SAILOR TALK
Aunt Jennie sent a telegram to Uncle Hiram that night and two days
later he came. He looked, Elizabeth Ann decided as soon as she saw him,
exactly like the kind of a man who would live in a boat. For one thing,
he was dressed in dark blue clothes with brass buttons and he wore a
cap instead of a hat. Uncle Hiram looked like a sailor.
“He was captain of a ship before he married Aunt Grace,” Doris
explained to Elizabeth Ann.
Uncle Hiram talked like a sailor, too. He came to lunch and said he
had no idea it was “mess time.” And he talked about the wind, and kept
looking at the sky as though it was most important to keep an eye on
the weather.
Everyone liked him. He had curly white hair and a curly white beard
and a deep voice and the nicest smile. He called his car “a clipper”
and said he had had no trouble at all navigating the waters on the way
down to Seabridge. Elizabeth Ann made up her mind that it was going to
be fun to visit someone who talked about ships and the ocean all the
time, even when he was living on the dry land.
Aunt Jennie had packed a trunk for Elizabeth Ann and Doris and this
had been sent on ahead by train to Gardner, which was the town nearest
to Uncle Hiram’s farm. And, since Gardner was some distance from
Seabridge, it was necessary for the two little girls to rise very early
the morning after Uncle Hiram came, so that he could make the trip in
one day.
“School opens day after to-morrow,” said Uncle Hiram in his deep voice.
“Can’t have you absent on the first day, you know. Can’t have the
teacher say those girls who come from the Bonnie Susie, are slow about
learning their lessons.”
“What _is_ the Bonnie Susie?” Elizabeth Ann whispered to Doris. But
Uncle Hiram heard her.
“It’s our house,” he explained. “I named it after my first ship. I
wanted to call it the Bonnie Grace, but my wife wouldn’t hear of it;
said she didn’t want the whole countryside to know there was a house
named after her.”
“I think it is nice to have a house named after you,” said Elizabeth
Ann, wondering how it would sound to have a house, or a boat, named
“The Elizabeth Ann.”
Uncle Hiram was anxious to be off, and Aunt Jennie hurried everyone
through breakfast. Then they all came out to the car to help tuck
Elizabeth Ann and Doris in, and to see that Tony was as comfortable
as possible in his wicker basket. It can not be said that Tony liked
to travel, but Elizabeth Ann hoped he would like his new home when he
eventually reached there.
“Take in the gang plank,” said Uncle Hiram, when his passengers were
finally settled.
That, Elizabeth Ann discovered, meant to close the car door.
“Full steam ahead,” said Uncle Hiram and started the car.
“Good-by, good-by!” cried all the Masons; and Elizabeth Ann and Doris
waved and waved till they could see the little brown house no longer.
Now if Elizabeth Ann had been all alone, or if Doris had been alone,
each little girl might have felt a bit homesick at that moment--riding
away in a strange car with a strange uncle. But two little girls can’t
feel forlorn when they have each other; and besides, as Elizabeth Ann
wrote to Uncle Doctor later, it took a great deal of time to understand
what Uncle Hiram was saying. Because he talked like a sailor, and
neither Elizabeth Ann nor Doris understood sailor talk.
It was a most beautiful September day and the roads were lined with
goldenrod. Elizabeth Ann would have liked Tony to enjoy the scenery but
she didn’t feel that it would be safe to take him from his basket, and
Uncle Hiram said that he agreed with her.
“Cats have to get used to strange ships,” he rumbled in his deep
voice. “Wait till we get Tony to the Bonnie Susie and he’ll feel at
home in a couple of days.”
Elizabeth Ann, watching the gray road roll out like a piece of ribbon
in front of the car, thought often of Uncle Hiram’s house. Doris had
said it was like a boat.
“But of course,” said Elizabeth Ann to herself, “it can’t be a real
boat. I never saw a real boat on the land. And Uncle Hiram lives on a
farm, and you have to live in a house when you live on a farm.”
She was wondering about Uncle Hiram’s house, when his deep voice spoke
to her and she jumped a little.
“Well, mess-mate,” said Uncle Hiram pleasantly, “what do you say to
stopping at the next place where there is something to eat?”
“I think it would be nice to stop,” Elizabeth Ann declared promptly.
“I’m hungry, too,” announced Doris, and it was a pity her mother
couldn’t hear her, for Doris had not been hungry lately.
“Guess we’ll have to coal ship, too,” said Uncle Hiram and Elizabeth
Ann looked at Doris helplessly.
“I mean, we need some gas for the car,” Uncle Hiram added. “I forget
you haven’t signed up with a ship before. But you’ll learn in
time--you’ll learn in time.”
They came to a filling station with a nice, clean-looking restaurant
attached and Uncle Hiram drove in. He helped Elizabeth Ann and Doris
out and then looked at the basket in which Tony was fastened.
“How do we feed the cat?” he asked.
Elizabeth Ann had traveled with Tony before. She knew how to take care
of him.
“If there is a quiet place, I can take him out of the basket,” she
explained. “He likes liver and milk, but he won’t eat if there is much
noise, or many people looking at him.”
“He’s a cat after my own heart,” declared Uncle Hiram. “I can’t enjoy
my food if a crowd has to sit and stare at every mouthful I take. We’ll
see what we can do.”
Well, what Uncle Hiram could do was to take one of the tables in a
row of little alcoves. The table had seats built on two sides of it,
and there were pink and blue curtains that could be drawn across the
doorway, so that the alcove was almost like a separate room. Elizabeth
Ann and Doris sat on one side of the table, and Uncle Hiram sat on the
other, while a little waitress in a pink and white frock and a green
apron brought them hot rolls filled with creamed chicken, and glasses
of milk and, for Tony, a green and white enameled dish with tiny pieces
of liver all cut up ready for him to eat.
“Here’s your lunch, Tony,” Elizabeth Ann whispered, opening the basket
carefully.
Out popped the white head and green eyes of Tony. He looked around the
alcove and apparently approved of it. The dish of liver was on the
floor and Elizabeth Ann put him down beside it and he went to eating
not greedily, but daintily and slowly, as Tony always ate.
“You’ll be eating supper in the Bonnie Susie to-night,” said Uncle
Hiram, looking hard at Doris’s glass of milk.
Doris thought he meant her to drink it (which he did) and she took a
long swallow.
“Is--is the Bonnie Susie a house or a boat?” asked Elizabeth Ann, her
curiosity getting the better of her.
“Wait and see,” Uncle Hiram said with a smile.
“It’s a boat!” declared Doris. “I told you it was a boat, Elizabeth
Ann.”
“Well, you----” began Elizabeth Ann.
She had intended to say, “You never saw it,” and suggest that Doris
might be mistaken.
But instead she glanced down under the table and cried in alarm,
“Where’s Tony? Tony isn’t here!”
Tony wasn’t there--he had disappeared. He had licked his dish as clean
as clean could be and then had vanished.
“I’ll find him--likely as not he is prowling around the restaurant, in
the main room,” said Uncle Hiram. “You two children stay here and I’ll
round up the culprit. We can’t allow mutiny on board this craft.”
Uncle Hiram went out through the curtains and Elizabeth Ann and Doris
waited. He didn’t come back and he didn’t come back.
“I can’t go away and leave him here,” whispered Elizabeth Ann, feeling
as though she would like to cry. “He would be so unhappy if he found
out I’d gone off with Uncle Hiram and left him.”
“Serve him right,” Doris said rather crossly. “Anyway, Uncle Hiram
won’t let you stay here to wait for Tony; if that cat doesn’t come
back, you’ll just have to go and leave him.”
Doris, you see, was a little tired and as people often are, who have
been ill, inclined to be cross. She didn’t want Elizabeth Ann to be
unhappy, but neither did she want to have their journey interrupted by
a search for Elizabeth Ann’s cat.
“I just have to find him,” said Elizabeth Ann. “I’m going to open that
door and see where it goes.”
She pointed to a door in the wall behind them--a closed door. But it
wasn’t a locked door for it opened when Elizabeth Ann turned the knob,
and there was a flight of steps leading down to the cellar.
“You’d better stay right here,” Doris told her, and that was certainly
good advice.
Elizabeth Ann, unfortunately, didn’t always take good advice.
“I’m going down to look for Tony,” she said firmly. “You stay there so
you can tell Uncle Hiram where I’ve gone.”
And down the steps went Miss Elizabeth Ann, into a perfectly strange
cellar.
It wasn’t dark--that is, it wasn’t so very dark. She began to call
softly for Tony as she went down the steps and when she found herself
on the cement floor she thought she saw him moving among the shadows.
But when she walked toward what she thought was the cat, Elizabeth Ann
discovered that it was only a piece of wood someone had dropped as they
carried an armful up for the fire.
“Here, Tony, Tony!” called Elizabeth Ann.
The cellar seemed to have little rooms arranged around it--Elizabeth
Ann wrinkled her nose at the spaces where coal and wood were piled, and
the potatoes and onions and other vegetables heaped in neat piles in
some of the other rooms. But when she came to a place just lined with
shelves, Elizabeth Ann paused. She forgot Tony for a moment, too.
“It looks like the pantry Aunt Hester had in her house,” thought
Elizabeth Ann.
These shelves were filled with glass jars, just as Aunt Hester’s
shelves had been filled. Elizabeth Ann knew what was in the jars--fruit
and jam and jellies--perhaps vegetables, too. She opened the gate made
of slats and went in to have a better look.
“I thought so!” said a sharp voice behind her. “I’m not a bit
surprised. Put out your hand!”
Too surprised to disobey, Elizabeth Ann held out her little right hand.
At once she felt three hard stinging blows across it--blows from a
ruler the owner of the sharp voice held in her hand.
“Now you march right upstairs,” commanded the sharp voice.