Sube Cane Part 27

Several plans were suggested and discussed and discarded before Mrs.

Westfall considered that the psychological moment had arrived to spring on the meeting an idea that had come to her in the night, undoubtedly in answer to her earnest prayer for guidance, but at last she stood before her dear sisters, faintly flushed with enthusiasm and holding in her hand a pink folder with which she gesticulated from time to time as she made a few introductory remarks. Finally she opened the folder and read from beginning to end the descriptive matter concerning the Inter-State Correspondence School course in _Philanthropy--the Science of Giving_.

She read selected quotations from the world's most cheerful givers: from Andrew Carnegie's essay on _Gainful Giving_, from Hettie Green's monograph on _Making Every Cent Count_ and from other of the authorities.

"My idea," she went on to explain as she laid aside the pink folder, "is to have the Coral Strand Missionary Circle as a body, take this course, so that hereafter we shall be known as a society of Graduate Philanthropists!"

A storm of discussion followed, but above its raging the nasal tones of Mrs. Electa Mandeville could be heard distinctly.

"They're fakes! They're all alike! They're fakes! They're fakes!" she repeated over and over.

Gradually the others subsided and at last Mrs. Mandeville had the floor all to herself, whereupon she shook a long bony index-finger at the president and cried shrilly:

"I tell you they're fakes! All fakes! I've had experience with 'em and I _know_! Look at my son-in-law! He answered an ad in a magazine that said 'Be a Civil Engineer,' and he took a course that cost me sixty dollars!

And _look_ at him! Why, he ain't even civil, to say nothing of being an engineer!"

"I will personally vouch for the reliability of the Inter-State Correspondence School," replied Mrs. Westfall tartly. "And besides, they give an iron-bound guarantee of satisfaction or all money refunded."

"I wouldn't trust any of 'em!" cried Mrs. Mandeville excitedly. "They take your money and then all they do is send you a lot of rubbish through the mail and try to sell you text books and equipment or get you to take some other course--!"

"Some of the _inferior_ schools might do such things," interrupted Mrs.

Westfall icily; "but not the Inter-State! As I said, I will personally vouch for--"

"Personally? Did you say?" snapped Mrs. Mandeville. "Personally? How could you vouch for them _personally_ unless you have had dealings with them?"

"I said 'personally,' Sister Mandeville," returned the president, "and I meant personally! I _have_ had dealings with them."

The Coral Strand Missionary Circle was on tip-toe. It was confidently expected that Mrs. Westfall was about to divulge the details of some of her secret efforts at self-improvement, and it was something of a disappointment when she told merely of Karl's triumphant conquest of the art of swimming without going outside of her own kitchen.

As she paused for rhetorical effect the irrepressible Mrs. Mandeville inquired,

"But how do you know he can swim?"

There was a suspicion of a t.i.tter from the rear seats; but Mrs. Westfall froze this levity with a glare as she retorted:

"He is, at this very moment, down in swimming with his little playmates!"

"But if he's never tried it in the water, how do you know he can--"

began Mrs. Mandeville, but before she could finish her question there was a tremendous slam from the front door, and Biscuit appeared in their midst.

For a moment he was taken for an apparition of the Evil One; and when he fled bawling into his mother's arms he brought his worthy parent under momentary suspicion of intimacy with striped devils.

But when she began to pat his naked back and murmur: "There, ther-r-r-e!

Mother's boy is all safe!" and other similar expressions of a.s.surance, the horrified spectators began to grasp the situation, and restored her good character.

It was some time before Biscuit could utter intelligible words, although his mother fancied she heard among his tearful babblings the names of several fish. But when he managed to convey the idea that there was some kind of an initiation, she began to understand his highly decorated exterior. Then suddenly it dawned on her that the painted decorations were the only ones that he had on. In that panicky moment she wrapped him in her best white shawl and started to conduct him towards a small door that led into the session-room, when Mrs. Mandeville again entered the arena.

"This," she exclaimed sarcastically, "might be a good time to get at the _truth_ about those wonderful swimming lessons!"

Mrs. Westfall stopped in her tracks. "Perhaps it would," she said with a murderous look at Mrs. Mandeville; and, turning Biscuit around so that he faced the meeting she asked in a wheedling tone: "You _could_ swim all right, couldn't you, dearie?"

"I du-du-don't know!" he blubbered.

"Don't know!" she demanded giving his shoulder an angry shake. "Don't know! _Why_ don't you know?"

"I--uh--uh--ain't been in the wu-wu-water yet!"

A crimson flush spread over Mrs. Westfall's scowling visage as she cried, "Oh! You haven't, eh! You haven't!"

She seized him by one of his unornamented ears and marched him down the aisle towards the front door, where she relieved him of the shawl and pointing a trembling finger at the door almost screamed: "Get out of that door!... Go down to that swimming-hole just as fast as your legs will carry you, and don't you come back till you've _found out_ whether you can swim or not!"

And while the question of taking a correspondence course in _Philanthropy--the Science of Giving_ was being gently but everlastingly laid on the table, Biscuit was retracing his steps to the swimming-hole with less precipitation and much more modesty than he had left it. More than once he longed for the cartoonist's favorite barrel as he dodged from tree to tree to escape the prying gaze of an inconsiderate public.

Fate dealt him a cruel blow when he sought to avoid meeting two old ladies by slipping behind a clump of lilac bushes in Rude's front yard; for from underneath the very bushes themselves came the shocked observation of the voice he loved best in all the world:

"I don't know _what_ game you think you're playin', Karl Westfall, but it's not a very nice game! I think you're horrid anyway--!"

But Biscuit did not tarry to hear more. He fled. Nor did he stop again until he had reached the swimming-hole, which he did shortly after Sube's return from his unsuccessful pursuit. Sube had just finished telling how he had burst into the church--and burst out again without being observed, when the sound of footsteps was heard on the path.

"Hark! There's somebody after us already! We'll get--"

Then Biscuit came into view.

As one they flew to welcome him.

"Good for you, old kid! How'd you get away from all those old hens? Come 'ere, let's see if I can't wipe off some of that ol' paint with my unders.h.i.+rt--"

It took the underwear of the entire party to make Biscuit presentable, and meanwhile he had given an account of the proceedings at the church.

"She never noticed the paint at all!" he declared. "She jus' asked me if I could swim, and when I said I didn't know, she sent me back to find out."

"You'll find out all right!" came a gruff voice from behind him.

Turning around, Biscuit beheld Seth Bissett, the terror of the town, who had received his preliminary training in a reform school and had afterwards finished in the penitentiary. The other boys dived into the pool and swam to safety on the farther side of the creek; but Biscuit, forgetting for the moment his theoretical mastery of the deep, attempted to effect his escape by land, and ran into the arms of Warren Sours, the ally and familiar friend of Seth Bissett.

"How many times I gotta tell you little rats to keep away from this swimmin'-hole?" cried Seth with the a.s.sistance of several ever-ready strong words, as he roughly grasped Biscuit by the shoulder and faced him around. "Can you swim, bo?"

"Yes, sir," replied Biscuit proudly, little suspecting what was to follow.

"That's blankety-blank lucky!" the big fellow went on, suddenly catching Biscuit by an ankle and a wrist, "because now you're goin' to have a chanct."

Warren seized him by the other ankle and wrist. And as they swung him back and forth as in the game called "beetle and wedge" Seth counted:

"One!... Two!... Thr-e-e!"

Biscuit went sailing through the air and struck far out in the pool with a tremendous splash; then disappeared from view. Without waiting for him to come up, Seth and Warren hastily s.n.a.t.c.hed up the clothes that were lying about on the gra.s.s, and flinging them into the pool, made off into the bushes without so much as a glance at the place where Biscuit had gone down.