Speed Nell
Vacation with the Tucker Twins

CHAPTER VIII
LETTERS

To Dr. James Allison from Page Allison.

Willoughby Beach,

July – , 191 – .

My Dearest Father:

We are having the grandest time that ever was and all we want now is for you to take a little holiday and come down to see us. It would do you worlds of good and surely your patients can let you go for a little while. Sometimes I think you should get an assistant or try to persuade some young doctor to settle in the neighbourhood. You never have any fun. I feel very selfish to have gone off and left you and Mammy Susan when I have been away all winter, but I promise to come back the first of next month and not to budge from Bracken until it is time to go to school the middle of September. I hope Cousin Sue Lee will be with us then, as I should hate to miss her visit, one moment of it. On the other hand I devoutly hope that Cousin Park Garnett will pay her yearly visitation while I am away. I heard a rumor that a Mrs. Garnett was expected at the hotel here, but I am trusting in my hitherto lucky stars that it is not Cousin Park. If she comes to Willoughby, I am going to bury my head in the sand, like an ostrich, and pretend I'm somebody else.

There is a camp of boys near us and they are just as nice as can be and seem to think it is their affair to give all of us girls a good time. They rented this cottage for last month and liked Willoughby so much that when their time was up they started a camp. They are James Hart, Stephen White, George Massie and Ben Raglan. They are called Jim, Wink, Sleepy and Rags, and as we have come to know them pretty well and they are not the kind of boys one stands on ceremony with, we call them by their nicknames, too. Wink White is studying medicine and so is Sleepy, when he is not playing foot-ball or sleeping. Wink is very clever and intensely interested in his work.

Mr. Tucker (only I call him Zebedee now) is teaching me how to swim. He says I am a very apt pupil because I am not a bit afraid; although he teases me a great deal because one day, the very first time I went in, I politely went to the bottom, and he says I made the biggest bubbles he ever saw. He calls me "Sis Mud Turkle," but I don't mind a bit. There is some kind of joke on all of us, even Annie Pore, who is so touchy we have to be careful. But Zebedee just has to tease and he says he can't leave out Annie, as it might make her feel bad.

Of course Mary Flannagan has a joke on everybody and everybody has a joke on her. She is a delightful person to be on a house party with, always so full of fun and always starting something.

Dum and Dee are the same old Tweedles, the very most charming and agreeable persons in the world. I have saved up the most important to the last: – our chaperone, Miss Cox, has gone and got herself engaged! It is an old lover she used to have when she was a girl and he has turned up in the most unexpected and romantic way, and all of us girls are so excited over it we can hardly eat and sleep. We are going to miss her terribly at Gresham. She can make me understand mathematics, which is going some, and how I am to proceed into quadratic equations without her, I cannot see. We do not know when they are to be married, but rather think it will be soon. Zebedee bids to be flower girl.

You may be sure that Miss Cox and Mr. Gordon come in for their share of teasing. I used to think Miss Cox was very old but since she got engaged she does not seem to be any older than we are, and while Mr. Gordon has very grey hair, he is really not old at all, not much older than Zebedee, who is the youngest person of my acquaintance.

All the old girls at Willoughby run after Zebedee, much to Tweedles' disgust. I believe it would about kill the twins if their father should ever marry again, and indeed I think it would be hard on them and I hope he never will, certainly not any of these society girls who are down here at the beach. I don't believe they would any of them make him happy.

Tell Mammy Susan that her great niece is doing very well and everyone likes her. Do not tell her that she is a perfect scream, using the longest, most ridiculous words in the world, never by any accident pronounced properly or in the right place. She is certainly proof positive of a little learning being a dangerous thing; but she is a kindly, sweet-tempered creature and as soon as we persuaded her to cook as she did before she went to school, we found her very capable.

Good-bye, my dearest Father, and please come see us. We are one and all longing for you. Give my best love to Mammy Susan and the dogs.

Your devoted daughter, PAGE.

From Blanche Johnson to Mammy Susan.

Willerbay beech.

Dere ant Susen —

i Take my pen in han to enform you that this leves me in pore helth and hopes it finds You in the same. The son of the C show is very hard on my complexshun and i think the endsewing yer i will spind my vocation in the montings. the yung ladys my hostages is most kind and considerable to me and Mis page tretes me like her own sister. Our shapperoon is in the throws of coarting and all of us maidens is very rheumatic in consequince thereof. Mis page and the other young female ladys who is engaged in this visitation declares they is got little if no use for the opposition sect but that is one thing i do not give very cerus credentials to as our pieazzer is one mask of yuths who no doubt would be spry to leve if they did not suspicion they was welcum. My kind empoyerer is now taken what he designs as his much kneaded rest but I cannot see that he rests none as he keeps up with all the other boys and dances and frolix just like he was the parient of nothin. I ask Mis page if he want her bow and she took on so dignifidedly that i done see i ain't made no mistake, ennybody ken see that Mis page is the favoright of the party, The twinses is plum crazzy about her but i dont bleive they suspicion that they pa is so intrusted. They keeps theyselves quite busy shoein off some fine ladys what is most attentave to they pa and never seems to see what is under they feet, uv cose i no Mis page is yung yit but evy day she is making out to grow a little older and it looks lak mister Tucker is standin still or even gittin some younger. i bleive they will meet in this path of life (as a pote done said) and then proceed together. No more from yose at presence. Mis page has done invitided me to stop at Bracken to pay you a visitation before i return to the cemetary of learning and if nothin ocurs to prevint me i will take gret plesure in compiling with her request.

your gret nease,

BLANCHE JOHNSON.

From Annie Pore to her father, Mr. Arthur Ponsonby Pore, of Price's Landing.

My Dear Father:

I should have written you immediately on my arrival at Willoughby Beach, but we had so many delightful pleasures planned for us by our kind host that I found very little time for correspondence.

I can never thank you enough for permitting me to join this charming house party. Everyone is so very kind to me, I find myself gradually overcoming my habit of extreme shyness and now endeavour to join in the gaieties and to make myself as agreeable as possible, feeling that that is the way I can repay my friends for their hospitality.

I am learning to swim but am not so quick at it as Page Allison. Already she is able to keep up for many strokes. Mr. Tucker himself is teaching us and his patience is wonderful. He first taught us to float, as he says if we are in an accident and can float we will surely be saved, as anyone can tow a floating person to safety. The Tucker twins and Mary Flannagan are fine swimmers and Miss Cox is the strongest swimmer on the beach.

We are all quite excited over the fact that Miss Cox is to be married. I am very glad of her happiness but very sorry that she will not be at Gresham next year as she was so interested in my voice and encouraged me so kindly. Page feels badly, too, as Miss Cox is the only teacher she has ever had who could make her comprehend mathematics.

Mr. Tucker sends you many messages and repeats his invitation for you to come to Willoughby for a week-end. I do sincerely hope you will do so. It would be a pleasant change for you and no doubt your assistant could take care of the shop in your absence. Harvie Price is to be here next week, also another boy who attended Hill Top, Thomas Hawkins. The cottage is quite roomy so there is no danger of crowding, and I can assure you it would be splendid if you could come.

Your devoted daughter,

ANNIE DE VERE PORE.

Miss Josephine Barr from Miss Caroline Tucker.

Willoughby Beach,

July – .

My dear old Jo:

If you only could have come! We are having such times and such heaps of them. In the first place, all five of us girls are sleeping on the same porch with our cots so close together the cover hasn't room to slip. We go in the water twice a day, although every day Zebedee says it must be the last day, but every day he is the first one in and the last one out. Our before-breakfast swim is nothing more than just in and out, and such appetite as it gives us! I am dying to tell you the great news, and Miss Cox says I may tell you. She is going to be married!!! A lovely man that used to be stuck on her ages and ages ago! I tell you he is stuck still, all right, all right. He goes by the name of Robert Gordon and looks like a vrai hero of romance, iron-grey hair and moustache and the most languishing gaze you ever beheld. We are right silly about him because he certainly does know how to make love. As for Coxy, she is simply great and rises to the occasion in fine shape. She looks real young here lately and has given up looking as though she were trying not to smile. Instead of that, she laughs outright, which is certainly much more becoming.

 

I wish you could see your little room-mate, Annie Pore. She has bloomed forth into a regular English rose! I never saw anything like the way the boys swarm around her, just like bees! She is not nearly so shy as she used to be, but she is still very quiet and demure and has a kind of sympathetic way of listening that surely fetches the hemales. She is really beautiful and is always so anxious to help and is so considerate of others. I fancy her selfish old father has been good for her disposition in a way. We are rather expecting Mr. Pore to come see us. I hope if he does come he will not cast a damper over Annie's spirits.

Mary Flannagan is simply splendid. Page calls her our clown dog, and the name suits her to a T. She is the funniest girl in the world and her good nature is catching. She is a good swimmer and how she does it in the bathing suit she wears, I cannot see. Fancy swimming with three yards of heavy serge gathered around your waist! I think Mary and Annie will room together next year at Gresham since you are not to be there. They will be good for one another, but no one could do for Annie what you did.

I have not told you anything about Page, but you know what Page always is – just Page. She is still busy making her million friends, but she never gives up her old friends for the new ones.

Guess who is here at Willoughby! That Mabel Binks! She arrived yesterday and is stopping at the hotel. I hope she will keep herself to herself but I 'most know she won't. She is bent on getting in with Zebedee and he is so dead polite where girls are concerned that he is sure to submit. She is kin to one of the boys in the camp near us and is pushing the relationship for all it is worth. Poor Stephen White (Wink for short) is the cousin and I have an idea he is not very proud of the connection, but is too much of a gentleman to say so. Wink and Page are great friends, have been from the first minute they met, and I bet you a hat Mabel Binks butts in on that friendship and tries to break it up. She has had it in for Page ever since the time the caramel cake gave all of us fever blisters and Page used the blisters, of which Mabel boasted a huge one, as circumstantial evidence that Mabel had stolen a hunk of our cake.

Good bye, dear Jo. All the girls send you lots of love and Dum says she will write next time.

Very affectionately,

DEE TUCKER.

CHAPTER IX
THE START

"Well, I've a great mind not to go!" exclaimed Dum pettishly. "I can't see why that old Mabel Binks always has to go where we go. We can't even spend a month at Willoughby without her traipsing here after us."

"Yes! And for her to make out to Wink that we are her very best friends at Gresham just so he will ask her on the sailing party! Gee, I can't stand her. I'll stay at home if you do, Dum," and Dee began to take off the clean middy blouse she was in the act of donning to go on a sailing party that the boys from the camp were getting up for our benefit.

"Well, that will certainly leave Mabel with a clear field for action. Didn't we agree last winter that the best thing to do with Mabel was to be very polite to her? What excuse could you give the boys?" I asked, hoping to bring Tweedles to reason.

"Tell them the truth!"

"The truth! Well, I must say it would sound fine to say to Wink: 'We just naturally despise your cousin and since she is to be on this party that you have been so kind as to get up for us, we will have to decline. Besides, this cousin of yours is so dead set after our father that we can't sit by and watch her manœuvres, but feel that the best thing for us to do is to leave him to her tender mer – '" I was not allowed to finish, but Tweedles immediately saw how impossible it would be to stay off the party. Dee put her clean middy back on and in a jiffy we were down on the porch with the rest of the crowd.

It was irritating for Mabel Binks to come as a discordant element in our little circle, but as for her being at Willoughby, she certainly had as much right there as we had and it was absurd for the twins to take the stand that she had come there because of them. Zebedee seemed to have very little use for the dashing Mabel but the sure way to enlist his sympathy for her was to be rude to the girl. She was very polite to all the Tuckers but had it in for Annie Pore and me; and as for Mary Flannagan: she simply ignored Mary's existence, much to that delightful person's amusement. Mary could imitate her until you could declare that Mabel was there and sometimes she would do it when you least expected it, as on this morning while we were waiting for the boys to come for us. They were to go by for Mabel first and then pick us up on the way to the landing where the two boats were in readiness for us, a cat boat and a naphtha launch. Neither boat was big enough for the whole crowd so we had decided to divide the party.

"I have determined how we are to sit," said Mary in the coarse, nasal tone that belonged to Mabel, "I prefer the naphtha launch, as cat boats are so dirty. I intend that the Tuckers, especially Mr. Tucker, shall accompany me, also Stephen White and Mr. Hart. Page and Annie and Mary must find room in the cat boat while I will allow Sleepy and Rags to look after them. Oh! Miss Cox! I forgot her! She can go in the cat boat, too, but we will make room for Mr. Gordon in the launch."

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 Cox'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 repetition," 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 embarrassment 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 chink 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 Massie's great strength, and he had assumed the attitude 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 seashore 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 shirts and hats.

Miss Cox 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 Cox 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 anchored 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 cushions 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 cushions 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 cushions 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.