The Carter Girls' Week-End Camp

CHAPTER IX
MR. MACHIAVELLI TUCKER

Nan wondered what Mr. Tucker had in mind to relieve the situation which she had so ingenuously disclosed to him on that little walk in the moonlight. The next morning she watched him closely and there was something about the businesslike way in which he sought out Mrs. Carter, when that lady appeared long after breakfast, that made her divine he had something up his sleeve.

The charming lady was looking especially lovely in a white linen morning dress. She said she had slept splendidly in spite of the fact that she rather missed the rolling of the ship. Again she had kept Susan so busy waiting on her that the labor of serving breakfast properly had fallen on Helen. A tray of breakfast had to be arranged exactly as though they were still in the city, and Susan made many trips from the cabin to the kitchen.

Mrs. Carter was one of those persons who was always treated as more or less of an invalid because of a certain delicate look she had, but her girls could not remember her having had a real illness. She must not be awakened in the morning and she must never be asked to go out in bad weather. She must have the daintiest food; the warmest corner in winter and the coolest in summer. She had never demanded these things, but they had always been given her as though she had a kind of divine right to them. Her husband had, from the moment he saw her, the belle of belles at White Sulphur, felt that she was to be served as a little queen and the children had slipped into their father’s way.

No one would have been more astonished than Annette Carter had anyone accused her of selfishness. Selfishness was something ugly and greedy and no one could say that she was that. She never made demands on anyone. In fact, she quite prided herself on not making demands. Everyone was kind and thoughtful of her, but then was she not kind and thoughtful of everyone? Had she not brought a present to every one of her girls and a great box of expensive toys for Bobby? It was not her fault that Bobby preferred currying that disgraceful-looking old mule to playing with the fine things she had purchased for him at the most exclusive toy shop in New York. Had she not even remembered every one of the servants, not only Susan and Oscar but the ones who had been in her service when she had left Richmond? The fact that she had charged all of these gifts and that the money to pay for them was to be worked for by her daughters had not for a moment entered her mind.

“And how is camp life treating you this morning?” asked Jeffry Tucker, as he led the little lady to a particularly pleasant corner of the pavilion that commanded a view of the beautiful apple orchards of that county of Virginia famous for the Albemarle pippins. “Did you ever see such a morning? I can hardly believe that only last night we were in the throes of the fiercest storm I have ever seen.”

“Oh, I am quite in love with camp life. It is not so rough as I expected it to be when I arrived yesterday. I have a very comfortable bed and a nice bright fire cheered me up wonderfully after I left the pavilion last night. I must confess I was scared to death during the storm, although I held on to myself wonderfully.”

“Yes, wonderfully!” but Jeffry Tucker crossed his fingers and reached out for a bit of green from the pine tree growing close to the post. He could not but picture the little woman of the evening before hanging on to her husband, intent on protecting her dress and shrieking at every close flash of lightning or loud clap of thunder.

“I am so glad you are here because I am thinking of leaving my girls at the camp for a while, and of course I could not think of doing it unless you were here to chaperone them.”

“Oh, I never thought of my presence being necessary as a chaperone! You know I am thinking of taking Douglas to the White for a fortnight.”

“Oh, I am sorry. Of course I could not leave my girls unless they are to be chaperoned.”

“But Robert will be here; he is enough chaperone surely.”

“Yes, enough in our eyes but not the eyes of the world. You see, I think one cannot be too careful about what Mrs. Grundy will say,” and Jeffry Tucker crossed his fingers again and reached for more green, “especially when girls are about the age of mine and yours, too, about to be launched in the world, as it were.”

He was devoutly thankful that his girls could not hear him indulging in this homily. If there ever lived a person who scorned Mrs. Grundy that was this same Jeffry Tucker. He devoutly hoped that Mrs. Carter would not hear that Page Allison was in the habit of being chaperoned by him, if one could call it being chaperoned. He well knew that as a chaperone Robert Carter had him beat a mile but he felt that a little subterfuge was permissable in as strenuous a case as this.

“Why, Mr. Tucker, I did not dream you were such a stickler for the proprieties!”

“Ahem – I am more so than I used to be. Having these girls almost grown makes me feel I must be more careful than – my nature – er – er – dictates.”

“Exactly! I respect you for it. I, too, think it very important, especially if a girl is to make a debut as I mean that Douglas shall. I am very sorry, though, that you could not leave Virginia and Caroline up here in Robert’s care. I am sure it will be all right for once. I have quite set my heart on White Sulphur for a few weeks. I think it gives a girl a certain poise to be introduced to society in an informal way before she makes her debut.”

“Well, I am sorry, too, sorrier than I can say. You see, I had planned to come up again myself next Saturday and I thought I would bring with me Hiram G. Parker. He would like this sort of thing and fit in nicely with these young girls. You know how much he takes to the girls before they are quite grown.”

“Ye – es!” and Mrs. Carter was lost in a revery.

She well knew that the name of Hiram G. Parker was one that controlled society. He was the Beau Brummel of Richmond and in some unaccountable way had become the dictator of society, that is of the debutante society. He passed the word about whether or not a girl was to be a belle and his judgment was seldom gainsaid. Mrs. Carter was thinking that no doubt the presence of Hiram G. Parker in their camp would be of more benefit than a trip to White Sulphur. Her position in society was of course assured beyond a doubt but that did not mean a successful debut for one of her daughters, certainly not for one who was to be persuaded if not forced to be a debutante. The business of coming out must be taken quite seriously and the importance of it not belittled. Poor Douglas was taking it seriously enough, but not in a way her mother thought desirable for success.

“Do you know, Mr. Tucker, I have half a mind to give up the trip to White Sulphur. – It is so pleasant here and so delightful to be with my children again; and if your daughters and that sweet little friend of theirs care to remain with us, I shall be more than pleased to chaperone them.”

“Oh, you are kind!” exclaimed the wily Zebedee. “I cannot thank you enough. If you choose to make it so, Camp Carter will vie with White Sulphur as a resort. I shall certainly bring Parker up next week.”

Mr. Tucker grasped the first opportunity to inform the anxious Nan of his successfully performed mission.

“Oh, how did you do it?”

“By just a little twist of the wrist. You shall have to put up with my girls though for another week or so. Your mother has promised to chaperone them until I fetch them away.”

“Splendid! Do they want to stay?”

“They are dying to. I only hope they won’t tear things wide open at camp. They are terribly hoydenish at times.”

“Mr. Tucker, tell me: did you really get mother to give up White Sulphur just to chaperone the twins and Page?”

“You ask her! I think she thinks she did.”

“I believe I’ll call you Mr. Machiavelli Tucker.”

“Don’t flatter me so yet. Wait until I accomplish the seemingly impossible of making your mother decide of her own accord that your sister had better not come out yet.”

“Can you do that, too?”

“I don’t want to sound conceited but I believe I can. This is our secret, so don’t tell a soul that we have any hand in this matter. Just let Douglas think it is fortune smiling on her.”

“All right, but nothing can ever make me forget your kindness!” and Nan held his hand with both of hers with no more trace of shyness than Hiram G. Parker might have shown in dancing a german.

“What on earth have you done to make Nan so eternally grateful?” demanded Dum Tucker, coming suddenly around a spur of rock on the mountain path where her father had accosted Nan.

“I am going to leave you girls up here for some days longer. Isn’t that enough for her to be grateful over?”

“We – ll, I don’t know – that sounds rather fishy.”

“And besides, I am going to send her up a ouija board to pass the hours away until I return. How about that?”

“Oh, now you are talking! That is something to be grateful about. We are all of us dying to try it,” but Dum could not see why Nan was blushing so furiously and evidently trying to hold in the giggles, and she plainly caught a wink passing between her dignified parent and the demure Nan.

“He’s up to something, but it wouldn’t be very gentlemanly of me to try to find out if he doesn’t want me to know,” she said to herself.

The Tucker Twins had been motherless since they were tiny babies and their ridiculously young father had had the rearing of them alone and unaided. Many stepmothers had been picked out for these irrepressible girls by well meaning friends and relatives, but Jeffry Tucker had remained unmarried, much to the satisfaction of the said twins.

“He is much too young and inexperienced to marry,” they would say when the matter was broached by wily mammas who hoped to settle their daughters. And so he did seem to be. Time had no power to age Jeffry Tucker. He was in reality very young to be the father of these great girls, as the romance of his life had occurred when he was only twenty, still in college, and the little wife had died after only a year of happiness.

In rearing his girls he had had only one rule to go by: they must conduct themselves like gentlemen on all occasions. “I don’t know what ladylike rules are but I do know what is expected of a gentleman, and if my girls come up to that standard I am sure they will pass muster,” he had declared. As a rule the twins did pass muster. They were perfectly honorable and upright and the mischief they got into was never anything to be ashamed of – only something to be gotten out of, never too serious to tell their father all about.

The fact that they were to stay longer than the week-end was greeted with joy by the Carters. Page had already made herself popular, too. Douglas was soon informed by her mother that she had given up the trip to the White, so some of the load was lifted from the poor girl’s heart. There was much more talk, however, of the proposed debut and Helen upheld her mother in thinking that since Douglas was not going to college she must come out.

“But, Helen, the money for a debut! And if we go into our house and turn out the desirable tenants, where are we to get an income to exist on?”

“Oh, always money, money! It can be gotten, and mother says our credit is as good as the U. S. mint. She has often heard father say so.”

“Of course it was as good, but now that father is no longer able to earn money it would not be quite square to presume on that credit when we have no way of paying the bills.” Douglas would go over and over the same argument and Helen would still not be convinced.

“Are we to spend the rest of our lives digging and delving for gold and then not use the money? How does our bank account stand now?”

“I don’t know, but it is not so large that we could make a debut on it,” smiled Douglas.

“But we could make a start and then earn some more.”

“But why spend it on me when I don’t want to go into society?”

“Why, for mother’s sake, goose. She has set her heart on it and you know we have always let her do whatever she wanted to. It would make father miserable to think mother wanted something and could not have it.”

“Yes, I know! He mustn’t know she wants it and can’t have it.”

“But she must have it. She is planning all the time for your being a great belle.”

“Dr. Wright said that father – ” but Helen flounced off, refusing to hear what Dr. Wright said. She had overcome all of her antipathy for that young physician and in fact liked him rather more than anyone of her acquaintance of the male persuasion, but she still resented any tendency on his part to dictate to her.

Mrs. Carter, having given up her trip to White Sulphur, felt that virtue must be rewarded and so actually persuaded Douglas to protect her complexion. She was not allowed to go in the sun at all and in the shade she must wear a great hat tied under her chin, with a curtain of blue veiling draped over it. Every night she must be anointed with some kind of cucumber cream and her hair must be brushed with one hundred licks every night and morning.

Lewis Somerville and Bill Tinsley made their sorrowful adieux. Everyone missed them. They seemed as important to the camp as the great poplar tree in the center of the pavilion was to that edifice. There was a feeling that everything might topple over now that those two young men were gone. It didn’t, however. Skeeter Halsey and Frank Maury did what they could to fill their places, but as they expressed it, they “sho’ did rattle ’round in ’em.”

Mr. Carter, too, delighted to be of use and to find something he could do without using his poor fagged brain too much, was busy at something from morning until night. First the reservoir must be repaired after the heavy rain had caved in part of the dam; then the roof of the cabin needed a shingle here and there. A rustic bench must be put by the spring which formed the reservoir, and then a table was added so that afternoon tea might be served there on occasions. He was so busy and so happy in being busy that it was delightful to see him. Bobby was his companion at all times, even deserting the beloved Josh and Josephus to be with his father. This was a new father, one who had time to play and talk. Together they made wonderful little water wheels and put them in a tiny mountain stream where they turned continuously to the delight of Bobby. The successful architect of other days drew plans for bird houses and he and his little son whittled them out of stray bits of lumber and cigar boxes and placed them in the trees, no doubt filling a long felt want for suburban villas in bird society.

The miracle was happening! The cure that Dr. Wright had predicted was taking place. Robert Carter was on the high road to recovery.

CHAPTER X
MR. HIRAM G. PARKER

Susan had been kept very busy all week doing lady’s maid work for her mistress. Susan’s usefulness in the kitchen was about over, the Carter girls feared. There never seemed to be a moment that she was not wanted to wait on Mrs. Carter. When she took the daintily arranged breakfast tray to the cabin she was kept to fetch and carry and do a million foolish little nothings that an idle woman can always find to occupy other persons. Then the many new dresses must be pressed and white skirts must be laundered. Mrs. Carter always had worn white in the summer, and although washing was something of a problem at the camp, she still must wear white. Not a speck must be on those snowy garments even if it did take all of Susan’s time to keep them in condition.

“There is no excuse for letting oneself go even if it is necessary to live in a camp,” she would assert. “I think it is very important to look nice wherever one happens to be.”

“It sho’ is, Mis’ Carter, an’ you jes’ call on me to washanirn all the things you need. That’s what I’m here fur,” and Susan, who much preferred the job of lady’s maid to that of assistant cook, gathered up an armful of rumpled skirts and blouses and carried them off to launder. She adored her mistress and saw no reason at all why the girls need mind doing extra work so that she could give all of her attention to the whims of the mother.

“What’s all that?” grumbled Oscar, who saw many reasons why Miss Helen should not be doing Susan’s work. “You ain’t a-goin’ to do no washinanirnin’ in this hyar kitchen today. You know puffectly well that them thar week-enders is a-comin’ pilin’ in hyar this ebenin’, all of ’em as empty as gourds.”

“Well, these here langery is got to be did up, an’ I is got to do ’em up, an’ as fur as I know thain’t no place to do ’em up but in the kitchen. It’s jes’ because of some of these here week-enders that they is got to be landered. You is so ign’rant that you don’t know that one of these here week-enders what is a-comin’ is what Mis’ Carter call a arbitrator of sassiety.”

“Well, I may be ign’rant but I knows one thing, that ifn a nice little gal named Miss Page Allison hadn’t a come in an’ helped Miss Helen an’ I, we wouldn’t a got breakfast on the table. Miss Gwen warn’t here this mornin’ cause that ole po’ white mounting ooman what she calls Aunt Mandy done took with cramps in the night an’ Miss Gwen couldn’t leave her. This is a been the busiest week of the camp an’ you – you ain’t been wuth standin’ room in de bad place all week. You an’ yo’ mistress with yo’ langery an’ yo’ arbors of sassiety. I don’t know who he is a-comin’ but whoever he is, he ain’t no better’n our folks.”

“He’s Mr. Hiram G. Parker hisself!”

“What, that little ole Hi Parker? He ain’t nuthin’. If he’s done riz to the top er sassiety it’s caze he’s the scum an’ the scum jes natch’ly gits on top. Who was his folks? Tell me that, who was they? You don’t know an’ neither do lots er folks but I knows an’ he knows. That’s the reason he’s so partic’lar ’bout who he consorts with. He has to be! Yi! Yi! He has to be! Arbor er sassiety much! Back po’ch er sassiety, mo’ lak!” and Oscar chuckled with delight at his wit.

“I betcher Mis’ Carter better not hear you a-talkin’ thataway.”

“Well, she ain’t a-goin’ ter hear me – ’cause I ain’t a-goin’ ter talk thataway befo’ her, but that ain’t a-keepin’ me from knowin’ all about little Hi Parker’s fo-bars. Thain’t much ter know ’cause he warn’t troubled with many. His grandpap had a waggin with a bell on it an’ went aroun’ hollerin: ‘Ragsoleioncopperanbrass! Ragsoleioncopperanbrass!’ I ’member it mighty well ’cause my mammy uster say she goin’ ter thow me in the waggin an’ sell me ter ole Parker if I didn’t ’have myself.”

“Well, howsomever it might a-been, tain’t thataway now! Mis’ Carter is ’cited over his a-comin’. She done made po’ Miss Douglas sleep with some kinder wax on her competence las’ night to peel off the remains of the sunburn an’ she done made her promus not to wear that there cowboy suit for supper. Mis’ Carter says she thinks Miss Douglas oughter be dressed in diafricanus interial.”

“Humph! The missus is all right, but she better let these here young ladies run this here camp like they been doin’. If they take to dressin’ up it’ll mean all yo’ time’ll be spent pressin’ an’ fixin’ an’ I want ter know who’ll be a-doin’ yo’ work. Not me! By the time I get through butlerin’ these here week-enders, I ain’t got the back ter washanwipe all the dishes.”

Susan quietly started the charcoal brazier and put her irons to heat. She knew that the mistress’ word was law and that although Oscar might grumble until he was even blacker in the face than nature had made him, he would go on washing dishes until he dropped in his tracks rather than make a real disturbance.

Nan and Dum Tucker came to the kitchen after breakfast and helped him while Susan washed and ironed the many white things that Mrs. Carter had discarded as too soiled to appear before Mr. Hiram G. Parker.

“I’ll wash and you wipe,” suggested Nan.

“No, please let me wash,” begged Dum, “I adore sloshing in suds.”

“Well, they’s lots er suds here ter slosh in,” grinned Oscar, bringing a great steaming dish pan, “an’ if you is so enjoyful of suds, mebbe you young ladies could spare me altogether an’ let me pick them there chickens ’gainst it’s time ter fry ’em for supper.”

“Yes, indeed! Go!” from Dum. “We can do them in no time, can’t we, Nan?”

“We can do them, but not in no time,” drawled Nan. “I can’t think it is right for people to use so many dishes. Wouldn’t it be grand to be like Aeneas and put your food on a little cake and then eat the cake?”

“Yes, but if you can’t do that, I think the feeders should at least have the grace to lick their plates. What on earth do you do with all the scraps?” asked Dum as she vigorously scraped plates, a part of the work that everyone hates.

“Fatten chickens for killin’,” answered Oscar, sharpening a great knife fit for the deed he had to do. “For land’s sake, Miss Dum, don’t arsk none of the week-enders ter lick they plates. They don’t leave nothin’ now for my chickens. The gals even eat the tater peelin’s. They say it gwine make they har curl, but they eat so much they don’t leave no room for they har ter curl.”

Dum and Nan had become fast friends during that week at camp. The several years’ difference in their ages was as nothing. The feeling for beauty which both of them had to a great degree was what drew them together. Nan was so quiet and unostentatious in her unselfishness, few at the camp realized how much she did. For instance: the person who cooks a meal is usually praised by the hungry ones, but the person who patiently scrapes and washes dishes is hardly thought of at all by the satiated. On that Friday morning, Helen had, with the help of Page, produced a wonderful breakfast; and when these two girls came to that meal flushed but triumphant in the knowledge that their popovers popped over and that their omelettes had risen to the occasion, the breakfasters had given them three rousing cheers. No one thought of who was going to wash up.

While Dum was sloshing in the suds and Nan was busily drying the dishes that piled up to such great heights they looked like ramparts, Page and Helen came in to try their hands at pies for Saturday’s picnic. Page had on one of Helen’s bungalow aprons and seemed as much at home as though she had been born and bred in camp. Page always had that quality of making herself at home wherever she happened to drop. Dee used to say she was just like a kitten and wasn’t particular where she was, just so it was pleasant and people were kind.

“What kind of pies shall it be?” asked Helen.

“Something not too squashy!” pleaded Dum. “Nan and I have found the most adorable spot for a picnic: a fallen tree about half a mile around the mountain – not a freshly fallen one but one that must have fallen ages and ages ago as it has decided just to grow horizontally. Any old person could climb up it, just walk up it in fact – such seats were never imagined – the limbs all twisted into armchairs.”

“Of course if we are going to eat up a tree we had better have mighty solid pies,” laughed Page. “How about fried turnovers like Mammy Susan makes?”

“Grand!” from Dum. “Apple?”

“Yes, apple,” laughed Helen, amused at Dum’s enthusiasm, “also some lemon pies, don’t you think? I mean cheese cakes.”

“Splendid and more and more splendid!”

The girls went to work, Page on the fried turnovers and Helen on the cheese cakes. Such a merry time they were having, all busy and all talking! Oscar sat outside picking chickens and of necessity Susan was driven to the extreme corner of the kitchen with her heap of washing and ironing.

“I think you are awfully clever, Helen, to learn to make pastry so quickly. How did you do it?” said Page, deftly forming a turnover.

“I don’t know – I just did it. It seems to me as though anyone can cook who will follow a recipe. I had a few lessons at the Y. W. C. A. in the spring and I learned a lot there. How did you learn?”

“Well, when I was a kiddie I had no one to play with but Mammy Susan, so I used to stay in the kitchen and play cooking. I’ve been making thimble biscuit and eggshell cake ever since I could walk.”

“How do you make eggshell cake?”

“Just put the left-over scrapings of batter in the eggshells and bake it. It cooks in a minute and then you peel off the shell. Scrumptious!”

Dee came running in with the mail, having been to the post office at Greendale with Josh and Bobby and the faithful Josephus.

“A letter from Zebedee and he will be up for sure this evening! Ain’t that grand? But guess who is coming with him – old Hiram G. Parker! I believe Zebedee must have lost his mind. I am really uneasy about him.”

“Why, what is the matter with Mr. Parker?” asked Helen, who had been much interested in what she had heard of that gentleman’s charms and graces.

“‘No matter, no matter, only ideas!’ as the idealist said when the materialist saw him falling down stairs, bumping his head at every step, and asked him what was the matter,” laughed Dee. “Didn’t you ever meet Mr. Parker?”

“No, but I have always understood he was all kinds of lovely things.”

“Oh, he’ll do,” put in Dum, “if you like wax works. He wears the prettiest pants in town and has more neckties and socks than an ordinary man could buy if he went shopping every day. He knows all the latest jokes and when they give out, he starts in on the others. He makes jokes of his own, too – not like Zebedee’s – Zebedee always bubbles out in a joke but Hiram G. leads up to his. First he gets one, a joke I mean, and then he gets a crowd of listeners. Then he directs the conversation into the proper channel and dams it up and when it is just right he launches his joke.”

“You certainly do mix your metaphors,” laughed Page, crimping her turnovers with a fork. “You start out with bubbling brooks and end up with the launching of ships.

 
“‘She starts! she moves! she seems to feel
The thrill of life along her keel.’”
 

“Well, Zebedee does bubble and Hiram G. Parker doesn’t; neither does a boat, so there. Oh, oh! Look at the goodies. How on earth do you make such cute edges to your tarts? Just see them, girls!”

“I did mine with a broken fork but Mammy Susan says she knows an old woman who always did hers with her false teeth.” After the shout that went up from this had subsided, Helen begged to know more of Mr. Parker.

“Is he a great friend of your father?”

“Why no, that is the reason I can’t divine why he is bringing him up here. I believe Zebedee likes him well enough – at least I never heard him say anything to the contrary. There is no harm in the dude that I ever heard of. Of course he is the Lord High Muck-a-Muck with the buds. He decides which ones are to ornament society and which ones to be picked for funerals. He has already looked over Dum and me at a hop last Thanksgiving at the Jefferson; Page, too. I believe he thinks we’ll do, at least he danced us around and wrote on our back with invisible chalk: ‘Passed by the Censor of Society.’ I believe he thinks a lot of Zebedee, but then everyone does who has even a glimmering of sense,” and Dee reread her father’s letter, a joint one for her and her sister, with a postscript for Page.

“Well, all he says is that he is coming and going to bring the immaculate Hi and we must behave,” declared Dum, reading over Dee’s shoulder. “I don’t know whether I am going to behave or not. That Mr. Parker gets on my nerves. He’s too clean, somehow. I’m mighty afraid I’m going to roll him down the mountain.”

“Mis’ Carter is fixin’ up a lot for the gent,” said Susan, who had been busily engaged with her wash tub while the girls were talking, “if it’s Mr. Hiram G. Parker you is a-speakin’ of. She done say he is a very high-up pusson. I do believe it was all on account of him that she done made Miss Douglas look after her hide so keerful this week.”

“Why, does mother know he is coming up?” asked Helen. “She never told me. Nan, did you know he was coming?”

Nan hadn’t known, but she had a great light break on her mind when she heard that her mother knew he was to come: Mr. Tucker had certainly used this visit of Mr. Parker’s to persuade her mother to give up the trip to White Sulphur.

“No! I never heard a word of it,” Nan answered sedately but her eyes were dancing and it was with difficulty that she restrained a giggle.

How could her mother be so easily influenced? She must consider Mr. Parker very well worth while to stay at camp just to see him. That was the reason for all of this extra washing and ironing Susan had on hand. Nan loved her mother devotedly but she had begun to feel that perhaps she was a very – well, to say the least – a very frivolous lady. Nan’s judgment was in a measure more mature than Helen’s although Helen was almost two years her senior. Where Helen loved, she loved without any thought of the loved one’s having any fault. She wondered now that her mother should have known of Mr. Parker’s coming without mentioning it, but as for that little lady’s dressing up to see this society man, why, that was just as it should be. She had absolutely no inkling of her mother’s maneuvering to push Douglas toward a successful debut. Susan’s intimation that Douglas was to preserve her complexion for Mr. Parker’s benefit was simply nonsense. Susan was after all a very foolish colored girl who had gotten things mixed. Douglas was to protect her delicate blond skin for all society, not for any particular member of it.

The train arrived bearing many week-enders and among them Zebedee and the precious Mr. Hiram G. Parker, looking his very fittest in a pearl gray suit with mauve tie and socks and a Panama hat that had but recently left the block. Zebedee could not help smiling at the fine wardrobe trunk that his companion had brought and comparing it with his own small grip with its changes of linen packed in the bottom and the boxes of candy for Tweedles and Page squeezed on top.

“Thank Heaven, I don’t have a reputation to keep up!” he said to himself.

The wardrobe trunk was not very large, not much more bulky than a suitcase but it had to be carried up the mountain by Josephus and its owner seemed to be very solicitous that it should be stood on the proper end.