WOODEN LEGS

Really, there was a great deal at and about the Truefelt House besides wooden legs for Carolyn May to be interested in; but it must be confessed that her mind was more set on Captain Ozias Littlefield's artificial limb than upon the soughing of the surf along the beaches, the salt tang of the breeze, the passing in continual procession off shore of sail and steam vessels, or the lovely view of rolling country from the windows of her mother's room on the second floor of the hotel.

They went down to dinner, and Carolyn listened for the step, clump! step, clump! of Mr. Littlefield's passage through the hall and out on the porch more faithfully than she attended to her meal. The wooden-legged man not only "bussed," as he called it, for the Truefelt House, but he acted as handy man. He cleaned the porches early in the morning, Carolyn learned; and at the dinner hour he put on a white apron and a black coat, and served those guests who lingered on the porch and desired refreshments from the café.

The Truefelt House, indeed, was short-handed.

"Part the crew mutinied a week ago an' desarted the ship," Mr. Littlefield was heard to say to a group of guests on the porch after dinner. "Mr. Ben has to act as his own clerk as well as checker at the kitchen door. And the Good Book does say that a man can't sarve two masters—not an' suit both on 'em."

Mrs. Truefelt bustled about making her guests welcome. She was a motherly but shrewd-faced, woman. She clipped her words when she spoke and had the true island intonation, although she had been a "foreigner" when she married Ben's father. She had a kindly pat on the head for Prince, hugged Carolyn, and expressed herself in most friendly fashion to Mrs. Cameron.

"It used to be, when Ben was at college, that we could get plenty of good help in summer. He brought the boys right over to the island from New Haven. Some of them were glad of the job between college terms, and others just came for the fun of it. Why! once we had for a clerk all one summer the son of one of the wealthiest men in Wall Street."

"Indeed?" responded Mrs. Cameron. "What was his name?"

"Why, the other boys called him 'Griffin Junior.' I declare! I don't remember his real name. You know how boys are—always calling each other out o' name. Why! they called my Ben 'Quahaug' because he was naterally such a silent feller. Like his Grandfather Solon Truefelt. It positive is a cross for Ben to talk to folks like he has to when he acts as clerk. I heard him say only today that he'd give a pretty penny to have Grif here again."

Carolyn's mother displayed a warmer interest in the matter than one might have expected a mere guest of the hotel to feel.

"Do you not remember the young man's name?" she asked again.

"Him they called 'Griffin Junior'? I declare! No. I'll ask Ben," said Mrs. Truefelt, bustling away.

Sunrise the next morning saw Carolyn May and Prince awake and at one of the windows in Mamma's big room where they could watch the seafog roll away before the red, level rays of the sun just then appearing above the sea-line. As the fog fled and the smooth sea came into view, its surface seemed to be a sheet of glass.

"Oh, Princey!" gasped Carolyn May, "I believe we could walk right out on it. I just believe we could do that very thing!"

Prince sniffed. That did not appeal much to him—walking on the water. He might have enjoyed, nevertheless, a plunge into the sea. At this present time, however, he wanted his usual morning run.

Carolyn hastened the completion of her toilet. As a usual thing she compassed all the buttons and buttonholes herself. Mamma was still asleep. The little girl and the dog crept out of the room as softly as possible.

But once down the stairs they dashed for the out-of-doors in noisy delight. It was then Carolyn learned that her friend of the wooden leg, Captain Ozias Littlefield, washed down and holystoned the decks, as he called it, at this early hour.

There he was with both trouser-legs rolled up to his knees, exposing one bona fide leg with an anklet of blue and red tattooing, and the varnished "peg-leg" which was strapped to the stump of the other leg at the knee. He first scrubbed, or "holystoned," the porch in sections, and then washed it down with a garden hose.

"Mornin', leetle gal," he said cheerfully. "How are you and your dog?"

"Very well, I thank you," said Carolyn May, wishing much that she felt herself sufficiently acquainted with Captain Littlefield to ask him, point-blank, how he came to have a wooden leg. But she did ask: "Can I go anywhere I want to?"

"I guess so. All but into the kitchen. Don't you put your head in there this airly. The cook—'chef' he likes us to call him—gets up with a grouch. I've noticed—dunno why it is!—most cooks at sea are grouchy. And if you wanter git into a flare with a woman ashore, you try to moor alongside o' one on bakin' day. Been me that had to decide this here present war," went on Mr. Littlefield, "I'd recruit all the cooks and send 'em over against them Germans right at the start. Cooks is fighters, take it from me."

"Oh, dear me!" murmured Carolyn, "I hope nobody'll have to go to war from over here. If we were in the war, wouldn't it be dang'rous for us to stay 'way out here in the ocean? Maybe submarine boats would surround the island. Then what would we do?"

"Jest like a whaleboat surrounded by sharks? Uh-huh! That would be tough, leetle gal, and no mistake." Then his eyes twinkled and he favoured her with a sly smile. "Never mind. Won't never be no war on this island."

"Oh! Are you sure?" demanded Carolyn May.

"Sure as sure."

"Why not?" asked she, falling into the trap.

"'Cause there's so many Littlefields here that the Motts and the Allens couldn't never Dodge the Balls," chuckled the wooden-legged man. "Ye won't jest understand that till ye get acquainted with more folks here. But the Balls and the Motts, and the Allens, and the Dodges, to say nothin' of us Littlefields, purt' nigh inhabit this island and all the outskirts thereof."

Carolyn May laughed politely, although she did not understand the punning on the islanders' family names. She and Prince ran off the porch and found a rutted path leading through the fields behind the hotel. A long way to the southward and outlined clearly in the morning light was the shaft of the South, or Highland, Light. To the right hand and near the middle of the island was another shaft with long arms attached. Carolyn had seen pictures of windmills. There was one in Papa Cameron's Don Quixote. Carolyn knew she would like to go to that windmill and see the miller grind corn. Beyond the mill, and on the highest point of land of any she could see, was a tower with a railed platform built around the top of it.

Prince found something much nearer at hand to interest him; he ran into a flock of young turkeys and became almost cross-eyed trying to follow them all as they scattered.

"Now, Princey!" exclaimed Carolyn, as he came back to her much abashed under the lash of her tongue. "Are you always going to be bad like that when you see anything that wears feathers? I am ashamed of you! Now we have come to a new place, you must behave. Nobody will love you at all if you are so obnox-u-ous."

That last word, perhaps, quenched the dog's ardour. He walked back to the hotel with his little mistress in a very sedate fashion. Others of the guests were up and out now. There were sounds from kitchenward that announced the fact that breakfast was in preparation.

She did not see Captain Littlefield; but from the front porch Carolyn heard the step, clump! step, clump! of a man with a wooden leg. She thought it must be her friend walking up and down the "for'ard deck" in the morning sunshine.

Prince evidently thought it was the friendly captain, too. He dashed around the corner of the house, and the next moment there was a vocal explosion that might have shocked more sophisticated ears than those of Carolyn May.

"What the Dancin' Doolittles is this here?" bawled a shrill and unmelodious voice. "Get out, you brute! Scat, I say!"

Carolyn hastened to the rescue. She knew it could never be Captain Littlefield. And she was right. Her friend was not in sight.

Instead, gyrating about in a clumsy circle on the front porch was a tall man with a very red face, a great white moustache, and a topknot of white hair that made him look like an angry cockatoo.

This old man, whose fiery eyes and great beak added to his birdlike appearance, was dancing about on one slippered foot, while his other leg, finished with a wooden limb much like that of Captain Littlefield's, was thrust out in a mad attempt to keep Prince at a distance.

"Get out, you brute!" he bawled, almost overturning himself in another attempt to kick the dog.

His white linen suit flapped about his lean body like dishcloths hangin' on a pole in a strong breeze. Prince, much excited and enraged by the attack made upon him by the old man, dashed in just as Carolyn appeared and fastened his teeth upon the part of the "peg-leg" that would have been the ankle had the limb been of actual flesh and bone.

"Whoo! Scat!" shouted the red-faced man, continuing to hop about on his sound foot.

"Prince!" shrieked Carolyn May.

But Prince hung right on to the wooden leg, and as the old fellow swung around he fairly lifted the dog from the porch and swung him in a circle, too.

The hullabaloo aroused everybody on the lower floor of the hotel, and maids, waiters, and kitchen help, as well as the early risen guests, came running to the front porch.

Lastly appeared Captain Ozias Littlefield, who had been shaving and had one side of his face masked with lather, while he flourished his razor in his hand.

"Belay all!" cried he, clumping forward. "What's afoul the ship hawse now?"

"Take this dog off'n me, Ozy Littlefield!" shouted the red-faced man. "Gimme that razor and I'll near 'bout chop his head off!"

At that terrible threat Carolyn shrieked again. Prince held his firm grip on the leg, and the red-faced man kicked out more strenuously than before. He actually kicked himself over backward and landed with a crash on the porch floor.

The straps holding the wooden leg to the stump of his real leg broke, and the dog flew off at a tangent, still gripping the timber in his jaws.

"What th' Dancing Doolittles!" yelled the old fellow, lying there on his back. "Now see what that dog's done."

"Fer the land's sake, Oly! what kind of a conniption fit do you call this? Can't you keep out o' trouble long enough for me to git shaved an' rid up a mite? I told ye I'd be right out," declared the exasperated Captain Littlefield. "Gimme your hand and let me help you up."

"No use gettin' up with only one laig, Ozy," complained the overturned one. "Git me that timber-toe away from that savage beast. What ye keepin' here—a menagerie 'stead of a hotel, I wanter know?"

"Since ever I knowed ye, Oly Littlefield—an' that was when both of us was in petticuts—you've allus managed to git into trouble more'n any other human bein' I ever met up with. Sit up in this chair like I tell ye, an' I'll git yer laig all right."

Captain Littlefield showed a great deal of latent muscular strength in lifting the bigger man into one of the porch chairs. There he left him, fuming and fussing, while he went to the rescue of the wooden leg.

Carolyn had snapped the leash to Prince's collar and the dog was merely mumbling the wooden leg. He evidently considered the whole business some kind of new play. The little girl's face was almost as red as that of the old fellow who had lost his leg. She felt sure that the trouble had not been of Prince's making; but she feared everybody would blame him.

"Don't you fret yourself, Sissy," said Captain Littlefield, kindly. "Cousin Oly ain't responsible for what he does and says, anyway. He'd oughter been a cook. He's got the temper of one, sure 'nough."