THE ROUND ROBIN CLUB
People were already drifting away from the pier. “Hugh and Victor
are waiting to take us to Camp in the motor boat,” explained Nancy.
“I’ll just introduce you to the Round Robin before we start. Don’t
you think we have a nice yell? There are six of us, you see; you will
make the seventh girl. The boys are Associates. Mother and the Twins
are Honorary.”
Nancy chattered so fast that the newcomer was quite bewildered.
Perhaps it was the best way to get over an awkward moment, for the
Club was oddly tongue-tied. They did not all know one another very
well as yet, the summer being so young. They were not awed by the
Golden Girl; but they did not like the way she looked at them. “How
queer these people are.” She seemed to be thinking. “I knew they
would be.” She said nothing, however, and perhaps they mistook her
real thoughts.
Nancy began her introduction, putting her arm about Cicely’s
shoulders. “This is my cousin Cicely Vane of England,” she said.
“How do you do?” said Cicely prettily. Anne nodded coldly as the name
of each girl was given.
“This is Gilda Bétemps, who was born in Belgium,” went on Nancy,
drawing forward the short, round girl whose pleasant face was
beaming. “She doesn’t speak English very easily yet. But she is
getting on. She is going to be an American all the rest of her life.”
“I gave some money for the Belgian children, and a lot of old
clothes,” said Anne, staring at Gilda with some interest. “What a
dreadful thing to say!” inwardly commented the other girls. But Gilda
only smiled.
“And this,” Nancy indicated the brunette of the group, “is Norma
Sonnino, who is going to be a great musician some day, like her
grandfather. She sings like a--like a round robin!”
Norma blushed and rolled her eyes. “Nancy is always laughing at me,”
she said, showing dazzling white teeth. “Like a round robin indeed!”
“Well, I don’t know anybody who can sing better than the round robin
we named our camp for; the fellow who sings on top of the spruce tree
every morning--‘_Get up, get up! Get uppity up!_’ And his sunset
song, Norma!”
“_Grazie tante!_” said Norma, shrugging her shoulders, but smiling
too.
“Another foreigner!” thought Anne Poole. “That makes three of them
already. What an odd group for _me_!” And her little nose rose higher
in the air.
Norma was not a foreigner. Her people had not lived in America so
long as had the people of Nancy or Beverly or Nelly Sackett. But
Norma was just as truly an American as they; since her Italian-born
father was now a naturalized citizen, a merchant in New York where
she herself had been born.
“I am Beverly Peyton, of Virginia,” drawled the pretty Southerner,
waiting for no introduction and holding out her hand cordially.
Beverly had not forgotten how cold the first greeting of these
Northern girls had seemed to her warm Southern heart, when a week
earlier she had arrived, a stranger to all but the Batchelders. She
knew that they were not really cold; it was just the Yankee offhand
way. But she wanted to cheer up this pale, big-eyed newcomer.
Anne, however, did not seem to appreciate Beverly’s advance. She
dropped the warm little hand as soon as convenient, and stood staring
at the last of the six girls--the freckled, sandy one.
“I know you,” she said. “You’re Captain Sackett’s niece. I used to call
him Uncle Eph’ once. Are you a member of this Club, too?” There was
something in the way she said it that made Nelly Sackett flush and
draw back the hand she had half extended, following Beverly’s lead.
“Of course she is a member of the Round Robin,” said Nancy,
clapping Nelly on the shoulder in a boyish fashion. “We couldn’t do
without Nelly, though she doesn’t live at Camp. She lives at Cap’n
Sackett’s, a mile and a half away.”
“The idea of a fisherman’s daughter in my Club!” thought Anne Poole.
“Well!” Just then a whoop rent the air and the cry--“Hurry up, girls!”
“The boys are getting impatient,” Nancy explained to Anne. “They’re
always in a hurry. Your trunks are in the motor-boat already; three
of them! I guess the boys didn’t bargain for more than one. We shall
be pretty crowded. But we shan’t mind, if you don’t.”
Anne had seen two roughly-dressed young men struggling with her
boxes, while a red-haired boy walked away with her suit-case. She
had supposed them to be porters. What was her amazement to learn
they were to be her neighbors and camp companions in this strange
summer. For the bronze young man wearing the service star was Hugh
Batchelder, it seemed. And his taller friend with the silver star
of a wounded veteran was Victor Lanfranc, late of the French Flying
Corps. While the funny Dick Reed, whom they called “Reddy,” and
who shook Anne’s arm up and down like a pump handle, when he was
introduced, much to her disgust, was being tutored by Hugh Batchelder
at his mother’s camp.
Presently the _Togo_ full of girls and boys and trunks and puppy, all
comfortably mingled, was chugging away over the blue waters of the
Harbor into a wild, beautiful section of the “country of the pointed
firs.” The air was pungent with the smell of balsam and bay and sweet
fern, mingled with a salty fragrance that is the breath of life to
true Yankees, and which even Beverly Peyton’s aristocratic little
Southern nose was beginning to love. Perched awkwardly on one of
her own trunks, Anne Poole scanned the rocky shore eagerly, as they
approached a high point.
“I suppose of course you know all about this coast?” said Nancy,
trying to make conversation. “You used to sail around so much. We
often saw your father’s yacht last summer.”
Anne sighed. “I shall miss that,” she said.
“Hugh has looked up all the places around here,” Nancy went on. “The
Bay is full of history----”
“And fish,” interrupted Dick, below his breath.
“I don’t know about the history,” said Anne. “But I think I do
know that Point. I never came just this way before. But isn’t that
Idlewild?”
“Yes. That is Idlewild. And here is where Nelly gets off.” They were
at the entrance of a little cove, at the end of which a good-sized
white house stood alone. On the shore were some low grey sheds;
lobster pots lay about and a dory was moored a little way from shore.
The _Togo_ drew up at the tiny pier and Nelly Sackett jumped nimbly
out.
“Good-bye, Nelly! Don’t forget to-morrow,” called Nancy.
“It’s not likely I’ll forget!” grinned Nelly Sackett.
“And please, ask Cap’n Sackett about the lobsters?” Nancy reminded
her.
“He’ll have them ready,” promised Nelly. “He’s going hauling, I know,
to-morrow. He’ll be back by ten. The lobsters will be ready.”
“Good-bye, Nelly! Good-bye!”
“Heia! Hoia! Together! Get together!” yelled the Club as the boat
chugged away; the same call with which they had greeted Anne. The
latter did not join in the yell. It was too strange to her.
“Here we come to Idlewild!” As the boat drew near the Point they
could see a great stone house on top of a cliff; a garage, summer
houses, and the glass roofs of greenhouses. But there was no flag
flying on the tall flagstaff above the boat house. The place seemed
deserted. Every window was shuttered, giving the house the look of a
blind person. There were no boats moored off the little pier.
“How dead it looks!” thought Anne. But she said aloud complacently--
“It’s the finest place anywhere within fifty miles; Father says so.”
“It certainly is the biggest place,” agreed Nancy. “But wait till you
see Round Robin!”
“I wish I was going to be here,” said Anne simply; and Beverly Peyton
saw her lip tremble. “I never went anywhere else in the summer,
except when we went to Europe. I liked Idlewild.” Anne could not say
any more.
“We will come over and see it some day, Anne,” said Beverly sweetly.
“It is only about a mile from Camp, they say. I’ve wanted to come
very much.”
“So have I,” said Nancy. “In all the years I’ve never been on shore
here. We’ll all go, if you will invite us, Anne.”
Anne did not say anything. She was watching the roofs of Idlewild
fade out of sight, and she looked wistful.
The others were already planning for to-morrow and seemed to have
forgotten the newcomer.