CHAPTER XXIV
SCOUTS IN THE WOOD
“You were wise, dear, not to press the boy further. I think he had about as much as a small boy’s head could carry, as it was.”
So spoke Dr. Hale to Barbara, late that night, after Barbara had told him the whole story of her complicated interest in Nicky and his family. She was sitting on the floor beside him, on the old braided rug, her head against his knee so that he might stroke it reassuringly.
“And you’ve forgiven me for not telling you before, Dads? You see, I knew you wouldn’t want me to bother about such things, and I felt that once I did get into it I would have to go through with it,” she explained. “But, you have no idea what a bother it has been. Whew!” She blew the word out explosively. “I feel like a Sherlock Holmes.”
“Yes, it is surprising what difficulties some poor people have to struggle against and yet what fine characters they develop. If they don’t get sour they are sure to remain permanently strong; sort of a concentrated character, if you know what I mean,” her father pointed out to her.
“Yes, I think I understand, sort of boiled down,” she answered, laughingly.
“Exactly.” And they both laughed over the illustration.
“But you see, Dad, I’ve got to find his mother and talk to her. I couldn’t be satisfied with so small a boy’s word on all this. Besides, there’s her husband’s pardon. I ought to talk to her about it, don’t you think so?”
“Yes, decidedly. Nicky is clever enough but as you say, he’s nothing but an ignorant little boy, and it wouldn’t be right to trust too much to him,” decided Dr. Hale.
“You see, I couldn’t possibly say another word to him tonight after the Washington letter and the ship model and everything,” went on Barbara seriously. “If I had so much as asked where their camp was, I’m sure he would have run away. He seemed to hate it all, as it was. Bashful you know, Dads,” Barbara explained.
“Yes, he would be. But I guess you’ve made him happy, just the same,” her father assured her. “To get that letter from Washington would have set some boys up proudly for the rest of their lives.”
“Oh, you couldn’t make Nicky proud,” Babs declared. “You see, he’s—boiled down.” This expression had become Babs’ special joke.
When they settled down to seriousness after that, it was decided that Babs and Cara should again visit the lighthouse and get from Captain Quiller what directions they could in hopes of finding the camp in the woods.
“And I’ll go along with you,” promised her father, “for a number of reasons.”
But it was actually two days later before the all-important trip could be made. The doctor had been called out of town, the captain had to have time to make sure he was divulging no secret that should have been withheld, and it took him a day to go out to the woods to see Mrs. Marcusi, as he could only leave his post at a certain hour of the afternoon. So Babs and Cara lived somehow, and Miss Davis was so relieved to be assured her model was safe, she really was, as Cara said, “quite sweet about it.”
All week long the Community House “fair,” as the exhibit was being called by the country folks, was in progress, and as Cara predicted, the girls’ committee got together again and worked even more enthusiastically than at first.
It must be said in all fairness to Esther and Louise that they did all they could to make amends for their slight to Barbara. They explained quite frankly that their folks didn’t want them to have anything to do with the foreigners, because, as Louise put it, “they didn’t know anything about them.”
This was not unreasonable, Cara made Babs see that, because summer folks have to be careful whom they associate with. Both Cara and Babs laughed over the foolish idea that summer folks had to be more carefully guarded than winter folks—those who lived at Sea Cosset the year around—but Babs was too busy with other and more important affairs to worry over such trifles.
Her heart was singing these days, because she was so expectant. Something wonderful was about to happen. She was going to find out who carved the beautiful wooden candlesticks, and why Nicky’s folks were afraid of being known to strangers. This would surely satisfy her thirst for adventure.
“I feel just as if it were the day before Christmas,” she told Cara, “and I was waiting for Santa Claus.”
“I feel as if it were the day after Christmas,” Cara put in, “and that he had brought me a bag of golden promises.”
So the girls flitted from their homes to the Community House, gaily helping the ladies with the dusting and rearranging of the articles still left to be voted upon later; and it was all good fun.
Mrs. Brownell’s table was awarded first prize, it had to be or she would have gone to bed with nervous prostration. But it really was a fine antique. As to quilts——
“They won’t get them all decided upon before the holidays,” Ruth Harrison declared, “and maybe they’ll have to hold another Old Home Week to give the prizes then.”
The smaller articles, in which class Babs’ sampler had been placed, were to be voted upon on the very last day, Saturday, and Miss Davis wondered about her model.
“You see,” she confided, “I expect sister home Friday, that’s tomorrow night. And if ever I lay my eyes on that little boat again I don’t think I’d risk taking it out of the house. Sometimes I’m just as worried as ever——”
“I’m sure it’s safe,” Barbara told her again, for times beyond counting, “and maybe you could get it in the contest after all,” she cheered the little lady.
“I’d love to. It is so handsome! Well, you’ve done your best and I’m getting more fond of you every day,” declared the dainty little Miss Davis, with a pardonable show of affection for her little sampler relation.
Barbara loved that feeling of relationship, however remote it was, for she had been much alone since her Aunt Katherine moved away out West, and there was after that no woman but the well-meaning Dora to offer her protection. It was all well enough to be considered different from other girls, to have her father tell her gallantly that she was almost as good as a boy, to have boys call her a pal and a chum and flatter her in their favorable comparisons, not a bit like other girls; but a girl needs a woman’s sure arm around her; sometimes.
She wants to be told she just must not do things she insists upon doing. In a word she cannot comfortably carry all her own responsibility. And Barbara knew this well. She had tried it out and found the way very lonely. It would be such fun now to have the Twinnie Davises to run to. Cousins, she would call them of course.
It so happened that this was the week that Dudley Burke and Glenn Gaynor left for camp. So much always happens in the late summer. The night before they left the boys took all the girls out, all the girls that the girls could gather up. And they had a wonderful time, from sodas at Hills, to movies at the Ritz, after which delightful hours were spent upon the porch of a Monmouth hotel, where the party too young and too informal to take part, listened to the orchestra and watched the dancing, from the great ocean-front porches. In a few more years they might take part in this, but just this summer Mrs. Burke was acting as chaperon and they were glad to be allowed to look on. Otherwise the party might not have remained so late on the wonderful hotel porch; that is, they could not have done so but for the all-important chaperonage.
Friday morning came at last, and they were going in search of that camp in the woods.
“I’m so thrilled,” Cara confessed, “I can hardly breathe. I think I have real heart disease.”
“Not exactly heart disease,” said Dr. Hale, “but curiosity illness. It has a choking habit.”
Babs, Cara, and Dr. Hale were in Cara’s touring car, and she was driving. The dignified doctor tried to spread himself all over the back seat; for the two girls, of course, were together in front. They were going to Cosmo Woods. Captain Quiller had not only given them full and detailed directions, but he had drawn them a map of the outlying territory.
“You could easily tell he was a sailor,” commented Barbara. “Just look at the lines. They’re like the zone lines in an old geography.”
It wasn’t far to Cosmo Woods but it was hard to get there. After leaving the lovely ocean boulevard they took a strip of road that wound around the lake. Then, they went out on a back road that cut through a farming district. There were even some hills, uncommon for ocean territory, and when their car would reach the top of one of these there wouldn’t be a mark of any kind to distinguish the end of the hill from the beginning. Such a sameness, so little variety, a few scattered houses! Assuredly the sea-shore is lovely—just at the sea’s shore. But not inland.
“Let’s see that chart,” the doctor asked Barbara when Cara turned away from the main road onto what might charitably be called a lane. “I expect I’ll need a mariner’s compass, but let’s take a look at it anyhow.”
Babs handed over the penciled paper.
“Yes, I guess this is right,” the doctor announced, after a brief survey. “But we’ll probably soon have to get out and walk.”
“Yes, we walk from the scrub pines,” Babs said. “And see! There they are! They’re the only pines around. These trees are everything else, but not pines. Why don’t they call them Scrubbys?”
So presently the car had been parked in a little clearance, safely locked, and the three scouts went on.
“If we see a camp,” said Cara, after they had decided that one way was a path newly trodden and the other wasn’t, “perhaps Babs had better go ahead and you and I, doctor, will sort of hang behind. They may still be so afraid they might take to the trees.”
“Fine idea,” assented Dr. Hale, who loved the woods so thoroughly that he seemed to care as much about a clump of ferns as about finding the elusive Marcusis.
Through a little tunnel of wild-grape vines they managed to pass, while the doctor led and brushed the most impertinent brambles and vines out of the girls’ way.
Then Babs grasped Cara’s arm.
“Look!” she exclaimed. “There they are! Just look!”
“Oh, how funny!” Cara said excitedly. “Did you ever see anything—so funny!”
They were looking at the Italians’ camp. It was made up of three old automobiles, or parts of automobiles that could never be expected to turn a wheel again. For the wheels were gone. But the tops were there and in these the little family had taken refuge. Even from the distance where the scouts had stopped little Vicky could be seen. She was swinging gaily on a swing made of rope, hanging from a sturdy tree; and a very good swing it was indeed, for any little girl to enjoy.
A woman, whom Babs recognized as Nicky’s mother, was cooking something over a camp kettle. The fire was set in a stone oven and appeared mighty attractive to Dr. Hale; so he said.
“Not a bad camp at that,” he remarked. “And the best thing in the world for that family. Just see how they manage. Obstacles become useful tools in their willing hands.”
“Yes, look at the home-made tent built on to the side of that old car,” directed Cara. “I should think it would be lovely under that.”
“I wish I could see Nicky,” whispered Babs a little anxiously. They were behind bushes that hid them completely from any one who might be looking out at the camp.
“There he is!” declared Cara. “Look! He’s doing something with that old car, the one with wheels on.”
“Yes, so he is,” exclaimed Babs. “Now I’ll go over and talk to him. You stay here a few minutes.”
“Look out for dogs,” cautioned her father. But Babs knew that the Marcusis had no dog when she went to their place over the tracks, and it wasn’t likely they would have one now to attract attention to their camp in the woods.
No, they had no dogs.