The S. W. F. Club Part 28

"Oh, but we're coming back--after we've been taught all manner of necessary things."

"Edna'll be the only one of you girls left behind; it's rough on her."

"It certainly is; we'll all have to write her heaps of letters."

"Much time there'll be for letter-writing, outside of the home ones," Tom said.

"Speaking of time," Josie turned towards them, "we're going to be busier than any bee ever dreamed of being, before or since Dr. Watts."

They certainly were busy days that followed. So many of the young folks were going off that fall that a good many of the meetings of "The S. W. F. Club" resolved themselves into sewing-bees, for the girl members only.

"If we'd known how jolly they were, we'd have tried them before," Bell declared one morning, dropping down on the rug Pauline had spread under the trees at one end of the parsonage lawn.

Patience, pulling bastings with a business-like air, nodded her curly head wisely. "Miranda says, folks mostly get 'round to enjoying their blessings 'bout the time they come to lose them."

"Has the all-important question been settled yet, Paul?" Edna asked, looking up from her work. She might not be going away to school, but even so, that did not debar one from new fall clothes at home.

"They're coming to Vergennes with me,"

Bell said. "Then we can all come home together Friday nights."

"They're coming to Boston with me," Josie corrected, "then we'll be back together for Thanksgiving."

Shirley, meekly taking her first sewing lessons under Pauline's instructions, and frankly declaring that she didn't at all like them, dropped the hem she was turning. "They're coming to New York with me; and in the between-times we'll have such fun that they'll never want to come home."

Pauline laughed. "It looks as though Hilary and I would have a busy winter between you all. It is a comfort to know where we are going."

"Remember!" she warned, when later the party broke up. "Four o'clock Friday afternoon! Sharp!"

"Are we going out in a blaze of glory?"

Bell questioned.

"You might tell us where we are going, now, Paul," Josie urged.

Pauline shook her head. "You wait until Friday, like good little girls. Mind, you all bring wraps; it'll be chilly coming home."

Pauline's turn was to be the final wind-up of the club's regular outings. No one outside the home folks, excepting Tom, had been taken into her confidence--it had been necessary to press him into service. And when, on Friday afternoon, the young people gathered at the parsonage, all but those named were still in the dark.

Besides the regular members, Mrs. Shaw, Mr. Dayre, Mr. Allen, Harry Oram and Patience were there; the minister and Dr. Brice had promised to join the party later if possible.

As a rule, the club picnics were cooperative affairs; but to-day the members, by special request, arrived empty-handed. Mr. Paul Shaw, learning that Pauline's turn was yet to come, had insisted on having a share in it.

"I am greatly interested in this club," he had explained. "I like results, and I think,"

he glanced at Hilary's bright happy face, "that the 'S. W. F. Club' has achieved at least one very good result."

And on the morning before the eventful Friday, a hamper had arrived from New York, the watching of the unpacking of which had again transformed Patience, for the time, from an interrogation to an exclamation point.

"It's a beautiful hamper," she explained to Towser. "It truly is--because father says, it's the inner, not the outer, self that makes for real beauty, or ugliness; and it certainly was the inside of that hamper that counted.

I wish you were going, Towser. See here, suppose you follow on kind of quietly to-morrow afternoon--don't show up too soon, and I guess I can manage it."

Which piece of advice Towser must have understood. At any rate, he acted upon it to the best of his ability, following the party at a discreet distance through the garden and down the road towards the lake; and only when the halt at the pier came, did he venture near, the most insinuating of dogs.

And so successfully did Patience manage it, that when the last boat-load pushed off from sh.o.r.e, Towser sat erect on the narrow bow seat, blandly surveying his fellow voyagers. "He does so love picnics," Patience explained to Mr. Dayre, "and this is the last particular one for the season. I kind of thought he'd go along and I slipped in a little paper of bones."

From the boat ahead came the chorus.

"We're out on the wide ocean sailing."

"Not much!" Bob declared. "I wish we were--the water's quiet as a mill-pond this afternoon."

For the great lake, appreciating perhaps the importance of the occasion, had of its many moods chosen to wear this afternoon its sweetest, most beguiling one, and lay, a broad stretch of sparkling, rippling water, between its curving sh.o.r.es.

Beyond, the range of mountains rose dark and somber against the cloud-flecked sky, their tops softened by the light haze that told of coming autumn.

And presently, from boat to boat, went the call, "We're going to Port Edward! Why didn't we guess?"

"But that's not _in_ Winton," Edna protested.

"Of it, if not in it," Jack Ward a.s.sured them.

"Do you reckon you can show us anything new about that old fort, Paul Shaw?" Tracy demanded. "Why, I could go all over it blindfolded."

"Not to show the new--to unfold the old,"

Pauline told him.

"That sounds like a quotation."

"It is--in substance," Pauline looked across her shoulder to where Mr. Allen sat, imparting information to Harry Oram.

"So that's why you asked the old fellow,"

Tracy said. "Was that kind?"

They were rounding the slender point on which the tall, white lighthouse stood, and entering the little cove where visitors to the fort usually beached their boats.

A few rods farther inland, rose the tall, gra.s.s-covered, circular embankment, surrounding the crumbling, gray walls, the outer sh.e.l.ls of the old barracks.

At the entrance to the enclosure, Tom suddenly stepped ahead, barring the way. "No pa.s.sing within this fort without the counter-sign," he declared. "Martial law, this afternoon."

It was Bell who discovered it. "'It's a habit to be happy,'" she suggested, and Tom drew back for her to enter. But one by one, he exacted the pa.s.sword from each.

Inside, within the shade of those old, gray walls, a camp-fire had been built and camp-kettle swung, hammocks had been hung under the trees and when cushions were scattered here and there the one-time fort bore anything but a martial air.

But something of the spirit of the past must have been in the air that afternoon, or perhaps, the spirit of the coming changes; for this picnic--though by no means lacking in charm--was not as gay and filled with light-hearted chaff as usual. There was more talking in quiet groups, or really serious searching for some trace of those long-ago days of storm and stress.

With the coming of evening, the fire was lighted and the cloth laid within range of its flickering shadows. The night breeze had sprung up and from outside the sloping embankment they caught the sound of the waves breaking on the beach. True to their promise, the minister and Dr. Brice appeared at the time appointed and were eagerly welcomed by the young people.

Supper was a long, delightful affair that night, with much talk of the days when the fort had been devoted to far other purposes than the present; and the young people, listening to the tales Mr. Allen told in his quiet yet strangely vivid way, seemed to hear the slow creeping on of the boats outside and to be listening in the pauses of the wind for the approach of the enemy.

"I'll take it back, Paul," Tracy told her, as they were repacking the baskets. "Even the old fort has developed new interests."