Vacation with the Tucker Twins. Speed Nell
we'd simply adore helping," urged Dee.
"All right, if you must you must! Here's a basket of clean sheets an' sich, an' here's clean bags fer the mattresses. I never asks one tenant to sleep on the same tick cover that the one before it used, certainly not when boys is been the fore-runners. These was likely boys if'n they was a leetle harum-scarum, but boys at the best is kinder goatish. Jist bundle up the s'iled bedclothes an' trun 'em down the steps, an then when you've buttoned up the mattresses in their clean covers make up the cots to suit your fancy. By that time I'll be up with my broom and rags." And Mrs. Rand bustled out to the kitchen to clean up after her abomination.
We could hardly wait for her to get out of the room to have a good giggle. She was a type that was new to me. Dee declared that she was a real out and out "po' white" if she did own three houses at Virginia Beach and one at Willoughby, and got 15 per cent on her investments. Her dialect was, in some instances, like the coloured people's, but her voice was high and nasal and every sentence ended in a kind of whine. With our coloured friends the dropping of a "g" or "d" makes their speech soft and mellow, but with this so-called "poor white" it seemed to make it only dry and hard. Certainly Mrs. Rand's exterior was not very attractive, but there was a kind of frankness about her that I rather liked. I had an idea that she was going to prove a good and just landlady, which, after all, is very important when one is renting a furnished house for a month at the sea shore.
"Thank goodness, we are spared the lightning artist's pictures," sighed Dum. "Isn't this room wonderful?"
It had indeed the repose and calm of a forest. The light was soft and subdued after the glare of sand and water. The high, vaulted, unplastered ceiling with its heavy green beams and rafters made me think of William Morris's description of the hall of the Nibelungs when the eagles screamed in the roof-tree.
We carried the heavy basket of clean bed linen upstairs and made our way through the dressing rooms, which were little more than closets, to the spacious sleeping porches, overlooking the bay. We found the place in very good order, considering boys had been keeping bach there for a month, and it was not at all "goatish," as we had been led to expect to find it. On the first porch we discovered an old checked cap on a hook, and some discarded tennis shoes in a corner, under one pillow a wallet, rather fat with bank bills, and under another a large gold watch.
"Aren't boys the limit, though?" exclaimed Dee as she carefully placed the valuables in a drawer. "That means they'll be coming back for their treasures. Maybe we had better save the old hat and shoes, too;" which we did with as much care as we had shown the watch and wallet. We bundled up the bed clothes according to instructions and decided to visit the other porches and get rid of all the soiled linen before we commenced to make up the cots. There were three large porches, with two dressing rooms to each porch, and two small porches in the back, one of them, we fancied, intended for the servant and the other one for some person who preferred solitude to company, as there was room for only one bed on it.
This porch was the last one we visited and we found it in terrible disarray. There were clothes and shoes all over the floor and the bed was piled high with a conglomeration of sweaters, baseball suits and what not.
"My, what a mess!" I cried, being the first to enter. "And this is the room of all others to get in order, as I fancy Miss Cox, our chaperone, will occupy it."
"Yes, this would be best," said Dum. "She could have more privacy, and then, too, she would escape the morning sun. Here, you girls, catch hold of the corners of the sheet and let's take up all of this trash and 'trun' it down the steps and let Mrs. Rand sort it out."
We laid hold with a good will, but it proved to be very heavy, so heavy, in fact, that just as we got it off the bed, Dee let go her end and the contents fell to the floor with a resounding bump.
CHAPTER II
"SLEEPY."
The mass of bed clothes and sweaters and shoes went through a great upheaval, and an arm, encased in a striped pajama sleeve, was thrust forth. We did what girls always do, we screamed and then we giggled.
"Gee, it's hot!" came in muffled tones. "It's hard enough to be waked before daybreak but you fellows might at least wake me like gentlemen and not pull me out of bed, keeping up such an infernal cackling, too, sounding like a lot of fool girls."
Of course, the thing to do was to get out of the room, or rather off the porch, as fast as we could, but, as Dee and I were at the foot of the bed and the floor space was occupied by the squirming mass, we had no chance to make a graceful exit.
"Jump!" came in a sibilant whisper from Dum, and we got ready for a feat not very difficult for two girls as athletic as we were; but a fit of giggles attacked us and we were powerless to do anything but cling to each other in limp helplessness.
"I'm afraid we would step on it," I managed to squeak out through my convulsions.
"I just dare you to!" spluttered the owner of the arm, and a tousled head emerged and then a hot, fat, red face. It was a rather good-looking face in spite of the fact that it was swollen with sleep and crimson with heat and distorted with rage at having been "awakened before dawn." I never expect again in all my life to see anything half so ludicrous as that boy's expression when it dawned on him that the rude awakening was not the work of his erstwhile companions, but of a lot of "fool girls." His eyes, half shut with sleep and blinking with the glare of unexpected daylight, were blinded for a moment, but as Dee and I still clung to each other and giggled, the youth's eyes began to widen and the mouth, sullen from heavy slumber, formed itself into a panic-stricken O. His face had seemed as red as a face could get, but, no! It took on several shades more of crimson until it was really painful to behold. He did the wisest thing he could possibly have done under the circumstances: hid his head and burrowed deep under the cover.
"Now, jump!" cried Dum; and jump we did, clearing the hurdle in great shape, and then we raced down to Mrs. Rand to tell her of our ridiculous predicament.
"Well, land's sake! Don't that beat all? And you was fixin' to gather him up with the s'iled clothes! 'Twould 'a' served him right if'n you had a-trunned him down the steps and let him take his chanct with the la'ndry." And the old woman laughed until her Mrs. Wiggs knot came down and she had to put down her scrubbing brush and twist it up. "I'm about through here and I'll go up and 'ten' to him."
"Oh, Mrs. Rand, I am sure he is up by this time, and the poor fellow is embarrassed enough. Don't say anything to him," begged Dee.
"I ain't so sho 'bout that. I spec it's the one they call 'Sleepy,' an' if'n it is, he's mo'n apt to be gone back to bed," and she stalked like a grenadier up the steps to rout out poor "Sleepy."
Two boys came up on the piazza as we turned from viewing the now spotless kitchen, and, caps in hand, asked to see Mrs. Rand. They were what that lady would have called a "likely pair." Both were dressed in white flannels and had the unmistakable look of clean-living athletes.
Mrs. Rand's voice was heard from the balcony as she rapped sharply on the dressing-room door:
"You, there! Git up! This ain't no tramps' hotel."
Then a growl came from the den as from a wounded, sore-headed bear.
"Sleepy!" gasped the boys, and they went off into roars of laughter in which we perforce joined them. "Not up yet!"
Mrs. Rand, coming down the steps from her valiant attack on the back sleeping porch, espied the laughing boys and renewed the offensive:
"Now what's bringing you here? This here cottage ain't yourn no longer. If'n youse after that fat sleepy-head up thar you is welcome to him, but what's the reason you didn't take him with you, I can't see."
"You see, Mrs. Rand, it's this way," said the taller of the two boys, approaching Mrs. Rand with an engaging smile. "We did wake up Sleepy and then piled all his clothes on top of him, thinking the weight and heat of them would make it impossible for him to sleep longer. We had to go get our tents pitched and provision our camp and we couldn't stay to see that our scheme worked. We are mighty sorry if it has caused you any trouble or annoyance."
"No trouble to me," and Mrs. Rand gave a snaggled-tooth smile at the polite young man, "but it was some trouble for these young ladies; which