CROSS CURRENTS

Carolyn May had seen her friend and his wife, who had become interested in Baby Laird, on several occasions since they had first driven by the Ball place. They often came over to the West Side in a hotel carriage, and always stopped at the bottom of the lane where it debouched upon the public highway.

Carolyn would usually spy them if she did not chance to be wheeling the baby that way; and if he was asleep or with his mother she would run down alone to speak with her friends. Even the woman unbent to Carolyn May—who could resist the little girl's sunny ways?—and she was openly interested in Baby Laird.

"How is the little dear?" she would ask eagerly, if the baby was not to be seen on that particular occasion. "He reminds me so much of my own little one—years and years ago."

The little girl felt there was something about the woman's own baby that was not to be talked about. Her husband looked very stern and never said a word about it. Perhaps, like Aunty Rose Kennedy's three little ones, this woman's baby had been too puny to grow up.

Carolyn's mother—nor the pale lady—asked few questions regarding these new friends of Carolyn's. The child became acquainted with so many people. And Carolyn never chanced to mention that the couple in the hotel turnout were the same whose automobile had crushed the pale lady's baby go-cart in New York.

Molly I. informed her boarders that "those folks Car'lyn's struck up such an acquaintance with stop at the Orowoc House and have a suite of rooms and a maid for her and what they call a vally for him, b'sides that black man. They're richer'n a clam-flat at low water."

Now that Edna had come to spend the week, Carolyn was so busy that she almost forgot these newer friends. And as Edna was "fed up," as Barzilla called it, on baby-minding, her own Brother Eldred being her immediate care at home, the little girls did not spend much time with the pale lady's little one.

There really was a great deal to show Edna. Even the cow was a wonder to the little city girl, who had never seen milk drawn from anything save a bottle or a can.

"And I can't see, Carolyn, why she has horns, or why she mews all night," remarked Edna.

"Why, Edna Prince! Flory Ball doesn't mew; it's cats that mew. And what you heard last night wasn't a cow anyway. It was foggy out at sea, and that was the steam foghorn at the South Light. Barzilla told me."

"Well, I don't care. It sounded just like that cow," declared Edna.

They played in their bathing suits for part of every pleasant day. Carolyn was as brown as a berry; but Edna had to be careful about getting sunburned.

There was a path down the face of the bluff behind the cottage that led to a smooth stretch of beach. Mamma Cameron and Baby Laird's mother, with sometimes Molly I., took their dip with the little girls on this beach. But Carolyn and Edna were forbidden to descend the bluff alone.

There was a wealth of treasure along the shore, shells, pebbles, seaweeds—the drift and flotsam of the flowing tide that twice each day took the island in its arms.

Talk about Mr. Jedidiah Farlow's shavings! Why, the seaweeds were made a hundred times more decorative than ever shavings could be.

There were lacy kinds that made splendid veils and collars for the little girls; and kinds with green and purple fronds like the leaves of palm trees; thick, leathery sea-green weed that could be cut into different shapes with a sharp knife. Then there was that kind of seaweed that had seed pods which, when partly dried, popped delightfully; while tangled in the various growths were all manner of odd little shells and deep-sea monsters. Why! Carolyn even found a seahorse about four inches long.

And how Prince tore up and down the beach! He found other monsters than those the little girls came across—horseshoe crabs for one thing, which Carolyn had no idea were good to eat until Molly I. rescued several live ones from the surf and they ate them, prepared deliciously, for supper. No ordinary softshell crab is the equal of these monsters.

Then Carolyn and Edna had an awful fright. Prince saw something in the surf and went in after it.

"Oh, see that thing!" cried Edna. "It's got a round, shiny head."

"Why," responded Carolyn, "it must be a rubber ball."

But when Prince tried to seize it, they saw a short arm thrown into the air as though the Thing were mutely pleading for rescue.

"Oh!" shrieked Edna. "It's a baby!"

"Come back here, Prince!" commanded Carolyn, fully as horrified as her friend.

"A drowned baby!" moaned Edna, covering her eyes.

"Maybe it isn't drowned," gasped Carolyn. "Prince!"

Prince returned to the shore. The Thing whirled around and around in a miniature whirlpool; then another incoming breaker rolled the Thing almost to the little girls' feet. Prince barked at it wildly.

"Sh! Hush, Princey!" begged his little mistress. "If it's dead—But, then, maybe it isn't dead."

"Oh, it must be," wailed Edna.

"Maybe not. There are Water Babies, you know. Papa read about them out of a book to me. And a little chimney-sweep, who wanted to be clean, was washed all nice and made round and rosy and just like a land baby, because he'd never had a chance before to get a bath."

Edna listened to this with both ears; but she looked at the Thing in the surf with both eyes.

"It is black," she said. "Maybe it is another chimney-sweep trying to get clean. But—but, it looks awful dead!"

The Thing retreated with the receding surf to meet another incoming wave. The pebbles scratched and squeaked as they rolled down the strand, as if it might have been the voice of the Thing crying for help.

"Oh, it can't be that it is alive!" whispered Edna. "But see! See its arm waving!"

The Thing rolled over again and again. The incoming wave caught it and lifted it high upon its front. The little girls saw almost all of the Thing for a moment.

"Oh!" shrieked Edna. "It's got a tail!"

"It's a baby mermaid," murmured Carolyn May, all but stricken dumb by this discovery.

"Do you believe so?" demanded her friend. "And is it alive?"

"It can't be," said Carolyn. "Else it would be swimming. And it wouldn't let us see him. You know, my papa says it is almost as hard to see mermaids as it is to see sea serpents—and the sea serpents only come around when it is a very dull season at the seaside resorts. I am sure this is a good season at Block Island. See how many people there are here."

"The poor baby!" crooned Edna. "The poor mermaid baby! Isn't it awful?"

The sea rolled in and deposited the dead Thing almost at the feet of the two little girls. Prince could not restrain himself any longer, and he leaped upon the body and held it down so it could not slide back with the tide.

At that moment a voice startled the little girls, and there was Captain Ozias Littlefield, with a short handled clam hoe in a basket on his arm, stumping along the hard sand toward them. The staff of his wooden leg made strange holes in the beach beside his shoe print, as though some prehistoric monster had passed that way.

"Hullo, little girls—and little dog!" he said jovially. "How fare ye?"

"Oh, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield!" cried Carolyn almost in tears. "Come and look at this poor little dead merbaby."

"Dead what?" gasped the old sailor.

"Merbaby."

"Er—mer—Oh, my soul and body! Ye mean a mermaid's young 'un?"

"Yes, sir. And the poor thing's dead. Don't worry it, Princey. It's half human, anyway, even if it has got a tail and such short arms."

"Them arms is flippers. That's a fur seal," said the wooden-legged captain. "Got his foolish head battered on the rocks somehow. Or mebbe he was hit by a propeller. Them critters air awful cur'ous. Don't seem to know enough to keep out of trouble. If seals had any sense at all they wouldn't go year after year to the same rookery to sit and wait for the sealers to come and knock 'em over the head with iron clubs."

"Oh, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield!" exclaimed Carolyn, yet much relieved to learn that the dead Thing was not even "half human," "do wicked men do that to the poor seals?"

"I dunno how wicked they be. A livin's a livin' wherever and however you make it. And I bet your marm's got a sealskin coat or cape or muff or somethin'."

"A coat?" cried Carolyn in wonder. "Oh! Is that what they make sealskin coats out of?"

"Takes more'n one skin to make a proper coat for a lady as big as your marm."

"Oh, I'm sure she doesn't know that sealskins come from things that look so like dead babies. I'm sure she doesn't."

"My mamma," said Edna virtuously, "hasn't got a sealskin coat. She's got a ponyskin."

"Well!" ejaculated Carolyn quickly, "don't you s'pose it hurts a pony to be skinned just as much as it does a seal?"

She then proceeded to introduce Edna to the captain. He told them that as the fire had relieved him of his job at the Truefelt House, he and "Cousin Oly" had come across the island, as they did every spring and fall, to catch and cure fish for the winter.

"We're stopping in old Beppo's shack down by Dorris Cove," he said. "It's rigged kind of Portugoosy; but it's all right in fair weather or foul. Course, Oly kicks. He'd kick if his feet was tied—Hi cracky! he ain't got but one foot to tie, has he?" and the captain stubbed away, chuckling.

The little girls did not immediately lose their interest in the dead seal.

"It looks so much like humans," Carolyn said. "See its poor eyes! Aren't they beautiful, Edna? And so sad."

"Well, anybody's eyes would be sad if they were dead," declared her friend.

"I don't think it's decent to let the poor thing lie here. He might have been a Water Baby, you know. Let's bury it," said Carolyn.

And so they dug with their shovels a deep, deep hole in the loose sand above highwater mark. Prince helped in this, for he could dig faster and throw out more sand with his feet and nose than both little girls could with their shovels. There they laid the poor dead seal and made a mound over him. They covered the mound with shells and pebbles and seaweed in a very decorative pattern, and so left the seal to his long rest.

The children were not, however, engaged always in such beach pursuits during that week of Edna's visit. They raced the downs between the Ball cottage and the Free Baptist Church like wild colts. They rolled down the smooth, moss-covered sides of the many hollows (the moss was grey and had tiny red blossoms); and once Edna rolled right into the Dodges' tughole and frightened all the ducks and geese playing there. And she was in a mess!

They made a chum of Nebuchadnezzar, and when he grew used to having Prince around, he showed himself to be a lively playfellow indeed. He was fast learning to butt, and on one occasion he almost butted Carolyn into the barn cellar through the trapdoor behind old Beppo's stall.

One day they met on the road with their negro driver, the couple who were Carolyn May's friends. Carolyn ran back to the cottage to get Baby Laird, who was awake, and wheeled him down to the highroad, that the woman might see him and hold him in her arms. She had brought him a beautiful rattle made of walrus ivory—"scrimshaw work," Captain Littlefield would have called it—which she had bought of a Portuguese fisherman who lived on the South Side.

Edna thought the woman quite a wonderful person, and could not keep her gaze off her rich garments, her jewels, and her beautifully manicured hands.

That she was a semi-invalid was quite evident, and even the children understood that her fault-finding and nervousness arose from mental and bodily troubles. Her husband was vastly patient with her; he never crossed her even by a word. It seemed as though she must have everything she desired, they were so very wealthy. She did not have to play "If I Were Rich," Carolyn thought!

Carolyn had had many interesting conversations with the man whenever they met. On one occasion she said to him:

"Do you know, I saw your big, fine car this summer and you weren't in it?"

"Before you left New York, do you mean?"

"Oh, no, sir," said Carolyn May. "I saw it while I was up at my Uncle Joe Stagg's, at the Corners."

"And where, pray, is 'the Corners'?"

"Why, that's where Uncle Joe lives. It's near Sunrise Cove. He sells hardware and ploughs and things in his store at Sunrise Cove."

"Indeed? And are you sure it was my machine you saw?" asked the man, with curiosity.

"Oh, yes, sir. Your chauffeur was with it, and another gentleman."

"What sort of looking man was he?" asked Carolyn's friend, and his face grew much more stern in its expression.

The little girl explained, prattling away about the dark-browed man and his personal peculiarities without the first idea that she was "telling tales out of school"; for she would have scorned to be a "tattle-tale" had she realized. She did wonder, however, what her friend meant when he muttered:

"It was more than an ordinary joy ride that took them away up there—and René was not at the bottom of it. I'll look into that. Somebody will have to explain."

He put aside his ill-temper in a moment. There was a plan for a picnic the next day but one. Evidently it was a plan he and his wife had already talked over. They would come for the children in the morning and drive them to the South Light, there to have a picnic luncheon.

Of course, Mrs. Cameron had to be asked if Carolyn and Edna could go, and the former raced up to the cottage and led her mother down by the hand to give her permission for the outing. It was evident that the haughty looking woman approved of Carolyn's mother.

Mrs. Cameron had heard Carolyn talk so much about these people that she felt quite as though she knew them. And yet, she did not even know their name. As neither the man nor the woman mentioned it, she felt some embarrassment at the thought of asking them, pointblank, for that information. She had heard enough about them from Molly Ball and other Island people. They were by far the wealthiest and most important guests at the Orowoc House.

She might have been more curious had Carolyn not failed to mention the fact that these very people were those whose motor-car had crushed Baby Laird's go-cart so many weeks before. The invalid's interest in the pale lady's baby, however, did cause Mrs. Cameron some thought at a later time. She could see no reason for refusing to allow the little girls to accompany these people on the proposed outing.

"I would love to take the baby, too; but that, I fear, would be impossible," the invalid said. "Do you think his mother would consent?"

"I am afraid not. She is watching up there for his return now," said Mrs. Cameron, smiling, and drawing the woman's attention to the figure of Baby Laird's mother with the fresh gale blowing her skirts about her as she stood by the house on the bluff.

"Ah, yes," rejoined the invalid, looking at the pale lady's figure in the distance carelessly. "Remarkable what fine children some of these island women have. This baby looks much as my own son did when he was this child's age."

Her husband cleared his throat and said sharply:

"We shall have to be going. We will stop for the little girls about eleven. Good afternoon. Drive on, George."

The coloured man drove on. Not until they had quite gone did Hannah Cameron remember that she had not explained that Baby Laird was not a Block Island child.