The Carter Girls' Week-End Camp Part 9

"We'll have to put a stop to it. You get Tillie Wingo and you and she soft soap the men who are grouching, and then get Zebedee to go after the females. He can make them believe they only dreamed it stormed."

CHAPTER VIII

THE DAMAGE DONE

Jeffry Tucker and his daughter Caroline, otherwise known as Dee, were surely the most tactful human beings in the world. They could almost always gain any goal by tact. They set out now to make the grouchy week-enders dry up and cheer up, and in half an hour after the storm was over they had attained their object. Page overheard Mr. Tucker pacifying a very disconsolate maiden lady whose hair had come out of curl and whose rosy cheeks had run off--not far, however--only to her jaws.

"This is a most outrageous way to treat boarders!" she exclaimed. "The idea of having no proper shelter for them--charging an enormous price, too! I certainly intend to leave tomorrow and I will stop some friends of mine who were planning to come up next week. Isn't it strange how these places are overrated? Anyhow, I'll not give it a good name but will get out the first thing in the morning."

"Oh, don't do that," begged the wily Zebedee. "I had planned to get you to take a walk with me tomorrow evening. The moon will be gorgeous and there are some wonderful spots around here--romantic spots."

"Well, of course I wouldn't think of going if it clears up."

"It has already cleared up! Just look at the moon! I almost think we might take a walk now, but it might be very muddy. Let's fox trot instead."

"'Done, for a ducat!'" laughed Page to herself, as Mr. Tucker and the much mollified week-ender danced off together. "I am afraid poor Zebedee will have his whole holiday taken up showing the moon to wet hens."

What Mr. Tucker accomplished with the females, Tillie and Dee did likewise to the males. Tillie exercised all her fascinations on some hallroom boys, while Dee went in for some old bachelors who loved their ease and comfort and did not at all relish the idea of wet sheets on soggy cots.

"Here is some hot coffee!" she said, with a very winning smile. "Two lumps, or one?"

"None for me, miss," from a terrible old grouch who had been particularly loud in his praise of Nature before Nature had shown what she really could do. "I don't expect to sleep a wink as it is. I am perfectly sure the beds will be damp."

"But I am sure they will not be. Douglas is seeing about it now and she says they have plenty of dry bed linen. You had better have some coffee and I will dance with you until you get sleepy."

"Egad, that would be very pleasant! I am going back to the city tomorrow and I could sleep on the train, perhaps."

"Oh, please don't go tomorrow. I thought you would be here over Sunday and we might get up a little crowd and go sit on the rocks and read aloud or something."

"Well, if it clears I may change my mind."

"It has already cleared! Goody! Goody! Now you will have to stay.

Wouldn't the old-fas.h.i.+oned waltz go well with that record Helen has just put on? Do you know I adore the old-fas.h.i.+oned waltz?"

As the old-fas.h.i.+oned waltz was the only thing that staid bachelor could dance, never having been able to master the new dances, this put him in rare good humor. He swallowed his coffee hastily, p.r.o.nouncing it excellent, and in a twinkling he and Dee were dancing the dances of the early eighties and one more week-ender was saved to the Carters to give the camp a good name.

After a severe storm sometimes it is more of a wonder what the damage isn't than what it is. It seems at the time that nothing will ever be dry and straight again, and then in a very short while the world looks normal once more.

Camp Carter recuperated in a miraculous manner. Only one tent had been blown away and those that stood the test of wind had also stood the test of rain. Some of the blankets were damp but most of them, thanks to Lewis' foresight, had been protected. The drainage on the side of a mountain is naturally perfect so there were no disconcerting puddles, and the rocky paths were hardly muddy, so hard and driving had been the downpour.

Lewis and Bill Tinsley went with Douglas and Nan to take stock of the damage and to repair what they could. Their relief was great at the state of affairs until they entered the cabin. The wind and rain had gone straight through it. The pretty rag rugs were sopping wet and, as I have said before, all the dainty finery spread out on the bed, was blown hither and yon. Douglas looked at the havoc in dismay. Would her mother want to buy more things to replace these that were ruined? She missed the pretty hat intended for her own fair head and was in a measure relieved that she would not have to wear it.

"Let's build a fire immediately," and Nan began to pile up paper and chips in the open fireplace, the cabin boasting the one chimney in camp where a fire was possible. "Now this will dry out the room before mother comes in to go to bed."

"Yes, and we had better put a cot in here for Bobby, now that our tent is blown off," suggested Lewis.

"But where will you and Bill sleep?" asked Douglas.

"Oh, we can curl up on the floor of the pavilion. Our cots are soaking.

I kept the blankets dry, though."

"But I am so afraid you won't be comfortable."

"Oh, that's all right! Get us in training for the border! Bill and I have been living so soft I fancy a little roughing it will be good for us."

Lewis sounded rather bitter and Douglas felt that she would give worlds if she could tell him that she had decided she did care for him as he wanted her to. Other girls pretended, why not she? But there was an uprightness about Douglas Carter that would not let her be a party to any form of deceit. She was sorry, very sorry, but she could not be like Tillie Wingo and engage herself to anyone on a moment's notice.

"We are going to miss both of you ever and ever so much. Think what it would be in a time like this without you to help! I can hardly contemplate running the camp without you."

"Oh, that will be easy enough! Skeeter and Frank can do what we have done. You won't miss us at all."

"I didn't mean just the work you do," faltered poor Douglas.

"Oh, well, the rest won't amount to much," declared Lewis, determined to be difficult.

Bill listened to his chum in amazement. He was in such a seventh heaven of bliss himself that he could not understand anyone's being anything but happy. For his part he could not see why Lewis didn't settle matters with his cousin before going to the border. It never entered his head that anyone could refuse a Greek G.o.d of a fellow like Lewis Somerville.

If a belle like Tillie Wingo could put up with him, why, there was not a girl living who would not jump at his friend.

Nan sniffed a romance in the air where she had not expected to find it.

She, like all her family, was so accustomed to the friends.h.i.+p between her elder sister and Lewis that she had not thought of a more serious relations.h.i.+p being the outcome. Lewis was certainly sounding cold and formal and Douglas was looking distressed.

"I see how it is," she said to herself; "Lewis has proposed to Douglas and Douglas has turned him down. He told her he was going to enlist and proposed all in one breath and poor old Doug couldn't adjust herself fast enough. She no doubt does love him but doesn't know it. Just wait until he gets out of sight!"

The week-enders were finally all put to bed in dry sheets and warmed blankets, after having drunk hot coffee and eaten a rarebit that was so tender even the grouchiest of the grouchy could not get up indigestion over it. The leaven of good-humor spread by the Tuckers and Page Allison had begun to work and all were rising to the occasion and quite proud of themselves over taking everything so philosophically.

The maiden lady who had threatened to leave on the morning train but had been persuaded by Zebedee to stay over to take a moonlight walk with him was now loud in her praise of camp life.

"I say the only way to get along is to take things as they come. I was just telling Mr. Tucker that one can't expect the comforts of the Jefferson Hotel up in camp, but then if one wants the comforts of the Jefferson one had better go there and not come to the country. Now I would give up any comforts for the beauties of nature!" and so on, and so on!

Dee danced the old-fas.h.i.+oned waltz until she almost forgot how to do a single modern step. The grouchy bachelor forgot to worry about the possibility of damp sheets and babbled along about the dances of the eighties, and promised to teach his young partner the racket and the heel and toe polka if any of the records would fit those defunct dances.

The sprightliness of that particular bachelor was catching, and the two others, who had begun to inquire about time tables with a view to beating a hasty retreat to the safety-firstness of the city, found themselves cheering up, too; and warmed by the good hot coffee, they began to dance with youthful ardor and actually grumbled when the crowd broke up for needed repose.

"Aren't the Tuckers splendid?" said Douglas, when she and her sisters were undressing.

"Indeed they are," agreed Helen, "and I like that little Allison girl a lot, too. She waltzed in and helped with the eats as though she were one of us."

"I think Mr. Tucker is kind of gone on her," drawled Nan.

"Nonsense! You are always thinking somebody is gone on somebody,"

laughed Helen.

"Well, somebody always is. He treats her just like he does the twins, only different."

"How's that, like triplets?"