out with, because Mom and Aunt Claire don’t toss stuff on the floor
like you boys do.”
“That’s no fair,” yelled James. “It’s a cheat!”
“It’s not a cheat,” retorted Jane. “I had all sorts of company on my
side during the week and they left hairpins and face powder all over
the place.”
Mom finished her grocery list and stood up to leave. “Well,” she said.
“I’m still offering a prize. If you two would rather argue about it
than win it, I’ll give the job to Davey and Bill instead.”
“No, no, Mom. We’ll take it. We’ll go right away,” and they ran in the
direction of the bathhouse.
Jane opened the door and got to work. She swept the floor, wiped off
the bench and even polished the mirror. While she was hanging fresh
towels she called to James.
“Why don’t you hurry? Mom will be back from shopping, and I’ll win.”
“Aw, I could win with both hands tied behind my back. I can clean mine
in five minutes and still win.”
He lay flat on the pier, idly kicking the boat back and forth, but
all of a sudden he realized that his boasting wouldn’t take him much
farther, because Jane had almost finished with her side and he still
had everything to do. He sauntered over to the bathhouse, being careful
to give the impression of great leisure, just as Jane emerged.
“I’ll win,” she said cockily. “You haven’t got a chance. You started
too late.”
“Pooh, pooh,” said the master mind, but the minute her back was
turned, he hurried as fast as he could. He was almost finished when
Mom returned from shopping. All that was left was a pile of dust in
the middle of the floor. Jane had taken the dust pan back to the
cottage with her. If he swept it out on the brick steps he would be
disqualified. He could pick it up in his hands and stuff it in his
pockets, but there were no pockets in this suit. Mom was on her way
across the lawn for inspection right this minute.
“Aha,” he thought, in a burst of pure mischief, and as quick as a wink
he swept the remaining dust under the partition and over to the girl’s
side. Broom in hand and eyes dancing, he stepped outside and bowed to
Mom.
“Everything is in order, Mom,” he said. “I get the prize.”
Mom stepped inside the boy’s side and looked around carefully. “Very
good,” she said. Then she stepped out and walked around to the girl’s
side. She looked around carefully again. James giggled, expecting her
to see the joke, but her face was grave as she noticed the dust spread
fan-wise from under the partition.
“You have the cleanest bathhouse, James,” she said. “You win the
prize,” and she gave him a candy bar.
James gulped. “But Mom....”
She looked at him in a funny sort of way, but she didn’t say any more,
and then she walked up toward the house.
Janie was getting ready to go to Deerpath with the Landrys when the
prize was announced, so her normal surprise and protest were somewhat
muffled in the mild excitement of leaving.
That was the end of it. James felt baffled. He walked around with the
candy bar in his hand. What was the matter with Mom? Couldn’t she see a
joke?
The rest of the afternoon passed in a dull sort of way. Mom was busy
with preparations for Sunday and she didn’t seem to pay any attention
to him. Billy and Davey were fishing at the dam and Janie wasn’t home.
He walked around with his face squinted up in a frown, kicking at tufts
of grass.
“Maybe tonight I can finish my sunset,” he muttered.
Early in the season Aunt Claire gave James a piece of canvas and some
tubes of oil paint.
“Paint the sunset,” she encouraged him. “You draw well and we have such
beautiful sunsets out here. See what you can do.”
Every evening, as the sun sank, James hauled forth his canvas and
brushes. He’d get everything organized for painting. The sun got
splashed in the middle of the horizon, an oily red blob surrounded by
sausage-like clouds in a glazed blue sky. His nose would wrinkle in a
distressed sort of way.
“This isn’t the way Aunt Claire’s sunsets look.”
By the time he had mixed the right shade of purple for the low-banked
clouds the sun had disappeared and he’d put everything away until the
next evening. The next evening the clouds that had been fat and fluffy
were long and wispy, and the rose colored sky of the night before would
be changed to gold.
Hurriedly mixing his colors, he’d attempt to change his canvas to match
the changed sunset, but again the magic colors eluded him and darkness
came before he was finished.
“Creepers, I never can work fast enough. I’ll never finish this thing.”
As the days went by the canvas became more and more covered with paint,
but James wasn’t cast down. He was always certain that the next night
would see the finished picture.
On this Saturday night there was no sunset, only a solid bank of black
storm clouds.
“Make everything fast,” called Dad. “We’re going to have a blow,” and
then the sun appeared between a crack in the clouds.
“Hurry, boy, hurry,” called Dad. “Finish your picture.”
James ran for the paints. The many-colored clouds of previous attempts
were hastily covered with black and gray. The sun peeped through as
always, and a few quick strokes with a clean brush made a golden halo.
The trees at the horizon were greenish black, and he finished the broad
sweeps of leaden gray that were the lake just as the first rain hit him.
“Hurray,” he exulted. “I’ve got it! I’ve got it,” as he ran for the
cottage holding the masterpiece over his head.
“That’s wonderful,” beamed Aunt Claire. “You’ve got real
stick-to-it-iveness. You have talent, too, but persistence
is more important. Let’s prop your sunset here on the floor
against the wall so that everyone can see it.”
All evening James heard nothing but praise and admiration for his black
sunset. By bed time he was beginning to feel pretty good, but then he
reached his hand in his pocket and felt that old candy bar.
Sunday was always a quiet time at the lake. The grown folks sat around
reading and taking naps, and even the children quieted down. Jane drove
to church with Daddy and Aunt Claire. She wore her white dress, and her
wide-brimmed floppy hat. All the way along there were folks going to
church. Cars slid out of side roads and chortled and wheezed down farm
lanes. They streamed up hill and down on the road to Deerpath. It would
be fun, thought Jane, to watch them from a plane. They would look like
a procession of shiny-backed beetles.
The church was crowded with summer people, and Daddy stopped at the
door to speak to some folks he knew. Inside, it was dark and cool. The
altars were filled with beautiful garden flowers. There were roses
during June, and larkspur, then white gladioli and lilies, making the
air heavy with their perfume. When the phlox and asters appeared Janie
always knew it was time to start thinking about going back to town.
The windows were swung open, and inquisitive sparrows came to the ledge
and looked in. Sometimes a fat bee would lumber about in the roses, and
then take off, heavily, for the summer world outside. Janie thought of
the psalm:
“I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of Thy house,
And the place where Thy glory dwelleth.”
This must be the place, she thought, looking around her, here in a
country church, with the doors and windows flung wide, filled with
music, and fragrant with the flowers of a country garden.
On the way home they stopped at the drug store to buy a paper. Later
breakfast was served on the terrace at the back of the cottage. It was
another one of Mom’s romantic ideas. It wasn’t entirely practical. You
see, the terrace wasn’t screened. Birds and butterflies entered at
their will, also dogs and mosquitos and ordinary flies.
Buick, the neighbor’s dog, always enjoyed having breakfast on the
terrace with the Murrays. He strolled over on this particular morning
looking around for his old enemy, Butch. Not seeing him, he made
straight for Janie’s chair. She absently gave him a piece of her
coffee cake, and went on reading the funnies. Aunt Claire was always
generous, so Buick looked pathetic and waited. Another piece of coffee
cake dropped into his jaws, and he said “Thank-you” in dog fashion, and
strolled over to Daddy’s chair.
Now, Daddy didn’t like dogs in general and Buick in particular. Not
that he would ever hurt a dog, or even a fly for that matter. He just
insulted them by ignoring them, and he was ignoring Buick completely
just now. Deep in the sport page, he read with perfect concentration.
Buick waited patiently, but no gifts were forthcoming. There was a
lovely curled strip of bacon getting cold while Daddy read. It was so
close to his moist black nose he could almost touch it. It smelled so
good he quivered. Suddenly there was a black streak of flying dog, and
a murderous roar out of Daddy. Buick and the bacon were gone.
“Bah!” Daddy fumed, shaking his paper in mock rage. “Butch is right
in his instincts about that pup. He’s nothing but a low down bacon
snitcher.”
In the afternoon Davey took Butch down to the lake front where they
watched “old rubber-back” paddle about in his tub. The boys lay on the
pier watching a sailboat race, and Janie took a pillow, an apple, and a
book and made for her favorite perch. It was up in the branches of the
old willow tree, right at the shore of the lake. The branches were as
thick as a man’s arm, and worn smooth with the clambering of the Murray
children. Ever since they were little Janie and the boys had played
up there. You could see all over the lake. It was cool and quiet, and
if you knew just how to prop your pillow, it was comfortable too. She
took a big bite of apple and sighed contentedly. This is the kind of a
Sunday afternoon I like, she thought.
James walked under her tree perch and glanced up.
“Can I come up, too, if I get a book?”
“You can, but may you?”
“Smarty!”
Jane laughed. “Come ahead. There’s room for the whole family.”
James ran for the cottage to get an apple and a book. The door of his
room was closed. It was a pretty nice room, and he was very proud of
it. It was always a comfortable place to come back to. As he opened
the door he noticed that the radio was turned on and the windows were
open. The pillows were plumped up in just the right way for reading.
The bedspread was neatly drawn across the bed and the books had been
restacked, and ... right in the middle of the room stood an enormous
pile of dust!
He turned and ran to the front yard and climbed the tree where Jane was
sitting. Much to her astonishment, he handed her a wrinkled, slightly
melted candy bar.
_Chapter Fourteen_
_Dad Finds a Treasure_
[Illustration]
Billy and Jane sat on the big stone posts at the gate swinging their
legs and watching for the mailman. They tried to guess what he would
bring.
“James will get his usual letter from that stamp dealer down east,”
said Jane. “He will say: ‘Dear Mr. Murray, I received your want list,
but you failed to include your money’ or he’ll say: ‘Dear Mr. Murray,
I received your dollar and three cents, but you failed to include your
want list. Please advise, etc.’” They laughed merrily at absent-minded
James and his difficulties, and then Jane heard the familiar squeal of
the mailman’s brakes.
“Here he comes,” she cried. “I’ll race you to the mailbox!” They jumped
off the posts and ran across the road. Jane had the shorter distance,
but Billy won by throwing himself full length on the grass and sliding
to touch the post.
“Really, Billy,” panted Jane. “Sometimes you use the foulest and the
most unfairest means....”
Billy hooted. “Foulest and unfairest!” Then, imitating her angry voice,
he said, “Really, Jane, you use the most unusual adjectives!”
She threw a shoe at him, and he ran away laughing.
The mailman’s car slid in close to the mailbox. He had a brown face,
all wrinkled from smiling. He was an usher at the little church in
Deerpath, and when he passed the collection plate to Janie on Sunday
his eyes crinkled up in a smile just as they did now when he passed the
letters from box to box at the lake.
“Here you are, young lady,” he said. “Letters for everybody today.”
There was “Popular Mechanics” for the boys, and a letter for Mom from
a dress shop. There were some letters for Daddy in long business
envelopes and a post card for Davey. At the bottom of the heap was a
square envelope addressed to:
Miss Jane Murray,
Oak Lake, Wisconsin.
R. R. 1
“From Dor,” Janie exclaimed, and sat down on the grass to read it.
Hi, Janie,
How are you? I am fine. My mother is going to Michigan tomorrow,
and I’d like to come to visit you for a few days. I will come on
the five o’clock bus,
Your loving friend,
Dor
Janie gathered her mail together and ran down to the cottage with
her news. “Here you are, my wonderful family,” she said. “Mail for
all of you.” Mom sat down to glance at her letter and the boys tore
the wrapper from their magazine. Davey’s post card was from a school
friend, and he chuckled at the picture on the cover. It was a garish
scene of an over-sized fish leaping into a row boat with a frightened
fisherman. “Look,” he said, “at the big fish Greenie caught.”
Janie waited for Mom to finish, and then she burst out with, “May Dor
come? I have a letter from her. May she come tomorrow?”
Mom blinked at the suddenness of it all, and put her glasses on the
table. “Why yes, of course. I’d be glad to have her. What does she
say?” Jane handed her the letter, and she glanced through it quickly.
Then she smiled.
“It’s not tomorrow,” she said. “It’s today. This letter was written
yesterday. She’ll be out on the five o’clock bus this afternoon.”
The boys were deeply absorbed in a marvelous invention that would make
an iceboat out of an old baby carriage. Jane grinned and put her finger
to her lips. “Don’t tell them,” she said to Mom. “They weren’t paying
attention to what we said.”
She held out her arms for Butch. “Come, my little brown friend. Let’s
go down to the pier and catch flies.” She stretched out on the hot
boards and dreamed in the sun. Butchie scrambled around on the braces
under the pier, snatching at shadows and frightening schools of timid
minnows. In a little while the boys came down and jumped into the boat
and rowed away. Janie stretched lazily. Two weeks from today, she
thought, I’ll be back in school. It doesn’t seem possible. Why the
summer has just begun. I don’t like to leave this. The sky will be just
as blue when we’re gone, and the water will be just as warm. Of course
school won’t be too bad, and this year there’ll be dancing class. I’ll
waltz and waltz (she dreamed), in a pink tulle gown, with pale pink
ostrich feathers in my hair.
_Bump...._ The boys banged into the pier full force with the boat and
Janie sat straight up.
“Hey, hey!” she yelled. “What are you trying to do, break the pier
down? Why are you back so soon? I thought you were going fishing.”
The boys laughed at her confusion. “We caught something right away,”
said Billy, “so we brought it back. Hold it up James.”
It was a small green turtle. His curved green legs pawed the air as
James held him up, and his under shell was red, green, and yellow in a
most interesting pattern.
“I’m going to bring him back to town and give him to Robin,” said
James. “He can keep him in his bathtub.”
“I guess his Grandmother will have something to say about that,” said
Jane primly.
“Well,” James argued, “why should she care if the turtle stays in the
bathtub? Turtles are clean. They’re almost the cleanest creatures in
the whole world, and she could lift him up if someone wanted to take a
bath, couldn’t she?”
“Maybe it’s a snapper,” said Jane. “You wouldn’t like it if Robin’s
Grandmother had her finger snapped off by a turtle, would you?”
“Aw,” said James in disgust. “You’re always thinking of something like
that,” and gathering his turtle and his fishing tackle up in his arms,
he started away. Just as he left the pier he turned and narrowed his
eyes. With just one word he summed up what he thought of Jane, her
arguments, her ideas, and her contemporaries.
“Dames ...” he said, witheringly.
Janie turned and hid her face in her arms, and laughed until she shook.
Then she gathered up Butchie and ran for the cottage.
Grandma was peeling green apples for pie. “Grandma,” she said. “Have
you noticed that this summer has been much too short?”
“Yes, Jane. Every summer seems a little shorter than the last. When
I was a little girl the summer days seemed to stretch in front of me
like years. Now I have so much to do and so much to think about that
the years fly past like days.” A long green peeling fell to the floor
in the shape of a treble clef, and Grandma’s sharp little paring knife
twinkled around another apple. “Your mother had a telephone message,”
she said. “It seems that your friend Dor is coming out on the five
o’clock bus.”
“Oh goody, oh wonderful, Grandma!” She gave her a hug that sent the
little green apples flying all over the porch.
“You wild one,” said Grandma, straightening her glasses. Jane was down
on her hands and knees searching for the runaways.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Just for that I’ll stay here and help you
peel them.”
The afternoon passed quickly, and at five o’clock Mom drove down to the
bus station with Janie beside her and the three curious boys in the
back. The passengers got off on the other side of the bus, so they saw
their feet and legs first. It was easy to identify Mr. Williams by his
brief case. The bus driver helped an old lady off with her suitcase and
then a pair of sun-tanned legs swung off the steps and Dor appeared
around the corner of the bus.
“It’s Dorothy Dreyer,” cried Billy.
“Dreyer,” squealed James, “with her braces off! Boy! what teeth! A
smile like a movie star.” Everybody laughed at that, and they started
back for the cottage.
“Oh,” said Janie, “I’m so glad you could come. Let me hold some of your
things. What in the world do you have in this one? It’s heavy.”
“Worms,” said the practical Miss Dreyer. “I knew the ground would be
dry now, and you’d be running out of bait, so I brought my own bait.”
Mom looked a trifle dashed, but the boys beamed on her.
“Dreyer,” said Bill. “You would have made a swell boy.”
They laughed and joked as they carried her stuff down to the cottage.
Everyone seemed to feel lighthearted and gay. They sat around the table
talking until it was almost dark. Someone started to sing, and they all
joined in. Daddy played the piano, and the children made so much noise
that Buick heard them next door and started to howl.
After the commotion died down the two girls strolled down to the
pier, and sat there dipping their toes in the water and watching the
reflection of the stars.
“Do you know what?” Dor asked.
“No, what?”
“I’m going to be a vet.”
“A what?”
“A vet. You know, a horse doctor. I just love horses and dogs, and I’m
really very good at taking care of them. I’ve decided to devote my life
to them.”
“Pooh,” said Janie inelegantly. “What about the ballet? Last year you
said you were going to be a ballerina, and spend the rest of your life
on your tiptoes.”
“That was last year,” said Dor patiently. “A lot can happen to a girl’s
life in a year.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Janie agreed. Dor stretched out and lay on her back
on the pier, looking at the stars overhead.
“What are you going to be, Janie?”
“I’m going to be a frozen corpse if I don’t go into the house and get a
sweater. I’m beginning to sneeze.” She started for the cottage. “Do you
want to come in or shall I bring a sweater for you?”
“Never mind about a sweater,” Dor said, “but send Billy down with a
flashlight. We’ll go hunting frogs.”
Janie curled up on the davenport with an apple and a book. Now and then
she would glance up to see the light flash on and off along the shore
as Dor and Billy and James pursued their favorite pastime.
“What are those children doing down there?” asked Grandma.
“They’re catching frogs,” Mom answered.
“Catching frogs? Lands sakes! What for?”
“Just for fun. They let them go again.”
Grandma looked puzzled. “They’re really entertaining Dor,” Mom went on.
“If she couldn’t have a frog hunt when she came out here for a visit,
I’m sure she’d be disappointed.”
Soon after daybreak Billy scratched on Janie’s screen. There was no
response. He called softly. Still no response. Then he shouted: “If you
lazy girls don’t get up and come fishing with us we’ll go alone.” Janie
grunted and Dor stirred. “And,” Billy continued, “we’ll take the worm
can, and we’ll use up all the worms.” That helped.
“Wait for us. We’ll be right out.”
They had breakfast at the kitchen sink, and Davey heard them and
demanded to go along. Five was a crowd for the row boat, but he looked
so eager it was hard to refuse him. “All right,” Billy said, “but sit
tight, and don’t catch any turtles.”
They pushed off in the mist. Billy and James took the oars, the girls
sat on the back seat, and Davey sat in the front. They decided to try
the pond first. Fishing was fair. By nine o’clock they had about a
dozen blue gills. Dor was in favor of staying, but the Murrays knew
they could do better than that.
“Let’s go to the dam,” said Bill, and they started down along the
eastern shore.
They rowed along quietly until Janie pointed to the shore and said,
“Look! Look at the smoke! The old man’s lot is on fire!” There was just
enough breeze to fan the flames and while they watched the fire spread
rapidly.
“Golly,” said Bill. “It’s getting close to the shack. It’s been so dry
the last couple of weeks that if the fire gets over there near those
old dry boards, everything will go.”
Just then the old man appeared at the door of his shack and saw the
grass fire. He grabbed a shovel and began to thump at the flames
vigorously. He couldn’t quite catch up with them. As fast as he would
get one patch extinguished, another would creep around behind him.
“What are we sitting here for,” asked Dor getting to her feet. “Come
on, let’s help him put that fire out.”
Bill looked at Janie, and Janie looked perplexed. James blurted out,
“He doesn’t like us. He chased us out of there once, and Daddy and Mom
told us to keep out of his way.”
Dor was indignant. “Do you mean to say that your Dad and Mom wouldn’t
even let you go in there and throw a pail of water on a fire? Do you
mean to say that you’d sit here and watch that old man’s house burn
down?” Dor was angry. Janie was angry too.
“His house isn’t burning down. It’s just an old grass fire, and he can
see us plain enough. If he wanted us to help he’d say so.”
Almost as if he had heard their words, the old man turned and shouted
at them, “Hey there, you young fella in the boat, come in here and help
me put this fire out. Can’t you see that it’s getting away from me? Get
a move on you!”
Dor answered for the Murrays, “Here we come!” and they pulled for shore
with all their might.
Billy and James ran for the pump to get water, and Dor and Janie picked
up some loose boards as they ran and beat at the rapidly spreading
flames. The heat was intense and the smoke choked them, but they
stomped and smothered with all their strength. Davey was sent back to
the pump. “You keep pumping,” Billy yelled, “and we’ll run back and
forth with the buckets.”
The smoke kept getting in Janie’s eyes, and it hurt so that the tears
ran. Her face burned, and she could even feel the heat through the
soles of her thin summer shoes. Oh, why didn’t somebody come? They’d
all burn up in this dreadful fire. She had forgotten all about her fear
of the old man. In the excitement they pounded away at the fire, side
by side.
Suddenly she turned and looked up at him. He had stopped and was
holding his side. He had a queer expression on his face. He reached out
as if to grab something, and then fell at her feet.
“Help! Help!” screamed Janie. “Dor, James, Billy! He’s fainted.”
Dor came leaping over the burned stubble. Her face was a black smudge,
and she had a wild look in her eye.
“Throw water on him,” she cried. “Get him out of here!” Billy and James
reached under his shoulders, and Janie and Dor caught hold of the
strong leather belt at his waist. They pulled and tugged with all their
might. He was awfully heavy. Davey yelled from behind them, “Hey kids,
the fire is getting bad again.” There was no choice. They dropped the
unconscious man and raced back to the fire.
“Davey!” Billy shouted. “You get out of here! Run to the nearest house
and get help, and then run home and get Daddy!”