New Faces Part 14

"I remember him," said Mr. Hawtry, "a well-bred beast but a holy terror, go on dear."

"One Byccle.

Three Tickets.

Stanley's Darkest Africa two books but not very new.

One printing press.

Two Tickets.

Treasure Island. One Book."

"And that's all the big things," finished Cecelia Anne in evident relief. "Jimmie wrote down the prices, wouldn't you like to see them?"

And she crossed to Mr. Debrett and laid the open book on his knee.

Mr. Debrett, as Cecelia Anne teetered up and down on her heels and toes before him, read the list again, counted up the total expenditure and admitted that his ward had got remarkably good value for her money.

"But what are all these 'tickets,' my dear?" he asked her.

"Eden Musee," answered Cecelia Anne. And the very thought of it drew her to her mother's knee. "Jimmie and the boys used to take me there Sat.u.r.day afternoons in the winter to try to get my nerve up. They say,"

she admitted dolefully, "that I haven't got much. So they used to take me to the Chamber of Horrors so's I'd get accustomed to life. That's what Jimmie thought I needed. They used to like it, and I expect I'd have liked it, too, if I could have kept my eyes open, but I never could. I couldn't even _get_ them open when the boys stood me right close to that gentleman having death throes on the ground after he'd been hung on a tree. You can hear him breathing!"

"I know him well," said Mr. Debrett. "He is rather awful I must admit.

And now we'll talk about the books. Don't you care at all about 'Little Men' and 'Little Women' or the 'Elsie Books?'"

"Jimmie says," Cecelia Anne made reply, "that 'Darkest Africa' is better for me. It tells me just where to hit an elephant to give him the death throes. He says the 'Elsie Books' wouldn't be any help to us even with a buffalo. We're going to buy 'The Wild Huntress, or Love in the Wilderness' next month. Jimmie thinks that's sure to get my nerve up--being about a girl, you see--"

"And 'Treasure Island' now;" said her guardian, "did you enjoy that? It came rather late in my life, but I remember thinking it a great book."

"It's great for nerve. Jimmie often reads me parts of it after I go to bed at night. There's a poem in it--he taught me that by heart--and if I think to say it the last thing before I go to sleep he says I'll get so's _nothing_ can scare me."

"Recite it for Mr. Debrett," urged Mrs. Hawtry. And Cecelia Anne obediently began, with a jerk of a curtsey and a shake of her delicate embroideries and blue sash.

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

Mr. Debrett's astonishment at this lullaby held him silent for some seconds.

"You see, sir," Cecelia Anne explained, "if you _can_ go to sleep thinking about that it shows your nerve. I can't. Not yet. But it never makes me cry any more and Jimmie says that's something."

"I should say it was!" he congratulated her. "It's wonderful. And now in the matter of dolls," he went on referring to the list, "no rag babies, eh?"

"Oh, but she has beautiful dolls, Mr. Debrett," interposed her mother.

"She'll show them to you to-morrow morning, won't you honey-child? But she did not buy them. They were given to her at Christmas and other times. But really, since we came out here for the summer they've been rather neglected. Their mother has been so busy."

"And Jimmie made me a house for them!" Cecelia Anne broke in. "And furniture! And a front yard stuck right on to the piazza! But I don't know, mother, whether I'd have time to show them to Mr. Debrett in the morning. I'm pretty busy now. It's getting so near the race. And I pace Jimmie _every_ morning."

"Ah! that reminds me," said her father, "Jimmie told me to send you to bed at eight o'clock--one of the rules of 'training', you know--so say good night to us all and put your little book back in the drawer.

You've kept it very nicely. I am sure Mr. Debrett agrees with me."

When the elders were alone, Mrs. Hawtry crossed over into the light and addressed her guest.

"I can't have you thinking badly of Jimmie," she began, "or of us, for allowing him to practically spend the baby's income. Every one of the things on that list mark a stage in Cecelia Anne's progress away from priggishness and toward health. I don't know just how much she realizes her own power of veto in these purchases but I am sure she would never exercise it against Jimmie. She's absolutely wrapped up in him and he's wonderfully good and patient with her. Of course, you know, they're twins although no one ever guesses it. They've shared everything from the very first."

"In this combination," laughed Debrett, "the boy is 'father to the girl' and the girl is 'mother to the boy.'"

"Precisely so," Mr. Hawtry replied, "and the mother part comes out strong in this race and training affair. An old chap down at the hotel--one of those old white-whiskered 'Foxey Grandpas' that no summer resort should be without--has arranged a great race for his friends, the children, on Fourth of July morning. The prize is to be the privilege of setting off the fireworks in the evening."

"They'll run themselves to death," commented Debrett, who knew his young America, "and is Jimmie to be one of the contestants?"

"He is," replied Hawtry, "it's a 'free for all' event and even Cecelia Anne _may_ start if Jimmie allows it. She's not thinking much about that though. You see, Jimmie has gone into training and she's his trainer. I went out with them last Sat.u.r.day morning to see how they manage. They marched me down to an untenanted little farm, back from the road. Jimmie carried the 'riffle' referred to in Cecelia Anne's text and a handful of blank cartridges. Cecelia Anne carried Jimmie's sweater, a bath towel, a large sponge, a small tin bucket and a long green bottle. I carried nothing. I was observing, not interfering."

"Oh, that dear baby!" broke in Mrs. Hawtry, "such a heavy load!"

"She's thriving under it, my dear." Well, presently we arrived at our destination, and I saw that those kids had worn a little path, not very deep of course, all round what used to be rather a s.p.a.cious 'door yard.'

The winning-post was the pump. By its side Cecelia Anne disposed her burden like a theatrical 'dresser' getting things ready for his princ.i.p.al. She hung her tin pail on the pump's snout and pumped it full of water, laid it beside the bath towel, threw the sponge into it, gave a final testing jerk to her tight little braids and divested herself of her jumpers and the dress she wore under them. Then she resumed the jumpers, took the rifle and crossed the 'track.' Jimmie, meanwhile, had stripped to trousers and the upper part of his bathing-suit, had donned his running shoes, set his feet in holes kicked in the ground for that purpose and bent forward, his back professionally hunched and in his hands the essential pieces of cork. Cecelia Anne gabbled the words of starting, shut her eyes tightly, fired the rifle into the air, threw it on the ground and set off after the swiftly moving Jimmie. Early in his first lap she was up to him. As they pa.s.sed the pump, she was ahead. In the succeeding laps she kept a comfortable distance in the lead, until the end of the third when she sprinted for 'home,' grabbed the towel and, as Jimmie came bounding up, wrapped him in it, rubbed him down, fanned him with it, moistened his brow with vinegar from the long bottle, tied the sweater around his neck by its red sleeves and held the dripping sponge to his lips. Then she found time for me.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CELIA ANNE SHUT HER EYES TIGHTLY AND FIRED THE RIFLE INTO THE AIR.]

"Oh, father," she cried, "did you _ever_ see _any_body who could run as fast as Jimmie? Don't you just know he'll win that race?"

"There's but one chance against it," said I. "And really, Mr. Debrett, that boy can run. He's a little bit heavy maybe, but he holds himself well together and keeps up a pretty good pace. I timed him and measured up the distance roughly afterward. It was pretty good going for a little chap. Cecelia Anne is so much smaller that we often forget what a little fellow he is after all. But that baby--whew--I wish you'd seen her fly.

It wasn't running. She just blew over the ground and arrived at the pump as cool as a cuc.u.mber although Jimmie was puffing like an automobile of the vintage of 1890."

"You see," said Jimmie to me as he lay magnificently on the gra.s.s waiting to grow cool while Cecelia still fanned him with the towel, "you see it don't hurt her to pace me round the track."

"Apparently not," said I, and although he's my own boy and I know him pretty well, I couldn't for the life of me decide whether he, as well as Cecelia Anne, had really failed to grasp the fact that she beats him to a standstill every morning. I suppose we'll know on the Fourth. If she runs, then he does not know. But if he refuses to let her run; it will be because he does know."

"I'm not so sure of that," said Mrs. Hawtry.

Cecelia Anne _was_ allowed to run. First, in a girl's race among the giggling, amateurish, self-conscious girls whom she outdistanced by a lap or two and, later, in the race for all winners, where she had to compete with Charlie Anderson, the beau of the hotel, Len Fogarty, the milkman's son, and her own incomparable Jimmie.

The master of ceremonies gave the signal and the event of the day was on. First to collapse was Charlie Anderson. Jimmie was then in the lead with Len Fogarty a close second, and Cecelia Anne beside him. So they went for a lap. Then Jimmie, missing perhaps the blue little figure of his pacemaker, wavered a little, only a little, but enough to allow Len Fogarty to forge past him. Len Fogarty! The blatant, hated Len Fogarty, always shouting defiance from his father's milk-wagon! Then forward sprang Cecelia Anne. Not for all the riches of the earth would she have beaten Jimmie, but not for all the glory of heaven would she allow any one else to beat him. And so by an easy spectacular ten seconds, she outran Len Fogarty.

Then wild was the enthusiasm of the audience and black was the brow of Len Fogarty. A chorus of: "Let a girl lick you," "Call yourself a runner," "Come up to the house an' race me baby brother," has not a soothing effect when added to the disappointment of being forever shut off from the business end of rockets and Roman candles. These things Cecelia Anne knew and so accepted, sadly and resignedly, the glare with which Len turned away from her little attempts at explanations.

But she was not prepared, nothing in her short life could ever have prepared her, to find the same expression on Jimmie's face when she broke through a shower of congratulations and followed him up the road; to expect praise and to meet _such_ a rebuff would have been sufficient to make even stiffer laurels than Cecelia Anne's trail in the dust.

"Why Jimmie," she whimpered contrary to his most stringent rule. "Why Jimmie what's the matter?"

"You're a sneak," said Jimmie darkly and vouchsafed no more. There was indeed no more to say. It was the last word of opprobrium.

They pattered on in silence for a short but dusty distance, Cecelia Anne struggling with the temptation to lie down and die; Jimmie upborne by furious temper.