THE following afternoon, all the castaways except Billy, who, however, was sitting up in bed, crouched in a row on the bank to watch two slowly approaching objects.
"Surely we never asked for two boat-loads of food," remarked puzzled Bettie.
"Or medicine," added Mrs. Crane.
"Or books," said Jean.
"Or clothes," supplemented Henrietta.
"Perhaps," suggested Mr. Black, "the other boat isn't coming here."
"But it is," asserted far-sighted Marjory. "It's headed right this way. And the bigger one is Captain Berry's launch, I know."
Twenty minutes later the boat that was not Captain Berry's dropped anchor in the little bay.
"It's people!" Marjory exclaimed, as the smaller launch swung about. "It looks like a picnic."
"Dear me," said alarmed Mrs. Crane, "I hope they've brought their own lunch—we couldn't give them much. And I feel like hiding in the woods—we're terribly in need of starch and flatirons."
"They're waving," cried Bettie. "I do believe they're visitors for us. Oh, I guess they want a boat."
Mr. Black, who had hastened to the launch with one of the small boats, was first to recognize the passengers. Jean, who followed with the second boat (by this time all the girls had learned to row in the shallow, usually calm little bay), was second.
"Mercy!" exclaimed astonished Jean, almost catching a crab, "it's most of our parents and Aunty Jane—I do hope they're not going to take us home!"
Presently the visitors were safely landed. Doctor and Mrs. Bennett, Doctor and Mrs. Tucker, Mrs. Mapes, Henrietta's grandmother, Mrs. Slater, and Marjory's Aunty Jane.
"Where's that dreadful boy?" demanded Aunty Jane, the moment she was on shore. "Are you sure he hasn't something catching? I haven't known a moment's peace since I knew that you'd sent for the doctor; for Marjory's never had anything. Are you sure it isn't smallpox? Those lumber camps up the lake——"
"Dear me," said Mrs. Crane, "didn't we write that the boy was more than half drowned? I'm sure I said so."
"It was that Indian—that unspeakably filthy Indian," returned Aunty Jane. "He said the boy had a fever. I went to the jail—to the jail, Mrs. Crane—to talk to that—that beast."
"Who—Dave?"
"I suppose so. From what little I could understand, I gathered that that boy had some malignant illness—typhoid, diphtheria, scarlet fever, smallpox——"
"Mr. Black," interposed Doctor Bennett, "I did all I could to keep these women home, but they would come."
"I don't blame them," beamed Mr. Black, hospitably. "They wanted to see their girls. We're glad to see you all."
Aunty Jane, the neatest housekeeper in Lakeville, cast disapproving glances in every direction as Mr. Black led the way to the campground. Everybody else was busy exclaiming over Bettie.
"Are you sure you are Bettie?" demanded Mrs. Tucker, with delighted eyes. "Why, you're fat—Doctor Bennett, she hasn't been fat since she was three years old. And brown! And look at the red in her cheeks! And her lips!"
"I've certainly lost my patient," laughed Doctor Bennett. "But Mabel seems to be all here."
"Just look at my long Jean's brown arms," cried pleased Mrs. Mapes, vainly endeavoring to span the rounded forearm. "Bigger than mine!"
"That's muscle," laughed Jean. "Rowing and climbing trees are great for your muscle—but hard on your clothes."
"Ugh!" shuddered Aunty Jane, sniffing disgustedly. "How horrible everything smells! Bacon, onions, fish—just like that filthy Indian!"
"All camps smell camp-y," explained Doctor Bennett. "You'll smell camp-y after a day in the woods. But where's that boy? Until I've seen him, these anxious mothers won't be satisfied that he hasn't something contagious."
Mrs. Mapes, Doctor and Mrs. Tucker, and the Bennetts were delighted with Pete's Patch and went quite wild over the scenery; but it was clear to everybody that Henrietta's decidedly aristocratic little grandmother and Marjory's overwhelmingly neat Aunty Jane had never been intended by nature for camp life. Mrs. Slater, to be sure, enjoyed the fine sky, the wonderful expanse of blue water, the beautiful golden-brown river, and the deep, cool forest. She liked all these in a quiet, understanding way; but one could see, although the tactful gentlewoman was most polite about it all, that the lowly balsam beds, the rough benches, the careless attire of the castaways had proved rather shocking to a lady accustomed always to luxurious ways of living. As for Aunty Jane, she liked nothing and did not hesitate to denounce camp life and all pertaining to it, Terrible Tim included.
"Marjory!" she had exclaimed, at first sight of her usually spotless niece, "your dress is a perfect sight! Go this instant and put on a clean one."
"Why!" returned surprised Marjory, "this is my clean one—I washed it yesterday."
"Washed it!" gasped Aunty Jane. "Well, you couldn't have used much water."
"Only the whole lake," returned Marjory, meekly. "But we haven't any flatirons, so we just pull things somewhere near the right shape and dry them on the bushes. It's lovely fun to wash—we go right in with our clothes."
"Do you cook in those filthy pans?" next demanded Aunty Jane, inspecting the fruit of the large pine that served, as Mr. Black punned merrily, as a "pan-tree."
"They're clean inside," defended Jean. "That's smoke from the camp fire."
"I wash the outside of my saucepans," sniffed Aunty Jane, with blighting emphasis. "Also my frying-pans."
"It isn't considered proper in camp," returned Mr. Black, whose eyes were twinkling wickedly; "but if you'd like a little missionary work, Miss Jane, there's the dishcloth."
"Dishcloth!" gasped Aunty Jane, disdainfully, eying the fairly clean rag drying in the sun. "I wouldn't scrub my coal bin with a cloth the color of that."
"I wouldn't scrub mine with anything," laughed Mrs. Bennett; "but never mind, Aunty Jane, our girls seem to be thriving in spite of torn dresses and unscoured pans. This life is doing them a world of good."
"Good!" sniffed Aunty Jane. "Why! The place must be fairly swarming with germs. I shouldn't think of permitting Marjory to remain here—I shall take her home with me to-night."
This was lightning from a clear sky. For a moment nobody said a word. Then there was a chorus of protests.
"No, no!" shrieked Bettie, hurling herself upon Aunty Jane. "She can't go."
"Oh, please, Aunty Jane," cried Jean. "We can't spare her—she's our telescope and our ears."
"Oh, no," stormed Mabel, "we must keep her. She likes it here—and look at her face—all brown——"
"With dirt," snapped Auntie Jane. "It'll take me a month to get that child clean—and a year to scour off those disgusting freckles."
Marjory groaned. The prospect was certainly dismal.
"Never mind," counseled impish Henrietta, whispering in Marjory's ear. "You can run away—I'll help you. You can easily hide in the bushes so she can't find you when the time comes—there's forty good places to hide in—let's find one now."
"No," moaned Marjory, "I can't do that—I wouldn't dare to. And it won't do a mite of good to tease. If she says a thing she sticks to it—it's all over for poor me."
When things went wrong, Bettie cried easily, Henrietta wept copiously, and Mabel wailed uproariously; but Marjory, restrained little soul that she was, was seldom known to shed tears. But now several large specimens began to roll down Marjory's cheeks, and presently, to Mr. Black's dismay, the little girl was sobbing bitterly, with her head against Jean's flat but motherly bosom.
Both Mr. Black and Mrs. Crane pleaded with Aunty Jane. All the parents reasoned with her. Even Mrs. Slater, who was no camper herself, implored Miss Higgins to change her mind. But that was a thing that the poor lady never could do. Some people can't change their minds—Aunty Jane couldn't. Even when she wanted to she couldn't.
"Perhaps she'll be more amiable after dinner," suggested gentle Doctor Tucker, whose mild eyes were shining at the prospect of catching a trout with the hook that Mr. Black was baiting for him. "Many persons are."
But the splendid noon dinner that hungry Aunty Jane had expected to devour was still nearly a mile from shore in Captain Berry's launch, and the other launch-man couldn't go after it; because, having incautiously ventured too near shore, he was now engaged in half-hearted attempts to dislodge his stranded craft from a troublesome sand bar. He declined all offers of assistance, saying that Captain Berry, whose engine would surely work sometime, could easily tow him into deeper water—he wasn't goin' to work hisself to death for nobody, no, not he.
As nobody wanted to row a mile or more and then back again with a load of heavy baskets, nobody did; so Mrs. Crane did the best she could with what she had; but the camp-cooked dinner did not appeal to Aunty Jane, who refused to eat venison that Dave had touched and had no appetite for plain beans, boiled potatoes, and cindery johnny-cake. Altogether, poor Aunty Jane, who was never very pleasant, was in her unhappiest mood.
"You see," apologized Mrs. Crane, "our provisions are pretty low; we haven't a very large supply of cups and plates, and of course you haven't been here long enough to acquire an appetite for camp fare. Let me give you a piece of this trout, Miss Higgins."
"No, thank you," was Aunty Jane's frigid reply. "I never eat fish."
"These beans," assured Mrs. Slater, politely, "are very nice indeed."
"And I'm sure," said Doctor Bennett, "this is excellent coffee, even if I do have to drink from a cocoa can."
But Aunty Jane scorned them both.
"Tell us," urged Mr. Black, "about that boy of ours. What do you think of him?"
"Why," replied the merry doctor, "the lad's all right, considering what he's been through. But, judging from his extreme thinness, being shipwrecked is only a small part of his unhappy experience."
"What do you mean?" demanded Mrs. Mapes, uneasily.
"No, my dear woman—all my dear women," Doctor Bennett hastened to add, "he hasn't had smallpox. But I do know that he was a sick boy before he was shipwrecked, because his body shows that he has lost more flesh than a boy could lose in so short a time."
"Yes," corroborated Mrs. Crane, "he was very thin when we found him."
"Tuberculosis!" breathed Aunty Jane.
"Nothing of the kind," declared the doctor.
"But he was dreadfully thin," asserted Mabel. "His legs——"
"Never mind his legs," said Doctor Bennett. "It's his head that troubles us now. His body is mending with every moment; but there's something seriously wrong with his memory——"
"A dangerous lunatic!" gasped excitable Aunty Jane, half rising from her seat.
"No, no!" shouted the exasperated doctor, who didn't like Aunty Jane. "Nothing of the sort. Merely a very pitiable boy who has been extremely ill, probably with pneumonia. A boy who is naturally very bright, in all ways but the one. A boy with an excellent constitution or this last experience would have finished him. The best thing we can possibly do for him is to keep him right here, build up his strength in this splendid air, and then, when he's entirely well, take him to a specialist—I'm wiser about bodies than brains."
"Could I make him a pudding?" demanded Mabel, unexpectedly.
"No," roared the doctor. "We want him to get well."
"As for me," said Henrietta, "I shan't be able to sleep nights until I know that boy's real name."
"Take my word for it," warned Aunty Jane, "he isn't worth saving. He'll prove either a thief or a tramp; or perhaps both. I wouldn't think of taking in a stranger like that."
Mabel was about to retort indignantly, and, it is to be feared, impolitely; for this candid child was sometimes too candid; when Henrietta whispered in her ear:
"Wouldn't it be terrible if he proved to be just like Aunty Jane!"
This thought was so appalling, in spite of its impossibility, that for ten seconds Mabel sat in silence, with her eyes fairly bulging.
"Henrietta," she breathed finally, "weren't—weren't you just fooling?"
"Listen!" warned Henrietta.
"I'd rather be deceived fifty times," Mrs. Crane was saying, "than let even a tramp go hungry; but that's an honest lad or I never saw one. It's quite possible that he's poor, but that's no crime."