Part 25

"Aunt Barbara," he proclaimed, "I am not going to let you keep tent; you only know how to keep house; and beside, you mustn't do what you always do at home. Let the girls manage dinner and you come with me, now that the fire is started. I have thought of an errand."

Miss Leicester meekly obeyed; she was ready for anything, having once cast off, as she said, all obligation to society, and with a few parting charges to Betty about the provisions she disappeared among the pines with her nephew.

"Isn't it fun?" said Mary Beck, and she put on such a comical face when Betty sedately quoted,

"What is that, mother? A lark, my child,"

that Betty fell into a fit of laughter, and Becky caught it, and they were gasping for breath before they could stop. "Oh, think of Aunt Barbara camping out and setting herself up for a gypsy!" said Betty. "This is just the way papa does now and then. I always told you so, didn't I?--only you never know when to watch for his tricks. He doesn't always catch me like this, I can tell you. Think of Aunt Barbara! I hope the dear thing will pass a good night; she isn't a bit older than we are in her dear heart. How will she ever have the face to walk into church so grandly Sunday morning!" and so the merry girls chattered on, while they spread the cloth and Betty put a decoration of leaves round the edge and a handful of flowers in the middle. "You have such a way of prettifying things," said Mary Beck; "there, the chocolate pot is beginning to boil already."

"We ought to have some fresh water; it is time papa came back," said Betty anxiously; and just then appeared papa and smiling Aunt Barbara, and a small tin pail which had to be borrowed at a farm-house half a mile away because it was forgotten.

The wind blew cool across the river, and more and more boats went gliding up and down in the channel, though the tide was very low. Everybody was hungrier than ever, because the sea wind is famous for helping on an appetite, and the hot chocolate was none too hot after all, though Aunt Barbara's bonnet was hanging on a branch and she did not seem to miss the shelter of it. Becky was forced to change her opinion about cooking; she had always disliked to have anything to do with it; it seemed to her a thing to be ignored and concealed in polite society, and yet Betty was openly proud of having had a few cooking-school lessons, and of knowing the right way to do things. Becky suddenly began to parade her own knowledge, and found herself of great use to the party. Instead of being unwilling when her mother asked for help again, she meant to learn a great many more things. She was overjoyed when she found a tin box of coffee, and remembered that Betty had said it was her father's chief delight. She would make a good cup for him in the morning. Betty was always saying how nice it was to know how to do things. She never expected to like to wash dinner dishes, but the time had come, though a hot sun was somehow pleasanter than a hot stove, and it had been a gypsy dinner, with potatoes in the ashes and buns toasted on a hot stone, and no end of good things beside.

"We must have some oysters to roast for our supper. I know a place just below here where they are very salt and good," said Mr. Leicester; "and one of you young men might go fishing, and bring us in a string of flounders, or anything you can get. We have breakfast to look out for, you remember."

"Ay, ay, sir," said Harry Foster, sailor fashion, but with uncommon heartiness. Harry had been very quiet and care-taking on the boat, and had not said much, either, since he came ashore, but his eyes had been growing brighter, and as Miss Leicester looked up at him she was touched at the change in his face. How boyish and almost gay he was again! She caught his eye, and gave him a kind reassuring little nod, as if nobody could be more pleased to have him happy than herself.

The Starlight was now aground in the bright green river grass and the flats were bare for a long distance beyond, so that there was no more boating for the present. There were plenty of comfortable hollows to rest in farther back on the soft carpet under the pines, and so the dining-room nearer the shore was abandoned and the provisions cachéd, as Mr. Leicester called it, under an oak-tree. Certain things had been forgotten, but just round the point the steeples of Riverport were in full view; and when everybody had rested enough and the tide was creeping in, Mr. Leicester first sent Harry out in the small boat and his long-legged fishing-boots to get two buckets of river mud, and after he had seated himself beside them with his magnifying-glasses and a paraphernalia of tools familiar to Betty, Harry was given orders to take Seth Pond and the two girls and go down to Riverport shopping, as soon as the Starlight floated again.

Harry was hovering over the scientific enterprise and looked sorry for a minute, but it seemed to the girls as if the tide had stopped rising. At last they got on board by going down the shore a little way to be taken off the sooner from some rock. Aunt Barbara announced that she meant to go too; indeed, she was not tired; what had there been to tire her? So off they all went, and left Mr. Leicester to his investigations. It took some time to go to Riverport, for the wind was light and the tide against them. Everybody, and Betty in particular, thought it great fun to make fast to the wharf and go ashore up into the town shopping. Aunt Barbara gayly stepped off first, to see an old friend who lived a little way above the business part of the town, and, asked to be called for, as they went back, at the friend's river gate. Harry knew it?--the high house with the lookout on top and the gate at the garden-foot. Betty went first to find her early friend, the woman who kept the bake-house, and was recognized at once and provided with fresh buns and crisp molasses cookies which had hardly cooled. Then Betty and Becky walked about the narrow streets for an hour, enjoying themselves highly and collecting ship's stores at two or three fruit shops; also laying in a good store of chocolate, which Betty proclaimed to be very nourishing. She got two pots of her favorite orange marmalade too, in case they made toast for supper.

"All the old ladies are looking out of their windows, just as they were the day I was coming to Tideshead," she said; and Becky replied that their faces were always at just the same pane of glass. The fences were very high and had their tops cut in points, and over them here and there drooped the heavy bough of a fruit-tree or a long tendril of grapevine, as if there were delightful gardens inside. The sidewalks were very narrow underneath these fences, so that Betty often walked in the street to be alongside her companion. There were pretty old knockers on the front doors, and sometimes a parrot hung out under the porch, and shouted saucily at the passers-by. Riverport was a delightful old town. Betty was sure that if she did not love Tideshead best she should like to belong in Riverport, and have a garden with a river gate, and a great square house of three stories and a lookout on top.

The stores were put on board, and Seth Pond came back from researches which had been rewarded by a half-bushel basket full of clams. Then they swung out into the stream again, and ever so many little boys with four grown men on the wharf gave them a cheer. It was great fun stopping for Aunt Barbara, who was in the garden watching for them, and was escorted by a charming white-haired old gentleman who teased her a little upon her youthful escapade, and a younger lady who walked sedately under an antique Chinese parasol. Betty sprang ashore to greet this latter personage, who had lately paid a visit to Miss Barbara at Tideshead. She was fond of Miss Marcia Drummond.

"It seems like old times to have you going home by boat," said Miss Marcia, kissing Aunt Barbara good-by. "It is much pleasanter than a car journey. Betty, my dear, you know that your aunt is a very rash and heedless person; I hope you will hold her in check. I have been trying to persuade her that she will be much safer to-night in one of our old four-posters;" and so they said good-by merrily and were off again, while the young people in the boat looked back as long as they could see the old garden with its hollyhocks and lilies, and the two figures of the courtly old gentleman and the lady with the parasol going up the broad walk.

"What a good thing it was in Tom Leicester to send his daughter to Tideshead this summer!" said the old gentleman. "I think that Barbara is renewing her youth. Tom is a man of distinction, and yet keeps to his queer wild ways. You are sure that Barbara quite understands about our wishing them to dine here? I think this camping business is positively foolish conduct in a person of her age."

But Miss Marcia Drummond looked wistfully over her shoulder at the cat-boat's lessening sail, and wished that she too were going to spend a night under the pines.

A little way up the river they passed the packet boat, a little belated and heavily laden, but moving steadily.

"Look at old Step-an'-fetch-it," said Seth. "She spears all the little winds with that peakéd sail o' hern. Ain't one on 'em can git by her." They kept company for a while, until in the broad river bay above Riverport bridge the Starlight skimmed far ahead, like a great white moth. Seth mentioned that folks would think they was settin' up a navy up to Tideshead, and just then the Starlight yawed, and the boom threw Seth off his balance and nearly overboard, as much to his own amusement as the rest of the ship's company's. Betty and Mary Beck stowed themselves away before the mast, and wished that the sail were longer. The sun was low, and the light made the river and the green shores look most beautiful. Miss Leicester suggested that they should sail a little farther before going in, and so they went as far as the next reach, a mile above the camp, on the accommodating west wind. It was a last puff before sundown, and by the time Harry had anchored the Starlight in deeper water than before, her sail drooped in the perfectly still evening air.

Once on shore everybody was busy; the spruce and hemlock boughs must be arranged carefully for the beds and the tents pitched over them before the August dew began to fall. Mr. Leicester was chief of this part of camp duty, and Miss Barbara, who seemed to enjoy herself more every moment, was allowed by the girls to help, just that once, about getting supper. It was growing cool and the fire was not unwelcome, but by and by a gentle wind began to blow and kept away the midges. Betty began to think that there would be nothing left for breakfast by the time supper was half through, but she managed to secrete part of her cherished buns, and reflected that it would be easy to send to Riverport for further supplies even if breakfast were a little late. Betty felt a certain care and responsibility over the whole expedition, it was so delightful to be looking after papa again; and she was obliged to tell him that he must not touch the river mud any more, or he would not be fit to go through the streets of Riverport next day, at which Mr. Leicester, though deeply attached to his old friends in that town, looked very distressed and unwilling.

The darkness fell fast, and the supper dishes had to be put under some bayberry bushes until morning. The salt air was very sweet and fresh, and it was just warm enough and just cool enough, as Betty said. The stars were bright; in fact, the last few days had been much more like June than August, and it was what English people call Queen's weather. Mary Beck said sagely that it must be because Miss Leicester came, and then was quite ashamed, dear little soul, not understanding that nothing is so pleasant to an older woman as to find herself interesting and companionable to a girl. People do not always grow away from their youth; they add to it experiences and traits of different sorts; and it is easy sometimes to throw off all these, and find the boy or the girl again, eager and fresh and ready for simple pleasures, and to make new beginnings.

Seth Pond had stolen out to the cat-boat on some errand of his own which nobody questioned, and now there suddenly resounded the surprising notes of his violin. It was very pretty to hear his familiar old tunes over the water, and everybody respected Seth's amiable desire to afford entertainment, even if he failed a little now and then in time or tone. He had mastered several old Scottish and English airs in the book Betty had given him, and already had become proficient in some lively jigs and dancing tunes, as we knew at the time of Betty's first party in the garden. The clumsy fellow had a real gift for music. Some stray fairy must have passed his way and left an unexpected gift. The little audience on the shore were ready to applaud, and two or three boats came near, while some young people in one began to sing "Bonny Doon," softly, while Seth played, and, encouraged by the applause, went on more boldly, and took up the strain again when Seth changed suddenly to "Lochaber no more." Miss Leicester was overjoyed when she heard such fresh young voices sing the plaintive old air so readily. It had always been a great favorite of hers, and she said so with enthusiasm. Mary Beck was sorry that she never had learned it, but by the time the last verse came she began to join in as best she could.

"I'll bring thee a heart with love running o'er, And then I'll leave thee and Lochaber no more,"

the words ended. Nobody who heard it that summer night in the starlight by the river shore would ever forget the old song.

"You must have influenced Seth's choice of music," Betty's father said to Aunt Barbara, who confessed that the droning of the violin over cheap music was more than she could bear at first, and she had been compelled to suggest something in the place of "The Sweet By-and-By" and "Golden Slippers." Luckily, Seth seemed to abandon these without regret.

At last the boats all disappeared into the darkness, and the little camp was made ready for night. The open air made every one sleepy but Miss Barbara, who consoled herself by thinking that if she did not sleep it would be little matter; she had been awake many a night in her life and felt none the worse. But in fact the sound of rippling water against the bank and the sea-like sound of the pine boughs overhead sent her to sleep before she had half time to properly enjoy them. She and Betty declared that their thick-set evergreen boughs and warm blankets made the best of beds. They could see the stars through the open end of the tent. One was so bright that it let fall a slender golden track of light on the river. Mary Beck thought that she had never been so happy. Camping-out had always been such a far-off thing, and belonged to summer tourists and the remote unsettled parts of country; but here she was, close to her own home, with all the delights of gypsy life suddenly made her own. Betty and Betty's friends had such a way of enjoying every-day things. Becky was learning to be happy in simple ways she never had before. She went to sleep too, and the stars shone on, and late in the night the waning moon came up, strange and red; then the dawn came creeping into the morning sky, and one wild creature after another, in the crevices of rocks or branches of trees, waked and went its ways silently or gay with song.

When Betty's eyes first opened she could not remember where she was, for a moment. Then she was filled with a sense of great contentment, and lay still, looking out through the open end of the tent across the wide still river down which some birds were flying seaward. It was most beautiful in that early morning of a new day, and from beyond the water on the opposite shore came the far sweet sound of a woman's voice singing as she worked, as if a long-looked-for day had come and held great joy for her. She was singing just as the birds sing, and Betty tried to fancy how she looked as she went to and fro so busily in one of the farm-houses.

Aunt Barbara did not wake until after Betty, which was a great joy, and there was a peal of delighted laughter from the girls when she waked and found their bright young eyes watching her. She complained of nothing, except a moment of fright when she saw her own bonnet at the top of a lopped fir which had been stuck into the ground at the foot of the bed, to hang her raiment on. Her wrap had been put neatly round the tree's shoulders by Betty, so that it looked like a queer sort of skeleton creature with every sort of garment on its sharp pegs of bones. Nobody had taken the least bit of cold, and everybody was as cheerful as possible, and so the day began. Seth Pond had trudged off to get some milk at one of the farm-houses, and had lighted a fire before he went and covered it with bits of dry turf, which served to keep it in as well as peat. Mr. Leicester complained that he had found the tent too warm, and so had rolled himself in his blanket and spent the night in the open air. Evidently he and Harry Foster had been awake some time, and they were having a famous talk about one of the treasured creatures in the muddy wooden pail. Harry had managed to learn a great deal by spending an hour now and then in a famous old library in Riverport, in which Miss Leicester had given him the use of her share; and Betty knew that her father was delighted and surprised with the young man's interest in his own favorite studies. She had felt sure all summer that papa would know just how to help Harry Foster on, and as she watched them she could not help thinking that she wished Harry were her brother. But then she would no longer have entire right to papa.

"Come, Elizabeth Leicester!" said papa, in high spirits. "I never had such a dilatory damsel to make my first tent breakfast!" So Betty hastened, and poked the fire nearly to death in her desire for promptness with the morning meal. After it was over Miss Leicester sat in the shade with a book, while all the rest went fishing and took a long sail seaward beside.