PLEASE REMIT
Of course everyone was vastly interested in Mr. Tom Smith and his aeroplane. That young man, however, exhibited a modest demeanor which was very pleasant to members of his s.e.x. He promised to take any and all of the campers flying if his machine was in good order. He thought it needed a little tinkering, however, as he had noticed a little clicking sound above the usual clack and hum of the motor.
"How on earth did you happen to land here?" asked someone.
"Airman"s instinct, I reckon. I was looking for the camp and had heard there was a mountain with a smooth plateau around here somewhere. A place to land is our biggest problem. The time will come when there will be landing stations for flyers just as they have tea houses for automobilists now. There is great danger of becoming entangled in trees and telegraph wires. A place looks pretty good for lighting when you are up in the clouds and then when you get down you find what seemed to be a smooth, gra.s.sy plain is perhaps the top of a scrub oak forest."
After breakfast the whole camp of week-enders marched to the top of the mountain to view the great bird, but the Carter girls had to stay behind to prepare for the picnic. Many sandwiches must be made and the baskets packed. Nan had her usual bowl of mayonnaise to stir. She looked very demure in her great ap.r.o.n but her eyes were dancing with the remembrance of her morning"s escapade.
"You look very perky this morning, honey," said Douglas, as she packed a basket of turnovers and cheese cakes with great care not to crush those wonders of culinary art.
"You look tolerable perky yourself," retorted her sister. Just as the soph.o.m.ores and seniors of a college seem to fraternize, so it is often the case with the first and third members of a family. Douglas and Nan hit it off better with one another than they did with either Helen or Lucy.
"I feel like flying!" declared Douglas. "I don"t mean in an aeroplane but just of my own accord. I am so happy that mother has given up that terrible plan for me, given it up without father"s knowing anything about it. I wish I knew who had persuaded her or how it came about. She is rather--well, not exactly cold with me--but not exactly chummy. She has not told me yet, but if you say it is so, I know it is so. I went to her room this morning so she could tell me if she wanted to, but she didn"t say a thing about it. She got a lot of letters from New York by the early mail. I am mighty afraid they are bills."
"Pretty apt to be," sighed Nan. "I hope she won"t give them to father."
"Oh, she mustn"t do that. I shall have to ask her for them. I hate to do it. She thinks I am so stern."
"Let me do it," said Nan magnanimously. "I wonder how much they amount to."
"Oh, Nan! Would you mind asking for them?"
"Well, I am not crazy about it, but I"ll do it," and do it she did.
She found her mother in a dainty negligee writing notes at a little desk her devoted husband had fashioned from a packing box.
"Ah, Nan, how sweet of you to come to me! I see so little of my girls now, they are so occupied with outside interests. Here, child, just run these ribbons in my underwear. It really takes a great deal of time to keep one"s clothes in order. Susan should do such things for me, but she is constantly being called off to do other things, at least she says she is. What, I can"t for the life of me see."
Nan dutifully began to do her mother"s bidding, but when she saw the drawer full of things she was supposed to decorate with ribbons she had to call a halt.
"I am very sorry, mumsy, but I am helping Douglas pack the lunch baskets. This is a day for a picnic, you know."
"No, I didn"t know. Who is going?"
"Everyone, we hope, as that gives Oscar and Susan a chance to get a thorough cleaning done, with no dinner to cook."
"Oh, how absurdly practical you girls have become! I just hate it in you. What business has a girl of your age to know about who does thorough cleaning and when it is done?" Nan restrained a giggle. She had come to a full realization of what a very frivolous person her little mother was and while it made her sad in a way it also touched her sense of humor irresistibly.
"I am deeply disappointed in the fact that Douglas is not to come out next winter. Mr. Parker advises me strongly against trying to launch her. He says there are so many debutantes already and that he is engaged up to every dance and that all of the dancing men are in the same fix.
Of course if I should go against his advice Douglas would fall as flat as possible. She has no desire to come out as it is and no doubt would do nothing to further her cause. I do not feel equal to the task of bringing her out and of putting spirit into her at the same time. She has been so lifeless and listless lately."
Nan smiled, thinking of how she had left Douglas actually dancing as she packed the goodies and smiling all over her happy face.
"What a lot of letters you have, mumsy! You are almost as busy as I am with letters. It takes me hours every day answering applications for board."
"Oh, yes, I have many notes to answer--friends, welcoming me back to Virginia. This pile over here is nothing but bills--things bought in New York, on my way home. I think it is most impertinent of these tradespeople to send them so promptly. They were so eager for me to open accounts, and now they write to me as though I were a pickpocket.
"Please Remit" at the bottom of every bill, and one man actually accuses me of being slow in payment. He says he understood I was to send money as soon as I reached Virginia. I have no money myself. I shall just have to hand them over to your father----"
"Oh, mother, please don"t do that!"
"Why not? How else am I to get them paid?"
"But, mother, the doctor said no money matters must be brought to father for at least a year and maybe not then. It was bills that made him ill, and bills would be so bad for him now."
"Bills, indeed! It was overwork! I did my best to make him relax and not work so hard, but he would not listen to me. Many a time I tried to make him stop and go to the opera with me or to receptions, but it was always work, work, work!--day and night. I"m sure no one can accuse me of selfishness in the matter--I did my best."
"Yes, dear, I know you did," said Nan solemnly and gently, as though she were soothing a little child who had dropped a bowl of goldfish or done something equally disastrous and equally irreparable. "I tell you what you do, though, honey, you give me the bills. You see, I write all the letters for the camp and I will attend to them."
Mrs. Carter handed over the offensive pile of envelopes with an air of washing her hands of the matter.
"There is one thing, mumsy: if I were you, I"d withdraw my patronage from such persons. I"d never favor tradespeople like these with another order."
"Never!" exclaimed the mother. ""Please Remit," indeed! I never imagined such impertinence."
Nan bore off the sheaf of bills. They were not quite so large as they had feared. Mrs. Carter had unwittingly managed very well since she had accidentally struck August sales in New York and the things she had bought really were bargains.
"We will pay them immediately, Nan," said Douglas. "I am so thankful that father did not see them. It would be so hard on him that I am sure much of the good that has come to him from the long rest would be done away with."
"Do they make you blue, these bills?"
"No, indeed! Nothing will make me blue now that mother has given up making me be a debutante. I can go on working and make more money to take the place of this we shall have to take out of the bank to pay for these things mother bought. But just suppose she had carried her point and forced me into society. I could have earned no money and would have had such a lot spent on me. Why can"t she see, Nan?"
"She is color blind, I think, unless it is couleur de rose. We must be patient with her, Douglas."
"All right, grandma!" And if Mrs. Carter could have heard the peal of laughter from Douglas, she would not have thought her lifeless and listless. "You are such a dear little wise old lady, Nan!"
CHAPTER XIII
TEAKETTLE
The fallen tree where Nan and Dum Tucker had chosen to have the picnic proved to be most attractive. It was a great oak that had attained its growth before it had been felled in some wind storm, and now it lay like some bed-ridden old giant who refuses to die. Part of the roots held to the soil while part stood up like great toes, poking their way through the blanket of ferns and moss that were doing their best to cover them.
This tree not only clung to its old branches but had actually the hardihood to send out new shoots. These branches were not growing as the limbs of an oak usually grow, with a slightly downward tendency from the main trunk, but shot straight to the sky, upright and vigorous.
"It is just like some old man who has to stay in bed but still is open to convictions of all kinds, who reads and takes in new ideas and is willing to try new things and think new thoughts," suggested Page Allison.
"Yes, that strong green branch struggling to the light there might be equal suffrage," teased Mr. Tucker.
"Yes, and that one that has outstripped all the others is higher education of women," declared Douglas.
"These little ferns and wild flowers that are trying to cover up his ugly old toes are modern verse. He even reads the poetry of the day and does not just lie back on stuffy old pillows and insist that poetry died with Alfred Tennyson," whispered Nan, who did not like much to speak out loud in meetin". Tom Smith heard her, however, and smiled his approval of her imagery.
"Well, I only hope while we are picnicking on his bed he won"t decide to turn over and go to sleep. It would certainly play sad havoc with cheese cakes," laughed Helen.