Judith Lynn Part 4

"He's going away from us, we sha'n't meet him," Blossom said in disappointment.

"Of course he's going away--of course he won't meet us," Judith retorted between her little white teeth.

"An' I wanted to 'speak him,'" the disappointed little voice ran on; "I was going to call out, 'How's the folks abroad? We're on our way 'cross, in the Judiana B.,'--this is the Judiana B., Judy, after both of us. B. stands for me."

"Funny way to spell me!" laughed Judith with an effort. She must hide away her black suspicions. Not for the world would she have Blossom know! Blossom was so fond of Jemmy Three, and she had so few folks to be fond of.

A surprise was waiting for them "out there." The traps were pretty well loaded! Not full, any of them, but not one of them empty. In all, there were seventeen great, full-grown, glistening, black fellows for Blossom to shudder over as she never failed to do--Blossom was no part of a fisherman.

"He didn't dare to take them all," thought Judith, refusing to let the Evil Thought get away from her. "Probably he saw us coming. If he'd let 'em alone there might have been a lot more--perhaps there were fifty!"

"One, two, three,"--counted Blossom slowly. "Why, Judy, there's seventeen. You didn't s'pose there'd be as many as seventeen, did you? Isn't that a splendid lot?"

"Not as splendid as fifty," answered Judy, a.s.sured now that there had been as many as that.

"Seventeen from fifty is thirty--thirty-two," whispered the Evil Thing in her ear. Evil things cannot be expected to be good in arithmetic or anything else. "So he helped himself to thirty-two, did he! Nice haul! Thirty-two big fellows will bring him in--"

"Don't!" groaned Judith.

"I don't wonder you say 'don't!' Thirty-two nice big fellows would have brought _you_ in a pretty little sum. You could have put it away in a stocking in your bureau drawer, for the Blossom-fund."

"Oh, I was going to! I was going to!"

"Thought so--well, you'll have to get along with seventeen. That comes of having boys like that for friends!"

"He isn't my friend!" Judith cried sharply to the Evil Thing in her breast. "He never will be again. If it wasn't for Uncle Jem I'd never look at him again as long as I live!"

All this little dialogue had gone on unsuspected by the little pink "mastif" in the bow of the little dory. Blossom had been busy edging out of the reach of the ugly things in the bottom of the boat. If Judith had only edged away from her Ugly Thing!

Another surprise was even now on the way--a surprise so stupendous and unexpected that, beside it, the lobster-surprise would dwindle away into insignificance and be quite forgotten for the rest of the day.

And oddly enough, it was to be Blossom who should be discoverer again.

"I'm going a little farther out and fish awhile," Judith announced over her last trap. "I've got all my tackle aboard and maybe I can find something Mrs. Ben will want. You sit still as a mouse, Blossom, for I cant't be watching you and fishing, too."

"I'll sit still as _two_ mice. Needn't think o' me!" answered the little one proudly. Did Judy think she was little like that? Just because she hadn't legs that would go! They didn't need to go, did they, out here in the middle of the sea!

"What makes it look so ripply an' bubbly out there?" she questioned with grown-up dignity. Judy should see she could sit still and talk like anybody.

"Where?" asked Judith absently. She did not take the trouble to follow the little pointing finger with her eyes.

"_There_--why don't you look? It's all pretty an' ripply an' kind of queer. Doesn't look like plain water 'xactly. Look, Judy--why don't you?"

"I am looking now--Oh, Oh, wait! It looks like--Blossom, I believe it's a school! That's the way the water always loo--Blossom, Blossom, do you hear me, it's a school! A school of mackerel--a _school_, I tell you!"

"Well, you needn't keep on a-telling me." Blossom, anyway, was calm.

"I'm not deaf o' hearing, am I? If it's a school, le's us go right straight out there an' fish it up, Judy."

Judy was going right straight out there with all the strength of her powerful young arms. She was not calm; her face was quivering with excitement and joy. A school! A school! Oh, but that meant so much for the Blossom-fund, to put away in the stocking in the bureau drawer! If it should prove a big school--but she and Blossom could not manage a big one, never in the world. If Jemmy Thr--no, no, not Jemmy Three! This was not Jemmy Three's school--what had he to do with it?

In all the stress and excitement of sending the old dory out there where the water was rippling its news to her, Judy had time to think of several things. She had time to remember how she and Jem Three had used, from the time they were little brown things in pinafores, to plan about their first school o' mackerel--what they would do with all the wealth it should bring them, how they would share it together, how they would pull in the silvery, glistening fellows, side by side.

What plans--what plans they had made! They had practiced a shrill, piercing call that was to summon the one of them who should happen to be absent when the "school" was descried out there in the bay. Even lately, big and old as they had grown, they had laughingly reviewed that call. Now--this minute--if Judith were to utter it, piercing and far-carrying and jubilant, perhaps Jemmy Three might hear and come plowing through the waves to get his share--had he any share? Because when they were little brown things they had made vows, did that give him any rights now?

Of course, if--if things had been different--lobster-things--Judith might have pursed her lips into that triumphant summons. But--

"Sit still! I'm going to swing her round!" called Judith sharply.

"I've got to go ash.o.r.e for father's old net. It's in the boat-house."

"You won't leave me, Judy--promise you'll take me out with you!"

pleaded Blossom, eagerly.

"I'll have to," Judith responded briefly. "There isn't time to carry you home--I don't dare _take_ time."

She made her plans as she went in, and put out again with the clumsy heap of netting towering at her feet. The thing she meant to do was stupendous for a girl to attempt alone, but she was going to attempt it. The shabby old net had lain in its corner, useless, for two years. Now it should be used--she, Judith Lynn would use it! She was glad as she pulled seaward again that she had thrown in two scoops--perhaps when the time came Blossom could make out to use one a little.

The net was like a long--a very long--fence, with its lower edge weighted heavily and its upper edge provided with wooden floats, to insure its standing erect under water. When in position properly it surrounded the school of fish, completely fencing in the darting, glimmering, silver fellows. Then the circle could be gradually narrowed and the fish brought together in a ma.s.s, when scoops could be used to dip them up into the boat.

The school once located, Judith began to circle slowly round it, "paying out" her fence of netting with no small difficulty, but gradually surrounding the unsuspected fish, until at length she had them penned.

"What did I tell you! I told you I'd be the--the mastif, Judy!"

Blossom chattered. "I told you you'd say how thankful you was you brought that child!"

"How thankful I am!" chattered Judy. Then, launched into the thick of the arduous work, they both fell into breathless silence and only worked. It was not much Blossom could do, but she did her little splendidly. And Judith toiled with all her strength.

They stopped at last, not because there were no more of the glistening, silver fellows about them, but because the old black dory was weighted almost to the water's edge. They had to stop. And then began Judith's terrible hour. For the heavy boat must somehow be worked back, a weary little at a time, to the distant sh.o.r.e. Judith set herself to this new task gallantly, but it was almost too much for her. Over and over again it seemed to her she must give it up and toss overboard part, at least, of her silver freight, to lighten her load. But over and over again she nerved herself to another spurt of strength.

She must do it! She could not give up! She would shut her eyes, like this, and row ten more strokes--just ten more. Then she would row ten with her eyes open. Ten, shut--ten, open. Perhaps that would help. She tried it. She tried other poor little devices--calling the strokes "eenie, meenie, minie, mo," the way she and Jemmy Three had "counted out" for tag when they were little--brown--things. Her strength--was surely--giving out--it shouldn't give out!

Blossom, watching silently from her weary perch, grew frightened at Judy's tense, set face and began to sob. And then Judy must find breath enough to laugh rea.s.suringly and to nod over her shoulder at the child.

They had gone out late--had been out a wearisome time--and the journey back to land was measured off by slow, laboring oar-strokes that scarcely seemed to move the great boat. So it was late afternoon when at length Judith's hard task was done. She seemed to possess but one desire--to rest. To get Blossom over the remaining half mile between her and home and then to tumble over on the bed and sleep--what more could anyone wish than that?

But there would be more than that to do. She must get food for tired little Blossom, if not for herself. And before this towered gigantically the two last feats of strength that faced her and seemed to laugh at her with sardonic glee.

"Drag me up on the beach--drag me up!" the old black dory taunted her.

"Carry me home, Judy, I'm so tired!--carry me home," Blossom pleaded, like a little wilted blossom.

She did both things, but she never quite realized just how she could have done them. She remembered telling herself she couldn't and then finding them done. Of covering her load of mackerel with an old rubber blanket she was dimly conscious. It was not until she lay drowsing in utter exhaustion on her own bed that she thought of all of the rest that must be done to that boat-load of precious freight.

Then she tried to sit up, with a cry of distress.

"I must go! I cant't stay here! Or I shall lose--Oh, what shall I lose?" she groaned in her drowsiness and dread. Something would happen if she did not get up at once--she would lose something that she _mustn't_ lose. She must get up now, at once.

"I shall lose Blossom--no, I mean Blossom will lose--oh, yes, Blossom will lose her legs, if I don't get up," she drowsed, and fell asleep.

Chapter IV.