CHAPTER XIII
CRAZY QUILTS GALORE
The party was over. It had been a delightful experience for Babs, and despite her natural opposition to that social life to which she felt alien, she had to admit that it “did her good.”
She admitted this at the constant reiteration of Dora, who just kept saying that the party “done Barbara good,” until Barbara chimed in to break the monotony.
“Put some life in her,” then Dora varied her chant, and at that Dr. Hale took up the refrain and declared that it certainly had.
But life at the old-fashioned home did not now seem quite the same to Barbara. Everything seemed so shabby; she scarcely felt brave enough to invite her new friends in to see her, although their curiosity would amply have repaid her and would easily have compensated for the lack of luxury.
“Not just yet,” Babs replied to her father’s suggestion. “Wait until I get things fixed up a little.”
But a new interest was now claiming the time and attention of Sea Cosset folks. A real Old Home Week was being inaugurated, and Babs was asked to head the girls’ committee.
“Because,” said Miss Mary-Louise Trainor, “she knows something. She takes more books out of the library than any other girl in the place.” Miss Trainor told the women’s committee that and so Babs had been asked. She could not refuse; her father pointed out the fact to her, that because the Hales were a part of the sea-coast town, and living “over the line in Landing” did not make her exempt from obligation to help with this affair. She was a native, one who lived there winter and summer, and what did the summer girls know about Old Home Week anyhow?
So Babs had reluctantly consented with reservations. She wouldn’t boss anybody and she wouldn’t work at night. She wanted her evenings to do as she pleased with them, and if the “show” was to hold forth of nights the women would have to “tend it,” she pointed out, reasonably enough.
The old Stillwell place was selected for the exhibit, as quaint an old homestead as could be found in the entire county. Then the women’s committee decided that all sorts of old-time handiwork would be taken in the collection, and that meant that quilts were going to receive a tremendous boom.
All one could hear was “quilts”; every one seemed to have a collection of at least one, and those who didn’t own one knew just where they could borrow one. So a quilt deluge was threatened.
Candlesticks were probably next in point of popularity, and Barbara knew something about them. She knew that Nicky could supply a pair, beautifully carved in new or old wood, for he had done so when Cara offered him her patronage. Who carved them or where he got them was as mysterious to Babs as to the other girls, and boys too, for that matter, for Babs had insisted upon leaving the Italians to themselves.
“If we want to try their candlesticks, all right,” she said simply but finally. “I don’t see what business it is of ours where they get them from.”
“Neither do I,” agreed Cara stoutly, “for we know very well they don’t steal them. Who would have things like that anyway? They have simply been made to fill our order,” she concluded sagely.
This was all settled shortly after the windup of the house party. Then little Nicky had taken Cara’s order, and the delivery of the quaintly carved wooden candlesticks, tinted with softly blended colors that reminded one of the Italian painters, was made within an incredibly short time.
Even Babs marvelled at the workmanship. It was too fine to be made by some unskilled Italian, and when she tactfully asked Nicky who did make them, he became so excited he could scarcely answer.
“A friend,” was all he said. Babs knew better than to press her question. Cara declared frankly she didn’t care who made them, she was so glad to get them.
“Even if that famous black hander whom the girls are always hinting about, is hidden in the Marcusi shack,” she protested stoutly, “I don’t give a rap. The candlesticks are the quaintest things I’ve ever seen and I’ll give Nicky all the orders he’ll take for more. I want them for Christmas presents,” declared Cara.
Cara and Babs were alone on the beach. The morning was hot and sultry and only a few vagrant clouds gave hope of stirring up a breeze of relief. The girls had already become chums, as Cara had intended and perhaps as Babs had feared—because she considered herself too busy to have a real chum. At least, she thought she felt that way about it.
But she very soon discovered what a foolish notion that was, for a girl like Cara helped her. She did exactly what Dora said she would do—“put some life in Barbara.”
And now that they were really companions, Babs just wondered how she used to get along, all alone or with Glenn Gaynor. Glenn too had changed his habits, and was having a wonderful time going around with Dudley Burke.
“Hope it doesn’t rain,” Cara remarked as the girls made for their bath-houses. “Because you know, Babs, this afternoon——”
“Oh, yes, I know. We’re to have a tiresome old meeting,” grumbled Babs. “Why do old ladies so love to get things up for young ladies? Why can’t they manage their own old patchwork show?”
“They can, dear,” cooed Cara. “But then they’d miss the fun of making us do something. That’s their chiefest joy, you know,” she ended laughingly.
“Yes, I know. Well, I’m only doing what I have to do because I have to,” Babs declared, still in a grumbling mood. “Dads again, you know.”
“And Nicky,” Cara reminded her companion. “You know, Babbsy, you must show Nicky’s candlesticks.”
“No, I don’t think I will,” Babs surprised her friend by saying. “Women aren’t like us. They would demand to know who made them, and that would, or might,” she corrected herself, “bring trouble to Nicky.”
“Oh, Babs!” exclaimed Cara, in real surprise. “You don’t mean to say you wouldn’t. Not show those darling little candlesticks,” she repeated. “Why, they would be sure to win a prize,” Cara faltered in disappointment.
“I know they are lovely and I don’t suppose any handicraft work there will be better done,” Babs replied. “But somehow, Cara, I know those poor folks are trying to hide some trouble. And I’d be a queer friend if I drew attention to it.”
“Attention—to what?”
“To the Unknown.”
“Unknown?”
“Yes. We know perfectly well that whoever makes those candlesticks is hiding—is unknown,” Barbara admitted. “I’d love to know all about them but it really isn’t my business, is it?” she said rather than asked.
“Do you really believe, Babs, that a mysterious person is being hidden by—by Nicky’s mother?” Cara almost gasped.
“Yes, I do,” replied Babs decidedly.
“It couldn’t be—be their father!”
“I don’t see how he could have escaped and then hide there,” Barbara continued, as if trying to reason the matter out. “That would be too easy.”
“Yes, wouldn’t it?” agreed Cara. “And—the carving is really very fine. Mother has seen much of that work. She travelled all over Europe last year to finish up her sight-seeing, you know,” Cara made clear.
“Yes?” Babs answered abstractedly. She was not thinking of sight-seeing or Europe either.
“And she says,” continued the enthused Cara, “that this Italian work is really very good indeed.”
“Dad says so too. But I must hurry to dress,” Babs reminded herself. “No matter how we feel about the old ladies’ quilting bee, I suppose we’ve got to show up, much as we hate to.”
At this the girls separated, as their bath-houses were at different ends of the small pavilion, but when each emerged, dressed and ready to ride home in the small car that Cara had just obtained a license to drive, their conversation was resumed.
“You see,” Barbara pointed out, “how dreadful it would be if anything that we did would draw attention to this thing. I just couldn’t stand that.”
“But how could little Nicky come to harm?” Cara wanted to know. “He surely is innocent, and besides, isn’t something going to be done to reward him for risking his life to get oil to the lighthouse?”
“I hope so. I have written to Washington; Dad told me how to do it. But I suppose they get so many such letters I may never get a reply,” said Babs, a little dispiritedly.
“I don’t see why not!” Cara never could see why any one would slight Barbara. “I’m sure we pay enough taxes to have a secretary answer such letters,” she fumed, indignantly.
“Oh, I suppose I’ll get a letter-form answer, maybe, the kind they grind out of machines, you know. But it would be lovely——” Babs stopped, made a queer face and choked back a laugh.
“A secret, eh?” surmised Cara. “Not even telling me?”
“I don’t want to seem silly, Cara, so if you don’t mind I’ll wait to tell you when I get my official answer. When I do,” she repeated, quizzically.
“Want Nicky made official messenger to the president, or something like that?” Cara started in to guess.
“No fair guessing,” Babs checked her. “And besides, perhaps I shouldn’t have written at all. Who am I, to address the Secretary of State.”
“You are just as important as any one else, I guess,” Cara defended promptly.
“But Captain Quiller is in the government employ, and Nicky got the oil for him,” Babs reminded her.
“Yes, maybe all that’s true, but Captain Quiller doesn’t love Nicky as you do.”
“He does, really Cara. He came over to see Dad right after it all happened, and what he didn’t say in praise of Nicky merely stuck in his throat. He just raved about him.”
“Then why don’t you take a chance to show off his candlesticks and get the women raving too?”
“Oh, women!” deplored Babs. “They want to know everything. I wouldn’t wonder but they would go right down among the Italians and offer to give them lessons in making macaroni. They couldn’t imagine the foreign women knowing anything, I suppose. No Cara, please don’t say anything about it. I’ll have to wait and see how things turn out. I can’t, just can’t take a chance on hurting poor little Nicky and Vicky.”
“All right, girl,” Cara answered gaily. “Here you are,” and she pulled up expertly to the side steps of Babs’ old homestead. “See you later. I’ll call——”
“Dad will be driving out, thanks Cara,” Barbara interrupted her in her offer. “We have to go out in the family car once in a while you know, or folks might think we pawned it,” she finished, trying to joke about the old car that Dr. Hale drove around in. It went, and that was all that he could ask of any car, according to him.
Later that day these same two girls entered enthusiastically into the plans for the exhibit. No one could have guessed they were not “heart and soul with the project” which was the way Miss Mary-Louise Trainor said every one ought to be for establishing a Community House.
“Might as well have some fun out of it,” Cara told Barbara.
“Might better,” Barbara agreed with Cara.
“But the crazy quilts; are we supposed to go crazy over them? Aren’t they hideous?”
“We’re apt to go crazy over them,” Barbara continued in the same bantering strain. “Ought to call this a Crazy Show.”
“Judging from the way some of the women are acting,” Cara whispered, for the girls were busy sorting the goods arriving, “we’ll be lucky if it doesn’t turn out to be a prize-fight.”
“That would be fun; let us hope for it. I heard Mrs. Trout tell Mrs. Clayton that her quilt would have to be shown on the old table over there.”
“And that’s the family table of the Brownell’s, older than Age itself, I believe,” Cara continued to whisper. “I doubt if they’ll allow any quilt upon its sacred surface.”
“That’s why we may hope for a prize-fight,” said Barbara, hurrying to the door to take from the hands of Mrs. Mary Ann Smalley a glass case of utterly impossible wax flowers.
A flock of girls, all on the girls’ committee, and expected to work under the directions of Cara and Barbara, arrived just in time.
“We don’t dare put the wax flowers on the floor,” said Cara to Esther, “but where can we put them?”
“Better get a carpenter to make a long table for us——”
“My flowers must have a proper setting,” Mrs. Mary Ann Smalley interrupted Cara. “That table over there——”
“That’s the famous Brownell table,” Cara said, smiling that this one table with its elaborate carvings should be in such great demand.
“Well, I don’t care whose it is, it’s just made for my wax flowers,” insisted the excited exhibitor, just as Mrs. Nathaniel Brownell herself fluttered in.
Then, as Babs put it, the fight was on.