CHAPTER XIX.
That was a great day for the boys, but, before the close of it, Ford Foster had told his friends the news that Joe Hart and his brother Fuz had been invited to visit with him.
"Will they come?" asked Dab.
"Certainly. That kind of boy always comes. Nobody wants to keep him from coming."
"When do you look for them?"
"Right away. Vacation's most gone, you know."
"Wont they be ashamed to meet your sister!"
"Not a bit. They'll try their tricks even after they get here."
"All right. We'll help 'em all we know how. But, boys, I tell you what we must try for."
"What's that?"
"One grand, good sailing party, in the 'Swallow,' before they get here."
"Hurrah for that! Annie was wishing for one only yesterday."
"We'll have all of your folks and all of ours. The 'Swallow' 's plenty big enough."
"Mother wouldn't go and father can't, just now. He's trying a case. But there's Annie and Frank and me—"
"And my mother and Ham and Miranda and our girls. Ham'll go, sure. Then we must take Dick Lee along. It'd make him sick if we didn't."
"Of course. And aint I glad about him? Could we get ready and go to-morrow?"
"Guess not so quick as that. We might by the day after, if the weather's all right."
Exactly. There is always a large sized "if" to be put in where anything depends on the weather. Mrs. Kinzer took the matter up with enthusiasm, and so did the girls, Miranda included, and Ford Foster was right about his own part of the company.
But the weather!
It looked well enough to unpracticed eyes, but Ham Morris shook his head and went to consult his fishermen friends. Every human barometer among them warned him to wait a day or so.
"Such warm, nice weather," remonstrated Ford Foster, "and there isn't any wind to speak of."
"There's too much of it coming," was Ham's response, and there was no help for it. Not even when the mail brought word from "Aunt Maria" that her two boys would arrive in a day or so.
"Our last chance is gone, Annie," said Ford, when the news came.
"O, mother, what shall we do?"
"Have your sail, just the same, and invite your cousins."
"But the Kinzers—"
"Why, Annie! Mrs. Kinzer will not think of neglecting them. She's as kind as kind can be."
"And we are to pay her with Joe and Fuz," said Ford. "Well, I wish Ham Morris's storm would come along."
He only had to wait till next day for it, and he was quite contented to be on shore while it lasted. There was no use in laughing at the prophecies of the fishermen after it began to blow. Still, it was not a long one, and Ham Morris remarked: "This is only an outside edge of it. It's a good deal worse at sea. Glad we're not out in it."
Ford Foster thought the worst of it was when the afternoon train came in, and he had to show a pair of tired, moist and altogether unpleasant cousins to the room set apart for them. Just after tea a note came over from Mrs. Kinzer, asking the Hart boys to join the yachting party next morning.
"The storm may not be over," growled Ford.
"Oh," said Annie, "Mrs. Kinzer adds that the weather will surely be fine after such a blow, and the bay will be quite safe and smooth."
"Does she know the clerk of the weather," asked Joe Hart.
"Got one of her own," said Ford.
Fuz Hart laughed but said nothing. Both he and his brother felt a little "strange" as yet, and were almost inclined to try and behave themselves.
When morning came, however, sea and earth and sky seemed to be the better for what they had just been through. The grass and trees were greener and the bay seemed bluer, while the few clouds visible in the sky were very white and clean, as if all the storms had been washed out of them. Not a single thing went wrong in Mrs. Kinzer's management of the "setting out" of the party, and that was half the day now to begin with. Ford had some trouble in getting Joe and Fuz up so very early, but an intimation that "Ham Morris wouldn't wait five minutes for the Queen of England, or even me," was sufficient to rouse them.
"Joe," whispered Fuz, after they got on board, "are we to be gone a week?"
"Why? What's up?"
"Such piles of provisions as they've stowed away in that kennel!"
The bit of a water-tight cabin under the half-deck, at which Fuz pointed, was pretty well filled, beyond a doubt, but Mrs. Kinzer knew what she was about. She had provided lunch for most of that party before, and the effect of the sea-air was also to be taken into account.
"Dab," said Ford Foster, "you've forgotten to unhitch the 'Jenny.' Here she is, towing astern."
"That's all right. We may need her. She's too heavy to take on board."
A careful fellow was Mr. Hamilton Morris, and he knew very well the value of a row-boat to a picnic party. As for Joe and Fuz they were compelled to overcome a strong inclination to cast the boat loose. Such a joke it would have been, but Ham was in the way as long as he held the tiller.
The "Swallow" was "steady" enough to inspire even Annie Foster with a feeling of confidence, but Ford carefully explained to her the difference between slipping along over the little waves of the land-locked bay, and plunging into the great billows of the stormy Atlantic.
"I prefer this," said Annie.
"But I wouldn't have missed the other for anything," replied Ford. "Would you, Dick?"
Mr. Richard Lee had taken his full share in the work of starting, and had made himself singularly useful, but if all the rest had not been so busy they would have noticed his silence. Hardly a word had he uttered, that anybody could remember, and, now he was forced to say something, his mouth opened slowly, as if he had never tried to speak before and was not quite sure he knew how:
"No,-Mr.-Foster,-I-would-not-have-missed-that-trip-for-a-good-deal."
Every word by itself, and as different from Dick's ordinary talk as a cut stone is from a rough one. Ham Morris opened his eyes wide, and Ford puckered up his lips in a sort of a whistle, but Annie caught the meaning of it quicker than they did.
"Dick," she said, "are we to fish to-day?"
"May be,-but-that-depends-on-Mr.-Morris."
Every word slowly and carefully uttered, a good deal like a man counts over doubtful money, looking sharp for a counterfeit.
"Look here, Dick!" suddenly exclaimed Dab Kinzer, "I give it up. You can do it. But don't try to keep it up all day. Kill you, sure as anything, if you do."
"Did I say 'em all right, Cap'n Dab?" anxiously inquired Dick, with a happy look on his black, merry face.
"Every word," said Dab. "Well for you they were all short. Keep on practicing."
"I'll jest do dat, shuah!"
Practicing? Yes, that was it, and Dick himself joined heartily in the peal of laughter with which the success of his first attempt at "white folk's English" was received by the party. Dab explained that as soon as Dick found he was really to go to the academy he determined to teach his tongue new habits, and the whole company heartily approved, even while they joined Dab in advising him not to try too much at a time.
Plenty of talk and fun all around as the "Swallow" skimmed onward, and the long, low outlines of the narrow sand-island were rapidly becoming more distinct.
"Is that a light-house?" asked Annie of Dab.
"Yes, and there's a wrecking station close by."
"Men there all the while? Are there many wrecks on this coast?"
"Ever so many, and there used to be more of them. It was a bad place to run ashore, in those days. Almost as bad as Jersey."
"Why?"
"Because of the wreckers. The shore's bad enough, and the bar's a mean place to escape on, but the wreckers used to make it worse."
And Dab launched out into a slightly exaggerated description of the terrors of the Long Island coast in old times and new, and of the character of the men who were formerly the first to find out if anything or anybody had gone ashore.
"What a prize that French steamer would have been!" said Annie, "the one you took Frank Harley from."
"No, she wouldn't. Why, she wasn't wrecked at all. She only stuck her nose in the sand and lay still till the tugs pulled her off. That isn't a wreck. A wreck is where the ship is knocked to pieces and people are drowned, and all that sort of thing. Then the wreckers have a notion that everything that comes ashore belongs to them. Why, I've heard even some of our old fishermen—best kind of men, too—talk of how government has robbed 'em of their rights."
"By the new system?"
"By having wrecks prevented, and saving the property for the owners."
"Isn't that strange! Did you say they were good men?"
"Some of 'em. Honest as the day is long about everything else. But they weren't all so. There was old Peter, and he lives on the Island yet. There's his cabin now. You can just see it in the edge of that great sand-hill."
"What a queer thing it is!"
"Sometimes the storms drift the sand all over it, and old Peter has to dig it out again. He's snowed under two or three times every winter."
They were now coasting along the island, at no great distance, and, although it was not nearly noon, Dab heard Joe Hart say to his brother:
"Never was so hungry in all my life. Glad they did lay in a good stock of provisions."
"So am I," returned Fuz. "Isn't there any such thing as our getting into the cabin!"
No, there was not, so long as Mrs. Kinzer was the "stewardess" of that expedition, and Joe and Fuz were compelled to wait her motions.
(To be continued.)
[THE FOX AND THE TURKEYS;
OR, CHARLEY AND THE OLD FOLKS.]
By Susan Coolidge.
[A cunning fox perceived some turkeys roosting securely on the bough of a high tree. Unable to climb, he resolved to get at them in another way. Night after night he stationed himself beneath the tree, and there played off all sorts of curious tricks. He jumped, he capered, he turned somersaults, he walked on his hind legs, he pretended to be dead, he raised and expanded his tail until, in the moonlight, it looked like a flame of fire,—in short, he performed every antic conceivable. The turkeys, who, to sleep in safety, had only to turn their backs and forget the fox, were so agitated and excited by his pranks that for whole nights they never closed their eyes; the consequence was that they lost strength, and one by one dropped from the bough and into the jaws of Renard, who soon made an end of them.
Moral.—It is unwise to concern one's self with the tricks and antics of mischievous persons.—La Fontaine's Fables.]
It was midsummer at the old Brush Farm. When I say "midsummer," how many pretty things it means,—woods at their freshest and greenest, meadows sweet with newly cut hay, cinnamon-roses in the hedges and water-lilies in the ponds, bees buzzing in and out of the clove-pinks and larkspurs which edge the beds of cabbages and carrots in the kitchen-garden, a humming-bird at work in the scarlet trumpets of the honeysuckle on the porch,—everywhere the sense of fullness and growth, with no shadow as yet of rankness or decay. August is over-ripe. September's smile is sad, but midsummer is all rosy hope, the crown and blossom of the year.
Charley Brush lay under an apple-tree, face downward, and absorbed in "The Red Rover," a book he had read at least ten times before. Stories about ships and sea-life and freebooters and buccaneers were his favorite reading, and, unfortunately, what with illustrated papers and cheap novels, and so-called "Boys' books," plenty of such tales abound nowadays. I say unfortunately, for beside teaching him nothing, these books made Charley utterly dissatisfied with his life at home. Hoeing vegetables, chopping wood, and going to the district school, seemed dull work indeed to a boy who was longing to stand sword in hand on a blood-stained deck, in a gory uniform trimmed with skulls and cross-bones, and order his enemies to be thrown one by one into the sea. "The shark awaits your car-casses!" spouted the imaginary desperado with a vicious snap of his teeth; and when Aunt Greg interrupted by asking him to bring in an armful of kindling, he glared at her like the Red Rover himself. Poor Aunt Greg! how little she guessed what was passing in his mind!
"You look real pale to-day," she said. "I was afraid all that mince-pie for supper would be bad for you. Here, Charley, I'll mix you some ginger-and-water. That'll settle you, and make all right again."
"Mis-cre-ant!" was what Charley yearned to say, but instead he muttered, gruffly, "I aint sick, and I don't want no ginger." Very bad grammar, as you perceive; but grammar seemed such an unnecessary accomplishment for a would-be buccaneer, that Charley never could be induced to pay the least attention to it.
That afternoon, under the apple-tree, he made up his mind. A pirate he must and he would be, by fair means or by foul. He was cunning enough to know that the very word "pirate" would frighten his grandmother into fits, so he only asked her leave to go to sea. Going to sea was, to his mind, a necessary first step toward the noble profession he desired to enter.
"I want to so bad," he whined. "Please say I may."
Grandmother began to cry. Aunt Hitty was sure he must be out of his mind, and ran for the Epsom salts. Aunt Greg quoted, "There's no place like home," and told a story about a boy she once heard of who ran away to sea and never came back, "foundered or drowndered," she couldn't remember which. Aunt Prue seized his shoulders and gave him a sound shake. This was what came of idling over story-books all day long, she said,—he could just shut up and go and give the pig its supper, and not let her hear any more trash like that—making them all feel so bad about nothing.
Charley twisted his shoulder out of her grasp with a scowl, but he took the pail and went out to the pen. All the time that piggy ate, he was considering what to do. "I'll tease 'em," he decided, "and tease and tease, and then they'll let me go."
So he did tease, and plead and expostulate, but it was all in vain. Grandmother and the aunts could not be reached by any of his entreaties, and at the end of a week he seemed as far from his desire as ever.
You will wonder, perhaps, that Charley did not run away, as so many boys do in books, and a few out of them. Somehow he never thought of that. He was not a hardy, adventurous fellow at all. His desire to go to sea was a fancy born of foolish reading, and he wanted to have his going made easy for him.
"I must set to work in another way," he thought at last. "Asking of 'em aint no use. I must make 'em want to have me go." Then he fell to thinking how this could be done.
"Aunt Hitty wouldn't hold out long if the others didn't," he thought. "I could coax her into it as easy as fun. She'll do anything if I kiss and pet her a bit. Then there's Aunt Greg,—she thinks so much of poetry and such stuff. I'll hunt up the pieces in the 'Reader' about 'The sea, the sea, the deep blue sea,' and all that, and learn 'em and say 'em to her, and I'll tell her about coral groves and palm-trees, and make her think it's the jimmiest thing going to sail off and visit 'em. Grandmother's always bothering about my being sick, and afraid of this and afraid of that; so I'll just be sick—so sick that nothing but a viyage'll cure me! As for Aunt Prue, 'taint no use trying to impose on her. I guess I'll have to be real hateful and troublesome to Aunt Prue. I'll tease pussy and slop on the pantry shelves, and track up the floor every time she mops it, and leave the dipper in the sink, and all the other things she don't like, and by and by she'll be just glad to see the last of me! Hi!—that'll fetch 'em all!" He ended his reflections with a chuckle. Charley wasn't really a bad boy,—not bad through and through, that is,—but he had a cunning, tricky side to his nature which made him like to play on the weaknesses of his grandmother and aunts. A sharp boy may prove more than a match for four unsuspecting old women; and though in this case they were in the right and he in the wrong, none the less was he likely to succeed in his crafty plans.
He waited a few days to let opposition subside, and then began his tricks. Charley's first victim was Aunt Hitty. She was a gentle, weak-minded person, easy to persuade, and when Charley put his head into her lap and called her coaxing names, and was sure she was too kind to disappoint him in the thing he was set upon, her heart softened, and she began to think that they all had been hard and unkind. "The dear boy wants to go awful bad," she told Aunt Greg, and to her surprise Aunt Greg did not fly out and scold as she had expected, but answered, with a sigh, "I suppose sailing on the ocean is beautiful!" Aunt Greg had never seen the ocean in her life, but she was naturally romantic; and Charley, who had been hard at work at the "Reader," had crammed her with all sorts of poetical quotations and fancies concerning it. Flying fish, coral islands, pole stars, dolphins, gallant mariners, wet sheets and flowing seas, figured largely in these extracts, but there was no mention whatever of storms, sharks, drowning, hard work, or anything disagreeable. Aunt Greg could not see the charm of "wet sheets," but all the rest sounded delightful; and gradually a picture formed itself in her mind of a sea which was always blue and always smooth, and of Charley standing on the deck of a ship repeating poetry to himself in the moonlight; and her opposition grew feebler and feebler.
"Charley's got a lot of ideas in his head," she said one day when she and her sisters were slicing apples for drying. "He aint no common boy, Charley aint. He'll make a mark yet—see if he don't."
"Dear little fellow!" sighed Aunt Hitty. "So lovin' and affectionate! He used to be a little worrisome in his ways at times, but he's got all over that!"
"Oh, has he?" snapped Aunt Prue. "I'd like to know when? He's been more of a plague the last six weeks than ever in his life before. When he upset that milk last night I could have cuffed him. It's the third time since Wednesday. Mark, indeed! The only mark he'll ever make is a dirt-mark on clean floors. The kitchen looks like Sancho at this moment. I've washed it up twice as often as ordinary, but as sure as I get it clean, in he comes stamping about with his muddy boots and tracks it from end to end. I believe he does it a-purpose."
"O, Prue!" began Aunt Hitty, in a pleading tone, while Aunt Greg broke in, indignantly:
"A-purpose! Well! Charley's mind is on other things, I can tell you, and it it's no wonder he sometimes forgets to wipe his feet."
"Other things! Getting off to sea, I suppose you mean?" remarked Aunt Prue, grimly. "He's pulled the wool over your eyes and Hitty's finely, I declare. As for me, if he's goin' on to behave as he has done for a spell back, the sooner he quits the better. I wash my hands of him," and Aunt Prue flounced into the buttery just as Grandmother came in at the other door.
"Charley is it you was talking about?" she asked. "Did you hear him coughin' last night? I did, and I couldn't sleep a wink for worrying about it. A real deep cough it was. Do you suppose it the lungs, and what's good for him to take?"
"He's well enough except for mischief," put in Aunt Prue through the buttery door.
"Prue never thinks anything ails anybody," said Mrs. Brush, sinking her voice to a whisper. "I'm really consarned about Charley. He don't eat hardly anything at dinner. That aint a bit natural for a growin' boy. And he says he lies awake a great deal of nights. He thinks it's the air about here makes him feel bad, but I don't know if he's right about it. I wish we'd a doctor here to say if going off to sea—or somewhere—would be the best thing for him. I'm clean confused as to what we'd best do about it, but I'm real uneasy in my mind."
Charley, coming in just then, chuckled to himself as he heard her.
So things went on, and by October Charley had his wish. It was settled that he should go to sea. Aunt Greg drove over to Wachuset Center and consulted with old Mr. Greg, her father-in-law, who was the wise man of the neighborhood.
"Let him go—let him go," was Mr. Greg's advice. "When a chap like that gets the bit between his teeth, it's no use to keep yanking at the reins. Let him go for one long cruise, and see how he likes it. Ten to one he'll come back then and be glad to settle down. He aint the kind of boy to make a sailor of, I judge. There's Ben Bradley,—my first wife's cousin,—captain of one of them China traders; ship Charley with him. I'll write a line, and I guess Ben'll kind of keep an eye on him for the sake of the connection."
So, late in the fall, Charley went to sea. Grandmother and the aunts felt dreadfully sad when it came to the parting; but he was full of satisfaction and triumph, and never shed a tear. The "Helen Weeks," as Captain Bradley's ship was named, sailed from Boston on the second of November, and for fifteen months nobody at home heard a word of Charley.
Those were sad days at the old Brush Farm. Grandmother fell ill from anxiety, and even Aunt Prue looked white and miserable. Aunt Greg and Aunt Hitty spent their time crying in corners, and "Why did we let him go?" was the language of all their hearts. But in February, when everything was at its coldest and iciest, Charley came back,—Charley or his ghost, for the tall, thin, starved-looking ragged boy set down at the gate was very unlike the stout, rosy lad of the year before.
He was so weak and forlorn that it was several days before he recovered enough to explain what had happened to him, and then it was little by little, and not as I give it, in one connected story.
"I don't ever want to go to sea again," he began. "It aint a bit like what we thought it was. I don't know why them chaps in the 'Reader' called it 'blue.' It's green and black and yellow, and all kinds of colors, but I never see it look blue exceptin' when folks was looking at it from the land. It's cold, too, and wet and nasty. I wasn't dry once for the first two months, it seems to me. Ugh! I hate it. Never let to sleep till you're rested, and such horrid stuff to eat, and sick—my, how sick I was! Captain Bradley was a fair enough sort of man, but he fell ill of China fever, and we had to leave him behind in Canton, and Bill Bunce, the first mate, took his place. After that we had a hard time enough. I thought it was bad at first, but it wasn't nothing to that. He was always walloping us boys, and swearing and kicking and cuffing us about. Then we had a storm, and lost our mainmast, and came near foundering; and then we were stuck in a calm for three weeks, and the water aboard ran short. That was the time I had the fever. I'd have died, I know, if it hadn't been for Tad Brice. He was one of the sailors, and a real nice man. His boy at home was just as old as I am, and he sort of took an interest in me from the start. He used to come in and feed me, and when we were put on allowance, he saved half his water ration for me; and when I got to crying, and thinking about home and you all, he'd—" Here Charley choked and was silent. Aunt Hitty, who sat next, possessed herself of his thin hand and wept silently over it.
"When I went away I meant to be a pirate, you know," went on Charley.
"A pirate!" cried Aunt Hitty and Aunt Greg in awe-struck voices.
"Yes. I didn't know much about what it meant, but it sounded somehow nice in the books, and I wanted to be one. But when I asked 'em about it aboard they roared and hooted and made fun, and they all called me Captain Kidd from that time on. And once, when we were in Shanghai" (Charley's voice sounded full of horror), "we saw two pirates. Tad Brice said they was pirates. The folks was taking 'em to jail. They was dreadful, black and ugly, and their eyes were so fierce and bad that it made me cold to look at 'em. I never wanted to be a pirate any more after that, but Bunce and the others, they all kept on calling me Captain Kidd just the same."
"You absurd, ridiculous boy!" began Aunt Prue, but Grandmother hushed her up.
"Now, Prue, I wont have poor Charley scolded when he's been so sick," she said—"He's only a boy, anyhow, and he's going to turn over a new leaf now; aint you, Charley? and go to school regular, and do his chores, and be the comfort of his granny's life. He's had enough of goin' to sea; haven't you, Charley? and he'll stay on the farm now, and we wont ever talk about this bad time he's had, and just be thankful to get him back home again."
Charley didn't answer in words, but he turned and gave Grandmother a big kiss, which she knew meant "yes," and they were all very happy that night as they sat together around the fire.
So you see that the fox, though he succeeded in his tricks, was not a particularly happy fox after all. Too much turkey may not be good for a fox, and too much of his own way is certainly not good for a boy.
OUT FISHING.
[HIDDY-DIDDY!]
Hiddy-Diddy! Hiddy-diddy!—
Ten small chicks and one old biddy!
"Cluck!" says Biddy, "cluck, cluck, cluck!"
"Scratch as I do!—try your luck!"
How the chickens, one and all,
Crowd around her at her call!
One chick, missing, peeps to say:
"Chirp, chirp, chirp!—I've lost my way!"
Shrill and shriller, comes the sound!
"Chirp! chirp! chirp!—I shall be drowned!"
Biddy clucks, and bustles quick,—
"Where, oh, where's my little chick?"
Mister Rooster bustles, too,
Screaming "Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Biddy, I just chanced to look,
And saw your bantling in the brook!"
"Gob!" shrieks Turkey, "gob, gob, gobble!
Mrs. Hen, you're in a hobble!
Why don't some one stir about,
And help your little chicken out?"
"Moo!" roars Sukey, "moo, moo, moo!
What is there that I can do?"
"Uff!" grunts Piggy, "uff, uff, uff!
Say you're sorry, that's enough."
"Quack!" says Ducky, "quack, quack, quack!
I have brought your chicken back!"
"Oh!" says Biddy, "cluck, cluck, cluck!
Thank you!—thank you! Mrs. Duck!"
[THE SQUIRRELS AND THE CHESTNUT-BURR.]
Four squirrels once saw a chestnut-burr growing on a tree. They wanted the chestnuts in the burr, but were afraid to touch it, because it was full of sharp points. Just then, along came a flying-squirrel. "I will tell you what you must do," said he: "wait until the burr opens, and the chestnuts fall out. The burr always opens when the right time comes." So they waited, and got the chestnuts.
It is a good rule to wait until things are ready for us.
[JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT.]
Vacation's over! School's begun! A splendid holiday time you've had, no doubt, my dears, and now you feel like setting to work again with earnest good-will. That's right. But don't try to do to much at first. Better start easily and keep up the pace, than make a quick run for a while only to falter and grow weary before you are half-way.