The Rival Campers; Or, The Adventures of Henry Burns

by Ruel Perley Smith

In person, Colonel Witham was decidedly corpulent, with a fiery red face, which turned purple when he became angry—which was upon the slightest occasion.

“Here’s another boy come to annoy me with his noise and tomfoolery,” was the colonel’s inward comment, when Mrs. Carlin, the housekeeper, informed him that Henry Burns was coming, and was to be under her charge.

So the colonel gave him the room next to his, where he could keep an eye on him, and see that he was in his room every night not later than ten o’clock, for that was the hour Mrs. Carlin had set for that young gentleman’s bedtime.

Henry Burns, having in due time made the acquaintance of the Warren boys, as well as a few other youths of his age, had no idea of ending up his evenings’ entertainments at ten o’clock each and every night; so he set about to discover some means of evading the espionage of the colonel and Mrs. Carlin. It did not take him more than one evening of experimenting to find that, by stepping out on to the veranda that ran past his own and Colonel Witham’s windows, he could gain the ascent to the roof by a clever bit of acrobatics up a lightning-rod. Once there, he found he could reach the ground by way of the old part of the hotel, in the manner before described. It is only fair to Henry Burns to state that he did not take undue advantage of this discovery, but kept on the whole as good hours as most boys of his age. Still, if there was a clambake, or some other moonlight jollification, at the extreme end of the island, where Henry Burns had made friends among a little fishing community, he was now and then to be seen, sometimes as the village clock was proclaiming a much later hour than that prescribed by Mrs. Carlin, spinning along on his bicycle like a ghost awheel. He was generally known and well liked throughout the entire island.

On the night following the arrival of Tom and Bob, the sounds of a violin, a clarionet, and a piano, coming from the big parlour of the Hotel Bayview, told that a dance was in progress. These dances, withal the music was provided by the guests themselves, were extremely irritating to Colonel Witham. They meant late hours for everybody, more lights to be furnished, more guests late to breakfast on the following morning, and, on the whole, an evening of noise and excitement, which interfered more or less with his invariable habit of going to bed at a quarter after ten o’clock every night of his life.

They brought, moreover, a crowd of cottagers to the hotel, who were given anything but a cordial welcome by Colonel Witham. He argued that they spent no money at his hotel, and were, therefore, only in the way, besides adding to the noise.

The guests at the Bayview were, on the whole, accustomed to the ways of Colonel Witham by experience, and really paid but little attention to him. They went ahead, planned their own dances and card-parties, and left him to make the best of it.

This particular evening’s entertainment was rather out of the ordinary, inasmuch as it was given by a Mr. and Mrs. Wellington, of New York, in honour of their daughter’s birthday, and, on her account, invitations to the spread, which was to be served after the dancing, were extended to the young people of the hotel. In these invitations Henry Burns had, of course, been included; but Mrs. Carlin and Colonel Witham were obdurate. It was too late an hour for him; his eating of rich salads and ices was not to be thought of; in short, he must decline, or they must decline for him, and that was the end of it.

“Never you mind, Henry,” said good-hearted Bridget Carrington, who was Mrs. Carlin’s assistant, and with whom Henry Burns had made friendship. “It’s not you that’ll be going without some of the salad and the ice-cream, not if I know it. Sure, and Mrs. Wellington says you’re to have some, too. So just breathe easy, and there’ll be a bit for you and a little more, too, a-waitin’ just outside the kitchen window about nine o’clock. So go on now and say never a word.”

So Henry Burns, with the connivance of Bridget, and by the judicious outlay of a part of his own pocket-money, in the matter of sweet things and other delicacies dear to youthful appetites, had prepared and planned for a small banquet of his own in his room, next to that of Colonel Witham.