Part 8 (1/2)
We were convulsed at this remark. Mary had not only imitated her tone but had clearly voiced the character of Mabel, who by the way had not been told of Miss c.o.x's engagement and had amused all of us very much by her endeavours to attract Mr. Gordon.
”What's the joke?” demanded Wink, arriving with Mabel and the boys while we were still laughing at Mary's mimicry.
”Oh, the kind of joke that would lose in repet.i.tion,” declared Dum.
”I bet it was something on me,” said poor Sleepy, ”but if it was, I'm sure to hear of it, though. There is one thing certain, if there is a joke on me it is obliged to come out.”
”Not if you can keep it to yourself,” laughed Dum. ”You know perfectly well the time you got mixed up with the laundry you told on yourself.
None of us was going to breathe a word of it.”
”Well, how did I know? I thought girls always told and I was determined that the fellows should understand exactly how it happened and so--and so----”
”And so you will never hear the last of it. Well, next time trust the girls a little and you will fare better.”
It had taken Sleepy some time to get over his extreme embarra.s.sment occasioned by his natural shyness combined with the unfortunate occurrence of our first meeting with him. He was something of a woman-hater, anyhow, according to his friends, but we decided that he was really more afraid of us than anything else; and when he found out that we were not going to bite him nor yet gobble him up whole, he made up his mind to be friends with us; and when he once made up his mind to like us, he outdid even the courtly Jim, and the genial Wink, and the sympathetic Rags, in his attentions. Wherever we went, the young giant could be seen hunching along in our wake with that gait peculiar to football players.
”It looks like old Sleepy had waked up at last,” Wink said to me. ”To my certain knowledge he never said two words to a girl before and now, look at him! I wish he would fall in love and maybe it would give him some ambition to get ahead in his studies. You see, Sleepy's people have got oodlums of c.h.i.n.k and Sleepy knows that he has got a living without making it. The old fellow has a wonderfully good mind but absolutely no ambition, except of course to make the team and to keep up his football record. He is supposed to be studying medicine, but I'll wager anything he does not yet know the bones in the body.”
”Maybe he is going to be an oculist and won't have to know the bones in the human body,” I ventured. ”He seems to be vastly interested in Annie's eyes lately.” Indeed there was something of the clinging vine in our little English friend that appealed to George Ma.s.sie's great strength, and he had a.s.sumed the att.i.tude of protector and forest oak, one singularly becoming to him.
”You had better go in the naphtha launch,” I heard him say to Annie. ”It is ever so much safer, and you can't swim.”
”Well, let me go wherever the rest think best. I don't want to take any one else's place,” said Annie, anxious as usual to efface herself.
She need have had no fear of being allowed to take any one else's place with Mabel Binks the self-elected chief cook and bottle washer of the occasion. That young woman was looking extremely handsome in a white linen tailored suit with a red parasol, Panama hat of the latest cut, red tie, red belt and red silk stockings. The seash.o.r.e was a very becoming place for Mabel, as sunburn brought out her good points, giving an added glow to her rather lurid beauty. She looked really magnificent on that morning of the sailing party and her grown-up, stylish clothes made all of us feel rather childish in our middy blouses and khaki s.h.i.+rts and hats.
Miss c.o.x was dressed very much as we were except that she tucked in her middy, and Mabel's effulgence seemed to take all the colour from our beloved chaperone, who had been seeming to us almost beautiful lately because of the love-light in her eyes. Mabel's brilliancy outshone even love-light. I became very conscious of the many new freckles on my nose and Dee said afterwards hers seemed so huge to her that they actually hurt her eyes. Dee and I always got freckled noses and it was a source of some distress to both of us. As for Mary, the freckles had met long ago on her turkey-egg countenance, while Dum had long streamers of peelings hanging from her nose. She did not freckle but declared she grew fifteen brand new skins every summer.
Annie was a great comfort to me as I took a quick inventory of my friends, who on that day compared so unfavourably with the glowing beauty. Annie looked as lovely as ever. She had that very fair skin that neither tans nor freckles, and her ripe wheat hair was curling in little tendrils around her white neck and calm forehead.
”Thank goodness my hair curls, too,” I thought, ”and the dampness won't make me look too stringy,” and then I took myself to task for thinking about such foolish things, as though it made any difference what we, a lot of kids, looked like, anyhow.
Zebedee was carrying Mabel's parasol and they seemed to be having a most intimate conversation, certainly a very spirited one into which she constantly drew Mr. Gordon; and as Miss c.o.x had hooked her arm in Mary's and everyone else was coupled off, Mr. Gordon soon fell into step with the gay pair.
”Disgusting!” I heard Dum mutter, but I hoped she would not let anyone see how furious she was. I noticed she closed her eyes and I saw her lips move and knew she was praying, ”Don't let me biff Mabel Binks, don't let me biff her,” just as she had at the football match at Hill Top the fall before. We reached the landing where the boats were anch.o.r.ed and as Dum had not biffed Mabel, I suppose her prayer was answered.
”Oh, there are the boats! What a darling little launch! Dum and Dee and I bid to go in that. Mr. Gordon, will you please arrange those cus.h.i.+ons in the stern for me? Be sure and don't lose me, Mr. Tucker, and I will finish that delicious yarn I was in the midst of. Stephen, you will run the launch, I know, as that will give you such a good chance to be near Dee, and, Mr. Hart, here is a nice seat for you right by Dum.”
Her words were so exactly what Mary had said they would be, that we who had heard Mary's prophetic imitation could hardly contain our merriment; and strange to say, the twins, in a measure hypnotised by her determination to carry out her schemes, stepped with unaccustomed docility into the pretty launch; but the polite Mr. Gordon arranged the cus.h.i.+ons and then got out determined not to be separated from his inamorata for the sail. Wink and Jim naturally complied with the arrangement as far as being near the Tuckers was concerned, but Wink said:
”Put me where I look best, but I think Sleepy had better run his own launch, especially since I don't know the first thing about it.”
And Sleepy thought so, too, but he quietly determined that Annie Pore should go along. The girl was too sensitive to be willing to risk the withering scorn of Mabel's black-eyed glance and begged to be allowed to take a seat in the cat boat. Just as the launch was ready to start, Zebedee, who had been stowing the bathing suits away under the seats, made a flying leap for the landing, calling back:
”That story will have to keep, Miss Binks, as I have been promising myself the pleasure of giving Page a sailing lesson today,” and for once in their lives I feel sure that Tweedles were glad to have their beloved father leave them.
Mabel lay back on her cus.h.i.+ons like a sulky Cleopatra with the expression that the queen herself might have worn had Antony refused to ride in the royal barge, choosing instead to paddle his own mud scow down the Nile.
CHAPTER X.