Back at School with the Tucker Twins Part 14

"Jo, I wish you would bring me a Remington rifle from New York. I'm old enough to have a good one now, and tell my reformer I named the canoe 'Uncle Sam'. I like that old man so much I wish he'd come down here to live."

"So long, Son! I hope you will have a peach of a time at your camp. Oh, yes! Aunt Maria told me to be sure and tell you not to go swimming but once a day, but I always lived in my bathing suit--at least we will say I had a bathing suit--and you can do the same."

It was only an hour's trip to New York and Jo was busy thinking about the change in Hal and wondering if Uncle Sam would consider it strange for him to invite him to go home on a visit. He decided he would go by Uncle Sam's office and speak to him and make an engagement for the theatre that night.

Jo Allen stopped a minute in front of Uncle Sam's office door to get out a card and then he rang the bell. A very handsome, auburn-haired, green-eyed girl answered his ring and he gave her his card with a rather bewildered smile, for he wondered why such an old man as Uncle Sam kept such a darned good-looking female to tickle the keys.

"May I see Uncle Sam?" he asked.

"Why, certainly!" she said. "Please come in."

Her "Certainly" sounded Southern to Jo. He might have thought some more but he was interrupted by the girl.

"You will sit down, won't you?" she smiled at him from her swivel chair.

"Thank you! Will Uncle Sam be along soon do you think?" he queried.

"Oh! I thought you understood. Why, Mr. Allen, I am Uncle Sam."

"Ohgoodlord!" Jo said it very loud and as though it were all one word.

Then after a minute, "What the devil will Hal say when he finds his Uncle Sam is a woman?"

"I see no reason why he should know." Uncle Sam was very calm and unconcerned.

"But you see I swore I'd bring Uncle Sam back on a visit. I had it all planned out that Uncle Sam and I would take in a show to-night...."

"I don't reckon Uncle Sam would mind going to the theatre, Mr. Allen.

You might ask him," said the girl very frankly.

"Good for you, Uncle Sam,--you are a peach, after all. Hal may be disappointed, but, believe me, I am not. I wish you would tell me your name."

Jo was looking much happier now. He had forgotten what Hal would say when he got home Uncle Samless,--but really her hair and eyes were enough to make him forget and her voice was very musical with its Southern accent.

"Page Carter," she told him, "and I suppose you want to know the whys and wherefores of Uncle Sam's business. Well, you can probably tell from my name that I am a Virginian and from my occupation that I am poor, and if you could see my brain at work or my poor attempts at sewing, you would see why I had to choose this way of making a living. Yes, I had to do it. You see, my mother and father are dead and I could not accept my friends' kind invitations to come and be their barnacles."

"Miss Carter, you need not worry about the workings of your brain. That was a dandy bluff you put up. I could see you with white hair, seated at a desk, writing Hal about your boyhood sc.r.a.pes. Let's make it a supper before the theatre. Are you game?"

"Sure," she said.

Jo noticed she did not have to look in a mirror to make her hat becoming.

"Mr. Allen, your son has written me so much about you that I feel as though I knew you. That is very bromidic, but it is so."

Jo never knew what they had for dinner and Page Carter did not get many of the lines of the play. She had always been strong for black hair and grey eyes. She knew, too, that he was successful from his clothes and Hal's remarks about the Mercer, and he surely was an amusing companion.

Hal interested her. New York wasn't much when you were in it by yourself and it was very evident that Jo liked her and his grey eyes were beginning to look....

The play was over; and she had promised to meet him for lunch and afterwards to pick out a rifle for Hal.

A week later Hal jumped out of the canoe and rushed up to the boys in camp and waved a yellow slip of paper before them. "Listen," he yelled, "'Be home to-morrow. Got rifle. Uncle Sam with me. Dad.'"

CHAPTER XIV.

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS.

_Nods and Becks_ met with great favour and we felt after our labours that we had earned the good times we meant to have during the holidays.

The Tuckers had decided to come to Bracken for Christmas, so we were in the seventh heaven of bliss. Annie and Mary could not accept the invitation that Father had told me to give them as they had to go to their respective homes, Annie to be with her dignified paternal relative, and Mary with what she a.s.sured us was a far from dignified maternal one.

We had never met any of Mary's people but hoped to some day, as all she told us of them sounded pretty nice. She had no father but was unique among us as she actually could boast a mother. She had one little tiny sister and a big brother who was a mining engineer. The Flannagans lived in the valley of Virginia. They were of rugged Scotch-Irish stock, very different from the softer, aristocratic types to be seen in the tide-water section. Their home was in Harrisonburg and we knew afterwards that they were well off but no word from Mary ever gave us to understand it. She always was quick to pay her share and more than her share in any jaunt we went on together, but I believe I never heard Mary mention money. Tweedles and I used to wonder if they were not fabulously wealthy because of all the material that was wasted in Mary's voluminous skirts. It seems that Mary's mother always wore full skirts and she just had Mary's made the same way.

The last night before the holidays we broke about all the rules we could remember. Some may have escaped us, but I doubt it. We cooked in our rooms; visited in other girls' rooms; laughed and made a racket in the halls; slid down the bannisters; and were generally obstreperous,--so much so that Miss Plympton said we would have to work off our demerits when we got back from the holidays. This pleasing bit of news she imparted to us at the very early breakfast we had on the morning of our departure. But we were going home, and threatened demerits after the holidays had no more effect on our spirits than a sermon on h.e.l.l fire would have had on the ardour of a new-born babe.

On the way to the station we pa.s.sed our dear old friend, Captain Pat Leahy, who was faithfully keeping the gate at the railroad crossing. He stumped out on his peg leg to give us the "top o' the morning."

"An' phwat do ye hear of that poorrr sick angel, Miss Peyton? Bless her heart!"

"We believe she is recovering, Captain Leahy. We miss her terribly."

"Miss her! I should say ye would, with her winnin' ways and the kind smile of her. And phwat does the managemint mene by hoistin' a lady on ye poorr lambs with the manners of a Tammany boss? Whin I saw her schtriding off of the trrain last Siptimber in her men's clothes, all but the pants, and a voice like a trrain butcherr, I said to meself: 'Pat Leahy, ther'll be trooble oop at Gresham this sission!' I knew it more than iver whin she pushed me cats away with her oombrella that she carried like a s.h.i.+llalah. A lady, whin she has no use for cats, is either a very timid lady and surely no fit person to look arfter a girls' school, or ilse she is that hard-hearted that she ought to have the job of dhriving a team of mules to a rock waggon."

"How are the cats, Captain?" asked Dee.

"Foine, missy, foine! And here is Oliverr, grown to sich a great schize ye woud scarcely know him. He got over his runtiness jist as soon as you young ladies took oop with him."

Oliver came running out of the little gate house at sound of his name.

He had indeed grown to be a handsome cat. Dee, of course, had to stop and take him in her arms for a moment. Oliver was the kitten, grown into a great cat, that Dee had taken to her room the winter before. We would never forget the night he spent with us nor our efforts to feed him milk, heated over a candle.

"I wonder what Miss Plympton would have said if we had gone to her and confessed about the kitten, as we did to Miss Peyton," said Dum.

"Said!" exclaimed Captain Leahy. "Why, phwat she would have said would not be fit to print!" and he gave a great laugh which rang pleasantly in our ears as we ran to catch the train that was coming around the curve.

The train was full of girls going home for the holidays and a very gay crowd we were in spite of its being so very early in the morning. We had come off with so little breakfast that it was not worthy of the name.

Crackers and jam and weak coffee, heated over from last night's brewing, but not much heated over, just warmed up to the tepid temperature of a baby's bath, is not very satisfying to the growing girl.

I can't see why the food at boarding school for both boys and girls seems to be the last thing considered. Their minds and morals are looked after with great care but their inner men are simply ignored. All the catalogues say: "Food wholesome and plentiful," but to my mind that at Gresham was neither. When it was poor it was plentiful and when it was plentiful it was poor, but if something was served very good and palatable, it usually gave out. Under Miss Plympton's regime it was much worse than when Miss Peyton wielded the scepter. Miss Peyton insisted on a certain balance of diet at least and had many a talk with the dull old housekeeper, who, I am sure, was the only person in the world who preferred Miss Plympton to Miss Peyton. Miss Plympton did not at all object to three kinds of beans being served at one meal, or sweet potatoes and Irish potatoes with no touch of green food. On the other hand when the housekeeper chose to have turnip salad and cabbage on the same day, so that we felt like Nebuchadnezzar when he ate gra.s.s like an ox, our princ.i.p.al said nothing. Girls' insides must be disciplined, too.

If skim milk was served with their cereal that was more than they deserved.

During that first half of my second term at Gresham I had to remember very often what Margaret Sayre had said to me about looking at the mountains when things did not go just exactly to suit me. I looked at them a great deal that first half. I had a good appet.i.te as a rule but had been spoiled by Mammy Susan, whose one idea seemed to be to give me what I wanted, and the consequence was that unless food was well cooked and seasoned, I simply did not eat. Tweedles ate anyhow, but long stretches of cafes or boarding houses had inured them to cooking that I simply could not stomach.

"You are a regular princess, Page," said Dee to me on that morning when we were leaving for the holidays. "Of course the food is b.u.m but it is better than going empty."

"Maybe it is, but I can't swallow bad coffee."

"But you are looking as pale as a little ghost and you are so thin you can't keep on your skirts."

This I could not deny as at that minute I had my skirt lapped over two inches and pinned with a large safety pin to keep it from dropping off altogether.