The Corner House Girls Under Canvas

The young folk had a pleasant walk, for there was a moon. Coming finally in sight of the home of the little old woman who lived in a shoe, Ruth said to Rosa, who walked with her:

“It is a lonely spot, isn’t it?”

“But I never feel afraid. Only I’m curious about Mrs. Bobster’s friend – There! See it?” she cried, suddenly, but under her breath.

“See what?” Ruth asked.

“The shadow on the curtain,” said Rosa.

At the same moment Agnes said: “Hello! Mrs. Bobster has company.”

There was a lamp lit in the tiny front room of the cottage. Plainly silhouetted upon the white shade was a man sitting in a chair.

“What! With his hat on?” exclaimed Ruth. “Who can it be?”

“He isn’t very polite, whoever he is,” said Neale.

“Let’s see about it,” suggested Agnes. “Do you know anything about him, Rosa?”

“I only know she has had a visitor sometimes – after I’m in bed,” said the Southern girl.

“Come on! let’s go in the side door,” said Agnes, in a low voice.

But when they had tiptoed to the door they found it locked. Rosa laughed. “I tell you she never leaves a door or window unfastened after dark,” she said.

They heard the little old woman who lived in a shoe coming to the door to let them in. But Rosa had to assure her who it was before Mrs. Bobster unlocked the door.

“But you had company?” said Agnes, rather pertly.

“Eh?” returned Mrs. Bobster, setting the broom behind the hall door. “Oh, yes! I don’t never kalkerlate ter be alone many evenings.”

“Is he here now?” demanded Neale, laughing.

“Who? Him? No,” said the widow, calmly. “He’s bashful. He went out jest as you young folks come in. Sit right down, children, an’ I’ll find a pitcher of milk an’ some cookies.”

The Corner House girls and Rosa – to say nothing of Neale O’Neil – were amazed. They looked at each other wonderingly as the widow bustled out to the pantry.

“I’d give a penny,” murmured Rosa Wildwood, “to know who her mysterious friend is.”

CHAPTER XXII – THE YARN OF THE “SPANKING SAL”

The wooden-legged clam digger, Habakuk Somes, seemed suddenly to have acquired a great interest in Tom Jonah.

He appeared almost every day at the tent of the Corner House girls and did his best to become friendly with the dog. Tom Jonah grew used to his presence, but he would allow no familiarities from the dilapidated waterside character.

The girls thought “Kuk” Somes only queer; the boys “joshed” him a good deal. Nobody minded having him around, considering merely that he was a peculiar fellow, and harmless.

His tales of sea-going and sea-roving were wonderful indeed. How much of them was truth and how much pure invention, the older Corner House girls and Neale O’Neil did not know. However, they forgave his “historical inaccuracies” because of the entertainment they derived from his yarns.

Tess and Dot listened to the old fellow with perfect confidence in his achievements. Had he not known – in a moment – what it was that shot water up through the holes in the clam flat? The smaller girls listened to old Kuk Somes with unshaken confidence.

“And how did the pirates get your leg, Mr. Kuk?” asked Tess. “Your really truly leg, I mean.”

She and Dot were sitting on the edge of the tent-platform, under the awning, with their bare feet in the sand, with Tom Jonah lying comfortably between them. The dog had a brooding eye upon the clam digger, who sat on a broken lobster trap a few feet away.

“Huh! them pi-rats?” queried the clam digger. “Well – er – now, did I say it was pi-rats as got my leg, shipmet?”

“Yes, you did, sir.” Dot hastened to bolster up her sister’s statement of fact. “And you said it was on the Spanish Main.”

“Well!” declared the old man, “so it was, an’ so they did. Pi-rats it was, shipmet. An’ I’ll tell yer the how of it.

“I was carpenter’s mate on the Spankin’ Sal, what sailed from Bosting to Rio, touchin’ at some West Injy ports on the way – pertic’larly Porto Rico, which is a big merlasses port. We had a good part of our upper holt stowed with warmin’ pans for the merlasses planters – ”

“Oh, Mr. Kuk!” ejaculated Tess in rather a pained voice. “Isn’t that a mistake? Warming pans?”

“Not by a joblot it ain’t no mistake!” returned the old man. “Warming pans I sez, an’ warming pans I sticks to.”

“But my geogoraphy,” Tess ventured, timidly, and mispronouncing the word as usual, “says that the West Indies are tropical. Porto Rico is near the Equator.”

“Now, ain’t that wonderful – jest wonderful?” declared the clam digger, smiting his knee with his palm. “Shows what it is to be book l’arned, shipmet.

“’Course, I knowed them was tropical places, but I didn’t know ’twas all writ down in books – joggerfries, do they call ’em?”

“Yes, sir,” said Tess, seriously. “And it is so hot down there they couldn’t possibly need warming pans.”

“Now, ye’d think that, wouldn’t ye, shipmet? And I’d think it. But the skipper of the Spankin’ Sal, he knowed dif’rent.

“A master brainy man was Captain Roebuck. That was his name – Roebuck,” declared the clam digger, solemnly. “Hev you ever seen a warming pan, shipmet – an old-fashioned warmin’ pan?”

“Oh, yes!” cried Tess and Dot together. “There’s one hangs over the mantelpiece in the sitting-room of the old Corner House,” added Tess. “That’s where we live when we’re at home in Milton.

“And it is a round brass pan, with a cover that has holes in it, and a long handle. Mrs. MacCall says folks used to put live coals in it and iron the beds before folks went to bed, in the cold weather. But we got furnace heat now, and don’t need the warming pan.”

“Surely, surely, shipmet,” agreed the clam digger. “Them’s the things. And Cap’n Roebuck of the Spankin’ Sal, plagued near crammed the upper holt with them.

“It looks right foolish, shipmet; but that skipper got a chancet ter buy up a whole lot o’ them brass warmin’ pans cheap. If he’d seen ’em cheap enough, he’d bought up a hull cargo of secon’ hand hymn books, and he’d took ’em out to the heathen in the South Seas and made a profit on ’em – he would that!” pursued Kuk, confidently.

“He must have been a wonderful man, sir,” said Tess, while Dot sat round-eyed and listened.

“Wonderful! wonderful!” agreed the clam digger. “But about them warmin’ pans. When we got ter Porto Rico we broke out the first of them things. Looked right foolish. All them dons in Panama hats and white pants, an’ barefooted comin’ aboard to look over samples of tradin’ stock, an’ all they can see is warmin’ pans.

“‘What’s them things for?’ axed the first planter, in the Spanish lingo.

“‘Them’s skimmers,’ says Cap’n Roebuck, knowin’ it warn’t no manner o’ use to try to explain the exact truth to a man what ain’t never seed snow, or knowed there was a zero mark on the almanack.

“He grabbed up one o’ them warmin’ pans and made a swing with it like you’d use a crab-net. ‘See! See!’ says the dons. ‘Skim-a da merlasses.’ That’s Spanish for ‘Yes, yes! skim the merlasses,’” explained Kuk, seriously.

“‘But what’s the cover for?’ axed the don. ‘Ye don’t hafter have no cover,’ says Cap’n Roebuck, and he yanks the cover off the warmin’ pan an’ throws it away.