A House Party with the Tucker Twins Part 16

"Ya.s.sum! I been up sence sunup a-packin' 'em. It seemed like ol' times to be a-packin' all them victuals. I 'member what a gret han' you was for pickan.i.g.g.e.rs whin you was a gal. I reckon it's a-cuttin' all them samwidges yistiddy dat done combusticated yo' hip now. You better let me rub you befo' I go a shopper-roonin'."

"Thank you, Milly, but if you chaperone, that will be work enough for you for to-day. You had better get ready now. Tell Willie to take you to your cabin in the buggy and wait and drive you back. You must hurry and not keep the young ladies waiting."

Aunt Milly waddled off, filled with importance and pride but secretly dreading a water trip. Dee insisted upon ma.s.saging the poor invalid, who really was suffering intensely. Dee was a born nurse and was never so happy as when she could take command in a sick room. She drove all of us out, insisting the patient must be quiet. Wink, who was really and truly a doctor now, was called in and readily prescribed and what's more produced the medicine from a little kit he carried about with him. Dee rubbed and rubbed until it was time to start on the picnic. Miss Maria was so soothed that she dozed off and Dee tiptoed out of the room without making a sound.

No doubt the poor old lady enjoyed her day of quiet and rest. We must have been a great trial to her, because we were a noisy, hoydenish lot.

Those of us who didn't sit up late at night making a racket, got up early in the morning to do so, and vice versa. She was so sweet and good-natured about us that she never let us feel we were a nuisance, but I am sure we must have been.

CHAPTER XII

THE SHOPPER-ROON

OF course Aunt Milly kept us waiting. There is no telling what rite she performed in her cabin in preparation for the momentous occasion of chaperoning. We were all seated in the boats waiting, the lunch stowed carefully in the locker of the launch and the bathing suits tucked under the seats, when Willie came racing up in a light red-wheeled buggy, one side so bent down with Aunt Milly's great weight that the springs were touching.

"Gawd pertec' me!" she prayed as Harvie and Zebedee between them handed her into the launch. The little craft did some perceptible sinking with the extra load and had to be lightened a bit.

"Sleepy, you had better get out," teased Rags.

Poor Sleepy had been having a strenuous week trying to monopolize Annie Pore. This was a difficult thing to do, as Annie seemed to attract the male s.e.x w.i.l.l.y nilly. She had no idea of flirting and never meant to hurt anyone, but there was something about her that appealed to the masculine element irresistibly. Wherever she went she made conquests by a certain clinging vine att.i.tude she had towards the whole world. Mere man likes to be looked upon as a protector and Annie's timidity was meat and drink to his vanity. George Ma.s.sie, alias Sleepy, was her slave; Harvie Price thought he looked upon her as a little sister, but I have never yet seen a big brother quite so anxious for the comfort of nothing but a sister; Jack Bennett seemed to find her very attractive and divided his allegiance between her and Dee; nothing but his loyalty to Sleepy kept Ben Raglan from entering the lists for the favor of the little English maid. He occasionally teased poor Sleepy, but that young giant never did know what I knew: that Rags really cared for Annie.

Sleepy, knowing that the launch was the safest place in which to embark for a picnic and understanding how timid Annie was and how poor a swimmer, had ensconced her in that vessel in a protected spot, and had found a place at her feet where he could look up into her pretty face.

"Me get out? Get out yourself!" he cried indignantly.

"But it is not quality they want out but quant.i.ty," answered Rags. "You and Aunt Milly, being in the same boat, can't ride in the same boat."

Now George Ma.s.sie was not really fat, but because of his great bulk he was usually thought of as being so. Certainly his bones were well covered but his muscles were hard as iron. What fat was there was well hammered down. He must have weighed at that time at least two hundred and twenty pounds, but then his six feet two inches could carry a good many pounds. He was cursed with money if ever a young man was. His father was very wealthy and George had never been denied a single thing in all his life. His princ.i.p.al ambition had been to make the football team at the University and even that had been granted him,--not because of money but because of brawn.

He was studying medicine in a desultory way, taking a year longer to finish his course than the more ambitious Wink, who was not cursed at all with money but had unbounded energy and ambition. Sleepy's friends, and he had many of those necessary things, all adored him. He was so honest, so straightforward, so sympathetic. They deplored his lack of ambition, however. I used to feel that Sleepy was a lesson to all of the young men in his set because they realized that after all too much money often had a softening effect on character. There seemed to be no especial use for George Ma.s.sie to graduate, because after he got his diploma what difference would it make whether he got patients or not?

His adoration of Annie Pore had had a good effect on him, so Jim Hart had told me. The last year at the University he had done better studying than he ever had in his life, and his friends had hopes of his waking up to the fact that the world might need him, even if he did not need the world's money in doctor's fees.

"Yes, Sleepy! You'll have to vamoose," insisted Jack Bennett, trying to squeeze himself down between George Ma.s.sie and Annie.

"You are as big as any two other pa.s.sengers," declared Rags.

"If that is the case, then suppose two other pa.s.sengers take to the life-boats," suggested Zebedee. "Come on, Page, you are light and easy to row and there is a nice little brown boat waiting for us."

Dum and Billy Somers had already started in their picturesque red skiff, and Mary Flannagan and Shorty were well on their way in the canoe. They had been independent and had not had to wait while Aunt Milly arrayed herself in all the glories of a brand new purple calico and bright plaid head handkerchief.

"All right!" I acquiesced to Mr. Tucker's proposal.

After we were transferred to the little brown boat and on our way to Croxton's Ford, he said:

"I am afraid I was selfish to ask you to come with me. I know I should not have taken you away from all of your young friends."

"Why, Zebedee! How absurd! You are the youngest friend I have, much the youngest."

"But you gave a very sad and unenthusiastic 'all right' to my proposition to come by skiff. Now, didn't you?"

"But it wasn't that I didn't want to come with you," I declared.

"Perhaps not, but merely that you didn't want to leave someone else to come with me. Now fess up, honey!"

"I have nothing to fess up about."

"Well, then, why did you look so crestfallen when I put it up to you to leave the launch?" and Zebedee dug his oars in the water with some viciousness.

"I didn't mean to. I--I----"

"You what?"

"I had a reason for wanting to stay in the launch."

"Didn't I say so? Who was the reason?"

"It wasn't a who, at all--it was a which."

"A which?" he asked somewhat mystified.

"Yes, a which! If you must know, I wanted to be under the awning because of my freckled nose," and I blushed until it hurt. My nose was a great annoyance to me. It was such a little nose to get so many freckles on it. The fact that they disappeared in the winter was but cold comfort to me.

"But I like freckles," he said quite solemnly, but his eyes were dancing with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"But I don't, and it's my nose. You are the only person who does like 'em."

"Who has been telling you he doesn't like them?"

"n.o.body to my face, or rather to my freckles, but I heard Jessie Wilc.o.x talking to someone about me and she called me a speckled beauty,--just exactly as though I were a trout or a coach dog or a turkey egg or something. And I know after this day on the water I'll be a sight."

"Do you care what she says?"

"I care what anybody says."

"Why, little friend, I did not dream you put so much value on the opinion of others, especially where mere personal appearance is concerned." I thought I detected a note of disappointment in his voice.

"I don't about everything, but one's nose is mighty close to one, somehow."

"So it is," he laughed, "and I am so sorry to have been the means of injuring that touchy member. I can't help feeling kind of happy, though, that it was the awning you were loath to leave and not some one of those boys. Here's a nice linen handkerchief; why don't you tie that over your nose?"

Mr. Tucker always had the nicest linen handkerchiefs I ever saw, and he seemed to have clean, folded ones ready to produce for every emergency.

I accepted his offer and tied it over the lower part of my face.

"Now you look like a little Turkish lady. Please say you are glad you came in the little brown boat," and my boatman s.h.i.+pped his oars and drifted with the current.

It was a very easy thing to say because I was very glad. Now that my poor little nose was protected, I was perfectly happy. I always enjoyed being with Zebedee. We never talked out and we seldom had a disagreement; not that we agreed on every subject by any means, but we could disagree without having a disagreement. We talked about everything under the sun from Shakespeare to the musical gla.s.ses. I couldn't help comparing this boat ride to the one I had been overpersuaded to take with Wink only a few days before. We had started out with the best of intentions on my part to avoid all shoals in conversation, but before we had been out ten minutes Wink was gnawing his little moustache in fury and I was wis.h.i.+ng I had stayed on sh.o.r.e. A row with Wink was sure to end in a row (p.r.o.nounced rou).