Part 17 (2/2)
We stood aghast during this speech. Dum looked as though she would welcome Death, the Deliverer, with joy, anything to relieve the strain she was on to keep from exploding with laughter; but Zebedee did not seem to think it was funny at all. He listened with the greatest courtesy and when she had finished with her quotation (which we afterwards agreed was singularly appropriate, since Caesar had been made ”impervious” enough to keep out water as well as wind), he answered her very kindly:
”I thank you, Blanche, for understanding me so well. I can tell you that I, for one, will always remember your waffles; and had I known at the time that there was any more batter, there would not have been any cold ones to find their last ignominious resting place in the garbage pail.”
”I also have saved some of your writings, Mr. Tucker,--an editorial that Miss Dum said you had written before you came for your holiday,--and I will put it in my mem'ry book as an epitaph of you.”
Then Dum did explode. She made out that she was sneezing and even insisted upon purchasing a menthol inhaler before she went back to Willoughby, declaring she felt a head cold coming on.
The Beach seemed stale, flat and unprofitable somehow when we got back.
We missed Miss c.o.x and above all we missed Zebedee.
”I'm glad we couldn't get the cottage for another month,” yawned Dum.
”Old Zebedeelums couldn't be here more than once or twice in that time and it would surely be stupid without him;” and all of us agreed with her in our hearts.
The cottage was in a terrible state of disorder. We had been too excited in the morning to do our ch.o.r.es. Beds were unmade, the living-room messy and untidy with sweaters on chairs, crumbs on the table and floor and shades some up, and some down, and some crooked (nothing to my mind gives a room a more forlorn look than window shades at sixes and sevens); the kitchen, usually in the pink of perfection, just as Blanche had left it after cooking what she had termed, a somewhat ”forgetable” breakfast.
”Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow,” said Dee. ”Let's leave this mess and take a dip before supper. We will have fifteen minutes at least before Blanche can get the funeral baked meats on the table.”
We were to have a very simple repast and we told Blanche just to put it on the table and we would wait on ourselves. The girl was as tired as we were and we felt we must spare her. We determined to get the cottage in perfect order the next day and just to ”live keerless” for that evening and night, as Blanche expressed it.
Five hats and five pairs of gloves, dropped where the owners happened to fancy, did not help to make the living-room look any more orderly. Dum took off her white kid pumps, that had been pinching a little all day, and left them in the middle of the floor. The morning paper, despised of Zebedee but eagerly devoured nevertheless, was scattered all over the divan and floor, and a bag of bananas Blanche had been intrusted with was in a state of dishabille on the crummy table. It was surely a place to flee from and flee we did.
Such a swim as we had! It seemed the best of the whole month. The water was perfect, just a little cooler than the air, and the setting sun turned it to liquid gold.
”Why, look at Annie! She is swimming, really swimming!” called out Mary Flannagan. And sure enough there was Annie staying on top of the water and calmly paddling around like a beautiful white swan.
”Of course I can swim in golden water! Who couldn't? I do wish Mr.
Tucker could see me. Isn't it too bad after all his patience with me that I wait until he is gone to show what I can do? Somehow this seems like a dream, and the water is fairy water.”
”Let's all catch hold of hands and lie on our backs and float,” I suggested.
”If you won't leave me when the tide comes, to turn over and swim in,”
pleaded Annie.
”I will stay with you until your shoulders grate against the sh.o.r.e,”
promised Mary.
And so we lay all in a row on top of the water, faces upturned to the wonderful evening sky, our bodies as light as air and our hearts even lighter.
”Gee, Dee! I am glad you suggested this!” sighed Dum. ”I never felt more peaceful in my life than I do this minute, and I know I never felt more forlorn than I did when we first got back to the cottage.”
”Me too! Me too!” we chorused.
”Let's float to Spain and never come back,” suggested Annie.
”And this from a little lady who has been afraid to get her toes wet all month! Well, I'm game if the rest of you are,” and Mary gave a few vigorous kicks that sent the line some distance from sh.o.r.e; and still Annie with her white-swan expression floated peacefully on. We lay there chatting and dreaming, was.h.i.+ng off ”the cares that infest the day,”
<script>