Vacation with the Tucker Twins Part 21

UNTIL NEXT TIME.

Zebedee met us at the station in Richmond with the faithful Henry Ford, quite spruced up (I mean Henry) with a new coat of paint, put on while the family was at the beach. Brindle, Dee's precious dog, was perched on the front seat with the air of injured dignity he always a.s.sumed, so Dee said, when they went off to the seash.o.r.e and left him behind. His damson-jam eyes were moist and sad and his breathing even more stertorous than usual.

"Well, you know yourself how you hate the water and how grouchy you were the last time you went with us!" said Brindle's mistress, hugging the old dog and speaking to him as though in answer to the reproach in his eyes. "If you would learn to be a more agreeable traveling companion and eat fish like a respectable canine, we would never leave you. Goodness knows, I miss you and long for you every minute of the day and night."

Brindle snorted and gurgled and licked Dee's ear in token of forgiveness.

"I am sure any physician would say that Brindle's adenoids should be removed," commented Dum from the back seat. "Did you ever hear such a noise in your life as that old dog makes just simply living? Every breath he draws seems to require all the force and strength he can muster."

"Virginia Tucker, I will thank you not to be personal with Brindle. His breathing shows his breeding, which is more than your conversation does.

You know how easy it is to hurt his feelings," and Dee looked daggers at her twin.

"Oh, excuse me, Brindle, I was merely joking!"

"You know perfectly well that Brindle's one fault is that he has no sense of humour."

"Well, I had forgotten it for the moment.--I saved him a chocolate peppermint out of the box we bought on the train. Do you think that would serve as balm to his wounded feelings?"

"It might!" said Dee dubiously. "Brindle is very fond of chocolate peppermints, but he does hate to be guyed." It did, however, and peace was restored before Zebedee finished attending to the trunks and cranking up Henry.

Blanche's brother, "Po' Jo," had met her at the station, much to the relief of all of us.

"I am no sn.o.b," declared Zebedee, "but I'll be hanged if I was relishing the prospect of running poor, dear Blanche uptown in Henry Ford, bedecked as she was in all that glory of second mourning."

Blanche's feelings were so hurt when we suggested that she should travel in the decent black skirt and plain shirtwaist bought for the wedding that we had to give in and let her return in the costume in which she had arrived.

"Po' Jo" was quite as comfortable in figure as his sister. He was, in fact, as fat and sleek as a 'possum, and like that animal he had a perpetual grin on his coffee-coloured countenance. His portly form stretched the seams of a Palm Beach suit, on the left sleeve of which was st.i.tched a large black heart in honour of his recent bereavement.

Brother and sister beamed on each other with family pride written all over their good-natured faces.

"Well, Sister Blanche, you is looking quite sw.a.n.ky, as a English gentleman at the Club is contingently saying." Jo was waiter at the Club.

"And you, Brother Jo, you is bearin' up wonderful an' lookin' mighty well in yo' new Palm Leaf suit," and she smoothed the sleeve with the black heart st.i.tched thereon with an air of conscious pride that she could boast such a wonderful brother.

We were sorry to tell Blanche good-bye. She had endeared herself to all of us, and in spite of the fun we got out of her peculiarities, we were really very fond of her. She was perfectly honest and faithful, and above and beyond all that, as Zebedee said, she was a born cook. She was to stay a while with Jo and then go down to pay Mammy Susan a visit before returning to her school.

I was to spend one night with the Tuckers and then go back to my beloved Bracken. I was reproaching myself for staying even the one night longer away from Father, but Zebedee had planned all kinds of things for my pleasure, and Tweedles were so persistent in their entreaties that I had submitted, although I was getting very homesick for Father and Mammy Susan, to say nothing of the dogs and Peg, my old horse.

Lunch first! Dee made all of us eat beefsteak, ordering a huge porterhouse so she could get the bone for Brindle. "I know he is tired of the food at that old cafe," she said. "He does not look nourished to me and I intend to give him some building-up food."

"Why, Dee, he is as fat as a pig," insisted Dum.

"Yes, I know he is fat, but I don't like the colour of his tongue. Flesh is not always an indication of health, Dum Tucker."

"That's so," put in Zebedee, "I've seen many a fat corpse, but my opinion is that Brindle needs exercise. He is so lazy."

After lunch as we spun up Broad Street, we noticed quite a crowd gathered near the marketplace. Zebedee, with an eye ever open and nose ever twitching for news, slowed up his car.

"Nothing but a street fakir, but he must have something fine or be a very convincing talker."

Just then Henry indulged in his little habit of stopping altogether, and Zebedee had to get out and crank up. This enabled us to hear the fakir and see his wares.

"This, ladies and gentlemen, is a most remarkable implement, taking the place of a whole chest of tools! This is a potato-parer! This is an apple-corer! This is a cork-screw! This is a can-opener! This is a nutmeg-grater! This is a knife-sharpener! This----" But Dum leapt from the car and without any ceremony interrupted the man's stream of convincing eloquence. With every "this" he had ill.u.s.trated the virtues of his wares by slicing potatoes, coring apples, opening bottles and cans, etc.

"How much?" she asked excitedly.

"Ten cents! Ten cents! Eight perfect implements in one for ten cents! I am the sole agent in the United States and Canada and you miss the chance of a lifetime if you do not purchase one. I am now on my way to California and will not return to Virginia for many years."

"Give me five," demanded Dum recklessly, producing her last fifty cents.

The delighted and mystified salesman counted them out to her and the crowd began to buy excitedly, as though they thought that the wonderful magic implements would start on their trip to California and back by the Great Lakes and through Canada and they might be old men and women before another chance came to own one of these rare combinations.

"Mrs. Rand's lost treasure," gasped Dee.

"Here's another for good measure!" and the man tossed an extra one into Dum's lap as Henry got up steam and moved off. "You started my sales and I won't have a one left by night at this rate."

"I am going to send all of these to that hateful old Mrs. Rand," and Dum settled herself on the cushions, her lap full of can-openers.

We had told Zebedee of Mrs. Rand's carryings-on over her precious tool and he had been vastly amused.

"Don't send them all," I pleaded. "Take one back to Gresham. It would be invaluable at boarding school to get olives out of the bottles, and to open trunks when the keys got lost. As a shoe-horn I am sure it could not be surpa.s.sed, for the apple-corer end would do for that. As for a finger-nail file, what could equal the nutmeg-grater?"

So Dum sent only five to Mrs. Rand, and one we took to boarding school with us, where it ever after played an important part in the curriculum under the pseudonym of "Mrs. Rand."

The Tuckers' apartment seemed especially crowded after the large simplicity of the living-room at Willoughby. As a family they usually managed to get anything they wanted very much, and they had had some sixteen years of wanting and satisfying their desires. It was a fortunate thing that they had, one and all, innate good taste. Mr.

Tucker had wanted pictures and prints; Dum had wanted bronzes, carved curios of all sorts and casts of masterpieces; Dee had a leaning towards soft Persian rugs, old china and pets. The pets had some of them been mercifully overtaken by fate or I am sure we could not have squeezed into the apartment on that hot afternoon in early August. All of them had wanted books and the books wanted shelves, so wherever there wasn't anything else there were book shelves. Small pictures were actually hung on the doors, as there was no wall s.p.a.ce available, and the rugs lapped over each other on the floors.

"We usually have the rugs stored for the summer, but Brindle misses them so much that I wouldn't let Zebedee do it this year. He loves to lie on them and I truly believe he appreciates their colour as well as their softness," and Dee leaned over and patted her beloved dog, who had chosen a particularly wonderful old blue rug on which to take his after-lunch nap.

"Well, I only hope they won't get moths in them with your and Zebedee's foolishness," sniffed Dum.

"Oh, no, Brindle promised me to catch all the moths, didn't you, Brindle, old boy?" Brindle, as though in answer to his mistress, looked solemnly up and snapped at some tiny-winged creature which had recklessly come too close to his powerful jaws.

"Look here, girls! Do you realize that our vacation is more than half over? Before we can turn around we will be back at Gresham," I said, fearing a discussion was imminent. I had heard the subject of moths and Brindle's fondness for Persian rugs thoroughly threshed out before and the gloves had had to be resorted to to prove the point that Brindle's comfort was more important than mere rugs.

"Oh, Page, don't introduce such sad subjects!" exclaimed Dum. "Gresham is all right in its way, but I can't bear to contemplate another winter there. Still, I know it is up to us to go back."

"We'll be Juniors, too--and Juniors are always in hot water," sighed Dee.

"Well, anyhow, we won't be beau-crazy Juniors like last year's cla.s.s,"

declared Dum. "Did you ever see such a lot of boy grabbers in your life?"

"I can't fancy our being grabby about boys, but I tell you one thing," I laughed, "we are certainly much fonder of the male s.e.x than we were a year ago. Boys are nice and I do like 'em, and I don't care who knows it, so there!"

Zebedee came in from his afternoon work just then and overheard the last of my remarks. "What's all this? Page confessing to a fondness for the opposite s.e.x? You like boys, do you? Well, I am glad indeed of my eternal youth. I am nothing but a boy, eh, Dum," he said, tweaking his daughter's ear.

"Boy, indeed! You are nothing but a baby!"

"Well, I am a tired and hot baby and I thought I would find all of you old ladies dressed and ready to go to the Country Club with me for a game of tennis, a shower bath and supper afterwards on the terrace."