LIZ SEES A "HA'NT"
After their bath the girls got into their gymnasium costumes. Then
they clamored for breakfast, and had Mrs. Morse not appeared just then
there certainly would have been a riot at the cook-tent. Lizzie was a
stickler for orders, and she would not begin to fry cakes until Jess'
mother gave the signal.
Flapjacks! My! weren't they good, with butter and syrup, followed by
bacon and eggs and French fried potatoes? The girls ate for a solid
hour. Lizzie's face was the color of a well-burned brick when the
girls admitted they were satisfied. The out-of-door air had given even
Lil an enormous appetite.
"If my mother had any idea that I'd eat so much at this time in the
morning she'd never have let me come camping," she said. "Why! do you
know--I only drink a cup of coffee and pick the inside out of a roll,
at breakfast, at home."
There was a general inclination to "laze" about the camp and read, or
take naps after that heavy breakfast. But Laura would not allow the
other six girls of Central High any peace.
"Of course, we have a big ham and a case of eggs with us," said Mother
Wit. "But we don't want to eat ham and eggs, or bacon and eggs, three
times a day while we stay here.
"Beside, the eggs, at least, won't hold out. We must add to the
larder----"
"What shall we do?" asked Dora Lockwood. "Paddle to the mainland and
kill some farmer's cow to get beef?"
"No, indeed," Laura said, laughing. "We must, however, make an attempt
to coax some of the finny denizens of the lake out of it and into
Lizzie's fry-pan."
"Fishing!" cried Dorothy.
"I never went fishing in my life," complained Lil.
But the other girls of Central High were not like Lil--no, indeed!
They had been out with the boys on Lake Luna--both in summer and
winter--and every one of them knew how to put a worm on a hook.
Lil squealed at the thought of "using one of the squirmy things."
"Aw, you give me a pain!" said Bobby. "Don't act as though you were
made of something different from the rest of us. A worm never bit me
yet, and I've been fishing thousands of times, I guess."
Lil did not hear her, however. She was the only girl who had not
brought fishing tackle. When she saw her six schoolmates going about
the work of tolling the finny denizens of Lake Dunkirk onto the bank,
she began to be jealous of the fun they were having. White perch, and
roach, and now and then a lake trout, were being landed.
Lil got excited. She wanted to try her hand at the sport, too. Yes!
Bobby had an extra outfit, and she even cut Lil a pole.
"But I tell you what it is, Miss," said the black-eyed girl, "I'm
going to hold you responsible for this outfit. If you break anything,
or lose anything, or snarl the line up, you'll have to pay me for it.
I paid good money for that silk line and those hooks."
Lil promised to make good if anything happened to the fishing tackle.
She took her place on a rock near Bobby and made a cast. The other
girls were very busy themselves and paid Lil very little attention.
The fish were biting freely, for the morning was cloudy and these
waters about Acorn Island were far from being "fished out." Bobby
hauled in a couple of perch and had almost forgotten about Lil, when
the latter said, mournfully:
"Say, Clara."
"Well! what is it?" demanded the other.
"What do you call that little thing that bobbed up and down on the
water?"
"The float," replied the busy Bobby.
"Well, Clara!" whined Lil, mournfully.
"Well! what is it?" snapped the busy fisherman.
"I'll have to buy you a new one."
"Buy me _what_?" demanded the surprised Bobby.
"A new float."
"What for?" was the amazed demand.
"Because that one you lent me _has sunk_," mourned Lily.
"For goodness' sake!" shrieked Bobby. "You've got a bite!"
She dropped her own pole, ran to the amazed Lily, and dragged in a big
bullpout--sometimes called "catfish"--that was sulking in the mud at
the bottom, with Lil's hook firmly fastened in its jaws.
Lil shrieked. She would not touch the wriggling, black fish. She was
afraid of being "horned," she said!
Bobby put her foot on the fish and managed to extract the hook. Then
she baited the hook again and bade Lil try her luck once more.
But the amateur fisherman was doomed to ill-luck on this occasion. She
had scarcely dropped the bait into the water, when a fierce little
head appeared right at the surface. It swallowed the bait--hook and
all--at a gulp, and swam right toward the shore where Lil stood.
She began to squeal again: "A snake! a snake! Oh, Bobby, I'm deathly
afraid of snakes."
"So am I," rejoined Bobby. "But you won't catch a snake in the water
with a hook and line."
"_I've caught one!_" gasped the frightened Lil.
"Gee!" growled Bobby. "You're more trouble than a box of bald-headed
monkeys. What is the matter--Oo! it's a snapper!"
"A what?" cried Lil, dropping the fishpole.
"A snapping turtle," explained Bobby. "Now you _have_ caught it! I'll
lose hook and all, like enough."
She jerked the turtle ashore. Lil had seen only its reptilian head.
The beast proved to be more than a foot across.
"Makes bully soup," said the practical Bobby. "But he won't willingly
let go of that bait and the hook in a month of Sundays."
She ran up to the camp and came flying back in a minute with the
camp-hatchet. Lil grew bold enough to hold the line taut. The turtle
pulled back, and Bobby caught it just right and cut its head off!
Although Lonesome Liz had never seen a turtle before, she managed to
clean it and with Mrs. Morse's advice made a pot of soup. Lizzie was
getting bolder as the hours passed; but she announced to Laura that
she believed there must be "ha'nts" in the woods.
"What is a haunt?" asked Laura, curiously.
"Dead folks that ain't contented in their minds," declared the queer
girl.
"And why should the spirits of the dead haunt _these_ woods?" asked
Laura. "Seems to me it's an awfully out of the way place for dead
people to come to."
But Lizzie would not give up her belief in the "spooks."
That first day in camp the girls had no visitors. Through their
binoculars and opera glasses, they could see the boys very active
about their camp across the lake. It was plain they were too busy to
visit Acorn Island.
The girls of Central High, however, had plenty of fun without the
boys. Only Bobby declared that Lil principally spent the time staring
through her opera glasses across the lake, wishing Purt would come
over in the _Duchess;_ but Lil angrily denied _that._
"And you stop trying to stir up a rumpus, Miss," commanded Laura, to
the cut-up. "Let us live, if we can, like a Happy Family."
"My!" drawled Jess, "Mother Wit is nothing if not optimistic."
"Ha! what is your idea of an optimist?" demanded Nellie Agnew.
"Why," Jess said, smiling quietly, "I read of a real optimist once. He
was strolling along a country road and an automobile came along and
hit him in the back. It knocked him twenty feet.
"'Oh, well!' said he, as he got up, 'I was going in this direction,
anyway.'"
"Aw, say!" put in Bobby, "that's all right for a _story;_ but _my_
idea of a real optimist is a man who's dead broke, going into a
restaurant and ordering oysters on the half shell with the hope that
he can pay for the dinner by finding a pearl in one of the bivalves."
They all laughed at that, and then Laura said:
"To get back to our original conversation, let us see if we can't get
on in _this_ camp without friction. And that means that _you_, Bobby,
must set a watch on your tongue."
"What do you suppose my tongue is--a timekeeper?" cried the irreverent
Bobby.
Laura herself helped get dinner, the main dish of which was fried
fish. And how good they tasted, fresh out of the lake!
Mrs. Morse had kept her typewriter tapping at a swift pace in the
cabin, and she could scarcely be coaxed to leave her story long enough
to eat dinner.
"This quietude is an incentive to good work," she said, reflectively,
at table. "I shall be sorry to go back to town."
But it was very early in their experience to say _that._ Lizzie Bean
was not yet an enthusiast for the simple life, that was sure. She and
Mother Wit had gotten better acquainted during the preparations for
the noonday meal.
"I ain't never been crazy about the country myself," admitted Liz.
"Cows, and bugs, and muskeeters, and frogs, don't seem so int'restin'
to me as steam cars, and pitcher shows, and sody-water fountains, and
street pianners.
"I like the crowds, I do. A place where all ye hear all day is a
mowin' merchine clackin', or see a hoss switchin' his tail to keep off
the bluebottles, didn't never coax me, _much._"
"The bucolic life does not tempt you, then?" said Laura, her eyes
twinkling.
"Never heard it called that afore. Colic's it serious thing--'specially
with babies. But the city suits me, I can tell ye," said Liz.
"I never seen no-one that liked the woods like you gals seem to
before, 'ceptin' a feller that lived in the boardin' house I worked
at in Albany. He was a bug on campin' and fishin' and gunnin', and all
that."
"Did you work in Albany?" queried Laura, surprised.
"Yep. Last year. I had a right good place, too. Plenty of work. I got
up at four o'clock in the mornin' and I never _did_ get through at
night!"
"Oh, my!"
"Yep. I love work. It keeps yer mind off yer troubles, if you have
enough and plenty to do. But if yer have too much of it, yer get fed
up, as ye might say. I didn't get time to sleep."
Laura had to laugh at that.
"Yep. That chap I tell you about was the nicest chap I ever see. He
was kind to me, too. When I cut my thumb most off--see the
scar?--a-slicin' bread in that boardin' house, the missis put me out
'cause I couldn't do my work."
"How mean!" exclaimed Laura.
"Ah! ye don't know about boardin' house missises. They ain't human,"
said Liz, confidently. "But Mr. Norman, he seen me goin' out with my
verlise, and he knowed about my sore thumb. He slipped me five dollars
out o' his pocket. But he was rich," sighed Liz, ecstatically. "He
owned a bank."
"Owned a bank?" gasped Laura.
"Yep."
"And lived in a cheap boarding house?" for Laura knew that Liz could
not have worked in a very aristocratic place.
"Well! he went to a bank every day," said the simple girl. "And if he
warn't rich why should he have slipped me the five dollars?"
"True--very true," admitted Laura, much amused.
But she did not think it so funny that evening when, as the girls sat
about a fire they had made in the open, singing and telling jokes, and
Lizzie was washing up the supper dishes, a sudden shrill whoop arose
from the cook-tent.
"Gee! what's that?" demanded the slangy Bobby.
"A mouse!" declared Nellie. "That funny girl must be just as much
afraid of them as _I_ am."
"I hope it's nothing worse than a mouse," Lil said, tremblingly.
Laura had sprung up on the instant and run to the cook tent. Liz had
dropped a pile of plates, and some of them were broken. She had
deposited herself stiffly in a campstool. Her body was quite stiffened
and her eyes fairly bulged--and it was not easy for Liz Bean's eyes
_to_ bulge!
"What is the matter, Liz?" demanded Laura, seizing her by the
shoulder.
"I seen him," gasped Liz.
"You have seen whom?"
"_Him_."
"But that doesn't mean anything to me," declared Laura, shaking her.
"Who _is_ he?"
"The feller I was tellin' you about. That feller that give me the five
dollars."
"_What_?"
"Yes, Ma'am!" uttered Liz, solemnly. "He was standin' right
yonder--just at the edge of them woods. I took the cover off the stove
and the fire flashed out and showed me his face--just as plain!"
"You've been dreaming," said Laura, slowly.
"Git out!" ejaculated Liz, with emphasis. "I never fell asleep yet
washin' greasy dishes--no, Ma'am!"
"Well!"
"I know what it means," Liz said, solemnly. "Yes, I do."
"What _does_ it mean?" demanded Laura, doubtful whether to laugh or be
serious.
"He's dead," said the odd girl.
"Dead?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"But why should he appear to you, even if he _were_ dead?" demanded
Laura, seeing that she must never let this superstition take root in
the camp. "Do you suppose he's come to try to get his five dollars
back?"
"My goodness to gracious!" said Liz. "No. The ha'nt of a man that
owned a bank wouldn't come to bother a poor gal like me for money,
would he?"