"I want to go, Judy--please, please!"
Blossom was up on her elbow, pleading earnestly. Judith was dressing.
"It's a Blossom day--you know it's a Blossom day! And Jemmy Three'll
carry me down. _I_ know Jemmy Three will! I haven't been out
a-dorying for such a long time; Judy--please!"
It was always hard work for Judith to refuse Blossom anything.
Besides--Judith went to the window and lifted the scant little
curtain--yes, it certainly was a "Blossom day." The sky was
Blossom-blue, the sea spread away out of sight, Blossom-smooth and
shining. And the little pleader there in the bed looked so eager and
longing--so Blossom-sweet! She should go "a-dorying," decided Judith,
but it would not be Jemmy Three that carried her down to the sea.
"You little tease, come on, then!" laughed Judith. "I'll dress you in
double-quick, for I've got to get out to my traps."
Judith had overslept, for a wonder. When had Judith done a thing like
that before! For two hours Blossom had been awake, lying very quietly
for fear of waking Judy; poor, tired Judy must not be disturbed.
Downstairs mother had gone away to her work at the beautiful summer
cottage down-beach, beyond the hotel. It was ironing-day at the
cottage, and all day mother would stand at the ironing-board, ironing
dainty summer skirts and gowns.
"I'll ride in front an' be a--a what'll I be, Judy?"
"A little bother of a Blossom in a pink dress," laughed Judith, as
she buttoned the small garments with the swift, deft fingers that had
buttoned them for six years.
"No, no! a--don't you know, the kind of a thing that brings good luck?
You read it to me your own self, Judy Lynn!"
"I guess you mean a _mastif_," Judith said slowly. "Queer it sounds
so much like a dog!--it didn't make me think of a dog when I read it."
"M-m--yes, I'll be a mastif"--Blossom's voice was doubtful; it hadn't
reminded her so much of a dog, either, at the time. "An' so you'll
have good luck. You'll find your traps brim-up full, Judy! Then I
guess you'll say, 'Oh, how thankful I am I brought that child!'"
Judith caught the little crippled figure closer in a loving hug. "I'm
thankful a'ready!" she cried.
They hurried through the simple breakfast that mother had left for
them, and then Judith shouldered the joyous child and tramped away
over the half-mile that separated them from the old black dory.
"Now, Judy, now le's begin right off an' pretend! Go ahead--you
pretending?"
"I'm pretending. I'm a chariot and you're a fine lady in pink ging--"
"Ging--!" scorned Blossom. "Silk, Judy--in pink silk, a-ridin' in the
chariot. It's a very nice, _easy_ chariot an' doesn't joggle her
hip--Oh, I forgot she hasn't got any hips, of course! Well, here she
goes a-riding and a-riding along, just as comfortable, but pretty
soon she says--we're coming to the beautiful part now, Judy!--'I guess
I better get out an' walk now,' she says. Now pretend she _got out
and walked, Judy_--you pretending?"
"I'm pretending," cried Judy, her clasp on the little figure
tightening and her eyes shining mysteriously. Sometime the little
fine lady should get out and walk! She should--she should!
"Now she's walking--no, she isn't, either, she's riding, and it isn't
in a chariot, it's in her sister's arms, an' she's _Blossom_. Don't
le's pretend any more, Judy. There's days it's easy to an' there's
days it's hard to--it's a hard-to day, I guess, to-day. Those days you
can't pretend get out and walk very well."
"Pretend I'm an elephant!" laughed Judy, though the laugh trembled in
her throat. "That's an easy-to-pretend! And you're an--Oh, an Arab,
driving me! You must talk _Arabese_, Blossom!"
Blossom was gay again when they got to the dory, and Judith dropped
her into the bow, out of her own weary arms.
"Now say 'Heave-ho!--heave-ho'!" commanded Judith, "to help me drag
her down, you know. Here we go!"
"I don't know the Arabese for 'heave-ho,'" laughed little Blossom,
mischievously. "I could say it in American."
"Say it in 'American,' then, you little rogue!" panted Judith, all
her tough little muscles a-stretch for the haul.
They were presently out on the water, rocking gently with the gentle
waves. And Blossom was presently shouting with delight. Her little
lean, sharp face was keen with excitement.
"Now pretend--now, now, now! It's easy to out here! The fine lady's
going abroad, Judy--do you hear? She's going right straight over
'cross this sea, in this han'some ship! When she gets there she'll
_step out_ on the shore an' say what a beautiful voyage she's had,
an' good-by to the cap'n--you're the cap'n, Judy. An' you'll say, 'Oh,
my lady, sha'n't I help you ashore?' An' she'll laugh right out,
it's so ridic'lous! 'Help me, my good man!' she'll 'xclaim. 'I guess
you must think I can't walk!'"
Blossom's face was alive with the joy of the beautiful "pretend."
But Judith's face was sober.
"Laugh, why don't you, Judy?" cried the child.
"I'm laugh--I mean I will, dear. But I've got to row like everything
now, so you must do the pretending for us both. We've got to get out
there to those traps before you can say 'scat'!"
"Scat!" shrilled Blossom.
It was Blossom's sharp eyes that discovered Jem Three "out there."
Judith was bending to her work.
"There's Jemmy Three, Judy! True-honest, out there a-trapping! He
looks 's if he was coming away from our place--he is, Judy! He's got
our lobsters, to s'prise us, maybe."
"It won't surprise me," muttered Judy, in the clutch of the Evil
Thought again. She was watching the distant boat now keenly, her eyes
hard with suspicion. Jem Three it surely was, and he was rowing
slowly away from Judith's lobster "grounds." It seemed to her his
dory was deep in the water as if heavily weighted. He had been--had
been to her traps again. He was whistling--Judith could hear the
faint, sweet sound--but that didn't hide anything. Let him whistle all
he wanted to--she knew what he had been up to!
"Ship aho-oy!" came across faintly to them, but it was only Blossom
that answered.
"Ahoy! Ship ahoy!" she sent back clearly. Judith bent over her
toiling oars.
"He's going away from us, we sha'n't meet him," Blossom said in
disappointment.
"Of course he's going away--of course he won't meet us," Judith
retorted between her little white teeth.
"An' I wanted to 'speak him,'" the disappointed little voice ran on;
"I was going to call out, 'How's the folks abroad? We're on our way
'cross, in the Judiana B.,'--this is the Judiana B., Judy, after both
of us. B. stands for me."
"Funny way to spell me!" laughed Judith with an effort. She must hide
away her black suspicions. Not for the world would she have Blossom
know! Blossom was so fond of Jemmy Three, and she had so few folks to
be fond of.
A surprise was waiting for them "out there." The traps were pretty
well loaded! Not full, any of them, but not one of them empty. In
all, there were seventeen great, full-grown, glistening, black
fellows for Blossom to shudder over as she never failed to do--Blossom
was no part of a fisherman.
"He didn't dare to take them all," thought Judith, refusing to let
the Evil Thought get away from her. "Probably he saw us coming. If
he'd let 'em alone there might have been a lot more--perhaps there
were fifty!"
"One, two, three,"--counted Blossom slowly. "Why, Judy, there's
seventeen. You didn't s'pose there'd be as many as seventeen, did
you? Isn't that a splendid lot?"
"Not as splendid as fifty," answered Judy, assured now that there had
been as many as that.
"Seventeen from fifty is thirty--thirty-two," whispered the Evil Thing
in her ear. Evil things cannot be expected to be good in arithmetic
or anything else. "So he helped himself to thirty-two, did he! Nice
haul! Thirty-two big fellows will bring him in--"
"Don't!" groaned Judith.
"I don't wonder you say 'don't!' Thirty-two nice big fellows would
have brought _you_ in a pretty little sum. You could have put it away
in a stocking in your bureau drawer, for the Blossom-fund."
"Oh, I was going to! I was going to!"
"Thought so--well, you'll have to get along with seventeen. That comes
of having boys like that for friends!"
"He isn't my friend!" Judith cried sharply to the Evil Thing in her
breast. "He never will be again. If it wasn't for Uncle Jem I'd never
look at him again as long as I live!"
All this little dialogue had gone on unsuspected by the little pink
"mastif" in the bow of the little dory. Blossom had been busy edging
out of the reach of the ugly things in the bottom of the boat. If
Judith had only edged away from her Ugly Thing!
Another surprise was even now on the way--a surprise so stupendous and
unexpected that, beside it, the lobster-surprise would dwindle away
into insignificance and be quite forgotten for the rest of the day.
And oddly enough, it was to be Blossom who should be discoverer
again.
"I'm going a little farther out and fish awhile," Judith announced
over her last trap. "I've got all my tackle aboard and maybe I can
find something Mrs. Ben will want. You sit still as a mouse, Blossom,
for I cant't be watching you and fishing, too."
"I'll sit still as _two_ mice. Needn't think o' me!" answered the
little one proudly. Did Judy think she was little like that? Just
because she hadn't legs that would go! They didn't need to go, did
they, out here in the middle of the sea!
"What makes it look so ripply an' bubbly out there?" she questioned
with grown-up dignity. Judy should see she could sit still and talk
like anybody.
"Where?" asked Judith absently. She did not take the trouble to
follow the little pointing finger with her eyes.
"_There_--why don't you look? It's all pretty an' ripply an' kind of
queer. Doesn't look like plain water 'xactly. Look, Judy--why don't
you?"
"I am looking now--Oh, Oh, wait! It looks like--Blossom, I believe it's
a school! That's the way the water always loo--Blossom, Blossom, do
you hear me, it's a school! A school of mackerel--a _school_, I tell
you!"
"Well, you needn't keep on a-telling me." Blossom, anyway, was calm.
"I'm not deaf o' hearing, am I? If it's a school, le's us go right
straight out there an' fish it up, Judy."
Judy was going right straight out there with all the strength of her
powerful young arms. She was not calm; her face was quivering with
excitement and joy. A school! A school! Oh, but that meant so much
for the Blossom-fund, to put away in the stocking in the bureau
drawer! If it should prove a big school--but she and Blossom could not
manage a big one, never in the world. If Jemmy Thr--no, no, not Jemmy
Three! This was not Jemmy Three's school--what had he to do with it?
In all the stress and excitement of sending the old dory out there
where the water was rippling its news to her, Judy had time to think
of several things. She had time to remember how she and Jem Three had
used, from the time they were little brown things in pinafores, to
plan about their first school o' mackerel--what they would do with all
the wealth it should bring them, how they would share it together,
how they would pull in the silvery, glistening fellows, side by side.
What plans--what plans they had made! They had practiced a shrill,
piercing call that was to summon the one of them who should happen to
be absent when the "school" was descried out there in the bay. Even
lately, big and old as they had grown, they had laughingly reviewed
that call. Now--this minute--if Judith were to utter it, piercing and
far-carrying and jubilant, perhaps Jemmy Three might hear and come
plowing through the waves to get his share--had he any share? Because
when they were little brown things they had made vows, did that give
him any rights now?
Of course, if--if things had been different--lobster-things--Judith
might have pursed her lips into that triumphant summons. But--
"Sit still! I'm going to swing her round!" called Judith sharply.
"I've got to go ashore for father's old net. It's in the boat-house."
"You won't leave me, Judy--promise you'll take me out with you!"
pleaded Blossom, eagerly.
"I'll have to," Judith responded briefly. "There isn't time to carry
you home--I don't dare _take_ time."
She made her plans as she went in, and put out again with the clumsy
heap of netting towering at her feet. The thing she meant to do was
stupendous for a girl to attempt alone, but she was going to attempt
it. The shabby old net had lain in its corner, useless, for two
years. Now it should be used--she, Judith Lynn would use it! She was
glad as she pulled seaward again that she had thrown in two
scoops--perhaps when the time came Blossom could make out to use one a
little.
The net was like a long--a very long--fence, with its lower edge
weighted heavily and its upper edge provided with wooden floats, to
insure its standing erect under water. When in position properly it
surrounded the school of fish, completely fencing in the darting,
glimmering, silver fellows. Then the circle could be gradually
narrowed and the fish brought together in a mass, when scoops could
be used to dip them up into the boat.
The school once located, Judith began to circle slowly round it,
"paying out" her fence of netting with no small difficulty, but
gradually surrounding the unsuspected fish, until at length she had
them penned.
"What did I tell you! I told you I'd be the--the mastif, Judy!"
Blossom chattered. "I told you you'd say how thankful you was you
brought that child!"
"How thankful I am!" chattered Judy. Then, launched into the thick of
the arduous work, they both fell into breathless silence and only
worked. It was not much Blossom could do, but she did her little
splendidly. And Judith toiled with all her strength.
They stopped at last, not because there were no more of the
glistening, silver fellows about them, but because the old black dory
was weighted almost to the water's edge. They had to stop. And then
began Judith's terrible hour. For the heavy boat must somehow be
worked back, a weary little at a time, to the distant shore. Judith
set herself to this new task gallantly, but it was almost too much
for her. Over and over again it seemed to her she must give it up and
toss overboard part, at least, of her silver freight, to lighten her
load. But over and over again she nerved herself to another spurt of
strength.
She must do it! She could not give up! She would shut her eyes, like
this, and row ten more strokes--just ten more. Then she would row ten
with her eyes open. Ten, shut--ten, open. Perhaps that would help. She
tried it. She tried other poor little devices--calling the strokes
"eenie, meenie, minie, mo," the way she and Jemmy Three had "counted
out" for tag when they were little--brown--things. Her strength--was
surely--giving out--it shouldn't give out!
Blossom, watching silently from her weary perch, grew frightened at
Judy's tense, set face and began to sob. And then Judy must find
breath enough to laugh reassuringly and to nod over her shoulder at
the child.
They had gone out late--had been out a wearisome time--and the journey
back to land was measured off by slow, laboring oar-strokes that
scarcely seemed to move the great boat. So it was late afternoon when
at length Judith's hard task was done. She seemed to possess but one
desire--to rest. To get Blossom over the remaining half mile between
her and home and then to tumble over on the bed and sleep--what more
could anyone wish than that?
But there would be more than that to do. She must get food for tired
little Blossom, if not for herself. And before this towered
gigantically the two last feats of strength that faced her and seemed
to laugh at her with sardonic glee.
"Drag me up on the beach--drag me up!" the old black dory taunted her.
"Carry me home, Judy, I'm so tired!--carry me home," Blossom pleaded,
like a little wilted blossom.
She did both things, but she never quite realized just how she could
have done them. She remembered telling herself she couldn't and then
finding them done. Of covering her load of mackerel with an old
rubber blanket she was dimly conscious. It was not until she lay
drowsing in utter exhaustion on her own bed that she thought of all
of the rest that must be done to that boat-load of precious freight.
Then she tried to sit up, with a cry of distress.
"I must go! I cant't stay here! Or I shall lose--Oh, what shall I
lose?" she groaned in her drowsiness and dread. Something would
happen if she did not get up at once--she would lose something that
she _mustn't_ lose. She must get up now, at once.
"I shall lose Blossom--no, I mean Blossom will lose--oh, yes, Blossom
will lose her legs, if I don't get up," she drowsed, and fell
asleep.