Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid Part 2

CHAPTER III

THE SEARCH FOR A HOUSEBOAT

"Eleanor Butler, do hurry!" urged Madge two days later. "If we miss the train, I feel I shall never forgive you." The two girls were preparing for their trip to Baltimore.

"Let me alone, Madge," Eleanor returned. "If you will stay out of the room for ten minutes, I promise to be ready. You've talked so much in the last half hour that I haven't known what I was doing and I don't know now. You had better make another call upon Miss Jones. She is even more enthusiastic about your old houseboat scheme than you are."

Eleanor laughed as Madge disappeared in the direction of Miss Jones's room.

"You must wish with all your heart that we shall find the houseboat to-day, Miss Jones," declared Madge in her impulsive fashion. "You see, everything depends on our not having to waste any time. The sooner we find our boat, the sooner we can begin our delightful vacation."

Miss Jones smiled. She was beginning to understand the impetuous Madge better than she had ever dreamed of knowing her, and she was very grateful for her invitation. Miss Jones was fairly well aware of how much it had cost her pupil to ask her. "Yes, I shall be thinking of you girls every minute," she declared. "Let me see. This is the twenty-fifth of May. School will close in another week. You girls wish to spend a week at home with your parents and relatives; but just as early in June as possible we are to go aboard our houseboat. That is our plan, isn't it, Madge?"

Madge nodded. Then, as she heard Phil and Lillian calling her, she waved a hasty farewell and darted from the room.

Madge had received a letter from the boy cousin who was at school in Baltimore. He had given her several addresses in Baltimore where there was just a bare chance that she might find a ready-to-use houseboat.

He a.s.sured her, however, that houseboats were usually made to order, and that she might find some difficulty in securing what she wished, and must, therefore, not become easily discouraged.

Just before noon the four young women arrived in Baltimore on their quest for a house-boat. Lillian and Eleanor demanded their luncheon at once, but Phil and Madge protested against eating luncheon so early.

"You can't be hungry already," argued Madge. "As for me, I shall never be able to eat until we find our boat."

For two hours the girls tramped about the boat yards in search of their treasure. They saw canoes and motor boats of every size and kind, and models of private yachts, but not a trace of a houseboat could they find. The representatives of the various boat companies whom they interviewed suggested the building of a houseboat at a cost of anywhere from six hundred to a thousand dollars.

Lillian and Eleanor were the first to complain of being tired. Then Phil, who was usually the sweetest-tempered of the four girls, began to show signs of irritability. Madge, however, undaunted and determined, would not think of giving up the search.

"Just one more place, girls," she begged; "then we can rest and have our luncheon somewhere. This is a very large ship-building yard we are going to. I am sure we can find our boat there."

Half an hour later the four chums turned wearily away from another fruitless quest. They were now in a part of Baltimore which none of them had ever seen before. A few blocks farther down the street they could see the line of the water and the masts of several sailing vessels that were lying near the sh.o.r.e.

"I tell you, Madge Morton," declared Phyllis Alden firmly, "whether or not we ever find a houseboat, there is one thing certain: I positively must have something to eat. I am half starved. What good would finding the boat do me if I were to die of hunger before I have even seen it?"

"Please don't be cross, Phil," soothed Madge. "I am sure we are all as hungry as you are. I am awfully sorry. We ought to have eaten luncheon before we came here. There isn't a restaurant in sight."

"I am sure I saw the sign of a funny little restaurant as we came by the corner," broke in Lillian. "It did look queer, but I suppose it would not be any harm for us to go in there."

"We don't care if it does look queer," declared Phyllis stoutly.

Turning, the girls retraced their steps to the corner.

Outside the swinging door of the small restaurant they hesitated. "I don't think we ought to go in there," argued Eleanor, "it is such a dreadfully rough-looking place."

It was indeed a very common eating house, where the men who worked on the wharves, the fishermen and sailors, were in the habit of getting their meals. The one dirty window showed half a dozen live crabs crawling about inside among the pieces of sea-weed. A row of old pies formed the background.

A moment later they had marched bravely up to the door. Dainty Eleanor shuddered as they crossed the threshold, and even Phil and Madge hesitated as a man's coa.r.s.e laugh greeted them once they were fairly inside the restaurant room.

"Come on, children," said Madge, with a pretence of bravery she was far from feeling. "We are going into this restaurant to get something to eat. Don't look as if you thought you were going to be eaten. It is rather horrid, but perhaps they will let us have some bread and milk."

The quartette seated themselves at the first table they saw vacant.

Just across from it were a number of men with rough, hard faces. They were evidently sailors from the nearby boats. The girls kept their eyes on the table, and Madge gave their order for tea and sandwiches in a low tone to the German boy who came forward to wait on them.

When the boy had departed with their order a silence settled upon the little group of girls. In each girl's mind was the thought that it had been unwise to enter the restaurant. By this time they had come to a realization of the fact that they were the only women in the room.

"We ought never to have come here," whispered Lillian, clutching Madge's arm.

"Nonsense," returned Madge bravely, "we have as much right here as any of these men."

"But I'd rather not stay," persisted Lillian.

"Didn't you say you were hungry?" asked Madge pointedly.

"Ye-es," hesitated Lillian, "but I just can't stay here."

"Nor I," chimed in Eleanor.

Madge looked appealingly at Phyllis, who shook her brown head deprecatingly. "I don't believe we ought to stay here, Madge."

"You, too, Phil!" exclaimed Madge impatiently. "All right, Misses 'Fraid Cats,' we'll go. Here comes our luncheon, too."

The girls glanced quickly at the rosy-faced lad who came up at that moment with their order on a tray.

"I'm so hungry," sighed Phil. "Perhaps we'd better----"

"So glad you've changed your mind," commented Madge rather satirically.

"But what about you, Lillian and Eleanor?"

"Let's stay this once, but next time we'll be more careful where we lunch," smiled Eleanor.

"I take back all I said about 'Fraid Cats,'" laughed Madge. "We'll hurry through our luncheon and leave here the moment we finish. After all, as long as we are to become seasoned mariners we shall have to learn to accustom ourselves to the vicissitudes of a sailor's life."

"But we can't be 'seasoned mariners' until we find our houseboat,"

reminded Lillian. "It doesn't look as though we'd find it to-day, either."

"We must," was Madge's emphatic response. "Here we have been worrying like mad about this restaurant not being a proper place in which to eat our luncheon, while the really important question of where we are to find our boat hasn't troubled us. We must go out of here saying, 'We shall find it, we shall find it,' and then I believe we can't help but run across it." Madge's blue eyes were alight with purpose and enthusiasm.

"Good for you, Madge," laughed Phil. "Come on, girls. Let us finish our tea and renew our search."

It was half-past three in the afternoon when they left the little restaurant. The four girls were to spend the night in Baltimore with a friend of Miss Tolliver's, who kept a boarding-place. As they were in the habit of staying with Miss Rice when they came into Baltimore to do their shopping, Miss Tolliver had, for once, after many instructions, permitted the girls to go into town without a chaperon.

"Miss Rice said we did not have to be at her house until half-past five o'clock," Phil volunteered, "so what shall we do?"

"There is a little park down there near the water," Lillian pointed ahead. "Suppose we sit down there for a few minutes until we decide where to go next?"

It was a balmy, sunshiny May day. While the girls rested on the park benches they could see, far off, a line of ships sailing up the bay and also the larger freight steamers. They were near one of the quiet ca.n.a.ls that formed an inlet from the great Chesapeake Bay. Lining the banks of the ca.n.a.l were numbers of coal barges and ca.n.a.l boats.

On the deck of a ca.n.a.l boat a girl came out with a bundle of clothes in her arms. She was singing in a high, sweet voice as she hung them on a line strung across the deck of the boat.

The girls watched her silently as she flitted back and forth, and she sang on, unconscious of her audience. She was singing a boat song which the men chant as they row home at the close of day. The pathos in the woman's voice was so exquisite, its notes so true, that Madge's blue eyes filled with tears. None of the four friends stirred until the song was over, and the girl in her faded calico dress and bare feet had disappeared into the cabin of the boat.