BUSY IZZY IN A NEW ASPECT
The stair-well was a wide and long opening and around it ran a broad
balustrade. There was no stairway to the third floor of this big
bungalow, only the servants' staircase in the rear reaching those rooms
directly under the roof. So the hall on this second floor, out of which
the family bedrooms opened, was an L-shaped room, with the balustrade
on one hand.
And upon that balustrade Ruth Fielding beheld a tottering figure in
white, plainly visible in the soft glow of the single light burning
below, yet rather ghostly after all.
She might have been startled in good earnest had she not first of all
recognized Isadore Phelps' face. He was balancing himself upon the
balustrade and, as she came to the door, he walked gingerly along the
narrow strip of moulding toward Ruth.
"Izzy! whatever are you doing?" she hissed.
The boy never said a word to her, but kept right on, balancing himself
with difficulty. He was in his pajamas, his feet bare, and--she saw it
at last--his eyes tight shut.
"Oh! he's asleep," murmured Ruth.
And that surely was Busy Izzy's state at that moment. Sound asleep and
"tight-rope walking" on the balustrade.
Ruth knew that it would be dangerous to awaken him suddenly--especially
as it might cause him to fall down the stair-well. She crept back into
her room and called Helen. The two girls in their wrappers and slippers
went into the hall again. There was Busy Izzy tottering along in the
other direction, having turned at the wall. Once they thought he would
plunge down the stairway, and Helen grabbed at Ruth with a squeal of
terror.
"Sh!" whispered her chum. "Go tell Tom. Wake him up. The boys ought
to tie Izzy in bed if he is in the habit of doing this."
"My! isn't he a sight!" giggled Helen, as she ran past the gyrating
youngster, who had again turned for a third perambulation of the railing.
She whispered Tom's name at his open door and in a minute the girls
heard him bound out of bed. He was with them--sleepy-eyed and hastily
wrapping his robe about him--in a moment.
"For the land's sake!" he gasped, when he saw his friend on the
balustrade. "What are you----"
"Sh!" commanded Ruth. "He's asleep."
Tom took in the situation at a glance. Madge Steele peered out of her
door at that moment. "Who is it--Bobbins?" she asked.
"No. It's Izzy. He's walking in his sleep," said Ruth.
"He's a regular somnambulist," exclaimed Helen.
"Never mind. Don't call him names. He can't help it," said Madge.
Helen giggled again. Tom had darted back to rouse his chum. Bob Steele
appeared, more tousled and more sleepy-looking than Tom.
"What's the matter with that fellow now?" he grumbled. "He's like a
flea--you never know where he's going to be next! Ha! he'll fall off
that and break his silly neck."
And as Busy Izzy was just then nearest his end of the hall in his strange
gyrations, Bob Steele stepped forward and grabbed him, lifting him bodily
off the balustrade. Busy Izzy screeched, but Tom clapped a hand over his
mouth.
"Shut up! want to raise the whole neighborhood?" grunted Bobbins,
dragging the lightly attired, struggling boy back into their room. "Ha!
I'll fix you after this. I'll lash you to the bedpost every night
we're here--now mark that, young man!"
It seemed that the youngster often walked in his sleep, but the girls had
not known it. Usually, at school, his roommates kept the dormitory door
locked and the key hidden, so that he couldn't get out to do himself
any damage running around with his eyes shut.
The party all got to sleep again after that and there was no further
disturbance before morning. They made a good deal of fun of Isadore at
the breakfast table, but he took the joking philosophically. He was
always playing pranks himself; but he had learned to take a joke, too.
He declared that all he dreamed during the night was that he was wrecked
in an iceboat on Second Reef and that the only way for him to get ashore
was to walk on a cable stretched from the wreck to the beach. He had
probably been walking that cable--in his mind--when Ruth had caught him
balancing on the balustrade.
The strange girl who persisted in calling herself "Nita" came down to
the table in some of Heavy's garments, which were a world too large
for her. Her own had been so shrunk and stained by the sea-water that
they would never be fit to put on again. Aunt Kate was very kind to
her, but she looked at the runaway oddly, too. Nita had been just as
uncommunicative to her as she had been to the girls in the bedroom the
night before.
"If you don't like me, or don't like my name, I can go away," she
declared to Miss Kate, coolly. "I haven't got to stay here, you know."
"But where will you go? what will you do?" demanded that young lady,
severely. "You say the captain of the schooner and his wife are nothing
to you?"
"I should say not!" exclaimed Nita. "They were nice and kind to me,
though."
"And you can't go away until you have something decent to wear," added
Heavy's aunt. "That's the first thing to 'tend to."
And although it was a bright and beautiful morning after the gale, and
there were a dozen things the girls were all eager to see, they spent the
forenoon in trying to make up an outfit for Nita so that she would be
presentable. The boys went off with Mr. Stone's boatkeeper in the motor
launch and Mary Cox was quite cross because the other girls would not
leave Miss Kate to fix up Nita the best she could, so that they could
all accompany the boys. But in the afternoon the buckboard was brought
around and they drove to the lighthouse.
Nita, even in her nondescript garments, was really a pretty girl. No
awkwardness of apparel could hide the fact that she had nice features and
that her body was strong and lithe. She moved about with a freedom that
the other girls did not possess. Even Ruth was not so athletic as the
strange girl. And yet she seemed to know nothing at all about the games
and the exercises which were commonplace to the girls from Briarwood Hall.
There was a patch of wind-blown, stunted trees and bushes covering
several acres of the narrowing point, before the driving road along
the ridge brought the visitors to Sokennet Light. While they were driving
through this a man suddenly bobbed up beside the way and the driver
hailed him.
"Hullo, you Crab!" he said. "Found anything 'long shore from that
wreck?"
The man stood up straight and the girls thought him a very horrid-looking
object. He had a great beard and his hair was dark and long.
"He's a bad one for looks; ain't he, Miss?" asked the driver of Ruth,
who sat beside him.
"He isn't very attractive," she returned.
"Ha! I guess not. And Crab's as bad as he looks, which is saying a
good deal. He comes of the 'wreckers.' Before there was a light here,
or life saving stations along this coast, there was folks lived along
here that made their livin' out of poor sailors wrecked out there on
the reefs. Some said they used to toll vessels onto the rocks with false
lights. Anyhow, Crab's father, and his gran'ther, was wreckers. He's
assistant lightkeeper; but he oughtn't to be. I don't see how Mother
Purling can get along with him."
"She isn't afraid of him; is she?" queried Ruth.
"She isn't afraid of anything," said Heavy, quickly, from the rear
seat. "You wait till you see her."
The buckboard went heavily on toward the lighthouse; but the girls saw
that the man stood for a long time--as long as they were in sight, at
least--staring after them.
"What do you suppose he looked at Nita so hard for?" whispered Helen
in Ruth's ear. "I thought he was going to speak to her."
But Ruth had not noticed this, nor did the runaway girl seem to have
given the man any particular attention.