He Comes Up Smiling

by Charles Sherman

The Watermelon decided from habit to get a better view of the lonely swimmer before he let his own presence become known. He slipped into the bushes and slowly wriggled his way to the little glade. The lake was bigger than at first appeared. It turned and twisted through the woods and was finally lost from view around a small promontory. The trees grew nearly to the water's edge, a dense protecting wall to one who wished to sport in nature's solitude, garbed in nature's simple clothing. The lake was too far from the hotel to have been annexed as one of the attractions of that hostelry. All this the Watermelon noticed at a glance. He also noticed that the man swimming in the cool brown depths, with long easy strokes, was alone and a stranger. The Watermelon looked for the clothes and found them on a log, practically at his feet.

In everything but color, they fulfilled his dream of what raiment should be like. Instead of the pale gray he rather favored, the suit was brown, a light brown, with a tiny green stripe, barely visible, intertwined with a faint suggestion of red, forming a harmonious whole that was vastly pleasing to the Watermelon's æsthetic senses. In the matter of socks, he realized that the stranger had not taken the best advantage of his opportunity. Instead of being red or green to lend character to the delicate suggestion of those colors found in the suit, they were a soft dun brown. There was a tie of the same shade and a silk negligée shirt of white with pale green stripes. The owner was clearly a young man of rare taste, unhampered by a vexatious limitation of his pocket-book.

He could be seen swimming slowly and luxuriously in the little lake, perfectly contented, unconscious that some one besides the woodpeckers and the squirrels was watching him. The swimmer's strokes had quickened and the Watermelon perceived that he was swimming straight up the lake with the probable intention of rounding the promontory and exploring the farther lake. When he disappeared, the Watermelon quickly, carefully, gathered up the clothes and likewise disappeared.

The swimmer was a big man and the clothes as good a fit as one could look for under the circumstances. They set off the Watermelon's long, lean figure to perfection, and the hat, a soft and expensive panama, lent added distinction. The Watermelon removed the three dollars and ten cents and the keys from his own pockets, and making a bundle of his cast-off dollies, stuffed them out of sight in a hollow log, where later he could return and find them. It was just as well to leave the stranger a practical captive in nature's depths until the beauty show was pulled off. After that event, he would return, and if the stranger was amenable to reason, he could have his good clothes back, but if he acted put out at all, for punishment he would have to accept the Watermelon's glorious attire.

Clean-shaven, well-clothed, there was no longer any need for him to go to the hotel, unless he wished to dine there. If the devotee of nature, back in the swimming pool, was a stranger in these parts and not a guest at the hotel, the Watermelon felt that he could do this with pleasure and safety. It was after twelve, and his ever-present desire to eat was becoming too pronounced to be comfortable. It would be a fitting climax to a highly delightful morning to have dinner, surrounded by gentle folk again, for the Watermelon came of a gentle family. He had no fear, for some time at least, of the owner of the borrowed clothes making himself unnecessarily conspicuous. But, on the other hand, if he were a guest at the hotel, the clothes would probably be recognized and murder be the simplest solution of their change of owners. Still, reasoned the Watermelon, with a shrewd guess at the truth, if he were a guest, it was hardly likely that he would be swimming alone in the isolated pond, in the bathing suit designed by nature. The clothes hardly indicated a young man of a serious turn of mind, who would seek the wooded solitudes in preference to the vivacious society of his kind to be found in a big hotel.

The wood ended abruptly at a stone wall. There was a road beyond the wall, and beyond the road, another stone wall and more woods. It was a narrow woodland road, a short cut to the hotel. It wound its way out of sight, up a hill, through the pines. It was grass-grown and shady and the trees met overhead. Sweetbrier and wild roses grew along the stone walls, while gay little flowers and delicate ferns ventured out into the road itself, and with every passing breeze nodded merrily from the ruts of last winter's wood hauling. By the side of the road, like a glaring anachronism, a variety theater in Paradise, a vacuum cleaner among the ferns and daisies, stood a huge red touring car with shining brass work and raised top. No one was anywhere in sight and the Watermelon climbed into the tonneau and leaned comfortably back in the roomy depths.

"Home, Henry," said he languidly to an imaginary chauffeur.

A honk, honk behind him answered. He leaned from the car and saw another turn into the road and come toward him. It was a touring car, big and blue. An elderly gentleman, fat, serious, important, was at the wheel. Beside him sat a lady, and a chauffeur languished in the tonneau.

"Hello, Thomas," called the old gentleman with the affability of a performing elephant, addressing the Watermelon by the name of his car, as is the custom of the road.

"Hello, William," answered the Watermelon, wondering why they called him Thomas.