PRINCE CUCURBITA ON THE TRELLIS.
Prince Cucurbita was very unhappy. His smooth, shiny face was all puckered up into little wrinkles, every now and then a big sob shook his jolly little person till you really felt like crying yourself at the sight of him. Here was a prince living in a lovely garden full of birds and flowers, surrounded by a large family of brothers and sisters, and always dressed in a pretty green jacket, which could not get soiled or torn. In spite of all this, he was not happy, for Queen Cucurbita, in order to keep her children out of harm's way, had hoisted them all up on a high trellis, and would never let them get down.
You may think the Prince might have been smart enough, or naughty enough, to have jumped down when his mother's back was turned, but, alas! how could he? for she held tightly to the tassel of his cap, and his cap fitted so closely to his head that no effort of his was ever able to get it off. Across the way lived another big family, the Filberts. They were just the merriest set that ever was seen, nodding gayly to Cucu now and then when they could spare the time from their own fun, and telling stories to each other, which must have been very amusing; for sometimes they all laughed together till they nearly fell out of bed, and their mother was obliged to shake them all round. One day, there was a great commotion among the Filberts. The eldest brother had determined to go out into the world and seek his fortune, so he climbed out of bed and quietly dropped to the ground.
"Oh, dear me!" cried Cucu; "it is too mean that I should have to stay up on this old trellis."
"Naughty boy!" scolded his mother. "What are you talking about? That ever I should be afflicted with such a fractious child; 'tis enough to turn me yellow;" and she spread out her pretty green apron, and waved her ribbons in the air, while she took a firmer hold upon the poor little Prince's cap.
"Don't you know that if I were to let go, off you would fall flat on your back upon the nasty wet ground, and very likely lie there all the rest of your life, growing wrinkled and yellow and sickly, while great ugly worms crawled over you, and everybody blamed me for a careless parent? No! no! I shall take good care you don't get away from me, you may be sure."
So, Cucu had to accept his fate as best he might, and amused himself watching his neighbors. Every day, now, one or more of them left home and disappeared among the grass and flowers below. Cucu imagined them as traveling off around the garden, but if he had seen them lying half buried in the earth, their bright brown faces dirty and streaked with tears, their merry little hearts nearly broken with woe, he would not have envied them so much.
Day after day passed, and the month of October came with its clear and cool nights. Queen Cucurbita did not relish this at all, and, every morning, when the sun peeped at her, he wondered how he ever could have admired such a dried-up yellow old creature. Cucu's heart, on the contrary, grew happier all the time, he lifted up his heavy head that seemed to be lighter each day, and when the wind blew, he rattled against the trellis and wondered how it was he could move so easily. "Poor Prince!" the Cat-bird whistled, as she perched above him, "your face is getting as brown and shining as one of those little Filberts, your cap is no longer green and pretty, and you look so light that a breath might blow you away."
"I don't care," returned Cucu, "for I feel delighted, and so long as I can't see my own face, what's the odds?"
The next night was clear and very cold. The people to whom the garden belonged brought out sheets and covered over the tender heliotropes and other flowers they valued, but they couldn't have cared much for Queen Cucurbita, for they never gave her a thought. When Cucu woke up bright and early and said good-morning to his mother, she did not reply. He turned his head to look at her. Oh, frightful sight! she hung to the trellis wilted and dead; her green dress was brown and torn, but her hard and wrinkled hand still grasped poor Cucu's cap.
After the sun had been up some hours, a lady came into the garden and approached the home of the Cucurbita family.
"Oh, you beauty!" she cried, "what a lovely basket I shall make of you!" and, placing a hand on each of Cucu's cheeks, she gave him a slight twist,—his mother's fingers let go; he was free. The lady put him in her basket, and now he was really setting off on his travels.
This was, in fact, only the beginning of his career. The lady with a sharp knife lifted his cap from his head; then she painted him all over a pale green. After the paint was dry, she bored three holes in his sides. My! how it hurt! but it was soon over, and she had fastened three slender chains through them, and hung the little Prince up in a sunny window. "What next?" he wondered. If he had got to hang here all his life, it wouldn't be much better than the old trellis. But that wasn't the end, for his mistress filled him with nice black earth, and planted delicate little ferns and runaway-robins which climbed over and twined lovingly round his face. They patted his cheeks with their soft little hands, and whispered pretty stories of the woods they had come from.
"Dear Cucu," said they, "how much we love you, and how kind you are to hold us all so carefully!" When they said this, he felt so proud and happy that he could not contain himself any longer, and sang at the top of his voice; but the people in the house did not hear him, for mortal ears are not adapted to such music. Only the Cat-bird flying past understood and stopped to congratulate him.
"Plenty to do, and plenty to love," she sang; "that is the way to be happy. I found it out last spring when it took me from morning till night to find food for my four hungry babies. Good-bye! I am going south with them to-day. I haven't a bit of time to lose," and away she flew.
CUCURBITA IN THE WINDOW.
And the ferns and the runaway-robins clapped their hands and sang, "Yes, that is the secret. Good-bye! Good-bye!"
Our older readers will remember Nimpo, whose "Troubles" interested them in St. Nicholas's first year. To our newer friends it is only necessary to say, that Nimpo and Rush were boarding with Mrs. Primkins during their mother's absence, by Nimpo's own desire, and were very unhappy under the care of that well-meaning—but very peculiar—person, who was so greatly surprised on the occasion of the Birthday Party.
One morning, Mrs. Primkins received a letter. This was a very unusual occurrence, and she hastened to wipe her hands out of the dish-water, hunt up her "specs," clean them carefully, and, at last, sit down in her chintz-covered "Boston rocker," to enjoy at her leisure this very rare literary dissipation.
Nimpo, who was boarding with Mrs. Primkins while her mother was off on a journey, was engaged in finishing her breakfast, and did not notice anything. Having found her scissors, and deliberately cut around the old-fashioned seal, Mrs. Primkins opened the sheet and glanced at the name at the bottom of the page, then turned her eyes hastily toward Nimpo, with a low, significant "Humph!"
But Nimpo, intent only on getting off to school, still did not see her. Mrs. Primkins went on to examine more closely, covering with her hands something which fell from the first fold, rustling, to her lap. Very deliberately, then, as became this staid woman, did she read the letter from date to signature, twice over, and, ending as she had begun with a significant "Humph!" she refolded the letter, slipped in the inclosure, put it into her black silk work-bag which hung on the back of her chair, and resumed her dish-washing, for she was a genuine "Yankee housekeeper" of the old-fashioned sort, and scorned the assistance of what she called "hired help."
Meanwhile, Nimpo finished her breakfast, gathered up her books, and hurried off to school, though it was an hour too early, never dreaming that the letter had anything to do with her. After the morning work was done,—the pans scalded and set in the sun; the house dusted from attic to cellar; the vinegar reheated and poured over the walnuts that were pickling; the apples drying on the shed roof, turned over; the piece of muslin ("bolt," she called it) that was bleaching on the grass, thoroughly sprinkled; and, in fact, everything, indoors and out, in Mrs. Primkins' domain, put into perfect order, that lady sat down to consider. She drew the letter from the bag, and read it over, carefully inspecting a ten-dollar bill in her hands, and then leaned back, and indulged herself in a very unusual, indeed totally unheard-of, luxury—a rest of ten minutes with idle hands!
If Nimpo had chanced to come in, she would have been alarmed at such an extraordinary state of things; but she was at that moment in her seat in the long school-house, with wrinkled brow, wrestling with sundry conundrums in her "Watts on the Mind," little suspecting how her fate was hanging in the balance in Mrs. Primkins' kitchen at this moment. At last, Mrs. Primkins' thin lips opened. She was alone in the house, and she began to talk to herself:
"Wants her to have a birthday-party! Humph! I must say I can't see the good of pampering children's folks do nowadays! When I was young, now, we had something to think of besides fine clothes, unwholesome food, and worldly dissipation! I must say I think Mis' Rievor has some very uncommon notions! Hows'ever," she went on, contemplating fondly the bill she still held in her hand, "I do' know's I have any call to fret my gizzard if she chooses to potter away her money! I don't see my way clear to refuse altogether to do what she asks, 's long 's the child's on my hands. Ten dollars! Humph! She 'hopes it'll be enough to provide a little supper for them!' It's my private opinion that it will, and a mite over for—for—other things," she added, resolutely closing her lips with a snap. "I aint such a shif'less manager's all that comes to, I do hope! 'T wont take no ten dollars to give a birthday-party in my house, I bet a cookey!"
That night, when supper was over, Nimpo sat down with the family by the table, which held one candle that dimly lighted the room, to finish a book she was reading. Not that the kitchen was the only room in the house. Mrs. Primkins had plenty of rooms, but they were too choice for every-day use. They were always tightly closed, with green paper shades down, lest the blessed sunshine should get a peep at her gaudy red and green carpets, and put the least mellowing touch an their crude and rasping colors. Nimpo thought of the best parlor with a sort of awe which she never felt toward any room in her mother's house.
"Nimpo," said Mrs. Primkins at last, when she had held back the news till Nimpo had finished her book, and was about to go upstairs, "wait a bit. I got a letter from your Ma to-day."
"Did you?" exclaimed Nimpo, alarmed. "Oh! what is the matter?"
"Don't fly into tificks! Nothing is the matter," said Mrs. Primkins.
"Is she coming home?" was the next eager question.
"No, not yet," fell like cold water on her warm hopes. "But she says to-morrow's your birthday."
"Why, so it is!" said Nimpo, reflecting. "I never thought of it."
"Wal, she thinks perhaps I'd best let you have a few girls to tea on that day, if 't wont be too much of a chore for me," went on Mrs. Primkins, deliberately.
Nimpo's face was radiant. "Oh, Mrs. Primkins, if you will!" But it fell again. "But where could they be?"—for trespassing on the dismal glories of the Primkins' parlor had never entered her wildest dreams.
"I've thought of that," said Mrs. Primkins, grimly. "Of course, I couldn't abide a pack of young ones tramping up my best parlor carpet, and I thought mebbe I'd put a few things up in the second story, and let you have 'em there."
The second story was unfurnished.
"Oh, that will be splendid!" said Nimpo, eagerly. "But,—but,"—she hesitated,—"could they take tea here?" and she glanced around the kitchen, which was parlor, sitting-room, dining-room, and, in fact, almost the only really useful room in the house. The front part Mrs. Primkins enjoyed as other people enjoy pictures, or other beautiful things,—looking at, but not using them.
"No; I shall set the table in the back chamber, and let you play in the front chamber. We can put some chairs in, and I'm sure a bare floor is more suitable for a pack of young ones."
Mrs. Primkins always spoke of children as wild beasts, which must be endured, to be sure, but carefully looked after, like wolves or hyenas.
"Oh yes! We wouldn't be afraid of hurting that. Oh, that'll be splendid!" continued Nimpo, as the plan grew on her. "I thank you so much, Mrs. Primkins!—and we'll be so careful not to hurt anything!"
"Humph!" said Mrs. Primkins, not thinking it necessary to tell her that her mother had sent money to cover the expense. "You're a master hand to promise."
"I know I forget sometimes," said Nimpo, penitently. "But I'll try really to be careful, this time."
"Wal," said Mrs. Primkins, in conclusion, as she folded her knitting and brought out the bed-room candles, "if you don't hector me nigh about to death, I'll lose my guess! But as I'm in for 't now, you may's well bring the girls when you come home from school to-morrow. Then you'll have time to play before supper, for their mothers'll want them home before dark."
"Do you care who I invite?" asked Nimpo, pausing with the door open on her way to bed.
"No, I do' know's I do. Your intimate friends, your Ma said."
"Oh, goody!" said Nimpo, as she skipped upstairs, two at a time. "Wont we have fun! How nice it'll be!"
The next morning she was off, bright and early, and, before the bell rang, every girl in the school knew that Nimpo was going to have a birthday-party, and was wondering if she would be invited. At recess, she issued her invitations, every one of which was promptly accepted; and in the afternoon all came in their best dresses, ready to go home with Nimpo.
At four o'clock, they were dismissed, and Nimpo marshaled her guests and started. Now, the truth was, that the girls had been so very lovely to her when she was inviting, that she found it hard to distinguish between intimate friends and those not quite so intimate, so she had asked more than she realized till she saw them started up the street. However, she had not been limited as to numbers, so she gave herself no concern, as she gayly led the way.
Meanwhile, the Primkins family had been busy. After the morning work was done, Mrs. Primkins and her daughter Augusta made a loaf of plain, wholesome cake, a couple of tins of biscuits, and about the same number of cookies with caraway-seeds in them. After dinner, they carried a table into the back chamber and spread the feast. Nimpo's mother had sent, as a birthday-present, a new set of toy dishes. It had arrived by stage while Nimpo was at school, and been carefully concealed from her; and Augusta, who had not yet forgotten that she was once young (though it was many years before), thought it would be nice to serve the tea on these dishes. Not being able to think of any serious objection, and seeing advantage in the small pieces required to fill them, Mrs. Primkins had consented, and Augusta had arranged a very pretty table, all with its white and gilt china. The biscuits and cookies were cut small to match, and, when ready, it looked very cunning, with tiny slices of cake, and one little dish of jelly—from the top shelf in Mrs. Primkins' pantry.
During the afternoon, a boy came up from the store (Nimpo's father was a country merchant) with a large basket, in which were several pounds of nuts and raisins and candy, which her father had ordered by letter.
Everything was prepared, and Mrs. Primkins had put on a clean checked apron, to do honor to the occasion, and sat down in her rocker, feeling that she had earned her rest, when Augusta's voice sounded from upstairs: "Ma, do look down street!"
Mrs. Primkins went to the window that looked toward the village, and was struck with horror.
"DO LOOK DOWN STREET!"
"Goodness gracious! Why, what under the canopy! Did you ever!" came from her lips in quick succession, for there was Nimpo, the center of a very mob of girls, all in Sunday best, as Mrs. Primkins' experienced eye saw at a glance.
"Ma!" exclaimed Augusta, rushing down, "I do believe that young one has invited the whole school!"
"The trollop!" was all Mrs. Primkins could get out, in her exasperation.
"I'd send 'em right straight home!" said Augusta, indignantly. "It's a burning shame!"
"Mercy on us! This is a pretty kettle of fish!" gasped Mrs. Primkins.
"I wouldn't stand it! So there!" said Augusta, sharply. "I never did see such a young one! I'd just send every chick and child home, and let Miss Nimpo take her supper in her own room—to pay her off! Things have come to a pretty pass, I think!"
"I never did!" ejaculated Mrs. Primkins, not yet recovering her ordinary powers of speech.
"Shall I go out and meet them, and send them packing?" asked Augusta.
"No," said her mother, reluctantly, remembering the unbroken bill in her "upper drawer." "I do' know's I have a right to send them back. I didn't tell her how many, but—mercy on us!—who'd dream of such a raft! If there's one, there's forty, I do declare!"
"That's the meaning of those enormous packages of nuts and things from the store," said Augusta, "that we thought were enough for an army."
"But the table!" gasped Mrs. Primkins. "For such a crowd! Augusta," hastily, "fly around like a parched pea, and lock the doors of that room, till I think what we can do. This is a party with a vengeance!"
Augusta obeyed, and was none too quick, for the girls crowded into the front chamber before she had secured the doors.
Being a "party," of course they had to go into the house. But as soon as they had thrown off their slat sun-bonnets,—which was in about one second,—and began to look around the bare room, to see what they should do next, Nimpo was seized with a bright idea.
"Girls, let's go out in the yard, and play till tea-time," she said; and the next moment sun-bonnets were resumed, and the whole troop tramped down the back stairs, Nimpo not daring, even on this festive occasion, to disturb the silence of the solemn front hall, and the gorgeous colored stair-carpet. In two minutes, they were deep in the game of "Pom-pom-peel-away," and now was Mrs. Primkins' chance.
She hastily sent Augusta out to the neighbors, letting her out slyly by the front door, so the "party" shouldn't see her, to beg or borrow something to feed the crowd; for, the next day being baking-day, her pantry was nearly empty, and there was not such a thing in the village as a bakery. As soon as she was gone, Mrs. Primkins cleared the table upstairs, hid the small biscuits and minute slices of cake, and brought tables from other rooms to lengthen this. She then carried every cup and saucer and plate of her own up there, and even made several surreptitious visits herself to accommodating friends, to borrow, telling the news, and getting their sympathy, so that they freely lent their dishes, and even sent their boys to carry them over, and their big girls to help arrange.
For an hour, the games went on in the side yard, while a steady stream came in by the front door—the grand front door!—and up the august stairs, carrying bread, cake, dishes, saucers, etc., etc., till there was a tolerable supply, and Mrs. Primkins was in debt numerous loaves of bread and cake, and dishes of "preserves."
At five o'clock, they were called in, and, before their sharp young appetites, everything disappeared like dew in the sunshine. It was a queer meal,—bread of various shapes and kinds, and not a large supply; cakes, an equally miscellaneous collection, from cup-cake which old Mrs. Kellogg had kept in a jar two months, "in case a body dropped in unexpected," to bread-cake fresh from some one else's oven; cookies of a dozen kinds; doughnuts and ginger-cakes, and half a dozen dishes of sweet-meats, no two alike.
But all deficiencies were forgotten when they came to the nuts and candies, for of these there was no lack. Augusta had filled every extra dish in the house with these delightful things, and I sadly fear the children ate shocking amounts of trash. But they had a good time. The entertainment was exactly to their liking,—little bread and butter, and plenty of candy and raisins. It was incomparably superior to ordinary teas, where bread predominated and candy was limited.
After eating everything on the table, putting the remainder of the candy in their pockets, as Nimpo insisted, they flocked into the front room, where Mrs. Primkins told them they might play a while, if they would not make a noise, as a little sprinkle of rain had come up. To insure quiet, each girl took off her shoes, and played in stocking-feet on the bare, rough floor, "blind-man's-buff," "hunt the slipper," and other games, for an hour more.
Suddenly, Nimpo held up her foot.
"Girls! look there!" Nimpo's tone was tragic.
The soles of her stockings were in awful holes! All eyes were instantly turned on her, and forty feet were simultaneously elevated to view. The tale was the same,—every stocking sole was black as the ground, and worn to rags!
"What will Ma say?" rose in horror to every lip.
This awful thought sobered them at once, and, finding it getting dark, shoes were hastily sought out of the pile in the corner, sun-bonnets donned, and slowly the long procession moved down the back stairs and out again into the street.
Nimpo flung herself on to the little bed in her room, and sighed with happiness.
"Oh! wasn't it splendid?—and I know mamma'll forgive my stockings. Besides, I'll wash them myself, and darn them."
(While I am about it, I may as well say that every girl who went to Nimpo's party had a long and serious task of darning the next week.)
When it was all over, and Mrs. Primkins and Augusta, assisted by two or three neighbors, had washed and returned dishes, brought down tables and chairs, swept out front hall, and reduced it to its normal condition of dismal state, to be seen and not used, and the neighbors had gone, and it was nine o'clock at night, Augusta sat down to reckon up debts, while Mrs. Primkins "set the bread."
Augusta brought out her account, and read: "Mrs. A., blank loaves of bread, ditto cake, one dish preserves; Mrs. B., ditto, ditto; Mrs. C., ditto, ditto."
Mrs. Primkins listened to the whole list, and made a mental calculation of how much of the ten-dollar bill it would take to pay up. The result must have been satisfactory, for her grim face relaxed almost into a smile, as she covered up the "sponge" and washed her hands.
"Wal, don't let your Pa get away in the morning till he has split up a good pile of oven-wood. We'll heat the brick oven, and have over Mis' Kent's Mary Ann to help. I guess the money'll cover it, and I can pay Mary Ann in old clothes."
Dismally barren and lonesome was that desolate bar between the "bay" and the ocean. Here and there it swelled up into great drifts and mounds of sand, which were almost large enough to be called hills; but nowhere did it show a tree or a bush, or even a patch of grass. Annie Foster found herself getting melancholy as she gazed upon it and thought of how the winds must sometimes sweep across it, laden with sea-spray and rain and hail, or the bitter sleet and blinding snow of winter.
"Dabney," she said, "was the storm very severe here last night and yesterday?"
"Worse here than over our side of the bay, ten times."
"Were there any vessels wrecked?"
"Most likely; but it's too soon to know just where."
At that moment the "Swallow" was running rapidly around a sandy point, jutting into the bay from the highest mound on the bar, not half a mile from the light-house, and only twice as far from the low, wooden roof of the "wrecking station," where, as Dab had explained to his guests, the life-boats and other apparatus were kept safely housed. The piles of drifted sand had for some time prevented the brightest eyes on board the "Swallow" from seeing anything to seaward; but now, as they came around the point and a broad level lay before them, Ham Morris sprang to his feet in sudden excitement as he exclaimed:
"In the breakers! Why, she must have been a three-master. All up with her now."
"Look along the shore!" shouted Dab. "Some of 'em saved, anyhow. The coast-men are there, life-boats and all."
So they were, and Ham was right about the vessel, though not a mast was left standing in her now. If there had been, indeed, she might have been kept off the breakers, as they afterward learned. She had been dismasted in the storm, but had not struck until after daylight that morning, and help had been close at hand and promptly given. No such thing as saving that unfortunate hull. She would beat to pieces just where she lay, sooner or later, according to the kind of weather and the waves it should bring with it.
The work done by the life-boat men had been a good one, and had not been very easy either, for they had brought the crew and passengers from the wreck safely to the sandy beach. They had even saved some items of baggage. In a few hours, the "coast wrecking tugs" would be on hand to look out for the cargo. No chance whatever for the 'longshoremen, good or bad, to turn an honest penny without working hard for it. Work and wages enough, to be sure, helping to unload, when the sea, now so very heavy, should go down a little; but "wages" were not what some of them were most hungry for.
Two of them, at all events—one a tall, weather-beaten, stoop-shouldered, grizzled old man, in tattered raiment, and the other, even more battered, but with no "look of the sea" about him—stood on a sand-drift gloomily gazing at the group of shipwrecked people on the shore, and the helpless mass of timber and spars out there among the beatings of the surf.
"Not more 'n three hunder yards out. She'd break up soon 'f there was no one to hender. Wot a show we'd hev."
"I reckon," growled the shorter man. "Is your name Peter?"
"Aye. I belong yer. Allers lived about high-water mark. Whar'd ye come from?"
The only answer was a sharp and excited exclamation. Neither of them had been paying any attention to the bay side of the bar and, while they were gazing at the wreck, a very pretty little yacht had cast anchor, close in shore, and then, with the help of a row-boat, quite a party of ladies and gentlemen—the latter somewhat young-looking—had made their way to the land, and were now hurrying forward. They did not pay the slightest attention to Peter and his companion, but, in a few minutes more, they were trying to talk to those poor people on the sea-beach. Trying, but not succeeding very well, for the wreck had been a Bremen bark with an assorted cargo and some fifty passengers, all emigrants. German seemed their only tongue, and none of Mrs. Kinzer's pleasure-party spoke German.
"Too bad," Ford Foster was saying, when there came a sort of wail from a group at a little distance, and it seemed to close with—"pauvre enfant."
"French!" he exclaimed. "Why, they look as Dutch as any of the rest. Come on, Annie, let's try and speak to them."
The rest followed a good deal like a flock of sheep, and it was a sad enough scene which lay before them. No lives had been lost in the wreck, though there had been a great deal of suffering among the poor passengers, cooped up between-decks with the hatches closed, while the storm lasted. Nobody drowned, indeed, but all dreadfully soaked in the surf in getting ashore; and among the rest had been the fair-haired child, now lying there on his mother's lap, so pinched and blue, and seemingly so lifeless.
French, were they? Yes and no; for the father, a tall, stout young man, who looked like a farmer, told Ford they were from Alsace, and spoke both tongues.
"The child, was it sick?"
Not so much sick as dying of starvation and exposure.
Oh, such a sad, pleading look as the poor mother lifted to the moist eyes of Mrs. Kinzer as the portly widow bent over the silent boy. Such a pretty child he must have been, and not over two years old; but the salt water was in his tangled curls now, and his poor lips were parted in a weak, sick way, that spoke of utter exhaustion.
"Can anything be done, mother?"
"Yes, Dabney; you and Ham, and Ford and Frank, go to the yacht, quick as you can, and bring the spirit-heater, lamp and all, and bread and milk, and every dry napkin and towel you can find. Bring Keziah's shawl."
Such quick time they made across that sand-bar!
And they were none too soon; for, as they came running down to their boat, a mean, slouching sort of fellow walked rapidly away from it.
"He was going to steal it."
"Can't go for him now, Dab; but you'll have to mount guard here while we go back with the things."
He did so, and Ham and Frank and Ford hurried back to the other beach to find that Mrs. Kinzer had taken complete possession of that baby. Every rag of his damp things was already stripped off, and now, while Miranda lighted the "heater" and made some milk hot in a minute, the good lady began to rub the little sufferer as only a mother knows how.
Then there was a warm wrapping up in cloths and shawls, and better success than anybody had dreamed of in making the seemingly half-dead child eat something.
"That was about all the matter," said Mrs. Kinzer. "Now if we can get him and his mother over to the house, we can save both of them. Ford, how long did you say it was since they'd eaten anything?"
"About three days, they say."
"Mercy on me! And that cabin of ours holds so little! Glad it's full, anyhow. Let's get it out and over here at once."
"The cabin?"
"No, the provisions."
And not a soul among them all thought of their own lunch, any more than Mrs. Kinzer herself did; but Joe and Fuz were not just then among them. On the contrary, they were over there by the shore, where the "Jenny" had been pulled up, trying to get Dab Kinzer to put them on board the "Swallow."
"Somebody ought to be on board of her," said Fuz, in as anxious a tone as he could, "with so many strange people around."
"WHOM DO YOU THINK I'VE SEEN TO-DAY?"
"It isn't safe," added Joe.
"Fact," replied Dab; "but then I kind o' like to feel a little unsafe."
And the Hart boys felt, somehow, that Dab knew why they were so anxious to go on board, and they were right enough, for he was saying to himself at that moment,
"They can wait. They do look hungry, but they'll live through it. There aint any cuffs or collars in Ham's locker."
All there was then in the locker, however, was soon out of it when Mrs. Kinzer and the rest came, for they brought with them the officers of the wrecked bark, and neither Joe nor Fuz had a chance to so much as "help distribute" that supply of provisions. Ham went over to make sure it should be properly done, while Mrs. Kinzer saw her little patient with his father and mother safely stowed on board the "Swallow."
"I'll save that baby, anyhow," she said to Miranda, "and Ford says his father's a farmer. We can find plenty for 'em to do. They'll never see a thing of their baggage, and I guess they hadn't a great deal."
She was just the woman to guess correctly, but at that moment Dab Kinzer said to Annie Foster in a low tone:
"Whom do you think I've seen to-day?"
"I can't guess. Who was it?"
"The tramp!"
"The same one—"
"The very same. There he goes, over the sand-hill yonder, with old Peter, the wrecker. We've got to hurry home now, but I'm going to set Ham Morris on his track."
"You never'll find him again."
"Do you s'pose old Peter'd befriend a man that did what he did, right on the shore of the bay? No, indeed, there isn't a fisherman from here to Montauk that wouldn't join to hunt him out. He's safe whenever Ham wants him, if we don't scare him now."
"Don't scare him, then," whispered Annie.
The wind was fair and the home sail of the "Swallow" was really a swift and short one, but it did seem dreadfully long to her passengers. Mrs. Kinzer was anxious to see that poor baby safely in bed. Ham Morris wanted to send a whole load of refreshments back to the shipwrecked people. Dab Kinzer could not keep his thoughts from that "tramp." And then, if the truth must come out, every soul on board the beautiful little yacht was getting more and more aware, with every minute that passed, that they had had a good deal of sea air and excitement, and a splendid sail across the bay and back, but no dinner. Not so much as a herring or a cracker.
As for the Kinzers, that was by no means their first experience in such matters, but their friends had never before been so near to a genuine, out and out shipwreck. Perhaps, too, they had rarely if ever felt so very nearly starved. At least Joe and Fuz Hart remarked as much a score of times before the "Swallow" slipped through the inlet and made her way toward the landing.
"Ham," said Dab Kinzer, "are you going right back again?"
"Course I am, soon as I can get a load of eatables from the house and the village. You 'll have to stay here."
"Why can't I go with you?"
"Plenty for you to do at the house and around while I'm gone. No, you can't go."
Dab seemed to have expected as much, for he turned to Ford with,
"Then I'll tell you what we must do."
"What's that?"
"See about the famine. Can you cook?"
"No."
"I can, then. Ham'll have one half of our house at work getting his cargo ready, and that baby'll fill up the other half."
"Mother wont be expecting us so soon, and our cook's gone out for the day. Annie knows something."
"She can help me, then. Those Hart boys'll die if they're not fed. Look at Fuz. Why, he can't keep his mouth shut."
Joe and his brother seemed to know, as if by instinct, that the dinner question was under discussion; and they were soon taking their share of talk. Oh, how they wished it had been a share of something to eat! The "Swallow" was moored, now, after discharging her passengers, but Dab did not start for the house with his mother and the rest. He even managed to detain some of the empty lunch-baskets, large ones, too.
"Come on, Mr. Kinzer," shouted Joe Hart, "let's put for the village. We'll starve here."
"A fellow that'd starve here just deserves to, that's all," said Dab. "Ford, there's Bill Lee's boat and three others coming in. We're all right. One of 'em's a dredger."
Ford and Frank could only guess what their friend was up to, but Dab was not doing any guessing.
"Bill," he exclaimed, as Dick's father pulled within hearing,—"Bill, put a lot of your best pan-fish in this basket and then go and fetch us some lobsters. There's half a dozen in your pot. Did those others get any luck?"
"More clams 'n 'ysters," responded Bill.
"Then we'll take both lots."
The respect of the city boys for the resources of the Long Island shore began to rise rapidly a few minutes later, for not only was one of Dab's baskets promptly provided with "pan-fish," such as porgies, black fish and perch, but two others received all the clams and oysters they were at all anxious to carry to the house. At the same time, Bill Lee offered, as an amendment to the lobster question,
"Ye 'r' wrong about the pot, Dab."
"Wrong? Why—"
"Yes, you's wrong. Glorianny's been an' b'iled every one on 'em an' they 're all nice an' cold by this time."
"All right. I never eat my lobsters raw. Just you go and get them, Dick. Bring 'em right over to Ford's house."
Bill Lee would have sent his house and all on a suggestion that the Kinzers or Fosters were in need of it, and Dick would have carried it over for him.
As for "Gloriana," when her son came running in with his errand, she exclaimed:
"Dem lobsters? Sho! Dem aint good nuff. Dey sha'n't hab 'em. I'll jist send de ole man all 'round de bay to git some good ones. On'y dey isn't no kin' o' lobsters good nuff for some folks, dey isn't."
Dick insisted, however, and by the time he reached the back door of the old Kinzer homestead with his load, that kitchen had become very nearly as busy a place as Mrs. Miranda Morris's own, a few rods away.
"Ford," suddenly exclaimed Dab, as he finished scaling a large porgy, "what if mother should make a mistake?"
"Make a mistake? How?"
"Cook that baby! It's awful!"
"Why, its mother's there."
"Yes, but they've put her to bed, and its father too. Hey, here come the lobsters. Now, Ford—"
The rest of what he had to say was given in a whisper, and was not heard by even Annie Foster, who was just then looking prettier than ever as she busied herself around the kitchen fire. As for the Hart boys, Mrs. Foster had invited them to come into the parlor and talk with her till dinner should be ready.
Such a frying and broiling!
Before Ham Morris was ready for his second start, and right in the midst of his greatest hurry, word came over from Mrs. Foster that "the table was waiting for them all."
Even Mrs. Kinzer drew a long breath of relief and satisfaction, for there was nothing more in the wide world that she could do, just then, for either "that baby" or its unfortunate parents, and she was beginning to worry about her son-in-law, and how she should get him to eat something. For Ham Morris had worked himself up into a high state of excitement in his benevolent haste, and did not seem to know that he was hungry. Miranda had entirely sympathized with her husband until that message came from Mrs. Foster.
"Oh, Hamilton, and good Mrs. Foster must have cooked it herself!"
"No," said Ham, thoughtfully; "our Dabney went home with Ford and Annie. I can't stay but a minute, but I think we'd better go right over."
Go they did, while the charitable neighbors whom Ham had stirred up concerning the wreck attended to the completion of the cargo of the "Swallow." There would be more than one good boat ready to accompany her back across the bay, laden with comforts of all sorts.
Even old Jock, the village tavern-keeper, not by any means the best man in the world, had come waddling down to the landing with a demijohn of "old apple brandy," and his gift had been kindly accepted by the special advice of the village physician.
"That sort of thing has made plenty of ship-wrecks around here," remarked the man of medicine; "and the people on the bar have swallowed so much salt-water, the apple-jack can't hurt 'em."
May be, the doctor was wrong about it, but the demijohn went over to the wreck in the "Swallow."
Mrs. Foster's dining-room was not a large one. There were no large rooms in that house. Nevertheless, the entire party managed to gather around the table,—all except Dab and Ford.
"Dab is head cook and I'm head waiter," had been Ford's explanation, "and we can't have any women folk a-bothering about our kitchen. Frank and the boys are company."
Certainly the cook had no cause to be ashamed of his work. The coffee was excellent. The fish were done to a turn. The oysters, roasted, broiled or stewed, and likewise the clams, were all that could have been asked for. Bread there was in abundance, and everything was going finely till Mrs. Kinzer asked her son, as his fire-red face showed itself at the kitchen door:
"Dabney, you've not sent in your vegetables; we're waiting for them."
Dab's face grew still redder, and he came very near dropping a plate he had in his hand.
"Vegetables? Oh yes. Well, Ford, we might as well send them in now. I've got them all ready."
Annie opened her eyes and looked hard at her brother, for she knew very well that not so much as a potato had been thought of in their preparations. Ford himself looked a little queer, but he marched out, white apron and all. A minute or so later, the two boys came in again, each bearing aloft a huge platter.
One of these was solemnly deposited at each end of the table.
"Vegetables?"
"Why, they're lobsters!"
"Oh, Ford, how could you?"
The last exclamation came from Annie Foster as she clapped her hands over her face. Bright red were those lobsters, and fine-looking fellows, every one of them, in spite of Mrs. Lee's poor opinion; but they were a little too well dressed, even for a dinner-party. Their thick shoulders were adorned with collars of the daintiest material and finish, while every ungainly "flipper" wore a "cuff" which had been manufactured for very different uses. Plenty of cuffs and collars, and queer enough the lobsters looked in them. All the queerer because every item of lace and linen was variegated with huge black spots and blotches, as if some one had begun to wash it in ink.
Joe and Fuz were almost as red as the lobsters, and Mrs. Foster's face looked as severe as it could, but that is not saying a great deal. The Kinzer family knew all about those cuffs and collars, and Ham Morris and the younger ladies were trying hard not to laugh.
"Joe," said Fuz, half snappishly, "can't you take a joke? Annie's got the laugh on us this time."
"I?" exclaimed Annie, indignantly. "No, indeed. That's some of Ford's work and Dabney's. Mr. Kinzer, I'm ashamed of you."
Poor Dab!
He muttered something about "those being all the vegetables he had," and retreated to the kitchen. Joe and Fuz were not the sort to take offense easily, however, and promptly helped themselves liberally to lobster. That was all that was necessary to restore harmony at the table; but Dab's plan for "punishing the Hart boys" was a complete failure. As Ford told him afterward,