Strawberry Acres Part 12

"Only a novice, but I'm rather proud of these. I hope the first night was a comfortable one?"

"Perfect! Our friends are still sleeping--though they won't be long if I shout like this."

"I've been up so long I didn't realize it was barely seven o'clock. But I wanted to make sure of your having these for the first camp breakfast.

I'll disappear now, and perhaps I can venture to appear again, later in the day, with my mother. We want to offer our services as neighbours from whom anything, from axes to apricots, can be borrowed."

Max could hear Josephine's low laugh echoed by a small ecstatic chuckle from the other side of the canvas wall which separated his head from Sally's. Her whisper came from very near his ear:

"Max, are you awake? Did you hear what Jo said? We're to have fresh strawberries, right out of a garden, for breakfast. Aren't you glad you're alive?"

Where was his ill-temper? He felt for it, in the recesses of his inner man, and couldn't seem to find it. He had had nine long hours of refreshing sleep, in the purest air to be found in the country, and had wakened with a sense of refreshment and well-being such as he had not experienced in many months. A faint, but appetizing, odour of cookery, including that of fragrant coffee, was in the air, and there were to be freshly picked strawberries for breakfast. And on the other side of the tent wall was a happy young convalescent, demanding of him whether it was not good to be alive. He found himself answering, in a genuinely cheerful tone:

"I'm certainly mighty glad you're alive, Sally Lunn!"

CHAPTER VII

EVERYBODY IS SATISFIED

"Bobby, let's have a garden, you and I." Bob looked up from the front of the tent platform, where he sat polishing a pair of much-worn russet shoes. Riding back and forth, nights and mornings, on a bicycle, over very dusty roads, made it necessary to polish often. But Bob didn't mind.

The two weeks of camp life he had enjoyed had made him indifferent to any extra trouble involved.

"Looks as if you had a garden somewhere," he responded, eyeing with favour the pailful of red raspberries Sally held up. "You must have got up with the lark, to have picked all those. Mary Ann hasn't more than started the fire in the kitchen tent. I had to go and help her. That girl doesn't know how to boil an egg. She cracks it getting it in. Her coffee is a thick, dark, wicked looking stuff. What do you suppose she does to it?" he asked in a whisper.

"Never mind. I'm growing stronger every minute, and mean to begin to cook, next week."

"Thank goodness!" murmured Bob. "I mean," he explained quickly, "that I'm thankful you're well enough."

Sally laughed, pulled off her wide straw hat, and sat down beside Bob.

"Your cheeks are pink as hollyhocks," he observed, eyeing her with satisfaction.

"I had a lovely time picking those raspberries," she said. "There must have been a big patch of them back there once. Bob, I want to start a kitchen garden. Max and Alec haven't waked up yet to the fun it would be to grow things on this old place, but you're always awake. Come on!"

Bob stood up.

"I'm ready for anything you say, but I don't know any more about planting gardens than I do about building bridges. You don't plant a garden in July--I'm sure of that."

"Isn't there a thing that can go in late, and produce a late crop?"

"Don't ask me. Maybe our friend Ferry would know. If there's anything he doesn't know, I haven't found it out. It's funny a preacher should be such an all-round sort of fellow, isn't it?"

"A--what?" Sally nearly dropped her raspberries, she was so astonished.

"A preacher. He preaches in the old white church with the big pillars, away down town in the middle of everything. I just found it out yesterday from a fellow in the office."

"Why, it can't be! He's always busy round that garden--or chopping wood up in our timber tract. He asked Max to let him work at that--for the sake of his muscle, he said."

"If you'll just stop and think, you'll find he isn't round all the time.

He's in the city every day--has to be. He holds a half-hour noon service in the old church every day in the week for men. Fred Kentner says they flock in there like sheep--says he goes in often. It's cool in there, and he likes the things Ferry says. I'm going in with Fred some day soon. I'd like to find out what a fellow that can chop trees and fight with his fists can find to say in a pulpit."

"Fight with his fists!"

Bob chuckled. "I tackled him the other evening, out behind his house, just for fun. I got all I wanted in about two minutes. He was laughing all the time, but I couldn't get near him. He laid me on my back as helpless as a baby. Say, if Mary Ann doesn't get round with the oatmeal pretty soon, I'll have to go without. It's twenty minutes past six now."

"I'll see about it," and Sally hurried away, revolving in her mind this astonishing news.

"He can't be as young as he looks, then," she said to herself. "I shouldn't say he was a minute over twenty-five, but he must be."

Her mind turned later that day to a project more immediately promising than the garden. She wanted to have a house party--a tent party, to be accurate. The Burnsides had driven out twice to see them since they had become established, but Jarvis had been having another siege with his eyes, and Josephine had been entertaining visitors. Sally, in the fast-increasing strength and enthusiasm of returning health, longed for her friends, and began to plan how she could have all three with her for the s.p.a.ce of at least two days.

"Wait a little longer," counselled Uncle Timothy. "Your strength is more that of happiness than of real physical gain, though you are certainly acquiring health rapidly. There will be plenty of hot weather in August, and you will be better fit to exert yourself."

Max and Alec backed him, for they were still more or less indifferent to the charms of active exercise, and when they had been fed, each evening, were in the habit of falling into postures of ease on the ground before the tent, while they discussed the happenings of the day.

At the end of another fortnight, however, everybody admitted that Sally seemed enough like herself to be permitted the mild dissipation of a tent party, and she proceeded joyfully to plan for the occasion.

"Alec and Bob will have to sleep outside," she decided.

"Thank you, not for me!" said Alec.

"Oh, don't go and be a spoil-sport now, Al!" cried Bob. "I'd a good deal rather sleep outdoors than not."

"You have my permission," rejoined Alec.

"I will sleep out-doors, with pleasure," said Uncle Timothy.

"Never, if I give you my room!" and Sally looked indignant.

"I should enjoy it," Mr. Rudd insisted. "This out-door life has renewed my youth. If the weather is favourable during your friends' visit you can count on having my room for them."

Of course Alec could not allow such a reversal of the natural order of things, and he announced the fact with firmness mixed with irritation.

Uncle Timothy, however, also persisted, went into town and bought a hammock, and returning hung it under the trees.

Sally, with the help of Mary Ann, did considerable preliminary baking, and the Ferrys, hearing of the coming event, contributed a large basketful of garden produce. Sally, running over to thank Mrs. Ferry, told her all about her plans. She had already grown very fond of the little lady, whose happiness at being with her son, after a long period of separation from him, made her a cheery companion.

"I hope you and Mr. Ferry will come over this evening," urged Sally. "We want to make it a jolly time for our friends, and I'm sure you'll enjoy knowing Mrs. Burnside."

"Mother's a little shy," said a voice from behind Mrs. Ferry, who stood in the small porch, looking down at her visitor. Sally, in a crisp frock of white with tiny black figures, her sunny head uplifted, and her cheeks now round and rosy with returning health, looked past Mrs.

Ferry's shoulder, smiling. "She is decidedly modest about showing off before people, but she could entertain your guests quite by herself, if she would."

"Donald!" The small lady faced about, as her son's arm came round her shoulders. "What an idea!"

"She's the finest reader in the state," a.s.serted the young man. "She's a scholar, she's--"