A SUFFICIENT time having elapsed since dinner, we decided to go in swimming again; at least the Tuckers decided to and all of us followed suit (bathing suit!). Aunt Milly was becoming accustomed to the ways of her charges and gave her gracious consent when we humbly asked it. She even stopped rolling her eyes at Shorty when she saw that Harvie was not injured, after all, and that he himself bore no malice towards his friend.
Mary, too, had something to do with mollifying the old woman. She went and sat on the sand bank by her side and explained to her how the battle royal started and what fun it had been. Of course ever since the circus, Mary had been a great favorite with all the servants. They looked upon her as a real celebrity. Mary had so many stunts and was always so willing to amuse persons that she was constantly being called on to do her dog fight or get off a feat of ventriloquism or something else.
"Aunt Milly, if you forgive poor Mr. Hawkins for b.l.o.o.d.ying up Mr.
Harvie, I"ll go like a little pig caught under the gate for you."
"Lawsamussy, chil", kin you do that?"
"Sure! Will you forgive him if I do it?"
"Lemme hear you do it fust an" I"ll see," said Aunt Milly with a sly look. She was getting too much capital out of the grudge she had against Shorty to give it up too readily.
So Mary went through all the agony of a little pig caught under the gate and even improved upon it to the extent of introducing another character into the act: she went like two pigs caught under the gate.
Aunt Milly sat in her sand hole entranced.
"Well, bless Bob! If it ain"t it to the life! How you do it, honey?" So Mary had to do it once more and then Aunt Milly promised to forgive and forget.
"Come on and help clear up the remains of the feast, Mary," insisted Dum, who was ever determined that there should be no shirkers.
"I"m busy mollifying," declared Mary. "My talents lie more in this direction," and she could not help mimicking Jessie Wilc.o.x just enough to give Dum the dry grins. Jessie had not helped at all about luncheon but had insisted that Aunt Milly should be made to do whatever we had the hardihood to suggest that she might do. Aunt Milly, however, having been told that she was to do no "wuck," did none, and presented a duck back to all insinuations from the haughty Jessie.
"I don"t care where your talents lie," insisted Dum, "you are going to come help clear these dishes off the cloth so I can fold it up."
Mary began to sing to a catchy tune this music-hall ballad:
"I want to be a actress, a actress, a actress, I tell you I won"t live and die a common serving gal.
I feel I"ve got the natur"
To act in a the-a-ter, I"m just the kind of stuff to make a star profession-a-l-l."
"Well, now ain"t she cute?" and Aunt Milly shook her fat sides with laughter. "She ain"t ter say purty but she is sho" got a way wid her.
She ain"t so handsome as some but she gonter keep her takin" ways til"
Kingdom Come, whilst some folks what ain"t nothin" but purty won" hab nothin" lef" a tall whin the las" trump soun"s. I ain"t a got no "jections ter purty folks,--now that there little Miss Annie Po" is sho"
sweet lookin" an" sweet tas"in", too, but she is wuth somethin" sides.
But some ain"t." A glance of her rolling eyes in the direction of Jessie gave us to understand who "some" meant.
Jessie and Wink were having a most desperate flirtation. He had not left her side a moment during the whole day. Jessie glanced occasionally in my direction with a little exultant toss of her head as much as to say: "See, miss, I"ve got your beau!" She was more than welcome to him, but I didn"t think it kind to lessen her delight in her conquest, so I did my best to make her happy by sighing deeply every time I caught her looking at me.
The pleasure of going in swimming is going in again, so as I said before, as soon as a reasonable time had elapsed since our very filling dinner we again retired to our several tree-formed bath-houses and donned our suits for a farewell dip.
"No more fights now!" commanded Zebedee sternly, just as though he had not been among the mighty warriors of the last fray.
Tweedles promptly caught him and gave him a good ducking until he yelled for mercy and help from Aunt Milly, but that model chaperone had gone off to sleep again and was deaf to his cries.
"That"s what you get for being Mr. Tuckerish," declared Dum.
Jessie Wilc.o.x was a good swimmer but was determined not to get her hair wet, so had not entered very largely into our water sports. Tweedles and Mary and I had lost our bathing caps in the great naval battle, and since our heads were already wet, we decided to get them wetter and let our hair dry on the trip home. As for Annie, getting her feet wet was about all she could make up her mind to do, although her coils of honey-colored hair got a little damp. She would take shuddering steps into the water and when she got about knee-deep would lie down and go through the motions of swimming with one foot on the bottom. She had really learned to keep up on top of the water at Willoughby the summer before, but now had lost all confidence in herself and was content just to paddle around in the shallows.
From one side of our large island there stretched a long narrow sand bar. The water just trickled through there, while the great volume of the creek flowed on the other side where we were swimming. There were many shallow spots where Annie could be perfectly safe, but she decided to walk out on the sand bar and there let down her hair and dry it in the sun. Her cavaliers who seldom left her alone for a moment happened to be engaged in some swimming stunts just then, so unattended she crossed the bar and, seating herself on the end of the neck of sand, she let down her beautiful hair and spread it out in the sun.
"Only look at Annie! Isn"t she lovely?" whispered Dum to me. "She looks like a mermaid or a Rhine maiden."
"Please sing something, Annie!" I called.
"What shall I sing?" laughed Annie, combing her hair with one of her side-combs and peeping at me through its golden glory.
"Anything, so it has water in it!"
Annie"s voice had grown in richness and volume since the days at Gresham, although she had had no lessons since that time. She had taken advantage of the teaching she had received from Miss c.o.x and kept up her practicing by herself as best she could. Of course she should have been under some good master, and all of us felt indignant with Mr. Pore that he did not realize this and make some arrangement for his daughter. The outlay of money necessary for her musical education would have been great, but the returns would surely have been fourfold. Everyone who heard Annie sing could not but admire her voice. Even Jessie Wilc.o.x praised it, although that young lady was not inclined to think anybody but herself worthy of compliments.
The lovely thing about Annie was she was always ready to be obliging, and if her singing gave any pleasure, she was perfectly willing to contribute it to the general welfare. She never said she didn"t have her music and could not sing without notes; she never gave the excuse of not being able to sing without accompaniment. When Annie sang, her shyness left her. She seemed to forget herself and lose all self-consciousness.
As her clear soprano notes arose on the air, the noisy bathers quieted down and everyone listened.
"On the banks of Allan Water When the sweet spring-time did fall, Was the miller"s lovely daughter, Fairest of them all.
For his bride a soldier sought her, And a winning tongue had he, On the banks of Allan Water, None so gay as she.
On the banks of Allan Water When brown autumn spreads his store, There I saw the miller"s daughter, But she smiled no more.
For the summer grief had brought her, And the soldier false was he, On the banks of Allan Water, None so sad as she.
On the banks of Allan Water, When the winter"s snow fell fast, Still was seen the miller"s daughter, Chilling blew the blast.
But the miller"s lovely daughter, Both from cold and care was free; On the banks of Allan Water, There a corse lay she."
"Bully!" exclaimed the audience.
"I"d like to meet that soldier," muttered Sleepy.
"Please sing some more," begged Rags.
And so she sang again. Now she stood up, took a few steps, and faced us as we paddled around.
"Look what a big hole Annie made in the sand, almost as big as Aunt Milly"s," whispered Dee to me.
"Yes, the sand must be awfully soft. I"m glad it"s not quicksand, though. That"s so dangerous." But what I knew about the dangers of quicksand I kept to myself, as Annie had begun:
"To sea, to sea! The calm is o"er; The wanton water leaps in sport, And rattles down the pebbly sh.o.r.e; The dolphin wheels, the sea-cow"s snort, And unseen mermaids" pearly song Comes bubbling up the weeds among----"
And just then a strange thing happened: Annie began to sink. The little sand island she had chosen as a place of refuge where she might dry her hair was evidently only an island in the making, and the sand had not packed down. It was quicksand, but not so quick as it might have been, as she had been on it some minutes before it began to give way under her weight. She looked frightened and tried to pull her one foot up, but it stuck. The last lines of her song were in a fair way to be enacted before our very eyes if haste was not made.
Annie gave a scream and made desperate struggles to extricate herself.
The swimmers all started to her rescue, George Ma.s.sie leading the way, shooting through the water like a shark.
I clutched Zebedee as he went by me. "Get the little brown boat and I"ll help! The sand may be dangerous all around there."
He was a quick thinker and turned without a word, landed on the big island and I followed. We launched the little brown boat that we had shoved up among the weeds and in a very short time were floating out into deep water. With a few strong strokes of the oars we had arrived at the spot where we were in truth much needed.