A MERRY TIME
"Yes, I say it's a shame!" cried Jack, indignantly.
"Perfectly awful," confirmed Dray.
"Our meeting is at nine," announced Walter, "and when I went on the
soup shift, I did not agree to do the waiting. That's not my part."
Ed tucked an end of white mosquito netting in his belt, draped it
jauntily, and appeared ready to do the "waiting." Walter was frying
bacon and eggs on the oil stove. Jack threw dishes at the
oilcloth-covered table in imitation of a game of quoits, and he rarely
missed the mark. They were about to have breakfast, and in spite of
the difficulties encountered in the way of modern improvements omitted
in the arrangement of Camp Couldn't (the camp got that name for a
million reasons), the boys were having a fine time.
"That coffee will be cold," protested Dray, "and my doctor says cold
coffee is slow poison. I prefer my poison quick." The joke about
Dray's doctor was that Dray never knew a doctor other than the medical
inspector at school. He had such astonishingly good health that they
used the idea of sickness in reference to him as a "counter irritant."
"But this stove is a trifle small," said Walter. "What do you say we
buy that one from Camp Cattle? It's a peach."
"If the Cattle crowd have a good stove they won't sell it," replied
Jack. "You will likely find a second-hand flue in it, or a rubber hose
leader. Those boys are brilliant. If we need a new stove let it be
from Duke's, with a cast-iron guarantee."
"Right-o," seconded Dray. "The cast-iron is always useful about a
camp. But I say, what about the racket at the Mote last night? That
sister of yours, Jack, is wasting her talents. She ought to be chief
of a detective bureau."
"Cora is all right," Jack returned, proudly. "And while we are on the
subject, and not to brag, of course, I might say that some of the
other girls are in the same class. First few years they came out to
the woods I used to be rather doubtful, but now we often find that the
maids can take care of the masters; don't we, Wallie? More of that
odor, please. I wonder why bacon turns all to odor when it's cooked
up!"
"There are only two more pieces of odor left," complained Walter, "and
I'd like the smell myself."
"Oh, all right. I have had more than enough." Jack waved a disdainful
hand loftily. "I believe, as it is, I should be more careful what I
eat."
A huge, very hard bun, the sort found only in bakeries near Summer
resorts, hit Jack squarely in the face. Without any comment he caught
it, cut it in half, and with a tin spoon plastered it with butter.
Then he put "the lid on it," and tried to get it between his teeth. It
was heroic exercise, but Jack had been trained at a reputable college,
and had learned to eat what he wanted.
"But those duffers, the land men," continued Dray, "what are they
after the girls for? I had an idea one of them must be trying to claim
relationship with the fair Freda. He kept so close to her when she was
out after Denny."
"Relationship!" Jack repeated, with a laugh. "You almost hit it, Dray.
I guess the bear would like to be her first cousin, for he is trying
to get her goods and chattels from her."
"How?"
"Oh, we must not go into that; at least not just yet. I promised Cora
not to be hasty with Moran. He's the 'gent' who is supposed to be
president of the company."
"The one who wears the Panama? I wonder if anyone would think of haste
in connection with that duffer. It took him just one hour to buy three
soft crabs from some kids at the dock yesterday," said Walter. "I
wouldn't like to be his messmate. But I don't like his eye; it's made
on the bias."
"Yes, always looks as if it were going to slip out of the socket,"
confirmed Jack. "Well, I hope the girls won't go in too deep with
their schemes. Those fellows are from little old N'Yawk."
"Quick!" whispered Walter. "There's that Black. If he lays eyes on
your plates he'll lick them."
The last morsels of food were crammed into mouths before the call from
the neighboring camper was answered.
"Come right in," Ed said, finally, "and help yourself. Have you had
your grape fruit?"
"Oh, no," sighed Tom Black, "I didn't feel exactly right this
morning." (He brushed a brown hand across his brow.) "Nerves, I
guess."
"Nerves? Grub!" shouted Jack. "Didn't I see a can marked 'soup' in
your back yard this a. m.?"
"Might have, but I didn't. Else I would have had soup."
"There were grubbers around last night," went on Jack, "and we thought
we found a thread that matches your sweater, sticking to a nail in our
grub box."
"My sweater is not ripped that I can see," replied Tom, innocently,
"but if you are so kind I might take it. Don't think we put our sewing
boxes in the kit, come to think of it."
"It will be ripped presently," announced Ed. "We have reason to
suspect the Cattle; in fact, we have engaged counsel."
"The motor girls, I fancy, will defend you," said Tom, nonchalantly,
"but I assure you, you will have no case. We are absolutely without
grub; in fact, our case is pitiable."
"And you had a 'Doins' last night," Dray reminded him. "Now, Tom, we
want to be fair, but we have arranged to form a housewives' league for
the purpose of swiping systematically. For instance," (here he got a
burnt match and tried to trace something on the oilcloth), "if we have
company, and no olives, we could go over to your cupboard, take a
bottle and deposit in its stead, say, a can of beans."
"Great!" shouted Tom, tossing up his cap, that landed on the flaming
oil stove. "You should not waste oil," he said, as he rescued the cap.
"It's always wise to turn out the stove when you take off the pan."
"The meeting is to be held in our living room," Ed said, pointing
outside to a bench made of a tree limb _au naturel_. "When we have
formed our committees and settled on our constitution----"
This last word seemed to give every boy present a sort of agony, for
each began to "feel for his constitution," as if that important part
of his physique had been lost in the camp woods.
"I wish you could settle my constitution," remarked Tom. "Once I get
that settled, I don't care what happens."
"Now, quit your fooling," returned Walter. "I have an engagement and I
would like to get my housework done. Tom, help yourself to a towel,
and be careful not to wipe the plates on a glass towel. You can tell
the difference by the border. The dish towel is all border, the center
or hole went up on the oil stove, a little trick our stove has--it
does not like towels. The proper towel for the glasses is that one
with the black line drawn through the middle. The black line is not
important, it was put there with a single wipe of the spark plug from
the _Lassie_. Ed did it, very neatly."
Tom took the towel tossed to him, and, as only a boy can, began to dry
the dishes that Walter was piling in front of him. First he patted and
rubbed the towel on one side of the dish that lay before him; then he
turned the same dish over with a bang and repeated the patting and
rubbing on the other side. After that he gave the plate a spin. If it
landed right side up he left it so; if the trade-mark showed he
counted it a "foul," and tried the trick again. How boys can get work
done that way is always a mystery to girls, who find the same play
labor.
"Do I stay for lunch?" Tom asked. "I suppose when a fellow helps with
the general housework he is entitled to his 'keep.'"
"Oh, we would just love to have you," replied Jack, with mock
seriousness, "but the fact is, we are all invited out. We lunch on the
_Chelton_ to-day," and he strutted around with such wide sweeping
curves, and twists, that he knocked from the narrow board table every
last bit of butter the "Couldn'ts" had in their camp. Gingerly he
scooped up the top lump, that lay on the store dish, but the scraps
had to be scraped up with the egg turner, and the spot on the floor
(they had a board floor in the camp) had to be washed up with the dish
water, when Walter finally relinquished that important commodity.
"More careful next time," commanded Dray. "I'm off to call the
meeting. Where's that dinner bell?"
The "bell," a very old and very large tray, was found outside under
the bench, and with a good strong stick Dray beat it furiously, until
it might easily be heard by every camper on the grounds. At the first
signal boys came scampering from all directions. Some carried
towels--too much excited to drop them in their camps; others dashed
through the woods with sweaters on their arms, and reluctant neckties
in their fists, for it was early and the campers had scarcely time to
make "careful" toilets.
"Grub?" they asked in chorus. "Let us see it? Lead us to it!"
"Grub nothing!" replied Walter. "You just get outside on that bench,
the overflow can take the reserved seats on the nice green moss. This
meeting has been called for the purpose of organizing the Housewives'
League of Crystal Bay."
"Aoo-oo-ou--oh!" came a groaning reply from those who felt able to
groan. "And I left sugar in my coffee cup," wailed he with the dish
towel.
"And there were perfectly good crumbs at my place," sighed Teddy, a
boy with so many colors in his face that they called him "Rainbow."
"Come to order!" called Jack, banging on the tent table, which was to
serve as the chairman's desk. "Every camp must qualify."
"We do! We do!" shouted the majority, the rest being engaged in a
rough and tumble for places near the "door."
"The purpose of this meeting," went on Jack, ducking a lump of moss
tossed in lieu of a bouquet, "is to formulate plans, whereby the
humans of Prowlers' Paradise may continue to defy the birds of the
air, and the beasts of the field, and live in a perfectly human way."
"Hurrah for the humans!" shouted Rainbow, and the cheers that followed
did more than merely consume time.
"Let me explain," interrupted Dray, pushing Jack from his place, and
taking the stand pompously. "We have been the victims of prowlers. We
have lost our soup; we also lost our cans of milk--in fact, the cruel
ones took everything but our appetites, and now we propose to put a
stop to such depredations. We will form a league to borrow and to
lend, also to pay back, but he who taketh his brother's soup and
returneth not a can of beans shall be expelled from the Prowlers'
Paradise!"
"We did lose five small cans of milk," reiterated Walter to Dave, the
head or chief of a big camp called "We-like-it," "and if we find the
rowdy who took that he shall be court-martialed."
A commotion then started that broke up the meeting. The boys, in
rolling and tumbling about, rolled Dainty, so-called because he never
could get enough to eat, and because his quest showed in unweighable
pounds of fat, deliberately down the small hill at the side of Camp
Couldn't. Two of the Cattle did the rolling, and as Dainty made one
full turn a can of milk squirmed out of his pocket.
"Robber! Thief! Traitor!" screamed the rollers, and then poor Dainty
was lugged back to the camp.
Making the charge against him, and making an example of him would be
too sad a tale for words; sufficient to say that the meeting adjourned
at the request of a peace commission.
When the last visitor had been "shooed" away and the Couldn'ts had
carefully prepared for the lunch to be taken on the _Chelton_
(although Ed claimed that Walter had appropriated his most becoming
tie, and that the shade of tan rather marred Wallie's own "tannery"
effect), the boys finally put the camp flap down good and tight, and
were off to the bay.