It took me some time to explain that Percy was not supporting a harem in the Maine woods; but when at last she got my idea and that the other two cla.s.sed with me in beauty and attractiveness, she was overjoyed.
"But Percy promised not to ask for help," she said suddenly.
"He needn"t. My dear, go away and stop worrying about Percy--he"s all right. When is the time up?"
"In three weeks."
"I suppose father and the Willoughby person will come to meet him?"
"Yes, and all the fellows from the club who have put money up on him.
We"re going to motor over and father"s bringing the physical director of the athletic club. He"s not only got to survive, but he"s got to be in good condition."
"He"ll be in good condition," I said grimly. "Does he drink and smoke?"
"A little, not too much. Oh, yes, I had forgotten!" She opened up a little gold cigarette case, which she took from her pocket, and extracted a handful of cigarettes.
"If you are going to see him," she said, "you might put them where he"ll find them?"
"Certainly not."
"But that"s not giving them to him."
"My dear child," I said sternly, "Percy is going to come out of these woods so well and strong that he may not have to work, but he"ll want to. And he"ll not smoke anything stronger than corn-silk, if we"re to take charge of this thing."
She understood quickly enough and I must say she was grateful. She was almost radiant with joy when I told her how capable Tish was, and that she was sure to be interested, and about Aggie"s hay fever and Mr.
Wiggins and the rabbit snares. She leaned over and kissed me impulsively.
"You dear old thing!" she cried. "I know you"ll look after him and make him comfortable and--how old is Miss Let.i.tia?"
"Something over fifty and Aggie Pilkington"s about the same, although she won"t admit it."
She kissed me again at that, and after looking at her wrist watch she jumped to her feet.
"Heavens!" she said. "It"s four o"clock and my engine has been running all this time!"
She got a smart little car from somewhere up the road, and the last I saw of her she was smiling back over her shoulder and the car running on the edge of a ditch.
"You are three darlings!" she called back. "And tell Percy I love him--love him--love him!"
I thought I"d never get back to the lake. I was tired to begin with, and after I"d gone about four miles and was limping with a splinter in my heel and no needle to get it out with, I found I still had the fungus message to the spring-wagon person under my arm.
It was dark when I got back and my nerves were rather unstrung, what with wandering from the path here and there, with nothing to eat since morning, and running into a tree and taking the skin off my nose. When I limped into camp at last, I didn"t care whether Percy lived or died, and the thought, of rabbit stew made my mouth water.
It was not rabbit, however. Aggie was sitting alone by the fire, waving a brand round her head to keep off mosquitoes, and in front of her, dangling from the spit, were a dozen pairs of frogs" legs in a row.
I ate six pairs without a question and then I asked for Tish.
"Catching frogs," said Aggie laconically, and flourished the brand.
"Where?"
"Pulling them off the trees. Where do you think she gets them?" she demanded.
A large mosquito broke through her guard at that moment and she flung the torch angrily at the fire.
"I"m eaten alive!" she snapped. "I wish to Heaven I had smallpox or something they could all take and go away and die."
The frogs" legs were heavenly, although in a restaurant I loathe the things. I left Aggie wondering if her hay fever wasn"t contagious through the blood and hoping the mosquitoes would get it and sneeze themselves to death, and went to find Tish.
She was standing in the margin of the lake up to her knees in water, with a blazing torch in one hand and one of our tent poles in the other.
Tied to the end the pole was a grapevine line, and a fishing-hook made of a hairpin was attached to it.
Her method, which it seems she"d heard from Charlie Sands and which was not in the "Young Woodsman," was simple and effectual.
"Don"t move," she said tensely when she heard me on the bank. "There"s one here as big as a chicken!"
She struck the flare forward, and I could see the frog looking at it and not blinking. He sat in a sort of heavenly ecstasy, like a dog about to bay at the moon, while the hook dangled just at his throat.
"I"m half-ashamed to do it, Lizzie, it"s so easy," she said calmly, still tickling the thing"s throat with the hook. "Grab him as I throw him at you. They slip off sometimes."
The next instant she jerked the hook up and caught the creature by the lower jaw. It was the neatest thing I have ever seen. Tish came wading over to where I stood and examined the frog.
"If we only had some Tartare sauce!" she said regretfully. "I wish you"d look at my ankle, Lizzie. There"s something stuck to it."
The something was a leech. It refused to come off, and so she carried both frog and leech back to the camp. Aggie said on no account to pull a leech off, it left its teeth in and the teeth went on burrowing, or laid eggs or something. One must leave it on until it was full and round and couldn"t hold any more, and then it dropped off.
So all night Tish kept getting up and going to the fire to see if it was swelling. But toward morning she fell asleep and it dropped off, and we had a terrible feeling that it was somewhere in our blankets.
But the leech caused less excitement that evening than my story of Percy and the little girl in the white coat. Aggie was entranced, and Tish had made Percy a suit of rabbit skin with a cap to match and outlined a set of exercises to increase his chest measure before I was half through with my story.
But Percy did not appear, although we had an idea that he was not far off in the woods. We could hear a crackling in the undergrowth, but when we called there was no reply. Tish was eating a frog"s leg when the idea came to her.
"He"ll never come out under ordinary circ.u.mstances in that--er--costume,"
she said. "Suppose we call for help. He"ll probably come bounding.
Help!" she yelled, between bites, as one may say.
"Help! Fire! Police!"
"Help!" cried Aggie. "Percy, help!" It sounded like "Mercy, help!"
It worked like a charm. The faint cracking became louder, nearer, turned from a suspicion to a certainty and from a certainty to a fact. The bushes parted and Percy stood before us. All he saw was three elderly women eating frogs" legs round a fire under a cloud of mosquitoes. He stopped, dumbfounded, and in that instant we saw that he didn"t need the physical exercises, but that, of course, he did need the rabbit-skin suit.
"Great Scott!" he panted. "I thought I heard you calling for help."
"So we did," said Tish, "but we didn"t need it. Won"t you sit down?"
He looked dazed and backed toward the bushes.