Tripping with the Tucker Twins

"There are others!" put in Dum. "Do you know you have not stopped once for half-an-hour?"

"Well, I'm not out of gas yet."

"No, I reckon not! You are some self-starter, too. Nobody has to get out and crank you up and persuade you to get going. Funerals don't stop you. You go in high all the time, go so fast a traffic cop can't see your number."

"Well, I'm afraid I have monopolized the conversation some but it has been a very exciting day. I'm going to divide up with you, Dum. I believe between us we can get all of those debts paid."

"Oh, Dee, that would be too good of you!"

"Nonsense! You worked just as hard as I did. I believe in an equal distribution of wealth. Count up, Page, and see where we stand."

"Let's see! You made ten dollars and fifty cents; Dum made two dollars and ten cents – that makes twelve dollars and sixty cents. You owe five dollars and seventy-three cents – Dum owes seven dollars and twenty-three cents. That makes twelve dollars and ninety-six cents. You are thirty-six cents short."

"Oh, but I've got thirty-seven cents and a street car ticket. That leaves a penny over, to say nothing of the ticket. Hurrah! Hurrah!" and those irresponsible Tuckers, all three of them, got up and danced the lobster quadrille with me in the middle. When they stopped, completely out of breath, Dee exclaimed:

"Oh, Zebedee! I am awfully sorry, but I am afraid you will have to pay for the gas after all. I charged it."

And all Zebedee said was: "I'll be – " and just as Dee said would be the case, what he said does not bear repetition and certainly is not to be printed.

Mrs. Barton Alston had many a treat from the Tuckers. Dum did not collect her two dollars and ten cents until she had made many trips to the boss. He tried to persuade her to accept a steady job with him as an agent for household novelties, and while she naturally could not do it, she declared it gave her a very comfortable feeling that if she should have to earn her living there was at least one avenue open to her.

The day after Dee's success as a jitneur the paper came out with headlines that the jitneys were no longer within the law. Bonds must be furnished, licenses must be paid, etc. Dee had been not a day too soon in her venture.

Zebedee never said one word of reproach to Tweedles. When he gave voice to the unprintable remark above he was through.

"I know I ought to do something about it," he moaned to me several days after when he caught me alone. "It was a very risky thing for both of my girls – they might have got in no end of scrapes – but what am I to do? If I row with them and get Mr. Tuckerish even you get out with me, and somehow I feel as long as the girls tell me everything, that they can't get into very serious mischief. I know I have not done my part by them. If I had been the right kind of unselfish father I would have married long ago when they were tiny little tots and have had some good, sensible woman bring them up."

"They don't look at it that way."

"Well, you could hardly expect them to 'kiss the rod'."

I laughed aloud at that.

"What's the matter?"

"I am wondering what the 'good, sensible woman' would think at being called a rod. I wonder if there is any woman good enough to undertake the job of rod."

"Perhaps not," he said ruefully. "You see when my little Virginia died, all my friends and hers got busy and found a roomful of worthy ladies that they considered the proper persons to marry me and bring up the twins, but all of them were rather rod-like in a way, and somehow I never could make up my mind to kiss 'em either. The trouble about me is I can't grow up, and anyone whom my friends consider a suitable age for me now, I look upon as a kind of mother to me."

"I think Tweedles are getting on pretty well without a stepmother," I managed to say. I felt about as bad as the twins themselves would have at the thought of Zebedee's marrying again. "They never do anything too bad to tell you, but they do lots of things I fancy they would not tell a stepmother."

"Well, little friend, if you think that, I reckon I'll worry along 'in single blessedness' for a while yet."

The Tucker Twins had been living in dread of a stepmother ever since they had been conscious of living at all. It was a theme with all of their relations and friends and one that was aired on every occasion. "Jeffry Tucker should marry again!" was the cry and sometimes the battle cry of every chaperone in Richmond. As Mr. Tucker said, it was always some good, settled lady who needed a home and was willing to put up with the twins who was selected as his mate.

"I don't want to run an old ladies' home. If I ever marry I shall do it for some reason besides furnishing a stepmother to my family and giving a haven of refuge to some deserving lady."

"I don't want to seem disloyal to Dum and Dee, but I think it might be rather salutary if you talk to them just as you have to me, I mean about stepmothers and things. It might make them a little more circumspect."

"All right, I'll try; but I am afraid I have cried 'Wolf!' too often and they would just laugh at me."

Tweedles did listen to him quite seriously when he broached the subject of his duty to marry again and give them the proper chaperonage.

"Oh, Zebedee, please don't talk about such terrible things. We'll be good and learn how to sew," wailed Dum. "I'm going to make some shirts the very first thing."

"Oh please, please spare me! I couldn't bear for you to get so good that I'd have to wear home-made shirts!" And so the threat of a stepmother was withdrawn for the time being.

CHAPTER V

A TRIP TO CHARLESTON

My ankle improved rapidly and in another week I was able to walk and still another to dance. I had been patience itself, so my friends declared, and I am glad they thought so. I had really been impatience itself but had kept it to myself.

"Girls, I've got a scheme!" exclaimed Zebedee one evening after dinner. "I want to send a special correspondent to South Carolina to write up the political situation and I am thinking about sending myself. If I do, I am going to take all of you. I have written your father, Page, and an answer came from him today. He says you may go, as he knows it would do you good. I haven't said anything about it to you girls until I was sure I could work it."

"Oh goody, goody, goody! Where will we go first?"

"Charleston first! I may leave you there awhile, as I have to do some knocking around, but it will not be for very long, not more than a day at a time."

We plunged into shopping the very next day. Father had sent me a check for necessary clothes, and the all-important matter had to be attended to speedily.

"Let's get all of our things exactly alike and pass for triplets! It would be such a scream on Zebedee," suggested Dee.

"Triplets, much! We'd just look like a blooming orphan asylum and get in a book. It seems to me that every book I pick up lately is about orphan asylums. Chauffeurs and orphans and aviators form the theme for every book or magazine story I read. No, indeed! Let's get our clothes just as different as possible," said Dum, rapidly turning the pages in Vogue.

"All right. Then we can wear each other's. I'm going to get brown."

"I'm crazy for dark green, if you don't think it will make my freckles show on my nose too much. My nose and its freckles are a great trial to me."

"Nonsense! You've got the cutest nose in Virginia and Zebedee says he likes freckles," said Dee, always tactful.

"Well, he can have them, I'm sure I don't want them. What color are you going to get, Dum?"

"Anything but blue. There is a refinement about blue that I can't stand right now. I want something dashing and indicative of my sentiments of its being my bounden duty to have a good time."

"Red?"

"No, red's too obvious! I think I'll get lavender or mauve. Then I can wear violets (when I can get them). I think lavender suits my mood all right. It is kind of widowish and widows when they get into lavender are always out for a good time. I tell you when widows get to widding they are mighty attractive. I don't see why they don't stay in their pretty white crêpe linings, though. They are so terribly becoming. I mean to make a stunning widow some day."

"First catch your flea before you kill him," taunted Dee.

"Well, I can't see the use in having your hair grow in a widow's peak on your forehead if you can't ever be a widow. It seems such a waste."

"There's time yet! You are only seventeen," I laughed.

"Seventeen is old enough to know what style suits me best. Weeds are my proper environment."

In spite of Dum's conviction about weeds she purchased a most becoming and suitably youthful suit in a soft mauve. Dee got exactly the same style in brown and I in green. We deviated in hats, however, and each girl thought her own was the prettiest, which is a great test of hats. Hats are like treats at soda fountains: you usually wish you had ordered something you didn't order and something your neighbor did.

Spring was late in making its appearance in Virginia that year, but since we were going to South Carolina we bravely donned our new suits and hats. Zebedee declared he was proud of us, we were so stylish.

"I have a great mind to grow some whiskers so people won't think I am your little nephew," he said as he settled us in our section. The three of us girls were to occupy one section, two below and one above, lots to be cast how we were to dispose ourselves.

"Nephew, much! You've got three gray hairs in your part now," declared Dee.

"Each of you is responsible for one of them." Mr. Tucker often classed me with his own girls and really when I was with them I seemed to be a member of the family. He treated me with a little more deference than he did Tweedles because he said I seemed to be older. I was really a few days younger.

Dee got the upper berth in the casting of lots and Dum and I slept in the lower, at least, Dum slept. I was conscious of much jerking and bumping of the train, and Dum seemed to be demonstrating the batty-cake flipflapper all night.

We had left Richmond with a belated sprinkling of snow, but as we were nearing Charleston at about five-thirty in the morning we ran through a fine big thunder storm, and then torrents of rain descended, beating against the windows. Of course some bromide who got off the train with us, said something about "the back-bone of winter."

What a rain! It seemed to be coming down in sheets, and such a thing as keeping dry was out of the question. Tweedles and I regretted our new spring suits and straw hats, but since we had been so foolhardy as to travel in them we had to make the best of it and trust to luck that they would not spot.

The train had reached Charleston at six and by rights it should have been dawn, but it was as dark as pitch owing to the thunder clouds that hung low over the city.

Zebedee hustled us into a creaking, swaying bus that reminded us somewhat of the one at Gresham. Other travelers were there ahead of us and as everyone was rather damp the odor of the closed vehicle was somewhat wet-doggish.

We rattled over the cobblestones through narrow streets, every now and then glimpsing some picturesque bit of wall when we came to one of the few and far between lamp posts. But it was generally very dim and would have been dreary had we not been in a frame of mind to enjoy everything we saw and to look at life with what Dee called "Behind-the-clouds-the-sun's-still-shining" spirit.

The bus turned into better lighted streets with smoother paving.

"Meeting Street," read Dum from a sign. "Doesn't that sound romantic? Do you reckon it means lovers meet here?"

"It may, but I am very much afraid it just means the many churches that abound on this street," laughed Zebedee.

I wondered who the people were in the bus with us, but they seemed to take no interest at all in us. There were two pale old ladies in black crêpe veils drawn partly over their faces; a dignified old gentleman in a low-cut vest and a very high collar with turned-down flaps that seemed especially designed to ease his double chin; and a young girl about sixteen or seventeen who had evidently been in a day coach all night and was much rumpled and tousled therefrom. She seemed to belong to the pompous old gentleman, at least I gathered as much, as I had seen him meet her at the station and noticed he gave her a fatherly peck of greeting. Not a word did they utter however on that bumpy bus ride, and although the two pale old ladies in crêpe veils had stiffly inclined their shrouded heads as father and daughter entered the vehicle and they in turn had acknowledged the bow, not one word passed their lips. Evidently a public conveyance was not the proper place for Charlestonians to converse. The girl, who was very pretty in spite of being so tired and dishevelled, smiled a sympathetic smile when Dum enthused over Meeting Street. I had a feeling if we could get her by herself she would chatter away like any other girl.

Perhaps the old man won't be so stiff when he gets his breakfast. It is hard to be limber on a wet morning and an empty stomach. When one has so much stomach it must be especially hard to have it empty, I thought.

It seemed very impertinent of the omnibus to bump this dignified old gentleman so unmercifully. He held on to his stomach with both hands, an expression of indignation on his pompous countenance, while his double chin wobbled in a manner that must have been very trying to his dignity.

The pale old ladies in crêpe veils took their bumping with great elegance and composure. When the sudden turning of a corner hurled one of them from her seat plump into Zebedee's arms, if she was the least disconcerted she did not show it. A crisp "I beg your pardon!" was all she said as she resumed her seat. She did pull the crêpe veil entirely over her face, however, as though to conceal from the vulgar gaze any emotion that she might have felt. Of course we giggled. We always giggled at any excuse, fancied or real. The pretty girl giggled, too, but turned it into a cough as her father pivoted his fat little person around and looked at her in evident astonishment.

The bus backed up to our hotel where a grinning porter was in readiness to capture our bags. Our fellow travelers were evidently relieved at our departure. I saw through the window that both ladies put back their stuffy veils and that the old gentleman relaxed his dignified bearing somewhat and entered into conversation with them. The young girl, however, peered rather wistfully through the drenched pane at us as we gaily took possession of the hotel lobby.

"Wasn't she sweet! Maybe we will see her again sometime," said Dee.

"I couldn't see her at all from where I sat," declared Zebedee. "Her old father's embonpoint obstructed my view."

The hotel where Zebedee had decided to take us was not the newest and most fashionable in Charleston, but he had heard it was the most typical and that the cooking was quite good. It had been built years before the famous earthquake, and had still marks of that calamity. The floors, many of them, had a down-hill tendency, and there were cracks under the doors and I believe not one right angle in a single wall of the house.

The room we girls were to occupy was a great square chamber with a large window looking out on a cobbled street. There were picturesque doors, and walls with mysterious shuttered windows, where one could occasionally see eyes peering forth. It is against the Charleston code of manners to open shutters or raise the blinds of windows that look out on the street.

The floor of our room was on a decided slant and this caused a very amusing accident. There was a large armchair with broad substantial rockers into which Dum sank to rest her weary bones until breakfast. The chair was pointed down-hill and over Dum went backwards, and nothing in the world but her fine new spring hat saved her from getting a terrible bump on her head.

"It's like living in the Tower of Pisa!" she exclaimed as we pulled her up.

"You had better remember to rock up-hill next time," admonished Dee. "I bet you, we will all develop a mountain leg living on such a slant. But isn't it fascinating? As soon as breakfast is over, let's go out and explore. I want to peep in the shutters all along the way and see what everybody is having for breakfast and going to have for dinner."

"That's just the way I feel! If anything is shut, I want to peep in. If it is locked, I want to get in."

Our hotel was run on the American plan and our grinning waiter insisted upon bringing us everything on the bill of fare. I think he saw in Zebedee the possibilities of a liberal tip. In South Carolina there is a law against tipping. In all of the rooms of hotels the guests are reminded of this by large printed placards, but like most laws of the kind it seems made only to be broken.

"The tight-wads who kicked against tipping the poor colored servants now have the law on their side and can get out of it gracefully, but the people who tip because they feel that the servants have earned some little acknowledgment of their faithful services, go on tipping just as though no law had been made," said Zebedee, as he slipped some silver under the side of his plate in view of the watching darky, who pounced upon it with a practiced hand, while making a feint of removing finger bowls.

"I am going to turn you girls loose now to find your way around and seek out the wonders of Charleston. I have work to do and politicians to see."

"All right! Don't worry about us!" tweedled the twins.

"I want to get a map of the city first," said Dee, "so we can get our bearings," but Dum and I cried down this project.

"Let's find out things for ourselves and then get a map and guide book to verify us. It's lots more fun to go at it that way."

"Well, all I know is that this hotel is on Meeting Street, and on our right is Church Street and on our left King. The street under your window is Queen, and if you walk south down Meeting you come to the Battery. You can't get lost and can't get in any trouble unless you try to climb the spiked fences or get over the walls covered with broken bottles. I'll meet you at luncheon at one," and Zebedee took himself off to find out things from some of the political lights of the city.

We were left to our own devices. The sun had come out and if we had not been in the rain we would not have believed it could have come down in such torrents only a short while ago. Our dresses did not spot.

"Let's not go in any place this morning but just walk around and see from the outside. It would be low of us to do the graveyards and things without Zebedee. He loves those things and will want to see them," said Dee.

It was a strange taste for one so cheerful, but it was the truth that Mr. Tucker was especially fond of poking around musty old churches and reading epitaphs on tombstones.

We walked to St. Michael's, looking longingly through the iron gates at the quaint old tombstones, but refrained from going in for Zebedee's sake. We passed many beautiful old houses, some of them in perfect repair, brave in fresh paint, with trimmed hedges and gravel walks in their lovely old gardens that we could see by peering through the wrought-iron gates. Some of the houses, though, looked as though they had not been painted since the Revolution, and their gardens were grown up with weeds, with ragged, untrimmed hedges and neglected paths.

Almost every house, big or little, boasts a southern gallery or porch. The houses are built right on the street, but the large door opens from the street to the porch and not to the house. The gardens are to the side and back, and, as a rule, are surrounded by great brick walls with either iron spikes across the top or ferocious broken bottles cemented to the bricks. The windows, opening on the street, are kept shuttered closely, and iron bars give you to understand that there is no breaking into Charleston society by night or day. The corners of the houses, where the porches are, also are protected from possible interlopers by great iron spikes, a foot long and sharp enough to pierce the hide of a rhinoceros. The porches are also shuttered, partly to protect the inmates from the rude gaze of the passer-by and partly to protect them from the ruder gaze of the southern sun.

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