A MONOGRAM ON A COIN
But no Camp Fire Girl or Boy Scout, either, who assembled at the
invitation of the Twin-Light Tribe at an hotel upon the mainland of the
Massachusetts North Shore, indulged in any wild or random guesses about
the large, silver disc, curiously stamped with a sunburst, which rose
and fell with the excited breathing of one happy girl of the
Morning-Glory Tribe when she put in an appearance at the long-expected
party.
The Twin-Light Tribe was an enthusiastic band of Camp Fire Girls who had
taken their name from the twin lights, the two golden, saving eyes of a
lighthouse guarding their shore.
Being eager for the obtaining of new honor-beads to string upon the
leather thongs about their girlish necks, they had arranged to give a
large party at which the girls and boys would be equal in number, where
all the youthful guests should take part in at least two old-fashioned
dances—the boys being instructed on the spur of the moment by the girls
if they could not skilfully foot it already in the old-time figures of
“Pop Goes the Weasel,” “Chorus Jig,” or any two more stately American
dances popular long ago.
For this achievement every participating member of the Twin-Light Tribe
was to receive a red, white, and blue honor for patriotism, a
distinction which might have been extended to the father of one of them
who put the ballroom of the seaside hotel of which he was manager at the
service of the Camp Fire Girls for a certain evening and who lent
generous aid, too, along the lines of refreshments.
The large room was radiant with electric bulbs disguised as Chinese and
Japanese lanterns which pointed many a rainbowed finger of light at the
silver sun-dollar gleaming upon Jessica’s breast when she entered the
hall. But nobody, neither the benevolent manager nor the guests,
all—with the exception of Scoutmasters and Camp Fire Guardians—under
twenty, was ignorant by this time of the details of its strange
discovery.
Two of the Boy Scouts, going for milk to a farmhouse beyond the dunes
where their camp was situated, upon the evening of the most terrible and
exciting day in the life of one Camp Fire Girl, Jessica Dee Holley, had
told about the finding of the old coin in the wet side of a sand-hill.
The farmer from whom they procured their milk reported the news at the
nearest post-office when he drove round with his full cans next morning.
The postmaster telephoned it to a newspaper reporter. Inside of
thirty-six hours practically the whole of Wessex County, Massachusetts,
knew that another of the old sun-stamped Peruvian _pesos_, lost from the
South American brig wrecked off the coast nearly three-quarters of a
century before, had been found by two Boy Scouts and by a girl who had
been swept down the tidal river in a squall in an opposite direction to
that taken by the drifting brig which the furious gale of long ago had
driven in from the bay, over the bar, to break to pieces in the river.
Even the few resident guests still staying on at the hotel, now that
September had set in, had heard or read the story, too, touched up by a
reporter’s imagination, and were anxious to meet the heroine of the
drifting dory accident who to-night wore the beautiful old _peso_, or
dollar, on a silver chain around her neck.
“There’s a man out there in the hotel corridor who says he’s interested
in old coins. I was talking to him just now; he’s like all the rest; he
wants to see the sun-dollar,” remarked Miles Stackpole, Eagle Scout, to
the coin’s possessor, looking down at the silver sunburst dangling upon
the breast of her white dress.
At this patriotic party the Scouts, by request, wore their uniform.
Miles was resplendent with all his merit badges below the service
stripes upon his right sleeve; the American Eagle in silver swooped from
the red, white and blue ribbon hanging from the silver bar upon his left
breast. On his collar was embroidered in dull gold B. S. A.: Boy Scouts
of America; together with the number of the troop to which he belonged.
Other lads from his camp numbering over twenty, including Kenjo and the
fat Astronomer, looked debonair and smart in their khaki uniforms, too.
But the Camp Fire Girls had, for to-night, abandoned their
leather-fringed khaki; they were not in ceremonial dress; each wore a
conventional party-frock or the fairest apology for one which she
happened to have brought with her to camp, the girlish costumes ranging
widely from Olive Deering’s frilled yellow silk in which she looked like
a chrysanthemum, the first of the season, to Sally’s white skirt and
orange smock, minus the saucy Tam—wherein she was again the little
Baltimore oriole of the city playground—and to Penelope’s white duck
skirt and “fancy” waist which the girls had between them fashioned for
her, having ruled out her old “black and white warbler” attire with the
faded girdle.
“There! the piano is just striking up ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ now,” went
on Miles after an interval during which Jessica had expressed a happy
willingness that the hotel guest who was interested in venerable coins
should have his desire gratified and examine the sun-dollar. “You and I
are to dance this together in the leading set. After it’s over, we’ll
put the sunburst coin on exhibition.”
“Pop Goes the Weasel! Dear me! the last time I danced it was on a public
playground with that poor little deaf-and-dumb foreign child whom,
between us, we rescued from drowning in the shallow bathing-pool,”
murmured Morning-Glory, in fancy seeing little Rebecca’s big-eyed face
under the Chinese lantern above her. “Ha! there’s Captain Andy looking
in at us, with the hotel guests; he paid me the ‘dandiest’ compliment
that day, so the girls told me”—laughing merrily—“he said I was so light
on my feet that I danced like a Mother Carey chicken on a foam hill;
what d’you think of that?”
“Well, I bet you do! I can tell better, though, after the Weasel has
popped,” laughed Stack, as this leading couple in the leading set stood
with arms arched for a gay little dancer (it happened to be orchard
Kitty who had been duly instructed beforehand in the popping figures) to
pass beneath.
Never did a weasel pop to a finish more triumphantly; never did the
large handsomely decorated room where fashionable seashore visitors held
revel during the summer echo and reëcho to happier laughter, more joyous
dance-cries; never certainly did its decorative panels smile upon a
company so fraught with promise for the future of their native land as
this assemblage of Scouts in khaki and their Camp Fire Sisters.
“Now, when you’ve rested, we’ll exhibit the _peso_, the Peruvian
sun-dollar, to all who want to see it!” suggested Miles when the dance
was over and he was fanning his partner with his broad hat, to be worn
later when the Boy Scouts were to give an exhibition, go through some
drilling and signaling “stunts” for the entertainment of their
hostesses.
“I’m rested now, but don’t show it off to too many people at once,”
pleaded the girl shyly. “If they’re hotel guests bring them one by one
or two at a time—I hate facing a crowd!”
Stack divined that she did not want to run the gauntlet of many
questions about her experiences on the day when she had been a castaway
on the Neck and espied the coin-waif, from the wreck of long ago,
flashing from its wet niche in a sand-hill.
“All right!” he agreed. “We’ll hold a reception for the sun’s face on
the sun-dollar, though if I was the sun I’d boycott Peru forever—never
shine on ’em again—for caricaturing me like that! I’ll usher guests in
one by one; ladies first, then that lawyer-chap to whom I was speaking a
while ago who’s interested in coins.” Miles nodded toward a tall, thin
man lounging just inside the doorway of the room.
“Did he tell you he was a lawyer?”
“Not in so many words, but he said that he was only resting at this
hotel for a day or two and that, then, he was going on to old
Newburyport on the Merrimac River, thirty or forty roundabout miles from
here, on a quest that was not exactly legal business; he did not say
what sort of search it was, but why should he mention that it wasn’t a
legal matter if he wasn’t side-stepping his own line, eh?” beamed Miles,
fanning more vehemently with his Scout’s hat.
“Newburyport! Old Newburyport—the only Newburyport in the United
States!” sighed the girl. “I have been wanting all summer long to go
there; my great-gran’father lived there once; at least, he used to sail
out of Newburyport on his long voyages to the West Indies; he went all
round the world sometimes.”
This was the gayest evening of her life, the most utterly happy one
since she had lost her parents, yet as young Stackpole went off to
summon the lawyer who was “side-stepping his own legal line” by taking
up with some matter outside it, she felt as if her heart shrank until it
was the size of a peanut, squeezed by poverty’s iron hand; she had not
been able even to afford the train fare to Newburyport, a town in the
same State, without imposing on Cousin Anne.
“Never mind, it won’t always be so; I’ll soon be independent, earning
money in some way, even among a storm of typewriters! And I’ll always
have the silver sunburst to remind me of this happy summer and that, as
a Camp Fire Girl, I’m a daughter of the Sun,” she murmured to herself
even as her hand went up to the back of her neck to unfasten Arline’s
silver chain, in order that the stranger might examine her coin-pendant
closely.
“It certainly is a most beautiful specimen of Peruvian coinage,” that
stranger was exclaiming presently after Miles had duly introduced him to
its owner. “Do you mind if I take it over there to the farther end of
the room where there are some electric lights that aren’t dressed up
like Chinese mandarins, so’s to see it better?”
“Not at all!” they agreed and followed him like happy children, Miles
and Jessica.
Several of Jessica’s Camp Fire Sisters of the Morning-Glory Tribe,
hovering around their sweet-faced Guardian, also migrated to that far
end of the long room where there were no swinging, red-and-yellow,
mandarin lights; so did two or three of the Scouts, with Captain Andy,
looming massive in this hall of revelry, at their heels.
“Yes, I don’t think these South Peruvian _pesos_ were issued after
1838,” remarked the lawyer, his words dropping clearly into the heart of
the lull between the music and dances. “I can make out the inscription
above the sun-stamp fairly well: ‘_Repub Sud Peruana_,’ and that
grotesque little sun-face—like a microscopic All-hallowe’en face—at the
heart of the sunburst. But—but what is this fresh engraving, if you can
call it so, beneath it?”
“My initials in a tiny monogram,” laughed Jessica. “He put them
there”—glancing up at Miles—“in honor of my seeing it first.”
“What _Philistinism_! What youthful arrogance!” gasped the lawyer half
under his breath. “Why, it spoils the ancient stamp!” angrily.
“Not so! I made too slick a job of it for that!” maintained the
eighteen-year-old Scout, with a chuckle, not caring in the least that an
elderly lawyer who was “side-stepping his own job” should denounce his
act as that of a spoiling Philistine; nobody else of the group or
throng, now augmented by almost every young person in the room, exactly
caught the stranger’s words and meaning, with the exception of the Camp
Fire Guardian.
“I’ll wager no silversmith could have done it better with the tool I
had, the fine blade of my penknife,” boasted Stack, peering down at the
minute, intertwined letters under the sunburst; “you see they were easy
letters to weave into a monogram: J. D. H.: Jessica Dee Holley!”
“Dee! Dee! Is your middle name _Dee_?” The irate lawyer’s expression
changed as if a flash of lightning from the electric bulbs overhead
struck him. “Dee!” he reiterated. “It’s not a common surname; I have, as
yet, only got upon the track of a few families of that name. And I
can’t—I can’t go about asking every one I meet what his or her middle
name is, if it happens to begin with D.” He looked appealingly at
Jessica, shifting the old coin upon his wrinkled palm.
“No, of course not.” Morning-Glory did not know whether to laugh or
hide; she thought he was slightly deranged and edged a little closer to
Miles.
“I’m going on to Newburyport on the Merrimac River in a day or two, to
see whether I can, in person, get upon the trail of any Dees whose
ancestors lived there,” went on the man who was on a “side-stepping”
quest.
“Well! you needn’t go any farther,” proclaimed Stack excitedly, his Boy
Scout’s trained detective-instinct leading him to believe that there was
“something in the wind.” “Do some pumping—I mean questioning—here first!
Miss Holley’s middle name is Dee and she has just told me that her
great-grandfather—on her mother’s side, I suppose—came from Newburyport.
He was a sea-captain.”
“A sea-captain!” More lightning struck the lawyer, so it seemed; he made
a few prancing, forward steps. “Was he drowned?”
“Yes, in the year 1840, so Mother told me.” There was the germ of a sob
in Jessica’s answer; she did not take kindly to abrupt questioning about
this heroic, handsome ancestor whose memory she idolized.
“What was his name, his full name—may I ask?”
“Captain Josiah Flint Dee, sir.” The great-grandchild spoke the name
proudly, although she was beginning to tremble and shiver, she didn’t
know why; was it possible that the ancestor whose dimpled chin, blue
eyes and live smile—preserved on ivory all these years—had been the
living companion of her loneliest, _sorrowfulest_ hours, was
really—really—coming alive, at last, in some deed of his, to bless her?
Not for an instant was she so disloyal to the gallant shoulders and the
fine head in the old miniature as to imagine that any deed of his could
shame her.
So she threw back her own brown head and looked the queer questioner,
who was still holding her sun-dollar upon his palm, straight in the eye
as she added:
“Yes, my great-grandfather’s name is written in a small Bible that I
have, which was printed very long ago, in which an s is formed like an
f,” with a catch of the breath. “My grandfather’s name is written on the
fly-leaf, too, and my grandmother’s and my mother’s.”
“All named Dee! Well! Well! And I might never have found that out, might
never have thought of questioning you—for, of course, I can’t go about
asking people _what their middle names are_—if it hadn’t been for your
monogram scratched on this old coin.”
“‘Youthful arrogance,’ eh?” quoted Miles with a wink, flinging the words
back in the lawyer’s teeth. “I call it a heaven-sent inspiration if
there’s anything back of your questions, sir!” The Eagle Scout darted an
eagle look, but a respectful one at the same time, at the elderly legal
stranger.
“If there is any purpose back of ’em, I say go ahead an’ drive it—no
more bushwhacking—you’re upsetting the little girl and holding up the
dancing—spoiling the party!” threw in Captain Andy with a paternal look
at Jessica who was now leaning against her Camp Fire Guardian.
“Why! of course there’s a purpose back of them,” replied the lawyer with
dignity. “I am in possession of knowledge that _may_ be of benefit to
this young lady to whom I was so accidentally introduced through looking
at the coin she found. But in order to determine beyond doubt whether—or
not—she really is heir to a trifling old legacy, I must ask a few more
questions.”
“Heir! Legacy! _Gee!_” Tenderfoot Tommy Orr licked his lips as he
hovered upon the skirts of the ring which had formed around Jessica, his
short, fat neck thrust forward, his gaze slanted inquiringly upward at
one and another of the now thoroughly excited group. “Legacy! Gee whiz!
That sounds slick,” puffed the Astronomer.
“I’m sure I’m on the right track at last,” murmured the lawyer, mentally
squinting backward at certain letters of inquiry he had written during
the past few weeks to people whose surname was Dee in various parts of
the country, which had brought no satisfactory results. “But there may
be other heirs or heiresses beside this young lady—other descendants of
Captain Josiah Dee. Are you an only child?” he inquired of Jessica.
“Yes. I had a little brother who died when he was a baby.”
“And your mother—she was an only child, too?”
“Yes. And my grandfather was an only son; at least he was the only one
to grow up; he ran away from home, that is, went away soon after he was
twenty on hearing a rumor of gold being found in California; that was
while my great-grandfather was away on the voyage from which he never
came back; he was lost in a storm with his ship _The Wave Queen_.”
“_The Wave Queen!_ Ha! We’re getting on.” The lawyer rubbed his palms
together upon the old sunburst coin as if he were petting it.
“Your grandfather was a gold-hunter, eh? Did he own the little old Bible
you speak of with the names on the fly-leaf? That would come in handy as
evidence.”
“Yes; my mother said that was the only thing he took away with him,
beside his outfit, when he started for California, that and a little
miniature painted on ivory of his father; both had belonged to his
mother—my great-gran’mother.” Jessica’s voice faltered a little as she
leaned against the Guardian of the Camp Fire, Miss Dewey; lawyers did
seem to do no end of bushwhacking, beating about the bush; at the next
leveled question, however, she straightened up; her eyes shone.
“Did you ever hear of your great-grandfather’s saving the life of a
Boston merchant or petty trader, named Orlando Norton, at sea?”
“No, but I know he saved a whole lot—of—lives,” with a proud quiver in
the voice.
“Well! I may come to the point at last and tell you that on one of his
voyages he did save the life of Orlando Norton whom he found clinging to
a spar in mid-ocean, after the passenger ship on which he was aboard was
wrecked. And this Orlando Norton was grateful; he wasn’t a rich man, but
he left Captain Josiah Dee a small legacy at the time of his death which
occurred while your great-grandfather was away on his last voyage from
which he never came back. So the legacy went unclaimed. The Judge of
Probate ordered it to be deposited in a Boston savings bank until some
claimant turned up. None has ever done so—efforts were made at the time
to reach your grandfather, but they failed—so the sum has lain there for
nearly seventy-five years, swelling and multiplying at compound
interest, doubling itself every twenty-five years or so.”
Dead silence as the legal tones ceased; among the girls not a hair
ribbon stirred! As for the Boy Scouts, only the Astronomer’s padded
gasps, sounding as if they emanated from a throat lined with
cotton-wool, made themselves heard; others were holding their breath.
“Great guns! I’d like to ask how this matter of a legacy came to be
hauled forward again after such a long time had elapsed?” Captain Andy
suddenly thrust a massive shoulder into the midst of the group.
“Simply because of late years there has been a law obliging all banks to
publish, at intervals, a list of their unclaimed deposits in leading
newspapers. Probably if Miss Jessica Dee Holley and her parents weren’t
living in New England, they never saw that list, but I did, and not
having much legal business on hand, I thought I’d manufacture a little
by trying to look up heirs for two or three of the oldest legacies still
unclaimed.” Thus the lawyer explained his “side-stepping quest.” He was
silent for a moment, gathering breath for a dramatic climax; then he
stretched out his right arm and put the old sunburst coin, with its
dangling chain, back in Jessica’s hand.
“Here is your sun-dollar, my dear,” he said in fatherly tones; “it has
brought you a very strange piece of good fortune; through your initials
on the coin—which irritated me at first—I was led to question you; and,
now, I haven’t the slightest hesitation in saying that I am sure you are
the heiress to that old legacy—a debt of gratitude to your
great-grandfather for saving a life—and that, with my assistance, you
can claim it at any time.”
“Oh! Oh! Oh-h!” These bomb-like exclamations, fired off into the
stillness of the great room with its decorated panels and portly, gaudy
lanterns, were for a minute the only sound to be heard. “Don’t
faint—Jessica!” pleaded the Astronomer then.
“How much is the legacy?” Miles spoke huskily.
The lawyer cleared his throat. “Well! money looked bigger in those days,
I suppose, and the merchant was a comparatively poor man,” he prefaced;
“the original legacy was only three hundred dollars.”
“Three hundred! He didn’t put a big price on his life.” Miles kicked
vehemently at a chair.
Every one’s elated countenance fell—with the exception of the
new-found heiress who was thinking proudly of that deed of her
great-grandfather—three hundred dollars: it was better than nothing!
But it was a very small windfall which had fallen among them with a
very big thud and they resented the noise it made.
“Ah! but you forget”—a smile crept over the lawyer’s face—“you forget
that the legacy has lain in that savings bank at compound interest,
compounding and compounding for nearly seventy-five years; I can’t
compute exactly its present amount at a moment’s notice, but I know that
it is in the neighborhood of twenty-five hundred dollars; that isn’t
such a bad little nest-egg for pin-money, eh,” smiling at Jessica’s
white face, “even when my small fee is deducted?”
Silence again.
“Twenty-five hundred!” The shriek came from Sesooā. With a spring Sally
flung herself upon the “modest heiress,” flung her arms about her. “Oh!
Jessica,” she cried. “Jessica, darling! you can go to a school of art—to
a dozen schools of art, if you want to, now!” wildly. “She thought she
must earn her living as a stenographer in a business office!” Sally
flashed round upon the company, a smocked flame. “And—and she didn’t
want to—though I’d like it well enough—because she loves _color_ and she
has the makings in her of being an artist, a designer like her father,
painting beautiful windows with saints’ heads—and things! She says girls
do that, sometimes, now. An’ she wants to—but she must have an
education—and to design a Camp Fire Girls’ colored window, some day, if
ever we girls get a grand National Building!”
Sally had soared to a hill of imagination from which she crowed upon the
listeners like a veritable flame-bird, mocking coherency.
“Oh! Jessica, why didn’t you tell _me_ that?” whispered Olive Deering.
“I couldn’t—Olive lovey!”
The heiress in a modest way looked very white and trembling. “I always
felt—I always felt that my great-grandfather _lived_ in some way!” she
breathed. Tears oozed out between her eyelids.
It was a crucial moment. Then Tenderfoot Tommy Orr grew splendid. With
the rolling gait of a very fat boy, chin thrust out, he ploughed through
the circle and seized Morning-Glory’s hand in both of his.
“I say! you just come an’ have some fruit punch,” he commanded, waving
his Scout’s hat toward a far-away table. “Waiter has just brought it in!
Legacies an’ stuff are all right, but I’m—_parched_!” in the same tone
that he had proclaimed how he was poisoned.... “I’m too short for you to
take my arm, but you can hang on _tight_ to my hand!” he added in
Jessica’s ear, as he steered her for the distant table.
“You’re a good Scout, Tommy,” applauded Miles huskily. “Goodness! to
think that one of us, in a way, did dig up a fortune from the sands
after all—or something like it!”
“Miles!” The Guardian of the Morning-Glory Camp Fire seized young
Stackpole’s arm as if he were her son or as if she had known him all her
life. “Miles—that’s your name, isn’t it—for pity’s sake! get hold of the
hotel pianist who has been playing for the dances; ask her—ask
her”—breathlessly—“to strike up Portland Fancy or the Virginia Reel,
something, anything lively, and set the girls to dancing.”
“Yes, let them work it off through their feet; if not we’ll have a
scene!... Jiminy twisters! I want to make a scene myself!” added Miles
Stackpole, Eagle Scout, stopping to whoop in the act of obediently
crossing the room. “_I_ want to wrestle somebody: I want to get
out-of-doors and yell and yell—and _yell_—and kick over the Man in the
Moon!”