Speed Nell
The Carter Girls' Week-End Camp

CHAPTER XVII
THE SPRING-KEEPER

“Isn’t this grand?” were the last words both of our girls uttered as they rolled into the bunks that had been made up with fresh, lavender-scented linen. The brigands had captured them certainly and their adventure was complete. The boys were sleeping on the porch in hammocks. Mr. McRae always slept on the porch unless weather drove him in, and Tom Tit had a little room that he loved, where he kept his treasures, all those he did not put in the hole in the mountain.

Dawn found the babes in the wood much refreshed. The boys were up and out early, helping Tom Tit milk the cow and chop wood. Mr. McRae had started the cooking of breakfast when Lucy and Lil appeared.

“We are so ashamed to be late but we almost slept our heads off,” they apologized. “Now let us help!”

“All right, set the table and skim the milk and get the butter out of the dairy.” The dairy was a cave dug in the side of the mountain where all their food was kept cool in summer and warm in winter. “We shall breakfast on the porch.”

The girls made all haste and set the table with great care.

“Let’s get him to tell us all about himself this morning,” whispered Lucy. “I’m dying to hear about him. Isn’t he romantic?”

“I’m crazy about him. Don’t you reckon he’ll go to the camp with us? Nan would be wild over him.”

“Yes, but he’s ours. We certainly found him.”

“You sound like Tom Tit,” laughed Lil.

“I hope the people at the camp won’t laugh at poor Tom Tit,” said Lucy. “If we could only get there a little ahead and prepare them for his pink pants.”

She need not have worried, as the wise Mr. McRae knew how to manage Tom Tit so that he discarded his pink pants when he was to go among strangers.

“Now, Tom Tit, we must hurry with all of our duties so we can make an early start to walk home with our guests; and we must put on our corduroys for such a long tramp, as the brambles might tear your lovely new trousers.”

So poor Tom Tit did the outside chores with the help of the boys, while the girls assisted Mr. McRae in the house.

Having breakfasted a little after dawn, by seven o’clock they were ready for their ten mile tramp back to the camp. The boys shouldered their guns and the sacks of fox grapes and squirrels. Mr. McRae took with him a small spade while Tom Tit carried a hoe.

“I can’t help thinking both of them are a bit loony,” Skeeter whispered to Lucy. “Why on earth do they want to carry garden tools on a ten mile tramp?”

“Loony yourself! I reckon they want to dig something.”

The old gentleman, as though divining Skeeter’s thoughts, remarked:

“Tom Tit and I have a little duty to attend to today, so we are taking our implements. There are several springs I have not been able to visit this summer and I am going to combine duty with pleasure and look after them today.”

“Look after springs! What for?” from Skeeter.

“I thought I told you that I am a spring-keeper. Perhaps you don’t know what a spring-keeper is.”

“N – o! Not exactly!” said Skeeter.

“Well, every country child knows that in every spring there is or should be a spring-keeper to keep the water clear. It is a kind of crawfish. It may be a superstition that he really does purify water. At any rate, it is a pleasing idea that he can. Whether he can or not, I know I can help a great deal by digging out of the springs the old dead roots and vegetable matter that decays there, so my self-appointed job is to keep the springs of Albemarle county in condition. I am sure I have saved many families from typhoid in the last years. That is something.

“I was born in the mountains, born in a cabin that stands just where the one I live in now stands, in fact the chimney is the same one that has always been there, but the house is new. When I was a mere lad, about twelve years old, there was a terrible epidemic of typhoid fever in the mountains. My whole family was wiped out by it, my father, mother and two sisters dying of it. I just did escape with my life and was nursed back to health by Tom Tit’s granny, as good a woman as ever lived. Afterwards, having no home ties, I drifted to the city where I was successful financially. We of the mountains had not known in the old days what caused typhoid, but afterwards, when I learned it was the water we drank, I determined to come back to my county whenever I could and make some endeavor to better the conditions. Would God that I might have been sooner! My poor boy had an attack of the dread disease just the year before I got my affairs in condition to leave New York, and that is what caused his brain trouble.”

Tom Tit was ahead of the party, gazing up into the air as his old friend spoke. He had a rapt expression on his face that made him for the moment look like Guido Reni’s Christ.

“Sometimes,” continued the old man, “in typhoid, the temperature is so high that certain brain tissue seems to be burned out. I am afraid that is what has happened to my boy.”

“All of us have been inoculated against typhoid,” said Lucy. “Dr. Wright insisted on it – every member of the family. Helen kicked like a steer but she had to do it, too.”

“Well named, well named, that young doctor! I try to get the friends in the mountains to submit to it, too, but it is a difficult matter. I keep the virus on hand all the time, a fresh supply. If I can’t persuade them to let me give them the treatment, I can at least keep their springs clean for them. Sometimes they even object to that,” he laughed, “but they can’t help it, as I do it without their leave. They say I take all the taste out of the water.”

Their way lay around the mountain instead of over it, the course they had taken the day before, and much to the amazement of the young people, they went to the left instead of to the right.

“But Greendale is that way!” declared Frank, pointing to the east.

“Greendale is really due north of us, but I thought you wanted to go by Jude Hanford’s cabin to do your errand. We could go either way to the camp from here, but if we go east, we will miss Jude.”

“Well, if that doesn’t beat all!” exclaimed Frank.

Mr. McRae laughed. “What would you have done last night if Tom Tit had not found you and brought you home?”

“I was going to lie right down and let the robins cover me up,” said Lil.

“I was going to climb the highest tree and look out and see if I could spy a light, like the cock in the ‘Musicians of Bremen,’” said Lucy.

“I was going to follow the path from the spring,” said Frank. “I felt sure from the cleanliness of the spring that we were near some house.”

“And I was going to build a fire and skin the squirrels and have supper,” declared Skeeter. “I was just about famished and I knew that food was what Lil and Lucy needed to put heart in them.”

“Yes, it wouldn’t!” laughed Lil. “Much good burnt squirrel without any salt would do a bruised heel. That was all that was the matter with me.”

That ten miles back to the camp seemed much shorter than it had the day before, and in fact it was, as they made no digressions on the homeward trip.

“We must really have walked twenty miles yesterday. Just think how many times we doubled on our tracks,” said Frank when they finally came to a familiar spot.

They found Jude Hanford’s yard running over with frying-sized chickens and on his door step a water bucket full of eggs all ready to take to the store. Of course he was pleased to sell them without having to take off the commission for the middleman. He joined their procession, with his eggs and three dozen chickens distributed among the bearers.

CHAPTER XVIII
MORE FINDS

“Look!” exclaimed Lucy as they neared the camp. “Mr. Smith is flying this morning. I wonder who is with him. He hasn’t taken me yet but he promised to today. Please don’t tell mother. She would be terribly alarmed at the prospect.”

“Oh, there’s my bird!” and Tom Tit dropped his hoe and the basket of chickens he was carrying and clasped his hands in an ecstasy of delight. “See, see, how it floats! I have found it again! I have found it again!”

“Tom Tit, would you like to fly with that great bird?” asked Lucy gently.

“Fly? Oh, I always dream I can fly! Can I really fly?”

“Yes, Tom Tit, if you want to I will give you my place. The birdman promised to take me today and I will get him to take you instead.”

Tom Tit looked wonderingly and trustingly at Lucy. Mr. McRae smiled his approval.

“It will be an experience my boy will remember all his life.”

“Spending the night at your home will be one we will remember always, too. It beat flying,” and all of the wanderers agreed with her.

Mr. Tom Smith was perfectly willing to take Tom Tit on a flight if he promised to sit still, which of course he did. The aeroplane was a great astonishment to him and the fact that the birdman could leave the bird and talk and walk filled him with awe.

“We uns ain’t never seen buzzards and eagles git out’n their wings, but then we uns ain’t never been so clost to the big ones, the ones that sails way up in the clouds.”

When they landed after a rather longer flight than Tom Smith usually took the would-be flyers, Tom Tit’s expression was that of one who has glimpsed the infinite. He said not a word for a moment after he found himself once more on terra firma, and then he turned to his old friend and whispered:

“Oh, Spring-keeper, I have found so many things that I’ll never be sad again.”

The Carters, of course, gave Mr. McRae a warm welcome. They could not do enough to express their gratitude for his kindness and hospitality to their young people. Mrs. Carter was graciousness itself to the old man, but looked rather askance at the queer figure of his companion. I wonder what she would have thought had she seen his pink calico trousers and his patched shirt that he considered so beautiful. Bobby, however, was drawn to him immediately and treated him just as though he had been another little boy who had come to see him. He took his new friend to see all of his bird houses and water wheels, and Tom Tit followed him about with adoration in his eyes.

“We uns kin talk like you uns when we uns remembers,” said Bobby.

“We uns would like to talk like Spring-keeper but always forgits,” sighed Tom Tit. “Spring-keeper used to talk just like we uns when he was little but he’s got larnin’ now.”

“We uns don’t never want no larnin’,” declared Bobby. “‘Tain’t no use. Josh wants to git larnin’, too, but when he does he ain’t goin’ to be my bes’ frien’ no mo’. I’m a-goin’ to be you bes’ frien’ then; I mean, we uns is.”

“What’s a bes’ frien’? We uns ain’t never found one.”

“Oh, a bes’ frien’ is somebody you likes to be with all the time.”

“Oh, then Spring-keeper is a bes’ frien’.”

“But he is an old man. A bes’ frien’ must be young.”

“Then we uns’ll have to take the baby fox. Will that do?”

“Oh, yes, that’ll do if’n they ain’t no boys around.”

“We uns will keep the baby fox for one of them things until Josh gits larnin’ and then you kin be it,” and Tom Tit laughed for joy.

“Is you uns ever flew?” Tom Tit asked Bobby.

“No – my mother is so skittish like, she ain’t never let me. She’s ’bout one of the scaredest ladies they is.”

“We uns’ maw is done flew away herself and she didn’t mind when we uns went a bit. We uns useter think that when the men found maw they took her and hid her in a hole in the ground. Spring-keeper done tole me lots of times that she wasn’t in the ground but had flew up to heaven, but we uns ain’t never seed no one fly, so we uns just thought he was a foolin’. And you see,” he whispered, “Spring-keeper is kinder daffy sometimes, so the folks say, and we uns has to humor him. But now – but now – we uns done flewed away up in the air. If we uns kin fly, why maw kin do it, too. She ain’t in a hole in the ground no mo’. We uns almost saw her flyin’ way up over the mountain tops.”

“I’m – I mean we uns is a-goin’ to come to see you. My father is goin’ to take me there some day. Kin you play on the Victrola?”

“No – we uns ain’t never seed one. What is it?”

“Why, it makes music.”

“Oh, we uns kin play the jew’s-harp.”

“Gee! I wish I could – I mean we uns wishes we uns could. If you show me how to play the jew’s-harp, I’ll show you how to play the Victrola. Come on, I’ll show you first while th’ain’t nobody in the pavilion. You see, my sisters is some bossy an’ they’s always sayin’ I scratch the records an’ won’t never let me play it by myself, but they is about the bossiest ever. I ain’t a-goin’ to hurt the old records.”

Tom Tit looked at the Victrola with wondering eyes while Bobby wound it up. He had seen a small organ once and the postmistress at Bear Hollow had a piano, but this musical instrument was strange indeed.

“I’m a-gonter leave the record on that Helen’s been a-playin’. I don’t know what it is. I can’t read good yet but I reckon it’s something pretty.”

It was Zimbalist playing the “Humoresque.” Fancy the effect of such a wonderful combination of sounds breaking for the first time on the sensitive ears of this mountain youth. He had heard music in the wind and music in the water; the birds had sung to him and the beasts had talked to him; but what was this? He stood like one enchanted, his hands clasped and his lips parted. At one point in the music when the great artist was evidently putting his whole soul in it, Tom Tit began to sob. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Why, what’s the matter? Don’t you like it? I’ll put a ragtime piece on,” cried Bobby, abruptly stopping the machine with a scraping sound that certainly proved he was a great scratcher of records.

“Oh, now it’s lost! It’s lost! We uns thought we uns had found something beautiful. Where has it gone?”

“Did you like it then? What made you bawl?”

“We uns has to cry when we uns finds something beautiful sometimes. We uns cries a little when the sun sets but it is tears of happiness. Can you uns play that again?”

“Sure!” and Bobby started up the “Humoresque” again and this time Tom Tit dried his eyes and stood with a smile on his face.

“Oh, Spring-keeper!” he cried when Mr. McRae came hunting him, “we uns has found something more beautiful than sunsets and flowers – prettier than birds – prettier than pink – prettier than blue or yellow. It shines like dew and tastes like honey – Oh, Spring-keeper, listen!”

“Yes, my boy, it is beautiful. And now I think you have found enough things for today and we must go home.”

“Go home and leave this!” and Tom Tit embraced the Victrola. “We uns can’t leave it.”

“Listen, my boy! I will get one for you. I don’t know why I never thought of it before. Within a week you shall have one all your own and play it as much as you choose.”

Of course Bobby had to be instructed in the rudiments of jew’s-harp playing first, according to agreement, and then with many expressions of mutual regard our young people parted from the spring-keeper and Tom Tit.

CHAPTER XIX
A DISCUSSION

August was over and our girls were not sorry. The camp had been like an ant hill all during that month of holidays. Not that it had been a month of holidays for the Carters, far from it. There had been times when they did not see how they could accomplish the work they had undertaken. They were two hands short almost all of the month which made the work fall very heavily on the ones who were left. Gwen was taken up with Aunt Mandy, the kind old mountain woman who had been so good to the little English orphan. Now that Aunt Mandy was ill, Gwen felt it her duty to be with her day and night. Susan was so busy waiting on Mrs. Carter that she never had time for her regular duties in the kitchen.

Lewis and Bill were terribly missed. They had done so many things for the campers, had been so strong and willing and untiring in their service that the girls felt the place could hardly be run without them. Skeeter and Frank did all they could but they were but slips of lads after all and there were many things where a man’s strength was necessary.

Mr. Carter was glad to help when he was called on, but he did not seem to see the things that were to be done without having them pointed out. When there was much of a crowd he rather shrank from the noise and the girls felt they must not let him be made nervous by the confusion. Of course there was much confusion when twenty and more boarders would arrive at once, have to be hauled up the mountain and assigned tent room and then as Oscar would say, “have to be filled up.” The girls would do much giggling and screaming; the young men would laugh a great deal louder than their jokes warranted, and the boys seemed to think that camp was a place especially designed for practical jokes.

It was a common thing to hear shrieks from the tents when the crowd was finally made to retire by the chaperone, and then the cry, “Ouch! Chestnut burrs in my bed!” Once it was a lemon meringue pie, brought all the way from Richmond by an inveterate joker who felt that a certain youth was too full of himself and needed taking down a peg! Now there is nothing much better than a lemon meringue pie taken internally, but of all the squashy abominations to find in one’s bed and to have applied externally, a lemon meringue pie is the worst.

It was as a censor of practical jokes that Douglas and Helen missed the young soldiers most. They had been wont to stand just so much and no more from the wild Indians who came to Camp Carter for the week-end, and now that there was no one to reach forth a restraining hand, there was no limit to the pranks that were played.

Mrs. Carter felt that the job of chaperone for such a crowd was certainly no sinecure. She complained quite bitterly of her duties. After all, they consisted of having the new-comers introduced to her and of presiding at supper and of staying in the pavilion until bed time. Miss Elizabeth Somerville had made nothing of it, and one memorable night when there was too much racket going on from the tents the boys occupied, she had arisen from her bed in the cabin and, wrapped in a dressing gown and armed with an umbrella, had marched to the seat of war and very effectively quelled the riot by laying about her with said umbrella.

The girls looked back on her reign, regretting that it was over. It was lovely to have their mother with them again but she was quite different from the mother they had known in Richmond in the luxurious days. That mother had always been gentle while this one had a little sharp note to her voice that was strange to them. It was most noticeable when she had expressed some desire that was not immediately gratified.

“I am quite tired of chicken,” she said to Douglas one day. “I wish you would order some sweetbreads for me. I need building up. This rough life is very hard on me and nothing but my being very unselfish and devoted makes me put up with it.”

“Yes, mother! I am sorry, but my order for this week is in the mail and I could not change it now, but I will send a special order for some Texas sweetbreads to Charlottesville. I have no doubt I can get them there.”

Either the order or the sweetbreads went astray. Mrs. Carter refused to eat any dinner in consequence and sulked a whole day.

“If she only doesn’t complain to father we can stand it,” Douglas confided to Nan. “What are we going to do, Nan? I am so afraid she will make father feel he must go back to work, and then all the good of the rest will be done away with. She treats me, somehow, as though it were all my fault.”

“Oh no, honey, you mustn’t feel that way. Poor little mumsy is just spoiled to death and does not know how to adapt herself to this change of fortune.”

“You see, Nan, now that Mr. Lane has had to go to Texas with the militia the business is at a standstill. He was trying to fill the orders they had on their books without father’s help.”

“Yes, Mr. Tucker said that father’s business was a one man affair and when that one man, father, was out of the running there was nothing to do about it. Thank goodness, father is not worrying about things himself.”

“I know we should be thankful, but somehow his not worrying makes it just so much more dreadful. I feel that he is even more different than mother. It is an awful problem – what to do.”

“What’s a problem?” asked Helen, coming suddenly into the tent where her sisters were engaged in the above conversation.

“Oh, just – just – nothing much!” faltered Douglas.

“Now that’s a nice way to treat a partner. You and Nan are always getting off and whispering together and not letting me in on it. What’s worrying you?”

“The situation!”

“Political or climatic?”

“Carteratic!” drawled Nan. “We were talking about mother and father.”

“What about them? Is father worse?” Helen was ever on the alert when her father’s well-being was in question.

“No, he is better in some ways, but unless he is kept free from worry he will never be well,” said Douglas solemnly.

She had not broached the subject of money with Helen since the question of White Sulphur had been discussed by them, feeling that Helen would not or could not understand.

“Who’s going to worry him? Not I!”

“Of course not you. Just the lack of money is going to worry him, and he is going to feel the lack of it if mother wants things and can’t have them.”

“Why don’t you let her have them?”

“How can I? I haven’t the wherewithal any more than you.”

“I thought we were making money.”

“So we are, but not any great amount. I think it is wonderful that we have been able to support ourselves and put anything in the bank. I had to draw out almost all of our earnings to pay for the things mother bought in New York, not that I wasn’t glad to do it, but that means we have not so much to go on for the winter.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake don’t be worrying about the winter now! Mother says our credit is so good we need not worry a bit.”

Douglas and Nan looked at each other sadly. Douglas turned away with a “what’s the use” expression. Helen looked a little defiant as she saw her sister’s distress.

“See here, Helen!” and this time Nan did not drawl. Helen realized her little sister was going to say something she must listen to. “You have got a whole lot of sense but you have got a whole lot to learn. I know you are going to laugh at me for saying you have got to learn a lot that I, who am two years younger than you, already know. You have got to learn that our poor little mumsy’s judgment is not worth that,” and Nan snapped her finger.

“Nan! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“Well, I am ashamed of myself, but I am telling the truth. I don’t see the use in pretending any more about it. I love her just as much, but anyone with half an eye can see it. I think what we must do is to face it and then tactfully manage her.”

Douglas and Helen could not help laughing at Nan.

“You see,” she continued, “it is up to us to support the family somehow and make mumsy comfortable and keep her from telling father that she hasn’t got all she wants. Of course she can’t have all she wants, but she can be warm and fed at least.”

“But, Nan, it isn’t up to you to support the family,” said Douglas. “You must go back to school, you and Lucy.”

“Well, it is up to me to spend just as little money as possible and to earn some if I can. I am not going to be a burden on you and Helen. You needn’t think it.”

“We’ll have the one hundred from the rent of the house and then Helen and I shall have to find jobs. What, I don’t know.”

“Well, I, for one, can’t find a job until I get some new clothes,” declared Helen. “I haven’t a thing that is not hopelessly out of style.”

“Can’t your last winter’s suit be done over? Mine can.”

“Now, Douglas, what’s the use in going around looking like a frump? I think we should all of us get some new clothes and then waltz in and get good jobs on the strength of them. If I were employing girls I should certainly choose the ones who look the best.”

Douglas shook her head sadly. Helen was Helen and there was no making her over. She would have to learn her lesson herself and there was no teaching her.

“Dr. Wright says we must keep father out of the city this winter but we need not be in the dead country. We can get a little house on the edge of town so Nan and Lucy can go in to school. I think we can get along on the rent from the house if you and I can make something besides.”

When the question of where they were to live for the winter was broached to Mrs. Carter, she was taken quite ill and had to stay in bed a whole day.

“No one considers me at all,” she whimpered to Nan, who had brought her a tray with some tea and toast for her luncheon. “Just because you and Douglas like the country you think it is all right. I am sure I shall die in some nasty little frame cottage in the suburbs. It is ridiculous that we cannot turn those wretched people out of my house and let me go back and live in it again.”

“But, mumsy,” soothed Nan, “we are going to make you very comfortable and we will find a pretty house and maybe it will be brick.”

“But to dump me down in the suburbs when I have had to be away from society for all these months as it is! I am sure if I could talk it over with your father he would agree with me – but you girls even coerce me in what I shall and shall not say to my own husband. I do not intend to submit to it any longer.”

“Oh, mother, please – please don’t tell father. Dr. Wright says – ”

“Don’t tell me what Dr. Wright says! I am bored to death with what he says. I know he has been kind but I can’t see that our affairs must be indefinitely directed by him. I will sleep a little now if you will let me be quiet.”