SOME EXCITEMENT
“But _why_ ‘Spoondrift’?” demanded Lucy. “What does it mean?”
“‘Spoondrift’ is the spray from the tops of the waves,” explained
Pearl. “We think the name is awfully pretty.”
“And so is the bungalow—and the Cove,” sighed Ruth.
“And we’re going to have a scrumptious time here!” declared Agnes.
Tess and Dot were frankly sleepy, and Lucy begged the privilege of
seeing them to bed.
“That’s real kind of you, I’m sure, Lute,” said Agnes.
“Don’t you praise her,” sniffed Carrie. “I know Lute. She’s sleepy,
herself. You won’t see her downstairs again to-night.”
“I don’t care,” yawned Lucy Poole, following Tess and Dot. “I sleep so
slowly that it takes a long time for me to get a good night’s rest.”
“Well! of all things!” ejaculated Carrie, as her cousin departed,
following the two smaller girls. “What do you know about _that_?”
“Almost as stupid as the inhabitants of London,” chuckled Agnes.
“What do you mean by that, Ag?” demanded Ann Presby. “The people of
London aren’t any more stupid than those of other cities, are they?”
“I don’t know,” returned Agnes; “but the book says ‘the population of
London is very dense.’”
“Fine! fine!” cried Carrie Poole, laughing. “Oh! these ‘literal’ folk.
You know, my Grandfather Poole has an awfully bald head. He was
telling us once that in some famous battle of the Civil War in which
he took part, his head was grazed by a bullet. My little brother Jimmy
stared at his head thoughtfully for a minute, and then he said:
“‘My, Grandpa, there’s not much grazing up there now, is there?’”
These stories began the evening. Everybody had some story or joke to
relate, and finally the girls began to guess riddles. Somebody
propounded the old one about the wind: “What is it that goes all
around the house and yet makes no tracks?” and Agnes had a new answer
for it:
“Germs!” she shouted. “You know, Miss Georgiana gave us a lecture
about them, and I bet we’re just surrounded by deadly bacilli right
now.”
“Those aren’t germs—they’re mosquitos, Ag!” laughed Pearl, slapping
vigorously at one of the pests. “Pleasant Cove isn’t entirely free
from them.”
“And they are presenting their bills pretty lively, too,” yawned Ruth.
“The bedrooms are screened. I believe we’d all better seek the haven
of bed unless we want to be splotchy to-morrow from mosquito bites.”
In the morning the older girls divided the housework between them, and
so got it all done in short order. The baggage had come up from the
station the evening before, and they unpacked.
Then they set forth to explore the fishing port, as well as the more
modern part of Pleasant Cove.
As they brisked along the walk past Mr. Terrence Severn’s Overlook
House, they spied Trix and her party on the big veranda. The girls
hailed each other back and forth; only Trix and the Corner House girls
did not speak.
“We can’t speak to her if she won’t speak to us,” said Ruth to Agnes.
“Now, never you mind, Aggie. She’ll get over her tantrum in time.”
The party from Spoondrift bungalow got back in season to get luncheon;
after which they rested and then bathed. It was the Corner House
girls’ first experience of salt water bathing and they all enjoyed
it—even Dot.
“It _does_ make you suck in your breath awfully hard when the waves
lap upon you,” she confessed. “But there was the Alice-doll sitting on
the shore watching me, and so I couldn’t let her see that I was
_afraid_!”
Ruth, more than the other girls, aided Pearl in looking after
housekeeping affairs. It was she who discovered the broken lamp in the
front hall.
The bungalow was lighted by oil-lamps, and they used candles in the
bed chambers; while there was a marvelous “blue-flame” kerosene range
in the kitchen.
Not all of the girls understood the handling of kerosene lamps, and
Pearl told a funny story about her own little sister who had never
seen any lights but gas or electric.
“When she came down here to Uncle Phil’s bungalow for the first time,
she was all excited about the lamps. She told mamma that ‘Uncle Phil
had his ’lectricity in a lamp right on the supper table. It’s a queer
kind of a light, for they fill it with water out of a can.’”
The hanging lamp in the front hall was set inside a melon-shaped
globe. Finding that, as Ruth pointed out, it could not be used, Pearl
made another trip to the village before teatime and in the local
“department store” bought another lamp.
“I am afraid you ought not to use that lamp, Pearl,” Ruth said, when
she saw that the chimney was not tall enough to stick out of the top
of the globe.
“Pooh! why not? Guess it’s just as good as the old chimney was,” said
Pearl.
“Seems to me Mrs. MacCall says that chimneys should always be tall
enough to come up through the globe. I don’t know just why——”
“Oh, pshaw!” interrupted Pearl. “It’s all right, I fancy.”
Neither girl had recourse to “applied physics.” Had she done so she
could easily have discovered just _why_ it was unwise to use a lamp
with a short chimney inside such a shaped globe as that hanging in
chains in the front hall of the bungalow.
Ruth forgot the matter. It was Pearl herself who lit the hall lamp
that evening. As before, they sat on the porch and played games and
sang or told stories, all the long, bright evening.
Tess and Dot had gone to bed at half after eight. It was an hour later
that Lucy suddenly said:
“I smell smoke.”
“It isn’t Mr. Harrod,” said Ann. “He’s gone down to the Casino.”
“It isn’t tobacco smoke I smell,” declared Lucy, springing up.
“Oh, Lute!” shrieked Agnes. “Look at the door!”
A cloud of black, thick smoke was belching out of the front hall upon
the veranda. One of the other girls shrieked “Fire!”
Those next few minutes were terribly exciting for all hands at the
Spoondrift bungalow. A single glance into the hall showed Ruth Kenway
that the hanging lamp had burst, and the place was all ablaze.
There was but one stairway, and the children were in one of the
low-ceilinged rooms above. Tess and Dot could only be reached by
climbing up the long, sloping roof of the bungalow, and getting in at
the chamber window.
While some of the girls ran for water—which was useless in the
quantity they could bring from the kitchen tap in pots and pans—and
others ran screaming along the street for help, Ruth “shinnied” right
up one of the piazza pillars and squirmed out upon the shingled roof.
She tore her dress, and hurt her knees and hands; but she did not
think of this havoc at the moment. She got to the window of the room
in which her sisters slept, and screamed for Tess and Dot, but in
their first sleep the smaller girls were completely “dead to the
world.”
There was the screen to be reckoned with before the oldest Corner
House girl could enter. It was set into the window from the inside,
and she could neither lift the window-sash nor stir the screen. So she
beat the tough wire in with her fists, and they bled and hurt her
dreadfully! Nevertheless, she got through, falling into the room just
as the stifling smoke from below began to pour in around the bedroom
door.
“Tess! Dot! Hurry up! Get up!” she shrieked, shaking them both.
Tess aroused, whimpering. Ruth seized Dot bodily, flung a blanket
around her, and put her out of the window upon the roof. Then she
dragged Tess to the window and made her climb out after her sister.
“Oh, oh!” gasped Tess, alive at last to the cause of the excitement.
“Save the Alice-doll, Ruthie. Save Dot’s Alice-doll!”
And Ruth actually went back, groping through the gathering smoke, for
the doll. With it she scrambled out upon the shingles.
By that time the street was noisy with shouting people. Mr. Harrod
came with a fire extinguisher and attacked the flames. Other men came
and helped the girls down from the roof.
Agnes had fainted when she realized the danger her sisters were in.
Some of the other girls were quite hysterical. Neighbors took them all
in for the night.
It was quite an hour before the fire was completely out. Then the
Spoondrift bungalow certainly was in a mess.
“It will take carpenters and painters a fortnight and more to repair
the damage,” said Mr. Harrod the next morning. “Luckily none of your
guests lost their clothing, Pearl; but you will all have to go to the
hotel to finish your visit to Pleasant Cove.”
[Illustration: Ruth actually went back, groping through the gathering
smoke, for the doll. With it she scrambled out upon the shingles.]