The lad approached. He was coolly attired in a worn shirt, overalls and a broken straw hat.
“Sim, be my witness.” The manner of Mr. Quince was dignified, as befitted one taking part in a legal ceremonial. He turned towards the busy medical man, a law-abiding citizen virtuously facing one of criminal desires. “I hereby warns yer agin’ putting any licker on this yere boat,” he cried in a stern voice.
“Oh, shut up,” shouted the aggravated Doctor. “Don’t be a fool.”
“You heard him and you heard me, Sim. Now I got the goods on that feller if we git pinched,” and, with an effort to engrave the matter upon the mind of his follower, the riverman concluded in the accepted tone of Hamlet’s ghost, “Remember.”
“Ayah,” responded the indifferent Sim.
The arrival of members of the picnic party prevented further discussion of this matter.
Down the steps from the bridge they came, a sisterhood of the tired, the worried, the anxious. The cruel strokes of labor and poverty were relentlessly erasing the softness of youth. The bearing of children and unceasing toil had destroyed their figures, and already the weariness of age was creeping into their movements.
Yet this was no gathering of the sorrowing. Upon each breast rested, in gentle embrace, the fulfillment of womanhood. Their pledge to the perpetuation of their kind, their duty to the responsibilities and opportunities of dawning centuries. The pride of motherhood was upon worn faces as coverings were adjusted about soft cheeks and tiny eyes twinkled and fat hands made spasmodic efforts to grasp something where nothing was. Coarse and strident voices dropped to a musical tenderness as they harked to the mysterious language of baby land.
Even as the first mothers arrived, came Virginia followed by Serena and Ike, carrying food. Mr. Vivian appeared, bringing monstrous ice cream freezers. Mrs. Henderson headed a small procession consisting of a man bringing oceans of milk and another with perfect bergs of ice.
The mothers charged upon Dr. Jackson, the familiar friend of their households, in noisy confusion. In sharp and emphatic tones, he brought order out of this feminine chaos in a manner pleasing even to that marine disciplinarian, Mr. Quince, who had watched the arrival of his passengers with great astonishment. Two lines of kicking, struggling, emotion swept infants were stretched upon the cots, and lifted their voices in a chorus which sounded above the hiss of steam from the boiler.