THE MEIGGS PLANTATION
The Bunker children watched the lights of the fleet until quite late in
the evening and thought the sight very pretty indeed. They would have
liked to have gone aboard at least one of the Government vessels
preferably, of course, the one to which their sailor friend belonged,
but there was no opportunity for such a visit. For early the next
morning the _Kammerboy_ steamed out of the harbor of Charleston again on
the last lap of her voyage to Savannah.
"You can't do it, Russ--ever!" declared Rose, with confidence.
"Well," said the oldest of the six little Bunkers, puffing very much, "I
can try, can't I? I do wish I could cut that pigeon wing just as Sam did
it."
They were on the sunshiny deck of the _Kammerboy_, which was plowing
now toward the headlands near Savannah Harbor. But the little folks had
been seeing the blue line of the shore ever since leaving Charleston, so
they were not much interested in it. As Laddie said, they knew it was
there, and that was enough.
"We know the continent of North America didn't get lost while we were
out there in the Gulf Stream," said the boy twin, with satisfaction. "So
it doesn't matter what part of it we hit--it will be land!"
"If we hit it most any old place," said Vi, "we would be shipwrecked and
be castaways like the game we started to play that time and Russ
wouldn't let us finish. I wonder why?"
She had ended with a question. But Laddie could not answer it. He was
watching Russ trying to do that funny dance.
"Uncle Sam's nephew could do it fine," Laddie said to Russ. "But you
don't get the same twist to it."
"Me do it! Me do it!" cried Mun Bun excitedly, and he began to try to
dance as Russ had. He looked so cunning jumping about and twisting his
chubby little body that they all shouted with laughter. But Mun Bun
thought they were admiring his dancing.
"Me did it like Sam," he declared, stopping to rest.
"You do it fine, Mun Bun," Russ said.
It was a fact, however, that none of them could cut that pigeon wing as
Sam, the colored boy, had cut it in Aunt Jo's kitchen in Boston.
Now that they were nearing the end of the voyage there were many things
besides pigeon wings to interest the little Bunkers. In the first place
the big sea-eagle had to be released from the turkey coop. The
quartermaster called him Red Eye. And truly his eye was very red and
angry all the time. And he clashed his great beak whenever anybody came
near him.
"I guess you couldn't tame him in a hundred years," Russ said
thoughtfully. "He can't be tamed. That is why we have an eagle for a
symbol, I guess. We can't be tamed."
It was decided to let Red Eye out of the cage when the ship entered
Savannah Harbor.
"He's come a long way with us. He has come away down here to Georgia,"
said Rose thoughtfully. "If he lives in Maine, do you s'pose he will
ever find his way back?"
"If he doesn't, what matter? It's a fine country," said the
quartermaster.
"But he will want to see his relations," said the little girl. "Maybe
he's got a wife and children. He will be dreadfully lonesome away down
here."
"Maybe you had better take him back with you on the _Kammerboy_," said
Russ thoughtfully, to the quartermaster.
But the officer could not do that. There had been some objection made
already to the big sea-eagle caged on deck. Besides, the bird's wing was
better, and if he was kept much longer confined, the quartermaster said,
he might forget how to fly!
So they all gathered around (but at a good distance from the cage you
may be sure), and the eagle was released. He had to be poked out of the
cage, for it seemed as though he could scarcely believe that the door
was open and he was free.
He stalked out upon the deck, his great claws rattling on the planks. He
turned his head from side to side, and then opened his beak and, so Vi
said, he hissed at them!
"At any rate," admitted Russ afterward, "he did make a funny noise."
"He was clearing his throat," said Laddie, with scorn of his twin. "How
could an eagle hiss? He isn't a goose."
Laddie knew all about geese, for Grandma Bell had geese. But he did not
know all about eagles, that was sure! Whether Red Eye hissed, or
growled, or whatever he did in his throat, he certainly showed little
friendliness. He raised his wings and flapped them "to see if they
worked right." Then he uttered a decided croak and jumped a little way
off the deck.
Evidently this decided him that he was really free and that his great
wings would bear him. He leaped into the air again, spreading his wings,
and wheeled to go over the stern of the steamship. The spread of his
wings when he flapped them was greater than most of the onlookers had
supposed.
"Oh! Oh! Look out, Laddie!" shouted Rose.
Her warning came too late. The end of the great pinion swept Laddie off
his feet! He went rolling across the deck, screaming lustily.
"Oh! I'm going overboard! Daddy!" he cried.
But it was Russ who grabbed him and stood him on his feet again.
"You're not going overboard at all," said the older brother. "You
couldn't. You'd have to climb over the rail to do it."
"We-ell!" breathed Laddie. "It's a wonder he didn't take me right with
him!"
Then he, like everybody else, became interested in the passage of the
great bird as it mounted skyward. It went up in a long slant at first,
and then began to spiral upward, right toward the sun, and presently was
out of sight.
"It can look the sun straight in the face," said Daddy Bunker. "Which is
something we cannot do."
"No wonder its eye is red, then," said Rose.
"I guess it's sunburnt," said Margy. "I got sunburnt at Captain Ben's."
That night they docked at Savannah and went to a hotel in two taxicabs,
for one would not hold all the Bunkers and their baggage too. The hotel
was a nice one, and Rose thought the negro waiters and chambermaids
very attentive and very pleasant people.
"They are the smilingest people I ever saw," she confessed to Mother
Bunker. "I guess they are thinking of funny things all the time."
"Perhaps," granted her mother. "But they are trained to politeness. And
you children must be just as polite."
They all tried to be polite, and Russ grew quite friendly with one of
the bellboys who brought them ice water. He asked that boy if he knew
how to cut the pigeon wing, and the boy grinned very broadly.
"I sure does!" he declared. "But if the boss heard of me doin' it around
dishyer hotel, he'd bounce me."
"Are you made of rubber?" asked Vi, who was standing by.
"What's dat?" he demanded, rolling his eyes. "Is I made of rubber?
Course I isn't. I's made of flesh and blood and bones, same as you is,
little Miss. Only I isn't w'ite like you is."
"But you said the man would bounce you. Rubber balls bounce," explained
Vi.
At that the bellboy went away laughing very heartily, but Vi could not
understand why. And, of course, as usual, nobody could explain it to
Vi's satisfaction.
"I know a riddle!" cried Laddie, after a moment. "What looks like a boy,
but bounces like a rubber ball? Why! A bellboy!"
And he was highly delighted at this and went around telling everybody
his new riddle.
In the morning Mr. Frane Armatage appeared at the hotel and was shown up
to the Bunker rooms. Mr. Armatage, as the little Bunkers knew, was an
old school friend of Daddy Bunker's; but one whom he had not seen for a
long time.
"Why," said Mr. Armatage, who was a slender man with graying hair and a
darker mustache, "Charley was only a boy when I last saw him." He was a
very jovial man, and red-faced. Rose thought him handsome, and told
Mother Bunker so. "No, Charley was only a sapling then. And look at him
now!"
"And look at the sprouts that have sprung from that sapling," laughed
Daddy Bunker, with a sweeping gesture towards the six little Bunkers.
"Was he only as big as I am?" Russ asked.
"Well, no, come to think of it; he was some bigger than you. We were
graduating from college when we parted. But it seems a long time ago,
doesn't it, Charley?"
Daddy Bunker agreed to that. Then he and Mr. Armatage talked business
for a while. The owner of the Meiggs Plantation wished to get more land
and hire more hands for the next year, and through Mr. Bunker he
expected to obtain capital for this. Aside from business the two old
friends desired very much to renew their boyhood acquaintance and have
their wives and children become acquainted.
"I've got half as many young ones as you have, Charley," said Mr.
Armatage. "You've beat me a hundred per cent. I wonder if we keep on
growing if the ratio will remain the same?"
Russ knew what "ratio" meant, and he asked: "How can it keep that way if
we grow to be seven little Bunkers? You can't have three and a half
little Armatages, you know."
"That's a smart boy!" exclaimed the tall man, smiling. "He can see
through a millstone just as quick as any boy I know. We'll hope that
there will be no half-portions of Armatages. I want all my children to
have the usual number of limbs and body."
"If you have little girls, and one was only half a little girl," said
Rose, "she would be worse off than a mermaid, wouldn't she?"
"She certainly would," agreed the planter.
"Why?" demanded Vi, who did not understand.
"Because half of her would be a fish," said Russ, laughing. "And you
would have to have all your house under water, Mr. Armatage, or the
mermaid could not get up and down stairs."
"I declare, Charley!" exclaimed the visitor, "these young ones of yours
are certainly blessed with great imaginations. I don't believe our
children ever thought of such things."
The next day the party went out to the Meiggs Plantation. It was a
two-hours' ride on a branch railroad and a shorter and swifter ride in
an automobile over the "jounciest" road the children had ever ridden on,
for part of the way led through a swamp and logs were laid down side by
side to keep the road, as Mr. Armatage laughingly said, from sinking
quite out of sight.
But the land on which the Armatage home stood was high and dry. It was a
beautiful grassy knoll, acres in extent, and shaded by wide-armed trees
which had scarcely lost any leaves it seemed to the little Bunkers,
though this was winter. On the wide, white-pillared veranda a very
handsome lady and two little girls and a little boy stood to receive the
party.
The children did not come forward to greet the visitors, or even their
father, until the latter spoke to them. Mr. and Mrs. Bunker were quite
sure by the actions of Phillis and Alice and Frane, Junior, that they
were not granted the freedom of speech and action that their little ones
enjoyed. Mother Bunker pitied those children from the start!
[Illustration: THE SIX LITTLE BUNKERS WERE AMAZED AT THE NUMBER OF
COLORED CHILDREN.
_Six Little Bunkers at Mammy Junes._ _Page_ 115]
But what amazed the six little Bunkers more than anything else was the
number of colored children hanging about the veranda to see the
newcomers. Rose confided to Russ that she thought there must be a
colored school near by and all the children were out for recess.
And there were so many house-servants that smiling black and brown faces
appeared everywhere.
"I guess," said Rose to her mother, "that there must be an awful lot of
work to do in this big house. It's lots bigger than Aunt Jo's or Grandma
Bell's. It's like a castle, and all these servants are like retainers. I
read about retainers in a story. Only these retainers aren't dressed in
uniforms."