understand. And Mary Beck's mother will not feel anxious?" she asked,
for a final assurance. "I never expected to turn myself into a wild
Indian at my age, even to please foolish children like you and Betty,
but I have always wished that I could sleep one night under the pine
woods."
"You said so when we were reading Mr. Stevenson's 'Travels with a
Donkey' aloud to Aunt Mary," Betty stated eagerly, as if the others
would find it hard to believe her grandaunt. Somehow, a stranger would
have found it difficult to believe that Miss Leicester had unsatisfied
desires about gypsying.
Mary Beck was deeply astonished; she had a huge admiration for her
dignified neighbor across the way, and yet it was always a little
perilous to her ease of mind and self-possession to find herself in Miss
Leicester's company. Many a time, in the days before Betty came to
Tideshead, she had walked to and fro before the old house hoping to be
spoken to or called in for a visit, and yet was too shy to properly
answer a kind good-morning when they met. Aunt Barbara used to think
that Becky was a dull girl, but they were already better friends. It
took a long time to rouse Becky's enthusiasm, but when roused it burned
with steady flame. To think that she should be camping out with Miss
Leicester!
But Mr. Leicester and Betty and Becky were soon at work making their
camp, and the novices took their first lesson in woodcraft. The young
men, Harry Foster and Seth, came ashore bringing the tender loaded deep
with tents and blankets, some of them from Jonathan's carefully kept
chests in the carriage-house, and Miss Leicester wondered again how
anybody had contrived to get so many things from the house to the boat
without her knowledge. There were two sharp hatchets, and presently Seth
and Harry were dispatched to gather some dry wood for the fire, though
until near evening the tents need not be put up nor the last
arrangements made for sleeping. By and by everybody could help either to
cut or carry hemlock and spruce boughs for the beds.
Betty helped her father to roll some stones together for a fireplace
just at the edge of the river beach, and pleased him very much by
rolling a heavy one up to the top of the heap on a piece of board which
had washed ashore, just as she had seen farmers do in building a stone
wall. Mary Beck, in a trepidation of delight, was helping Miss Barbara
Leicester unpack the baskets, to see what should be eaten for dinner
and what should be kept for future meals, when Mr. Leicester called
them.
"Aunt Barbara," he proclaimed, "I am not going to let you keep tent; you
only know how to keep house; and beside, you mustn't do what you always
do at home. Let the girls manage dinner and you come with me, now that
the fire is started. I have thought of an errand."
Miss Leicester meekly obeyed; she was ready for anything, having once
cast off, as she said, all obligation to society, and with a few parting
charges to Betty about the provisions she disappeared among the pines
with her nephew.
"Isn't it fun?" said Mary Beck, and she put on such a comical face when
Betty sedately quoted,
"What is that, mother?
A lark, my child,"
that Betty fell into a fit of laughter, and Becky caught it, and they
were gasping for breath before they could stop. "Oh, think of Aunt
Barbara camping out and setting herself up for a gypsy!" said Betty.
"This is just the way papa does now and then. I always told you so,
didn't I?--only you never know when to watch for his tricks. He doesn't
always catch me like this, I can tell you. Think of Aunt Barbara! I hope
the dear thing will pass a good night; she isn't a bit older than we are
in her dear heart. How will she ever have the face to walk into church
so grandly Sunday morning!" and so the merry girls chattered on, while
they spread the cloth and Betty put a decoration of leaves round the
edge and a handful of flowers in the middle. "You have such a way of
prettifying things," said Mary Beck; "there, the chocolate pot is
beginning to boil already."
"We ought to have some fresh water; it is time papa came back," said
Betty anxiously; and just then appeared papa and smiling Aunt Barbara,
and a small tin pail which had to be borrowed at a farm-house half a
mile away because it was forgotten.
The wind blew cool across the river, and more and more boats went
gliding up and down in the channel, though the tide was very low.
Everybody was hungrier than ever, because the sea wind is famous for
helping on an appetite, and the hot chocolate was none too hot after
all, though Aunt Barbara's bonnet was hanging on a branch and she did
not seem to miss the shelter of it. Becky was forced to change her
opinion about cooking; she had always disliked to have anything to do
with it; it seemed to her a thing to be ignored and concealed in polite
society, and yet Betty was openly proud of having had a few
cooking-school lessons, and of knowing the right way to do things. Becky
suddenly began to parade her own knowledge, and found herself of great
use to the party. Instead of being unwilling when her mother asked for
help again, she meant to learn a great many more things. She was
overjoyed when she found a tin box of coffee, and remembered that Betty
had said it was her father's chief delight. She would make a good cup
for him in the morning. Betty was always saying how nice it was to know
how to do things. She never expected to like to wash dinner dishes, but
the time had come, though a hot sun was somehow pleasanter than a hot
stove, and it had been a gypsy dinner, with potatoes in the ashes and
buns toasted on a hot stone, and no end of good things beside.
"We must have some oysters to roast for our supper. I know a place just
below here where they are very salt and good," said Mr. Leicester; "and
one of you young men might go fishing, and bring us in a string of
flounders, or anything you can get. We have breakfast to look out for,
you remember."
"Ay, ay, sir," said Harry Foster, sailor fashion, but with uncommon
heartiness. Harry had been very quiet and care-taking on the boat, and
had not said much, either, since he came ashore, but his eyes had been
growing brighter, and as Miss Leicester looked up at him she was touched
at the change in his face. How boyish and almost gay he was again! She
caught his eye, and gave him a kind reassuring little nod, as if nobody
could be more pleased to have him happy than herself.
The Starlight was now aground in the bright green river grass and the
flats were bare for a long distance beyond, so that there was no more
boating for the present. There were plenty of comfortable hollows to
rest in farther back on the soft carpet under the pines, and so the
dining-room nearer the shore was abandoned and the provisions cached, as
Mr. Leicester called it, under an oak-tree. Certain things had been
forgotten, but just round the point the steeples of Riverport were in
full view; and when everybody had rested enough and the tide was
creeping in, Mr. Leicester first sent Harry out in the small boat and
his long-legged fishing-boots to get two buckets of river mud, and after
he had seated himself beside them with his magnifying-glasses and a
paraphernalia of tools familiar to Betty, Harry was given orders to take
Seth Pond and the two girls and go down to Riverport shopping, as soon
as the Starlight floated again.
Harry was hovering over the scientific enterprise and looked sorry for a
minute, but it seemed to the girls as if the tide had stopped rising. At
last they got on board by going down the shore a little way to be taken
off the sooner from some rock. Aunt Barbara announced that she meant to
go too; indeed, she was not tired; what had there been to tire her? So
off they all went, and left Mr. Leicester to his investigations. It took
some time to go to Riverport, for the wind was light and the tide
against them. Everybody, and Betty in particular, thought it great fun
to make fast to the wharf and go ashore up into the town shopping. Aunt
Barbara gayly stepped off first, to see an old friend who lived a little
way above the business part of the town, and, asked to be called for, as
they went back, at the friend's river gate. Harry knew it?--the high
house with the lookout on top and the gate at the garden-foot. Betty
went first to find her early friend, the woman who kept the bake-house,
and was recognized at once and provided with fresh buns and crisp
molasses cookies which had hardly cooled. Then Betty and Becky walked
about the narrow streets for an hour, enjoying themselves highly and
collecting ship's stores at two or three fruit shops; also laying in a
good store of chocolate, which Betty proclaimed to be very nourishing.
She got two pots of her favorite orange marmalade too, in case they made
toast for supper.
"All the old ladies are looking out of their windows, just as they were
the day I was coming to Tideshead," she said; and Becky replied that
their faces were always at just the same pane of glass. The fences were
very high and had their tops cut in points, and over them here and there
drooped the heavy bough of a fruit-tree or a long tendril of grapevine,
as if there were delightful gardens inside. The sidewalks were very
narrow underneath these fences, so that Betty often walked in the street
to be alongside her companion. There were pretty old knockers on the
front doors, and sometimes a parrot hung out under the porch, and
shouted saucily at the passers-by. Riverport was a delightful old town.
Betty was sure that if she did not love Tideshead best she should like
to belong in Riverport, and have a garden with a river gate, and a great
square house of three stories and a lookout on top.
The stores were put on board, and Seth Pond came back from researches
which had been rewarded by a half-bushel basket full of clams. Then they
swung out into the stream again, and ever so many little boys with four
grown men on the wharf gave them a cheer. It was great fun stopping for
Aunt Barbara, who was in the garden watching for them, and was escorted
by a charming white-haired old gentleman who teased her a little upon
her youthful escapade, and a younger lady who walked sedately under an
antique Chinese parasol. Betty sprang ashore to greet this latter
personage, who had lately paid a visit to Miss Barbara at Tideshead. She
was fond of Miss Marcia Drummond.
"It seems like old times to have you going home by boat," said Miss
Marcia, kissing Aunt Barbara good-by. "It is much pleasanter than a car
journey. Betty, my dear, you know that your aunt is a very rash and
heedless person; I hope you will hold her in check. I have been trying
to persuade her that she will be much safer to-night in one of our old
four-posters;" and so they said good-by merrily and were off again,
while the young people in the boat looked back as long as they could see
the old garden with its hollyhocks and lilies, and the two figures of
the courtly old gentleman and the lady with the parasol going up the
broad walk.
"What a good thing it was in Tom Leicester to send his daughter to
Tideshead this summer!" said the old gentleman. "I think that Barbara
is renewing her youth. Tom is a man of distinction, and yet keeps to his
queer wild ways. You are sure that Barbara quite understands about our
wishing them to dine here? I think this camping business is positively
foolish conduct in a person of her age."
But Miss Marcia Drummond looked wistfully over her shoulder at the
cat-boat's lessening sail, and wished that she too were going to spend a
night under the pines.
A little way up the river they passed the packet boat, a little belated
and heavily laden, but moving steadily.
"Look at old Step-an'-fetch-it," said Seth. "She spears all the little
winds with that peaked sail o' hern. Ain't one on 'em can git by her."
They kept company for a while, until in the broad river bay above
Riverport bridge the Starlight skimmed far ahead, like a great white
moth. Seth mentioned that folks would think they was settin' up a navy
up to Tideshead, and just then the Starlight yawed, and the boom threw
Seth off his balance and nearly overboard, as much to his own amusement
as the rest of the ship's company's. Betty and Mary Beck stowed
themselves away before the mast, and wished that the sail were longer.
The sun was low, and the light made the river and the green shores look
most beautiful. Miss Leicester suggested that they should sail a little
farther before going in, and so they went as far as the next reach, a
mile above the camp, on the accommodating west wind. It was a last puff
before sundown, and by the time Harry had anchored the Starlight in
deeper water than before, her sail drooped in the perfectly still
evening air.
Once on shore everybody was busy; the spruce and hemlock boughs must be
arranged carefully for the beds and the tents pitched over them before
the August dew began to fall. Mr. Leicester was chief of this part of
camp duty, and Miss Barbara, who seemed to enjoy herself more every
moment, was allowed by the girls to help, just that once, about getting
supper. It was growing cool and the fire was not unwelcome, but by and
by a gentle wind began to blow and kept away the midges. Betty began to
think that there would be nothing left for breakfast by the time supper
was half through, but she managed to secrete part of her cherished buns,
and reflected that it would be easy to send to Riverport for further
supplies even if breakfast were a little late. Betty felt a certain care
and responsibility over the whole expedition, it was so delightful to be
looking after papa again; and she was obliged to tell him that he must
not touch the river mud any more, or he would not be fit to go through
the streets of Riverport next day, at which Mr. Leicester, though deeply
attached to his old friends in that town, looked very distressed and
unwilling.
The darkness fell fast, and the supper dishes had to be put under some
bayberry bushes until morning. The salt air was very sweet and fresh,
and it was just warm enough and just cool enough, as Betty said. The
stars were bright; in fact, the last few days had been much more like
June than August, and it was what English people call Queen's weather.
Mary Beck said sagely that it must be because Miss Leicester came, and
then was quite ashamed, dear little soul, not understanding that nothing
is so pleasant to an older woman as to find herself interesting and
companionable to a girl. People do not always grow away from their
youth; they add to it experiences and traits of different sorts; and it
is easy sometimes to throw off all these, and find the boy or the girl
again, eager and fresh and ready for simple pleasures, and to make new
beginnings.
Seth Pond had stolen out to the cat-boat on some errand of his own which
nobody questioned, and now there suddenly resounded the surprising notes
of his violin. It was very pretty to hear his familiar old tunes over
the water, and everybody respected Seth's amiable desire to afford
entertainment, even if he failed a little now and then in time or tone.
He had mastered several old Scottish and English airs in the book Betty
had given him, and already had become proficient in some lively jigs and
dancing tunes, as we knew at the time of Betty's first party in the
garden. The clumsy fellow had a real gift for music. Some stray fairy
must have passed his way and left an unexpected gift. The little
audience on the shore were ready to applaud, and two or three boats came
near, while some young people in one began to sing "Bonny Doon," softly,
while Seth played, and, encouraged by the applause, went on more boldly,
and took up the strain again when Seth changed suddenly to "Lochaber no
more." Miss Leicester was overjoyed when she heard such fresh young
voices sing the plaintive old air so readily. It had always been a great
favorite of hers, and she said so with enthusiasm. Mary Beck was sorry
that she never had learned it, but by the time the last verse came she
began to join in as best she could.
"I'll bring thee a heart with love running o'er,
And then I'll leave thee and Lochaber no more,"
the words ended. Nobody who heard it that summer night in the starlight
by the river shore would ever forget the old song.
"You must have influenced Seth's choice of music," Betty's father said
to Aunt Barbara, who confessed that the droning of the violin over cheap
music was more than she could bear at first, and she had been compelled
to suggest something in the place of "The Sweet By-and-By" and "Golden
Slippers." Luckily, Seth seemed to abandon these without regret.
At last the boats all disappeared into the darkness, and the little camp
was made ready for night. The open air made every one sleepy but Miss
Barbara, who consoled herself by thinking that if she did not sleep it
would be little matter; she had been awake many a night in her life and
felt none the worse. But in fact the sound of rippling water against the
bank and the sea-like sound of the pine boughs overhead sent her to
sleep before she had half time to properly enjoy them. She and Betty
declared that their thick-set evergreen boughs and warm blankets made
the best of beds. They could see the stars through the open end of the
tent. One was so bright that it let fall a slender golden track of light
on the river. Mary Beck thought that she had never been so happy.
Camping-out had always been such a far-off thing, and belonged to summer
tourists and the remote unsettled parts of country; but here she was,
close to her own home, with all the delights of gypsy life suddenly made
her own. Betty and Betty's friends had such a way of enjoying every-day
things. Becky was learning to be happy in simple ways she never had
before. She went to sleep too, and the stars shone on, and late in the
night the waning moon came up, strange and red; then the dawn came
creeping into the morning sky, and one wild creature after another, in
the crevices of rocks or branches of trees, waked and went its ways
silently or gay with song.
When Betty's eyes first opened she could not remember where she was, for
a moment. Then she was filled with a sense of great contentment, and lay
still, looking out through the open end of the tent across the wide
still river down which some birds were flying seaward. It was most
beautiful in that early morning of a new day, and from beyond the water
on the opposite shore came the far sweet sound of a woman's voice
singing as she worked, as if a long-looked-for day had come and held
great joy for her. She was singing just as the birds sing, and Betty
tried to fancy how she looked as she went to and fro so busily in one of
the farm-houses.
Aunt Barbara did not wake until after Betty, which was a great joy, and
there was a peal of delighted laughter from the girls when she waked and
found their bright young eyes watching her. She complained of nothing,
except a moment of fright when she saw her own bonnet at the top of a
lopped fir which had been stuck into the ground at the foot of the bed,
to hang her raiment on. Her wrap had been put neatly round the tree's
shoulders by Betty, so that it looked like a queer sort of skeleton
creature with every sort of garment on its sharp pegs of bones. Nobody
had taken the least bit of cold, and everybody was as cheerful as
possible, and so the day began. Seth Pond had trudged off to get some
milk at one of the farm-houses, and had lighted a fire before he went
and covered it with bits of dry turf, which served to keep it in as well
as peat. Mr. Leicester complained that he had found the tent too warm,
and so had rolled himself in his blanket and spent the night in the open
air. Evidently he and Harry Foster had been awake some time, and they
were having a famous talk about one of the treasured creatures in the
muddy wooden pail. Harry had managed to learn a great deal by spending
an hour now and then in a famous old library in Riverport, in which Miss
Leicester had given him the use of her share; and Betty knew that her
father was delighted and surprised with the young man's interest in his
own favorite studies. She had felt sure all summer that papa would know
just how to help Harry Foster on, and as she watched them she could not
help thinking that she wished Harry were her brother. But then she would
no longer have entire right to papa.
"Come, Elizabeth Leicester!" said papa, in high spirits. "I never had
such a dilatory damsel to make my first tent breakfast!" So Betty
hastened, and poked the fire nearly to death in her desire for
promptness with the morning meal. After it was over Miss Leicester sat
in the shade with a book, while all the rest went fishing and took a
long sail seaward beside.
That evening they went home with the tide, in great delight, every one.
Aunt Barbara was unduly proud of her exploits and a sunburnt nose, and
the younger members of the party were a little subdued from their first
enthusiasm by all sorts of exciting pleasures. As for Harry Foster, the
lad felt as if a door had been kindly opened in the solid wall of
hindrance which had closed about him, and as if he could look through
now into a new life.
XVII.
GOING AWAY.
MISS LEICESTER and her nephew, Betty's father, were sitting together in
the library. Betty had gone to bed. It was her last night in Tideshead,
and the summer which had been so long to look forward to was spent and
gone. She had felt very sorry before she went to sleep, and thought of
many things which might have been better, but after all one could not
help being very rich and happy with so many pleasures to remember. When
she thought how many new friends she had made, and how dear all the old
ones had been, and that she had become very friendly even with Mrs.
Beck, it was a great satisfaction. And now in less than a fortnight she
was to be with Ada and Bessie Duncan and their delightful mother in
London again. She certainly had a great deal to look forward to; still
there was a wistful feeling in her heart at leaving Tideshead.
There had been a fire in the library fireplace, for the evening was
cool, and papa and Aunt Barbara sat opposite each other. Papa was
smoking, as he always did before he went to bed; and happily Miss
Leicester liked the odor of tobacco, so that they were comfortable
together. They were talking most affectionately about Betty.
"I think you have done wonderfully with her, Tom," said the aunt.
"Nobody knows how anxious your Aunt Mary and I have felt at the thought
of your carrying her hither and yon, and spoiling her because she
couldn't settle down to regular habits of life."
"The only way is not to let one's habits become irregular," answered
Betty's papa. "I found out long ago that I could have my hours for work
and for exercise, and could go on with my reading as well in one place
as in another. I have tried not to let Betty see too many people in town
life, yet pretty soon she will be sixteen. She has always seemed to look
at life from a child's point of view until last spring. I don't mean
that she doesn't still have many days when she only considers the
world's relation to herself; but on the whole she begins to be very
serious about her own relation to the world, and is constantly made to
think more of what she can give than of what she can get. This is a very
trying season in many ways, the first really hard time that comes into a
boy's or a girl's life."
"Yes, and one is constantly learning those lessons in one way and
another during all the rest of one's life," sighed Aunt Barbara. Then
her face lighted up, and she added, "Just in proportion as she thinks
that she does things for other people she is making steps upward for
herself."
"I always think that Betty looks like Bewick's picture of the robin
redbreast; you remember it? There is an expression to its little beak
which always reminds me of my girl."
Aunt Barbara was much amused, but confessed that she remembered it, and
that Betty and the bird really resembled each other. "I think there is a
very good print of it in the large White's 'Selborne' which you sent
me," she said, going to one of the bookshelves and taking it down. "Yes,
they are certainly like one another," she repeated. "You see that this
copy has been used? I lent it for a long time to my young neighbor,
Henry Foster."