"You don't have spots. You just feel mean. You want dreadfully to do
things. But you know you can't. So you don't."
"What things?"
"Well, like the swimming race next Saturday. Mummy and Dad are coming
up for it. Prissy says I could win the Penguin Trophy if I didn't have
my complex. But Clara knows she's going to win. So she will. She
hasn't got any complex. She just overeats."
They sat side by side in melancholy silence. But Pip-Emma's misplaced
toothache was easing off. Janet might not be the Gang. But she
belonged to Emma. Ever since Emma had said she wasn't a dumb cluck
she'd followed Emma round like a little lost dog that had been found.
If anyone belonged to you like that, you had to look out for them.
"I wish my Pop and Ma were coming up," Pip-Emma said suddenly.
"Why? Are you homesick, too, Emma?"
"I dunno. I want Pop and Ma."
"It's no good wanting, is it?"
"Well, you've got yours, haven't you?"
"Not really. Not together. I mean--they don't live together."
"Why not?"
"They don't have to. Dad's got a place in Florida and Long Island and
Maine and New York. So when they quarrel, they just go off. Different
places. And I can't be with either of them because the other won't let
me," Janet choked. "I guess they'll quarrel Saturday," she said.
"Gee, that's tough." Pip-Emma gave a small hoarse chuckle. "Pop and Ma
get mad sometimes. But Ma says, 'You old son-of-a-gun, I guess I
gotter live with you and like it.' And Pop says, 'I like it fine, you
old so-and-so.' And he takes us out and gives us a sundae at the
drugstore. Ma says you can't stay mad in two rooms."
"I wish we lived in two rooms," Janet said.
Pip-Emma knitted her black brows. "Maybe," she said, "you might tell
'em so."
"I'd be too scared."
But Pip-Emma was after her thought like a terrier after an elusive
rabbit. "If my Pop and Ma were here, I'd jump into their darned old
water. I wouldn't care how cold it was. I wouldn't be scared. Maybe if
your Pop and Ma are along, you'll win the race, and then you'll never
be scared again."
"But I shan't win it. I'll lose my breath like I always do. And
Clara's so fat. She just has to float."
"Maybe if she was sick--if she eats something--"
"She can't. Prissy's got her on a diet. She's Prissy's pet."
Pip-Emma put her arm over Janet's shoulder. It was an accolade, and
Janet knew it.
"Gee--you poor kid!" Pip-Emma said, and relapsed into deep thought
again.
The two wandered off the landing stage together. Outside the gameroom
Claudine was writing up a notice on the blackboard. The twins went to
a progressive school where you learned spelling only if you felt the
urge. The twins had never felt it.
"You don't spell Saturday with an 'a' in the middle," Pip-Emma said.
A hot and flustered twin rubbed out the word with a lofty air of
apprehended carelessness, and Pip-Emma wrote it in for her.
"If I spelled like you do," she said, "old Perks would give me hell."
* * * * *
The harassed Penguins pinned one of their last hopes on horses. It
seemed probable that if Pip-Emma had never seen any trees, she had
never seen horses, either--or only from a distance--and that she would
be impressed. But it turned out that Pip-Emma's uncle had a horse--not
the W.P.A. uncle but the mounted-cop uncle--and that it was a bigger
and better horse than anything in the Camp stables. Pip-Emma had
actually ridden it from Ninth to Tenth Avenue. Moreover her uncle had
chased Squint-Eyed Peters down Forty-fifth Street and shot him and his
armored car so full of holes that it was hardly worth while cleaning
them up. Pip-Emma told the story after taps and in such gory detail
that the Penguins didn't know or care that discipline was going to the
dogs.
They learned at the same time that Mr. Binns, in his unregenerate
youth, had been an Englishman and had fought in the Great War and that
Emma's name was Pip because in English soldier language Pip-Emma meant
anything that happened after midday. And Emma had happened in Hell's
Kitchen at 3:30.
The Penguins sat up in their beds and listened spellbound. The glamour
surrounding Wall Street, Big Business, and the kind but stoutish and
baldish gentlemen who were their fathers was suffering an acute
depression. The prospect of their fathers' appearance on Saturday and
of Pip-Emma's dispassionate appraisal filled the Penguins with
uneasiness.
Things had come to such a pass that when on Friday evening, after the
Camp singsong, Clara felt Emma's arm slip through hers, the VanSittart
pride positively glowed. It was the first time that Pip-Emma had
seemed to notice Clara--which was a humiliation in itself, seeing that
Pip-Emma was really Clara's own idea. And Clara, thanks to Prissy's
training diet, was low in her mind anyway.
"Guess what I've found!" Pip-Emma whispered.
But of course Clara couldn't guess anything.
"I've found where they've got all tomorrow's ice cream. Buckets and
buckets of it."
Clara, as top Penguin, wavered. Some lingering Penguin rectitude still
glowed in her, but only faintly. After all, she was hungry. She was
being starved to death. And no one cared. Only Emma Binns seemed to
know what she was suffering.
"Dare you!" Pip-Emma said.
It was Clara's chance. Now she could show the stuff in her. Being born
on Park Avenue didn't mean necessarily that you were a dumb cluck. She
let Pip-Emma lead her by devious paths through the deserted kitchen.
Then to the huge icebox. And there it was--buckets and buckets!
Clara's first handful didn't even make a dent.
"I bet I can eat more than you can," Pip-Emma said.
At breakfast the next morning Miss Thornton made an unusual
appearance. She was grave and even troubled.
"Children, a serious thing has happened. Last night someone must have
broken all our Camp rules. Someone opened the icebox and ate several
pints of our ice cream. I hope--I'm sure--the culprit will stand up at
once and not spoil our happy day for us."