It was here that Bill gave his great guffaw, but it was also at a particularly ticklish place in the road, so he could not look at his blonde passenger.
Tillie stopped for the aforesaid thirty seconds and then decided that the dumb young man running the car was a common chauffeur and perhaps she had better change her form of conversation to one not suggesting equality. It never entered her head to stop talking.
“Richmond is just running over with jitneys now. They make such a dust you can’t see whether they are coming or going. Did you ever run a jitney? They say there is lots of money in them. I should think you would do better doing that than doing this—of course, though, you know best, and perhaps you get your board thrown in up here. Mamma said she knew that the Carter girls would not know how to feed people because they have always led such soft lives, but I said I was coming, anyhow. I am dying to fall off. I really should have walked up the mountain instead of riding as that would be a good way to start, but I had on my best shoes and I knew it would ruin them. Douglas Carter wrote me to be sure and bring a blanket, but I simply could not get one in my grip and I said I would sleep cold before I would be seen carrying a great old blanket over my arm like lots of these people. It was horribly hot in Richmond and I did not think it could be cold coming just this little way. I think it is so brave and noble for the Carter girls to try to help their father this way. They do say he is dippy and was quite wild-eyed. I have a friend who was on the sleeper with Mr. and Mrs. Carter when they went to New York, and he says they shut themselves up in the drawing room and acted awful queer. He didn’t say just how, but it must have been something fierce. What is this funny looking place? Is this the camp? My, ain’t it odd? I am very much obliged to you for bringing me up. Please look after my suitcase for me—it is the large one, really a small trunk, but I had no idea of mashing my new pink into a pulp just for the sake of reducing my luggage. Here, this is for you—and please get my baggage,” and Tillie handed the astonished Bill a quarter.
“Didn’t know what to say, so I just took it,” Bill told Lewis afterward. “First money I’ve earned since I was a kid and picked blackberries for Grandmother to jam, at five cents a quart. Dog, if I would not rather pick the berries, briars and all! I felt like hollering to somebody to throw something over the cage, that the canary was making such a fuss I couldn’t think.”
Josh, too, was the victim of tips but he indignantly returned the money that was proffered him with this remark:
“We uns ain’t beholden to nobody, but is employed regular by Mr. Somerville, we uns and Josephus.”
That is often the spirit of the mountaineer. He will sell anything but cannot stomach a tip.
Helen and Nan received the guests as they piled out of the Mountain Goat or came up the winding road on foot. It was a very exciting moment for our girls. This was really the beginning of their great adventure. Were they to succeed or not? The week-enders were there, for once at least, but could these girls make it so agreeable that they would want to come back?
“Do look at Tillie Wingo, Nan! Did you ever see such a goose? She has on ten dollar champagne shoes and a blue Georgette crêpe that would melt in a mist!”
“Yes, she is some goose, but she will pay us just as sensible board as anybody else, so we must not be too critical,” and Nan went forward to meet the pretty blonde Tillie and the stiff-backed spinsters and the pleasant Miss Hill, and Helen smothered her indignation at Tillie’s bad taste in being so unsuitably dressed for camping and did her best to make it pleasant for her, Georgette crêpe, champagne shoes and all.