The Red Book Magazine/Volume 7/Number 2/Bachelor's Hall

by George Allan England

 

Bachelor’s Hall

BY GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND

Mr. William Brice Peverley——Billy Peverley, “of New York and Boston,” as he liked to call himself—stood on the station platform at Lake Umsit and watched the tail-lights of the train winking redly at him as they dwindled rapidly in the gloom. When they had shrunk quite away ’round a curve, he sauntered into the tiny station, looking for the baggagemaster. Master there was none; only a very bony young man with red hands and a singularly fuzzy lip. Him he hailed:

“Boy! Oh, boy! I say, do you know where I can get any one to row me over to Camp Umsit, my sister’s—that is, Mrs. Norton’s camp, you know? I'll pay half a dollar!”

“Wa’al, mista, I dunno; p’r’aps I kin carry you over if you don’t mind a leak.” Fuzzy-lip carefully set a glass lamp on the telegraph table and removed the chimney with deliberation. “But, I vum, mista,” he continued, “whatever possesses you to wanta git thar, anyhow? Why, it ain’t be’n used fer three year—that is, by them is owns it, an’ now—”

“You said you had a boat?” interrupted Billy, with some asperity. “When can you row me over?”

“Right off, right square off, mista!” answered the unperturbed one, lighting his lamp and replacing the chimney. “Right plum’ off! D’ you mind settin’ outside the deepo’? I’ve gotta lock up fer the night. I'll put the lamp in the winder; they’s a truck to set on, right outside.”

Billy grumbled a little to himself, but said nothing; Fuzzy very deliberately locked up and melted away into the surrounding gloom.

“I’ll be back right off!” he called to Billy. “Set right thar an’ make yourself to home!”

A hasty word rose to Billy’s lips, but he choked it back and, taking his pipe and tobacco, seated himself on the truck and made ready to smoke. Fumbling for matches in his pocket, his hand touched a paper. He drew it forth.

“The deuce!” he exclaimed. “Sister’s letter! You’re at the bottom of all this, you good-for-nothing sheet! Here I am, buried in the Maine wilderness, thousands, millions of miles from Beacon street and the Loungers’, all on account of you! Oh, I'll get even yet; I’ll roll you up to make pipe-lights, that’s what!”

He cast a troubled eye over the page. By the light of Fuzzy’s oil-lamp the writing looked big and scratchy. The paper bore the seal of the Ponce de Leon, and it said:

Dear Brother Billy,

Please don’t think I’m crazy when you find out what I want you to do, for I’m not—I’m only trying to make things pleasant and cozy for Aline. She and I are coming north next week, and you positively must run down to Camp Umsit and get it into apple-pie order before we arive. We can’t possibly be dumped down into it after it’s been shut up three long years. You and you alone can save us!

I ask this chiefly on Aline’s account—she hates dirt and disorder worse than poison. You remember her, of course? Aline Dubey—the pretty slim girl you met at Mrs. Hamlin’s last year? We really must have the camp impress her well at first—open fire, neat little living-room and all that. First impressions are apt to be so lasting, you know!

Look for us Friday night, without fail. Remember, Aline is much prettier than when you saw her last—she speaks of you often as “that irreproachable, ornamental brother.” If she didn’t consider you a trifle lily-handed, I think she’d like you well. There, isnt that a “clincher,” as the boys say?

Now, I really must finish this. You needn’t write—we couldn’t get an answer anyway. Just betake yourself to Camp Umsit and wait for us, that’s all. The key’s in the spring-house, under the little table. Clean up the camp and grounds, see that we have plenty of wood and supplies, and generally sweep and garnish for our coming. What a lark it will be for you. I only wish I were a man!

Your Big Sister,
Addie.

P.S. Aline sends her best regards and says you're positively to obey me!

Illustration: “Aline, the girl you met last year.”

Billy read it all through, from beginning to end. He groaned softly to himself. “‘What a lark!’” he quoted. “M-m-mm, yes, uber nicht! She wishes she were a man! So do I, about a thousand times more than she does! And Aline’s right back of her in everything, too; that’s the deuce of it, for Aline’s certainly a little thoroughbred if there ever was one. Woe, woe! How much longer is that fool boy going to keep me waiting, I'd like to know? Say, I’d like to have him by the neck—perhaps I wouldn’t teach him the quickstep, eh?”

He struck a match and moodily lighted his pipe. It was growing really late; stars began to wink and glimmer; several millions of little new frogs in a near-by cove shrilled insistently; mist glimmered white through a cedar swamp where a whippoor-will was calling its insistent command. Once in a while Billy heard a drum-drum-drumming, very far away, which began slowly and ended in a muffled roulade. No one was at hand to tell him about Mr. Partridge’s wooing, so he only listened, smoked, and marvelled greatly.

“By Jove!” he told himself, “this may not be so bad, after all!”

After he had burned two pipefuls of fine-cut, he saw Fuzzy come suddenly back out of the night, bearing a lantern, keys, and a long-handled dipper.

“All right, mista,” the youth remarked, in a perfectly toneless voice, “we'll cut across the medder to th’ cove.”

Billy, a bit chastened, picked up his suit-case and followed his guide, who led him down a path over a stile, and finally to a rotting wharf where a boat lay half-submerged, with a pail floating ’round inside.

“We gotta bail some,” said Fuzzy. “Dipper or pail fer you?”

Billy’s eyebrows wrinkled to a frown, which a whimsical smile chased instantly away.

“The pail, please, if you really don’t care,” he answered, with exaggerated solicitude. “You’d better use the dipper, so as not to splatter your hands!”

“All right, mista; but I don’t mind water. Shucks, no! I’m used to it. Lived ’round the lake all my life.” His shoes and a certain ill-defined halo of fishiness bore witness to his veracity.

Billy carefully spread his handkerchief on the wharf and knelt down. Fuzzy grinned silently and mounted a seat. Both set to work.

“This is a sight for gods and men!” thought Billy; but neither men nor gods happened along to witness it. They bailed and they bailed, by the light of the lantern, until finally they came to the dregs, redolent of certain fragmentary earth-worms and flakes of paint.

“She'll do now,” opined the lad. “She'll float till we git thar. Climb in!”

“A vos ordres!” murmured Billy.

“Huh?”

“Nothing I simply said I was at your disposal.”

“That so? What kinda talk you call that?”

“Oh—French, of a sort.”

“H’m—French! Yes, I’ve heered French. They’s a gang of Canuck habitaws to work on the querry a piece below here. Be you—?”

“How long a row is it?” interrupted Billy, a shade of irritation in his voice. “I don’t want to stay out all night, you understand!”

“Aw, don’t you worry! Goin’ to be here long?”

“Long enough to get the place in order—to fix it up ship-shape.”

“You don’t say!" Fuzzy’s grin seemed to Billy particularly ghoulish and disconcerting. “Huh, I cal’late you'll think it needs fixin’ up!”

“Why?”

“Aw, no matter. Wait till you see, that’s all!”

Billy brooded. “Confound this Bœotian, anyway!” thought he. “I’m hanged if I’ll ask him another question. What will be, will be!”

Fuzzy had taken the oars. “Git in!” he commanded. Billy stowed his suitcase and climbed in. Fuzzy pulled away, his long, even strokes betraying the practiced oarsman. Billy breathed a trifle more calmly; the cool black waters soothed his troubled spirit, and the passionless stars, mirrored in unknown depths, spoke of an abiding peace. Presently his feet began to feel wet. Looking down he detected much water in the bottom of the boat.

“By Jove, you!” he remonstrated. “Have we got to bail the whole lake through your punt?”

“Aw, don’t worry—a little water won’t hurt you none!”

The boat ploughed heavily along amid mutterings and the splashes of dipperfuls of bilge. At last, after what seemed hours and hours, the young Charon rowed into a deep bay and dexterously brought the boat up to a mouldy landing, barely visible in the dark.

“Are you—eh—sure this is the place?” asked Billy.

“Camp Umsit, you said? Well, this is her. Follow the path up!”

“I know, I know!” grumbled Billy, clambering out with his wet suit-case and stamping his feet. “Here, take your fifty cents!”

With less urbanity than usual he handed down the coin. Fuzzy bit it and slid it into his overalls’ pocket; then, grasping the oars, backed away, whistling between his teeth.

“Oh, I say,” asked Billy, “can’t you lend me that lantern? Here—here’s a dollar! I’ll buy it!”

“Sorry, mista, but it b’longs to the Gran’ Trunk, an’ I dassent sell railroad stuff. Here’s matches, though. Better build a fire; you won’t find any ile in the camp, but they’s lots o’ bresh on the place. You ain’t much used to campin’, be you? Anythin’ else? No? Well, s’long.”

He tossed a few “eight-day” matches, the blue-torture kind, onto the wharf and made off, his course marked by a shrill whistle, the rhythm of oars and occasional splashes when he stopped to bail. Finally all these sounds blended into a vanishing echo upon the bosom of the great waters, leaving Billy Peverley “of New York and Boston”—and Camp Umsit—to chew the cud of reflection on a rotting wharf in an obscure lake of the Maine wilderness, at half-past ten of a dark May evening.

 

Now, this same Billy Peverley, indubitably possessed of “nerve,” was a resourceful young man: resourceful, that is, as measured by the standards of city men. He could not have kept a straight course through the forest by means of the moss-grown trees, nor could he have struck fire with his knife-blade, a quartz pebble, and a bit of punky pine-root; but, nevertheless, he was ingenious and never let circumstances “down” him. So it befell that, standing on the sorry wharf in the Egyptian darkness, he resolved, despite everything, that he would shortly deliver Camp Umsit into his sister’s hands—and Aline’s—cozy, clean, and habitable as the daintiest of pretty women could possibly desire.

Illustration: “Peeled the unwashed tubers.”

With high resolve, then, backed by an almost total ignorance of everything practical, he picked up his wet suit-case and followed the path toward the camp. It seemed to him that, since his last visit, things had changed considerably; the path had narrowed to a mere trail, and a disconcerting air of abandon reigned everywhere. The porch, by evanescent match-light, was not more encouraging; two steps were broken, bottles and papers lay strewn about, and a shutter was hanging by one hinge.

“Some cursed picnic!” he murmured. “Let’s have the key, anyway; it’s in the spring-house, under the table.” The spring-house he remembered well; it stood at one side in a clump of alders. “Lord!” he exclaimed, stumbling over a stone, “if there were only a moon to help a fellow, now!”

The spring-house was still there, but the little table had disappeared. His blue matches showed him the spring, all clogged with leaves, but no table—that was indisputably gone.

“Here’s a ‘facer!’” he said out loud. “If the key’s under the table and there isn’t any table, why, where the—Halifax—is the key?” Thought availed nothing, so back he blundered to the piazza. A little screech-owl—and the smaller they are the more outrageously their yells desecrate the silent places—came and sat in a spruce and curdled his blood till he hurled a bottle at it and sent it circling away, screaming like a soul in agony. The bottle, smashing against a rock, roused a dormant idea. He had read somewhere that wet paper spread on window-glass allowed you to break a pane without splinters. Rummaging a newspaper from his case, he carried it down to the lake and gave it a good soaking in the chilly water, then presently returned with one foot sopping wet. The bank, he had discovered, was very slippery. Not in the least disconcerted, he spread the paper smoothly on a window and struck it sharply with a stick. A jingle of shattered fragments testified that he had at one and the same time destroyed a large pane of plate glass and a popular theory.

“No matter! I’ll get in, anyway!” he consoled himself. He did, in fact, get in; the camp smelled about as dry and cheerful as a very old tomb.

“Mighty lucky for the girls I came! Jove, but it looks like the very devil! Ha, wait till I get through with it.”

He foraged about for a lamp; and, though he was brave enough, yet somehow his spine crawled a little, especially when the tiny owl came back and settled on the chimney. A good kerosene lamp, it seemed to him just then, was more to be desired than great riches, and it rejoiced him not when he found the only one in the camp was so nearly empty that the wick would only glow sullenly and emit rancid smoke.

“Now what?” he asked himself. Then Fuzzy’s words came to him—“I cal’late you’d better build a fire.” “Good idea!” he said, as if answering them. “Clever idea, I swear!” In the extremes of loneliness it is good to speak aloud, that one’s own self may hear.

It took him half an hour to make a decent blaze on the hearth; damp sticks and leaves are terribly recalcitrant. When at last the fire-light began to dance, Billy became aware that everything was very much topsy-turvey, that bottles, bone and débris littered the floor, and that the whole place was disreputable and disheartening.

“Some confounded hoboes have been camping in here!” said he. “That explains everything. Oh, say, but I’d like to wring their filthy necks for ’em!” Then, after a pause: “Gad, but I wish I could find some oil, though. Oil and groceries. I could eat a bear—raw! I say, this fire’s the limit!” Most of the smoke bellied out into the room, filling his eves with hitter tears. “Oh, curse the thing!” he ejaculated as he poked the embers, “I bet that owl up there has gone and shut off the draught! Well, fire or no fire, I’ve got to sleep—none of the beds for me, just yet, either, so here goes for the floor!”

Rolling himself in a couch-cover he lay down by the fire with his suit-case for a pillow—lay and listened to the secrets that pine-tree: and pebbly beaches are always whispering to each other and always have been, since the world was. Presently his breathing deepened and his body relaxed. For the first time in his life Billy Peverley had performed manual labor, had gone to bed unbathed, with his boots on, and had sought sleep on the floor. Curiously enough, never had sleep seemed more sweet as he drifted off and away into the great darkness of that fathomless woodland night.

The little birds that “maken melodie” now, even as in Dan Chaucer’s day, recalled him to the world again—a very different world from that of shudders, gropings, screech-owls, and a clinging darkness. Stretching his long arms to take the cramps out, Billy stepped onto the broad piazza. Instant admiration thrilled him, as at the sight of a marvelous woman.

“My Lord, my Lord, but that’s great, though! Grand! Splendid! Why, Maine—Maine is ‘paradise enow!’ And the air! And the big red ball of fire over the mountains!”

The lake, a sheet of trembling quicksilver bathed in vapors, lay at full length before him. All about it towered the eternal hills, shaggy with dark forests, hills whence arose the morning mists, white as wool and spun fine by the enmeshing tree tops. Every hill and tree and patch of color hung inverted in the liquid mirror, over whose surface skimmed a multitude of swallows in pursuit of midges. Here and there slow silver circles widened, where a trout or pickerel had leaped, glistening, into the upper world. Suffused with dazzling fog, through which the sun glowered goldenly, the morning sky hung arching over all; beyond lay a distant hint of blue mountains. It was a wilderness awakening to the day, a jewelled dawn wherein the hand of man spoiled nothing.

“To think they’re riding on the ‘L,’ in town!” mused Billy. “Going to offices! Breakfasting at clubs! Good Lord, deliver us!”

As a child with a new picture-book, so was this young metropolitan; long-buried atavisms began to stir in the roots of his soul. “I say, but it is glorious!” he exclaimed a few minutes later, after a plunge in the cool waters, thrilling with new life to his finger-tips. Having made a meagre breakfast of such odds and ends as his suit-case afforded, he undertook a general inspection of the premises and made discovery of an unputtied window-pane.

“Those hoboes were wiser than I was about getting in!” he pondered, beginning to realize that all useful knowledge is not of necessity filtered through college professors. “They’ve used all the fire-wood, split up that table I couldn’t find, and frozen onto most of the silver, too. Anyway, Addie’s Hawadji-ware is all right—if I only had something to put on it! Grub, real edibles—that’s what I want! I'll get out the old skiff, row over to town and lay in supplies. Then I’ll be ready to tackle this horrible disorder.”

It proved a sore job to get the boat out of the boat-house and row to the village; Billy’s hands were blistered before he reached the cove. He tied the boat there, however, with good courage, and went on up to the store.

“No, we ain’t got none,” said Brooks, the store-keeper, in answer to Billy’s inquiries for beef and green-stuff. “All we got is right in plain sight. Bananies? Yes, an’ potatoes, too; no bread, but I kin give you doughnuts, an’ they’s half a fresh-killed hawg out in the shed. Shouldn’t wonder if you’d like it better ’n the salted, seein’ you’re from the city. City folks is cur’ous ’bout their vittles, anyway—always hankerin’ arter some fool grub. As fer me, gimme my pork, says I, my fried potatoes, an’ my beans, with lots o’ hot grease onto ’em, an’ my tea an’ sweet vittles—that’ll do me twenty-one times a week, yes, sir! But city folks, city folks—”

By ten o’clock Billy had breakfasted on doughnuts, milk, and bananas, and felt returning strength in his young body.

“What now?” he asked himself. “What’s first? Well, I guess I'll tackle the grounds and then work inward to the—the nucleus, as it were. Two days ought to finish everything; then I’ll loaf and fish and wait for the girls.”

He found a rake and went willingly to work. Very soon he discovered that raking makes the sun extremely hot, that it causes the back-muscles to ache unpleasantly, and that it induces gnawing hunger. He stuck to it, however, till he felt certain it must be noon, in spite of his watch that pointed to eleven.

“I’m boss here, anyway,” he assured himself, “and by every law, now that I’ve worked, I’ve a right to eat. I’m chef, too—I’m going to cook something extra choice.”

To Billy, meals had always been a purely mechanical matter; you ordered what you wanted, got it, and paid for it with money, the spending of which involved no sacrifice, no labor, no discomfort. His first cookery dealt this theory a death-blow. The preparation of even the simplest food, he discovered, required time and labor excessive. First of all he made a fire in the kitchen stove which answered very well, save that all the smoke came out into the room instead of going up the chimney. The management of stove-draughts had been omitted from his curriculum, as had been the care of tea-kettles; consequently the kettle soon boiled dry and the spout melted off. A noseless tea-kettle made him laugh, in spite of his choking and eye-watering over the stove.

“Oh, hang the darned thing!” he cried at last. “How’s a fellow to know, anyway?”—a question destined to be often on his lips. “Have I got to skin these potatoes, I wonder, before frying ’em, and, by the way, can you fry raw potatoes?” Such were his perplexities as he peeled the unwashed tubers, wondering at their excessive grimness.

“There seems to be more potato hanging onto the skin than there is in the core part,” he soliloquized. “Fry the skin, eh?” Sager counsels prevailed, and he laid the ragged lumps in the hot spider. A turbulent sizzling and smoke arose like Aladdin’s genii to strangle him.

“Well, what in Sam Hill is the matter now? Oh, I guess they need butter! By Jove, how’s a fellow to know?”

Eventually Billy contrived a plateful of funny-looking curled-up potatoes; edible, however, with famine as a sauce. “They’re nourishing, anyway,” he consoled himself after the meal, lighting his pipe. They were, and on the strength of them and some canned meat he toiled all that afternoon like a Trojan. By nightfall the grounds were clean and fair to look upon. Not so was Billy; also, he ached.

Illustration: She had collapsed in a chair.”

“Never mind, I’ll soon get hardened to it,” he philosophized, “and as for my looks, they don’t matter here. I'm roughing it—no use to fix up till the folks come! This free-and-easy life hits me just right, and no mistake. Glad I came? Well, rather!”

For supper he boiled eggs very hard and made cocoa, which he sweetened with frosting from a cake he had. “No use to wash the dishes till they’re all used up,” he told himself, “so I’ll just pile ’em up and let ’em accumulate.” He did; they accumulated faster than he had dreamed anything but debts could. The kitchen floor also began to disappear under layers of things, like Troy under the wrack of centuries. Ashes fell on the oil-cloth, where, mixing with spilled liquids, they formed pasty spots. Shelves and cupboards became chaotic. Several burnt tins, dominated by the noseless tea-kettle, added just the necessary touch of color. “Never mind!” he still assured himself. “First the outside of the house, then the inside. System, Billy, system!”

The next two days Billy accomplished wonders with the dock, the spring, and the bushes. His cookery also was a marvel; he attempted gems after an old recipe he thought he remembered. “A cup of flour,” he soliloquized, “a cup of water, one of saleratus, and a spoonful of salt—there, that ought to bring it just right.” He stirred the mixture very painstakingly, then poured it into the gem-iron which he set on the warmest part of the stove. They puffed up amazingly, the gems did, ran out over the stove and smoked abominably; but he rammed them down and let them “sizzle” till he thought they must be done. Because he had not greased the iron, they stuck tight and had to be pried out; moreover, they would not cook on top. That was easily remedied, however, by turning them over and ramming them in upside down. At last they were done, and he ate them—that is, one. The others somehow languished on a top shelf, and Billy never was quite clear as to what eventually befell them.

As for his other doings, they were curious. He chose a bed-room, tried to keep it in order, and even essayed to make the bed. Farewell, bed-room! The living-room became untenable save for a little place in front of the fire, where Billy sat and smoked after his extraordinary repasts. He ceased shaving, abandoned collars, became unkempt, worked as the spirit moved, or basked at full length on the shore of the lake. This collarless, coatless, hatless existence was Elysian, and he doted on it. Hence it was that he began to feel a certain dread of the girls’ coming, as the signal for the bondage of conventions again to fall on him.

“Friday!” he thought. “Yes, Friday I positively must get a brace on; Friday, without fail! I'll fix the house up and myself, too; then, good bye all this dolce far niente!”

 

Friday morning came and the grounds were perfect. Billy made a big bonfire of all the leaves and rubbish, down by the spring-house. Unfortunately the grass was tinder-dry, and the fire ran under the little building; Billy rushed water in pails and saved it, but not before one side was badly charred.

“That’s a pure accident!” quoth he, wiping the sweat from his smoky brow. “They can’t blame me for accidents. Anyway, the rest of the grounds are in bang-up shape. Now I’m going to clean the camp, get a swell dinner, tog myself out, and wait for the ladies.”

He repaired to the camp, got out all the available supplies and set them handy in the living-room where he could ponder over them, bread before the fireplace, eggs in the Morris-chair, milk-pail on the table. Suddenly an idea struck him—those unwashed dishes!

“By Jove! About a million, I guess! Well, I’ll just have to heat water, do the darned dishes and carry ’em down to the lake to rinse, I suppose. The sooner it’s over, the better!’

He heated water in Addie’s hand-beaten brass bowl, did the dishes—oh, yes, he “did” them; nicked two out of every three—piled them all in the dish-pan and started for the wharf. Just as he reached it his sickened eye detected a boat midway down the lake and pulling rapidly toward him, rowed by a man and convoying two women.

“Lord, Lord!” he groaned, “what shall I do? The camp! Myself! Say, I’ve got to get these out of sight, anyway!”

Turning, he ran back up the path as fast as his big load of dishes would permit. Blinded by the arm-full he tripped fairly over a hemlock root and immediately thereafter found himself, like Marius the Roman, sitting amid ruins. Meantime, the boat had pulled in closer and a clear voice was hailing:

“Billee-e-ee! Oh, Billee-e-ee!”

Billy scrambled up and began throwing the wreckage into the bushes. “You’ve got to face it!” he kept saying. “Brace up, bluff it, be a man!”

He left the dishes and stalked doggedly back to the wharf, where he stood waiting, disheveled, dirty, and very grim. Handkerchiefs waved from the boat, wherein Addie and Aline were now plainly to be seen. Billy had no handkerchief, so he waved his dish-cloth.

“Hello, Billy boy!” cried his sister, still some distance away. “Here we are at last! Are you all ready for us?”

“Hel-lo! Hello!” called Billy in reply, discreetly ignoring the question. One moment the idea that he had best “cut and run” occurred to him, but he stood firm with a cheerful expectancy like that of the ox who sees the butcher-man draw insinuatingly near with a long knife.

The boat came up to the wharf. Billy noted distinctly how very pretty and slender Aline was, prettier “in all that frilly business she’s got on,” he told himself, than he had even expected. Hot waves chased themselves over his face, beneath the grime, as he steadied the boat and helped the passengers disembark.

Illustration:“Nonsense!”she retorted

“Why, Billy!”

His sister had just got a good look at him. “No, I won’t kiss you! Get away! What is the matter! Aline, don’t look at him! No, don’t you dare shake hands with him! Oh, he’s—”

“Addie, Addie, I’m ashamed of you!” broke in Aline, and her voice was balm to Billy’s wounds. “How can you? It’s all on your account, anyway, and—”

“Oh, I suppose you’re right, Aline, but I wanted so much to have him looking ultra, for your sake, and now—you don’t know how it is; you never had a brother, anyway!”

Then Billy spoke.

“Is this Friday night?”

“Friday night? You poor innocent! Didn’t you get my telegram, to—”

“Telegram?”

“Yes, telegram! Saying we’d be here at noon? The Plant Line schedules were all changed May 15th. Well, well! But it’s no one’s fault; forgive me, boy—you startled me, that’s all. You must have been working hard, though! I hadn’t the least idea there would be so much to do, and I’m awfully grateful, Billy, indeed I am. The grounds look perfectly stunning—I know the camp must be just delightful. I take back all I’ve said, and, Billy, you are practical, and strong, and good! Here, I want to kiss you, dirt and all!”

She gave him a sisterly kiss and started up the path; suddenly she shrieked as in agony.

“Oh, oh! Oh, my dishes, my dishes, my beautiful Hawdaji-ware!”

Billy glanced around as if looking for a chance to bolt.

“Perhaps we’d better—better go up and sit on the piazza,” he stammered to Aline. “Sister seems a trifle—eh—nervous, and the camp isn’t quite ready, but——” He wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a hand which left long, brownish trails.

They walked on up to the camp. Through the open door Billy saw his sister—she had collapsed in a chair, the Morris chair.

“Eggs!” he shouted, with sudden vehemence. “Eggs! Eggs!”

“What do you mean?” snapped Addie, flushing. “Are you stark raving mad, or what?”

“Eggs! Quick! Get up! You’re sitting on my—my eggs!”

Addie leaped up, speechless. Then she started to find her tongue.

“Why—why Billy Peverley—why, you—you—I think you’re—”

“Addie! Be calm! He’s all right, and you’re not going to scold him, mind now!” broke in Aline. “Just cool down and get me an apron! Go take a stroll—out with you!” She half coaxed, half pushed her hostess through the door. “Now, sir!” she went on, “now, Mr. Cook-Chef-Landscape-gardener, you and I are going to set this house to rights before you can say ‘Jack Robinson!’” She rolled up her sleeves, displaying a pair of round and very well-tanned arms. “Aren’t we, brother Billy?” she added, with a sudden smile.

Billy shot a glance of admiration and infinite gratitude at her.

“You—you’re a dea ex machina dropped right down from paradise for my salvation!” he exclaimed.

“Nonsense!” she retorted, deftly tying on an apron. “I’m nothing of the sort. You’re as far wrong as Addie, who tries to make me out a regular Miss Prim. As a matter of fact, I’m nothing but a plain every-day American girl with a present penchant for house-cleaning. Trot right along, now, and get me a pail of water! If I’m to be a dea, you'll have to step lively!” She lifted her broom in menace. “I warn you now I’m going to rule you with a rod of iron—that is, until this camp is spick and span—with your permission!””

“You have it, if you’ll promise never to tell what Umsit and—and Billy looked like when you came!”

“I never will, cross my heart! But don’t you dare say I bossed you with a broom-stick—Brother Billy!” Her eyes were tantalizing, her smile mocked him subtly.

“Why should I—Sister Aline? You’ve no brother, you know, and I—”

“Go, get that water!’

Then Billy Peverley, no longer “of New York and Boston,” but of Camp Umsit solely, went gladly down the path to do her bidding, and knew because of Aline’s bonny smile that he was most exceeding happy.