THE START.
"Well, I've a great mind not to go!" exclaimed Dum pettishly. "I can't
see why that old Mabel Binks always has to go where we go. We can't even
spend a month at Willoughby without her traipsing here after us."
"Yes! And for her to make out to Wink that we are her very best friends
at Gresham just so he will ask her on the sailing party! Gee, I can't
stand her. I'll stay at home if you do, Dum," and Dee began to take off
the clean middy blouse she was in the act of donning to go on a sailing
party that the boys from the camp were getting up for our benefit.
"Well, that will certainly leave Mabel with a clear field for action.
Didn't we agree last winter that the best thing to do with Mabel was to
be very polite to her? What excuse could you give the boys?" I asked,
hoping to bring Tweedles to reason.
"Tell them the truth!"
"The truth! Well, I must say it would sound fine to say to Wink: 'We
just naturally despise your cousin and since she is to be on this party
that you have been so kind as to get up for us, we will have to decline.
Besides, this cousin of yours is so dead set after our father that we
can't sit by and watch her manoeuvres, but feel that the best thing
for us to do is to leave him to her tender mer----'" I was not allowed
to finish, but Tweedles immediately saw how impossible it would be to
stay off the party. Dee put her clean middy back on and in a jiffy we
were down on the porch with the rest of the crowd.
It was irritating for Mabel Binks to come as a discordant element in our
little circle, but as for her being at Willoughby, she certainly had as
much right there as we had and it was absurd for the twins to take the
stand that she had come there because of them. Zebedee seemed to have
very little use for the dashing Mabel but the sure way to enlist his
sympathy for her was to be rude to the girl. She was very polite to all
the Tuckers but had it in for Annie Pore and me; and as for Mary
Flannagan: she simply ignored Mary's existence, much to that delightful
person's amusement. Mary could imitate her until you could declare that
Mabel was there and sometimes she would do it when you least expected
it, as on this morning while we were waiting for the boys to come for
us. They were to go by for Mabel first and then pick us up on the way to
the landing where the two boats were in readiness for us, a cat boat and
a naphtha launch. Neither boat was big enough for the whole crowd so we
had decided to divide the party.
"I have determined how we are to sit," said Mary in the coarse, nasal
tone that belonged to Mabel, "I prefer the naphtha launch, as cat boats
are so dirty. I intend that the Tuckers, especially Mr. Tucker, shall
accompany me, also Stephen White and Mr. Hart. Page and Annie and Mary
must find room in the cat boat while I will allow Sleepy and Rags to
look after them. Oh! Miss Cox! I forgot her! She can go in the cat boat,
too, but we will make room for Mr. Gordon in the launch."
We were convulsed at this remark. Mary had not only imitated her tone
but had clearly voiced the character of Mabel, who by the way had not
been told of Miss Cox's engagement and had amused all of us very much by
her endeavours to attract Mr. Gordon.
"What's the joke?" demanded Wink, arriving with Mabel and the boys while
we were still laughing at Mary's mimicry.
"Oh, the kind of joke that would lose in repetition," declared Dum.
"I bet it was something on me," said poor Sleepy, "but if it was, I'm
sure to hear of it, though. There is one thing certain, if there is a
joke on me it is obliged to come out."
"Not if you can keep it to yourself," laughed Dum. "You know perfectly
well the time you got mixed up with the laundry you told on yourself.
None of us was going to breathe a word of it."
"Well, how did I know? I thought girls always told and I was determined
that the fellows should understand exactly how it happened and so--and
so----"
"And so you will never hear the last of it. Well, next time trust the
girls a little and you will fare better."
It had taken Sleepy some time to get over his extreme embarrassment
occasioned by his natural shyness combined with the unfortunate
occurrence of our first meeting with him. He was something of a
woman-hater, anyhow, according to his friends, but we decided that he
was really more afraid of us than anything else; and when he found out
that we were not going to bite him nor yet gobble him up whole, he made
up his mind to be friends with us; and when he once made up his mind to
like us, he outdid even the courtly Jim, and the genial Wink, and the
sympathetic Rags, in his attentions. Wherever we went, the young giant
could be seen hunching along in our wake with that gait peculiar to
football players.
"It looks like old Sleepy had waked up at last," Wink said to me. "To my
certain knowledge he never said two words to a girl before and now, look
at him! I wish he would fall in love and maybe it would give him some
ambition to get ahead in his studies. You see, Sleepy's people have got
oodlums of chink and Sleepy knows that he has got a living without
making it. The old fellow has a wonderfully good mind but absolutely no
ambition, except of course to make the team and to keep up his football
record. He is supposed to be studying medicine, but I'll wager anything
he does not yet know the bones in the body."
"Maybe he is going to be an oculist and won't have to know the bones in
the human body," I ventured. "He seems to be vastly interested in
Annie's eyes lately." Indeed there was something of the clinging vine in
our little English friend that appealed to George Massie's great
strength, and he had assumed the attitude of protector and forest oak,
one singularly becoming to him.
"You had better go in the naphtha launch," I heard him say to Annie. "It
is ever so much safer, and you can't swim."
"Well, let me go wherever the rest think best. I don't want to take any
one else's place," said Annie, anxious as usual to efface herself.
She need have had no fear of being allowed to take any one else's place
with Mabel Binks the self-elected chief cook and bottle washer of the
occasion. That young woman was looking extremely handsome in a white
linen tailored suit with a red parasol, Panama hat of the latest cut,
red tie, red belt and red silk stockings. The seashore was a very
becoming place for Mabel, as sunburn brought out her good points, giving
an added glow to her rather lurid beauty. She looked really magnificent
on that morning of the sailing party and her grown-up, stylish clothes
made all of us feel rather childish in our middy blouses and khaki
shirts and hats.
Miss Cox was dressed very much as we were except that she tucked in her
middy, and Mabel's effulgence seemed to take all the colour from our
beloved chaperone, who had been seeming to us almost beautiful lately
because of the love-light in her eyes. Mabel's brilliancy outshone even
love-light. I became very conscious of the many new freckles on my nose
and Dee said afterwards hers seemed so huge to her that they actually
hurt her eyes. Dee and I always got freckled noses and it was a source
of some distress to both of us. As for Mary, the freckles had met long
ago on her turkey-egg countenance, while Dum had long streamers of
peelings hanging from her nose. She did not freckle but declared she
grew fifteen brand new skins every summer.
Annie was a great comfort to me as I took a quick inventory of my
friends, who on that day compared so unfavourably with the glowing
beauty. Annie looked as lovely as ever. She had that very fair skin that
neither tans nor freckles, and her ripe wheat hair was curling in little
tendrils around her white neck and calm forehead.
"Thank goodness my hair curls, too," I thought, "and the dampness won't
make me look too stringy," and then I took myself to task for thinking
about such foolish things, as though it made any difference what we, a
lot of kids, looked like, anyhow.
Zebedee was carrying Mabel's parasol and they seemed to be having a most
intimate conversation, certainly a very spirited one into which she
constantly drew Mr. Gordon; and as Miss Cox had hooked her arm in Mary's
and everyone else was coupled off, Mr. Gordon soon fell into step with
the gay pair.
"Disgusting!" I heard Dum mutter, but I hoped she would not let anyone
see how furious she was. I noticed she closed her eyes and I saw her
lips move and knew she was praying, "Don't let me biff Mabel Binks,
don't let me biff her," just as she had at the football match at Hill
Top the fall before. We reached the landing where the boats were
anchored and as Dum had not biffed Mabel, I suppose her prayer was
answered.
"Oh, there are the boats! What a darling little launch! Dum and Dee and
I bid to go in that. Mr. Gordon, will you please arrange those cushions
in the stern for me? Be sure and don't lose me, Mr. Tucker, and I will
finish that delicious yarn I was in the midst of. Stephen, you will run
the launch, I know, as that will give you such a good chance to be near
Dee, and, Mr. Hart, here is a nice seat for you right by Dum."
Her words were so exactly what Mary had said they would be, that we who
had heard Mary's prophetic imitation could hardly contain our merriment;
and strange to say, the twins, in a measure hypnotised by her
determination to carry out her schemes, stepped with unaccustomed
docility into the pretty launch; but the polite Mr. Gordon arranged the
cushions and then got out determined not to be separated from his
inamorata for the sail. Wink and Jim naturally complied with the
arrangement as far as being near the Tuckers was concerned, but Wink
said:
"Put me where I look best, but I think Sleepy had better run his own
launch, especially since I don't know the first thing about it."
And Sleepy thought so, too, but he quietly determined that Annie Pore
should go along. The girl was too sensitive to be willing to risk the
withering scorn of Mabel's black-eyed glance and begged to be allowed to
take a seat in the cat boat. Just as the launch was ready to start,
Zebedee, who had been stowing the bathing suits away under the seats,
made a flying leap for the landing, calling back:
"That story will have to keep, Miss Binks, as I have been promising
myself the pleasure of giving Page a sailing lesson today," and for
once in their lives I feel sure that Tweedles were glad to have their
beloved father leave them.
Mabel lay back on her cushions like a sulky Cleopatra with the
expression that the queen herself might have worn had Antony refused to
ride in the royal barge, choosing instead to paddle his own mud scow
down the Nile.