_In Which We Take a Vacation_
Diogenes finally convalesced to his former state of ruggedness and
obstreperousness. He continued, however, to cling to Silvia and to
call her "mudder." To my amusement the other children followed suit
and she was now "muddered" by all the Polydores.
"I am glad," I remarked, "that they scorn to include me in their
adoption. I wouldn't fancy being 'faddered' by the Polydores."
"You won't be," Ptolemy, appearing seemingly from nowhere, assured me.
"We've named you stepdaddy."
"If it be possible, Silvia," I implored, "let this cup pass from me."
"I am going down to the intelligence office today," replied Silvia
soothingly. "Diogenes is well enough to go home now, and I can run
over there every evening and see that he is properly put to bed."
I went down town feeling like a mule relieved of his pack.
When I came home that afternoon, I found Silvia sitting on the shaded
porch serenely sewing. A Sabbath-like stillness pervaded. Not a
Polydore in sight or sound.
"Oh!" I cried buoyantly. "The Polydores have been returned to their
home station!"
"No," she replied calmly. "They told me at the intelligence office
that it would be absolutely impossible to persuade, bribe, or hire a
servant to assume the charge of the Polydore place."
"I suppose," I said glumly, "that Gladys gave the job a double cross.
But will you please account for the phenomenon of the utter absence of
Polydores at the present period? Has Huldah at last carried out her
oft-repeated threat of exterminating the Polydore race?"
"Pythagoras," explained Silvia dejectedly, "has gone to the doctor's.
He broke his wrist this morning. Diogenes is lost and Emerald has gone
to look for him--"
"Oh, why hunt him up?" I remonstrated. "Maybe Emerald, too, will get
lost or strayed or stolen."
"Huldah," continued Silvia, "has locked Demetrius in the cellar. I am
unable to report on Ptolemy. Huldah is half sick, but she won't go to
bed. She said no beds in Bedlamite for her. But I have a wonderful
plan to suggest. There is relief in sight if you will consent."
"I will consent to any committable crime on the calendar," I assured
her, "that will lead to the parting of the Polydore path from ours.
Divulge."
"We both need a change and rest. Today I heard of a most alluring,
inexpensive, unfrequented resort called Hope Haven. Unfashionable,
fine fishing, beautiful scenery, twelve miles from a railroad, and a
stage stops there but once a day."
"If there is such a place, we'll go there at once, though why such an
enticing spot should be unfrequented is beyond me. Do we leave the
Polydores to their fate, or as a town charge?"
"We'll leave them to Huldah. She offered to keep them here if we'd
take the outing. She said she'd either give them free rein or beat
their brains out."
"Then I see where the Polydores land in a juvenile jail, or else I
return to defend Huldah for a charge of murder. We'll take our
departure by night--tomorrow night--and like the Arabs, or the
Polydore parents, silently steal away."
"Lucien," said Silvia constrainedly, when we had arranged the details
of our plan, "if you wouldn't object too much, I should like to take
Diogenes with us. He hasn't missed his mother, but I really believe
he'd be homesick without me."
"Take him, of course," I said. "He's manageable away from the others.
I plainly see you've formed the Polydore habit, and maybe a partial
parting from the Polydores would be wiser, but we'll take Diogenes as
an antidote against too perfect a time. But I forgot to tell you that
I had a letter from Rob today. He plans to come and make his visit
now and will arrive next Monday. I'll write him to join us at Hope
Haven. You must write down again for me the route we take to get
there."
Silvia laughed hopelessly.
"It never rains but it pours. I had a letter from Beth this afternoon,
and she says she would like to come to us now. She arrives Monday.
Here is her letter."
"Great minds! It is quite a coincidence," I declared.
"I thought it would be so nice to have Beth go with us to this
resort."
"It can't be done," I said. "That is, they can't both go. I am not
going to let even Rob Rossiter slight my sister."
"Still it would be a triumph to have her change his mind--or his
heart. You know a woman-hater always succumbs to the right girl."
"In books, yes!"
I had been scanning Beth's letter and I laughed derisively as I read
aloud: "'I am so curious to see those next-door children. When you
first wrote of the "Polydores" I never once thought of them as
children.'"
"She thought exactly right," I told Silvia, and then continued
reading: "'I supposed them to be something like tadpoles or polliwogs.
I really think I shall enjoy them.'"
"It would serve her right," I said, "to let her come and stay with
them here in our absence. She'd get the cure for enjoyment all right.
Rob wrote of them in the same strain and says he, too, is curious to
meet the missing links."
"Does she know," asked Silvia, "how Rob regards women?"
"No; I've always made some excuse to her for not having them meet. I
didn't want to hear her make disparaging remarks about him, and she
is such a flirt, she'd try to draw him out and he would shut up like a
clam."
"Well, I think," decided Silvia, "that the best way out of it is to
write Rob to postpone his visit and I will write Beth to come direct
to Hope Haven."
"Yes," I agreed, "that will be fine. She shall have charge of dear
little Di and study the evolutions of the Polydores later."
I approved this plan. So we wrote our letters and stealthily, but
joyously, prepared for our getaway, leaving the house like thieves in
the night and bearing the sleeping cherub, Diogenes.
Silvia sighed in relief when we were aboard the train.
"I feel quite chesty," she declared, "at being smart enough to outwit
Ptolemy, the wizard."
"I have the feeling," I observed forebodingly, "that they may be on
the train or underneath it."
The next morning we reached Windy Creek, the station nearest our
destination, and continued our journey by stage.
"People will think you have consoled yourself very speedily for the
death of your first husband," I observed, as we were en route.
"Why, what do you mean, Lucien?"
"You know Diogenes addresses me as stepdaddy. It is the only word he
speaks plainly."
"Oh!" she exclaimed in perturbation, "I never thought of that! Well,
we can explain to everyone, or I'll teach them to leave off the
'step.'"
"Not on your life!" I demurred.
"He had better call you Lucien, then. Emerald calls his father
'Felix.'"
She at once began her tutelage of the bewildered Diogenes. After
several stabs at pronouncing Lucien he managed to evolve "Ocean" to
which he sometimes affixed "step" so that people to whom he was not
explained doubtless thought me the latest thing in dances.
Hope Haven was like most resorts--a place safe to shun. There was a
low, flat stretch of woods in which a clearing had been made for a
barn-like structure called a hotel, with rooms rough and not always
ready. The beautiful recreation grounds mentioned in the advertising
matter consisted of a plowed field worked over into a space designated
as a tennis court and a grass-grown croquet ground.
"Anyway," claimed Silvia hopefully, "it's a treat to see woods, water,
and sky unconfined."
She devoted the remainder of the morning to unpacking and after
luncheon set off to explore the woods, borrowing from the landlady a
little cart for Diogenes to ride in. My plan to go in swimming was
delayed by my garrulous landlord.
I was just starting for the lake when I heard sounds from the woods
that alarmed the landlord but which I instantly recognized as the
Polydore yell. A moment later I saw Silvia emerging at full speed into
the open, drawing the cart in which Diogenes was doubled up like a
jackknife. I hastened to meet them.
"Oh, Lucien," exclaimed my wife tearfully, "we are bitten to bits!
Just look at poor little Di!"
I lifted the howling child from the cart. His face, neck, and hands
were stringy and purplish--a cross between an eggplant and a round
steak.
"Mosquitoes!" explained Silvia. "They came in flocks and they
advertised particularly 'no mosquitoes.'"
A dour-faced guest paused in passing.
"There aren't--many," she declared. "Very few, in fact, compared to
the number of black flies, sand fleas, and jiggers. However, you'll
find more discomfort from the poison ivy, I imagine."
"Lucien," began Silvia in lament.
"Never mind!" I hastened to console, "you are out of the woods now,
and you won't have to go in again. I presume they have an antidote up
at the house. I'll give you and Diogenes first aid and then we will
all go down to the lake shore. You can both sit on the dock and watch
me swim."
They both brightened up, and when we reached the hotel the landlady
provided a soothing lotion for the bites and stings.
By the time we had started for the lake, the afflicted two were in
holiday spirit again.
I sought cover in a small shed called a bath-house and got into my
swimming outfit and shot out from the dipping end of the diving-board
into the water. When I came to the surface, Silvia, sitting beside
Diogenes on the dock, shrieked wildly.
"Oh, Lucien, there are snakes all around you! Come out, quick!"
"They are only water snakes," I assured her.
"I don't care what kind they are. They are snakes just the same."
Diogenes instantly began to bellow for me to hand him a snake to play
with.
"He recognizes his own," I told Silvia, who, however, saw nothing
amusing in my implication.
When I came out of the water, the temperature had climbed several
degrees and we were glad to seek the hotel parlor, which was cool and
damp.
After dinner Silvia put Diogenes to bed and we sat out on the veranda.
I was enjoying my evening smoke and the feel of the night wind in my
face. Silvia had just finished telling me that merely to be away from
the Polydores was Paradise enough for her, and that she didn't care
very much about the woods, anyway--the lake was sufficient, when her
optimism was rudely jolted by the shrill, shudder-sending song of the
festive mosquito.
She fled into the parlor. The landlady, who seemed to have a panacea
for all ills, suggested that she might tack mosquito netting around
the little balcony extending from our bedroom, and then she could sit
there in comfort when the mosquitoes bothered.
"That's what the last lady that had that room did," she said, "but
when she left, she took the netting with her. We keep a supply in our
little store."
Silvia immediately sought the hotel store and bought a quantity of the
netting and a goodly stock of the mosquito lotion.
That night as I was drifting into slumber, Silvia remarked: "Only one
of the things I heard and read about this place is true."
"Which one?" I asked between winks.
"That it was unfrequented. I have seen only three guests besides us so
far. How do they make it pay?"
"The hotel is evidently only a side issue," I replied.
"To what?"
"To the store. Think of the quantities of lotion and netting they must
sell in the season, which, you must know, is in the fall. The hunting,
the landlord tells me, is very good, and his hotel is quite popular
in October and November."
"I think we had better stay, Lucien. Mosquitoes don't poison you."
"Even if they did," I declared, "as a choice between them and the
Polydores I would say, 'Oh, Mosquito, where is thy sting?'"