Jack had sung the old song delightfully, with the colorful wails of the darky and deserved the thanks and applause he got for singing it. He refused to sing any more, saying he wanted to smoke.
“I’ll sing you one,” volunteered Charlie immodestly.
“Oh, Charlie, haven’t you any shame?” giggled Mabel. “I never in all my life heard of any one suggesting singing or playing himself. It just isn’t the thing. You are supposed to blush furiously and shake your head the first time you are asked. Of course, you are asked again, then you say that you haven’t got your music or you aren’t in voice or your hands are chapped. On the third request, you allow yourself to be dragged unwillingly to the piano or the center of the room, according to your talent. And here you blatantly nominate yourself. I blush for you, I blush for you.”
“Don’t pay any attention to her, Charlie,” urged Frances. “I didn’t know singing was among your accomplishments. While I tremble at the result, we are all brave souls and most humbly I beseech you sing.”
“I may not be a Caruso or a Martinelli, but I do know some plantation songs, just as everybody below the Mason-Dixon line does, and coupled with the three cords I know on the banjo I can give a very creditable performance. Am I among friends?”
With a flourish of the banjo and a reckless expenditure of his three cords, Charlie began in an effectively low voice:
“I take it all back, Charlie,” offered Mabel, “I liked that a lot.”
Fred said a regretful good-bye and, with a promise that he and Virg would weigh the anchor of the “Sabrina” the minute the “Boojum” signaled, he dropped over the side into his dory and rowed slowly over the moon-lit water to the silent Hurricane Island.
The “Boojum” and the little “Sabrina” dropped anchor in the harbor at Nantucket Island almost at the same time. They found themselves in the midst of a fleet of trig catboats, yawls and splendid motor yachts. Every male in the island is said to have some sort of boat, and the catboat seemed to be the choice of the majority. There is a stretch of land-locked water reaching along one side of the island, and here, every day, are to be seen races between the many catboats.
Boat after boat slid in, found its mooring, and emptied itself of its gay-sweatered, picnicking crowd. The boats were so packed and wedged in that the “Boojum’s” people began to wonder how they could pick their way into shore with the tender.
Suddenly a speed boat shot out from the landing in front of the club house and with marvelous skill threaded its way among the moored boats. As it approached the “Boojum,” a tall gray-haired man, who was standing at the wheel, raised one hand and waved it at the group on the “Boojum’s” deck.
“Why, he seems to be coming up alongside,” Mr. Wing said in surprise.
“Ahoy on board the ‘Boojum!’” boomed the man’s deep voice.
“Come aboard,” invited Mr. Wing with a cordial smile and a bewildered voice.
“It’s Tim’s father, of course,” said Frances, springing forward to greet him. “They look exactly alike. Jane, run down into the saloon and tell Tim his daddy is here.”
But Mr. Reynolds, with a Tim-like grin that included them all in its heartiness, said:
“Please, young lady, let me go see my boy. I’ll be up in a second and thank all of you for your kindness.”
He had disappeared down the companionway before Frances got her breath, Mr. Wing following and the rest of the crew close on the heels of their captain.
Some persons think it is an amusing thing to see two men kiss, but no one would have been amused to see the gray-haired Mr. Reynolds take his red-haired son in his arms and kiss him first on one cheek, then on the other. Tim seemed to like it and not to be a bit abashed.
“How’s mother?” he asked as soon as he emerged from the bear’s hug his father was giving him.
“In an awful stew about you! When you didn’t come home that night, she threw a few fits and then, when there was no word from you, she threw a few more. The telegram that finally arrived only assured her you were as well as might be expected with a broken leg. Now she is having an awful time because the telegram didn’t say which leg.”
“Poor little Mumsy! It’s the left one, but since I don’t write or shave with my toes it doesn’t really make much difference.”
Then Tim introduced his father to the captain and the crew and the elder Reynolds by his heartiness and honest gratitude soon began to run his son a close race in their admiration and affection. It doesn’t take many hours on ship board for people to become very well acquainted and, already, the inmates of the “Boojum” had begun to feel that Tim Reynolds was a life-long friend.
“And these two slips of girls carried you down that rocky hill all by themselves? I don’t believe it! Let me feel your muscle!” said Mr. Reynolds, putting his hand around Frances’ biceps.
“Jimminy crickets! As hard as steel! Now where did you get your stretcher? Tell me all about it, every detail. My wife is sure to want to know everything that can be told. You say Tim was unconscious most of the time?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Frances, who, having been the one to find Tim, was tacitly understood to be the one to answer for him. “Either unconscious or light-headed, but his head was the only thing that was light, I can assure you. He said he hadn’t eaten anything for a day and a night, but he must have been breathing heavily all the time because he certainly hadn’t lost any weight.”
Then she had to tell him how she and Jane made a stretcher with their skirts and the oars. Here he interrupted:
“What kind of skirts? Tell me what kind and what color. The boy’s mother will worry my soul out of me if I don’t find out what kind and what color.”
“Just plain khaki, Camp Fire Girls’ skirts!” laughed Frances. “The kind we are wearing now, but we must change them soon, as we always dress up a bit when we go ashore.”
“But, my dear young lady, please don’t! I beg of you don’t change your skirts.”
Mr. Reynolds’ request was such a strange one the girls could not help laughing. His manner was earnest, but in his eyes there was a regular Tim twinkle.
“But why not?” insisted Frances.
“It is this way: you see, of course, when you go ashore it must be to our home, and I can tell you if you don’t wear those skirts out of which the stretcher was made that carried our Tim, his mother will never cease bewailing, to say nothing of Cousin Esther. Of course, you can tie them up in a bundle and let me carry them ashore, but ashore they must go. Am I not right, Tim?”
“Well, Mother is right fond of detail and as for Cousin Esther—” confessed Tim. “If you girls don’t mind—”
“Mind! Of course we don’t mind,” put in Jane. “The only thing Frances and I don’t like about going ashore is having to doll up. We’ll even carry Tim ashore as we carried him down the hill if that would help any.”
“Not me!” cried Tim. “I’ll never cease to be grateful to you for carrying me as you did, but, remember, I am not unconscious now and my leg has been set. I’m afraid you’ll jiggle it out of place. I bid for Breck and Jack to do the carrying this time.”
“We certainly will,” said Breck heartily, while Jack gave Tim a reassuring pat on his shoulder. “I think, Mr. Reynolds,” continued Breck, “you had better send for a surgeon as soon as you get your son home. I am little more than an amateur and think an expert should pass on my manner of setting bones.”
“Certainly, young man, although I am sure you made a good job of it. What my boy would have done without your skill I tremble to contemplate. Tell me—I think Mr. Wing said your name was Allen Breckenridge—are you related to Preston Breckenridge of California?”
“My father, sir!” and Breck’s face flushed.
“Well now, isn’t that too bad? Not that you are related to Preston Breckenridge, but that you have come into port just too late to see your father. His yacht has been anchored here for several days, but they set sail only this morning. I’ve no idea where they were going. Didn’t know they were going at all. Meant to see them again. Quite a party. You perhaps know where they are going?”
“No, sir, I do not know,” answered Breck, the flush deepening on his countenance. “I thought they were still on the Pacific coast.”
“Well, well! California people don’t think a thing of stepping across the continent,” declared Mr. Reynolds, suddenly realizing that he had rather put his foot in it and the good looking young man who had been so nice about setting his son’s leg was evidently not on very good terms with his family.
While the general bustle was in process incident to going ashore and getting the broken-boned Tim ready to be carried off, Breck had time to whisper to Jane:
“You heard what Mr. Reynolds said about my father’s being in these waters?”
“Yes, I heard. Aren’t you going to try to find out where he is? Do you think the rest of your family is along? He said a large party.”
“There is no telling. Gee, I’m glad I wasn’t one of them! I’d rather swab the ‘Boojum’s’ decks, even do galley work with greasy pots and pans to be scoured, than have to wait on the fool girls my sister, Lorna, gathers around her.”
“Lorna! What a pretty name! You never told me her name was Lorna. You always just said ‘my sister.’ I’ve meant to ask you what her name was time and again, but when we are together there always seems to be so many things to talk about I can’t get to it.”
“Yes, honey, and there always will be. That’s what is so nice about you: we never seem to talk out,” and Breck slid his hand along the rail and covered Jane’s hand. “We don’t get much time alone, though, do we? I love the old ‘Boojum,’ love her like a sister or a nice comfortable maiden aunt, but I can’t say she offers a fellow many chances to tell a girl how much he thinks of her. Ummhum! Just think of Hurricane Island! I tell you that’s a great place for love making.”
“How about the little tow-headed Grays? It seems to me on one occasion they were pretty numerous,” laughed Jane.
“Break away! Break away!” called Charlie, as he emerged from below.
“What did I tell you?” grumbled Breck.
“But you never did tell me if you are going to hunt up your family,” insisted Jane. “Do you intend to do it?”
“Not on your life! In the first place, they have gone. Mr. Reynolds said they had sailed this morning. I am too happy to row and if the Governor and I get together we’ll lock horns, as sure as shooting.”
“Yes—but—”
“But what?”
“I can’t fancy being in the same—same—Gulf Stream with my father and not trying to see him, even if it meant having a small set-to with him when I did see him. No doubt he and I are to have some argument at our next meeting, but I am nearly dead to see him all the same,” and Jane’s black eyes softened to velvet.
“But perhaps your father is different,” said Breck sadly.
“Different in some ways, but all fathers are more or less alike. I reckon your father loves you just as much as mine does me. He just doesn’t know you are grown-up, and you see my father had to let me grow up because my mother died when I was so young. He thinks I’ve got lots more judgment than Jack just because he can’t get in his head Jack is a man. If Jack had been a girl, he’d have realized long ago he was no longer a child. I’m hoping you are going to be friends with your father, Breck. It is a terrible thing to carry a grouch around, especially one against some of your own blood.”
“I know it, honey, but you don’t know what a ragging I got the last time I saw the Governor. Some day, maybe, it will come right and heal up, but the place is still pretty sore.”
“But how about Lorna?”
“Oh she is such a—such a—well, I think I won’t say anything about Lorna. I fancy she is what her environment has made her. She hasn’t had half a chance with everything on God’s green earth hers for the asking. Everybody spoils her and she has such a bunch of silly friends around her flattering her to death that it is hard for the true Lorna to come out. She was a cute kid years ago and I used to be mighty fond of her—she was of me too—but now—but never mind. She has changed—changed a lot.”
“Maybe you changed too,” insisted Jane.
“But she seemed to have so little sympathy for my plans and ideals.”
“Did you have any for hers?”
“But hers were so silly and vapid.”
“Perhaps she thought yours were silly, too.”
“Well, we won’t row about it, honey. I guess I was rather superior and big brotherish when last Lorna and I met,” said Breck somewhat ruefully.
“Next time, behave better,” admonished Jane.
“All right, but I can’t see a possibility of any next time for years to come. When you are given to understand by your father that your room is more desirable than your company, you are not likely to do much hanging around after that,” and the young man flushed.
“Poor old Breck! You mustn’t think I’m blaming you. I am sure it isn’t your fault, but I just have such a strong family feeling myself that I can’t understand when it is lacking. I know you have it too, and so has your father—and no doubt poor little Lorna has it. You just can’t get together on it.”
And Jane began to turn over in her mind how she might help her fiancé to make friends with his family.
Mrs. Reynolds always insisted that she belonged on Nantucket Island, although she had been born and reared on the mainland.
“It would take centuries of exile to get a Coffin to acknowledge any other spot as home,” she would say.
She had inherited a beautiful old house on the main street of Nantucket Town and it had been almost a religion with her to keep that house as her grandmothers for generations had kept it. Not a modern touch was allowed to profane the lovely simplicity of that island home. Her regret was that only the summers could be spent there. She would have enjoyed it the whole year round and she resented Mr. Reynolds’ large law practice that compelled his presence in Boston.
In Boston, Mrs. Reynolds was a fashionable, handsomely dressed woman, but the moment she entered her ancestral halls she changed her costly attire for a gown of severe simplicity more in keeping with the painted floors, rag rugs and cane-bottomed chairs found therein. She might have been her own great-grandmother in her sprigged muslin dress with a hemstitched kerchief crossed over her loyal Coffin bosom. The retinue of servants the Reynolds family found necessary in Boston to administer to their wants were left on the mainland. Ruling in their stead was one severe-looking person who claimed distant relationship with Mrs. Reynolds since they boasted the same great-great-grandmother Cousin Esther Sylvester was her name. She was the maid of all work, accomplishing with the utmost ease and precision the labor of cook, laundress, and housemaid, and at the same time never forgetting that she was of the same blood as the mistress. The fact that her cousin’s grandfather had left the island and gone over on the mainland, amassing a fortune, made not a whit of difference to the independent Esther, whose grandfather had stayed where he was and, at least, kept what he had, which was a fourth share in a very likely whaling vessel and an extremely picturesque fisherman’s cottage at Siasconset. Esther had inherited this property and, like her grandfather, she had held on to it. She still owned a fourth share in the whaling vessel and the picturesque cottage at ’Sconset. To be sure, the whaling vessel was rotting at the Nantucket wharf, a mute reminder that the wheels of the world no longer had to be greased with sperm oil. The cottage had proved a much more valuable asset, as she rented it every summer for large sums to a great actress who delighted in its simplicity and the view one could get from its crooked little windows of the quaint old village streets.
Mrs. Reynolds and Cousin Esther had not only the same great-grandmothers but also the same insatiable curiosity about the small and seemingly unimportant details of everyday life. Perhaps it was something that had been bred in the bones of the original Nantucket Islanders when, in old days, they had been cut off from the world for months at a time and their own affairs and the affairs of their neighbors were of all importance because of the fact that the affairs of the nation were stale long before they were brought to their ears. The fact that Amanda Bartlett had broken her best Canton china teapot was a current event while the news that the men of Boston had thrown the tea into the bay at the famous Boston Tea Party was days old before they heard of it.
The telegram telling of Tim’s accident had thrown Mrs. Reynolds and Cousin Esther Sylvester into a great state of excitement. Not only were they very uneasy about their darling boy but they did so want to know how and when and where the accident had occurred. Who had rescued him? Which leg was broken, etc., etc., etc. Who were the mysterious persons who had sent the lengthy telegram, evidently not at all counting the cost? How did they happen to be at Hurricane Island? Were they white people? If so, why did they say their yacht was named such a strange outlandish name, “Boojum!” Surely the telegraph operator must have got it wrong. Perhaps they were Fiji Islanders and not white persons after all. At any rate, they had rescued the beloved Tim and were bearing him home in the yacht with the exotic name and the ladies were determined to be as nice to them as could be.
“Cousin Esther, you had better make extra preparations and be ready for guests,” suggested Mrs. Reynolds. “You know how Mr. Reynolds loses his head when he begins to invite.”
“Certainly, Cousin Lucia. I have baked three kinds of pies and have a cold joint in the larder. I calculate there will be food enough for all the Boojummers likely to land,” said Miss Sylvester with some stiffness of manner. She did not at all like suggestions from her cousin-mistress.
Up the quiet, shady street of Nantucket Town came the Boojummers. Mr. Reynolds led the way with Mr. Wing. Then came the stretcher bearers, Breck and Jack, the grinning Tim borne lightly between them. The others flocked around the point of interest not certain they should not have stayed away and let Tim have his home-coming without such a crowd, but when this had been suggested, Mr. Reynolds made so many protestations there was nothing to do but tag along.
“Well, when you come right down to it,” said Mabel, “I guess there isn’t anybody to leave out. Father must go to receive thanks for being near by with the ‘Boojum.’ Of course, Jack and Breck must go to carry Tim; Frances must go because she found him, and Jane must go because she helped carry him; Ellen must go to look after Jack, and—”
“And you and Charlie must go along to do the head work,” teased Jane.
“Exactly! Charlie must look after the legal aspect of the case and I must look after Charlie.”
“Here they come! Here they come!” cried Mrs. Reynolds, peeping through the living-room window.
“Yes, and it’s a good thing I baked three kinds of pies,” asserted Cousin Esther, grimly. “I’ll be bound Mr. Reynolds has invited them to dinner.”
“How pale my Tim looks! I’m afraid I’m going to cry, Cousin Esther, although I know how he hates for me to.”
“Don’t do it, Cousin Lucia, don’t do it! Remember Great-great-Aunt Patience who never shed a tear even when they brought home her three boys all drowned off Sankity. Here’s the smelling-salts. Now bear up!”
Tim was pale in spite of a summer’s tan. The stretcher bearers were as careful as possible, but every little jolt was painful to the fractured hip.
“It hurts I know,” whispered Frances.
“Not much, but thank you for thinking about it, all the same.” Tim had been wondering if any of them realized how much it did hurt.
“Just think how Jane and I bumped you and be thankful our skirts are where they are instead of stretched on oars and you swung in the middle.”
“I wonder if Mother is going to weep over me. Poor Mother! It does her good to cry, but Cousin Esther is so stern with her when she gives way. Of course I’m not crazy about being cried over, but I can stand it for the good of the cause. I can stand anything better than Mother’s suppressed expression. There she is! Yes, she has her suppressed expression!”
Mrs. Reynolds came slowly from the door. Her instinct was to fly to her son and throw herself on him, take his red head in her arms and weep, but, remembering Great-great-Aunt Patience, she held on to herself, knowing full well the stern Cousin Esther was looking at her from the small-paned window.
The mother bent over her boy, giving him a restrained peck. But he put his arms around her and drew her close.
“Come on, old lady, and don’t be so Coffinish. Give us what our Southern friends call a ‘sho nuf’ kiss.”
That was too much for poor Mrs. Reynolds. Not only did she give Tim a “sho nuf” kiss but added to it a genuine hug, while the tears fell fast. What did she care after all for old Great-great-Aunt Patience and her strength of character that kept her from shedding tears even if her three sons were drowned off Sankity?
“That’s something like!” declared Tim. “Now you won’t have to get a headache from restrained emotion. Never mind Cousin Esther. She will forget it by the time she makes enough pies for all of us.”
Tim then proceeded, with the help of his father, to introduce all the Boojummers to his mother. After the formal introduction, he began with the utmost patience to give a detailed account of the accident to the eager ladies, Cousin Esther having joined them in the living room where the stretcher bearers had deposited their burden on a long, low couch.
“And this is the one who found me,” indicating Frances.
“Do tell!” from Miss Esther.
“Now tell me how you found him,” from Mrs. Reynolds. “How you found him and what you were doing there and how you happened to look behind the rock—everything! everything! Don’t leave out a thing.”
Frances proceeded with the narrative. When she got to the place where she went after Jane, her insatiate hostess exclaimed:
“And you tell me what you were doing and what you thought and what you said; please, Jane!”
With a twinkle in her eye, Jane took up the tale which seemed like a game of consequences. The improvised stretcher made its appearance in the story and the distracted mother looked eagerly about as though expecting the stretcher to tell all it knew.
“Now this is where the petticoats come in!” exclaimed Mr. Reynolds. “What did I tell you?”
“You made a stretcher out of the oars and your skirts? Remarkable! Wonderful! What kind of skirts?”
“These we are wearing!” Frances and Jane sounded like a Greek chorus.
“Those identical ones?”
“The same!”
Cousin Esther, who was standing next to Frances, picked up a piece of her skirt between thumb and forefinger and examined it critically.
“What they call khaki nowadays,” she said sententiously. “It is really a kind of lightweight sail cloth.”
“And the oars! What kind of oars? I do wish I might have seen the oars.”
“Here’s one of them,” grinned Tim. “I’ve been lying on it all the way here and mighty uncomfortable it was, but I felt I must produce it.” He proceeded to roll over a bit and pull gingerly at a little red oar that had been concealed up to that moment. “Here it is. Exhibit B! Now proceed!”
“No wonder you were making faces as we came long,” scolded Frances. “Why didn’t you let me carry the oar? It wasn’t very good for a broken hip.”
“Excuse me, please,” put in Breck. “But none of this is very good for a broken hip. I’m not much of a doctor, but I’m the only one you have had as yet and I really must insist, Mrs. Reynolds, upon my patient’s being put to bed and a real surgeon being called in to pass on my work.”
“Oh, thunder, Breck! Not before grub!” grumbled Tim.
All of them laughed at this and Mrs. Reynolds cried a little more.
“Now you are my own boy again,” she laughed through her tears.
“You remind me, Mother, of Tennyson’s lines,” quoted Mr. Reynolds:
“It seems to more like Sawyer’s parody on Tennyson,” suggested Frances:
A surgeon was called in and passed favorably on Breck’s handiwork. Tim’s fracture was doing as well as could be expected, but he was to be put to bed for three weeks or more and then, of course, must walk on crutches for many days to come.
“Isn’t that the limit?” grumbled Tim. “And the ‘Boojum’ will be sailing away before I know it and I’ll be left here with nothing to do.”
“You can be knitting,” suggested Frances, “at least your bones can be.”
“That’s right! Laugh—you don’t care if my hip is broken.” Tim was cross and miserable and didn’t care who knew it. It was hard right in the middle of his well-earned summer vacation to be laid up in bed just when he had made the acquaintance of such a jolly crowd too. He did not confess to himself that it was Frances and not the whole crowd that he was going to miss.
Mrs. Reynolds had given her boy the room opening into the living room for his sick chamber. It had been a sewing room through all the generations and it was something of a wrench for her to change it, but a live son weighed more in the balance than all the dead traditions, even though they were Coffin traditions, and it was nice to have Tim downstairs where his friends could see him and where, when he once got up and around on his crutches, he would not have to contend with stairs. Cousin Esther grumbled, but Cousin Esther was opposed to change of any sort.
“It is out of reason to take a sewing room for a bed room,” she objected. “I’d as soon think of making a pumpkin pie with a top crust or a mince pie without one. A sewing room is meant for a sewing room and a bedroom for a bedroom. I like things left as our Maker intended them to be.”
With which bit of theology she let the matter drop, but Tim always felt out of place in the sewing room. When Frances made the above suggestion about his bones knitting, he felt a grim satisfaction that the process was to go on in the sewing room.
“You don’t care a bit,” he repeated, keeping Frances’ hand in his a moment after the rest of the Boojummers had left his room, having bid him good-bye before going on a jaunt to ’Sconset.
“Nonsense! I do care! As for you, you are most uncomplimentary,” declared Frances. “You should be eternally grateful to your much-abused hip for getting itself broken. How otherwise would you ever have known the inmates of the ‘Boojum’?”
“Oh, I’d have found you somehow. What is to be is to be.”
“What has been was, you mean.”
“Well then, I’m going to grin and bear it as best I might. But please come see me when you get back from ’Sconset. Gee I’d like to go over there with you. It’s a peach of a place. It’s not quite so formal as Nantucket Town, more rough and ready. When all the summer folk go, I run over there and visit Cousin Esther sometimes. She loves to have me, although she is cleaning house most of the time getting rid of the leavings of the actress who rents her place for the summer. I am sure it is clean as clean, but she is never content until she has scrubbed every board three times at least. I’ll get Cousin Esther to ask you to come too. Will you?”
“But I’ll be gone—out West—home—somewhere by that time.” Frances tried to draw her hand away but Tim held on to it.
“But sometime would you go if Cousin Esther asked you?”
“Would she make three kinds of pies?”
“Sure! Ten kinds!”
“All right then!” Frances was laughing and blushing but she gave Tim’s hand a little answering pressure and left the boy happy and not so indignant with the fractured hip as that member no doubt deserved. After all, he reflected, there is generally a reason for everything.
“Cousin Esther!” he called after the Boojummers were out of the house, “please come here a minute.”
“Well, what is it?” and Esther came and stood by his bed, looking down on the red-haired man that seemed to her still the little boy who had been the plague and joy of her summers since he was able to crawl. She tried to look stern, but her eyes were soft in spite of her.
“What do you think of the one called Frances?”
“The one who found you lying up behind the boulder?”
“That’s the one.”
“Well, she ate a piece of every kind of pie. That’s doing pretty well for a girl born out of New England. She looks as though she came of good stock not to be seafaring.”
“Her ancestors went West in a prairie schooner and I fancy they had as much to contend with and more than ours did on the bounding billows,” laughed Tim. “Will you ask her to come visit you over at ’Sconset?”
“Are you serious, boy?”
“As serious as I ever was in my life. Her last name is Bliss and if she will have me that will be my middle name for the rest of my life. Don’t tell Mother. I want to wait and see if she will have me. I don’t see how she can.”
“I don’t see how she can help it if she has any sense,” declared Esther with some indignation. “Not have you indeed!”
“Well, if she does, will you teach her how to make pies?” teased Tim.
“Of course, if her mother has neglected to do so.”
“All right Cousin Esther. I’m glad you like her. Please hand me that scrap book over on the table before you go. It is the deuce and all to be laid up and not able to wait on myself.”
After Esther went out Tim lay idly fingering the scrap book. He chuckled to himself as he thought of the way his cousin had praised the girl he hoped to persuade to love him at some future date.
“A mouth for pie! That’s the way she lauded her,” he laughed. “Nothing but a mouth for pie! Well a slice from three kinds was going some. I fancy they must be almost at ’Sconset now. I do wish I could have been the first one to show her ’Sconset,” he mused. “Where is that little poem I want?” and he rapidly turned the leaves of the scrap book.
“Here it is! I am going to read it to her some day. It fills the bill exactly I think.”
’SCONSET BY-THE-SEA
By Jean Wright
The poem Tim read from his scrap-book is an excellent description of ’Sconset. It is a place in which to dream one’s life away in spite of the fact that it is a very popular summer resort and filled to overflowing with pleasure and rest seekers. There is many a nook and cranny behind the ever changing sand dunes where one can get away from the “madding crowd.” Behind one of those dunes Breck and Jane found a snug harbor after having taken a dip in the surf.
“Did you ever feel such water?” cried Jane, burrowing down in the yielding sand. “It isn’t as cold as Hurricane Island, but it has a stinging, spanking way with it as though it meant to conquer you.”
“Yes, I feel as though parental authority had got after me with the wrong side of the hair brush,” laughed Breck. “It is a treacherous bit of beach down at this end and none but good swimmers should venture here.”
The bathing beach proper was several hundred yards from where Breck and June had taken their swim. There the island made a sharp curve and the undertow suddenly was increased as though the old ocean resented the change of tactics in the land. It was a sparkling, brilliant day, but the water gave evidence of there having been a storm at sea. Far out near the horizon were occasional white-caps and as the waves came closer to the shore they increased in size and fury, each one seemingly trying to jump on the back of the one in front, foaming and raging, thundering and booming, breaking on the sand with a final roar and then endeavoring to drag the whole of Nantucket Island down into the deep. The sand was coarse and loose and it took a firm, quick-footed person to get out of the surf safely without being “boiled.” Boiling is a terrible experience and one often had by the unwary who does not know the habits of the surf on a shelving beach with loose and shifting sand. The worst feature about being “boiled” is the jeering crowd that sits on the beach and screams with laughter as the poor victim is turned over and over and played with by the relentless waves like some gigantic cat worrying a poor little mouse. There is nothing amusing in it but the crowd always finds it so and, when the poor mouse is cast up on the sands with a final admonishing spank from the last playful breaker, the ordinary crowd of holiday makers shows less heart than an ancient audience in a Roman arena. The victim, if it is a woman, is pretty apt to have lost her stockings in the struggle, her bathing cap, hair pins, anything in the way of apparel that is not securely fastened on. No matter what the sex, it is hard to come out from a real good “boiling” with much religion left. Ears leveled over with sand, shins, knees and elbows scraped sore from being dragged back and forth, besides the hurt feelings from being laughed at, is enough to make one doubt that “whatever is, is right.”
To the more secluded spot, sought by Jane and Breck, came Mabel and Charlie. They, too, found it difficult at times to pursue their love-making on the deck of the “Boojum” where, as Charlie put it, “somebody was always butting in.”
“Gee! Ain’t this nice? Not a soul around! Come on, Mabel honey, let’s take a dive and then get on the safe side of one of those friendly dunes.”
Now Charlie Preston was a fresh-water fish and, while he was a powerful swimmer, he knew little of the dangers of surf bathing. While on the “Boojum,” as a rule, the bathing had been done by diving from the yacht’s deck into the deep sea. Mabel was as at home in the surf as a seal and could dive under a breaker and come up on the other side with amazing poise. She never even thought to warn Charlie of the treachery of the beach but dived in and while her fiancé stood to watch her prowess and admire her skill a wave took him off his feet and then began the process of “boiling” described above.
Over and over poor Charlie rolled, struggling and spluttering, gurgling and choking. He would clutch with desperate hands at the loose sand and then a relentless wave would dash over him and drag him back while a playful brother wave would knock him with a resounding smack up on the beach only to let him be dragged back and rolled over by yet another one before he could get a footing.
Hearing a great splashing and screaming, Breck and Jane emerged from behind their friendly dune just in time to see Charlie being boiled to a king’s taste and Mabel, who ordinarily would have been much amused at the discomfiture of an unwary bather, was screaming shrilly and trying to get in to come to the rescue of her beloved Charlie. But one must bide his time in trying to ride waves. Time and tide waits for no man, nor does it hurry, and getting back to shore was not as quick as Mabel would have liked. She made a desperate lunge and, for the first time in the annals of the Wings, one of that name was caught in the surf and “boiled.”
Over and over went Mabel and over and over went Charlie again, but in the confusion they managed to clasp hands and just as Breck, trying to conceal a grin, came to their assistance they managed to crawl up out of reach of the spanking waves.
A rueful couple they were, sitting on the beach blinking ludicrously at each other.
“Well, you needn’t laugh!” spluttered Charlie.
“I’m not laughing! I’m trying to cry, but my eyes are dammed up with sand,” sobbed Mabel.
“Well, you needn’t laugh, Breck, you and Jane.”
“We are not laughing, old fellow. I would have come sooner if I had known what was going on,” said Breck. “‘Boiling’ is no joke to my mind but a serious calamity.”
Breck spoke soberly but he was glad Mabel and Charlie had so much sand in their eyes they could not see his face. Nobody could help smiling at their misery.
Jane came to the assistance of her friend with a small pail some child had left half buried in the sand. This she filled with sea water by carefully timing an incoming breaker. She had no desire to be caught as Mabel and Charlie had been.
“Here, honey, wash out your poor eyes.”
“They are getting washed fro-om with-h-in-hin-out-hout-ward,” sobbed Mabel. “I ne-hever expec-hected to get boi-hoiled.”
“Don’t you mind, darling,” comforted Charlie, who was still panting but was happy to be alive after such an experience. “Here’s a moonstone I found buried in my ear. A beauty too! I’m going to have it set in a ring for you. I’ve heard there were lovely moonstones on this beach, but I never expected to pick up one by ear.”
“I’m hun-un-gry,” said Mabel, her sobs letting up somewhat. “When I get scared, I always get hungry. Maybe it is the ‘boiling’ that made me think about food.”
“Of course,” said Charlie, indulgently. “I’m kind of hungry too. I tell you what you do: you and Jane wait here and Breck and I’ll go forage and bring us back a light lunch. We’ll pick up the rest of the crowd on the way.”
“Not too light,” admonished Mabel.
Breck looked sadly at Jane. There seemed to be no place where he could go and have a quiet little love-making with his sweetheart. Why should Charlie and Mabel come and be ‘boiled’ near their dune of refuge? And why should he have to go hunt food for Mabel? But Jane gave him a bright little nod of admonition and there was nothing for him to do but comply. He leant over and whispered to her:
“Don’t go in the water while I am away. Please promise me!”
And she laughingly promised.
While Jane and Mabel sat in the sun leaning comfortably against the friendly dune, a group of people came towards their retreat from the crowded bathing beach.
“Goodness, I wish they would stay away from here,” grumbled Mabel. “I’m still panting for breath and I certainly don’t want to move.”
“I reckon they won’t bother us if we don’t bother them,” suggested Jane. “It looks like a swell bunch.”
“That’s what I’ve got against them. How can a body eat before such elegance and Charlie and Breck will be back soon with food, I am thinking. That’s a pretty girl in the Vanity Fair bathing suit and scarlet cap—and look at the old gent in yachting togs! He must be postmaster general of all the railroads or something grand. He looks as though he owned the island and was thinking about annexing the ocean.”
“He doesn’t seem to take much pleasure in his possessions,” laughed Jane. “He looks sad to me.”
The gentleman in question was a powerfully built man of about sixty, with iron gray hair, piercing blue eyes, a high Roman nose that seemed to flaunt its aristocratic lines and a mouth and jaw of such force and determination that Jane wondered at the impertinence of a wave that, having leaped on the back of one of its brothers, came tumbling in all out of order, wetting the immaculate white shoes of the nabob. He looked indignant but evidently felt it to be beneath his notice.
Behind him trooped a crowd of young people, five girls and two young men. The old gentleman was the only one not in bathing costume.
“This is a good place to go in, Father,” said the pretty girl in the Vanity Fair suit. “I simply could not have gone in with that common crowd up there.”
“Humph!” whispered Mabel, “that must be the princess.”
“Of course not! Such persons!” spoke up one of the other girls.
“No one knows them,” from another.
“Well, hardly!” drawled one of the young men who seemed to be dancing attendance on the pretty girl Mabel had designated as “the princess.”
“I hope they can swim and know something about undertow and getting ‘boiled’,” murmured Jane.
“The snobs! It might do them good to get a good drubbing on their stuck-up persons,” answered Mabel, looking at the interlopers with round wondering eyes.
The interlopers in turn paid not the least attention to either Jane or Mabel. If they had been sand fleas or skates’ eggs, their presence could not have been more completely ignored.
“Sorry you won’t go in, sir,” said one of the young men to the older man.
“I never learned to swim,” he answered with a certain haughty indifference of tone which put the polite young man along with the impertinent wave, the sand fleas, the skates’ eggs, Jane and Mabel, among the things to be ignored.
“Strange! Your daughter is a beautiful swimmer—”
“Yes, beautiful!” chorused the girls who seemed to be bent on flattering the pretty daughter.
“She does everything well,” said one of them.
“And your son is—” but what his son was Jane and Mabel could not hear, as the gentleman turned on his heel and walked off up the beach puffing vigorously at a long black cigar that Mabel insisted smelt as though it might have cost a dollar.
“Lorna, darling, I hate for you to get your pretty bathing suit wet,” said one of the girls, whose manner was even more fawning than the rest.
“Oh, Lord!” groaned Mabel. “Just listen!”
“Lorna! Lorna!” Jane said to herself. “Could these be Breck’s people?” Looking after the retreating figure of the impatient old gentleman, she saw unmistakable lines of resemblance. He could be none other than the father of the man she had promised to marry.
“Poor Breck! They are certainly difficult,” she said to herself. “But the father looks sad. I believe he has been suffering, and the girl is sweet looking and mighty pretty. It is just this lot of flatterers and sillies that are ruining her. Look at the men! They haven’t a chin between them and the girls ought to have a good strenuous course in Camp Fire training to knock the foolishness out of them.”
She said nothing to Mabel about the possibility of their being the Breckenridges. Mabel was not a marvel of tact and Jane felt that here was a situation that must be handled delicately. She hoped something would detain Breck and she could warn him that his father and sister were on the beach. It might be hard on him to come upon them unawares. She felt assured, however, that her Breck was equal to any emergency.
“I wish I could get my wind back,” said Mabel. “That ‘boiling’ has done me up for the day. I wanted to go in the water again but I fancy I’d better not.”
“You are panting, you poor dear,” said Jane sympathetically.
“I was scared about Charlie. I believe that did me up more than all of the fancy somersaults I turned.”
“Why don’t you cuddle down and take a nap?” suggested Jane.
“I believe I will,” Mabel curled herself up in the sand and in a moment was fast asleep.
Jane, glad to have quiet for her thoughts, directed her attention to the bathers. The pretty Lorna had dived through the breakers and was riding the waves like a veritable mermaid. She was a good swimmer and seemed perfectly at home in the surf.
“Isn’t she wonderful?”
“Did you ever see anyone so beautiful?”
The flatterers were forced to shout their compliments in loud tones so that the pretty Lorna could hear them above the noise of the breakers.
“Come in!” she commanded. The young men looked rather ruefully at the curling waves and the girls took tentative steps in the direction of their princess. But tentative steps are fatal on a beach like that with a heavy uncertain sea. The “boiling” that Mabel and Charlie had just undergone was nothing to the one that the timid young men and maidens now were subjected to. It was the fault of one young man who hesitated and was lost. Over he went and clutching wildly grasped the arm of one of the girls, who in turn pulled down another and then the merry war went on.
“Help! Help!” they shrieked.
“I reckon they can help one another,” said Jane grimly.
Just as one victim would stagger to his feet, another would clutch wildly at his legs and over he would go. In the midst of this confusion another cry rang out shrill and sharp above the rush of the waters and the squeals of those being “boiled.”
“Help! Oh, help! I’m giving out!”
Jane sprang to her feet. In her amusement over the laughable predicament of the unwary she had forgotten all about Lorna. Now she could plainly see that the girl was in distress. Evidently she had tried to come in to shore and was being carried out by the undertow. She had lost her head and was struggling wildly. For a moment her head with the gay cap and handkerchief went under, a huge wave breaking over her.
Jane dived through the breakers. She was conscious of the fact that the father was near her. He had turned and walked back towards the beach, arriving near the friendly dune just as his daughter’s cry for help rang out.
“My God! It’s Lorna!” he gasped. “Here!” he cried, grabbing one of the struggling young men out of the breakers just as he was being thrown up on the sands by a playful wave. “Here, you! My daughter is drowning!”
“So am I!” gasped the chinless youth.
“You can swim—go get her! Get her man! I can’t swim a stroke.”
The frantic father was rushing up and down like a raging lion. By that time, all of the party had come out of the boiling with no bones broken but with rueful countenances.
“A nawsty beach!” announced the other young man.
“But my Lorna! She is drowning!” bellowed the father.
“Lorna! Lorna!” wailed the girls and the youths shivered and tried to make up their minds to go in after her but the waves seemed to have redoubled in force and fury. They rose up like walls and broke on the shore as though determined to smash anything that dared approach them.
“A rope! A rope! Get a rope!” commanded Mr. Breckenridge. But nobody seemed to know where to get a rope, so nobody got one. “Will none of you go in and get my girl? Cowards!”
He beat the trembling young men on their cringing backs and tried to shove them into the water.
“My God! My God! Why did I never learn to swim?”
The shrieks of the distracted friends of Lorna had at last attracted some of the people from the regular bathing beach and the crowd began to surge towards the scene of the disaster.
In the meantime Jane with sure eye and steady stroke had cut under the combing breakers and reached the spot where last she had seen the drowning girl. She trod water for a moment and peered through the clear green waves. Ah, there was a flash of the pretty crimson cap and handkerchief! Without a moment’s hesitation, Jane dived and came up bearing a limp trophy.
“I reckon it’s a good thing she’s lost consciousness,” thought Jane. “She can’t struggle and I have some chance of getting in with her.”
She looked back on the beach as a huge wave raised her aloft with her burden, and wondered if she could make it. It seemed a great way off.
“Of course you can, Jane Pellew! Keep your mouth shut and breathe through your nose; don’t fight the waves but let them take you in. Think of the skates’ eggs that are thrown up on the sands, how fragile they are and still safe. Think of Breck! Think of Father and Jack and poor Aunt Min! Think of Lorna and what it will mean to Breck’s father to have his child safe. Poor man!”
Holding Lorna’s head above water as much as possible, she began her perilous trip ashore. She must time each wave and endeavor to ride it instead of being overcome by it. Many times she and Frances had played the game of saving each other and she was thankful for the skill she had acquired. But she found it quite a different thing saving Frances who inadvertently helped herself somewhat and saving this poor limp girl who flopped so piteously and whose head was so hard to keep above water.
“If Breck would only come!” her heart cried out.
Among the crowd that gathered on the beach there were many good swimmers but, as sometimes happens in a crowd, a strange panic had seized them. The run in the loose sand from the bathing beach proper had winded most of them too and men and women stood shuddering and watched the black-eyed girl make her fight.
“She will win! She will win!” they comforted themselves by saying.
“Lord! what pluck!”
“Who is it—the drowned girl?”
“Preston Breckenridge’s daughter. He’s the multimillionaire from California.”
“Money won’t help him much now.”