The Rival Campers Part 5

"Ask Tom what he thinks," laughed Bob, while Tom tried to look unconscious, but blushed furiously.

"There's a pretty sister of mine," continued Bob, "that thinks so much of us that she spent a week cooking up a lot of things for us to start our camping with. There's a box full of the best stuff to eat you ever tasted, that somebody will gobble up, I suppose, without once thinking or caring about the one that made them. Pretty tough, isn't it, Tom?"

Tom turned redder still, and felt of his biceps, as though he was speculating what he would do to a certain person, if that person could only be discovered and come up with.

"I tell you what it is, boys," said George Warren; "things have had a strange way of disappearing here this summer, as they never did before; and, what's more, if Jack Harvey and his crew haven't stolen them, they have at least got the credit for taking the most of it,-and you may depend upon it, that box is down there in the woods, somewhere about that camp."

"Then what's to hinder our raiding the camp and getting it?" Tom broke in, angrily. "Bob and I, with two of you, could make a good fight against all of them."

"No doubt of that, Tom," answered George Warren; "but there are two things to be considered. First, we want to get the box back; and, second, we are not absolutely certain that they have it. If they have it, you may be certain that it is carefully hidden away, and we shouldn't recover it by making an attack on them. We must find out where it is hidden first, and then, if we cannot get it away otherwise, we will fight for it."

"So it seems that we have two scores to settle now," said Henry Burns, dryly. "We owe a debt now to Jack Harvey and his crew, and there's a long-standing account with Colonel Witham, part of which we must pay to-night. Be on hand early. The latch-string will be out at number twenty-one." So saying, Henry Burns left them.

Late that afternoon Tom and Bob, looking from the door of their tent across the cove, saw a sight that was at once familiar and strange. It was a canoe, in which were two occupants, and it was being paddled toward their camp. The long seas, smooth though they were, still rolled in heavily, and the light canoe tossed about on their crests like a mere toy. Still, it did not take long for them to discover that the canoe was their own. They had supposed it lost, though they had intended to set out in search of it on the following morning.

In the bow and stern, propelling the craft with paddles roughly improvised from broken oars, were George and Arthur Warren.

"Tom, old fellow," said Bob, as the canoe came dancing toward them, "we've lost the box, but we've got the luck with us, after all. Not only are we proof against drowning, but we own a canoe that refuses to be wrecked."

And then the bow of the canoe grated on the sandy sh.o.r.e.

CHAPTER IV.

A NIGHT WITH HENRY BURNS

Henry Burns, having neither father nor mother living, had been taken in charge several years before this by an elderly maiden aunt, whose home was in the city of Medford, Ma.s.sachusetts. She was fairly well-to-do, and, as there had been a moderate inheritance left in trust for the boy by his parents, they were in comfortable circ.u.mstances.

But Henry Burns was made, unfortunately, to realize that this does not necessarily mean a home, with the happiness that the word implies. Good Miss Matilda Burns, a sister of Henry's late father, never having known the care of a family of her own, had devoted her life to the interests of a half a score of missions and ladies' societies of different kinds, until at length she had become so wrapped up in these that there was really no room in her life left for the personality of a boy to enter.

Henry Burns was a problem which she failed utterly to solve. Perhaps she might have succeeded, if she had seen fit to devote less of her time to her various societies, and more to the boy. But she deemed the former of far more importance, and felt her duty for the day well performed, in the matter of his upbringing, if she kept him out of mischief, saw that he went off to school at the proper hour, and that he did not fall ill.

To achieve two of these ends the most conveniently to her, Miss Matilda exercised a restraint over Henry Burns which was entirely unnecessary and altogether too severe. Henry Burns was naturally of a studious turn of mind, and cared more for a quiet evening with a book than he did for playing pranks about the neighbourhood at night. At the same time, he had a healthy fondness for sports, and excelled in them.

He was captain of his ball team, until Miss Matilda found it out and ordered him to stop playing the game. She considered it too rough for boys, having had no experience with boys of her own. And so on, with swimming and several other of his healthful sports. They were altogether too risky for Miss Matilda's piece of mind. It came about that Henry Burns, in order to take part with his companions in their out-of-door sports, found it necessary to play "hookey" and indulge in them without her knowing it. He won a medal in a swimming-match, but never dared to show it to Miss Matilda.

Withal a healthy and athletic youth, he had a pale complexion, which deceived Miss Matilda into the impression that he was sickly. He was slight of build, too, which confirmed in her that impression. When once her mind was made up, there was no convincing Miss Matilda. The family doctor, called in by her for an examination, found nothing the matter with him; but that did not avail to alter her opinion. The boy was delicate, she said, and must not be allowed to overdo.

Accordingly, she made life miserable for Henry Burns. She kept a watchful eye over him, so far as her other duties would admit of, sent him off to bed at nine o'clock, tried to dose him with home remedies, which Henry Burns found it availed him best to carry submissively to his room and then pitch out of the window, and, in short, so worried over, meddled with, and nagged at Henry Burns, that, if he had been other than exactly what he was, she would have succeeded in utterly spoiling him, or have made him run away in sheer despair.

Henry Burns never got excited about things. He had a coolness that defied annoyances and disappointments, and a calm persistence that set him to studying the best way out of a difficulty, instead of flying into a pa.s.sion over it. He had, in fact, without fully appreciating it, the qualities of success.

If, as was true, he was a problem to Miss Matilda, which she did not succeed in solving, it was not so in the case of his dealings with her.

He made a study of her and of the situation in which he found himself, and proceeded deliberately to take advantage of what he discovered. He knew all her weaknesses and little vanities to a degree that would have amazed her, and cleverly used them to his advantage, in whatever he wanted to do. Fortunately for her, he had no inclination to bad habits, and, if he succeeded in outwitting her, the worst use he made of it was to indulge in some harmless joke, for he had, underlying his quiet demeanour, an unusual fondness for mischief.

What to do with Henry Burns summers had been a puzzle for some time to Miss Matilda. She was accustomed, through these months, to visit an encampment, or summer home, composed of several ladies' societies, and the presence of a boy was a decided inconvenience. When, one day, she learned that an old friend, one Mrs. Carlin, a fussy old soul after her own heart, was engaged as housekeeper at the Hotel Bayview, at Southport, on Grand Island, in Samoset Bay, she conceived the idea of sending Henry Burns there in charge of Mrs. Carlin.

So it came about that Henry Burns was duly despatched to Maine for the summer, as a guest of Colonel Witham. He had a room on the second floor, next to that occupied by the colonel, who was supposed also to exercise a guardians.h.i.+p over him. As Colonel Witham's disposition was such that he disliked nearly everybody, with the exception of Squire Brackett, and as he had a particular aversion to boys of all ages and sizes, he did not take pains to make life agreeable to Henry Burns. He was suspicious of him, as he was of all boys.

Boys, according to Colonel Witham's view of life, were born for the purpose, or, at least, with the sole mission in life, of annoying older people. Accordingly, the worthy colonel lost no opportunity of thwarting them and opposing them,-"showing them where they belonged," he called it.

But this disagreeable ambition on the part of the colonel was not, unfortunately, confined to his att.i.tude toward boys. He exercised it toward every one with whom he came in contact. Despite the fact that he had a three years' lease of the hotel, he took absolutely no pains to make himself agreeable to any of his guests. He looked upon them secretly as his natural enemies, men and women and children whom he hoped to get as much out of as was possible, and to give as little as he could in return.

He was noted for his meanness and for his surly disposition toward all.

Then why did he come there to keep a hotel? Because he had discovered that guests would come, whether they were treated well or not. The place had too many attractions of boating, swimming, sailing, and excellent fis.h.i.+ng, winding wood-roads, and a thousand and one natural beauties, to be denied. Guests left in the fall, vowing they would not put up with the colonel's n.i.g.g.ardliness and petty impositions another year; but the following season found them registered there again, with the same cordial antipathy existing as before between them and their landlord.

In person, Colonel Witham was decidedly corpulent, with a fiery red face, which turned purple when he became angry-which was upon the slightest occasion.

"Here's another boy come to annoy me with his noise and tomfoolery," was the colonel's inward comment, when Mrs. Carlin, the housekeeper, informed him that Henry Burns was coming, and was to be under her charge.

So the colonel gave him the room next to his, where he could keep an eye on him, and see that he was in his room every night not later than ten o'clock, for that was the hour Mrs. Carlin had set for that young gentleman's bedtime.

Henry Burns, having in due time made the acquaintance of the Warren boys, as well as a few other youths of his age, had no idea of ending up his evenings' entertainments at ten o'clock each and every night; so he set about to discover some means of evading the espionage of the colonel and Mrs. Carlin. It did not take him more than one evening of experimenting to find that, by stepping out on to the veranda that ran past his own and Colonel Witham's windows, he could gain the ascent to the roof by a clever bit of acrobatics up a lightning-rod. Once there, he found he could reach the ground by way of the old part of the hotel, in the manner before described. It is only fair to Henry Burns to state that he did not take undue advantage of this discovery, but kept on the whole as good hours as most boys of his age. Still, if there was a clambake, or some other moonlight jollification, at the extreme end of the island, where Henry Burns had made friends among a little fis.h.i.+ng community, he was now and then to be seen, sometimes as the village clock was proclaiming a much later hour than that prescribed by Mrs. Carlin, spinning along on his bicycle like a ghost awheel. He was generally known and well liked throughout the entire island.

On the night following the arrival of Tom and Bob, the sounds of a violin, a clarionet, and a piano, coming from the big parlour of the Hotel Bayview, told that a dance was in progress. These dances, withal the music was provided by the guests themselves, were extremely irritating to Colonel Witham. They meant late hours for everybody, more lights to be furnished, more guests late to breakfast on the following morning, and, on the whole, an evening of noise and excitement, which interfered more or less with his invariable habit of going to bed at a quarter after ten o'clock every night of his life.

They brought, moreover, a crowd of cottagers to the hotel, who were given anything but a cordial welcome by Colonel Witham. He argued that they spent no money at his hotel, and were, therefore, only in the way, besides adding to the noise.

The guests at the Bayview were, on the whole, accustomed to the ways of Colonel Witham by experience, and really paid but little attention to him. They went ahead, planned their own dances and card-parties, and left him to make the best of it.

This particular evening's entertainment was rather out of the ordinary, inasmuch as it was given by a Mr. and Mrs. Wellington, of New York, in honour of their daughter's birthday, and, on her account, invitations to the spread, which was to be served after the dancing, were extended to the young people of the hotel. In these invitations Henry Burns had, of course, been included; but Mrs. Carlin and Colonel Witham were obdurate.

It was too late an hour for him; his eating of rich salads and ices was not to be thought of; in short, he must decline, or they must decline for him, and that was the end of it.

"Never you mind, Henry," said good-hearted Bridget Carrington, who was Mrs. Carlin's a.s.sistant, and with whom Henry Burns had made friends.h.i.+p.

"It's not you that'll be going without some of the salad and the ice-cream, not if I know it. Sure, and Mrs. Wellington says you're to have some, too. So just breathe easy, and there'll be a bit for you and a little more, too, a-waitin' just outside the kitchen window about nine o'clock. So go on now and say never a word."

So Henry Burns, with the connivance of Bridget, and by the judicious outlay of a part of his own pocket-money, in the matter of sweet things and other delicacies dear to youthful appet.i.tes, had prepared and planned for a small banquet of his own in his room, next to that of Colonel Witham.

"But how will you manage so that Colonel Witham won't hear us, as he will be right alongside of us?" George Warren, who was a partner in Henry Burns's enterprise, had asked.

"Leave that to me," said Henry Burns.

The evening wore on; the strains of the music sounded merrily along the halls; dancing was in full swing,-everybody seemed to be enjoying the occasion, save Colonel Witham. He had at least conceded to the occasion the courtesy of a black frock coat and an immaculate white tie, but he was plainly ill at ease. He stood in the office, the door of which was open into the parlour, his hands twisting nervously behind his back, while he glanced, with no good humour in his expression, now at the blaze of lights in the parlour, and now at the clock, which, however, even under his impatient gaze, only ticked along in its most provokingly methodical fas.h.i.+on.

The outer door opened and in walked young Joe Warren, recognized by Colonel Witham as one of the plagues of his summer existence.

"Good evening, Colonel Witham," said young Joe, with studied politeness, and in a tone that ostensibly antic.i.p.ated an equally cordial response.

"Good evening!" snapped the colonel.

"Good evening, Colonel Witham," chimed Arthur Warren, close at his brother's heels.

The colonel responded gruffly.

"Good evening, colonel," came an equally cordial greeting from Tom and Bob, and from George Warren, smiling at Colonel Witham, as though he had extended them a hearty invitation to be present.

The colonel snorted impatiently, while the colour in his red face deepened. He did not respond to their salutations.