FUN AND NONSENSE
The next morning the girls were up with the sun. They were in hilarious
spirits and made so much noise that Mrs. Danvers, busily getting
breakfast in the kitchen below, smiled to herself and hugged a big collie
that at that moment strolled leisurely into the room.
The big collie's name was Bruce, and he belonged to Uncle Tom of the
lighthouse. But although Uncle Tom was his master and was first in his
dog's heart, Connie's mother was his very next best beloved and Bruce
spent his time nearly equally between the lighthouse and Uncle Tom and
the cottage and Connie's mother.
Now he answered the woman's hug with a loving look from his beautiful
eyes and waved his brush gratefully.
"Bruce darling," said Connie's mother, as she lifted a pan of biscuits
and shoved it into the oven, "it's a perfectly gorgeous morning and a
perfectly gorgeous world and you're a perfectly gorgeous dog. Now don't
deny it. You know you are! How about it?"
To which Bruce responded by a more vigorous waving of his white tipped
brush that very nearly swept a second pan of biscuits off on to the
well-swept floor.
Connie's mother rescued it with a quick motion of her arm and stared at
Bruce reproachfully.
"Bruce, just suppose you had spoiled it!" she scolded, as she slipped the
pan into the oven after its fellow. "Don't you know that I have four
hungry girls to feed, to say nothing of a great big husband----"
"Now what are you saying about me?" asked a man's pleasant voice from the
doorway, adding as Connie's mother turned toward him: "Can't I help,
dear? You look rather warm."
"Warm! Well, I should say I was!" said Connie's mother, sweeping a stray
lock of hair back out of her eyes. "But what do I care when it's such a
wonderful world? Haven't I got my baby back again, and three others as
well? They're sweet girls, aren't they, John? And Billie Bradley is going
to be a beauty."
"Well, I know some one else who is a beauty," said Mr. Danvers, looking
admiringly at his wife's rosy face and wide-apart, laughing eyes, adding
with a smile: "Even though she has a big patch of flour under one eye."
"Oh!" cried Connie's mother, and wiped her face vigorously with a pink
and white checked apron. "Now just for that," she said, turning to her
husband, who was still lounging in the doorway, "I'm going to put you
out. And Bruce, too. I have enough to do without having a husband who
makes fun of me and a dog who sticks his tail into everything under my
feet all the time. Hurry on," and she pushed her protesting, laughing
husband and the reluctant dog out through the open door and into the
brilliant sunshine beyond.
"Are you going to call us in time for breakfast?" Mr. Danvers called back
to his wife over his shoulder.
"Of course," she answered. "I'll send Connie after you." And she
playfully waved a frying pan at him.
"She put us out, Bruce," said Mr. Danvers laying a caressing hand on the
dog's beautiful head as he walked gravely along beside him. "But we love
her just the same, don't we?" And Bruce's answer was to press close to
Mr. Danvers and wave his tail enthusiastically.
Hardly had Mrs. Danvers had time to put the bacon in the oven to keep
warm and break the eggs into the pan when there was a sound of
skirmishing on the stairs, and a moment later a whirlwind broke in upon
her.
"Mother, Mother, Mother, everything smells good!" cried Connie, dancing
over to her mother and hugging her so energetically that she almost sent
the eggs, pan and all, on the floor. "Is there anything we can do to
help?"
"Yes--go away," cried Connie's mother, seeing with dismay that one of the
eggs in the pan was broken--and Connie's mother prided herself upon
serving perfect eggs. Then, as she saw the surprise in the girls' faces,
she relented, left the eggs to their fate, and hugged them all.
"You're darlings," she said. "But you're awfully in the way. Billie, for
goodness sake, hand me that pancake turner. Quick! These eggs are going
to be awful!"
But Billie had jumped to the rescue, and when the eggs were turned out on
the platter with the bacon surrounding them on four sides, they did not
look "awful" at all, but just about the most appetizing things the girls
had ever laid hungry eyes on.
"Oh, let me carry them!"
"No, let me!"
"I'll do it!"
And to a chorus of a score or so other such pleas, the eggs were borne
triumphantly into the dining room and set carefully on the table.
"Now the biscuits!" cried Connie, running back into the kitchen where her
mother was just heaping another platter high with golden brown
deliciousness.
"Oh, Mother," said Connie, darting a kiss at her mother that landed just
exactly on the tip of Mrs. Danvers' pretty astonished nose, "everything
you cook always looks just exactly like you."
Then she disappeared with the biscuits, leaving her mother to rub her
nose and smile somewhat proudly.
"I guess it must have been a compliment," she chuckled, as she followed
Connie with a second plate of biscuits, "for they always seem to like
what I cook."
The girls were already waiting politely but impatiently for her. She was
about to sit down when she thought of Mr. Danvers. She looked hastily at
Connie.
"I told your father I'd send you after him when breakfast was ready," she
said; and Connie looked dismayed.
"Oh, bother!" she said. "I just know they'll eat all the biscuits before
I get back."
"No, we won't. We promise," said Billie; but Connie still looked doubtful
enough to make them giggle as she flung out of the door in search of her
father.
She had been gone scarcely two minutes when she returned triumphantly
with her father and Bruce in tow.
"They were just coming back," she told her mother, as she sank into her
seat and reached for a biscuit. "Daddy said he smelled the biscuits and
they drew him with----What was it you said they drew you with, Daddy?"
"Irresistible force?" asked Mr. Danvers, as he greeted the girls and took
his seat at the head of the table. "Now, if they only taste as they
smell----" He smiled at his wife across the table and she handed him a
plate full of the golden brown biscuits.
"Who owns the dog?" asked Laura boyishly, as Bruce sat down gravely at
Mrs. Danvers' side, looking up at her adoringly.
"Oh, please, excuse me; I forgot to introduce him," cried Mrs. Danvers,
dimpling and laying her hand lightly on the dog's head. "This is Robert
Bruce, and he's a thoroughbred and belongs to Uncle Tom, and lives over
at the lighthouse."
"The lighthouse," repeated Billie eagerly, then added as though she were
thinking aloud: "Oh, but I'm crazy to see it."
"Are you?" asked Connie's mother, looking surprised at Billie's
eagerness, for the lighthouse was an old story to her. "Connie can take
you over there to-day if you would like to go."
"Oh, won't that be lovely!" cried Vi. "I've always wanted to see inside a
real lighthouse. I want to know all about the lights and everything. When
can we go, Mrs. Danvers?"
"Any time you like," answered Mrs. Danvers, her heart warming to their
girlish enthusiasm. She was falling in love with Connie's friends more
and more every minute. "Uncle Tom receives visitors at all hours of the
day."
"And he has lots of 'em," added Connie, nodding over her coffee cup. "All
the children and the men love him. He can tell so many stories, you
know----"
"And fish stories too, I reckon," put in Connie's mother laughingly. "You
know you can never really depend upon a sailor's telling the truth."
Good as the breakfast was, the girls found themselves hurrying through
it, so eager were they to see the lighthouse and Uncle Tom. They took
Bruce with them at Mrs. Danvers' request, for she was going to be very
busy and the big dog did have a habit of getting in the way.
As the girls swung along the boardwalk they had a wild desire to shout
with the sheer joy of living. Everything looked so different by daylight.
It was not half so thrilling and mysterious, but it was much more
beautiful.
The ocean was calm, for there was almost no wind. The water gleamed and
sparkled in the brilliant sunshine, and the beach was almost too
dazzlingly white to look upon.
In the distance rose the irregular outline of the mainland, but on all
other sides there was nothing but an illimitable stretch of long,
graceful, rolling combers.
As the girls came out upon the Point, there, before them, rose the
lighthouse tower, robbed of the mystery it had worn the night before, yet
wearing a quaint, romantic dignity all its own.
"Connie," said Billie happily, "I'm sure this is the most wonderful place
in the world."