Wyn's Camping Days: or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club

He stood near, however, speaking with a girl of about Wyn’s age–a girl who was a total stranger to the captain of the Go-Ahead Club. The stranger was rather poorly dressed. She wore shabby gloves, and a shabby hat, and shabby shoes. Besides, both her dark frock and the hat were “ages and ages” behind the fashion.

Her clothes were really so ugly that the girl herself did not have a chance to look her best. Wyn realized that after the second glance. And she saw that the strange girl was almost handsome.

She was as big as Grace Hedges; but she was dark. Her hair was beautifully crinkled where it lay flat against the sides of her head over her ears. At the back there was a great roll, and it was glossy and well cared-for. Even a girl who cannot afford to dress in the mode can make her hair beautiful by a little effort.

This girl had made that effort and, furthermore, she had made herself as neat as anyone need be.

In addition to her beautiful hair, the stranger’s other attractions can be enumerated as a long, well formed nose, well defined eyebrows and long lashes, and deep gray eyes that looked almost black in the shade of her broad brow. Her skin was lovely, although she was very much bronzed by the sun. A rose-flush showed through this tan and aided her red, full lips to give color to her face. Her teeth were two splendid, perfect rows of dazzling white; her chin was beautifully molded. This fully developed countenance was lit by intelligence, as well, and, with her well rounded figure and gentle, deprecating manner, Wyn thought of her instantly as a big helpless child.

Mr. Erad was speaking very sternly to her, and that, alone, made Wyn desire to take her part. She could not bear to hear anybody scold a person so timid and humble. And at every decisive phrase Mr. Erad uttered, Wyn could see her wince.

“I cannot do it. I do not see why I should,” declared the storekeeper. “Indeed, there are many reasons why I should not. Yes–I know. I employed John Jarley at one time. But that was years ago. He would not stay with me. He was always trying something new. And he never stuck to a thing long enough for either he–or anybody else–to find out whether he was fitted for it or not.

“Hold on! I take that back. I guess there’s one man in town,” said Mr. Erad, with almost a snarl, “who thinks John Jarley stuck long enough on one job.”

Wyn, frankly listening, but watching the girl and Mr. Erad covertly, saw the former’s face flame hotly at the shot. But her murmured reply was too low for Wyn to hear.

“Ha! I know nothing was ever proved against him. But decent people know the other party, and know that he is square. John Jarley got out of town and stayed out of town. That was enough to show everybody that he felt guilty.”

“You are wrong, sir,” said the dark girl, her voice trembling, but audible now in her strong emotion. “You are wrong. It was my mother’s ill health that took us into the woods. And the ill-natured gossip of the neighbors–just such things as you have now repeated–troubled my mother, too. So father took us away from it all.”

“If he was honest, he made a great mistake in running away at that time,” asserted Mr. Erad.

“No, he made no mistake,” returned the girl, her fine eyes flashing. “He did the right thing. He saved my mother agony, and made her last years beautiful. My father did no wrong in either case, sir.”

“Well, well, well!” snapped Mr. Erad. “I cannot discuss the matter with you. We should not agree, I am sure. And I can do nothing for you.”

“Wait, please! give me a chance! Let me work for you to pay for these things we need. I will work faithfully – ”

“I have no place for you.”

“Oh, sir – ”

“My goodness, girl! No, I tell you. Isn’t that enough? Beside, you are not well dressed enough to wait upon my customers. And you could not earn enough here to pay your board, dress decently, and pay for any bill of goods that you–or your father–may want.”

The girl turned away. There was a bit of dingy veiling attached to the front of her old-fashioned hat, and Wyn saw her pull this down quickly over her face. The listener knew why, and she had to wink her own eyes hard to keep back the tears.

She deliberately turned her back upon old Mr. Erad, whom she was usually so glad to see, and went hastily down the aisle. From her distant station by the notion counter she saw the drooping figure of the strange girl leave the store.

Wyn Mallory was worried. She could not see a forlorn cat on the street, or a homeless dog shivering beside a garbage can, that she was not tempted to “do something for it.”

Dave Shepard often laughingly said that it was an adventure to go walking with Wyn Mallory, One never knew what she was going to see that needed “fixing.” And Dave might have added, that if Wyn had him for escort, she usually got these wrong things “fixed.”

She now hastened through her purchasing, not with any definite object in view, save that she wanted to get out of the store. Mr. Erad was not at all the nice, charitable man whom she had always supposed him to be. That is, it looked so now to the impulsive, warm-hearted girl.

Her mind was fixed upon the strange girl and her troubles. Wyn did not neglect the errand her mother had given her to do, although she hurried her shopping.

When she was out of the store, she drew a long breath. “I couldn’t breathe in that place–not well,” she told herself. “I wonder where that poor girl has gone now?”

There was nobody to answer her, nor was the strange girl in sight. Wyn felt rather remorseful that she had not let her shopping wait and followed the strange girl out of the store immediately.

The stranger might have been in desperate straits. Wyn could not imagine anybody begging for goods, and for work, especially after the way Mr. Erad had spoken, unless in great trouble.

Wyn began to take herself seriously to task. The strange girl had disappeared and she had not even tried to help her, or comfort her.

“I might have gone out and offered some little help, or sympathy. How do I know what will become of her? And she may have no friends in town. At least, it is evident that she does not live here.”

There were several other errands to do. All the time, especially while she was on the street, she kept her eye open for the strange girl whose name she presumed must be “Jarley.”

But Wyn did not see her anywhere, and it seemed useless to wander down Market Street looking for her. So, when she had completed her purchases, she turned her face homeward.

She went up past Mr. Erad’s store again and turned through Archer Street. As she crossed into the park she looked for a settee to rest on, for unconsciously she had walked more briskly than usual.

There, under a wide-limbed oak, was a green-painted seat, removed from any other settee; but there was a figure on it.

“There’s room for two, I guess,” thought Wyn; and then she made a discovery that almost made her cry out aloud. Its occupant was the very girl for whom she was in search!

Wyn controlled her impulse to run forward, and approached the bench quite casually. Before she reached it, however, she realized that the dark girl was crying softly.

Natural delicacy would have restrained Wyn from approaching the girl so abruptly. Only, she was deeply interested, and already knowing the occasion for her tears, the captain of the Go-Ahead Club could not ignore the forlorn figure on the bench.

Without speaking, she dropped into the seat beside the strange girl, and put her hand on the other’s shoulder.

“My dear!” she said, when the startled gray eyes–all a-flood with tears–were raised to her own. “My dear, tell me all about it–do! If I can’t help you, I will be your friend, and it will make you feel lots better to tell it all to somebody who sympathizes.”

“Bu-but you ca-can’t sympathize with me!” gasped the other, looking into Wyn’s steady, brown eyes and finding friendliness and commiseration there. “You–you see, you never knew the lack of anything good; you’re not poor.”

“No, I am not poor,” admitted Wyn.

“And I don’t want charity!” cried the strange girl quickly.

“I am not going to offer it to you. But I’d dearly love to be your friend,” Wyn said. “You know–you’re so pretty!” she added, impulsively.

The girl flushed charmingly again. “I–I guess I’m not very pretty in my old duds, and with my nose and eyes red from crying.”

But she was really one of those few persons who are not made ugly by crying. She had neither red eyes nor a red nose.

“Do tell me what troubles you,” urged Wyn, patting her firm, calloused hand.

Those hands were no soft, useless members–no, indeed! Pretty as she was, the stranger had evidently been in the habit of performing arduous manual labor.

“Where do you live, my dear?” asked Wyn, again, as her first question was not answered.

“Up beyond Meade’s Forge,” said the strange girl.

“Oh, my! On Lake Honotonka?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Please don’t ma’am me!” cried the captain of the Go-Ahead Club. “My name is Wynifred Mallory. My friends all call me Wyn. Now, I want you to be my friend, so you must commence calling me Wyn right away.”

“But–but you don’t know me,” said the other girl, hesitatingly.

“I am going to; am I not?” demanded Wyn, with her frank smile. “Surely, now that I have confided in you, you will confide in me to the same extent? Or, don’t you like me?”

“Of course I like you!” exclaimed the still sobbing girl. “But–but I do not know that I have any right to allow you to be my friend.”

“Goodness me! why not?” exclaimed Wyn.

“Why–why, we have a bad name in this town, it seems,” said the other.

“Who have?” snapped Wyn, hating Mr. Erad harder than ever now.

“My father and I.”

“What have you done that makes you a pariah?” exclaimed Wyn, fairly laughing now. “Aren’t you foolish?”

“No. People say my father was not honest I am Polly Jarley,” said the girl, desperately.

“Polly Jolly?” cried Wyn. “Not much you are! You are anything but jolly. You are Polly Miserrimus.”

“I don’t know what that means, ma’am – ”

“Wyn!” exclaimed the other girl, quickly.

“M–Miss Wyn.”

“Not right. Just Wyn. Plain Wyn – ”

“Oh, I couldn’t call you plain,” cried the poorly dressed girl, with some spontaneity now. “For you are very pretty. But I don’t really know what Mis–Mis – ”

“‘Miserrimus’?’”

“That is it.”

“It’s Latin, and it means miserable, all right,” laughed Wyn. “And you act more to fit the name of ‘Polly Miserrimus’ than that of ‘Polly Jolly.’”

“It’s Jarley, Miss Wyn.”

“But now tell me all about it, Polly,” urged Wyn, having by this means stopped the flow of Polly’s tears. “Surely it will help you just to free your mind. And don’t be foolish enough to think that I wouldn’t want to know you and be your friend if your poor father was the biggest criminal on earth.”

“He isn’t! He is unfortunate. He has been accused wrongfully, and everybody is against him,” exclaimed Polly, with some heat.

“All right. Then let’s hear about it,” urged Wyn, capturing both of the other girl’s hands in her own, and smiling into her tear-drenched gray eyes.

CHAPTER IV

THE SILVER IMAGES

“Didn’t you ever hear of us Jarleys?” Polly first of all demanded.

“Only as being interested in the wax-work business,” replied Wyn, with twinkling eyes.

“I–I guess father never made wax-work,” said Polly, hesitatingly.

She was an innocent sort of girl, who evidently lacked many advantages of education and reading that Wyn and her friends had enjoyed as a matter of course.

“Well, I never heard the name before to-day–not your name, nor your father’s,” Wyn said.

“Well, we used to live here.”

“In Denton?”

“Yes, ma’am – ”

“Will you stop that?” cried Wyn. “I am Wyn Mallory, I tell you.”

“All right, Wyn. It’s a pretty name. I’ll be glad to use it,” returned Polly.

“Prove it by using it altogether,” commanded Wyn. “Now, what about your father?”

“I–I can’t tell you much about it–much of the particulars, I mean,” said the girl from Lake Honotonka, diffidently. “I don’t really know them. Father never speaks of it much. But even as a tiny girl mother explained to me that when folks said father had done wrong I must deny it. That it was not so. It was only circumstances that made him appear in the wrong. And–you know, Wyn–your mother wouldn’t lie to you!”

“Of course not!” cried Wyn, warmly. “Of course not!”

“Well, then, you’ll have to believe just what I tell you. Father was in some business deal with a man here in Denton, and something went wrong. The other man accused father of being dishonest. Father could not defend himself. Circumstances were dead against him. And it worried mother so that it made her sick.

“So we all left town. Father had very little money, and he built a shack up there in the woods near Honotonka. We’re just ‘squatters’ up there. But gradually father got a few boats, and built a float, and made enough in the summer from fishermen and campers to support us. Of course, mother being sick so many years before she died, kept us very poor. I only go to the district school winters. Then I have to walk four miles each way, for we own no horse. Summers I help father with the boats.”

“That’s where you got such palms! cried Wyn, touching her new friend’s calloused hands again.

“It’s rowing does it. But I don’t mind. I love the water, you see.”

“So do I. I’ve got a canoe. I’m captain of a girls’ canoe club.”

“That’s nice,” said Polly. “I suppose when you take up boating for just a sport it’s lots better than trying to make one’s living out of it.”

“Well, tell me more,” urged Wyn. “What are you in town for now? Why did I find you crying here on the bench?”

“A man hurt me by talking harshly about poor father,” said the girl from Lake Honotonka.

“Come on! tell me,” urged Wyn, giving her a little shake. Polly suddenly threw an arm about the town girl and hugged her tightly.

“I do love you, Wyn Mallory,” she sobbed. “I–I wish you were my sister. I get so lonely sometimes up there in the woods, for there’s only father and me now. And this past winter he was very sick with rheumatic fever. You see, there was an accident.”

“He met with an accident, you mean?”

“Yes. It was awful–or it might have been awful for him if he and I had not had signals that we use when there’s a fog on the lake. I’ll tell you.

“You see, there is a man named Shelton–Dr. Shelton–who lives in one of the grand houses at Braisely Park–you know, that is the rich people’s summer colony at the upper end of the lake?”

“I know about it,” said Wyn. “Although I never was there.”

“Well, Dr. Shelton had his motor boat down at our float. He left it there himself, and he told father to go to the express office at Meade’s Forge on a certain day and get a box that would be there addressed to Dr. Shelton. It was a valuable box.

“When father went for it the expressman would not give it up until he had telephoned to Dr. Shelton and recognized the doctor’s voice over the wire. It seems that that box was packed with ancient silver images that had been found in a ruined temple in Yucatan, and had been sent to Dr. Shelton by the man who found them. They claim they were worth at the least five thousand dollars.

“The doctor had a party at his house right then, he said over the telephone, and he wanted father to come up the lake with the box. He wanted to display his antique treasures to his friends.

“Now, it was a dreadfully bad day. After father had started down to the Forge in the motor boat he knew that a storm was coming. And ahead of it was a thick fog. He told Dr. Shelton over the ’phone that it was a bad time to make the trip the whole length of Lake Honotonka.

“The doctor would not listen to any excuses, however; and it was his boat that was being risked. And his silver images, too! Those rich people don’t care much about a poor man’s life, and if father had refused to risk his on the lake in the storm Dr. Shelton would have given his trade to some other boatkeeper after that.

“So father started in the Bright Eyes. He did not shoot right up the middle of the lake, as he would have done had the day been fair. The lake is twenty miles broad, you know, in the middle. So he kept near our side–the south side it is–and did not lose sight of the shore at first.

“But at Gannet Island he knew he had better run outside. You see, the strait between the island and the shore is narrow and, when the wind is high, it sometimes is dangerous in there. Why, ten years ago, one of the little excursion steamers that used to ply the lake then, got caught in that strait and was wrecked!

“So father had to go outside of Gannet Island. The fog shut down as thick as a blanket before he more than sighted the end of the island. He kept on, remembering what Dr. Shelton had said, and that is where he made a mistake,” said Polly, shaking her head. “He ought to have turned right around and come back to our landing.”

“Oh, dear me! what happened to him?” cried Wyn, eagerly.

“The fog came down, thicker and thicker,” proceeded the boatman’s daughter. “And the wind rode down upon father, too. Wind and fog together are not usual; but when the two combine it is much worse than either alone. You see, the thick mist swirling into father’s eyes, driven head-on by the wind, blinded him. He steered a shade too near the shore.

“Suddenly the Bright Eyes struck. A motor boat, going head-on upon a snag, can be easily wrecked. The boat struck and stuck, and father leaped up to shut off the engine.

“As he did so, something swished through the blinding fog and struck him, carrying him backward over the stern of the boat. Perhaps it was the loss of his weight that allowed the Bright Eyes to scrape over the snag. At least, she did so as father plunged into the lake, and as he sank he knew that the boat, with her engine at half speed, was tearing away across the lake.

“It was the drooping limb of a tree that had torn father from the stern of the motor boat,” continued Polly Jarley. “It may have been a big root of the same tree, under water, that had proved the finish of the boat. For nobody ever saw the Bright Eyes again. She just ran off at a tangent, into the middle of the lake, somewhere, we suppose, and filled and sank.”

“Oh, dear me! And your father?” asked Wyn, anxiously.

“He got ashore on the island. Then he signalled to me, and I went off during a lull in the storm, and got him. He went to bed, and it was three months before he was up and around again.

“He suffered dreadfully with rheumatic fever,” continued Polly, sadly. “And all the time Dr. Shelton was talking just as mean about him as he could. He didn’t believe his story. He even said that he thought my father took the motor boat down the river somewhere and sold it. And the way he talked about that box of silver images – ”

“Oh, oh!” cried Wyn. “I’d forgotten about them. Of course they were lost, too?”

“Sunk somewhere in Lake Honotonka,” declared Polly. “Father knows no more about where the boat lies than Dr. Shelton himself. But there are always people ready and willing to pick up the evil that is said about a person and help circulate it.

“While father was flat on his back, folks were talking about him. We had to raise money on the boats to pay for our food and father’s medicine. If we don’t have a good season this summer we will be unable to pay off the chattel mortgage next winter, and will lose the boats. I tell you, Miss Wyn, it is hard.”

“You poor, dear girl!” exclaimed Wyn. “I should think it was hard. And that mean man accuses your father – ”

“Well, you see, there was father’s past record against him. The story of his trouble here in Denton followed him into the woods, of course. If anybody gets mad at us up at the Forge, they throw the whole thing up to us. I–I hate it there,” sobbed the boatkeeper’s daughter.

“And yet, it is harder on poor father. He is straight, but everything has been against him. I saw he felt dreadfully these past few days because I need some decent clothes. And there is no money to buy any.

“So I thought I would come to town and see some old friends of mother’s who used to come and see us years ago. Yes, there were a few people who stuck to mother, even if they did not quite approve of poor father. But, when I paddled ’way down here – ”

“Not in a canoe?” cried Wyn.

“Yes, I came down very easily yesterday evening and stopped at a boatman’s house on the edge of town. I shall go back again to-day. The Wintinooski isn’t kicking up much of a rumpus just now. The spring floods are about all over.”

“But you must be a splendid hand with a paddle,” said Wyn. “It’s a long way to the lake.”

“Oh! I don’t mind it,” said Polly. “Or, I wouldn’t mind it if it had done me the least good to come down here,” and she sighed.

“You are disappointed?” queried Wyn.

“Dreadfully! I did not find mother’s old friends. I had not heard from them for two or three years, and found that they were away–nobody knows where. I did not know but I might get work here in town for a few weeks, and live with these old friends, and so earn some money. I am so shabby! And father isn’t fit to be seen.

“And then–then there was a man in town who used to befriend mother. I know when I was quite a little girl, the year after we had gone to the woods to live, father was ill for a long time and mother had to have things. She went to this storekeeper in Denton and he let her have things on account and we paid him afterward. Oh, we paid him–every cent!” declared Polly, again wiping her eyes.

“And I hoped he would–for mother’s sake–help us again. I went to him. I–I reminded him of how father once worked for him, and that he knew mother. But he was angry about something–he would not listen–he would neither give me work nor let me have goods charged. I–I–well, it just broke me down, Wyn Mallory, and I came here to cry it out.”

“It’s a shame!” exclaimed Wyn. “I am just as sorry for you as I can be. And I believe that your father is perfectly honest and that he never in his life intended to defraud anybody.”

It was that blessed tact that made Wynifred Mallory say that. It was the sure way to Polly Jarley’s heart; and Wyn’s words and way opened the door wide and Polly took her in.

“You–you blessed creature!” cried the boatman’s daughter. “I know you must have been ’specially sent to comfort me. I was so miserable.”

“Of course I was sent,” declared Wyn. She did not propose to tell her new acquaintance that she had observed her in Erad’s store and had looked for her all over Market Street.

“Such things are meant to be. If we trust to God we surely shall have release from our difficulties. That is just as sure as the day follows the night,” declared Wyn, with simple, straight-forward faith.

“And just see how it is proved in this case. You were in trouble, and sat here crying, and needed somebody to help you. And I came along perfectly willing and able to help you, and you are going to be helped.”

“I am helped!” declared Polly. “You just put the courage back into me. I didn’t know what to do – ”

“Do you know any better now?” demanded Wyn, quickly.

“We–ell, I – ”

“That doesn’t sound as though you had quite made up your mind,” said Wyn, with a little laugh.

“Never mind. I can stand even going back home with my hands empty, better than before I met you,” declared Polly, bravely.

“But you won’t go back home empty-handed.”

“Oh, Wyn! Can you get me work?”

“No, not here. Nor do I believe you ought to leave your father alone up there for so long. I expect he is not very well yet?”

“No. He is not,” admitted Polly.

“Then, you go home. That is the best place for you, anyway. But before you go you shall make such purchases as you may need – ”

Polly drew away from her along the seat, and her gray eyes grew brighter. “Oh, Miss Mallory!” she murmured. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?” demanded Wyn.

“Don’t spoil it all.”

“Spoil what-all?” cried Wyn, in exasperation. “I’m not going to spoil anything. But you listen to me. This is sense.”

“I–I couldn’t take charity from you– a stranger.”