NEW SCENES
"'Flow Gently, Sweet Afton' certainly gave us a sermon out of the
common today," declared Uncle Joe on Sunday, after meeting. "And I
believe I can see Car'lyn May's fine Italian hand in it."
"Why, Uncle Joe!" cried the little girl. "Neither of my hands is
Italian. I'm 'Merican, through and through! Besides," she added
thoughtfully, "most of the Italians--Dominick, the ice-coal-and-wood
man, and Angelo, the fruit man, and the man that goes through our
street with the ice-cream-cone cart--most always have got dirty hands.
Mine _never_ get as dirty as an Italian hand."
But at that, perhaps Uncle Joe was right about the sermon. If
the Reverend Afton Driggs was influenced by the prattle of the
sunny-hearted Carolyn, he was not the only one so brightened by the
little girl's second coming to the Corners.
"I declare!" Mrs. Hiram Lardner was heard to say, "that young 'un gets
ev'rybody on the broad grin. And she's as good as she can be. Though
that ain't sayin' Car'lyn ain't a reg'lar ticket when she wants to be.
I don't forget how she encouraged Amos Bartlett to taste our soft-soap
that time, thinking it was a hogshead of merlasses."
In this brief visit, however, Carolyn May managed to get into no
mischief of a serious nature. For one thing, a great deal of her time
during the fortnight was given to Baby Carolyn Amanda. Much as she
had enjoyed taking care of Baby Laird, her little cousin was a more
delightful plaything than the pale lady's baby.
In the first place, Carolyn Amanda quite filled the little girl's idea
of what an infant should be. She was no "skinny" baby. And she was good
as good!
Then Carolyn had to call on all her old friends about Sunrise Cove
and the Corners. She positively had to spend an afternoon with Chet
Gormley's mother; and she took tea there as well. Mrs. Gormley's belief
in the ultimate business success of her son, now that Mr. Stagg seemed
to consider him of some importance in the hardware store, was more than
touching. Much as Carolyn May liked Chet she realized that he was, like
his mother, just a little "queer." Mr. Jedidiah Parlow observed:
"If that Chet Gormley ain't a ha'f-innocent 'tain't his mother's fault.
She's been fillin' up his head with fool idees ever since he got into
short pants. My soul! Does seem a pity that some boys has to have
mothers at all. If they could have two fathers instead, they'd turn out
some good in the world, I vow!" But, then, Mr. Parlow made out that he
was a regular woman hater and could only see their foibles.
But Mrs. Gormley was undeniably silly about Chet.
"Of course," Chet's mother said to Carolyn May, eying the little girl
with a birdlike slyness, "I don't s'pose Mr. Stagg's ready to make
Chet a full partner in the store right at first. But I guess he's
dreadful keen about keepin' Chet satisfied, ain't he?"
"Oh, I am sure Uncle Joe thinks a great deal of Chet," the little girl
agreed kindly.
"Um-m! Yes!" Mrs. Gormley said, and nodded her head seriously, but
a good deal like one of those automatons Carolyn had often seen in
candy-store windows. "Last Christmas he raised Chet's wages a whole
ha'f dollar a week and now he's promised him another raise this Fourth.
That's two raises in a year."
"Isn't that nice!" exclaimed her visitor.
"And if he keeps on," said the sanguine mother, "it'll soon be cheaper
for Mr. Stagg to make Chet a partner in the business than to pay him a
salary."
That the woman (and perhaps Chet himself) expected the good offices
of Carolyn May to help boost the boy in the estimation of Mr. Joseph
Stagg, did not detract from the fact that they both loved the little
girl and were delighted by having her to tea. She was regaled with the
very nicest eatables from Mrs. Gormley's larder; and Prince was given a
great platter of chicken bones which were really only half picked.
Chet walked home with Carolyn to the Corners after supper. It made her
feel very much grown up. Never had she been escorted home by a boy
before. She had to write Edna Price about it the very next day.
"UNCLE JOES AT THE CORNERS, JULEY 1.
"_Dear Edna_:
"I am havvin a awful good time with Mamma and Aunty Rose and we hav
got a luvly Baby. Its lots fater than the pal lady's Baby I tole
you about. And it truly blongs to my Uncel Joe and Mis Mandy. But
its just as good as mine whil I stay hear they sed so.
"But we wont be hear fore much longer but will be gon to blok Iland
like I tole you where you are cummin to see me and we will play in
the sand and ro botes. But not go fishin for I dont like wurms.
"There is a boy hear. His name is Chett Gormley. He works for Uncel
Joe. He cam home last nite with me from his mother house and she
calld him my boo. But he is not a boo--he is only Chett. He is a
nice boy and awful tall and this will be all--"
"Why!" gasped Carolyn May at this point. "Isn't that funny? _That
rhymes!_ I never knew before I was a poet.
"'He's awful tall.
And this will be all.'
My!"
The letter was signed and sent to Edna Price just as Carolyn wrote it;
for, although she was rather weak in spelling, the little girl, as her
mother saw, made her meaning quite plain save, perhaps, in the matter
of Chet Gormley being a "boo."
And now the visit to the Corners had drawn to its end. Carolyn had had
such a good time that she would have postponed, had it been her own
will, the journey out of the woods, across the pleasant plains and
through the rich valleys of Massachusetts, and so finally down to Rhode
Island's former summer capital by the sea.
It was by no means an unadventurous journey, and the day and night
they spent at Newport was long to be remembered, too. Almost anything
can happen when one travels with a dog like Prince.
There was a rule of the hotel at which Carolyn and her mother stopped
which forbade dogs in the rooms of the guests, and the management
undertook to make them leave Prince in some part of the rear premises.
"I don't believe he'll be good down there," Carolyn May said to the
white-waistcoated and very precise-looking managerial person who
insisted on leading Prince away. "He never will make a mite of trouble
if he is with us. He's quite used to living with us. But to be tied
up--down in a cellar--Well! I just _know_ he won't be good."
"Sorry, little girl," said the stiff and haughty manager. "But rules
are rules."
When next they saw the man he was neither "stiffly starched" nor
haughty looking. His white vest and immaculate shirtfront were much
ruffled--and so was his temper. His black coat and trousers were a
sight!
"Here!" he gasped, struggling at the far end of Prince's leash, having
pounded on the door of the room in which Mrs. Cameron and the little
girl were just going to bed. "Take this dog. Dog! He's a hyena! I would
not turn an unprotected woman and child out of my house at this hour of
the night; but I would not allow this dog to remain here over another
night for anything or for any money."
Prince possibly proved his "hyena strain" by laughing just as plainly
as a dog could laugh. Seeing that his little mistress and her mother
were all right in this strange place, he immediately curled down on
a mat at the foot of the bed and blinked his eyes at them all in an
apathetic way.
"I told you," said Carolyn's small voice, "that I just _knew_ he
wouldn't be good in an old cellar."
"You may shut the door," said Carolyn's mother rather sternly to the
man. "You will hear nothing from the dog for the rest of the night."
The man backed out rather abashed. But wherever they went the
succeeding morning they were obliged to take Prince with them. He was
_persona non grata_ at that hotel.
It was a most delightful day, and they set sail for Block Island at the
very pleasantest hour of it. The little steamer sailed out of the bay,
passed the Dumplings and Fort Adams, breasting the heavy groundswell
running between Point Judith on the mainland and Sands Point, the
extreme northern tip of Block Island.
Lying but twenty-five miles or so from Newport, the island soon came
into view; and the sun-bathed Crescent Beach and the Clay Cliffs of
divers hues offered a very attractive picture to the passengers on the
steamboat.
They swept past the reach of the Neck in sight of the stony beach of it
and of the crescent-curled bathing beach with its sands hard enough to
drive upon with a brake and pair of horses; and so around the end of
the breakwater into the Old Harbour. Along the main street and up on
the hills behind the little hamlet, were the freshly painted hotels and
boarding houses, making a colourful picture.
Backed up to the wharf where the steamboat docked were several
brakes from the larger hotels, as well as a collection of surreys and
carryalls as quaint as Tim the hackman's vehicle at Sunrise Cove. The
island was no place for automobiles. There was a single street-car
running during the summer months from the South Side to the bathing
beach and the New Harbour at the Great Salt Pond.
Carolyn May and Prince, on the upper deck of the steamboat, were deeply
interested while the vessel approached the landing. The clang of the
bellbuoy at the mouth of the harbour excited Prince, and the little
girl was obliged to speak sternly to him to make him cease barking.
"That's not a fire engine bell, Princey," she told the excited beast.
"Why! they don't have fire department automobiles 'way out here in the
ocean. I should think you'd have more sense."
The men and boys who drove the buses and other vehicles were a
nondescript lot in appearance; but most of them wore yachting caps
and were dressed in a seamanlike way that distinguished them from the
visitors to the island. One old man caught Carolyn's eager attention
because of a certain physical peculiarity, if for no other reason.
His was a sturdy if undersized body. His face was tanned by salt winds
and tropical sun to a deep, mahogany hue. He wore a fringe of grey
beard masking his throat from ear to ear, but his lips and cheeks were
scrupulously shaven. He moved smartly and was dressed neatly; and those
observant persons who were familiar with his type would never have
mistaken him for anything but the ex-navalman he was.
He wore a cap, on the band of which was printed "_Truefelt House_" and
he stood beside the rear step of the bus on the roof-sign of which the
name of the hotel was repeated in black letters.
Somehow his roving, humorous eye caught that of Carolyn May. It
twinkled at once a friendly greeting. He waved a brown hand on the
back of which, even at that distance, she could see the deep indigo
markings of a tattooed pattern. He was one of the friendliest looking
persons the little girl had ever seen. Even Prince smiled widely at the
brown-faced man and uttered a sharp bark of greeting.
Aside from the pleasant countenance of the man from the Truefelt House
and his attractive manner, there was that particular thing about him
that interested Carolyn May immensely. The right leg of his breeches
was rolled up more than half way to his knee, revealing the varnished,
brass-ferruled end of a wooden leg braced firmly upon the wharf.
"Why," murmured Carolyn, wide-eyed, "he's a wooden-legged man! How
funny! I wonder how long he has had that wooden leg and--and if it
hurts him much."
It did not appear to inconvenience the man a great deal, for he got to
the head of the gangplank when it was run aboard as sprily as anybody.
"Truefelt House! Truefelt House, Ma'am!" he was saying, when Carolyn
May and her mother came up the plank.
A salesman with two big sample cases was just ahead of the Camerons,
and he thrust the heavy valises at the wooden-legged man.
"Here you are," he said. "I'm for the Truefelt House."
"And so is the lady and the leetle gal. Am I right, Ma'am?" queried
the wooden-legged man. "Lemme have _your_ bag. That's it. You go right
ahead, Mister," he added to the travelling man. "The good Lord has
blessed ye with two arms and two laigs, _as_ yet. There's the bus just
ahead of ye."
Prince, in his eagerness, came near to getting his leash tangled around
the man's wooden leg.
"Belay there!" sang out the bus driver. "You take a turn around that
spar, dog, an' ye'll likely lay me on my beam ends. What do you call
him when he's to home, Sissy?" he asked Carolyn.
"He's Prince. And if you please," said the little girl politely but
with emphasis, "I'm _not_ 'Sissy.' I am Carolyn May Cameron. And this
is my mamma."
"Proud to know ye, Ma'am," said the wooden-legged man. "I'm bussin'
jest now for Ben Truefelt and his marm who run the Truefelt House
since his dad died. _I'm_ Ozias Littlefield. One o' the 'riginal
Littlefields. They moved on to this island while the Injuns was still
here, an' helped cut down all the timber so's to ketch an' kill the
savages the better, I cal'late.
"You git right aboard, Ma'am," he added, helping Mrs. Cameron up the
rear step of the bus after the salesman. "Yaas'm; you can give me your
checks. A man with _two_ laigs'll come down after the trunks when them
deckhan's of Cap'n Ball set 'em off on to the wharf. You'm welcome, I
am sure, Ma'am."
"Now, leetle gal," he added, "you want to ride on the front seat with
me?"
"Oh!" and Carolyn's eyes danced. "But there's Prince."
"He can ride up there, too," declared Mr. Littlefield, and stubbed
around to the front of the bus. He lifted Carolyn up on to the high
seat, and grabbing Prince by the collar and his stump of a tail, tossed
him sprawling after her.
"Make him sit up side o' ye, leetle gal," said Mr. Littlefield,
and, securing the lines from the backs of the patient horses, began
clambering up himself. "I ain't so graceful as one o' these here
gazelles they tell about," he added. "I'm more like a crab--look one
way and travel t'other. But I manage to git there."
He ended, puffing a little, and falling upon the hard cushion of
the seat with his left foot on the brake release and the wooden leg
sticking straight out over the fat back of the nigh horse.
"All right astarn?" he called. "For we're goin' to cast off."
"All clear here, Skipper," said the salesman. "You can haul up your
mudhook."
"And you can haul in your slack," retorted the wooden-legged man. "I
remember you from a previous v'y'ge, young man. I dunno as Mr. Ben'll
want you an' your bags at all at the Truefelt House after you fillin'
the sugar bowls out'n the salt crock and the salt cellars vice varsy.
Fun is fun; but some people's idee of fun ought to bring 'em to the
gallus.
"Come up, Trouble! Hi, Worry! Shack along now. I guess we don't git no
more passengers this tide."
The fat, sleek horses awoke and ambled through the broad esplanade
before the docks. Carolyn was greatly interested in all she saw; but
particularly was she interested in the wooden-legged man and how he
came to have a wooden leg.
The horses, Worry and Trouble, drew the bus across the main street,
along the landward side of which were set most of the hamlet's shops,
the post-office, and some of the smaller hotels; while the other side
of the street dropped easily away to the harbour beach. They rattled
through a lane where the occupants of the fishermen's cottages could
almost shake hands from opposite doorstones; and then up a little
green rise into the premises of the Truefelt House--a sprawling frame
building with a porch on two sides and a big cupola on the roof with a
quarterdeck-walk outside the cupola.
Captain Solon Truefelt, who had built the house when he retired from
the sea, had still to pace his quarterdeck in all weathers. From the
cupola he could overlook the whole island and the surrounding seas
through an old-fashioned jointed telescope, that still hung in beckets
up in the glass-encased hut on the roof-top.
The Truefelt House was comfortably and well built, and had been
modernized to meet the requirements of the present generation of summer
visitors. Captain Solon's daughter-in-law and his grandson now managed
the hotel to much better advantage than had the old sea captain; and
the Truefelt fortunes were on the march.
Mr. Littlefield hopped down sprily, having halted Worry and Trouble
before the main entrance of the hotel, and lifted down Carolyn. There
was a sprinkling of guests on the porch who showed the usual vague
interest of summering people in the arrival of additional guests. The
little girl and the dog perhaps attracted rather unfavourable comment
in some quarters. Other people's children and dogs are generally
considered a nuisance.
A brisk young man, bare-headed, came out to greet Mrs. Cameron, whom
he helped descend with her bag from the bus. He nodded coolly to the
salesman and said to the lady:
"Your rooms are ready for you, Mrs. Cameron. I understand from your
husband that he will be with us on Saturday?"
"If he is permitted," Carolyn's mother agreed, following Mr. Ben
Truefelt, who had relieved her of the bag.
The little girl and Prince lingered. Carolyn was watching the
wooden-legged man climbing back to the driver's seat.
"He couldn't have been _born_ with it," Carolyn May murmured. "I wonder
where he got it?"