Our Next-Door Neighbors

Silvia sighed in relief when we were aboard the train.

“I feel quite chesty,” she declared, “at being smart enough to outwit Ptolemy, the wizard.”

“I have the feeling,” I observed forebodingly, “that they may be on the train or underneath it.”

The next morning we reached Windy Creek, the station nearest our destination, and continued our journey by stage.

“People will think you have consoled yourself very speedily for the death of your first husband,” I observed, as we were en route.

“Why, what do you mean, Lucien?”

“You know Diogenes addresses me as stepdaddy. It is the only word he speaks plainly.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed in perturbation, “I never thought of that! Well, we can explain to everyone, or I’ll teach them to leave off the ‘step.’”

“Not on your life!” I demurred.

“He had better call you Lucien, then. Emerald calls his father ‘Felix.’”

She at once began her tutelage of the bewildered Diogenes. After several stabs at pronouncing Lucien he managed to evolve “Ocean” to which he sometimes affixed “step” so that people to whom he was not explained doubtless thought me the latest thing in dances.

Hope Haven was like most resorts–a place safe to shun. There was a low, flat stretch of woods in which a clearing had been made for a barn-like structure called a hotel, with rooms rough and not always ready. The beautiful recreation grounds mentioned in the advertising matter consisted of a plowed field worked over into a space designated as a tennis court and a grass-grown croquet ground.

“Anyway,” claimed Silvia hopefully, “it’s a treat to see woods, water, and sky unconfined.”

She devoted the remainder of the morning to unpacking and after luncheon set off to explore the woods, borrowing from the landlady a little cart for Diogenes to ride in. My plan to go in swimming was delayed by my garrulous landlord.

I was just starting for the lake when I heard sounds from the woods that alarmed the landlord but which I instantly recognized as the Polydore yell. A moment later I saw Silvia emerging at full speed into the open, drawing the cart in which Diogenes was doubled up like a jackknife. I hastened to meet them.

“Oh, Lucien,” exclaimed my wife tearfully, “we are bitten to bits! Just look at poor little Di!”

I lifted the howling child from the cart. His face, neck, and hands were stringy and purplish–a cross between an eggplant and a round steak.

“Mosquitoes!” explained Silvia. “They came in flocks and they advertised particularly ‘no mosquitoes.’”

A dour-faced guest paused in passing.

“There aren’t–many,” she declared. “Very few, in fact, compared to the number of black flies, sand fleas, and jiggers. However, you’ll find more discomfort from the poison ivy, I imagine.”

“Lucien,” began Silvia in lament.

“Never mind!” I hastened to console, “you are out of the woods now, and you won’t have to go in again. I presume they have an antidote up at the house. I’ll give you and Diogenes first aid and then we will all go down to the lake shore. You can both sit on the dock and watch me swim.”

They both brightened up, and when we reached the hotel the landlady provided a soothing lotion for the bites and stings.

By the time we had started for the lake, the afflicted two were in holiday spirit again.

I sought cover in a small shed called a bath-house and got into my swimming outfit and shot out from the dipping end of the diving-board into the water. When I came to the surface, Silvia, sitting beside Diogenes on the dock, shrieked wildly.

“Oh, Lucien, there are snakes all around you! Come out, quick!”

“They are only water snakes,” I assured her.

“I don’t care what kind they are. They are snakes just the same.”

Diogenes instantly began to bellow for me to hand him a snake to play with.

“He recognizes his own,” I told Silvia, who, however, saw nothing amusing in my implication.

When I came out of the water, the temperature had climbed several degrees and we were glad to seek the hotel parlor, which was cool and damp.

After dinner Silvia put Diogenes to bed and we sat out on the veranda. I was enjoying my evening smoke and the feel of the night wind in my face. Silvia had just finished telling me that merely to be away from the Polydores was Paradise enough for her, and that she didn’t care very much about the woods, anyway–the lake was sufficient, when her optimism was rudely jolted by the shrill, shudder-sending song of the festive mosquito.

She fled into the parlor. The landlady, who seemed to have a panacea for all ills, suggested that she might tack mosquito netting around the little balcony extending from our bedroom, and then she could sit there in comfort when the mosquitoes bothered.

“That’s what the last lady that had that room did,” she said, “but when she left, she took the netting with her. We keep a supply in our little store.”

Silvia immediately sought the hotel store and bought a quantity of the netting and a goodly stock of the mosquito lotion.

That night as I was drifting into slumber, Silvia remarked: “Only one of the things I heard and read about this place is true.”

“Which one?” I asked between winks.

“That it was unfrequented. I have seen only three guests besides us so far. How do they make it pay?”

“The hotel is evidently only a side issue,” I replied.

“To what?”

“To the store. Think of the quantities of lotion and netting they must sell in the season, which, you must know, is in the fall. The hunting, the landlord tells me, is very good, and his hotel is quite popular in October and November.”

“I think we had better stay, Lucien. Mosquitoes don’t poison you.”

“Even if they did,” I declared, “as a choice between them and the Polydores I would say, ‘Oh, Mosquito, where is thy sting?’”

Chapter VI

A Flirt and a Woman-Hater

The next morning I arose early and screened in the little birdhouse balcony. There was a large piece of netting left and Silvia converted it into a robe and headgear for the swaddling of Diogenes.

“He looks like the Bride of Lammermoor,” I declared, as he went forth in this regalia.

“Well, that’s preferable to looking like a pest-house patient, as he did yesterday.”

His first-aid costume didn’t find favor with the landlady, as it would seem indicative to the newly arrived of the features of the place. However, before another stage-coming was due, Di had rent his garment sufficiently to make it useless is a “skeeter skirt.”

During the morning I enjoyed my solitary swim with the snakes. Diogenes played football with the croquet balls and bruised one of his toes, besides hitting the landlady’s child in the eye. Silvia went for a walk which had been pictured in the advertisements. She speedily returned, her ardor dampened.

“There are so many sticks and stones and rocks,” she said in a discouraged tone, “that there was no pleasure in walking. I nearly sprained my ankle.”

“Well, the real sport we haven’t tried yet,” I said. “We’ll get a boat and take Diogenes and go for a row on the lake.”

This proposition met with instant favor. I put Silvia and Diogenes in the stern of the boat and pulled for the opposite shore. My endeavors to gain this point were balked by Silvia’s remarkable conceptions of the art of steering craft. She was so serenely satisfied, however, with the way she performed her duties and the aid she thought she was giving me, that I forbore to criticize.

In order to achieve a few strokes in the right direction, I asked her to get me a cigar from an inside pocket of my coat, which was on the seat in front of her. Then came the blight to our bliss. She looked in the wrong pocket and instead of producing a cigar, she extracted two letters with seals unbroken.

“Lucien Wade!” she gasped. “Here are our letters to Beth and Rob. Well, it is my fault. I should have known better than to give them to you.”

“The plot thickens,” I replied thoughtfully.

“This is Monday. They must both be at the house now. What will they think!”

“They will think we didn’t receive their letters.”

“Isn’t it unfortunate–” she began.

“No,” I replied. “I am not sure but what it is a good thing. It will give Rob a jolt to see that girls can be as nice as Beth is, and as for her, she is quite able to take care of the situation where a man is concerned.”

“But we must have Beth here. Maybe you’d better telegraph her.”

“Huldah understands conditions. She will send Beth on here.”

The next morning we took Diogenes and went down the road to meet the stage. As it came around the curve, we saw there were three passengers.

“Tolly!” cried Diogenes with an ecstatic whoop.

“Beth!” recognized Silvia.

“Rob!” I ejaculated.

The stage stopped to allow us to get in.

Mutual explanations followed. Ours were brief and substantiated by the documents in evidence.

“Now,” I said turning threateningly to Ptolemy, “what did you come here for?”

“To show them,” indicating Beth and Rob, “how to get here and to look after Di so you and mudder could enjoy your vacation,” he replied glibly.

Beth laughed mirthfully.

“Check! Lucien.”

“Didn’t Huldah warn you,” I asked her, “that our whereabouts were to remain unknown?”

“Ptolemy,” she replied, “is evidently a mind reader, for he told me where you were before I saw Huldah.”

“Why, Ptolemy, how did you know where we were?” asked Silvia.

“I was on top of the porch when you told stepdaddy about coming. I didn’t tell the others. I won’t bother you any. And I know how to look after Di. You won’t send me back, mudder,” he pleaded, looking wistfully at the foam-crested water of the little lake.

I wondered mutely if Silvia could resist the appeal in the eyes of the neglected boy when he turned his imploring gaze to hers, and the delight depicted in Diogenes’ eyes at “Tolly’s” arrival. She could not.

“You may stay as long as we do,” she said slowly, “if you are a good boy and will not play too rough with Diogenes.”

We had reached the hotel by this time, and with a wild “ki yi” Ptolemy dashed for the shore, dragging the delighted Diogenes with him.

“It’s only fair to Huldah to take one more off her hands,” Silvia said apologetically.

“Them Three is what bothers me,” I complained. “If they, too, follow after, Heaven help them! I won’t.”

“It’s a good arrangement all around,” declared Rob. “I judge it takes a Polydore to understand his ilk, so the kids can pair off together. Miss Wade will be company for you, while Lucien and I go fishing.”

He looked keenly at Beth as he spoke, but Beth was looking demurely down and made no sign of having heard him.

Silvia and I went with Beth to her room, and then she told her story.

“Knowing Lucien’s failing, I was not surprised at receiving no response to my letter. When I got out of the cab in front of your house, a wild-looking boy, very bas-relief as to eyes, and who I felt sure must be Ptolemy of the Polydores, appeared. As soon as he saw me he gave utterance to a blood-curdling yell of–‘Here she is!’

“In response to his call three of his understudies came on with headlong greeting.

“‘You are Beth, aren’t you?’ Ptolemy asked me. Then he drew me aside and in mysterious whispers told me where you were and that you had written me to join you here. He added that stepdaddy never remembered to mail letters. I went within and interviewed Huldah who confirmed his information.

“Presently I saw a taxi stop before the house.

“‘That’s him!’ exclaimed Ptolemy.

“‘Him who?’ I asked.

“‘Rob somebody–stepdaddy’s college chum. He wrote he was coming, and they thought they had postponed him.’

“With a sprint of speed the four Polydores surrounded your Mr. Rossiter, all talking at once. I came to the rescue, of course, and explained the situation, and we decided to follow you.

“Ptolemy was promoter for the trip and suggested the advisability of his accompanying us as courier and future nursemaid to Diogenes. He was intending to come anyway, but thought he’d wait for us. He had all his belongings packed.”

“He hasn’t many except those he had on,” said Silvia thoughtfully.

“He has some swimming trunks, two collars, two shirts, some mismated socks, homemade fishing tackle and a battered baseball bat. We came away surreptitiously to escape detection by the trio left behind. I knew you wouldn’t welcome his presence–but he said he was coming anyway, so we thought we might as well bring him and express him back.”

After visiting with Beth for a few moments, Silvia and I withdrew to talk matters over confidentially.

“All’s well that ends well,” I quoth.

“It hasn’t ended yet,” reminded Silvia. “I trust Ptolemy didn’t reveal what you said about Rob’s being a woman-hater and Beth a flirt.”

Ptolemy conveniently appeared just then, as he generally did in the midst of private interviews. Silvia asked him if he had repeated those remarks to Beth or Rob.

“Why, no,” he said. “I knew you didn’t want her to know, because stepdaddy said so, and I thought he wouldn’t like to be called that, and I wasn’t going to give Beth away to him.”

“You’re all right, Ptolemy!” I exclaimed, for the first time awarding him approbation.

Out on the veranda we met Rob.

“Say, those Polydores certainly have the punch and pep,” he declared. “I’d like to have fetched the whole bunch along with me.”

“If you had,” I replied dryly, “our life’s friendship would have died on the spot.”

CHAPTER VII

In Which Nothing Much Happens

“Why Hope Haven?” asked Rob reflectively, when he had taken inventory of the possibilities of the resort.

“Because,” sighed Silvia, “so many hopes–vacation hopes–must have been buried here.”

Rob was of an investigating turn of mind, however, and he had heard from a native of H. H., as he had abbreviated the place, that there was a smaller lake, abounding in fish, farther on through the forest. It was so strongly fortified, however, by the formidable battalions of sharp-shooting insects that but few fishermen had ever been able to lay siege to it.

Rob and I being poison proof decided to try our luck and pitch camp for a few days on the shores of this hidden treasure. As we had to send to town by the stage driver for the necessary supplies, we remained in H. H. the remainder of the day.

We at once paired off in Noah’s most approved style as Rob had outlined. Beth and Ptolemy went up shore, sticks and stones and rocks being no obstacles to their feet. Rob and I sought the society of the snakes, while Silvia and Diogenes, mosquito-netted, watched a game of croquet.

We dined without the pleasure of the society of Ptolemy and Diogenes, who had been invited to sit at the table with the landlady’s children. I might state, incidentally, that the invitation was never repeated.

Beth was quite excited over her walk.

“Ptolemy and I,” she boasted, “made more of a discovery than Mr. Rossiter did. We found a haunted house, a perfectly haunted house.”

“I am not surprised,” declared Silvia. “You couldn’t expect any other kind of a house in such a region.”

“Where is it?” I asked, “and what is it haunted by?”

“Insects,” suggested Silvia.

“You go around shore about two miles, only it’s farther, as you have to make so many ups and downs over the rocks. Then you leave the shore and go through a low marshy stretch, sort of a Dismal Swamp, and then up a hill. After Ptolemy and I climbed to the top, we looked down and saw, hidden in a clump of lonely looking poplars, a small, rudely built house. We went down to explore and had hard work making our way through a thick growth of–everything. We crawled under some tangled vines and came up on the steps. The house was vacant, although there were a few old pieces of furniture–a couple of cots, a cook-stove, table, and chairs.

“On our way home we met a woman who gave us a history of the house. An old miser lived there long ago. One night he was robbed and murdered, and his ghost still haunts the place. No one ventures in its vicinity, and she said most likely we were the first people who had gone there since the tragedy. She told us of a nearer way to reach it. You take the road to Windy Creek, and about two miles below here, turn into a lane and then go through a grove and over a hill.”

“You don’t really believe the story, that is, the ghost part of it?” asked Rossiter.

“N–o,” allowed Beth. “Still, I’d like to. It makes it interesting. Ptolemy and I are going down there some night to see if we can find the ghost.”

“You won’t see one,” I assured her. “Ptolemy’s presence would be sufficient to keep even a ghost in the background.”

“Ptolemy’s a peach,” declared Beth emphatically.

“If he were older, you wouldn’t think so,” said Rob.

“Why not?” asked Beth in surprise, or seeming surprise.

He smiled enigmatically, and irrelevantly asked her if she wouldn’t really be afraid to go to the haunted house at night with only Ptolemy for protection.

She assured him she shouldn’t be afraid of a ghost if she saw one, and that she shouldn’t be afraid to go alone.

Throughout the evening, which we spent in rowing, walking, and later at a little impromptu supper, I was interested in observing the puzzling behavior of Beth and my chum. I had expected that he would avoid her as much as possible and speak to her only when common politeness made conversation obligatory, and that she, a born coquette, would seek to add his scalp to her collection. Instead, to my surprise, their rôles were reversed. He appeared interested in her every remark and looked at her often and intently. He was quite assiduous in his attentions which, strange to say, she discouraged, not with the deep design of a flirt to increase his ardor, but with a calm firmness that admitted of no doubt as to her feelings.

“Your sister,” he remarked to me as we were walking down to the lake for a swim just before going to bed, “is a very unusual type.”

“Not at all!” I assured him. “Beth is the true feminine type which you have never taken the trouble to know.”

“Oh, come, Lucien! Not feminine, you know. Though she is inconsistent.”

I resented the imputation hotly, but he only laughed and said that he guessed it was true that a man didn’t understand the women in his family as well as an outsider did.

“You think,” I said, “just because she says she isn’t afraid of ghosts–”

“Not at all,” he denied. “That wasn’t the reason, but–I like her type, though I always supposed I wouldn’t. It is a new one to me–anyway. I didn’t think so young a girl as she–”

Our discussion was cut short by the inevitable, ever-present Ptolemy, who came running up to us, clad in about four inches of swimming trunks.

“Why aren’t you in bed?” I demanded.

“I was in bed, but it was so warm I couldn’t sleep, and I went to the window and saw you coming down here, so I thought I’d come, too.”

I repeated Rob’s remarks to Silvia when I returned to our room, and she betrayed Beth’s confidences in regard to Rob.

“She says she would like him if it were not for one trait that she dislikes more than any other in a man and that it was sufficient in her estimation to counterbalance all his good qualities.”

“What can she mean?” I asked bewildered. “I don’t see a flaw in Rob, except for his being a woman-hater, and he surely hasn’t betrayed that fact to her, judging from his manner toward her. I think he is making an effort to be nice to her on my account, and she doesn’t appreciate it.”

“I asked her what the flaw was, and she flushed and said she couldn’t tell me.”

“Well, I guess all around it is a good thing we are going off on our fishing expedition. I don’t want my friend turned down by my sister, and I don’t want my friend calling my sister a new type and unfeminine.”

CHAPTER VIII

Ptolemy Disappears and I Visit a Haunted House

When Rob and I, with our camping outfit, drove off through the woods, Ptolemy’s eyes followed us so enviously and he pleaded so eloquently to be taken with us that Rob was actually on the point of considering it.

“See here, Rob Rossiter!” I exclaimed, “This is my vacation and all I came to this God-forsaken place for was to escape the Polydores. If he goes, I stay. You know I’ve always tried to meet issues, but this antique family has got me going.”

“All right,” he yielded.

After a drive of a few miles we came to the lake and pitched our tent. Two days of ideal camp life followed. The weather was fine, Rob was a first-class cook, and the sport was beyond our most optimistic expectation. We landed enough of the Friday food to satisfy the most fastidious fishing fiend, and the mosquitoes, finding we were impervious to their stings, finally let us alone.

I forgot all business cares and disappointments, yes, even the Polydores; but on the morning of the third day Rob began to show signs of restlessness and spoke of the likelihood of my wife’s being lonely.

“Not with Beth and Ptolemy in calling distance,” I told him.

“But they will be off together,” he replied, “and your wife will be alone with that enfant terrible. I fancy, too, that your sister isn’t exactly a companion for your wife.”

“Well, that shows how little you know her. She and Silvia are great friends.”

“Oh, yes, of course they are friendly, but I mean their tastes are so different, and they are so unlike. Your sister doesn’t care for domesticity.”

“Sure she does. You have turned the wrong searchlight on Beth. If you knew her, you’d like her.”

“I do like her,” he declared. “It’s too bad she–”

He stopped abruptly and quickly changed the conversation. In spite of my efforts to renew the controversy about Beth, he refused to return to the subject.

In the afternoon, when I was doing a little scale work preparatory to cooking, a messenger from the hotel drove up with a note from Silvia which I read aloud:

“Ptolemy has been missing for twenty-four hours. We are in hopes he has joined you. If not, what shall I do?”

“We’ll go back with you,” said Rob to the man. “Just lend a hand here and help us pull up these tent stakes.”

“What’s Ptolemy to me or I to him?” I asked with a groan, “can’t we give him absent treatment?”

“You’re positively inhuman, Lucien,” protested Rob. “The boy may be at the bottom of the lake.”

“Not he! He was born to be hung.”

All this time, however, I had been active in making preparations for departure, as I knew that Silvia would feel that we were responsible for Ptolemy’s safety, and her anxiety was reason enough for me to hasten to her.

Rob was quite jubilant on our return trip and declared that the fish came too easily and too plentifully to make it real sport, but I felt that I had another grudge to be charged up to the fateful family.

We found Silvia pale from anxiety, Beth in tears, and Diogenes loudly clamoring for “Tolly.” We learned that the afternoon before, Silvia and Beth had gone with the landlady for a ride, leaving Diogenes in Ptolemy’s care, but on their return at dinner time, Diogenes was playing alone in the sandpile.

Nothing was thought of Ptolemy’s absence until bedtime, and they had then sent out searching parties to the woods and the lake shores. Finally it occurred to Beth that he might have gone to join Rob and me, so they sent the messenger to investigate.

“He must be lost in the woods somewhere,” said Beth tearfully, “and he will starve to death.”

Rob actually touched her hand in his distress at her grief.

“Ptolemy is too smart to get lost anywhere,” I declared. “He knows fully as much about woodcraft as he does about every other kind of craft. He’s one of his mother’s antiquities personified. But haven’t you been able to find anyone who saw him after you went for your ride?”

“No; even the hotel help were all out on the lake.”

“And he left Diogenes here, absolutely unguarded?”

“Well!” admitted Silvia, “he tied Diogenes to a tree near the sandpile.”

“Then he must have gone away with malice aforethought,” I said, “and Diogenes is the only one who knows anything about his last movements.”

I lifted the child to my knee, and speaking more gently to him than I had ever done, I asked:

“Di, did you and Tolly play in the sandpile yesterday?”