The Corner House Girls Under Canvas

“I hope she won’t go so far from here that I shall never see her again,” thought Ruth. “For she was interested in Rosa Wildwood, I am sure; and it might be that she could tell me something about Rosa’s missing sister.”

While Agnes put forth many “guesses” and “supposin’s” about the strange girl, Dot had quite another problem in her enquiring mind. And finally, as they were getting ready for bed that night, she threw out a leading question which attracted the immediate attention of her three sisters:

“Say, Ruthie,” she asked, “how do frankfurters grow?”

“What?” gasped Agnes, and clapped a hand over her own mouth to keep from laughing.

“How do they grow, dear?” returned Ruth, rather taken aback herself.

“Goodness gracious, child!” exclaimed Tess. “They don’t grow on bushes like pea-pods.”

“Oh, no, of course not!” ejaculated Dot, who did not like to be considered ignorant. “A frankfurter flies, doesn’t it?”

“Mercy!” murmured Ruth. “Hear her!”

“Oh! I mean it crawls – it creeps. Of course,” Dot hurried to add.

Agnes exploded here. She could not keep in any longer.

“Well, I think you’re real mean!” complained Dot. “You won’t tell me. I guess it’s a fish, then. Does it swim?”

“Goodness!” cried Tess.

“Then they come in bunches like bananas!” declared the frantic Dot.

This was the worst yet. Agnes rolled on the matting of the bedroom and almost choked. Ruth herself was laughing heartily at her small sister as she gathered her into her arms and told her just how the sausage-meat was stuffed into the frankfurters’ skins.

“Well!” murmured Dot, at last, and rather sleepily. “I don’t care. I believe they are the very nicest things there are to eat – so there! Those the frankfurter man gave us were perfectly lovely.”

That was what suggested the Frankfurter Party, and the Frankfurter Party was one of the very happiest thoughts that Ruth Kenway ever evolved. We shall have to hear about it, in another chapter.

CHAPTER XXI – MRS. BOBSTER’S MYSTERIOUS FRIEND

Rosa Wildwood quickly showed improvement after her arrival at Pleasant Cove. Under the ministrations of the little old woman who lived in a shoe the Southern girl could not help feeling a measure of contentment, if nothing else.

Her hostess was such a cheerful body! And, as Agnes had promised, Rosa was supplied with good, hearty food – and plenty of it.

There was a glass of warm milk, fresh from the cow, on the stand beside the head of her little chintz-hung bed every morning when Rosa awoke. For Mrs. Bobster was up and about by daybreak.

When Rosa came down to the sunlit kitchen, breakfast was ready and the little old woman who lived in a shoe declared she had all her “outside” chores done, saving her regular work in her garden.

Rosa sometimes helped about the housework. The doctor had told her that certain forms of housework would be good for her. But she had to be very exact and careful in doing the work about the shoe-house, for Mrs. Bobster was a New England housekeeper of the old school and was as methodical as Grandfather’s Clock.

The girls from Milton did not neglect Rosa Wildwood. At least, the Corner House girls and their friends did not. Pearl Harrod and the girls at Spoondrift Bungalow came with a wagonette and took her driving. The repairs had been made upon the bungalow and Pearl’s party was there again – all but the Corner House girls.

Ruth had decided to stick to the tent for the remainder of their stay at Pleasant Cove. And Willowbend Camp was becoming the liveliest spot along the entire beach-front.

Ruth and her sisters came after Rosa and took her out in their boat. The boys who were living at Willowbend, too, took an interest in the frail Southern girl. For Rosa Wildwood, with the color stealing back into her cheeks and lips, and her eyes bright again, was a very attractive girl indeed!

Dot Kenway’s birthday came at this time, and that was the date set for the Frankfurter Party. Dot’s guesses about the origin and nature of the hearty and inviting, if not delicate, frankfurter, had delighted the campers who heard the story; and Dot’s sisters and Neale spent some time and a good deal of ingenuity in preparing for the festive occasion.

Rosa came over to the tent colony and helped the girls prepare for the party. Moreover, she had a secret to impart to Ruth.

“Don’t let the other girls hear, Ruth Kenway,” she said, with much mystery. “But Mrs. Bobster is the oddest thing!”

“Well! I guess she is,” laughed Ruth. “But she’s good.”

“Good as gold,” agreed Rosa. “But she has some funny ways. Of course I go to bed early. The doctor told me I should.”

“Well?”

“You’d think she’d go to bed early, too, when she’s up so soon in the morning?”

“Well – I suppose that’s a matter of taste,” Ruth observed.

“Anyway, you know how lonesome it is over there?”

“I guess there are not many people about – after dark.”

“That’s just it!” cried Rosa. “Mrs. Bobster scurries around and does all her out of doors chores before dark. And she locks and bolts all the doors. She is really afraid after dark.”

Ruth nodded. She remembered how once the little old woman who lived in a shoe had spoken to her about being afraid.

“Well, she locks and bolts the doors,” said Rosa, “and then we have supper and I go to bed. Sometimes, like a good child, I go right to sleep. Sometimes, like a bad child, I don’t.”

“Well – what then?”

“Then I hear Mrs. Bobster talking. She has company. I never hear the company come in, or go out; but she has it every night.”

“And never says anything about it?”

“Not a word,” said Rosa. “I hinted once or twice that she must have company every night, and all she said was that she didn’t like sitting alone.”

“Is it a man or a woman?” asked Ruth.

“I don’t know,” laughed Rosa. “That’s one of the funny things about it. Although I hear Mrs. Bobster sometimes chattering like a magpie, I never hear an answer.”

“What?” gasped Ruth, in amazement.

“That’s right,” said Rosa, nodding confidently. “Whoever it is talks so low that I haven’t heard his, or her, voice yet!”

“A dumb person?” suggested Ruth.

“Maybe. At any rate, I couldn’t tell you for the life of me whether it is a man or a woman that comes to see the little old woman who lives in a shoe. Isn’t it odd, Ruth?”

“I should say it was,” admitted Ruth.

“But she treats me well,” sighed Rosa. “I wouldn’t do her any harm for the world. But I am awfully curious!”

It was this day, too – the day of Dot’s party – that the wooden-legged clam-digger came along through the Willowbend tent colony again. He always came to the tent of the Corner House girls when he appeared; Ruth was a regular customer, for she and her sisters were fond of shellfish.

“I’ll have fifty to-day, Mr. Kuk,” she said to the saltish individual when he hailed her from outside the tent. Ruth had learned that his name was Habakuk Somes; everybody along the beach called him “Kuk,” and Ruth, to be polite, tagged him with “Mister” in addition.

Tom Jonah appeared and showed his disapproval of the clam man by a throaty growl. “That thar dawg don’t like me none too well,” said the clam man. “What d’yeou call him?”

“Tom Jonah.”

“Thet’s enough to sink him,” said the man with a grin. “How’d ye come ter call him that?”

“It’s his name,” said Ruth. “It was engraved on his collar when he came to our house in Milton.”

“Oh! then he ain’t allus been your dawg, shipmet?” demanded the man.

“No. He came to us. We don’t know where from. But he is a gentleman, and he is going to stay with us as long as he will.”

The clam man blinked, and said nothing more. But he cast more than one glance at Tom Jonah before he went away.

The preparations made for the birthday party included the purchase of a good many pounds of first quality frankfurters. And when they were delivered to the Corner House girls’ tent, the fun began.

Tess and Dot were sent away for the morning to play with some of the children at Enterprise Camp. Then Ruth and Agnes and Rosa and Neale set to work to make frankfurters into the very funniest looking things that you could imagine!

With bits of tinsel and colored paper and pins and other small wares, the young folks set to work. They made frankfurters look like caricatures of all kinds of beasts and birds, and insects as well. One was the body of a huge, gaily-winged butterfly. Another was striped and horned like a worm of ferocious aspect.

They were made into fishes, with tails and fins. Neale made a nest with several “young” frankfurters poking their heads out for food, while the mother frankfurter was just poised upon the edge of the nest, her wings spread to balance her.

There were short-legged frankfurters, with long, flapping ears, like dachshunds, and long, stiff-legged frankfurters, with abbreviated tails, and appearing to gambol like lambs. There were several linked together and apparently creeping about like a species of jointed, horrid caterpillar.

Then they actually were bunched like bananas! while some grew, husked, like sweetcorn, and some had the green, fluffy tops of carrots cunningly fastened to them and were tied together as carrots are bunched in the market.

Neale’s ingenuity, however, rose to its height when he stretched a slanting wire across the tent, higher than the partition, and made several “aeroplanes” with bodies of the succulent sausage, which he could start at one end of the wire to “fly” to the other end.

The young folks came to Willowbend Camp about five o’clock to enjoy the festivities. The older Corner House girls, with the help of some of their friends, served the crowd a hearty supper, the main course of which was hot frankfurters, prepared by the “frankfurter man” whose acquaintance Tess and Dot had made.

When the fun was over the guests took the fancy-dressed sausages home as souvenirs.

Neale and Agnes and Ruth went home with Rosa, for it was a long walk, and part of the way it was lonely. One of the ladies who had chaperoned the party remained with Tess and Dot while their sisters were absent.

The young folk had a pleasant walk, for there was a moon. Coming finally in sight of the home of the little old woman who lived in a shoe, Ruth said to Rosa, who walked with her:

“It is a lonely spot, isn’t it?”

“But I never feel afraid. Only I’m curious about Mrs. Bobster’s friend – There! See it?” she cried, suddenly, but under her breath.

“See what?” Ruth asked.

“The shadow on the curtain,” said Rosa.

At the same moment Agnes said: “Hello! Mrs. Bobster has company.”

There was a lamp lit in the tiny front room of the cottage. Plainly silhouetted upon the white shade was a man sitting in a chair.

“What! With his hat on?” exclaimed Ruth. “Who can it be?”

“He isn’t very polite, whoever he is,” said Neale.

“Let’s see about it,” suggested Agnes. “Do you know anything about him, Rosa?”

“I only know she has had a visitor sometimes – after I’m in bed,” said the Southern girl.

“Come on! let’s go in the side door,” said Agnes, in a low voice.

But when they had tiptoed to the door they found it locked. Rosa laughed. “I tell you she never leaves a door or window unfastened after dark,” she said.

They heard the little old woman who lived in a shoe coming to the door to let them in. But Rosa had to assure her who it was before Mrs. Bobster unlocked the door.

“But you had company?” said Agnes, rather pertly.

“Eh?” returned Mrs. Bobster, setting the broom behind the hall door. “Oh, yes! I don’t never kalkerlate ter be alone many evenings.”

“Is he here now?” demanded Neale, laughing.

“Who? Him? No,” said the widow, calmly. “He’s bashful. He went out jest as you young folks come in. Sit right down, children, an’ I’ll find a pitcher of milk an’ some cookies.”

The Corner House girls and Rosa – to say nothing of Neale O’Neil – were amazed. They looked at each other wonderingly as the widow bustled out to the pantry.

“I’d give a penny,” murmured Rosa Wildwood, “to know who her mysterious friend is.”

CHAPTER XXII – THE YARN OF THE “SPANKING SAL”

The wooden-legged clam digger, Habakuk Somes, seemed suddenly to have acquired a great interest in Tom Jonah.

He appeared almost every day at the tent of the Corner House girls and did his best to become friendly with the dog. Tom Jonah grew used to his presence, but he would allow no familiarities from the dilapidated waterside character.

The girls thought “Kuk” Somes only queer; the boys “joshed” him a good deal. Nobody minded having him around, considering merely that he was a peculiar fellow, and harmless.

His tales of sea-going and sea-roving were wonderful indeed. How much of them was truth and how much pure invention, the older Corner House girls and Neale O’Neil did not know. However, they forgave his “historical inaccuracies” because of the entertainment they derived from his yarns.

Tess and Dot listened to the old fellow with perfect confidence in his achievements. Had he not known – in a moment – what it was that shot water up through the holes in the clam flat? The smaller girls listened to old Kuk Somes with unshaken confidence.

“And how did the pirates get your leg, Mr. Kuk?” asked Tess. “Your really truly leg, I mean.”

She and Dot were sitting on the edge of the tent-platform, under the awning, with their bare feet in the sand, with Tom Jonah lying comfortably between them. The dog had a brooding eye upon the clam digger, who sat on a broken lobster trap a few feet away.

“Huh! them pi-rats?” queried the clam digger. “Well – er – now, did I say it was pi-rats as got my leg, shipmet?”

“Yes, you did, sir.” Dot hastened to bolster up her sister’s statement of fact. “And you said it was on the Spanish Main.”

“Well!” declared the old man, “so it was, an’ so they did. Pi-rats it was, shipmet. An’ I’ll tell yer the how of it.

“I was carpenter’s mate on the Spankin’ Sal, what sailed from Bosting to Rio, touchin’ at some West Injy ports on the way – pertic’larly Porto Rico, which is a big merlasses port. We had a good part of our upper holt stowed with warmin’ pans for the merlasses planters – ”

“Oh, Mr. Kuk!” ejaculated Tess in rather a pained voice. “Isn’t that a mistake? Warming pans?”

“Not by a joblot it ain’t no mistake!” returned the old man. “Warming pans I sez, an’ warming pans I sticks to.”

“But my geogoraphy,” Tess ventured, timidly, and mispronouncing the word as usual, “says that the West Indies are tropical. Porto Rico is near the Equator.”

“Now, ain’t that wonderful – jest wonderful?” declared the clam digger, smiting his knee with his palm. “Shows what it is to be book l’arned, shipmet.

“’Course, I knowed them was tropical places, but I didn’t know ’twas all writ down in books – joggerfries, do they call ’em?”

“Yes, sir,” said Tess, seriously. “And it is so hot down there they couldn’t possibly need warming pans.”

“Now, ye’d think that, wouldn’t ye, shipmet? And I’d think it. But the skipper of the Spankin’ Sal, he knowed dif’rent.

“A master brainy man was Captain Roebuck. That was his name – Roebuck,” declared the clam digger, solemnly. “Hev you ever seen a warming pan, shipmet – an old-fashioned warmin’ pan?”

“Oh, yes!” cried Tess and Dot together. “There’s one hangs over the mantelpiece in the sitting-room of the old Corner House,” added Tess. “That’s where we live when we’re at home in Milton.

“And it is a round brass pan, with a cover that has holes in it, and a long handle. Mrs. MacCall says folks used to put live coals in it and iron the beds before folks went to bed, in the cold weather. But we got furnace heat now, and don’t need the warming pan.”

“Surely, surely, shipmet,” agreed the clam digger. “Them’s the things. And Cap’n Roebuck of the Spankin’ Sal, plagued near crammed the upper holt with them.

“It looks right foolish, shipmet; but that skipper got a chancet ter buy up a whole lot o’ them brass warmin’ pans cheap. If he’d seen ’em cheap enough, he’d bought up a hull cargo of secon’ hand hymn books, and he’d took ’em out to the heathen in the South Seas and made a profit on ’em – he would that!” pursued Kuk, confidently.

“He must have been a wonderful man, sir,” said Tess, while Dot sat round-eyed and listened.

“Wonderful! wonderful!” agreed the clam digger. “But about them warmin’ pans. When we got ter Porto Rico we broke out the first of them things. Looked right foolish. All them dons in Panama hats and white pants, an’ barefooted comin’ aboard to look over samples of tradin’ stock, an’ all they can see is warmin’ pans.

“‘What’s them things for?’ axed the first planter, in the Spanish lingo.

“‘Them’s skimmers,’ says Cap’n Roebuck, knowin’ it warn’t no manner o’ use to try to explain the exact truth to a man what ain’t never seed snow, or knowed there was a zero mark on the almanack.

“He grabbed up one o’ them warmin’ pans and made a swing with it like you’d use a crab-net. ‘See! See!’ says the dons. ‘Skim-a da merlasses.’ That’s Spanish for ‘Yes, yes! skim the merlasses,’” explained Kuk, seriously.

“‘But what’s the cover for?’ axed the don. ‘Ye don’t hafter have no cover,’ says Cap’n Roebuck, and he yanks the cover off the warmin’ pan an’ throws it away.

“And there them dons had the finest merlasses dipper that ever went inter the islan’s. Cap’n Roebuck seen their eyes snap an’ put a good, stiff price on the things, and inside of a week there warn’t a warmin’ pan left on the Spankin’ Sal.

“Then,” pursued the clam digger, “we stowed away in our upper holt goods what would bring a fancy price at Rio, and laid our course for the Amazon.

“But we was all hands mighty worritted,” admitted Kuk, lowering his voice mysteriously. “Ye see, ye never could tell in them old days, an’ in the West Injies, who it was safe to trust, an’ who it was safe ter dis-trust.

“Yer see, so many of them snaky Spanish planters was hand an’ glove with the pi-rats. And ev’rybody on the island knowed the Spankin’ Sal was takin’ away a great treasure that had been exchanged for them warmin’ pans. We was a fair mark, as ye might say, for them pi-rats.”

“Oh!” gasped Dot, hugging her Alice-doll the tighter.

“How much treasure was there, Mr. Kuk?” asked the ever-practical Tess.

“A chist full,” announced the clam digger without a moment’s hesitation. “A reg’lar treasure-chist full. All them planters hadn’t had ready cash money to pay for the warmin’ pans, and they’d give in exchange di’monds and other jools – and the exchange rates for American money was high anyway. So the Spankin’ Sal was a mighty good ketch if the pi-rats ketched her.

“So, when we sailed from Porto Rico we kep’ a weather eye open for black-painted schooners with rakin’ masts an’ skulls and shinbones on their flags. When we seed them signs we’d know they was pi-rats,” declared Kuk, gravely.

The small Corner House girls sighed in unison – and in delight! “The plot thickens!” whispered Agnes to Ruth behind the flap of the tent where they were listening, likewise, though unbeknown to Kuk and the children.

“Go on, please, Mr. Kuk,” breathed Tess.

“Oh, do!” said Dot.

“Well, shipmets,” said the old clam digger, “bein’ peaceful merchantmen, as ye might say, we hadn’t shipped aboard the Spankin’ Sal to fight no pi-rats,” declared Kuk, with energy. “We wasn’t no sogers, and we told the skipper so.

“‘We’ll fight,’ says I. Bein’ an officer – carpenter’s mate, as I told ye – I was spokesman for the crew. ‘But we wants ter fight with weepons as we air fermiliar with. Let you and the ossifers fire the cannon, skipper,’ says I, ‘and give us fellers that was bred along shore an’ on the farms some o’ them scythes out’n the lower holt.

“‘Cutlasses an’ muskets,’ says I, ‘is all right for them as has been brought up with ’em,’ says I, ‘but, skipper, me an’ my shipmets has been better used ter cuttin’ swamp-grass an’ mowin’ oats. Give us the weepons we air fermiliar with.’

“And he done it,” declared Kuk, wagging his sinful old head. “We broke out some cases of scythes and fixed ’em onto their handles after grindin’ of ’em sharp as razers on the grin’stone in the waist of the Spankin’ Sal.

“Pretty soon we seen one o’ them black-hulled schooners comin’. She couldn’t be mistook for anythin’ but a pi-rat, although she didn’t fly no black flag yet.

“‘Let ’em come to close quarters, skipper,’ says I. ‘Let ’em board us. Then me an’ my shipmets can git ’em on the short laig. We’ll mow ’em down like weeds along a roadside ditch.’

“He done it, an’ we did,” pursued Kuk, rather heated now with the interest of his own narrative. “When they run their schooner alongside of us and the two ships clinched, and they broke out the black flag at their peak, me an’ my shipmets stood there ready to repel boarders.

“Them pi-rats,” proceeded Kuk, “fought like a passel of cats – tooth an’ nail! They come over aour bulwarks jest like peas pourin’ out o’ a sack. ‘Steady, lads!’ I sings out. ‘Take a long, sweepin’ stroke, an’ each o’ ye cut a good swath!’

“An’ we done so,” the clam digger said, nodding. “Our scythes was longer than the cutlasses of them pi-rats; and before they could git at us, we’d reach ’em with a side-swipe of the scythes, and mow ’em down like ripe hay.”

“Oh, dear, me!” gasped Dot.

“How awful!” murmured Tess.

“’Twas sartain sure a bloody field of battle,” declared the clam digger, nodding again. “If it hadn’t been for my leg I wouldn’t never have fought no pi-rats again. A man has his feelin’s, ye see. Our scuppers run blood. The enemy was piled along the deck under our bulwarks in a reg’lar windrow.”

“And did you kill them all– every one?” demanded Tess, in amazement.

“No. We jest cut ’em down for the most part,” explained Kuk. “Ye see, we cut a low swath with our scythes; mostly we mowed off their feet and mebbe their legs purty near to their knees. After that there battle there was a most awful lot o’ wooden legged pi-rats on the Spanish Main.

“An’ that,” declared the clam digger, rising and getting ready to move on, “was the main reason why I left the sea; leastwise I never wanted to go sailin’ much in them parts again.

“In the scrimmage I got a shot in this leg as busted my knee-cap. I kep’ hoppin’ ’round on that busted leg as long as there was any pi-rats to mow down; and I did the knee a lot of harm the doctors in the horspital said.

“So I had ter have the leg ampertated. That made folks down that-a-way ax me was I a pi-rat, too. I’m a sensitive man,” said Kuk, wagging his head, “an’ it hurt my feelin’s to be classed in with all them wooden-legged fellers as we mowed down in the Spankin’ Sal. So I come hum an’ left the sea for good and all,” concluded Habakuk Somes, and at once pegged off with his clam basket on his arm.

“What an awful, awful story!” cried Dot.

“Too awful to believe,” answered Tess, wisely.

CHAPTER XXIII – THE SHADOW

The four Corner House girls planned to start for town one morning early, and they were going by road instead of by boat.

Agnes ran over to the boys’ tents to ask Neale O’Neil to see that their fresh fish was put upon the ice in the icebox when the fishman came; and she found Neale doing duty on the housekeeping staff that morning, being busily engaged in shaking up the pillows and beating mattresses in the sun. The latter exertion was particularly for the dislodgment of the ubiquitous sandflea!

“Hello, Ag! What’s the good word?” cried Neale.

Agnes told him what they were going to do and asked the favor.

“I’ll see that you get the fish all right,” Neale agreed. “But what about the iceman? He’ll never come near your tent with Tom Jonah there.”

“Tom Jonah is going with us,” Agnes said, promptly. “Did you suppose we’d leave him all day alone, poor fellow?”

When they started Tom Jonah showed his delight at being included in the girls’ outing by the most extravagant gyrations. As they went up the shaded lane toward the auto-stage road, he chased half a dozen imaginary rabbits into the woods in as many minutes.