Vacation with the Tucker Twins

'We cannot do it, Sir, because – '

I sent to them again to say,
'It will be better to obey.'

The fishes answered with a grin,
'Why, what a temper you are in!'

I told them once, I told them twice;
They would not listen to advice.

I took a kettle, large and new,
Fit for the deed I had to do.

My heart went hop, my heart went thump;
I filled the kettle at the pump.

Then someone came to me and said,
'The little fishes are in bed.'

I said to him, I said it plain,
'Then you must wake them up again.'

I said it very loud and clear;
I went and shouted in his ear.

But he was very stiff and proud;
He said, 'You need not shout so loud!'

And he was very proud and stiff,
He said, 'I'll go and wake them, if – '

I took a corkscrew from the shelf;
I went to wake them up myself.

And when I found the door was locked,
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked.

And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, but – '"

Dum recited this poem with fervor and great elocutionary effects and simply convulsed the crowd. The whole thing was said directly to Mr. Gordon and the naughty girl seemed to have some personal meaning when she said, "My heart went hop, my heart went thump," and when she ended up with a hopeless wail, "I tried to turn the handle, but – ," Mr. Gordon actually went to Miss Cox, as we arose from the supper table, drew her hand within his arm and deliberately led her out on the beach, and in plain hearing of all of us, said:

"The door isn't shut for good, is it, Jinny?"

And we heard her answer: "No, Bob, not if you 'pull and push and kick and knock.'"

Well, Bob certainly did "pull and push and kick and knock." I have never imagined a more persistent lover. He seemed to be trying to catch even for all he had lost in those seventeen years. He told Zebedee that after the foolish quarrel he and Miss Cox had had on that wet, wet picnic, he had been called home by the financial disaster of his father, and while he knew he had been hard-headed in the affair, he felt she had been unreasonable, too, in demanding that he should agree with her about the absurd poem in Alice in Wonderland; and so had left the University without trying to right matters. Then when he had realized the tremendous difficulty his family was in, and found that not only would he have to go immediately to work but that his mother and sister would be dependent on his exertions, he felt that it was on the whole best that he and Miss Cox should separate. The engagement was already broken and he went off to his long and up-hill work saddened and forlorn; and Miss Cox, rather embittered by the experience, feeling that she had been hasty and exacting but too proud to make a move towards a reconciliation, had spent all the long years in vain regrets.

"Well, I hope they will be very happy," sighed Dum when we were discussing the matter while we lay on our closely packed cots the first night of Mr. Gordon's visit. "It does seem terribly unromantic for the separation to have been caused by the Lobster Quadrille."

"It might have been a permanent separation if it had been just plain lobster, 'specially in cans," said funny Mary Flannagan.

"Didn't Miss Cox look sweet in that blue dress? I thought she was almost pretty but maybe it was the love-light in her eyes," sentimentalized Annie Pore.

"Isn't it a pity they are so old?" deplored Dee. "His hair is real grey."

"It's trouble that has done it," said Mary. "I wondered, Dum, you didn't get off that verse on him about the voice of the lobster. Maybe that would have been too personal:

"'Tis the voice of the lobster, I heard him declare,
'You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.'
As a duck with his eyelids, so he with his nose,
Trims his belt and his buttons and turns out his toes.'

It would have been rather personal because Mr. Gordon's hair does look rather sugared and certainly Miss Cox has baked him pretty brown."

"What do you s'pose your Cousin Park Garnett would say, Page, if she knew that our chaperone for the house party had gone and got herself as good as engaged the very second evening?" laughed Dee.

"I fancy with her characteristic elegance she would exclaim: 'Oh, you chaperone!'"

CHAPTER VIII

LETTERS

    To Dr. James Allison from Page Allison.
    Willoughby Beach,
    July – , 191 – .

My Dearest Father:

We are having the grandest time that ever was and all we want now is for you to take a little holiday and come down to see us. It would do you worlds of good and surely your patients can let you go for a little while. Sometimes I think you should get an assistant or try to persuade some young doctor to settle in the neighbourhood. You never have any fun. I feel very selfish to have gone off and left you and Mammy Susan when I have been away all winter, but I promise to come back the first of next month and not to budge from Bracken until it is time to go to school the middle of September. I hope Cousin Sue Lee will be with us then, as I should hate to miss her visit, one moment of it. On the other hand I devoutly hope that Cousin Park Garnett will pay her yearly visitation while I am away. I heard a rumor that a Mrs. Garnett was expected at the hotel here, but I am trusting in my hitherto lucky stars that it is not Cousin Park. If she comes to Willoughby, I am going to bury my head in the sand, like an ostrich, and pretend I'm somebody else.

There is a camp of boys near us and they are just as nice as can be and seem to think it is their affair to give all of us girls a good time. They rented this cottage for last month and liked Willoughby so much that when their time was up they started a camp. They are James Hart, Stephen White, George Massie and Ben Raglan. They are called Jim, Wink, Sleepy and Rags, and as we have come to know them pretty well and they are not the kind of boys one stands on ceremony with, we call them by their nicknames, too. Wink White is studying medicine and so is Sleepy, when he is not playing foot-ball or sleeping. Wink is very clever and intensely interested in his work.

Mr. Tucker (only I call him Zebedee now) is teaching me how to swim. He says I am a very apt pupil because I am not a bit afraid; although he teases me a great deal because one day, the very first time I went in, I politely went to the bottom, and he says I made the biggest bubbles he ever saw. He calls me "Sis Mud Turkle," but I don't mind a bit. There is some kind of joke on all of us, even Annie Pore, who is so touchy we have to be careful. But Zebedee just has to tease and he says he can't leave out Annie, as it might make her feel bad.

Of course Mary Flannagan has a joke on everybody and everybody has a joke on her. She is a delightful person to be on a house party with, always so full of fun and always starting something.

Dum and Dee are the same old Tweedles, the very most charming and agreeable persons in the world. I have saved up the most important to the last: – our chaperone, Miss Cox, has gone and got herself engaged! It is an old lover she used to have when she was a girl and he has turned up in the most unexpected and romantic way, and all of us girls are so excited over it we can hardly eat and sleep. We are going to miss her terribly at Gresham. She can make me understand mathematics, which is going some, and how I am to proceed into quadratic equations without her, I cannot see. We do not know when they are to be married, but rather think it will be soon. Zebedee bids to be flower girl.

You may be sure that Miss Cox and Mr. Gordon come in for their share of teasing. I used to think Miss Cox was very old but since she got engaged she does not seem to be any older than we are, and while Mr. Gordon has very grey hair, he is really not old at all, not much older than Zebedee, who is the youngest person of my acquaintance.

All the old girls at Willoughby run after Zebedee, much to Tweedles' disgust. I believe it would about kill the twins if their father should ever marry again, and indeed I think it would be hard on them and I hope he never will, certainly not any of these society girls who are down here at the beach. I don't believe they would any of them make him happy.

Tell Mammy Susan that her great niece is doing very well and everyone likes her. Do not tell her that she is a perfect scream, using the longest, most ridiculous words in the world, never by any accident pronounced properly or in the right place. She is certainly proof positive of a little learning being a dangerous thing; but she is a kindly, sweet-tempered creature and as soon as we persuaded her to cook as she did before she went to school, we found her very capable.

Good-bye, my dearest Father, and please come see us. We are one and all longing for you. Give my best love to Mammy Susan and the dogs.

    Your devoted daughter, PAGE.