying a slice of swordfish, that it was so dangerous to capture one of the creatures?”
The crew of the Hattie G. got four ere they set sail for Pleasant Cove again, and the Corner House girls became quite used to the methods of the fishermen and the tactics of the swordfish on being struck.
They sailed back to Pleasant Cove with what was called the prize catch of the season. When a fish is as big as a good-sized dining-table and sells for twenty-five cents a pound, retail, it does not take many to make a good catch.
Ruth and Agnes, and Neale and the other boys, were glad they went on the trip. They arrived at the camp late in the evening, filled with enthusiasm over the adventures of the day.
And Skipper Joline presented the Corner House girls with a four-foot sword which, later, occupied a place of honor over the sitting-room mantelpiece in the old Corner House at Milton.
Ruth took Tom Jonah up to see the Wildwood girls with her the very next time she went to call.
The Corner House girl found Rosa and June shelling peas under the arbor, while Mrs. Bobster was talking with Kuk Somes over a “mess” of clams she had bought.
“You ain’t honest enough to count out a hunderd clams, Kuk,” declared the plain-spoken old lady. “Ye got such a high-powered imagination that ye can’t count straight.”
“Now, Mis’ Bobster, thet thar’s a hard statement ter make,” said Kuk, shaking his head, but grinning. “Don’t make me out so ’fore these here young ladies.”
“I reckon they know ye!” cried the widow. “If they’ve ever hearn ye spin one o’ yer sea-farin’ yarns——”
“And we have,” interposed Ruth, smiling. “He’s told us about how he sailed in the Spanking Sal and lost his leg fighting pirates.”
“For the good land o’ liberty!” gasped Mrs. Bobster. “He never told ye that?”
“Oh, yes. It was very interesting,” laughed Ruth.
“Why,” said the widow, angrily, “that fellow never sailed in a deep-water craft in his life. The only time he ever went out in a double-ender as fur as the swordfish banks, he was so sick they had ter bring him ashore on a stretcher!”
“Now, Mis’ Bobster——” began the clam digger, faintly.
“Ain’t that so? Ye daren’t deny it,” she declared. “He ain’t no sailor. He’s jest an old beach-comber. Don’t never go in any boat outside of the cove. Lost his leg fightin’ pirates, did he? Huh!”
“So he told us,” said the much amused Ruth.
“Why, th’ ridiculous old thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobster, laughing herself now. “He lost that leg in Mr. Reynolds’ sawmill at Shawmit—that’s how he did it. And he was tipsy at the time or he wouldn’t never have got hurt.”
“Oh!” cried Ruth, staring at the sheepish clam digger.
“And he goes over there to Shawmit ev’ry month an’ collects ten dollars from Reynolds, who’s good-natured and helps him out with a pension. Ain’t that so, Kuk Somes!”
The wooden-legged clam digger nodded. “Whar’s the harm?” he murmured. “Ye know these city folks likes ter hear my yarns. An’ it don’t hurt ’em none.”
“But that’s how Mr. Reynolds heard about our having Tom Jonah,” declared Ruth, accusingly. “You told him.”
“Yep. That’s his old dawg,” said Kuk.
“Well, you’ve made us a lot of trouble,” said Ruth, sadly. “For I am afraid that Mr. Reynolds will try to take Tom Jonah away. And,” she added, in secret, “how wrong I was to accuse Trix Severn, without stronger evidence.”