THE RIVAL CAMPERS
Northward by lazy canal and shadowy hummock, northward by a river
freckled with sand bars, Diane came in time to a quiet lake where
purple martins winged ceaselessly over a tangled float of lilies--where
now and then an otter swam and dipped with a noiseless ripple of
water--where ground doves fluttered fearlessly about the camp as Johnny
pitched the tents at noonday.
But for all the whir and flash of brilliant birdlife above the placid
water--for all the screams of the fish hawks and the noise of crows and
grackle in the cypress--for all the presence of another camper among
the trees to the west, the days were quiet and undisturbed. And at
night when the birds were winging to the woods now black against the
yellow west, and the lonely lake began to purple, the fires of the
rival camps were the single spots of color in the heavy darkness along
the shore.
Diane wrote of it, with disastrous results, to Aunt Agatha.
At sunset, one day, a carriage produced an aggrieved rustle of silk, a
voice and a hand bag. Each fluttered a little as the driver accepted
his fare and rolled away. The hand bag, in accordance with a
sensational and ill-conditioned habit which had roused more than one
unpopular commotion in crowded department stores and thoroughfares,
leaped unexpectedly from a gloved and fluttering hand.
Aunt Agatha possessed herself of the bag with a sniff and rustled
heedlessly into the nearest camp.
It was, of course, Mr. Poynter's.
Utterly confounded by the unexpected sight of a tall young man who was
cooking a fish over the fire, Aunt Agatha gurgled fearfully and backed
precipitately into the nearest tree, whence the ill-natured hand bag
forcibly opened a grinning mouth, leaped into space and disgorged a
flying shower of nickels and dimes, smelling salts and hairpins and a
variety of fussy contrivances of sentimental value.
"God bless my soul!" bleated Aunt Agatha with round, affrighted eyes,
"there's a dime in the fish! And I do beg your pardon, young man, but
will you be so good as to poke the smelling salts out of the fire
before they explode."
There was little likelihood of the final catastrophe, but Mr. Poynter
obeyed. Laughing a little as he collected the scattered cargo, he
good-humoredly suggested that he was not nearly so dangerous as Aunt
Agatha's petrified gaze suggested, and that possibly she might remember
him--his name was Poynter--and that Miss Westfall's camp lay a little
farther to the east.
Aunt Agatha departed, greatly impressed by his gallantry and common
sense. Arriving in the camp of her niece, she roused an alarming
commotion by halting unobserved among the trees, staring hard at her
niece's back-hair, dropping her hand bag, and bursting into tears that
brought the startled campers to her side in a twinkling.
"Great Scott, Johnny!" exclaimed Diane, aghast. "It's Aunt Agatha!"
Aunt Agatha dangerously motioned them away with the hand bag Johnny had
returned.
"I'll be all right in a minute!" she sniffed tearfully. "Mamma was
that way, too--mamma was. Tears would burst right out of her,
especially when she grew so stout. I can't help it! When I think of
all I've gone through with you off in the Green-glades or the
Never-glades or whatever they are--and worrying all the time about your
scalp and alligators--and you sitting there so peaceful, Diane, with
your hair still on--I've got to cry--I just have and I will. And
Carl's mysteriously disappeared--Heaven knows where! I've not seen him
for weeks. Nor did he condescend to write me--as I must say you
did--and very good of you too!" Whether Aunt Agatha was crying because
her mother was stout and eruptively lachrymose, or because Diane's hair
was still where it belonged, or because Carl was missing, Diane could
not be sure.
Aunt Agatha puffed presently to a seat by the fire, with hair and hat
awry, and dropped her hand bag.
"Johnny," she said severely, "don't stare so. I'm sorry of course that
I made you drop the kettle when I came, I am indeed, but I'm here and
there's the kettle--and that's all there is to it."
"Of course it is!" exclaimed Diane, kissing her heartily. "And I'm
mighty glad to see you, Aunt Agatha, tears and all!"
There was some little difficulty in persuading Aunt Agatha of the truth
of this, but she presently removed her hat, narrowly escaped dropping
it into the fire, and consigned it, along with the athletic hand bag,
to Johnny.
Now Diane with a furtive glance at Philip's camp, had been hostilely
considering the discouraging effect of Aunt Agatha's presence upon the
rival camper. That Aunt Agatha would presently discern degenerative
traces of criminality in his face by reason of his reprehensible
proximity to her niece's camp, Diane did not doubt. That the aggrieved
lady would call upon him within a day or so and air her rigid notions
of propriety and convention, was well within the range of probability.
Wherefore--
Aunt Agatha broke plaintively in upon her thoughts.
"If you would only listen, Diane!" she complained. "I've spoken three
times of your grandfather's old estate and dear knows you ought to
remember it--"
"I beg your pardon, Aunt!" stammered the girl sincerely.
"Certainly," said Aunt Agatha with dignity, "I deserve some attention.
What with the dark, gloomy rooms of the house and the cobwebs and
cranky spiders--and the people of St. Augustine believing it to be
haunted--so that I could scarcely keep a servant--and green mould in
the cellar--and a croquet set--and waiting down South when I distinctly
promised to go back with the Sherrills in March--I take it very hard of
you, Diane, to be so absent-minded. Ugh! How dark the lake has grown
and the wind and the noise of the water. There's hardly a star.
Diane, I do wonder how you stand it. The shore looks like bands of
mourning crepe. And in the midst of it all, Diane, there in St.
Augustine, the Baron aeroplaned the top off the Carroll's orchard--"
"Aunt Agatha!" begged the girl helplessly. "What in the world is it
all about?"
Aunt Agatha flushed guiltily.
"Why is it," she demanded, "that no one ever seems to understand what
I'm saying? Dear knows I haven't a harelip or even a lisp. Why, Baron
Tregar, my dear. He's been staying in St. Augustine, too. It almost
seemed as if he had deliberately followed me there--though of course
that couldn't be. And the Prince too. And the Baron bought an
aeroplane to amuse himself and annoy the Carrolls--"
Aunt Agatha flushed again, cleared her throat and looked away. Why
Ronador was in St. Augustine she knew well enough. He had waited near
her, successfully, for news of Diane. And though the Baron had been
very quiet, he had kept his eye upon the Prince. Aunt Agatha had for
once been the startled hub of intrigue.
"And what with the driver mumbling to himself this afternoon because I
lost my umbrella and made him go back, and the horse having ribs," she
complained, shying from a topic which contained dangerous possibilities
of revealing a certain indiscretion, "I do wonder I'm here at all. And
the young man was very decent about the dime in his fish--though I'm
sure he burned his fingers digging for the smelling salts--for they'd
already begun to sizzle--but dear me! Diane, you can't imagine how I
jarred my spine and my switch--I did think for a minute it would tumble
off--and he was so quick and pleasant to collect the nickels and
hairpins. Such a pleasant, comfortable sort of chap. I remember now
he was at the Sherrill's and very good-looking, too, I must say, and
very lonely too, I'll wager, camping about for his health. He didn't
say anything about his health, but one can see by his eyes that he's
troubled about it."
"Aunt Agatha!" begged Diane helplessly in a flash of foreboding, "what
in creation are you trying to say?"
"Why, Mr. Poynter, of course!" exclaimed Aunt Agatha. "The hand bag
shot into his camp and spilled nickels, and I bumped into a tree and
jarred my switch. And a very fine fellow he is, to be sure!"
Diane stared.
It was like Aunt Agatha to blunder into the wrong camp. And surely it
was like Philip to win her favor by chance.