Tish: The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions Part 25

"How far north?" she said crisply. Tish told her. "We'll have no cut-and-dried destination," she said. "There's a little steamer goes up the river I have in mind. We'll get off when we see a likely place."

"Are you going for trout or ba.s.s?"

Tish was rather uncertain, but she said ba.s.s on a chance, and Hutchins nodded her approval.

"If it's ba.s.s, I'll go," she said. "I'm not fond of trout-fis.h.i.+ng."

"We shall have a motor boat. Of course I shall not take the car."

Hutchins agreed indifferently. "Don't you worry about the motor boat,"

she said. "Sometimes they go, and sometimes they don't. And I'll help round the camp; but I'll not wash dishes."

"Why not?" Tish demanded.

"The reason doesn't really matter, does it? What really concerns you is the fact."

Tish stared at her; but instead of quailing before Tish's majestic eye she laughed a little.

"I've camped before," she said. "I'm very useful about a camp. I like to cook; but I won't wash dishes. I'd like, if you don't mind, to see the grocery order before it goes."

Well, Aggie likes to wash dishes if there is plenty of hot water; and Hannah, Tish's maid, refusing to go with us on account of Indians, it seemed wisest to accept Hutchins's services.

Hannah's defection was most unexpected. As soon as we reached our decision, Tish ordered beads for the Indians; and in the evenings we strung necklaces, and so on, while one of us read aloud from the works of Cooper. On the second evening thus occupied, Hannah, who is allowed to come into Tish's sitting-room in the evening and knit, suddenly burst into tears and refused to go.

"My scalp's as good to me as it is to anybody, Miss Tish," she said hysterically; and nothing would move her.

She said she would run no risk of being cooked over her own camp-fire; and from that time on she would gaze at Tish for long periods mournfully, as though she wanted to remember how she looked when she was gone forever.

Except for Hannah, everything moved smoothly. Tish told Charlie Sands about the plan, and he was quite enthusiastic.

"Great scheme!" he said. "Eat a broiled black ba.s.s for me. And take the advice of one who knows: don't skimp on your fis.h.i.+ng-tackle. Get the best. Go light on the canned goods, if necessary; but get the best reels and lines on the market. Nothing in life hurts so much," he said impressively, "as to get a three-pound ba.s.s to the top of the water and have your line break. I've had a big fellow get away like that and chase me a mile with its thumb on its nose." This last, of course, was purely figurative.

He went away whistling. I wish he had been less optimistic. When we came back and told him the whole story, and he sat with his mouth open and his hair, as he said, crackling at the roots, I reminded him with some bitterness that he had encouraged us. His only retort was to say that the excursion itself had been harmless enough; but that if three elderly ladies, church members in good standing, chose to become freebooters and pirates the moment they got away from a corner policeman, they need not blame him.

The last thing he said that day in June was about fis.h.i.+ng-worms.

"Take 'em with you," he said. "They charge a cent apiece for them up there, a.s.sorted colors, and there's something stolid and British about a Canadian worm. The fish aren't crazy about 'em. On the other hand, our worms here are--er--vivacious, animated. I've seen a really brisk and on-to-its-job United States worm reach out and clutch a ba.s.s by the gills."

I believe it was the next day that Tish went to the library and read about worms. Aggie and I had spent the day buying tackle, according to Charlie Sands's advice. We got some very good rods with nickel-plated reels for two dollars and a quarter, a dozen a.s.sorted hooks for each person, and a dozen sinkers. The man wanted to sell us what he called a "landing net," but I took a good look at it and pinched Aggie.

"I can make one out of a barrel hoop and mosquito netting," I whispered; so we did not buy it.

Perhaps he thought we were novices, for he insisted on showing us all sorts of absurd things--trolling-hooks, he called them; gaff hooks for landing big fish and a spoon that was certainly no spoon and did not fool us for a minute, being only a few hooks and a red feather. He asked a dollar and a quarter for it!

[I made one that night at home, using a bit of red feather from a duster. It cost me just three cents. Of that, as of Hutchins, more later.]

Aggie, whose idea of Canada had been the Hotel Frontenac, had grown rather depressed as our preparations proceeded. She insisted that night on recalling the fact that Mr. Wiggins had been almost drowned in Canada.

"He went with the Roof and Gutter Club, Lizzie," she said, "and he was a beautiful swimmer; but the water comes from the North Pole, freezing cold, and the first thing he knew--"

The telephone bell rang just then. It was Tish.

"I've just come from the library, Lizzie," she said. "We'd better raise the worms. We've got a month to do it in. Hutchins and I will be round with the car at eight o'clock to-night. Night is the time to get them."

She refused to go into details, but asked us to have an electric flash or two ready and a couple of wooden pails. Also she said to wear mackintoshes and rubbers. Just before she rang off, she asked me to see that there was a package of oatmeal on hand, but did not explain. When I told Aggie she eyed me miserably.

"I wish she'd be either more explicit or less," she said. "We'll be arrested again. I know it!"

[Now and then Tish's enthusiasms have brought us into collision with the law--not that Tish has not every respect for law and order, but that she is apt to be hasty and at times almost unconventional.]

"You remember," said Aggie, "that time she tried to shoot the sheriff, thinking he was a train robber? She started just like this--reading up about walking-tours, and all that. I--I'm nervous, Lizzie."

I was staying with Aggie for a few days while my apartment was being papered. To soothe Aggie's nerves I read aloud from Gibbon's "Rome"

until dinner-time, and she grew gradually calmer.

"After all, Lizzie," she said, "she can't get us into mischief with two wooden pails and a package of oatmeal."

Tish and Hutchins came promptly at eight and we got into the car. Tish wore the intent and dreamy look that always preceded her enterprises.

There was a tin sprinkling-can, quite new, in the tonneau, and we placed our wooden pails beside it and the oatmeal in it. I confess I was curious, but to my inquiries Tish made only one reply:--

"Worms!"

Now I do not like worms. I do not like to touch them. I do not even like to look at them. As the machine went along I began to have a creepy loathing of them. Aggie must have been feeling the same way, for when my hand touched hers she squealed.

Over her shoulder Tish told her plan. She said it was easy to get fis.h.i.+ng-worms at night and that Hutchins knew of a place a few miles out of town where the family was away and where there would be plenty.

"We'll put them in boxes of earth," she said, "and feed them coffee or tea grounds one day and oatmeal water the next. They propagate rapidly.

We'll have a million to take with us. If we only have a hundred thousand at a cent apiece, that's a clear saving of a thousand dollars."

"We could sell some," I suggested sarcastically; for Tish's enthusiasms have a way of going wrong.

But she took me seriously. "If there are any fis.h.i.+ng clubs about," she said, "I dare say they'll buy them; and we can turn the money over to Mr. Ostermaier for the new organ."

Tish had bought the organ and had an evening concert with it before we turned off the main road into a private drive.

"This is the place," Hutchins said laconically.

Tish got out and took a survey. There was shrubbery all round and a very large house, quite dark, in the foreground.

"Drive onto the lawn, Hutchins," she said. "When the worms come up, the lamps will dazzle them and they'll be easy to capture."

We b.u.mped over a gutter and came to a stop in the middle of the lawn.

"It would be better if it was raining," Tish said. "You know, yourself, Lizzie, how they come up during a gentle rain. Give me the sprinkling-can."

I do not wish to lay undue blame on Hutchins, who was young; but it was she who suggested that there would probably be a garden hose somewhere and that it would save time. I know she went with Tish round the corner of the house, and that they returned in ten minutes or so, dragging a hose.

"I broke a tool-house window," Tish observed, "but I left fifty cents on the sill to replace it. It's attached at the other end. Run back, Hutchins, and turn on the water; but not too much. We needn't drown the little creatures."