Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid Part 14

After the girls had left her, Madge lay back luxuriously among her linen pillows. She was looking very lovely in a pale pink silk tea gown Mrs. Curtis had insisted on her wearing, for Madge had arrived at the hotel with no clothes other than the wet garments she had on when rescued from the waves. Her fine clothes occupied very little of her thoughts, however. She had something of far greater import on her mind.

The time had come to tell Mrs. Curtis that she must go back to the houseboat. She was not sorry to go; she was only sorry to leave her new friends. During her stay at the hotel Mrs. Curtis had treated Madge as though she were her own daughter. The imaginative young girl was completely fascinated with the beautiful, white-haired woman, whose sad face seemed to indicate that she had suffered some tragedy in her life. While Madge lay thinking of the most courteous way in which to announce that she must return to the "Merry Maid" a light knock sounded on her door. Tom's mother came softly into the room, gowned in an exquisite afternoon costume of violet organdie and fine lace, which was very becoming to her white hair and youthful face.

"Are you awake, Madge?" were her first words. "How do you feel?"

Her guest smilingly raised herself from her pillows. "I am awake as can be, and as well as can be! To tell you the truth, Mrs. Curtis, I have never been in the least ill from my adventure. I was tired the day after it happened, but since that time I am afraid I have allowed you and Tom to believe that I was sick because I liked to be petted and made much of." Madge laughed frankly at her own confession. "You have been so good to me, and I do appreciate it, but now I must go home to my comrades. Eleanor was awfully disappointed to-day when I told her I was not going back with them this afternoon."

"I wish you would stay with me longer," pleaded Mrs. Curtis, taking the girl's firm brown hand in hers and looking down at it gravely, as it lay in her soft white one. She gazed earnestly at Madge's clear-cut, expressive face. "Tom and I will be lonely without you," she said. "I want a daughter dreadfully, and Tom needs a sister. If only you were my own daughter."

Madge sighed happily. "It has been beautiful to pretend that I was your real daughter. It has been like the games I used to play when I was a little girl. I have been lying here in the afternoons, when you thought I was asleep, making up the nicest 'supposes.' I supposed that I was your real daughter, that I had been lost and you had found me after many years. Just at first you did not know me, because time had made such a change in me. But---- Why, Mrs. Curtis, what is the matter?" There was wonder and concern in Madge's question. "You don't mind what I have said, do you? I have been making up things to amuse myself ever since I was a little girl." She looked anxiously into the face of the older woman. It was very white, and seemed suddenly to have become drawn and old.

"My dear child, I love to have you tell me of your little dreams and fancies," said Mrs. Curtis affectionately, laying her hand on Madge's head. "What made you think I didn't?"

"You looked as though what I said hurt your feelings," returned Madge, coloring at her own frankness.

"It was only that something you said brought back a painful memory,"

explained the older woman. "I would prefer not to talk of it. Tell me, is there nothing I can do to induce you to remain with me a little longer?"

Her guest shook her head. "Thank you," she replied gratefully, "but I must go back to my chums. It won't be going away, really, for I will come to see you as often as you like, and you and Tom and Jack must visit us on the houseboat. I want you to like the other girls _almost_ as well as you do me," smiled Madge. "Please don't like them quite as well, though. That doesn't sound very generous, but I should like to feel that I was first in your heart."

"You shall be, my dear." Mrs. Curtis bent and kissed the young girl's soft cheek. "And to prove just how much I do care for you I wish to give you something which I hope you will like and keep as a remembrance of me. I know your uncle and aunt will be willing to let you have this little gift when they learn of the spirit which prompted the giving of it." Mrs. Curtis drew from a little lavender and gold bag which she carried a square, white silk box and laid it in the astonished little captain's hand.

"What--why--is it for me?" stammered Madge, sitting up suddenly, her eyes fastened on the box.

"It is for no one else," was the smiling answer. "Shall I open it for you?"

Mrs. Curtis touched a tiny spring in the white box. It flew open!

There before Madge's wondering gaze, coiled on its dainty silk bed, lay a string of creamy pearls. They were not large, but each pearl was perfect, an exquisite bit of jewelry. Mrs. Curtis took the necklace from its case. She leaned over and clasped it about Madge's slender throat, saying: "Tom and I talked a long time about what we wished to give you as a slight remembrance of our appreciation of what you did for us. At last we decided upon this as being particularly suitable to you. Then, too, we wished to give you something that came up out of the sea."

"It is the loveliest necklace in the world," declared Madge happily, touching the pearls. "It is far too beautiful for me. I shall love it all my life and never, never part with it. You have been too good to me, Mrs. Curtis," she added earnestly.

"But think what you did for me," reminded the stately, white-haired woman.

"That isn't worth remembering. I did only what any one else would have done if placed in the same circ.u.mstances."

"But you saved my son's life, and that is the greatest service you could possibly render me."

Yet before her vacation was over Madge Morton was to perform for her friend a further service equally great.

CHAPTER XIV

MADGE COMES INTO HER OWN AGAIN

Lillian and Eleanor were in the houseboat kitchen, making chocolate fudge and a caramel cake.

"I think it will be too funny for anything," laughed Eleanor. "Let's keep your surprise a secret from the others. It will be a delightful way to celebrate Madge's return. Do you know that we have a hundred and one things to do today?" she added, stirring her cake batter as fast as she could. "This boat must be cleaned from stem to stern. I told the boy from the farm to be here at nine o'clock this morning to scrub the deck. He hasn't put in his appearance yet. I wonder which one of us can be spared to go and hurry him along?"

"Let's ask Miss Jenny Ann," suggested Lillian slyly. "She has done her share of the work already, and Mr. Brown is sketching the old garden near the farmhouse. Haven't you noticed that our chaperon has been very much interested in art lately? Mr. Brown wishes to paint a picture of our houseboat. He has a fancy for this neighborhood. He thinks it is so picturesque. 'Straws show which way the wind blows,'

you know. Watch the candy for me. I'll go ask Miss Jenny Ann if she will go out and round up our faithless boy."

Miss Jones was quite willing to go, and started out, leaving the girls to their cleaning. Every now and then they were seized with a desire to work, which caused them to fall upon the houseboat and clean it from end to end. This morning the fever had been upon them from the time they had risen, and by the time Miss Jenny Ann started upon her errand it was in full swing.

Jack Bolling and Tom Curtis were to bring Madge home late in the afternoon, and, as a surprise for Madge, the boys had been invited to remain to tea. It was therefore quite necessary that their floating home should be well swept and garnished.

"Where's Phil?" asked Lillian, stepping from the kitchen out onto the deck, where Eleanor had gone after having seen her cake safely in the oven.

There came a series of raps on the cabin roof. Phil leaned over among the honeysuckle vines on the upper deck. "I am up here, maiden, digging in our window boxes. Want me for anything?"

"No," returned Eleanor, as she vanished inside the kitchen again. "But sing out if you see Miss Jenny Ann and the boy coming."

A little while later Phil saw the figure of a young man coming slowly down the path toward the houseboat. She thought, of course, that it was the boy from the farm. She did not turn around. She was too deeply engrossed in pulling up the weeds that had mysteriously appeared in their window boxes. When his footsteps sounded on the floor of the lower deck she called out carelessly, "Miss Seldon and Miss Butler are in the cabin waiting for you. Miss Jones is not here. I suppose she gave you the message."

The youth, who had been moving cautiously toward the houseboat, was not the boy for whom the girls were waiting. This one had black, curly hair and wild dark eyes. He looked up and down the sh.o.r.e. There was no one in sight.

Although there were several farmhouses beyond the embankment that sloped down to the inlet of the bay, there was no house within calling distance of the "Merry Maid." Their boat was anch.o.r.ed to the pier only a few yards from the sh.o.r.e, tied firmly to one of the upstanding posts.

The youth grinned maliciously. He decided that he had met with an unexpected stroke of good luck. He was hungry and penniless. Nothing could be easier than to terrify the girls on board into submission, take what money and food they had, and be off with it before any one appeared to help them. If it was a desperate venture, well, he must take a desperate chance. He could not wander around in the woods forever with no food or money.

Meanwhile Phil had not once glanced behind her. "You'd better begin scrubbing at once," she directed. "We have been waiting for you a long time. We wish to get our houseboat in order. We are going to give a party for our friends. Do hurry, there is such a lot to do."

The young man below was not troubling himself about the amount of work to be done; he had other matters to consider. This girl on top the cabin deck was evidently expecting some one. She would not come down her little ladder unless she heard a noise or disturbance from below.

The next question was, how many girls were on board and where were they?

Eleanor and Lillian had finished the cake and the fudge. They had brought them into the living room and set them on the table to wait for the evening tea party. Eleanor was tired.

She had thrown herself down on a lounge and her eyes were closed.

Lillian, with her back to the door, stood talking to her friend. They did not hear the intruder's light footfalls.

Suddenly Lillian felt her two hands caught roughly behind her in such a powerful grasp that she staggered back. Eleanor sprang from the couch, opening her eyes in amazement! She saw Lillian struggling with a man whose face wore the expression of a hungry animal.

"Don't scream," he ordered harshly. "Give me what food and money you have and I will let you go. If you scream, you will be sorry." He glared savagely at the two girls.

Lillian tried to wrench her hands from his grasp. They were pinioned so tightly behind her that she could not move. Eleanor slipped off her divan. She and Lillian had no weapons with which to defend themselves.

Eleanor thought if she could get out of the room, while the man held Lillian, she could cry for help. Her first scream would bring Phyllis to their aid, and Phil would come to their a.s.sistance prepared to fight.

Eleanor looked so young and girlish that no one would have expected her to show resistance. She tried to look even more frightened than she really felt. "We haven't any money on board," she said quietly. "We don't keep our money here, but if you are hungry, we will give you something to eat without your being so fierce." Eleanor was edging slowly away from her couch.

"I don't want a slice of pie and your stale bread," the man replied angrily. "I want everything you have got, and I want it quick."

Now was Eleanor's chance. Lillian gave another frantic tug, attempting to free her hands. She had not cried out since the man seized her, but her face was contracted with pain. The robber was so fully occupied with holding her he was not looking at Eleanor, although his eyes slanted go curiously that he could apparently see on all sides of him.

Eleanor made a quick rush forward. With a thud she fell to the floor, and lay stunned by the force of her fall. The tramp, still holding Lillian by her wrists, had jerked her backward, thrown out his foot and tripped Eleanor. Now, before Lillian could scream, he whipped out a dirty handkerchief and tied it so tightly about her mouth that she could scarcely breathe. He next took a piece of twine and twisted it about Lillian's wrists, so that the cord cut into them.

While this scene of violence was being enacted Phil was perfectly happy and strangely unconscious of any trouble. She was still at work, sweeping the upper deck and clearing it of the trash she had made with her gardening. She was humming gayly to herself or she would have heard the sounds below more plainly. "There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise." She stopped short. She had heard a noise, as though something had fallen. But then, the girls were always dropping things and stumbling over their few pieces of furniture. There was no further noise. Phil went on with her singing. But why did Lillian and Eleanor not start the farmer boy to scrubbing? It was getting late, and they wished to decorate the boat. Phil was too busy at her own task to go down to discover the reason.

The tramp gazed sarcastically at Lillian, whose eyes watched him defiantly, then at Eleanor, who was still lying on the floor. "Now, girls," he began with mock politeness, "I imagine you will be kind enough to be quiet for a time at least. So I think I will look around to see if there is anything here that I would like." He seized poor Lillian's plate of chocolate fudge and stuffed the candy into his pockets. Then he left the sitting room and crept into the bedroom which was used by Miss Jones and Eleanor. He found Eleanor's purse under her pillow and pocketed it. On the small dressing-table was Miss Jenny Ann's purse. He chuckled softly. This was the best of the sport.