The Slipper Point Mystery Part 15

"But what about the treasure?" demanded Doris, her eyes beginning to sparkle.

"If you refer to the trunks and chests full of articles that Miss Camilla insisted that we continue to excavate from that interesting hole in her garden, you do well to speak of it as 'treasure'!" answered her father laughingly. "For beside some valuable old family silver and quite rare articles of antique jewelry, she had there a collection of china and porcelain that would send a specialist on that subject into an absolute spasm of joy. I really would not care to predict what it would be worth to any one interested in the subject.

"And you can tell your friend, Sally, of the adventurous spirit, that she's got 'Treasure Island' licked a mile (to use a very inelegant expression) and right here on her own native territory, too. I take off my hat to you both. You've done better than a couple of boys who have been playing at and hunting for pirates all their youthful days.

Henceforth, when I yearn for blood-curdling adventures and hair-breadth escapes, I'll come to you two to lead the way!"

But, under all his banter, Doris knew that her father was serious in the deep interest he entertained in her strange adventure and all that it had led to.

CHAPTER XV

THE SUMMER'S END

[Ill.u.s.tration: They sat together in the canoe]

They sat together in the canoe, each facing the other, Doris in the bow and Sally in the stern. A full, mid-September moon painted its rippling path on the water and picked out in silver every detail of sh.o.r.e and river. The air was full of the heavy scent of the pines, and the only sound was the ceaseless lap-lap of the lazy ripples at the water's edge.

Doris had laid aside her paddle. Chin in hands, she was drinking in the radiance of the lovely scene.

"I simply cannot realize I am going home tomorrow and must leave all this!" she sighed at last.

Sally dipped her paddle disconsolately and answered with almost a groan:

"If it bothers _you_, how do you suppose it makes _me_ feel?"

"We have grown close to each other, haven't we?" mused Doris, "Do you know, I never dreamed I could make so dear a friend in so short a time.

I have plenty of acquaintances and good comrades, but usually it takes me years to make a real _friend_. How did you manage to make me care so much for you, Sally?"

"'Just because you're you'!" laughed Sally, quoting a popular song. "But do you realize, Doris Craig, what a different girl I've become since I knew and cared for _you_?"

She was indeed a different girl, as Doris had to admit. To begin with, she _looked_ different. The clothes she wore were neat, dainty and appropriate, indicating taste and care both in choosing and wearing them. Her parents were comparatively well-to-do people in the village and could afford to dress her well and give her all that was necessary, within reason. It had been mainly lack of proper care, and the absence of any incentive to seem her best, that was to blame for the original careless Sally. And not only her looks, but her manners and English were now as irreproachable as they had once been provincial and faulty.

"Why, even my thoughts are different!" she suddenly exclaimed, following aloud the line of thought they had both been unconsciously pursuing.

"You've given me more that's worth while to think about, Doris, in these three months, than I ever had before in all my life."

"I'm sure it wasn't _I_ that did it," modestly disclaimed Doris, "but the books I happened to bring along and that you wanted to read. If you hadn't _wanted_ different things yourself, Sally, I don't believe you would have changed any, so the credit is all yours."

"Do you remember the day you first quoted 'The Ancient Mariner' to me?"

laughed Doris. "I was so astonished I nearly tumbled out of the boat. It was the lines, 'We were the first that ever burst into that silent sea,'

wasn't it?"

"Yes, they are my favorite lines in it," replied Sally. "And with all the poems I've read and learned since, I love that best, after all."

"My favorite is that part, 'The moving moon went up the sky and nowhere did abide,'" said Doris, "and I guess I love the thing as much as you do."

"And Miss Camilla," added Sally, "says her favorite in it is,

"'The selfsame moment I could pray, And from my neck so free, The Albatross fell off and sank Like lead into the sea.'

"She says that's just the way she felt when we girls made that discovery about her brother's letter. Her 'Albatross' had been the supposed weight of disgrace she had been carrying about all these fifty years."

"Oh, Miss Camilla!" sighed Doris ecstatically. "What a darling she is!

And what a wonderful, simply wonderful adventure we've had, Sally.

Sometimes, when I think of it, it seems too incredible to believe. It's like something you'd read of in a book and say it was probably exaggerated. Did I tell you that my grandfather has decided to purchase her whole collection of porcelains, and the antique jewelry, too?"

"No," answered Sally, "but Miss Camilla told me. And _I_ know how she hates to part with them. Even _I_ will feel a little sorry when they're gone. I've washed them and dusted them so often and Miss Camilla has told me so much about them. I've even learned how to know them by the strange little marks on the back of them. And I can tell English Spode from Old Worcester, and French Faience from Vincennes Sevres,--and a lot beside. And what's more, I've really come to admire and appreciate them.

I never supposed I would.

"Miss Camilla will miss them a lot, for she's been so happy with them since they were restored to her. But she says they're as useless in her life now as a museum of mummies, and she needs the money for other things."

"I suppose she will restore the main part of her house and live in it and be very happy and comfortable," remarked Doris.

"That's just where you are entirely mistaken," answered Sally, with unexpected animation. "Don't you know what she is going to do with it?"

"Why, no!" said Doris in surprise, "I hadn't heard."

"Well, she only told me today," replied Sally, "but it nearly bowled me over. She's going to put the whole thing into Liberty Bonds, and go on living precisely as she has before. She says she has gotten along that way for nearly fifty years and she guesses she can go on to the end. She says that if her father and brother could sacrifice their safety and their money and their very lives, gladly, as they did when their country was in need, she guesses she oughtn't to do very much less. If she were younger, she'd go to France right now, and give her life in some capacity, to help out in this horrible struggle. But as she can't do that, she is willing and delighted to make every other sacrifice within her power. And she's taken out the bonds in my name and Genevieve's, because she says she'll never live to see them mature, and we're the only chick or child she cares enough about to leave them to. She wanted to leave some to you, too, but your father told her, no. He has already taken out several in your name."

Doris was quite overcome by this flood of unexpected information and by the wonderful att.i.tude and generosity of Miss Camilla.

"I never dreamed of such a thing!" she murmured. "She insisted on giving me the little Sevres vase, when I bade her good-bye today. I hardly liked to take it, but she said I must, and that it could form the nucleus of a collection of my own, some day when I was older and times were less strenuous. I hardly realized what she meant then, but I do now, after what you've told me."

"But that isn't all," said Sally. "I've managed to persuade my father that I'm not learning enough at the village school and probably never will. He was going to take me out of it this year anyway, and when summer came again, have me wait on the ice-cream parlor and candy counter in the pavilion. I just hated the thought. Now I've made him promise to send Genevieve and me every day to Miss Camilla to study with her, and he's going to pay for it just the same as if I were going to a private school. I'm so happy over it, and so is Miss Camilla, only we had hard work persuading her that she must accept any money for it.

And even Genevieve is delighted. She has promised to stop sucking her thumb if she can go to Miss Camilla and 'learn to yead 'bout picters,'

as she says."

"It's all turned out as wonderfully as a fairy-tale," mused Doris as they floated on. "I couldn't wish a single thing any different. And I think what Miss Camilla has done is--well, it just makes a lump come in my throat even to speak of it. I feel like a selfish wretch beside her.

I'm just going to save every penny I have this winter and give it to the Red Cross and work like mad at the knitting and bandage-making. But even that is no _real_ sacrifice. I wish I could do something like she has done. _That's_ the kind of thing that counts!"

"We can only do the thing that lies within our power," said Sally, grasping the true philosophy of the situation, "and if we do all of that, we're giving the best we can."

They drifted on a little further in silence, and then Doris glanced at her wrist-watch by the light of the moon. "We've got to go in," she mourned. "It's after nine o'clock, and Mother warned me not to stay out later than that. Besides I've got to finish packing."

They dragged the canoe up onto the sh.o.r.e, and turned it over in the gra.s.s. Then they wandered, for a moment, down to the edge of the water.

"Remember, it isn't so awfully bad as it seems," Doris tried to hearten Sally by reminding her. "Father and I are coming down again to stay over Columbus Day, and you and Genevieve are coming to New York to spend the Christmas holidays with us. We'll be seeing each other right along, at intervals."

Sally looked off up the river to where the pointed pines on Slipper Point could be dimly discerned above the wagon bridge. Suddenly her thoughts took a curious twist.

"How funny,--how awfully funny it seems now," she laughed, "to think we once were planning to dig for pirate treasure--up there!" she nodded toward Slipper Point.

"Well, we may not have found any pirate loot," Doris replied, "but you'll have to admit we discovered treasure of a very different nature--and a good deal more valuable. And, when you come to think of it, we did discover buried treasure, at least Miss Camilla did, and we were nearly buried alive trying to unearth it, and what more of a thrilling adventure could you ask for than that?" But she ended seriously:

"Slipper Point will always mean to me the spot where I spent some of the happiest moments of my life!"

"And I say--the same!" echoed Sally.