"Mr. Ignatius Donahue's compliments, and will the ladies take a ride in
his motor-boat this afternoon? Mr. Donahue is sorry he cannot go too,
but a business engagement prevents his being at Palm Beach."
This was the message brought to Miss Campbell the morning after their
arrival at Palm Beach. The bearer of the message was Edward, the young
chauffeur, who stood at a respectful distance while she read the note.
"But if Mr. Donahue isn't here, how did the note come?" asked Miss
Campbell, much mystified.
"I can't say, ma'am," replied Edward, turning his face away so that they
could not see the smile which twitched the corners of his mouth.
"Perhaps he telegraphed it," observed Billie.
"But it's written on note paper," replied Miss Campbell, rather
irritably. "Would you like to go, girls?"
"Oh, yes," chorused the four voices.
"Very well, Edward, there seems no one to tell it to but you. We shall
accept the invitation with pleasure. It would be absurd, I suppose, to
telegraph this important communication to Mr. Donahue at Kamschatka or
Boston or wherever he is, but he is very kind to offer us his boat and
you may expect us on the pier this afternoon at four. Is that a good
time for sailing?"
"Yes, ma'am," replied Edward, withdrawing down the corridor just as the
door of an adjoining room opened and an angry voice cried:
"How dare you meddle with anything in this room? Leave it instantly."
Some one replied in a low musical voice,
"I am very sorry. I was only looking at a picture. I noticed a
likeness----"
"You are here to clean up and not to notice. You are a servant and not a
visitor. Another time and you will be reported. You may go."
At this point a girl was thrust out into the hall so roughly that she
fell on her knees. It was only a chambermaid, and perhaps she was
accustomed to being spoken to harshly, although she did not appear to
be, for she covered her face with her hands and crouched against the
wall.
"How could any one be so brutal?" exclaimed Billie indignantly as she
ran to the trembling little figure and helped her to her feet. "Won't
you come into our room until you calm down? It was cruel to have spoken
to you so roughly."
The door opened again and an old woman stood on the threshold, leaning
on a cane. There was something rather regal in her appearance, in spite
of her plain black dress and grotesque-looking old garden hat with its
flapping brim which half concealed her face.
"Don't interfere, young woman," said the formidable-looking personage.
"Young American girls are far too impertinent."
Billie, who all her life had been the champion of the oppressed, was not
frightened by the glare from the old woman's steely blue eyes. She made
no reply, however. Her father had taught her never to engage in a battle
of words if she could possibly avoid it, especially with an older
person.
Putting her arm around the little chambermaid's waist, she drew her into
Miss Campbell's room and closed the door. The other girls who had been
silent witnesses of the scene gathered around them.
"What a dreadful old person," Billie burst out at last, giving vent to
her indignant feelings, when the girl staggered and almost fell on the
floor.
"Oh, the poor dear is fainting," cried Miss Campbell, hurrying to the
dressing-table for her smelling salts, while the others quickly lifted
the little maid to the bed. They opened her dress at the throat and
moistened her lips with water and performed the numberless little
services a woman, with any kindly sympathy in her nature, will never
withhold from another woman who needs her help.
"She is much too young and pretty to be a servant," observed Miss
Campbell, looking down with pity into the white, tired face of the
chambermaid, who appeared hardly older than her own girls, although her
fluffy blond hair was drawn up into a knot on top of her head. Presently
the color came back to her face, and she opened her eyes which were
large and very deep blue.
"Are you better now?" asked Billie, waving a palm-leaf fan gently over
her head.
The girl sat up and looked about her in bewilderment.
"Where am I?" she asked. Then her eyes caught Billie's kind gray ones
and memory came back to her. "It was so good of you to take my part and
so stupid of me to faint! I was frightened, I suppose, and a little
tired. I must be going, now," she looked toward the door uneasily. "It
would be dreadful to lose my place on the first day I began to work."
"But you are not going back to work when you are ill, child?" exclaimed
Miss Campbell.
"I'm afraid I must. It will be only a few hours more. I am off at
twelve. My work isn't hard. I only sort and distribute the fresh linen,"
she added with a note of apology in her voice, which was soft and
beautiful. The girls were struck also with her lady-like manner. They
could see that she was not accustomed to being a maid because she never
said, "Yes, Miss," and "No, Miss," like the usual chambermaid. But they
were too polite to ask any questions, and presently she withdrew without
their knowing much more about her than they had at first.
But they soon forgot the chambermaid and her troubles in the joys of
Palm Beach. Probably nobody in the world can have a better time than
four intimate young friends on a pleasure trip, and many admiring
glances were turned in the direction of the Motor Maids as they sat in a
row on the hotel veranda after breakfast, while Miss Campbell composed a
letter in the writing-room. They were entirely unconscious of the
attention they attracted, however, so interested were they in watching
the rippling waters of Lake Worth already dotted with white sails.
Groups of people, dressed in white, strolled about the hotel grounds or
sat on garden seats under the palm trees. It was that delicious lazy
time in the morning when one is on a holiday and there is only pleasure
to anticipate.
"Billie," whispered Nancy, "there is that brutal old woman who was so
rude to the chambermaid this morning. I honestly believe she would have
struck you with her stick if you had answered a word."
"If she had," replied Billie, laughing, "and I had cabled it to Papa, he
would have taken a flying leap across the Atlantic Ocean and got here
before midnight. But I really don't think she would have dared go that
far."
"Be careful, here she is upon us," warned Elinor, and the four girls,
without intending to be rude, turned their eyes toward the approaching
figure.
The old woman still wore her flapping garden hat tied under the chin
with brown silk strings. She leaned on her cane heavily as she walked,
and noticed no one until she saw the four pairs of eyes regarding her
with evident curiosity.
She paused in front of the group and brandished her stick in their
faces.
"Well, what do you think you are looking at," she cried, "a chimpanzee
or an elephant or one of your own native wild people?"
"Oh, grandmamma," cried a tall, slender girl walking at her side. "How
can you talk in that way? You mortify me terribly." And she led the old
woman into the hall.
"What a fierce old party," exclaimed a young man in white flannels, who
was sitting so low in a deep chair that he appeared all legs and arms.
"'Native wild people,'" he repeated, laughing gaily. "We look like
native wild people in this civilized place, don't we?"
"Now, Timothy," said a girl sitting next to him, "she meant you, I am
sure. You resemble a native wild person more than any one here, with
your absurd bristling red hair."
The young man laughed good-naturedly, and the girls could not resist
joining in, for Timothy might have been taken for a human porcupine any
day. And that was how the Motor Maids came to make friends with Timothy
Peppercorn, whose ridiculous name and funny appearance never failed to
set them laughing.
"But who is this old lady?" asked the girl who had spoken to Timothy,
and whom they came to know later as Miss Genevieve Martin of Kentucky.
"I don't know," answered Billie, smiling. "I've only seen her once
before, and the meeting wasn't very friendly then."
"Did she beat you with her stick?" asked Timothy Peppercorn.
"If I had said anything, she would have tapped me on the head with the
gold knob, I believe, but I kept very still."
"What happened?" asked Miss Martin, turning to Elinor who was nearest
her.
Elinor related the story of the poor little chambermaid or "linen
sorter," as she was careful to call her.
"What a brutal old wretch!" exclaimed the other indignantly. "Does she
expect to teach manners to Americans by treating them like this?
"Timothy, run quick and look at the hotel register and see who she is."
Timothy gathered his loose frame together and rose to his feet. He was
really not so tall as he appeared when sitting, but he seemed all arms
and legs like a grand-daddy-long-legs.
"After I come back, will you have that swim?" he demanded.
The girl nodded her head gaily.
"No one can ever resist that funny red-headed boy," she exclaimed to the
others. "I don't know quite what it is about him. He is really one of
the best natured creatures alive, and he has had a great deal to make
him unhappy, too, but he is always in a good humor."
"What has happened to him?" asked Nancy, who had a childish curiosity
and was still young enough to ask questions.
"His mother and his brother and sister have all died of consumption.
Timothy would be delicate, too, but he is determined not to be, and when
he finishes college he is going to be an engineer and live out of
doors."
"We are engineers," put in Billie, "Papa and I and it's the nicest work
in the world."
Miss Martin laughed. She had taken a tremendous fancy to these four nice
young girls who seemed so unaffected and natural. But Timothy returned
before she could reply.
"The military lady in the flap-brimmed hat," he announced, "is
registered as Mrs. Paxton-Steele. The meek young person at her side is
Miss Georgiana Paxton, and there appear to be also in the family Edward
Paxton and Clarence Paxton, all of England."
"Steele is a good name for such a stern old personage," said Genevieve.
"Well, 'her is naught to we, nor we to she,'" added Timothy, "so let's
go in bathing and forget all about her."
"Are you sure you feel strong enough, Timothy?" asked his friend,
looking at him critically.
"Of course I do, Genie," answered the boy, flushing as red as his ruddy
upstanding hair.
"But I don't want to lose my new friends just as I have made them,"
continued the charming girl, changing the subject quickly and smiling
into Billie's face. "Perhaps you will go with us?"
"Oh, may we?" cried Billie and Nancy in one voice.
Mary and Elinor were no swimmers.
"Where are your mammas, then, so that I may ask permission first?"
demanded Miss Martin.
"We haven't but one with us and she's a cousin, but here she is,"
replied Billie.
Miss Martin had the easy gracious manners of the South and she never
permitted any one in her company to feel awkward or strange for long.
She introduced herself and her friend, Timothy Peppercorn, to Miss
Campbell simply and gracefully, and after a moment's pleasant chat she
had learned Miss Campbell's name and the names of the four girls, and
the swimming party was arranged.
"How quickly things do happen once they begin," thought Billie, as she
ran lightly into the surf where they chose to bathe instead of going to
the pool which most people preferred. "If old Mrs. Paxton-Steele, of
England, hadn't been so quarrelsome with the chambermaid this morning,
we should never have stared at her on the piazza. She would probably
have passed us by without noticing us at all. Then, we should not have
made friends with Miss Martin and that funny Timothy-boy, and no one
would have suggested this glorious morning swim."
She plunged under the foamy crest of a cool green wave, rose breast high
on another, shook herself like a young water spaniel and made for the
raft with long overhand strokes.
Swimming was a real accomplishment with Billie, although her father, who
had brought her up very much as he would have reared a son, had not
taught her this particularly boyish pastime. She had learned to swim at
the age of five from an old peasant woman in a village on the coast of
Brittany, where they had spent a summer. These old fisherwomen were the
only swimming masters on that sequestered beach. Billie could still
remember with something of a shiver the ancient, gnarled creature with
her skirts tucked up about her wrinkled limbs, who, standing waist-high
in the water, had taught her the first strokes. Hard as it had seemed at
the time, she had never ceased to be thankful for those early lessons.
"My, but you're a corker," exclaimed Timothy Peppercorn, breathlessly.
"I thought Genevieve was pretty good, but you're the best I have ever
seen."
"Thank you," answered Billie, as she swung herself on the raft.
Many other swimmers dotted the surf that morning and groups of people in
light clothes sat about on the shining strand. Splendid palm trees and
poincianas made a cool green background to the lovely shore, and Billie
half closed her eyes as she lay on the raft, so as to make a picture she
might carry in her mind always. She had not noticed that Timothy was too
winded to hoist himself on the raft.
Her attention was presently attracted by a frolicking group of swimmers
coming toward the raft. In the midst of them, puffing and snorting like
a Triton, was a jolly big fat man whom they called Duffy. Mr. Duffy had
a red rubber ball--not much redder or rounder indeed than his own
face--which he was tossing ahead of them on the water while the others
raced to get it.
"Let's get in the game," called Timothy as the ball skipped toward them
over the waves.
Billie dived off the raft and came up just where she had seen the ball
strike, but some one seized it and tossed it a score of yards away.
There is always a swimmer in a water party who does reckless and
dangerous things. This time it was the individual who had seized the
ball before Billie could get it. One by one the other swimmers left off
chasing and made for shore. Mr. Duffy, turning his immense frame over,
floated away on his back in happy oblivion. But the stranger, pitching
the ball again as far as he could send it, challenged Timothy to race
for it.
It was in vain that Genevieve, who had at that moment reached the raft,
protested and looked coldly at the man whose back was turned. Timothy
darted off in the water while the two girls watched his red head
uneasily as it rose and fell on the white-tipped waves.
Both swimmers reached the ball at the same moment, struggled over it,
and then that reckless, inhuman stranger tossed it further out to sea.
"Idiots!" cried Genevieve, beating her hands helplessly together as she
sat on the side of the raft.
All the other swimmers had gone ashore now and were making for the bath
houses, while loiterers on the beach were scattering to the tennis
courts and golf links or the morning concert in Cocoanut Grove.
Suddenly Billie saw the strange man throw up both hands with a loud cry,
which sounded very much like "Sharks!" and start to shore as fast as he
could go.
"Oh! Oh!" cried Genevieve, covering her face with her hands.
Some twenty yards beyond Timothy they could just make out the ugly
square nose and upstanding fin of a big fish sticking above the water.
"Hurry, Timothy, hurry," called the girl in an agony of anxiety.
"I'm all right," he answered faintly, but each movement seemed to be
weaker than the last and suddenly he sank beneath the waves.
While Genevieve was calling for help toward the now almost empty beach,
Billie made a running dive off the raft, and with long, clean strokes,
swam for the red head which appeared on the surface once more.