Tripping with the Tucker Twins Part 17

"You will have your boxes sent when it suits you. I am sorry we have no one to send for them." A boarding-house keeper to send for your luggage!

What next?

There seemed no reason to linger longer since the ladies made no move to show us the rooms we were to occupy, and we all of us felt that to mention money would be too brutal. Mrs. Green rose to take leave, and all of us followed suit.

"We will return at about four, if that is convenient."

"We shall be pleased to see you at any time."

We bowed, the ladies bowed, and the portraits seemed to incline their painted heads a bit.

Dilsey was standing in readiness to show us out of the street door, and the sight of her grinning human countenance did me good. She at least was alive.

Once on the street, we looked at one another knowingly, but the presence of Claire barred us from saying anything. We walked the block to her house, talking of the pleasure it would be to be so near her, and expressing to her our appreciation of the trouble she had taken to place us with her friends.

"Oh, we are too delighted to have you near," she declared. "Louis and I can talk of nothing else. Of course we are hoping to see a great deal of you."

We wondered if the pompous old father seconded this, and how the young Gaillards would get by with us. We were not, according to his ideas, desirable acquaintances. At least we fancied we would not be. Surely, however, Mrs. Green could pa.s.s muster anywhere.

"Louis wants to take you to see the old oak in Magnolia Cemetery just as soon as you feel like going."

"Oh, we couldn't go to a cemetery without Zebedee," declared Dee. "He loves them so!"

"Well, how about the Magnolia Gardens this afternoon? He is eager to be your guide there as well."

"Is that where the azaleas are so beautiful?" asked Dum.

"Yes, and they are just right to see now. I hear they were never more beautiful than now."

"See them without Zebedee? Never!" Dee still objected. "He adores flowers as much as he does old tombstones."

"Well, then, Sullivan's Island, where Poe's 'Gold Bug' was written?"

laughed Claire.

"Go somewhere that is interesting on account of Edgar Allan Poe without Zebedee! We could never be so heartless. Why, he knows Poe by heart."

"Well, Dee, I don't see any place we could go without Zebedee, according to you, unless it is back at school or to a dry goods shop."

"Well, Virginia Tucker, we could go see some pictures or something close by that he can run in on any time."

"Certainly you could! There's the wonderful collection of paintings at the City Hall," suggested Claire courteously, wondering a little, no doubt, at Dee's persistency in waiting for her father for all sight-seeing, and at her evident impatience with Dum. When the twins called each other Virginia and Caroline, it was, as a rule, something quite serious. So we settled on the City Hall as entertainment for the afternoon before our installment in our new quarters.

"Dum, I didn't mean to be grouchy," said the repentant Dee, as soon as we got out of sight of Claire. "I was trying to head off a trip where carfare would be necessary. You know Louis never has any money of his own, and he would be wanting to pay for all of us, and I know would be cut to the quick if we didn't let him. You see, Zebedee is so b.u.mptious he just naturally steps up and pays the fare before anybody else has time even to dig down in their jeans."

"My husband might have held his own with Louis," suggested Mrs. Green.

"Yes, I know; I thought of that, but then I did not know whether he would go or not. I think your husband is just lovely. I didn't mean he'd be the kind to hang back." Dee spoke so ingenuously and sincerely that the young wife had to forgive any fancied slight to her Edwin.

It turned out, however, that Professor Green was still writing letters, and had decided to spend the afternoon finishing them up, so he would not have been able to hold his own digging in his jeans. It was like Dee to think of that matter of carfare. She had so much sympathy for the poor and miserable of creation that she seemed to be able to put herself in their places as it were. I fancy there is no more miserable person on earth than a youth who aspires to be squire of dames and has no money to pay the fare.

Professor Green was writing in the palmetto-shaded court of the hotel, and had seen us from there as we came up the street. He begged us to join him and tell him what success we had met with the Misses Laurens.

"Oh, Edwin, it was lovely! You never saw such a beautiful old house and furniture. The garden is a dream, has a sun-dial and stone benches and statues!"

"The portraits are splendid, and there was a Wedgewood pitcher on the mantelpiece that I wouldn't trust Zebedee alone with if I were those ladies," exclaimed Dum.

"They had a lovely cat, too; so clean and soft, and he came to me in the friendliest way," from Dee.

"They gave us apricot cordial in Bohemian gla.s.s tumblers, and wafers you could see through," I put in.

"Well, all this sounds fine. How about the bedrooms? Were they attractive, too?"

"Bedrooms! We didn't see them."

"Oh, then you expect to sleep on the stone benches, perhaps."

"I wanted to ask to see them, but the ladies were so funny and stiff and seemed to want us to pretend to be guests, so that naturally we just pretended."

"I see. You came to terms with them, however, of course."

"Terms! You mean money terms? Why, Edwin, we could no more mention money in their presence than we could rope in a house where the father has been hanged."

Professor Green went off into a fit of laughter that made me think that after all maybe he was younger than Zebedee. He kissed his wife twice right before us and in plain view of the pa.s.sersby on Meeting Street, but he couldn't help it. She was so adorably girlish in her reasons for engaging board from Charleston aristocrats without even seeing the bedrooms, and with absolutely no idea of what remuneration those unbending dames would expect.

"I did say that Tweedles and I could sleep three in a room, and I wish you could have seen the way they jumped at me. It was Miss Judith. 'We are under no necessity for crowding,'" I mimicked her. "I did not like to insist, but of course I meant it might make our board a little cheaper. If you had been there, you would have knuckled under just like the rest of us."

"Do you think it would be wise to go without knowing? I don't want to seem mercenary with all of you high-minded ladies, but I do think there would be a certain satisfaction in knowing just what one was paying for sun-dials and wafers that can be seen through."

"Well, then, you can do the asking! I can't. Was there ever a moment when we could broach the subject, girls?"

"Never!" we chorused loyally.

"We will just go 'buying a pig in a poke,' as it were, and maybe after a night on the garden bench I can muster up courage to ask them what I owe them for the privilege," teased the professor.

"I don't like betting on a certainty, but I don't believe you will be able to do it, and am willing to wager almost anything that you can't get yourself to the point any more than we could. You might ask Miss Arabella, but if you tackle Miss Judith and she looks at you as she did at me when I suggested three in a room, I bet you father's copy of Timrod's poetry that you change the subject."

"Done! I bet you the volume of J. Gordon Coogler's 'Purely Original Verse' that I am living at the Maison Laurens on a purely business basis within the next seven hours. I am going to settle it before tonight."

"Will it be Miss Judith?" I asked, fearing Miss Arabella might be the cause of my losing the Timrod poetry, which I was anxious to write father I had found for him at the second-hand book store.

"Miss Judith and no other! I should feel very sneaky if I got my information through the easier channel of Miss Arabella. Miss Judith, and by seven o'clock."

"I hope we will know before Zebedee comes back," said Dee. "We shall never hear the last of it if he finds us boarding for untold sums."

"I shall feel myself a failure as a chaperone surely," remarked Mrs.

Green.

"We think you a tremendous success," tweedled the twins.