Vacation with the Tucker Twins Part 18

planning the future and gazing into the clear obscure of the darkening sky.

"'Star light, star bright, first star I've seen tonight!

I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight,'"

sang Dum, and sure enough there was a star.

"Look here, girls, it's getting late! I hate to awaken you from this dream of eternal bliss, but we've got to go in," and Dee turned over on her face to swim in, thereby causing some commotion in the hearts of the two swimmers newly initiated in the art.

"Don't leave me!" gasped Annie.

"Didn't your faithful Mary swear to take you safe to sh.o.r.e? Just lie still and I'll tow you in;" and in they came, Mary steaming away like a tug boat and Annie floating like an ocean liner, until her shoulders grated on the sand and then and only then was she convinced that she could touch bottom.

We raced back to the cottage, hungry and happy, the fifteen minutes that we had meant to stay having turned into an hour in the twinkling of an eye. From afar we espied Blanche on the porch, shooing us back with one hand and beckoning with the other. We obeyed the beckoning one and eagerly demanded what was the matter. Her face was so pale that the name of Blanche was almost appropriate.

"What is it, Blanche? What has happened?" we cried.

But she was speechless except for gasping: "Oh, the disgrace, the disgrace!"

We followed her trembling form into the living room, wet suits and all, feeling that the exigency of the case was sufficient cause for suspension of rules and for once we would bring dripping bathing suits into the house. The cause of Blanche's perturbation of mind was easily understood when we beheld the portly figure of Cousin Park Garnett stiffly seated in a dusty chair (on Dum's Panama hat it was discovered later). She was indignantly waving her turkey-tail fan, and such an expression of disgust I have never seen on a human countenance.

The room looked no better than when we had left it and even a little worse, as the pickup supper we were to have had been dumped on the table in great confusion and not at all in Blanche's usual careful style. We had told her not to set the table and she had taken us at our word. The odour of sardines left in the opened boxes mingled with that of the bananas, still in the bursting bag. The bread was cut in thick, uneven slices. A gla.s.s jar of pickle and one of olives added to the sketchiness of the table. It was "confusion worse confounded."

"Oh!" I gasped, on viewing my indignant relative, "I thought you had gone!"

"No, I have not yet departed," stiffly from Cousin Park. "This is rather an unusual time for bathing, is it not?"

"Yes'm, but----" and I began to stammer out something, fully aware of the dismal figure I cut, standing limply in front of that august presence, my wet clothes sending forth streams of water that settled in little puddles on the floor. I was well aware of the fact that Cousin Park had never approved of my friendship with the Tuckers, and now, coming on us in this far from commendable state, she would have what she would consider a handle for her hitherto unfounded objections.

But Dee, who by some power that she possessed in common with her father, the power by a certain tact to become master of any situation, no matter how embarra.s.sing, came forward and with all the manners of one much older and clothed in suitable garments, so that you lost sight of her scant and dripping bathing suit, she said:

"We are very glad to see you, Mrs. Garnett, and are extremely sorry to have missed any of your visit. You have found us in some disarray from the fact that we are preparing to move and at the same time have just been engaged in having a wedding in the family."

"A wedding! Whose wedding?" The wily Dee had taken her mind off of the disorder in the room and now she felt she could soon win her over to complacency at least. The wetting paled to insignificance beside the wedding.

"Why, our dear friend and chaperone, Miss c.o.x."

"Your chaperone! Goodness gracious, child! Did she marry your father?"

"Heavens, no!" laughed Dee. "Mr. Bob Gordon is the happy man!"

"Miss Binks did not tell me a word of it," said Mrs. Garnett rather suspiciously.

"No, she did not know about it." "Not know about it? That is strange!

Was there any reason for keeping it secret?"

"No especial reason for keeping it secret except that it was to be a very quiet affair and the invited guests included only the most intimate friends. Mabel Binks has a way of getting herself invited by hook or crook, and we just decided not to tell her about the matter."

"How long were they engaged? It seems strange behaviour in a chaperone."

"I tell you what you do, Mrs. Garnett. If you won't mind the informality of a picnic supper, you stay and have supper with us. We will run up and get dressed and be down in a moment and then we will tell you the whole thing, how they got engaged and all about it." And so anxious was my cousin for a bit of news to retail to the ladies on the hotel porch that she actually stayed.

When we got down stairs after very hasty toilets, we found the good-natured Blanche had brought some order out of the chaos of the supper table and with an instinct truly remarkable had made a pot of delicious, fragrant coffee. Coffee, I had often heard Cousin Park declare to be her one weakness. Now you may be sure that what Cousin Park, with her smug self-satisfaction, considered a weakness in herself would really have been a pa.s.sion in anyone else.

As Dee, who was doing the honours at the head of the table, it being her week as housekeeper, poured the coffee and our still far from mollified guest saw the beautiful golden brown hue that it a.s.sumed the minute it mingled with the cream, her expression softened and she looked very much as she had when Judge Grayson recited, "My Grandmother's Turkey-tail Fan." The colour of coffee when it is poured on cream is a never failing test of its quality, and the colour of Blanche's coffee was beyond compare.

The food was very good if not very elegantly served, and I really believe Mrs. Garnett enjoyed herself as much as she was capable of doing. When anyone's spinal column has solidified she can't have much fun, and I truly believe that was the case with hers.

What she enjoyed as much as the coffee and even more, perhaps, was the delightful news she was gathering in every detail to take back to the old hens roosting on the hotel porch. Mr. and Mrs. Gordon had made no secret of their affairs, even their former engagement and cause of the break being known now to some twenty persons; so we felt that it would be all right if we told the whole thing to our eager listener.

She agreed with the young lover that the Lobster Quadrille (of which she had never heard before) was nonsense pure and simple. Dum had to recite it twice and finally we all got up and danced it and sang it for her.

Then she did acknowledge that it might appeal to some persons, but that a girl with as irregular features as the former Miss c.o.x had been very foolish to let such twaddle as that stand in the way of matrimony, and she was surely exceedingly fortunate, when Time had certainly done nothing to straighten her face, to be able to catch a husband after all.

We well knew that while Time had not had a beautifying effect on our beloved Miss c.o.x's countenance, it had made more lovely her character and soul, and that was after all what Mr. Gordon loved more than anything else. We kept our knowledge to ourselves, however, as Cousin Park was not the kind of person to talk metaphysics to.

She finally departed, much to our relief, as we were one and all ready for bed. We escorted her to the hotel and before we were out of earshot we could hear her cackling the news to the other old hens very much as a real barnyard fowl will do when she scratches up some delectable morsel too large to swallow at one gulp. She immediately bruits it abroad, attracting all the chickens on the farm, and then such another noise, pecking, grabbing and clucking ensues, until the choice bit is torn to shreds.

We were very tired but not too tired to applaud Mary Flannagan, who imitated Cousin Park to the life as she recounted the tale to her cronies. Then Mary followed the gossipy monologue with her favourite stunt of barnyard noises, finally ending up with Cousin Park's parting speech anent the Lobster Quadrille and Miss c.o.x's imprudence in not taking a husband when she had a chance, even if their taste in the cla.s.sics did not coincide.

CHAPTER XXI.

SETTLING UP.

The next day, our last at the Beach, such scrubbing, sweeping and dusting went on as was never seen before I am sure. We were determined that Mrs. Rand should not say that girls at best were "goatish." Blanche insisted that she could do all the cleaning herself, but we thought it but fair to turn in and help.

"How could people in one short month collect so much mess?" demanded Dum, as she turned bureau drawers out on the beds and did what she called "picking rags." "Do you s'pose on a desert island we would find ourselves littered up with a lot of doo-dads?"

"Well, Robinson Crusoe collected Friday, besides several other days of the week that I can't remember," answered Dee, "and it seems to me he got a dog and a cat and a parrot, and he certainly 'made him a coat of an old Nannie goat.' He had no luggage at all on his arrival and had much to cart away. And look at Swiss Family Robinson! There was nothing they did not collect in the way of belongings on their desert island, even a wife for one of the boys."

"Do you know, I used to think Swiss Family Robinson was the best book that had ever been written," said I, emerging from the closet with an arm full of shoes.

"Well, I don't know but that it is still," declared Dum. "Wouldn't it be just grand to be cast on a desert island? Of course I mean if Zebedee could be cast along, too."

"Of course we wouldn't be cast without him," said Dee, "Heaven would be more like the other place if Zebedee wasn't there. Goodness, I wish he didn't have to work and we could all stay together all the time!"

"When I grow up a little more and learn how, I am going to sculp such a wonderful statue that Zebedee can stop working." Dum forgot all about the rags she was picking and with the dreamy expression we knew so well, began to ball up a perfectly clean shirt waist as though it were clay and with her sculptor's thumb shape it into I don't know what image of surpa.s.sing beauty.

She was rudely awakened from her dream by Dee, who s.n.a.t.c.hed the imaginary clay from her twin, exclaiming:

"Since that happens to be my shirt waist, the one I am going to travel back to Richmond in, I'll thank you to get-rich-quick on one of your own ... or this dirty middy blouse might prove a good medium," and she tossed a very soiled article over Dum's head. It happened to be a middy that she had gone crabbing in, so it was not overly pleasant. Anything was enough to start Tweedles in a romp, and in a minute the air was black with shoes and white with pillows, and what work we had accomplished was in a fair way to be done over.

Annie and I took to the farthest cot for safety and Mary perched upon the railing and egged the warriors to fiercer battle by giving her inimitable dog fight with variations. As is often the case, the non-combatants got the worst of the fight. Dee ducked a pillow, thrown with tremendous force by her opponent, and Annie got it square on her dainty nose, causing that aristocratic feature to bleed profusely.

"Oh, Annie, Annie, I'm so sorry!" wailed Dum.

"It is altogether my fault!" declared Dee. "I had no business ducking!"