THE MIDNIGHT RIDE
Cara had scurried off and Babs was hiding behind the door, as she
opened it. Giggling and spluttering in their hilarity they tumbled in,
the Indian girl, in full regalia, leading the raid.
“Ee-yah! Gum-bow-wah, Minne-ha-ha, See-la,” chanted the one posing as
the Indian. She was Ruth Harrison, of course, for it was Ruth who had
so quickly decided upon the masquerade when she met the girls that
afternoon. She hadn’t remembered about a pretty robe, so she turned
the matter into a joke. This was the result of it.
“Approach, Daughter of the Sun,” spoke Barbara, stepping out from her
hiding and assuming the pose of a very majestic Portia.
“Oh, how stunning! Barbara! Are you really a college girl?” exclaimed
Louise, surprised and awed at the spectacle in a genuine college cap
and gown. Barbara did indeed look like a young college girl, and her
dignified personality seeming to add inches to her classic height as
she stood before them.
“Wonderful!” Esther chimed in, while Lida seemed spellbound. Ruth, the
erstwhile Indian maiden, went stamping around, uttering guttural
sounds more like grunts and groans, however, than like anything
Indian. Lida, in her heavenly blue, chosen to suit her pale blondness,
was scarcely more noticeable than an unlighted candle, as she stood
by. But on the whole the girls in their much-talked-of “robes” made
quite a little chorus.
“Where’s Cara?” some one asked while the group lined up in mock ballet
fashion.
“Yes, where is she?” pressed Louise. They seemed to be expecting
something interesting from Cara.
“She was here a minute ago,” Babs replied.
Just then the door opened again and in walked—a bride!
“Oh, how lovely. How wonderful!”
After the first burst of admiration they all stood around speechless,
for Cara was gowned in the full bridal outfit of a very old-fashioned
style, the skirt of her “silk muslin” dress standing out as if it were
very stiffly starched (but it was the sort of organdie that held it
so)—and her waist!
“How in the world did you get into it?” asked Lida.
“I didn’t—Lottie put me into it. She has taken care of the chest that
has held this make-up for years. It was my grandmother’s,” Cara told
her guests proudly, pirouetting around to show off to better
advantage.
“But the veil?” Louise was fingering the tulle mesh that floated from
Cara’s black head. How she held it in over her “bob” was rather
mysterious.
“Grandmother’s also,” Cara told the admiring girls. “Aren’t these
little sleeves sweet?”
Up to this time Cara had not seen Babs in the college costume, nor had
she seen Ruth in the Indian outfit, for these two particular stars had
managed to keep in the background while the bride was being inspected.
But she espied them both now! And she fairly gasped in astonishment.
“How ever did you do it?” she demanded. “I thought I had the original
masquerade idea.”
“Ideas go in flocks,” laughed Babs. “Why don’t you cheer for our Alma
Mater?”
“Oh, girls!” breathed Esther. “Aren’t we dreadful? It must be past
midnight and we certainly aren’t whispering.”
“No need to,” replied Cara in full voice. “We have this end of the
house to ourselves and we’re having a party. But do let me see you,
Babs, a real, honest-to-goodness cap and gown! Any one can be a
bride——”
“I don’t know about that,” interrupted Louise. “We would have to have
a man to be a bride——”
“Oh, Weasy! How literal! I mean this sort of bride, of course,”
insisted Cara, sailing around so that her veil flew out in a lovely
silken cloud.
“Oh, let’s have a show!” proposed Ruth. “I’ll be—who’ll I be?” she
floundered, feeling a little uncertain on her Indian lore.
“Ruth Harrison! That Indian robe is just too darling!” cooed Cara.
“And your feathers! I think you girls were mighty smart to think of
our midnight frolic.”
“But what a pity the boys couldn’t see us?” sighed Esther, about
half-way in earnest.
“The boys—see you! In that butterfly thing with—you got anything under
it?” asked Louise, innocently.
“Louise St. Clair!” gasped Esther, pretending to be terribly shocked.
“I’d have you know I’m fully garbed,” and she tossed off the pretty
robe to display a still lovelier set of blue silk pajamas. Reasonably,
Esther was pleased to have so good a chance to display her pretty
things, for as Ruth might say “the fairies who see things while we
sleep may love them, but they’re awfully quiet about it.”
“Let’s have a march,” proposed Babs. “Cara, you lead and I’ll be the
magistrate who is to perform the ceremony.”
This was fun. The girls in the pretty robes were acting as
bridesmaids, the Indian Girl was the groom, while Portia in her severe
black robe (and the mortar-board cap was actually becoming to Babs)
stood judiciously upon a low stool, her book in her hand statuesquely,
and her face molded into an appropriate expression of severity.
In turn each of them tried to hum a march, but the time would jumble
into a foxtrot or into some other undignified dance time.
“Oh, I know,” exclaimed Lida. “It’s ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas!’ Try
that.”
“Bananas!” squealed Louise. “March to that! Why it’s wooden legged! A
hop skip and jump. Lida Bent, that’s the one best foxtrot.”
“I thought——”
“What’s that?” Ruth interrupted Lida. “I heard something.”
“So did I,” breathed Cara in a hushed voice. She seemed frightened
suddenly, for the noise was too unmistakably close by.
“Oh! A man is—groaning!”
“Hark!”
They huddled together in a far corner away from the window that opened
on a little upper porch. No one spoke. They certainly had heard a very
queer noise, all of them.
“Some one is calling,” Babs insisted, moving as if to answer the call.
“Calling! It’s past twelve o’clock,” replied Cara.
“And a storm is coming. Hear the thunder,” gasped Esther, shuddering
in her fright.
Again came the call; surely it was a call, but what a hoarse awful
voice intoned it!
“Oh!” cried Lida in real terror, for just at that moment something had
hit the window.
“Maybe Dudley and the boys are playing tricks,” suggested Babs,
brightly.
“No, Mother had his promise they wouldn’t play any tricks, late,” Cara
insisted. “No, Dud would _never_ throw things at the window. He knows
better than to do that.”
“Well, some one _is_ throwing things at the window,” Babs insisted,
“and _I’m_ going to see who it is.”
“You mustn’t, Babs,” Louise implored the girl who had separated
herself from the shrinking group and was moving towards the window.
But she did move towards it, nevertheless.
“I can see the lighthouse flash its light,” she declared. “I guess
they’re getting ready for the storm. Oh!” Babs sprang back just as
something landed on the porch. It was heavier than the things thrown
before, and as it crossed the window-sill the girls could see it was a
stick. It almost sailed in the open window and did disarrange the soft
curtains with its pointed end that rested over the sill.
“We’ll have to call some one,” Cara insisted, forgetting all about her
bridal costume as the other girls also had forgotten how they were
clothed.
“Hey there! Are ye all dead!”
A man’s voice! Close at the window! So close the girls could not now
feel safe to cross in front of the window to open the door to call.
“Oh, mercy!” groaned Louise. “He’ll be in the room in a minute! What
ever shall we do?”
“Keep still!”
“I see him——”
“Oh!” shrieked Lida. “A big black face——”
“Say there! Let me in! Are ye all dead! I’m in a hurry!” This command
came through the window in a gruff, heavy voice.
“Some one wants something,” Babs declared. “We had better speak to
him!”
“Oh, don’t please,” begged Ruth, who was apparently more frightened
than the others, although this was unusual for Ruth.
“We must,” declared Babs. “There’s no danger with all of us together.”
“But he may be crazy——”
“Will you push that window up?” the voice was ordering gruffly.
And the order came from a man who now stood in clear view. His face
was not pleasant—it was old and weather-beaten, and he was wearing one
of those queer hats known as S’ou’-westers.
“Looks like a fisherman,” Cara said more confidently.
But a sudden thrusting up of the window-pane no longer left time for
speculation. The next moment the girls gazed amazedly at an old man in
the garb of a seaman, and Babs, at least, instantly recognized him as
Davy Quiller, the lighthouse keeper.
“Davy!” she gasped. “What ever do you want here?”
“I want oil, lamp oil, and I’ve got to get it,” thundered the
intruder. “I knew you were up ’cause I could see you per’radin’
around. And the rest of this house must be dead ’cordin’ to the way
they sleep. I’ve been a-poundin’ on every winder an’ door. And I
couldn’t wait another minute. Got any kerosene oil on these premises?”
Babs and Cara understood. The lighthouse tender had to have oil for
his light, and he was justified in seeking it even under these unusual
circumstances.
“I don’t believe we ever use oil here,” Cara spoke up. “But I’ll find
out,” she hurried towards the door to call a servant.
“Mighty sorry to spoil your—show,” the old man muttered. “But I had to
get in here. I’ll get right down again and wait outside. ’T’ain’t any
harder than walking downstairs,” and he was stepping over the rail,
down to the first porch with the alacrity of a much younger man.
Captain Davy Quiller was “no slouch.”
By now the household had been pretty well aroused, and the girls, who
had merely fancy robes on, were scurrying to get into something more
presentable. Cara in her bridal attire and Babs in her collegiate
outfit however, seemed little concerned about their personal
appearance. They sensed an emergency, and that at the lighthouse, so
their search for lamp oil was added to that of Captain Quiller’s. Ruth
Harrison, the Indian girl, was another who felt dressed enough for
appearance on the porch, so that when the big arc light was flashed
on, as most of the Burke household assembled beneath it, Babs, Cara
and Ruth made a striking picture. Among those present were Dudley
Burke and Dick Landers, his house guest, and of course the boys
immediately set up “a howl” when they beheld “the show.”
“Keep still!” ordered Cara severely. “Don’t be silly. We’ve got to get
oil. Captain Quiller, where do they keep oil around here?” she asked
competently.
“That’s just it, they don’t,” the seaman replied. “Of course I always
get my supply from the station, but something went wrong with their
delivery this week. I thought I had plenty for a couple of more
nights, mistook an empty for a full can—but this afternoon I found out
my blunder,” he admitted, “and I have a little fellow runs messages
for me. I’d trust him with my hat,” the captain declared firmly, his
hat being a very important possession of his, “I can’t see what
happened to him! Well, I must be a-running,” he wound up, turning to
leave.
“We’ll take you around in the car,” Dudley promptly offered. “Just you
wait a minute, ’till I—hitch up.”
“I suppose it would be quicker,” admitted the captain. “But you see
that storm a’comin’?” he asked Mr. Burke, as if the gentleman of the
house was entitled to some attention.
“Yes; looks like a hummer,” Mr. Burke replied.
“An’ it’s blacker out there,” pointing toward the sea, “than ’tis in
here,” the captain declared. “’An my light’s the Eye of the Lord to
the sailors,” he said, lowering his voice reverently.
Dudley had hurried off for the car but Dick tarried on the porch,
joking with the girls about their “show”, that they hadn’t invited the
boys to see. Babs and Cara were standing aside with the grown-ups.
“We can go along,” Cara said quietly to Babs.
“But how about the other girls?” Babs inquired.
“They wouldn’t want to go, but, of course, I’ll ask them,” Cara
replied, and she did so promptly.
“No, I guess not,” Louise answered. “Looks as if the storm was almost
here and _I’m_ scared to death of thunder-storms.”
So were Lida and Esther, they said, but Ruth agreed to go with Cara
and Babs, so it happened that those most fantastically attired piled
into the touring car, after Captain Quiller.
Babs, being almost fully dressed, just went along in the college robe,
at Cara’s suggestion, and Cara actually kept on the bridal dress,
because she declared it was too much trouble to get it off, merely
throwing a light cape over her shoulders and tossing the bridal veil
at Louise as she dashed off. The veil rested comically over Louise’s
head and gave the girls on the porch something to joke about as those
in the car rumbled off.
“I sense an adventure,” predicted Babs, hopefully. “It seems to me,
Cara, you should remember your house party.”
“And call it ‘The Midnight Race for Lighthouse Oil.’ I will,” agreed
Cara, while Dudley and the seaman discussed the problem of finding oil
at that hour of the night.
Then a vivid flash of lightning followed by a splitting clap of
thunder silenced them all.