Lost Farm Camp Part 40

"h.e.l.lo, D-a-v-y!"

He went out and found them waiting on the opposite porch. Bas...o...b..had the wooden lunch-bucket in his hand, and Swickey was evidently cautioning him not to knock the cover off, for he pressed it down and went through a pantomime of carrying it carefully.

"Oh, I say, there you are. Here's the commissary. Got the 'rods and reels and traces'?"

"Yes," replied David. "How's your tobacco? Mine's about gone."

"Lots of it," answered Bas...o...b..gayly. "Come, let's go a-Juneing, you old slow-poke. Amaryllis waits without-let's see," he said, looking at Swickey, "without what?"

"Without a hat-if I'm Amaryllis."

"Well, Ammy'll get her pretty nose sun-burned, sure."

"Don't care," replied Swickey, laughing.

"But I do," said Bas...o...b.. "I like that nose just as it is."

They sauntered along in the June sun, Swickey walking ahead. She seemed particularly alluring that morning, in the neat flannel waist and trim skirt reaching to her moccasin-tops. The soft gray of her collar, rolled back from her full, round throat, enhanced her rich coloring un.o.btrusively. As she turned to speak to Bas...o...b.. the naturalness of the motion, the unstudied grace and poise accompanying it, appealed directly to his sense of physical beauty.

"By Jove!" he muttered, "it isn't every girl could wear those clothes and make them becoming. Most girls need the clothes to help, but she makes 'em what they are-Diana's vestments-"

"Whose vest?" said Swickey, catching part of his soliloquy; "you're frowning fearfully, and you don't usually."

"Just dreaming, Miss Avery."

"Well, don't, now. This footboard is shaky and you _might_ slip."

"Oh, Davy would fish me out. Wouldn't you, Davy?"

"Of course-fish what?"

"Nothing." Bas...o...b..hastened to change the subject. "How far is it to this mysterious fish-hatchery that you've discovered, anyway? From what you say, I should call it an aquarium-that is, if they bite as you say they do."

"About three miles. Just wait till you've made a few casts. Nanette can tell you-"

"Nanette won't, but perhaps Swickey will," she said, smiling at Bas...o...b..

As she paused, he stepped beside her and David took the lead, striding up the slope at a pace that set Bas...o...b..puffing.

"It's a desecration to call you Swickey," said Bas...o...b.. as he tramped along, swinging the lunch-bucket. "My! but our Davy's in a hurry-I don't think I could do it."

"Yes, you can if you point your toes straight ahead when you walk, like this. You swing your foot sideways too much. Try it."

"Thank you; but I referred to calling you by your nickname."

"Well, I said 'try it,' and you don't usually miss a chance like that."

"Well, Swickey,-there! I feel that's off my mind,-I think you're simply stunning in that costume."

She laughed happily. "Oh, but you should have seen me when Dave first came to Lost Farm. I had a blue checkered gingham that was-inches too short. I was only fourteen then, and I cried because I didn't have a new dress. Did Dave ever tell you about the book and the 'specs' and the two new dresses he got for me?"

"Nary a word-the dour laddie-but I was in the shop when he got it-and I could just wors.h.i.+p that gingham."

"Really? Well, that's too bad. I used it for a mop-cloth only the other day. It's on the mop now."

"_Touche!_" exclaimed Wallie, grinning. "I won't try _that_ again."

"What does '_touche_' mean, Mr. Bas...o...b.."

"Well, different things. One interpretation is 'touched,' but 'b.u.mped'

isn't stretching it under the circ.u.mstances."

"We must hurry!" she exclaimed. "Dave's 'way ahead of us. No, there he is, waiting."

"Here's where we begin to climb," he said, as they caught up with him.

"Walt, you'd better give me that lunch-bucket. It's pretty stiff going from now on."

"Whew! If it's any stiffer than this," replied Bas...o...b.. indicating the main trail, "I'm thinking the van will have to wait for the commissary.

But I'll tote the provender, Davy. I'm good for that much, and you've got the rods and paddles."

"Here," David gave him one of the paddles, "take this. Hang the bucket over your shoulder and you won't notice it."

"Castle Garden," said Bas...o...b.. as he settled the bucket on his back.

"Lead on, Macduff!"

There was no visible footpath, simply the trees which David had "spotted" at intervals on the route, to guide them. A few rods from the Lost Farm trail the ground rose gradually, becoming rocky and uneven as they went on, clambering over logs and toiling up gullies, whose rugged, boulder-strewn banks, thickly timbered with spruce and hemlock, were replicas in miniature of the wooded hills and rocky valleys they had left behind, for as they entered deeper and deeper into the mysterious gloom of half-light that swam listlessly through the fans of spreading cedars, and flickered through the webs of shadowy firs, their surroundings grew more and more eerie, till the living sunlight of the outer world seemed a memory.

Suddenly Bas...o...b.. consistently acting his part as the commissariat, in that he kept well to the rear, stepped on the moss-covered slant of a boulder. The soggy moss gave way and he shot down the hillside, the lunch-bucket catapulting in wide gyrations ahead of him. It brought up against a tree with a splintering crash.

"Hey, Walt! What are you doing?" shouted David, peering over the edge of the gully.

"Just went back for the lunch," called Bas...o...b.. as he got up and gathered the widely dispersed fragments of the "commissary" together.

"I've busted my bifocals," he said, as he scrambled up the slope; "so if there is any grub missing, you'll know why."

"That's too bad," said Swickey, trying not to laugh. "Where's the bucket?"

"Here!" said Bas...o...b.. displaying the handle and two staves; "that is, it's the only part of it that was big enough to recover."

He laid the remnants of the lunch on a rock, and gazed about him with the peculiar expression of one suddenly deprived of gla.s.ses.

"My!" he exclaimed, "but that was a fine biscuit-shower while it lasted.

Talk about manna descending from the skies- We'll have to catch fish now, or go hungry."

David stripped a piece of bark from a birch and fas.h.i.+oned it into a rude box in which the lunch was stowed.

"I'll take it," he said. "We haven't much farther to go."

"Magnanimous, that-we haven't much farther to go. Well, I'm glad some one had sense enough to make a noise. This 'gloomy woods astray'

business was getting on my nerves. It did me good to hear you laugh, Swickey."