Back at School with the Tucker Twins Part 9

Mr. Parker eyed all of us with the air of an appraiser and Dum said afterwards she felt as a little puppy in a large litter must feel when the hard-hearted owner is trying to decide which ones must be drowned.

Before he could decide which ones of us, if any, would make successful debutantes, the game was in full swing and even Mr. Parker had to let the social game give way to that of football.

My, how we yelled! We yelled when Virginia came near making a point, and we yelled when she came near losing one. When we could yell no longer we blew our horns until throats were rested enough to take up the burden of yelling once more. Zebedee, standing out on the engine to make room for his many guests, invited and otherwise, behaved like a windmill in a cyclone. He waved his arms and legs and shouted encouragement to our side until they could not have had the heart to be beaten.

Father's behaviour was really not much more dignified than Zebedee's.

Love for his Alma Mater was as strong as ever and he rooted with as much fervor as any one on the grounds.

Sleepy's playing was wonderful. I could hardly believe he was the same man we had known at Willoughby. There was nothing sleepy about him now; on the contrary, he was about as wide awake a young man as one could find. He seemed to have the faculty of being in many places at one time, and if he once got the ball in those mighty hands, it took eleven men to stop him. When he would drop, great would be the fall thereof. Sorry, indeed, did I feel for the one who was under him when he fell. He must have weighed a good two hundred pounds and over. He certainly did the best playing on the Virginia team, so we thought, and when he made a touch-down that Zebedee said should go down in history, we were very proud of being friends with the great Ma.s.sie.

We won! Everybody in our car was wild with delight, but I must say my pleasure was somewhat dampened when I saw the people in the car next to us, the one decorated in light blue and white, in such deep dejection. A middle-aged man was openly weeping and his nice, pleasant-looking wife was trying to console him and at the same time wiping her own eyes.

Their son was on the Carolina team. It seems strange for non-combatants to take defeat so much to heart, but it is just this kind of enthusiasm that makes the annual game between Virginia and Carolina what it is: something to live for from year to year in the minds of a great many persons. If Father, with no son to root for, could have tears of joy in his eyes because Virginia won, why should not the father of the Carolina player weep copiously when his state lost?

The victorious team were picked up bodaciously by the shouting crowd and borne on their shoulders to the waiting cars. The great Ma.s.sie, begrimed almost beyond recognition, pa.s.sed us in a broad grin. Zebedee leaped over the fence and shook the young giant's dirty hand.

"Come to dinner with us! Got a table reserved at the Jefferson! Dinner at six! Dance after!" Of course Sleepy was pleased to come, having espied the sun glinting on Annie's hair.

"Of all sights the rarest And surely the fairest Was the shine of her yellow hair; In the sunlight gleaming, Each gold curl seeming A thing beyond compare.

Oh, were it the fashion For love to be pa.s.sion, And knights still to joust for the fair, There'd be tender glances And couching of lances At the shine of her golden hair."

I know Sleepy felt like a knight of old, way down in his shy heart, as he grabbed that football and turned over all his doughty opponents making for the goal. In his heart he wore Annie's colours and in his mind he kissed her little hand. Annie had been receiving Harvie's devotion with much politeness, but now that Sleepy was the hero of the hour, she turned from her more dapper admirer and waved her hand to the delighted and blushing George. Girls all love a football player. They are simply made that way. I think perhaps it is some old medieval spirit stirring within us, and we, too, fancy ourselves to be the ladyes faire and idealize the tumbling, rolling, sweating, swearing boys into our own true knights.

After the Virginia team, borne by in triumph, came the poor Carolina men. They had put up a splendid fight and there had been moments when their success seemed possible. They took their defeat like the gentlemen they were, but I saw their mouths were trembling and one enormous blond with a shock of hair resembling our big yellow chrysanthemums, had his great hands up before his mud-caked face and his mighty shoulders were shaking with sobs, sobs that came from a real broken heart. I hope a hot bath and a cold shower and a good Thanksgiving dinner helped to mend that heart, but it was certainly broken for the time being if ever heart was.

Now we all of us yelled for Carolina, yelled even harder than we had for our own team, and they gave us a sickly smile of grat.i.tude.

During the game Mr. Parker had been very busy in his polite attentions to all of us, and from his generally agreeable manner it looked as though he thought we were all worth saving and none of the litter was to be drowned. Mabel had renewed her attack on Zebedee and had crawled out on the engine by him, where she stood clutching his arm for support and generally behaving as though he were her own private property.

"She makes me sick!" declared Dum. "And Zebedee acting just as though he liked it!"

"Well, what must he do? Let her fall off?" I asked.

"Yes, let her fall off and stay off!"

All was over at last and the automobiles were busy backing out of their places. Mr. Parker gathered in the pushing Mabel, who had done everything in her power to be asked to dinner with us at the Jefferson, but Zebedee had had so many quiet digs from Tweedles that even had he considered her an addition to the party, he would have been afraid to include her.

Our car was the last one out of the grounds because Mabel took so long to make up her mind to get off the engine and accept an invitation from some acquaintances who pa.s.sed and asked her to let them take her home.

"See you to-night!" she called affectionately to Tweedles as she finally took advantage of the offer.

"Not if we see you first!" they tweedled, in an aside.

CHAPTER XI.

THANKSGIVING DINNER.

"Just an hour for you girls to rest up and beautify yourselves and it will be time to break our fast at the Jefferson!" exclaimed Mr. Tucker as we swung up in our rocking old car to the door of the apartment house. "We will be eleven strong, counting White, Price and Ma.s.sie. The Judge is to join us in the lobby of the hotel. I'll see if I can find some one to make it twelve."

"All right, but not Mabel Binks!" warned Dee.

"Why not? She isn't so bad. I find her quite agreeable," teased Zebedee.

"I think she would be quite an addition to the party--"

"Well, you just get her if you want to, but I'll let you know I will smear cranberry sauce on her if she sits near me," stormed Dum.

I thought Tweedles made a great mistake in nagging so about Mabel. I had known very few men in my life, not near as many as the twins, but I had learned with the few I did know that a bad way to manage them was to let them know you were trying to. I, myself, felt rather blue about the way Mabel was monopolizing Zebedee, but I would have bitten out my tongue by the roots before I would have let him know it. Of course fathers are different from just friends. I don't know what I should have done if some flashy, designing person had made a dead set at Father. There weren't any flashy, designing females in our part of the county, and if there had been, I fancy they would not have aspired to the quiet, simple life that being the wife of a country doctor insured. For my part I should have liked a stepmother since I could not have my own mother. I often thought how nice it would have been if Father could have had a sweet wife to be with him while I was off at school. I trusted Father's good taste and judgment enough to know he would choose the right kind of woman if he chose at all. He never chose at all, however, although the many relatives who visited us during the summer made many matches for him in their minds. I hoped if he did make up his mind to go "a-courting" that the stepmother would wear my size shoes and gloves, and maybe her hats would be becoming to me. Even Mammy Susan tried to play Cupid and get Docallison to marry; but he used to say:

"No, no! Matrimony is too much of a lottery and the chances are against a man's drawing two prizes in one lifetime."

Tweedles fought the idea of a stepmother with all their might and main.

I think one reason that it was ever uppermost in their minds was that so many well meaning friends were constantly suggesting to them the possibility and suitability of Zebedee's taking unto himself another wife.

"Well, we'll make it hot for her all right, whoever she may be," they would declare. I never had a doubt that they would, too.

I felt it was really an insult to Mr. Tucker to think he could become infatuated with such a person as Mabel Binks, but then, on the other hand, I knew how easy it is to flatter men; and while Zebedee did not like to be run after, Mabel's evident admiration and appreciation of him would, as a matter of course, soften his heart.

Mabel was, however, not asked to make the twelfth at that Thanksgiving feast. Whether it was the dread of the battle royal that Dum was prepared to fight with cranberry sauce or just simply that Zebedee did not want her himself I did not know, but I was certainly relieved to find that our host had decided to leave the seat vacant.

"We can let Mr. Manners sit in it," he said, squaring his chin at Dum.

The Tuckers had played a game, when they were younger, called "Mr.

Manners." That fict.i.tious gentleman was always invited in when any rudeness was in evidence. Dum certainly had been rude about the cranberry sauce.

"Yes, do!" snapped Dum, "and let him sit next to you--you started it--"

"All right, honey, we'll put him between us and both of us will try to learn from him." So peace was restored.

We had entered the Jefferson Hotel while Dum and her father were having the little sparring match, and as we came into the enclosure where the fountain plays and the baby alligators and turtles splash among the ferns and the beautiful statue of Thomas Jefferson stands in all its quiet peace and dignity, it seemed to me that quarreling was entirely unnecessary and I said as much.

"You are right, Page," said Mr. Tucker. "There is always something singularly soothing and peaceful about this spot and it seems kind of an insult to Thomas Jefferson to be anything but well-bred in his presence."

Our table was laid in the large dining-room and we were hungry enough to go right in to dinner, but the lobby was so full of excited and boisterous people rushing back and forth and greeting each other, hunting lost friends, finding old acquaintances, etc., that we hung over the balcony looking at the gay throng and forgetting that we were short one meal for the day, having crowded breakfast and luncheon into one.

"Service is mighty slow on a crowded day like this, so you had better come eat," and Zebedee led the way to our table, where Stephen White, Harvie Price and George Ma.s.sie immediately joined us. We had picked up Judge Grayson in the lobby.

Of course George, alias Sleepy, was the toast of the occasion, and he blushed so furiously that he looked as though Dum had carried out her threat against Mabel and smeared poor, inoffensive and modest Sleepy with cranberry juice. We asked him so many questions and paid him so much attention that Zebedee finally interfered and made us let him alone.

"You won't let the boy eat and I know he is starving," and so he was,--and so were all of us. We ate right through a long table d'hote dinner, ordering every thing in sight from blue points to cafe noir.

Wherever there was a choice of dainties we took both, much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the very swell waiter, whose black face shone with delight in antic.i.p.ation of the handsome tip he knew by experience was forthcoming when Jeffry Tucker gave his girls a party.

"Pink ice cream for me!" exclaimed Father, when the question of dessert arose.

"And me! And me!" from Mary and Annie and me.

"Don't stop with that," begged Dee. "Dum and I always get everything on the menu for dessert except pumpkin pie. We can't go that."