The Underpup Part 2

"I dunno. I want Pop and Ma."

"It's no good wanting, is it?"

"Well, you've got yours, haven't you?"

"Not really. Not together. I mean--they don't live together."

"Why not?"

"They don't have to. Dad's got a place in Florida and Long Island and Maine and New York. So when they quarrel, they just go off. Different places. And I can't be with either of them because the other won't let me," Janet choked. "I guess they'll quarrel Sat.u.r.day," she said.

"Gee, that's tough." Pip-Emma gave a small hoa.r.s.e chuckle. "Pop and Ma get mad sometimes. But Ma says, 'You old son-of-a-gun, I guess I gotter live with you and like it.' And Pop says, 'I like it fine, you old so-and-so.' And he takes us out and gives us a sundae at the drugstore. Ma says you can't stay mad in two rooms."

"I wish we lived in two rooms," Janet said.

Pip-Emma knitted her black brows. "Maybe," she said, "you might tell 'em so."

"I'd be too scared."

But Pip-Emma was after her thought like a terrier after an elusive rabbit. "If my Pop and Ma were here, I'd jump into their darned old water. I wouldn't care how cold it was. I wouldn't be scared. Maybe if your Pop and Ma are along, you'll win the race, and then you'll never be scared again."

"But I shan't win it. I'll lose my breath like I always do. And Clara's so fat. She just has to float."

"Maybe if she was sick--if she eats something--"

"She can't. Prissy's got her on a diet. She's Prissy's pet."

Pip-Emma put her arm over Janet's shoulder. It was an accolade, and Janet knew it.

"Gee--you poor kid!" Pip-Emma said, and relapsed into deep thought again.

The two wandered off the landing stage together. Outside the gameroom Claudine was writing up a notice on the blackboard. The twins went to a progressive school where you learned spelling only if you felt the urge. The twins had never felt it.

"You don't spell Sat.u.r.day with an 'a' in the middle," Pip-Emma said.

A hot and fl.u.s.tered twin rubbed out the word with a lofty air of apprehended carelessness, and Pip-Emma wrote it in for her.

"If I spelled like you do," she said, "old Perks would give me h.e.l.l."

The hara.s.sed Penguins pinned one of their last hopes on horses. It seemed probable that if Pip-Emma had never seen any trees, she had never seen horses, either--or only from a distance--and that she would be impressed. But it turned out that Pip-Emma's uncle had a horse--not the W.P.A. uncle but the mounted-cop uncle--and that it was a bigger and better horse than anything in the Camp stables. Pip-Emma had actually ridden it from Ninth to Tenth Avenue. Moreover her uncle had chased Squint-Eyed Peters down Forty-fifth Street and shot him and his armored car so full of holes that it was hardly worth while cleaning them up. Pip-Emma told the story after taps and in such gory detail that the Penguins didn't know or care that discipline was going to the dogs.

They learned at the same time that Mr. Binns, in his unregenerate youth, had been an Englishman and had fought in the Great War and that Emma's name was Pip because in English soldier language Pip-Emma meant anything that happened after midday. And Emma had happened in h.e.l.l's Kitchen at 3:30.

The Penguins sat up in their beds and listened spellbound. The glamour surrounding Wall Street, Big Business, and the kind but stoutish and baldish gentlemen who were their fathers was suffering an acute depression. The prospect of their fathers' appearance on Sat.u.r.day and of Pip-Emma's dispa.s.sionate appraisal filled the Penguins with uneasiness.

Things had come to such a pa.s.s that when on Friday evening, after the Camp singsong, Clara felt Emma's arm slip through hers, the VanSittart pride positively glowed. It was the first time that Pip-Emma had seemed to notice Clara--which was a humiliation in itself, seeing that Pip-Emma was really Clara's own idea. And Clara, thanks to Prissy's training diet, was low in her mind anyway.

"Guess what I've found!" Pip-Emma whispered.

But of course Clara couldn't guess anything.

"I've found where they've got all tomorrow's ice cream. Buckets and buckets of it."

Clara, as top Penguin, wavered. Some lingering Penguin rect.i.tude still glowed in her, but only faintly. After all, she was hungry. She was being starved to death. And no one cared. Only Emma Binns seemed to know what she was suffering.

"Dare you!" Pip-Emma said.

It was Clara's chance. Now she could show the stuff in her. Being born on Park Avenue didn't mean necessarily that you were a dumb cluck. She let Pip-Emma lead her by devious paths through the deserted kitchen.

Then to the huge icebox. And there it was--buckets and buckets!

Clara's first handful didn't even make a dent.

"I bet I can eat more than you can," Pip-Emma said.

At breakfast the next morning Miss Thornton made an unusual appearance. She was grave and even troubled.

"Children, a serious thing has happened. Last night someone must have broken all our Camp rules. Someone opened the icebox and ate several pints of our ice cream. I hope--I'm sure--the culprit will stand up at once and not spoil our happy day for us."

Pip-Emma stood up at once. "It was me, Miss Thornton."

"But, Emma, dear, why? Didn't you have enough to eat? Were you hungry?"

Pip-Emma said simply and bravely, "I guess I'm always hungry."

Miss Thornton felt the sudden tears come into her throat. Poor little Emma Binns! No trees. Never enough to eat. And not without a forlorn charm. Prissy Adams, who had caught a glimpse of Clara's greenish countenance, remained grim and unmoved.

"Dear child, you should have told me. Come to my tent afterward. We can talk it over. Meantime it was fine and brave of you to tell the truth. It shows that you are a real Penguin--" she gave her warm, beloved chuckle--"almost, but not quite, perfect."

Everyone laughed and cheered except the Penguins, who for some unknown reason sank into the profoundest gloom. Clara VanSittart had left the table hurriedly.

Pip-Emma peeked out of the tent. The Penguin Circle was near the lake, and she could see the parents, looking better from a distance, lined up on benches along the water's edge. She could pick out Janet's parents because they were younger than the others. They didn't seem to be quarreling. They didn't seem even to be speaking to each other.

"O.K.," Pip-Emma said. She walked beside Janet like a trainer. She gave last instructions. Everyone knew Janet was her Gang. So Janet, who had never won anything, had to win. It was Prissy's opinion that if Janet did win, the Penguins, as a cla.s.s, were licked. She said sharply to Clara,

"If you feel as bad as you look, you'd better throw up the sponge."

It was an unfortunate suggestion. Clara gulped. But she was game. The prestige of the Penguins, the VanSittarts--one might say the whole Social Register--was in her hands. She mumbled, "I'm a' right," and slid with a smothered moan into the water.

Mr. and Mrs. Cooper waved dutifully to Janet. In her white cap and bathing suit she looked like a pet white mouse in charge of a dark and aggressive field mouse. Both parents had the same thought, with one small but important variation: "If he (she) had made a decent home for the poor child, she might have amounted to something."

"How's the little old complex?" Pip-Emma asked.

"I--I don't know, Pip. I think it's all right."

"Don't think about it. You ain't got it, see? So you're going to win.

'Cause you swim better than any of 'em. You just got to know it, and you'll be fine."