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[Illustration: Annie Pore has bloomed forth into a regular English
rose!--_Page 89_]
VACATION WITH THE TUCKER TWINS
by
NELL SPEED
Author of "At Boarding School with the Tucker Twins," "The Molly Brown
Series," etc.
With Four Half-Tone Illustrations by Arthur O. Scott
New York
Hurst & Company
Publishers
Copyright, 1916,
by
Hurst & Company
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE BEACH 5
II. "SLEEPY" 18
III. OUR FIRST NIGHT AT THE BEACH 28
IV. BUBBLES 36
V. BLANCHE 45
VI. A ROMANCE 57
VII. OH, YOU CHAPERONE! 67
VIII. LETTERS 83
IX. THE START 91
X. THE FINISH 102
XI. CAPE HENRY 111
XII. FRECKLES AND TAN 126
XIII. THE TURKEY-TAIL FAN 134
XIV. A LETTER AND ITS ANSWER 150
XV. THE JUDGE 158
XVI. AN AXE TO GRIND 175
XVII. MR. ARTHUR PONSONBY PORE 187
XVIII. THE MACHINATIONS OF MABEL 198
XIX. THE WEDDING 205
XX. THE AFTER-MATH 225
XXI. SETTLING UP 241
XXII. GOOD-BYE TO THE BEACH 261
XXIII. UNTIL NEXT TIME 268
XXIV. A BREAD-AND-BUTTER LETTER 282
XXV. BRACKEN IN AUGUST 285
XXVI. THE PICNIC 298
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Annie Pore has bloomed forth into a regular English
rose _Frontispiece_
A tousled head emerged and then a hot, fat, red face 19
Peeping in, we saw the game in full swing 145
"Why don't you speak up, girl?" 255
Vacation with the Tucker Twins.
CHAPTER I.
THE BEACH.
My first impression of Willoughby Beach gave me keen disappointment. It
was so sandy, so flat, and so absolutely shadeless. I longed for the
green hills far away and in my heart felt I could not stand a month of
the lonesome stretches of sand and the pitiless glare of the summer sun.
It took great self-control and some histrionic ability for me to conceal
my emotions from my enthusiastic hostesses.
The Tuckers had been coming to Willoughby for years and loved every
grain of sand on the beach. They could hardly wait for the trolley from
Norfolk to stop before they jumped out and raced down to the water's
edge just to dabble their hands in the ocean.
"My gracious me! How I hate to grow up!" exclaimed Dum. "One year ago I
would have had off my shoes and been in bliss by this time."
"Well, maybe you are too grown up to wade, but I'm not," declared Dee.
"However, since Zebedee has trusted us to come down and open up the
cottage, I fancy we had better go do it and get things ready for our
guests."
We three girls were the fore-runners of the famous beach house-party
that Mr. Jeffry Tucker, father of the "Heavenly Twins," had promised to
give us the winter before as reward of merit if we passed all of our
exams at Gresham and got through the year without any very serious
mishaps. Mishaps we had had in abundance, but not very serious ones, as
all of us were alive to tell the tale; and Mr. Tucker, with his
eternally youthful outlook on life, seemed to feel that a scrape that
turned out all right was not such a terrible matter after all.
"Just so you can look me in the eye while you are telling me your
troubles, it's all right," I have heard him say to his daughters.
The cottage proved to be very attractive. The lower floor was chiefly a
large living room with French windows that opened upon three deep, shady
verandas. A kitchen and bath rooms were in the rear. A staircase came
down into the living room from a low-hung balcony that went around the
four sides of the room. Doors from this balcony opened into dressing
rooms and they in turn led to the sleeping porches. This style of
architecture was new to me and very pleasing. There was a spaciousness
to the living room with its high, raftered ceiling that appealed to me
greatly. I have never been able to be happy in little, chopped-up rooms.
The wood-work, rafters, roof and all, were stained a dark moss green, as
were also the long mission dining table and the chairs and settles. At
one end was a great fireplace made of rough, grey boulders, with heavy
iron fire-dogs and fender. There was no attempt at ornamentation with
the exception of several old blue platters and a tea pot on the high
mantelpiece and a long runner of Japanese toweling on the table.
"Oh!" burst from us in chorus as we came through the hospitably open
door. "Isn't it lovely?"
Just then there emerged from the kitchen a woman with a pail in one hand
and broom in the other. Her long, pale face with the sandy hair drawn
tightly back into a Mrs. Wiggs knot had no trace of welcome, but rather
one of irritation.
"Well, land's sakes! You is greedy fer yo' rights. The fust of July
don't mean the fust thing in the morning. The last tenants ain't been
gone mor'n a hour an' here you come a-turn-in' up before I kin mor'n
turn 'round."
"Well, everything looks lovely," said the tactful Dee.
"Y' aint seen it yet. It's right enough in this here room where I've
done put in some licks, but that there kitchen is a mask of grease.
These June tenants was jist a passel of boys and I can tell you they
pretty near ripped things wide open. They had a triflin', no-'count
black man fer cook and if ther' is one thing I hate more'n a nigger
woman, it's a nigger man. Sometimes I think I will jist natchally refuse
to rent my house to anybody that hires niggers."
"Your house!" escaped from Dum before she could stop herself.
"Yes, Miss, my house! Did you think I'd be cleaning up after a nigger in
anybody's house but my own?"
"Then you are Mrs. Rand?" inquired Dee.
"The same! Did you think I might be Capt. Rand?"
"No'm; I--I----"
"You jist didn't expect to see a lady who owns a grand house like this
workin' like any common person. Well, you are right, young lady. But if
I didn't work like this, ther' wouldn't be no house to rent. Where's
your brother?"
"Brother?"
"Yes; him what come down last winter to see after rentin' the house. He
was a powerful likely young man. Me 'n Capt. Rand took to him from the
first minute we clapt eyes on him. I'd a-knowed you two were his sisters
anywhere; and this other young lady," indicating me, "I reckon she's his
girl, 'cause she sho ain't no kin."
The twins spluttered and I blushed but managed to put Mrs. Rand right as
to the Tucker family, explaining to her that Mr. Tucker was the father
of my friends and that I was merely a schoolmate who was invited to come
to the beach on a visit.
"Well, you may be putting something over on me, as these wild June
tenants used to call it. I can't believe that the young man who came
down here is the paw of these strapping twins any more than I could
believe that you are their maw. Maybe he sent his office boy." That made
all of us laugh.
"We've been coming here for years, Mrs. Rand," said Dee. "It is strange
we do not know each other. I can't remember ever seeing you before and
you never saw us."
"Good reason! I never come here 'til this last fall, when Capt. Rand and
I left Virginia Beach. He's been a lifesaver ever since he was a-put
inter pants, but his jints is too stiff now. The Government has
pensioned him but it looks like so long as we live near the old Life
Saving Station that every time there is any cause for gittin' out the
boats, Capt. Rand sees some good excuse why he's beholden to go 'long.
So I jist up 'n' moved him away from temptation over inter these quiet
waters. But when is that so-called paw of yourn comin'?"
"He will be along this evening with Miss Cox, our chaperone, and we want
to get everything in order before he comes," said Dum.
"Well, that bein' the case, I'd better get a hump on and finish up the
kitchen that greasy nigger left in such a state; and then I'll come
right on up to the bedrooms. This lapping and slamming of tenants is
right hard on me, but it is the only way I can get my fifteen per cent
out of my investment."
"Did you plan the house yourself, Mrs. Rand?" questioned Dum. "It is so
pretty."
"What, me? Do I look crazy? When I builds, I builds a house with a
parlor and nice, tight bedrooms. I don't 'low the builder to waste no
lumber on porches that's nothin' but snares fer lazy folks. I owns three
houses over to Virginia Beach, as snug little homes as you ever seed;
but somehow it looks like I can't git rich tenants fer 'em, in spite of
they bein' on the water front. Rich folks what is got the money to sleep
in nice, close bedrooms is all took to sleepin' out doors like tramps;
an' when they is got all the time there is to set in the parlors and
rock, they ain't content in the house but must take theyselves out in
the wind and sun 'til they look like Injuns!
"No, sirree! I had a mortgage on this house an' foreclosed. It was built
and owned by a architect from Norfolk. I had a chattel mortgage, too, so
I got all his fixin's. I felt real sorry fer him. It looked like he
loved the place as if'n it was his own flesh and blood. It is a strange,
misshapen lookin' house to me; but they do say if any of yo' children is
afflicted, you loves 'em more'n all the others. I wanted to decoration
this barn a little with some real fine pictures a lightnin' artist over
to Hampton struck off for me while I waited, but the man took on so,
jist like he thought I might a-been desecratin' the grave of his child!
And he kinder made me promise to leave this room jist as it is with that
common old blue chany on the mantel an' this strip of blue and white rag
on the table. So that's how it comes to be so bare-like."
"We don't think it is bare, Mrs. Rand, but beautiful," said Dum
reverently, and Dee took off her hat and held it just as I had seen her
father do when a funeral was passing. "May we go upstairs and see the
sleeping porches, and maybe we can help you some?"
"Snoop around all you've a mind to; but I wouldn't ask you to help. When
I rents a furnished house I sees that it is turned over to tenants in
apple-pie order, and if'n you'd 'a' come in the afternoon instid of
morning you'd 'a' found it ship-shape."
"But we'd simply adore helping," urged Dee.
"All right, if you must you must! Here's a basket of clean sheets an'
sich, an' here's clean bags fer the mattresses. I never asks one tenant
to sleep on the same tick cover that the one before it used, certainly
not when boys is been the fore-runners. These was likely boys if'n they
was a leetle harum-scarum, but boys at the best is kinder goatish. Jist
bundle up the s'iled bedclothes an' trun 'em down the steps, an then
when you've buttoned up the mattresses in their clean covers make up the
cots to suit your fancy. By that time I'll be up with my broom and
rags." And Mrs. Rand bustled out to the kitchen to clean up after her
abomination.
We could hardly wait for her to get out of the room to have a good
giggle. She was a type that was new to me. Dee declared that she was a
real out and out "po' white" if she did own three houses at Virginia
Beach and one at Willoughby, and got 15 per cent on her investments. Her
dialect was, in some instances, like the coloured people's, but her
voice was high and nasal and every sentence ended in a kind of whine.
With our coloured friends the dropping of a "g" or "d" makes their
speech soft and mellow, but with this so-called "poor white" it seemed
to make it only dry and hard. Certainly Mrs. Rand's exterior was not
very attractive, but there was a kind of frankness about her that I
rather liked. I had an idea that she was going to prove a good and just
landlady, which, after all, is very important when one is renting a
furnished house for a month at the sea shore.
"Thank goodness, we are spared the lightning artist's pictures," sighed
Dum. "Isn't this room wonderful?"
It had indeed the repose and calm of a forest. The light was soft and
subdued after the glare of sand and water. The high, vaulted,
unplastered ceiling with its heavy green beams and rafters made me think
of William Morris's description of the hall of the Nibelungs when the
eagles screamed in the roof-tree.
We carried the heavy basket of clean bed linen upstairs and made our way
through the dressing rooms, which were little more than closets, to the
spacious sleeping porches, overlooking the bay. We found the place in
very good order, considering boys had been keeping bach there for a
month, and it was not at all "goatish," as we had been led to expect to
find it. On the first porch we discovered an old checked cap on a hook,
and some discarded tennis shoes in a corner, under one pillow a wallet,
rather fat with bank bills, and under another a large gold watch.
"Aren't boys the limit, though?" exclaimed Dee as she carefully placed
the valuables in a drawer. "That means they'll be coming back for their
treasures. Maybe we had better save the old hat and shoes, too;" which
we did with as much care as we had shown the watch and wallet. We
bundled up the bed clothes according to instructions and decided to
visit the other porches and get rid of all the soiled linen before we
commenced to make up the cots. There were three large porches, with two
dressing rooms to each porch, and two small porches in the back, one of
them, we fancied, intended for the servant and the other one for some
person who preferred solitude to company, as there was room for only one
bed on it.
This porch was the last one we visited and we found it in terrible
disarray. There were clothes and shoes all over the floor and the bed
was piled high with a conglomeration of sweaters, baseball suits and
what not.
"My, what a mess!" I cried, being the first to enter. "And this is the
room of all others to get in order, as I fancy Miss Cox, our chaperone,
will occupy it."
"Yes, this would be best," said Dum. "She could have more privacy, and
then, too, she would escape the morning sun. Here, you girls, catch hold
of the corners of the sheet and let's take up all of this trash and
'trun' it down the steps and let Mrs. Rand sort it out."
We laid hold with a good will, but it proved to be very heavy, so heavy,
in fact, that just as we got it off the bed, Dee let go her end and the
contents fell to the floor with a resounding bump.