"Oh, come now! I must do better than this. Mrs. Carter, have you any of these teakettles about you?"
"No, Mr. Parker, I haven"t a single teakettle--ye-et," rather sadly.
"Mr. Smith!" That young aviator, not expecting to be called on, almost fell out of the tree, which would have been an ignominious proceeding for one accustomed to the dizzy heights of the clouds. "Do you come across any of this stuff, whatever it is that these crazy folks call teakettles?"
"Yes, I do occasionally. Even here in this camp there is a lot of the stuff that teakettles are made of--the raw material, I might say, but if I should, no doubt future teakettles would climb up the tree and mob me."
""Debutantes!" "Debutantes!" That is the word! Stupid of me not to guess it sooner. Thank you, Miss Dum, for the compliment you just paid me, or did you mean your father? Because I understand that he is somewhat fond of young girls himself."
"I meant you in the game--but Zebedee in reality," declared Dum, who had no more idea of coquetting than a real teakettle.
"Mr. Smith is "It"!" shouted Lucy. "We are going to get a hard one for him."
Skeeter wanted to take "flying machine" but that was too easy. Many suggestions were made but Nan finally hit on a word that they were sure he could never guess.
"The trouble is it is hardly fair to take a word that is so obscure,"
objected Mr. Carter, who had been quietly enjoying the fun as much as any of the party.
"Well, it is a compliment to give him a hard one," declared Mr. Tucker.
"It means we have some reliance on his wit."
Tom Smith was proving himself a very agreeable companion and old and young were feeling him to be an acquisition to the camp.
"You youngsters up there in the top of the tree, come down and be questioned!" cried the "Old Man." "You, Bobby, what are you doing up there?"
"I"m a-playin" I"m one er them there teakettles," said that ready-witted infant. Everyone shouted for joy at his answer.
"And you, Frank Maury! Do you want to take a trip with me some day?"
"Sure! I"d ruther be a birdman than--a--teakettle," said Frank lamely.
"Did you ever see one of these teakettles, Skeeter?"
"Naw, and n.o.body else."
"But you didn"t use the word, Skeeter," admonished Lil.
"Then you use it for him," suggested the questioner. "I take it then if he never saw a teakettle and no one else has ever seen one, that it is some kind of mythological creature. Am I right?" he appealed, following up the advantage Skeeter had given him.
"Yes, a teakettle is a mythological being," said Lil primly.
"Skeeter can give more things away without using the word than most folks can using it," declared Lucy cruelly.
"Miss Nan, did I ever see a teakettle that you know of?"
"I have an idea you thought you saw a teakettle once," drawled Nan.
""Wood nymph!"" exclaimed Tom Smith.
Everyone thought he was very clever to have guessed a very difficult and obscure word in five questions.
"Nan"s turn again! That isn"t fair when Skeeter really and truly was the one who got him going. You"ve got to go, Skeeter," and Frank and Lil and Lucy pounced on their chum and dragged him from the tree.
"Yes, I haven"t! I"d never guess c-a-t. Get somebody else."
"I"ll go," Mr. Tucker volunteered magnanimously.
"Let him; he"s dying to!" exclaimed the twins in one breath.
"Well, don"t tweedle!" commanded their father. He always called it tweedling when his twins spoke the same thing at the same time.
A word was hard to hit on because as his daughters said Mr. Tucker had what men call feminine intuition.
"You can"t keep a thing from him," Dum said.
"And sometimes he sees something before it happens," declared Dee.
"Oh, spooks!" laughed Page.
""Spooks" would be a good word," suggested someone, but Mrs. Carter had a word which was finally determined on. Zebedee was whistled for and came quickly to the front.
"Mr. Smith, tell me, while flying through the air would you like to have one of these teakettles with you? I mean would it be the kind of thing you could carry with you? Would it be of any value on the journey?"
"We--el, I can"t say that a teakettle would be of any great practical value on a flight, but it would certainly be great to have one. I believe I"d rather have one than anything I can think of. In fact, I mean to take one with me some day."
Mr. Tucker looked into the glowing countenance of the young birdman. He saw there youth, character, romance.
"A "teakettle" is a "sweetheart,"" he said simply.
"Talking about spooks--what do you know about that?" cried one of the crowd.
"Well, what did I tell you? Didn"t I say you couldn"t keep anything from Zebedee?" said triumphant Dee.
"I betcher I ain"t a-gonter take no sweetheart with me when I gits me a arryplane," shouted Bobby from his vantage ground. "I"m a-gonter take Josh and Josephus, ander--ander--father."
The picnic in the tree had been a decided success. It was one more perfect day for the week-enders to report as worth while to the possible future boarders. Even Mr. Parker was enthusiastic, although he was not as a rule much of an outdoor man. He was conscious of the fact that he shone in a drawing room, and under the "great eye of Heaven" did not amount to quite so much as he did under electric lights with pink shades.
CHAPTER XIV
THE FORAGERS
"Miss Douglas, them week-enders done cl"ared the coop. Thain"t nary chicken lef" standin" on a laig. Looks like these here Hungarians don"t think no mo" of "vourin" a chicken than a turkey does of gobblin" up a gra.s.shopper."
"All of them gone, Oscar?"