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CHAPTER VIII
UP ROCKY RIVER
The second start of the flotilla – that from Lumberton – was a hilarious start indeed. Poor Prettyman Sweet was the butt of everybody’s laughter. The glare of rage he threw now and then at the ridiculous dog in the bow of the Duchess sent the boys into spasms of laughter.
The girls in the other motorboat – even Bobby – seeing that their laughter quite offended Lily Pendleton, began talking about something else and ignored the Barnacle, as the dog had been so aptly named.
Reddy Butts and Art Hobbs, however, loved to annoy the Central High dude. They told Purt that the Barnacle possessed a family resemblance to the Sweets that could not be denied.
“He smiles just like you do, Pretty,” said Arthur. “I declare I wouldn’t deny the relationship.”
“You fellows think you are funny,” snarled the dude, losing his temper at last. “I’ll fix that beast!”
“How you going to do it?” demanded Reddy, grinning.
“You come here and take the wheel,” commanded the dude. “See that you steer right and keep in the channel, right behind Chet’s boat and his tow.”
“All right,” said Butts, and took the spokes in hand.
Purt, shooting an inquiring glance forward to see if the girls were watching, began to creep up on the dog. The beast was looking over the bow, his tongue hanging out, and evidently enjoying the rapid sail up Rocky River.
Somebody had removed the rope from his collar since he had come aboard the Duchess. There was nothing for Purt to grab had the dog observed his approach and sought to get away.
However, the dog remained unconscious of the attempt on his peace of mind. Purt crept nearer and nearer, while the giggling boys in the cockpit watched him narrowly.
Reddy looked knowingly at Arthur, and the latter pulled off his jacket and kicked off his sneakers. The water was warm and Arthur was a good swimmer.
The dude, earnestly striving to move softly, got within hand’s reach of the dog. Suddenly he threw himself forward. At the same moment Reddy twisted the wheel ever so little to starboard.
The Duchess was traveling at a good clip. The wave at her nose was foam-streaked and spreading broadly. The water in her wake boiled.
The sudden thrust Purt gave the dog cast the surprised brute overboard; with a yelp of amazement he sank beneath the foam-streaked surface as the motorboat rushed on.
But another yelp echoed the dog’s; when Reddy Butts swerved the boat’s nose, the move was quite unexpected by Purt.
He dove forward, yelled loudly, and was cast over the edge of the deck just as sprawlingly as the Barnacle himself!
“Man overboard!” yelled Reddy, scarcely able to say it for laughter.
The crowd on the other powerboat heard the shout, if they had not all seen Purt’s exhibition of diving. The dude went under just as deep as the dog, and did not come to the surface anywhere near as quickly.
The Barnacle, whether he was a water-dog, or not, was a good swimmer. When his head shot above the stream he yelped, started to paddle after the Duchess and her tow, saw that that was useless, and turned toward the southerly bank of the stream.
The river was half a mile wide at this place, and the Barnacle left a wake like a motorboat behind him. He was going to reach the shore all right.
How about the master he had adopted? Purt came to the surface more slowly, but when he got there he emitted a shriek like a steam whistle.
The Duchess had gone ahead of him. Arthur Hobbs was poised to leap overboard; but there swept close to the dude one of the trailing canoes, and just by raising an arm Purt reached it.
He clung to the gunwale and was dragged on behind the Duchess. At first the canoe tipped and threatened to turn over; Purt slipped along to the stern, and there got a grip on both sides, and so trailed on behind, getting his breath.
“He’s all right,” said Reddy, chuckling. “Let him cool off a little, Art.”
The girls aboard the Bonnie Lass were somewhat worried over Purt Sweet’s predicament. “He’ll be drowned!” Lily Pendeton declared, first of all.
“I’m not afraid of that,” Bobby said. “But if that suit of his shrinks, what a sight he’ll be!”
“This is no time for light talk,” declared Jess Morse. “Purt isn’t a very good swimmer.”
“Well!” exclaimed Nellie, rather tartly for her, “how did he know whether that poor dog could swim, or not?”
“Looks as though he had finally gotten rid of the Barnacle, just the same,” laughed Laura.
“We’ll see about that,” responded her brother, darkly. “That dog has the stick-to-it-iveness of fish-glue. Wait and see.”
Meanwhile Arthur Hobbs drew in the canoe Purt was clinging to, and soon helped the gasping dude into the large boat.
“Oh! oh!” cried Purt. “I might have known that horrid dog was bad luck.”
Having seen the exquisite dragged aboard the Duchess, most of the girls on the other powerboat gave their attention to the dog. Indeed, his fate all the time had attracted more attention from Lizzie Bean, than had the trouble Purt Sweet was in.
“Why! he might have been drowned!” Lily exclaimed in answer to something Bobby said.
“That’s right. And it would be too mean,” spoke up Lonesome Liz, as Billy Long secretly called the sad-faced girl. “He’s a smart dog.”
“Mercy! who cares about that horrid dog?” snapped Lily.
“I do, for one,” said Nellie Agnew.
“Me, too. He was pushed overboard by Purt, and it just served Purt right that he went into the water,” Bobby declared.
The mongrel cur had swum nobly for the shore. Before Purt was dragged aboard by Art the dog was nearing his goal.
They were well above the town of Lumberport now, and the shore along here was a shelving beach. After fighting the current the dog would have been unable to drag himself out had the bank been steep.
“He’s done it!” exclaimed Liz, eagerly. “Well! I declare I’m glad.”
“Gladder than you were over Purt?” chuckled Bobby.
“Well, if you ask me,” drawled the maid-of-all-work, “I think the dog’s wuth a whole lot more than that silly feller in the green pants.”
“How horrid!” ejaculated Lily.
“Gee!” said Bobby. “Don’t you know, Lizzie, that there is only one Pretty Sweet? I don’t suppose you could find another fellow like him if you combed the zones of both hemispheres.”
“Hear! hear!” drawled Jess. “How many zones do you suppose there are, Bobs?”
“Oh, a whole bunch of them,” declared the reckless Bobby. “There’s one torrid, two temperate, two frigid, and a lot of postal zones.”
“How smart!” sneered Lily, in no very good temper.
Meanwhile the dog had crawled out of the water. They saw him shake himself and then sink upon the shore, evidently exhausted.
“Well,” said Laura, “I guess Purt has finally gotten rid of the poor creature. But it was too funny for anything.”
The shores of Rocky River, as they advanced, were very pretty indeed. There were several suburban villages near Lumberport; but the farther they sailed up the stream the less inhabited the shores were and the wilder the scenery became.
“My!” ejaculated Dorothy. “I had no idea this country was really so woodsy.”
“You know there is scarcely anything but forest south of us, until you reach the B. & P. W. Railroad.”
“Maybe there are bad people up in these woods, after all,” suggested the timid Nell.
“Never you mind. Purt’s got his revolver,” chuckled Jess. “Lance says that it is one that hasn’t been fired for twenty years and belonged to Purt’s father.”
“Goodness!” exclaimed Laura. “I shall be afraid of that. It’s those old guns that nobody supposes are loaded, that are always going off and killing the innocent bystander. You ought to confiscate that gun, Chet.”
“Don’t worry,” returned her brother, laughing. “I’ve taken the trigger screw out of Purt’s gun and he couldn’t shoot it if he had forty cartridges in it. But I haven’t told Purt, for the dear boy seems to place implicit confidence in the old gat as a defense against anything on two or four legs in the Big Woods.”
CHAPTER IX
THE CAMP ON ACORN ISLAND
Although it was high noon when they were at Lumberport the Girls of Central High and their boy friends had not lunched there. Indeed, they waited to reach a certain pleasant grove which some of them knew about, on the south shore of the river, and several miles above the spot where Purt Sweet had taken his involuntary ducking.
As the motorboats put ashore and the boys tied them to stubs in the high bank, they all began joking Purt about his plunge into the river. The dude had been obliged to exchange his natty outing suit of Lincoln green for a suit of oil-stained overalls that he found in the cabin of the Duchess. He could not find his own baggage, as the boys with him had hidden it.
As for the tam-o’-shanter, it had fallen off and floated down the stream. Purt would never see that remarkable headgear again.
“But that isn’t what the boy is worrying about,” chuckled Lancelot Darby, as the party came ashore with the luncheon hampers. “It’s the fate of the Barnacle that is corroding Purt’s sensitive soul!”
“How do you make that out?” demanded Reddy Butts, broadly grinning.
“Why, isn’t it a fact that he went in after the dog? I saw him dive right after the poor thing when it fell overboard. It was a mighty brave attempt at rescue, I should say – especially when we all know that Purt swims about as good as a stone fence.”
“Some hero, Purt is,” agreed Billy Long, chuckling.
“And didn’t he make that dive gracefully?” demanded Reddy, bursting with laughter to think how he had shot the dude overboard by a sly twist of the wheel on the Duchess.
Purt was really ashamed of his present appearance. He felt it necessary to excuse it to the girls.
“Weally,” he said, when he came ashore, “I am not pwesentible; but I hope you ladies understand that it was an unavoidable accident.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Laura, gravely.
“Oh! I assure you, Miss Belding,” Purt hastened to say, “I had no intention of going overboard – weally!”
“So you were not actually trying to rescue the dog?” demanded Jess.
“That howwible cweature!” gasped Purt, in disgust. “I would fling him from the tallest cliff there is – could I safely do so.”
“And not try to dive after him – eh?” chuckled Bobby.
“You are cruelty incarnate!” exclaimed Jess, gravely. “I am horrified to find that we have a boy at Central High who would willingly destroy such a beautiful – Oh! oh!” shrieked Jess, who had been facing a thick path of woods below this open camping place. “What is that? It’s a bear!” she concluded, asking and answering the question herself.
She started in a very lively fashion for the boats. Some of the other girls were quite as agile. Like the word “mouse” in domestic scenes, the cry of “Bear!” in ruder surroundings “always gets a rise out of the girls,” as Chet Belding slangily expressed it.
But it was not a bear. Purt Sweet was stooping to aid in blowing up the flame of the campfire over which they proposed making Mrs. Morse a cup of tea. He did not see the “bear” coming.
But the other boys recognized the object that had so frightened Jess, and they burst into a roar of laughter. Out of the bushes and across the opening in the wood came a half wet, bedraggled dog, which, with a joyful whine, leaped upon the individual who had so fatally attracted his doggish love and loyalty!
“The Barnacle!” yelled Chet. “What did I tell you? Talk about ‘the cat coming back?’ Crickey! the cat wasn’t in it with this mongrel of Purt’s.”
In the exuberance of his joy Barnacle fairly pitched Purt across the fire, and tipped over the pail of water that had been hung over it to boil. The dude seemed fated to fall into trouble on this first day of the outing.
But now Purt was mad! He scrambled up, found a club, and chased the barking Barnacle all about the camp. The dog would not be chased away. Perhaps he had observed Lizzie opening the lunch baskets. Besides, he seemed to take everything Purt tried to do to him as a game of play.
“Do leave the dog alone, Purt!” exclaimed Lil, at last. “You’re making yourself perfectly ridiculous.”
Lily Pendleton’s opinion had weight with Pretty Sweet. He sat down, gloomy and breathless, and tried to ignore the Barnacle.
The latter sat on his tail all through the alfresco meal, directly behind Purt. The dude gave him no attention; but the other boys threw pieces of meat and sweet crackers into the air for the Barnacle to catch.
Could he catch them? Why! it seemed as though the dog must have been trained for just that trick. He never missed a bite!
When his appetite was satisfied the mongrel began to try to attract Purt’s attention. Every time Purt reached for anything, the Barnacle’s cold, wet nose was right there! It was a plain case of “love at first sight,” as Bobby remarked. Nothing could convince that dog that Purt was not his loving friend.
But finally the dude’s serious air and his efforts to reach the dog with a particularly well-shod foot, made an impression on the Barnacle. He squatted down before Purt and lifting up his head, uttered a howl that would have brought tears to the eyes of a graven image.
“You’ll break the poor dog’s heart, Purt,” said Jess, gravely. “Give him a kind word.”
“He has the most sorrowful face on him of any dog I ever saw,” declared Dora Lockwood. “Look at him kindly, even if you can’t speak.”
“Yes,” whispered Dorothy, her twin. “He has almost as sorrowful a face as Lizzie’s.”
“Gee! there’s a pair of them,” sighed Bobby, ecstatically. “Let’s take the dog with us to be a comrade for Liz.”
Indeed, Lizzie Bean petted the mongrel, which hung around the camp until the picnickers started up the river again.
There was another disturbance when Purt tried to slip aboard the Duchess without the dog. The Barnacle whined, and howled, and jumped aboard, and was finally driven ashore with an oar.
The motorboats and their tows got off into the stream. There sat the deserted dog on his tail, howling most dismally as the boats drew up stream and left him behind.
Laura called to Purt in the other boat: “Never mind, Mr. Sweet, I don’t think you’ll be troubled with that dog any more. It’s twenty miles to Lake Dunkirk. He will never follow you that far.”
“I bet the Barnacle haunts Purt in his dreams,” exclaimed Bobby.
“Oh! say not so!” begged Billy Long. “If Purt has the nightmare and draws that ‘family friend,’ the faithful revolver, on the ghost of the dog – Good-night! Like enough he’ll blow us all out of the tent.”
“I bet that Barnacle dogs his ‘feetsteps’ for the rest of Purt’s mortal existence,” declared Chet, prophetically.
“One thing,” said Lil Pendleton, “the nasty beast can’t follow us to Acorn Island.”
“And we won’t get there ourselves to-day, if we don’t hurry,” Chet said. “Come on, Pretty! let’s see what your little Duchess can do,” and he speeded up the engine of the Bonnie Lass.
“We have some distance to go, that’s a fact,” said Nellie. “The island is two miles beyond the end of Rocky River.”
The bigger powerboat pulled away from the Duchess and the two parties ceased shouting back and forth. Mrs. Morse was trying to get a nap, so the girls did not sing. But they told jokes and stories, and of course Bobby gave one of her jingles:
“‘There was an old man of Nantasket
Who went to sea in a basket:
When up came a shark,
Swallowed him and his bark–
Now, wasn’t that a fine funeral casket?’”
“Oh! I can beat that one,” cried Jess.
“Let’s hear you,” responded the black-eyed miss.
“Listen, then,” returned her schoolmate:
“‘A canny young canner of Cannee,
One morning observed to his Granny,
”A canner can can
A lot of things, Gran,
But a canner can’t can a can, can ’e?”’”
Now, how is that for a match for your limerick?”
This started the ball a-rolling. Dora Lockwood raised her hand, crying,
“Please, teacher! I have one,” and immediately produced this:
“‘There was a small boy who lived in Jamaica,
Who bought a lobster wrapped in a brown paper;
The paper was thin
And the lobster grabbed him–
What an awful condition that small boy was in!’”
This woke up Dorothy Lockwood, who would not be outdone by her twin. She recited:
“‘In Huron, a hewer, Hugh Hughes,
Hued yew-trees of unusual hues.
Hugh Hughes used blue yews
To build sheds for his ewes;
So his ewes a blue-hued yew shed use.’”
“Great Scott, girl!” gasped Chet. “That almost twisted your tongue out of kilter.”
“Any more?” queried Lance, who likewise had wonderingly listened to this display of talent. “Ah-ha! I see Nellie just bursting with one.”
“Yes. I have a good one,” admitted the doctor’s daughter. “Hear it:
“‘A right-handed writer named Wright
In writing “write” always wrote “rite.”
Where he meant to write “write,”
If he’d written “write” right,
Wright would not have wrought rot writing “rite.’”
Now! let’s hear you say that fast?”
This certainly was a teaser and the boys admitted it. Finally somebody shouted for Mother Wit. “Come on, Laura! where are you?” demanded Bobby. “Are you going to let us mere ‘amachoors’ beat you? Give us a limerick.”
Mother Wit was expected to keep up with the other wits, that was sure. So she obliged with:
“‘A smart young fisher named Fischer,
Fished for fish from the edge of a fissure.
A fish, with a grin,
Pulled the fisherman in.
Now they’re fishing the fissure for Fischer.’
“And now, boys, while we have been entertaining you,” concluded Laura, “you have gotten behind the Duchess again.”
“That’s right, Lance,” said Chet. “Give her some more power.”
“Electricity is a wonderful thing,” said Jess, seriously. “Just think how fast it travels.”
“How fast?” demanded Bobby.
“Something like 250,000 miles a second, I read somewhere.”
“And so,” remarked Bobby, grinning, “if it hits anybody, it tells the judge it was going about ten miles an hour.”
They were out for a good time and could laugh at almost anything that was said, or was done. Freed from what Bobby called “the scholastic yoke,” the whole world seemed a big joke to them.
“I know we’re going to have the finest kind of a time at Acorn Island!” the cut-up exclaimed.
“Well! I hope there’s nothing much to do there to-night, save to eat supper,” Jess said, yawning. “So much ozone is already making me sleepy.”
“Father Tom promised to have a man there to meet us, who would even have the fire going and the teakettle boiling,” said Bobby. “You see, he’s been up here hunting and fishing, and these guides all know him. He can get what he wants from them.”
The boats chugged on up the river and finally, as the evening began to draw in, they sighted the broadening sheet of water which they knew to be Lake Dunkirk. The lake was longer, but much narrower, than Lake Luna, and it was surrounded by an unbroken line of forest.
The sun was setting. Its last beams shone upon the island which lay about two miles above the entrance to Rocky River, and that island looked like an emerald floating on the blue water.
The light was fast fading out of the sky, save where the west was still riotous with colors. The big oaks on Acorn Island grew black as the shadows gathered beneath them.
At the nearer end was the hillock where they were to camp. Here the grove was open and they could see the cabin standing, with two tents beside it. One of the tents had a raised flap, and there was the stovepipe with a curl of smoke coming out of it.
Down at the edge of the shore – a smooth and sheltered bit of beach where the landing was easy – a man was sitting, smoking his pipe. A beautiful canoe, of Indian manufacture, had its bow drawn up beside him.
The boys and girls shouted a welcome as they drove in toward the shore. He rose, knocking the ashes from his pipe, and waved a hand toward the camp above. He was a tall man, almost as black as a negro, with long, black hair, and was barefooted.
“All right!” he grunted, gutturally. Then he pushed off, stepped into his canoe, and paddled away without another word.
The boats were beached and the young people began to disembark. Before the guide in the canoe got half way to the northern shore of the lake, he was lost to their sight, the darkness came down so suddenly.
CHAPTER X
GETTING USED TO IT
The boys were in haste to get to their own camping site, which was across from the island on the southern shore of Lake Dunkirk. So they hurried the baggage belonging to Mrs. Morse and the girls to the cabin, and then prepared to embark again with their own boats.
Chet saw to it that everything appeared to be in good shape about the camp on the island knoll, and he drew up the three canoes belonging to the girls, himself.
“Now, if you girls get into trouble to-night, toot this thing,” and Chet produced an automobile horn which he had brought along for the purpose. “If you need us by day, Laura knows how to wig-wag with those flags. I taught her.”
“For pity’s sake, Chet!” exclaimed Jess, with some asperity. “Do you suppose we are going to need you boys every hour, or so?”
“I hope not!” added Lil Pendleton. “Surely we ought to be able to get along in camp just as well as you boys.”
“Hear! hear!” cried Bobby. “How are you going to summon us if you need help, my dear little boys? Sha’n’t we give you each a penny whistle so you can call us?”
Chet only laughed. Lance said: “We’ve been camping before; most of you girls haven’t. Of course you will get into trouble forty times to our once.”
“Well! I like that,” sniffed Jess, who did not like it at all. “If girls aren’t just as well able to take care of themselves, as boys, I’d like to know why.”
“Jess is getting to be a regular suffragette,” chuckled Dora Lockwood.
“Reminds me of the little girl whose mother was chasing the hens out of the garden,” said Laura, with her low laugh. “The hen-chaser declared that ‘You can’t teach a hen anything, to save your life,’ when the little girl spoke up for her sex, and said: ‘Well! I think they know quite as much as the roosters!’”
“And that’s all right,” teased Lance, as the boys got under way. “I bet this bunch of hens on Acorn Island will holler for us roosters before we set the distress signal for them.”
“Get out, you horrid thing!” cried Bobby. “Calling us hens. We’re only pullets, at best.”
A lantern had been lit in each tent, for the shadows were thickening under the oak trees on the knoll. Lizzie Bean at once began to overhaul the cooking utensils and supplies in the cook-tent.
This tent was divided into two parts. Lizzie’s own cot was in the rear apartment. There was a long table, roughly built but serviceable, in the front with the stove and chest of drawers. There were folding campstools in plenty.
In the cabin was a comfortable straw mattress for Mrs. Morse in the wide bunk, a small table on which her typewriter case already stood, a rocker made in rustic fashion, a painted dressing case with mirror of good size, and shelves for books.
A small fire was burning on the hearth, for the cabin was apt to be damp after its many months of abandonment. It had been swept and garnished with boughs of sweet-smelling spruce and pine.
The girls’ sleeping tent housed seven cots, all supplied with unbleached cotton sheets and heavy double blankets. Lil Pendleton looked about it when she brought in her bag, and shivered.
“Goodness!” she said. “I’m glad we’re ’way out here in the wilderness if we’re going to dress and undress in this thing. Why! I shall feel just as much exposed as though the sides were made of window-glass.”
“What nonsense!” sniffed Bobby, who had been camping with her father and had spent many a night in a tent. “You’re too particular, Lil.”
“Who asked you to put in your oar?” demanded Miss Pendleton, crossly. “I have a right to my opinion, I hope.”
“I should hope it was nobody else’s opinion,” returned Miss Bobby, quick to pick up the gauntlet.
“Hush, girls!” advised Mother Wit. “Let us not be quarrelsome. We don’t want Mrs. Morse to think we are female savages right at the start.”
Lil sniffed; but good-tempered Bobby said, quickly: “You’re right, Laura. I beg the company’s pardon – and Lil’s particularly. We must be ‘little birds who in their nest agree.’”
“You’re a fine bird, Bobby,” laughed Dora. “Come on! I hear the dishes rattling. Let’s see what Lizzie has tossed up for supper.”
“I wonder if she managed to boil the water without burning it?” giggled Jess. “She’s the funniest girl!”
“I should think you and Laura could have found a maid who wasn’t quite such a gawk,” muttered Lil, unpleasantly.
“Hush!” admonished Mother Wit. “Don’t let her hear you.”
“Why not?” snapped Lil.
“You will hurt her feelings.”
“Pooh! she’s paid for it–”
“Not for having her feelings hurt,” declared Laura, sternly. “And I won’t have it. She’s odd; but she is quite as quick of hearing as the next person.”
“Aw, you’re too particular, Laura,” drawled Lil. But she stood a little in awe of Mother Wit.
They joined Mrs. Morse and filed into the cook-tent. Lizzie’s flushed face appeared behind the steaming biscuits and a big platter of ham and eggs. They did not really know how hungry they were until they sat down to these viands.
Lizzie stood with arms akimbo and waited for the verdict upon the cooking.
“Most excellent, Lizzie,” Mrs. Morse said, kindly.
“Suits ye, does it?” asked the strange girl. “I flatter myself them biscuits air light enough to sleep on.”
“They are a good deal more feathery than our ‘downy couches’ here in camp, I warrant, Lizzie,” laughed Laura.
“Glad ye like ’em. There’s plenty of biscuits – don’t be bashful.”
Jess giggled when she saw Lil’s face. “How rude!” muttered Miss Pendleton. “I don’t see what you and Mother Wit were thinking about when you hired that girl.”
“Thinking of you, Lily – thinking of you,” declared Jess. “She will willingly do your share of the dish-washing.”
“Dish-washing? Fancy!” exclaimed Lil. “I’d like to see myself!”
“Well I wouldn’t,” put in the omnipresent Bobby. “Not if I had to eat after your manipulation of the dish-mop.”
“But we didn’t come to do anything like that,” wailed Lil.
“Just the same we have got to do a part of the camp work,” declared Mother Wit. “It all can’t be shoved off onto Lizzie.”
“Let us arrange about that right here and now,” suggested Mrs. Morse.
“Oh, Mrs. Morse!” cried Nell, eagerly. “First of all I vote that Mrs. Morse is not called upon to do a thing! She’s company as well as chaperon.”
“I will make my own bed,” said the lady, smiling. “You girls can take turns sweeping and dusting the cabin, if you like.”
“And making the beds and cleaning up our tent,” added Laura. “Two at a time – it won’t seem so hard if two work together.”
“A good idea,” agreed Mrs. Morse.
“But that leaves an odd girl,” suggested Jess.
“We’ll change about. The odd girl shall help the cook. And one meal a day – either breakfast, dinner, or supper – we girls must cook, and Lizzie is going to have nothing to do with that meal.”
“Why! I can’t cook,” wailed Lil again.
“Good time for you to begin to learn, then,” Laura said, laughingly.
Some of the other girls looked disturbed at the prospect. “I can make fudge,” observed Nell, honestly, “but I never really tried anything else, except to make toast and tea for mother when she was ill and the maid was out.”
“Listen to that!” exclaimed the voice of Lizzie Bean, who had been listening frankly to the dialogue. “An’ I been doin’ plain cookin’ an’ heavy sweepin’ and hard scrubbin’ ever since I was knee-high to a toadstool!”
Bobby burst out laughing. “So have I, Lizzie!” she cried. “Only I have done it for Father Tom and my kid brothers and sisters when Mrs. Betsey was sick.”
Lily Pendleton turned up her nose – literally. “We’re going to have trouble with that girl,” she announced to Nellie. “She doesn’t know her place.”
But whatever Lizzie knew, or did not know, she did not shirk her share of the work. She stayed up after everybody else had retired and washed every pot and pan and plate, and set her bread to rise for morning, and stirred up a big pitcher of flapjack flour to rise over night, peeled potatoes to fry, leaving them in cold water so they would not turn black, and set the long table fresh for breakfast.
When the earliest riser among the girls (who was Laura herself) peeped into the cooking tent at daybreak, the fire in the stove was already roaring, and Lizzie had gone down to the shore to wash her face and hands in the cold water. Laura ran down in her bathing suit.
“What do you think of this place, Lizzie?” she asked the solemn-faced girl.
“For the land’s sake, Miss!” drawled Lizzie Bean, “I never had no idea the woods was so lonesome – for a fac’.”
“No?”
“I sh’d say not! I went to bed and lay there an’ listened. The trees creaked, and the crickets twittered, and some bird had the nightmare an’ kep’ cryin’ like a baby–”
“I expect that was a screech-owl, Lizzie,” interrupted Laura. “They come out only at night.”
“Goodness to gracious! Do they come out every night?” demanded the girl.
“I expect so.”
“And them frogs?”
“They are tree-toads. Yes, they are here all summer, I guess.”
“Goodness to gracious! And folks like to live in the woods? Well!”
“Do you think you can stand it?” queried Laura, much amused, yet somewhat anxious, too.
“As long as I’m goin’ to get all that money every week it’ll take more than birds with the nightmare an’ a passel of frogs to drive me away. Now! when do you want breakfast, Miss?”
“Not until Mrs. Morse gets up. And none of the other girls are out yet,” said Laura.
But very soon the other girls began to appear. They had agreed to have a dip the first thing, and the girls who first got into the water squealed so because of the cold, that it routed out the lie-abeds.
Lily would not venture in. She sat on a stump, with a blanket wrapped around her, and shivered, and yawned, and refused to plunge in with the others.
“And it’s so early,” she complained. “I had no idea you’d all get up so early and make such a racket. Why, when there isn’t school, I never get up before nine o’clock.”
“Ah! how different your life is going to be on Acorn Island,” said Bobby, frankly. “You’ll be a new girl by the time we go back home.”
“I don’t want to be a new girl,” grumbled Lily.
“Now, isn’t that just like her?” said Bobby, sotto voce. “She is perfectly satisfied with herself as she is. Humph! Lucky she is satisfied, I s’pose, for nobody else could be!”
