ON THE ROAD
THE clock in the railroad station announced high noon, but of all the
party only Marjorie and Millicent were there to hear it. Nan Kellogg had
fulfilled her own prophecy by coming down fifteen minutes earlier, and
then going back home for her cuckoo-clock, which was one of her pet
possessions, and which she decided she couldn’t be parted from for two
whole weeks. She came flying back, and entered the station by one door
just as Betty Miller came in at the other.
“Oh,” said Nan, breathlessly, “I thought of course I’d be the last one
here. Where are the other girls? But since they’re not here, won’t you
hold the clock, Marjorie, and let me run back home and—”
“No,” said Betty, decidedly. “You can_not_ go back for anything else.
Follow the example of your clock and stop running for a while.”
“Has it stopped? I was afraid it would. Never mind; I can set it going
after we get there. But I do want to go back and—”
“Nan Kellogg, you’ll be put in chains if you are so insubordinate,”
broke in Marjorie. “I am commander of this expedition, and I order you
to sit down on that bench and not move until the train comes.”
Nan laughed, but sat down obediently, holding her precious clock; and
then Helen appeared with her banjo, and Hester with her camera.
“Have you checked your wheels, girls?” asked Betty.
“Yes, with our trunks,” said Helen. “Mr. Bond is keeping watch over them
until the train comes; and he is holding Timmy Loo, who is a most
important-looking animal just now, dressed in a new red ribbon and a
baggage-tag.”
“Oh, he’s delighted with his prospective journey,” said Marjorie. “I
told him he had the entire charge of our trunks and wheels, and he feels
the responsibility. Oh, here’s Jessie. Now we’re all here but
Marguerite. Where is she, Nan?”
“Who? Daisy? Oh, she’ll be here in a minute. I think she waited to learn
how to make soup.”
“She’ll be in it if she doesn’t hurry,” said Nan. “I think I’ll go and
poke her up.”
“Don’t do it!” cried Betty. “You’ll miss her, and then we won’t have
either of you. Here she comes now, grinning like a Chessy cat.”
Dainty Marguerite, in her fresh white duck suit and pink shirt-waist,
came in, smiling radiantly.
[Illustration: “‘MR. BOND IS HOLDING TIMMY LOO.’ SAID HELEN.”]
“Girls,” said she, “Aunt Annie was at our house, and she taught me a new
soup. It’s wonderful, and I’ll make it for you, if you want it, the
first thing.”
“Of course we want it the first thing,” said Nan. “Did you suppose we
thought it was a dessert?”
“Come, girls!” called Mr. Bond, from the platform, as the train that was
to have the honor of carrying the party puffed into the station and came
noisily to a standstill. “Are you ready? All aboard! Good-by, Margy
dear; don’t set the house afire. Who is the Matron of this crowd,
anyway? I’d like a word with her.”
Marjorie looked at the girls. “I think Marguerite is,” she said. “She’s
the youngest and smallest and rattle-patedest. Yes, she shall be our
Matron.”
“Very well, then, Matron Daisy, I consign these young barbarians to your
care, and I put them and my house in your charge, and I shall expect you
to render me an account when you come back.”
“Don’t scare me, Mr. Bond,” pleaded Marguerite, shaking her yellow
curls. “If the responsibility proves too much for me I shall run away
and leave them to their fate. But I think I can manage them, and I’ll
rule them with a rod of iron.”
And then the bell rang, and Mr. Bond jumped off the train just in time;
and he waved his hat, and the girls waved their handkerchiefs from the
windows, until they were whisked away out of his sight.
“Now, my children,” said Marguerite, highly elated at her absurd title
of Matron, “you are in my care, and I must look after you. Why, where
are Nan and Helen?”
Sure enough, only six of the girls were to be seen; but just at that
moment the two missing ones were escorted through the now wabbling
doorway by an official. They were rather red-faced, and explained that
they had seated themselves in the smoking-car by mistake, and the
brakeman had kindly brought them back to their friends.
“I am shocked,” said Marguerite, severely. “Sit down there at once, and
after this follow my directions more closely.”
Then the eight girls were quickly paired off, and the general chatter
was broken up into dialogues.
Mindful of her position as Matron, Marguerite kept a watchful eye on her
charges. To be sure, the watchful eye was so bright and merry that as a
means of restraint it was practically useless. But the Blue Ribbon
Cooking Club knew how to behave itself in a public conveyance—oh, dear,
yes! and, save for a few sudden and really unavoidable bursts of
merriment, it was as proper and decorous a rosebud garland of girls as
one could wish to see.
To be sure, there was some commotion when the conductor asked for
Marguerite’s ticket, and she suddenly remembered she had written Aunt
Annie’s soup recipe on the back of it, intending to copy it before the
conductor came around.
“It was the only bit of paper I had,” she explained, “and it is such a
good recipe. What shall I do?”
Nan had a blank-book with her which she always carried in case of poetic
fire, and the conductor obligingly left the soup-ticket, as Betty called
it, for them to copy, and returned later to receive the yellow card,
much crumpled by the process of erasure. But the precious recipe was
safe, and at least one page of Nan’s book was worth having.
And there was another mild excitement when Nan’s cuckoo-clock, which was
carefully laid away up in the rack, suddenly announced in shrill pipes
that it was twelve o’clock. It wasn’t twelve o’clock at all, and that
rascally cuckoo knew it; but having been silenced by Nan’s breathless
run down to the station, he was well pleased to be set going again by
the jar of the train, and he chirped his twelve double notes with an
evident enjoyment of the situation.
Nan tried her best to look unconscious, but only succeeded in looking so
funny that the girls went off into peals of laughter.
Betty leaned over, and picking up Nan’s blank-book, scribbled in it:
Nannie had a little clock,
But it was rather slow;
And when she thought that it had stopped,
The clock was sure to go.
This was passed around, and caused such hilarity that Marguerite
confiscated the book and, assuming an air of rigid decorum, sat staring
straight before her with all the appalling dignity of a blonde wax doll.
Upon which, Millicent slyly regained the book, unobserved by the stern
Matron, and drew a funny sketch of Marguerite wearing epaulets and a
cocked hat, mounted on a fiery steed, and commanding a great army. The
curly mop of hair, the stiff duck skirt, and the side-saddle, contrasted
with the military pose and uplifted sword, was very funny; and when
Millicent labeled it “A Daisy Napoleon,” and passed it over to Betty and
Jessie, they giggled outright. But now they had passed Spring Grove, and
the next station would be Long Beach. Gathering up their belongings,
they were all ready, when the train stopped, to jump out on the
platform, and there they found Uncle Ned and Aunt Molly waiting for
them.
“All here?” sang out Uncle Ned, in his cheery way. “Where are your
checks?”
A dozen metal medals were produced by Betty, who announced herself as
Courier. It was an appalling lot of luggage to which these checks
entitled Uncle Ned; but he soon found a man with a big wagon, and
trunks, wheels, and boxes were lifted into it and despatched to the
cottage, while Marjorie received frantic expressions of affection from
Timmy Loo, who had had quite enough of baggage-cars for one while.
Uncle Ned politely put the spare seats of his carriage at the disposal
of the girls, but the loyal crowd refused to be divided. Not they
indeed! They would find a conveyance that would hold them all, or they
would walk. It was only about a mile. But a capacious stage lumbered up,
and the whole eight were bundled into it.
Timmy Loo, as was his custom when riding, jumped up on Marjorie’s
shoulder, and sat there fairly quivering with curiosity to know what
kind of a performance was going on, anyway. For his part, he couldn’t
understand it at all. But Marjorie gave him a little whack on his nose,
and he subsided into a wary indifference.
“Want any milk?” The loud words seemed to roll in at the door of the
stage, and there on the steps stood a burly, red-faced man, smiling with
fun and curiosity.
“I heard as how you young ladies was a-comin’, an’ I thought as you
might want to engage milk at onct.”
“Oh, not now, please,” said Marguerite, who sat in the end of the stage,
and who was startled by the sudden apparition. “Come round to the house
after we get settled.”
“All right, mum; thank ye, mum!” And the red-faced one disappeared as
mysteriously as he had come.
“Wasn’t he awful?” said Marguerite. “He hopped up like a
jack-in-the-box, and that off-with-his-head tone of voice scared me out
of my wits.”
“Oh, that was old Farmer Hobbs,” said Marjorie, laughing; “he always
brings us milk when we’re here in the summer.”
“Here’s the ocean, Nan; get out your best pensive expression and put it
on,” cried Betty, as the stage bumped around a corner and the blue sea
shone before them.
But Nan was already wearing what the girls called her rapt look, and she
paid no attention to their banter.
“‘Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!’” began Millicent.
“Should you dry up, ’twould leave an awful hole,” continued Marjorie.
“Oh, how good this salt air is! It makes me feel like a mermaid.”
“It has a worse effect on me than that,” exclaimed Betty. “It makes me
just awfully hungry. Do we really have to get settled to housekeeping
and all that before we can have anything to eat?”
“No, indeed,” said Marjorie; “we’ll have a picnic supper as soon as we
can get enough things unpacked to have it with, and then we’ll begin our
regular living to-morrow. There’s the house, girls; that shingled one
next to the one with the yellow dog in front of it.”
And in another minute they had stopped in front of the shingled house
and were tumbling over one another out of the stage.
Nan landed first, and no sooner had she touched the ground than, as if
by magic, a swarm of men appeared, who gathered round her, outvying each
other in impressive politeness, and offered her cards.
Bewildered at the suddenness of the onslaught, Nan glanced helplessly at
Marjorie with a scared “What _do_ they want?”
At this the swarm turned their attention to Marjorie and the cards were
pointed at her, while the men stood respectfully silent.
The Duchess, though as ignorant as Nan of the nature of the bits of
pasteboard thrust upon her, summoned all her dignity to her aid, and
sternly demanded:
“What _do_ you want?”
But the answers came from a dozen manly throats in such a jumble that no
word was intelligible. Then, looking at two cards which had been fairly
pushed into her hands, she read on one:
L. PARKINS
_Wholesale and retail dealer in_
BEEF,
VEAL,
[Illustration: drawing of cow head]
MUTTON,
LAMB,
PORK, AND POULTRY
CENTRAL MARKET
and on the other:
MERTON & FINCH
MEAT MARKET
_Hotels supplied at special rates_
Then these two rival butchers began each to dilate on his superiority
over all other butchers that ever had been or ever would be at Long
Beach, and each claimed the honor of having supplied the first families
there since the settlement of the place.
Marjorie, alive to the fun of the thing, tried to make a decision.
Finally she said: “I will order meat from one of you to-day, and the
other to-morrow, and whichever sends me the best meats I will continue
to patronize. And I will try first the one whose card is decorated with
this very beautiful cow’s head. That’s you, Mr. Parkins. But I can’t
order now, for I’m too busy. Come around again in about an hour. And
you, Mr. Merton & Finch, may come to-morrow morning for your order.”
“Yes, mum,” said the two men, and, gallantly lifting their caps, they
went away.
The cards of the other men announced them to be fish and vegetable
merchants, bakers and milkmen, and one, being card-less, declared
himself the coal and wood agent.
“We may as well order that at once,” said Marjorie, reflectively.
“Please send us a barrel of kindling-wood and a—Girls, how much coal
ought we to have for two weeks?”
“A ton, I should think,” said Marguerite, with an air of superior wisdom
that made her look like the canary who wanted to be an owl.
“Crazy Daisy!” said Betty. “We couldn’t _begin_ to use a ton, nor a
half, nor a quarter. Why, we only use twenty tons for a whole year at
home, radiators and all.”
“If six Millers in one year burn twenty tons, how much is necessary to
supply one Miller and seven other insects that they may have coal to
burn?”
“I’ll be Stoker,” said Hester Laverack. “The only thing I’m a real
success at is making a fire and keeping it going. And _I_ think we’ll
need a barrel of coal.”
“A barrel! Just the thing!” cried Betty. “That’s lots better than a
fraction of a ton; and there are so few fractions of a ton to choose
from.”
“All right,” said Marjorie; “you may send us a barrel of coal and some
wood for the open fire.”
“A quarter of a cord?” suggested the man, as if he feared another
lengthy discussion.
“Yes,” said Marjorie, breathing a sigh of relief as he went away. Then
she stood looking helplessly at her handful of cards. “Girls,” said she,
“the responsibilities of housekeeping are wearing me out, and we haven’t
even entered the house yet.”
“Where are the keys?” said impatient Marguerite.
Marjorie flourished her bunch of keys importantly, unlocked the door,
and, with a wild whoop from Betty and a responsive bark from Timmy Loo
they all went in.