Tripping with the Tucker Twins

Speed Nell

Tripping with the Tucker Twins

CHAPTER I

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES

After our boarding-school burned on that memorable night in March, it seemed foolish to start to school again so late in the season; at least it seemed so to the Tucker twins and me. Their father and mine were rather inclined to think we had better enter some institute of learning in Richmond or take extra classes, do something besides loaf; but we earnestly pleaded to be let off for the rest of the year, and they succumbed to our entreaties.

My ankle gave me a good deal of trouble. You remember, no doubt, how I sprained it getting out of the second-story window when the false alarm of fire rang, the afternoon before the real bona fide fire. Dee's first aid to the injured was all very well for the time being, but when we arrived in Richmond a surgeon had to be called to attend to it, and the ankle was put in plaster.

"A sprain can be much more serious than a break," the surgeon said solemnly as he looked at the much swollen foot and ankle. "I shall have to take an X-ray of this to be sure no bones are broken, and then, young lady, you will have to be quiet for some days, how many I can't yet tell."

Never having been disabled in my life, I had no idea how irksome it could become. On no account to put your foot to the ground and to feel perfectly well is about as hard a job as could be given me, an active country girl. Father came up from Milton and heartily agreed with the surgeon in charge.

"I have set a carload of broken legs in my time and bandaged a wagonful of ankles, and I am sure I have had less trouble from the legs than the ankles. It is because, as a rule, a sprain is not treated seriously enough. Now, honey, you have got to sit still and take it."

I sat still all right, although it nearly killed me to do it. Not even crutches were allowed for a week for fear I might be tempted to bear my weight on the offending member.

The Tuckers, father and twins, were goodness itself to me. I was afraid to express a wish, because no matter how preposterous it was they would immediately rush off and try to get whatever silly thing I had in a careless moment expressed a desire for. For instance, one day Dum came in enthusiastic over a new drugstore drink she had discovered:

"Vanilla ice cream with fresh pineapple mixed up with it, orange syrup and lots of bubbly soda! The best mess you ever sucked through a straw!"

"Ummm-ummm! Sounds good to me! When I can trust this old limb of Satan I am going to make straight for that drugstore and drink three of them."

Mr. Tucker had just arrived from the newspaper office where he labored many hours a day. He must have been tired sometimes, but he never looked it and never complained of work. Eternal youth seemed to belong to him, and undying energy.

"Good? I think it sounds awful!" he exclaimed. "You girls must astonish your poor little insides with the impossible mixtures you put in 'em."

"I think it sounds fine, and I am surely going to have three of them just as soon as I can toddle."

Mr. Tucker laughed and left the room, and I wearily resumed a not very interesting book I was reading while Dum followed her father. I read on, hoping to come to something better. I fancy not more than ten minutes had elapsed when father and daughter burst into the room, Dum carrying two foaming soda-water glasses and Zebedee one. The dauntless pair had actually cranked up Henry Ford, as they dubbed their little old automobile, and speeded down to the drugstore where they knew how to make that particular mixture, and brought them back to me.

"Your blood be on your own head if you drink them. They look pizen to me."

But drink them I did, all three, much to the wonderment of Zebedee, who declared that girls were fearfully and wonderfully made. I did feel slightly fizzly, but after my kind friends had brought them to me and even braved the danger of arrest and fine for speeding, trying to get the drinks to me with the foam on, I felt it was up to me to show my appreciation. The only way to show it was to drink the soda. What if I did burst in the effort?

The Tucker twins and I were almost seventeen, our birthdays coming quite near together, and their father, now Zebedee to all of us, was about thirty-seven, I think, almost thirty-eight. The Tuckers were so irresponsible in some ways that I often felt myself to be older than any of them, although I was certainly not very staid myself. Zebedee always declared he was just grown up enough to keep out of debt, but keep out of debt he would no matter what temptations he had to withstand. Tweedles regarded debt as the only lawful state, and hard they found it to keep within their allowance, but the one time when Zebedee was really severe was when they exceeded that allowance. Dum was worse about it than Dee, as her artistic temperament made it hard for her to keep up with money.

"It just goes, and I don't know where!" she would exclaim.

When we got back to Richmond after the fire, one day when Zebedee was in Norfolk attending a convention of newspaper men, to be gone several days, the sisters realized that a day of reckoning had arrived and they must take stock of their assets and liabilities. Each one had borrowed small sums from various friends at school, intending to pay back out of allowances forthcoming, and also expecting to realize large sums from old clothes that our washerwoman would sell on commission to the colored contingent in the village. Colored people for some unknown reason would much rather have clothes that have been worn by white people than new ones out of shops. Of course the fire had interrupted this traffic and Tweedles never expected to see the money owed them by our washerwoman's clients.

"I could have worn that corduroy skirt for months longer, but I thought I could get two dollars and a half for it at least and help get out of debt," wailed Dee.

"And I just loved my blue linen shirtwaist and the frayed cuffs hardly showed at all, and now the old washerwoman has got my shirt and the fifty cents, too – to say nothing of my old-rose dinner dress that I am scared to death about every night for fear Zebedee will ask me why I don't wear it. He always liked the color of it so much," and Dum looked ready to weep.

"Well, girls, count it all up and see where you stand; maybe I can lend you enough to get you out," I said.

"You sound like we were in jail," declared Dee ruefully. "I don't see how on earth you keep on top so yourself. You seem to do as many things as we do and always pay your share, and still you don't get in debt."

"I don't know how it is," I laughed, "unless I am like the Yankee who left his wife a large fortune, much to the astonishment of his neighbors, who did not know he had anything. When questioned as to the way her husband had made the money, the wife said: 'Wal, you see my husband was powerful fond of oysters, and whenever he went up to the city he just didn't get any.' You girls don't know how free you are with money. If you buy a paper that costs a penny you always say, 'Keep the change!' And then when a tip of ten cents is all that is necessary, you invariably give twenty-five."

"I know that's so," they contritely tweedled.

"Count up and see where you're at," and then they figured in silence for a few minutes.

"I owe five dollars and seventy-three cents," said Dee, getting hers added up first and emptying her purse; "I've got just thirty-seven cents and a street car ticket between me and the penitentiary."

"And I owe seven dollars and twenty-three cents and I haven't got anything but a green trading stamp and a transfer to Ginter Park that I did not use," and Dum searched in the corners of her purse for a possible penny that might have escaped her.

"I've three dollars and will have some more soon, as father is going to send me a check for a spring suit. You let me pay you both out of debt."

"We just can't. It only puts off the evil hour. We can't let you give us the money, and how will we ever pay it back?"

"Why don't you earn it?" I ventured.

"Earn it! Splendid! But how? Dum earned fifty cents once making paper dolls to sell at the Arts and Crafts, and Zebedee pays us both to dust the books and put them back in the right places, something the housemaids are incapable of doing; but this money we must earn without letting Zebedee get on to it. Where's the morning paper?"

But Dum had already got it and was poring over the want ads. Dee had to content herself with the news section, while Dum monopolized the "Help Wanted – Female" part.

"What's this?" demanded Dee, reading headlines: "'Ordinance to prohibit the drivers of jitney cars!' That is a sin and a shame. I can't see why they can't let the poor men make a little money without issuing ordinances. Oh, it is only under consideration! They may not pass it —

"By the great Jumping Jingo, I've got a scheme! I'm going to turn Henry Ford into a jitney bus. Zebedee'll be away for two more days, and by the time he comes back I bet I'll have enough to pay my debts and blow us all to the swellest supper at Rueger's."

Jitneys had just reached Richmond that spring, and every man or boy out of work who could beg, borrow or steal an old tumbled-down car had gone into the business of running a jitney. The streets were swarming with them, and the public, pleased with the novelty, patronized them to the neglect and chagrin of the trolleys. Of course there were some drivers who would hardly have been trusted with coal carts, and there were many accidents by reason of this. We adored the jitneys. Of course, I had not been able to ride in them because of my ankle keeping me house-bound, but I loved to see them swing around the corner, and always had my chair or sofa in the bay window where I could get a good view of them. There seemed to be such a happy, good-natured crowd of passengers; and certainly many a shopgirl and workingman got to ride in a jitney who had despaired before of ever being fortunate enough to get into an automobile. The Tuckers were strong upholders of the poor man's rights and patronized the jitneys whenever their own Henry Ford was out of commission or in use by some other member of the family.

"But what will your father say?"

"More than likely he will say something that won't bear repetition, but by that time I will have paid my debts."

"But will they let girls run one?"

"How are they going to help it? The ones who are running them are liable to be stopped any day, but so far there are no laws one way or the other about it, and I am going to get in my licks before they have time to make any. Besides, I am not going to look very feminine."

"That's what I get for being a pig and snatching up the want column before you could get it. Now if I had let you have it like a lady I could have got the jitney scheme first," grumbled Dum.

"What difference does that make? You can go in on it, you goose!"

"But I'm not going in. I think I ought to earn something my own way. That was your scheme, and I am not going to butt in on it."

"Well, you know you are welcome; but suit yourself."

"But, Dee, you say you are not going to look very feminine. Surely you are not going to wear pants?" I asked, aghast at what these Heavenly Twins would do next.

"Oh, no! I have no intention of landing in the pen. I'm just going to make up the upper half to look mannish. I'll wear Zebedee's big coat, which I tried to make him take to Norfolk with him and he wouldn't, just to be stubborn. Now ain't I glad?" and she put it on to show how well it fitted. "If it is a nice cool day I can keep the collar turned up so! Now there is no law about a lady's hat, and I am going to wear Zebedee's chauffeur's cap." She accordingly put it on, pulling it well down over her ears. "Now all I need is a dirty face. I've never yet seen a jitney driver who did not have a shady face. I wonder if I had not better just acquire it by the natural method of gradual accumulation, or if I could smudge it on tomorrow morning."

By this time Dum and I were reduced to a pulp with the giggles. Dum had for the time being abandoned her search for a lucrative job and had entered with zest into her sister's plans.

"Your hair is too lumpy-looking under your cap and it rides up too high on your head."

"Well, it shall have to be cut off then. It will grow out again."

"Dee! No! You mustn't! That would make your father really angry. Plait it in a tight rope and put it down your neck, inside your collar."

No sooner said than done, and now the cap came down to meet the upturned collar.

"You must wear Zebedee's gloves and take off your ring. Your hands look mighty sissy. You'll do fine if Henry Ford will just behave and you don't have to get out to crank him. It's too bad about the pants. You would be perfect if you could just wear pants. If you should have to get out, it would sho' be a joke if you got arrested for wearing skirts. You look terribly like a bad boy," and so she did. "And now I must get back to the task of finding a job for myself," and Dum returned wearily to the want column. Dee's delightful get-rich-quick scheme made everything else seem very colorless.

"'Wanted – A mother's helper to mind four children and wash dishes.' What do you reckon the lazy thing would be doing while I was doing all that for her? 'Wanted – Woman to wash only by the day.' Does the idiot think I could keep it up all night? Here we are! 'Wanted – Twenty able-bodied young women to apply between the hours of three and five p. m. to make house-to-house canvass, selling a number of household novelties.'" Dum grabbed her hat and began to draw on her gloves. "Here, Page, cut this out for me. It is ten minutes to three now and I can just get there!"

Dum was out of the house before we could say Jack Robinson, the clipping from the want column grasped tightly in her hand and her chin set in its determined, square, do-or-die lines.

"When Dum looks like that she always gets what she goes after," said Dee, looking admiringly after her twin as she jumped in Henry Ford, who spent a large part of his waking life parked in front of the apartment house or newspaper office. "Maybe going in a car, even a bum one like Henry, will queer her game. If she will only have sense enough to stop a little to one side of the place!"

We waited in almost breathless silence for Dum's return, Dee experimenting with her hair for the morrow's fray and I gazing out of the window at the whirling jitneys skidding around the corner, making hair-breadth escapes.

"There she is!" and Henry Ford sure enough threaded his way jauntily through the crowded street, turned himself about like a graceful skater and parked himself in good order just one inch from the curb. The Tuckers were all born chauffeurs, and, like most born chauffeurs or riders or drivers, they showed their skill by going faster than the law allows. They prided themselves on being able to go very close to things without touching them, and indeed I have seen Henry Ford almost take the buttons off the fat traffic cop at Seventh and Broad. That time Zebedee was driving, and as he skimmed by the grinning policeman he called out:

"If it had been after dinner I would have hit you," and the delighted officer shook his fat sides and patted his bay window with its row of gleaming buttons, showing he understood Mr. Tucker's joke. "There are two classes of persons I always keep in with – policemen and cooks. You can get into no very serious trouble when you have them on your side," Zebedee had laughed gaily.

"I've got a job! I've got a job!" cried Dum, almost breathless with haste and excitement as she rushed into the room where Dee and I waited.

"What is it?"

"Selling household novelties, of course. I'm to report at eight in the morning. I was the third girl to get in to see the boss. You never saw such a pompadoured, gum-chewing crowd in your life. I felt so ladylike I hardly knew myself. The boss was sure some household novelty himself. He is fat and soft, looks powerful like a dough ball, wears button shoes and an embroidered vest, curly black hair done up in a roach and stewed prune eyes and a full set, upstairs and down, of false teeth that look like

"'Thirty white horses on a red hill,Now they dance, now they prance,Now they stand still.'"

"But, Dum, what on earth are household novelties?" I gasped.

"And how much are you to get?" demanded Dee.

"One at a time! There is a whole bunch of novelties: one is a little plug to keep windows from rattling; another a needle-threader; another a silver polish; another a spot-knocker; a patent batty-cake turner that makes the batty-cake do the flipflap by pressing a button – either for cakes or omelettes; then there's Mrs. Rand – "

"No, not really!"

Mrs. Rand was a miscellaneous implement we had taken to boarding-school that had been purchased from a street fakir and we had named for the landlady at Willoughby Beach, who had been very irate over the Tuckers having lost the one she had in the cottage they rented from her. It was a combination apple-corer, can-opener, cheese-grater, potato-parer, and what not. It was the kind of thing you could use for everything but the things it was intended for. It was a great screw-driver and tack hammer and invaluable to gouge things out of deep cracks.

"I'll buy a Mrs. Rand with pleasure," I promised. "I have never ceased to regret that I did not save ours in the fire and let the pincushion Cousin Park Garnett gave me perish in the flames."

"Well, that's one sale already! That means five cents. I get five cents on every sale I make."

"I'll take a batty-cake turner just to see it do the flipflap, if it takes a whole trip of fares to pay for it."

"Good for you, Dee! I'll ride in your jitney if my work takes me in the West End."

CHAPTER II

EARNING A LIVING

We were up bright and early the next morning. I was dressed and tenderly cared for, with my easy chair dragged into the bay window, where I could command a view of the street east and west as far as the eye could reach. A housemaid, whose duty it was in the morning to do up the Tuckers' apartment, was cautioned to look in on me every half-hour to see that I wanted for nothing.

"Zebedee would kill us for leaving you this way," declared Dum as she embraced me good-by. "Nothing but the exigencies of the case excuse us."

"'My poverty and not my will consents,'" quoted Dee. "We'll be in for lunch. We've got to eat, and it might just as well be here." The maid was instructed to bring a generous supply of lunch up to the apartment at one o'clock. "If we have it up here I won't have to wash my face. I have worked so hard to make the dirt on it look casual that I can't contemplate going all over it again."

Of course my meals had to be brought up to me from the café because of my old ankle, and the girls often had theirs brought up, too, although they preferred going down as a rule. They insisted they missed too many tricks by having them sent up. "No second and third helps to pie, and the one help you get too dainty for us."

"Look out the window for me every ten minutes or so and pray that Henry won't get cranky and have to be cranked and have me expose my skirts to the rude gaze of the public," begged Dee as she hugged me good-by. She had to forego the kiss as she was afraid of rubbing off her dirty make-up, and I was quite willing to have it thus. Brindle, her beloved bulldog, was not so squeamish as I, however, and gave her an affectionate and disastrous lick. "Brindle can keep you company, honey. Good-by, darling," to the dog. "I'm going to take you down to your household necessity, Dum, and I am going to do it for nothing, too. I am loaded to the guards with gas. I reckon I won't put out my sign until I get downtown. I'll start my trade from down there."

Dum had lettered the jitney sign for her the evening before. It was most artistic, done in large blue letters on white cardboard:

MONUMENTAVENUE5c JITNEY 5c

Dee was not a day too soon in her venture, for already the authorities were taking the matter of the jitney business in hand, and the privilege of running a jitney without special license and a $5,000 bond was on the verge of being withdrawn from the legion of owners of broken-down Fords.

My morning was far from dull. The attentive maid came popping in every few minutes, I had a pile of new magazines and papers, and there was the never-dying excitement of watching for Dee and her blue-and-white sign.

On her return trip, after taking Dum to the household necessities, she had a lone passenger – certainly not enough money in that to pay for the gas; but on the downtown trip she caught many an early worm, and her car was actually running over. At that time there were no rules about standing on the steps and overcrowding, and Dee had taken in every one who had raised a finger. I counted thirty-five cents, which was going some for a five-passenger car. Dee had a small plaid shawl which she had wrapped around her legs to conceal her skirt. She looked as much like a boy as Zebedee himself must have at her age. She never forgot to look up at my window, and, on seeing me, would touch her cap in a most gentlemanly way, a grin on her funny, dirty face.

Up to nine-thirty her downtown trips were all crowded, while her outgoing ones were but sparsely patronized. Then there was a lull in her traffic until about eleven, when the shoppers began to pour downtown. Women and babies! women and babies! Sometimes women and dogs! Brindle, who never left the window, and seemed to be watching for Dee and Henry Ford as eagerly as I was, resented the dogs very much. He felt that his rightful place was in that car, and any dog who dared get in it was to be disciplined through the window glass if he could not reach him in any other way.

Every time Dee raised her dirty face and grinned at us Brindle would tremble all over with excitement and joy. I trembled, too, for fear that he would break the great pane of glass, he scratched on it with such vigor.

Before the hordes of shoppers were disposed of the men and business women began to jitney their way back to their homes for luncheon. It was actually almost one o'clock. I could hardly believe it. The morning had been fraught with excitement to me as I had kept account of Dee's earnings, and in watching for her and keeping up with her gains I had had little time for literature.

At one o'clock sharp, Henry Ford, shorn of his gorgeous blue-and-white placard, parked in front of the apartment house, and in a moment a breathless and excited Dee was hugging first Brindle and then me, quite careless of her make-up.

"Gee, but I am tired and hungry! It is a sin to be wasting all those fares. Just see how crowded the jitneys are! But I am so hungry I'm fittin' to bust. Where's Dum? Here, count my earnings while I scrape off enough dirt to eat." She poured into my lap a pile of silver and nickels.

"Four dollars and fifteen cents!" I called to her in the bathroom, where she was punishing her begrimed face. "I counted more than that; I kept watching and saw you every time you passed."

"Oh, yes, I took a load of old soldiers out to the Soldiers' Home for nothing. I gave them the time of their lives. They were so tickled, I took them down and back again. That made sixty cents short."

That was so like Dee and explained the many old men I had seen in the car.

Dum came bursting in just as the maid brought a tray laden with food. "Lord love us, but I'm tired! I have had a rip-roaring time, though. I can get off a spiel that would sell household novelties to Fiji Islanders. Mrs. Rand has taken like hot cakes, and the batty-cake turner went with it to turn those cakes." She had with her a disreputable-looking canvas telescope that contained her samples. Her job was to go from house to house and take orders, to be delivered later. Her pocket was bursting with signed agreements to pay for said wares on delivery. "Here, Page, please count 'em up and see how rich I am. What did you make, Dee? I am dying to hear all about your morning! You tell first and then I'll tell."

"I made four dollars and fifteen cents. I can't tell you about my morning now because I've got to eat with my mouth. I'm missing fares until it makes me sick," and Dee jumped into her lunch with such vim that Dum and I deemed it wiser to eat, too, for fear there would be nothing left from the voracious jitneur.