CHAPTER XI
THE LITTLE OLD WOMAN WHO LIVED IN A SHOE
The Overlook House was nearest. Mr. Harrod made arrangements for thegirls to go there and occupy several rooms. At least, he presumed hehad made that arrangement with Mr. Severn when he left on the forenoontrain for Bloomingsburg to arrange his insurance and hire mechanics toat once repair the bungalow.
The Spoondrift cottage was really not fit for occupancy and thereseemed nothing else for the girls to do but follow his advice and goover to the Overlook. But Ruth Kenway had her doubts.
After the excitement of the fire, and the general "stir-about" whichensued, Pearl Harrod had quite forgotten that the Corner House girlswere not on terms of intimacy with Trix Severn, the hotel keeper'sdaughter. It probably never entered her good-natured mind that Trixwould behave meanly when all hands from the Spoondrift had escaped theperil of the fire.
The girls trooped over to the hotel, after repacking their baggage, tolook at the rooms which had been secured for them. Mr. Severn was notthere, nor was the clerk on duty. Their schoolmate, Trix, was behindthe desk.
"Oh, yes," she said carelessly, "I presume we can find rooms for you.But father doesn't care much to take in people who won't stay theseason out--especially at this time of the year. It's a greatinconvenience."
"Pooh!" said Pearl, frankly, "I guess your father is running his hotelfor money--not for sport. And Uncle Phil is going to pay him for allthe accommodation we get."
"Indeed?" returned Trix. "You seem to know a lot about our business,Miss Harrod."
"Don't you put on any of your high and mighty airs with me, Miss!"snapped Pearl. "For they don't go down, let me tell you! Didn't UnclePhil secure rooms for us?"
"Well--he spoke of your coming here. There is Number 10, and 11, and14; they're all three double rooms, so you and Ann can have one, Maudand Lulu another, and Carrie and Lucy the third."
"But, goodness gracious! there are ten of us!" cried Pearl. "You knowthat very well."
"Those three rooms," said Trix, with elaborate carelessness, "are allyour uncle provided."
"Why, Uncle Phil must be crazy! Didn't he get a big room for theKenways?"
"Humph!" said Trix, maliciously. "Are _they_ with you, Miss Harrod?Your uncle must have quite overlooked them. All the rooms I knowanything about his securing for your party are the three I'vementioned."
"Well, where's your father----"
"He's gone fishing," said Trix, promptly, and with a flash ofsatisfaction in her eyes. "He won't be back till late to-night."
"Then, where's the clerk?" demanded Pearl, much worried.
"Mr. Cheever doesn't know anything about it. I was here when youruncle made his bargain. Nothing was said about those Corner Housegirls--so there! There is no room for them here."
"Well! I call that the meanest thing!" began Pearl, but Ruth, who hadstood close by, interrupted:
"Don't let it worry you in the least, Pearl. We have plenty of time tofind accommodations before night."
"You won't find them here, Miss!" snapped Trix.
"Nothing would make me remain under this roof for a night," said Ruth,indignantly. "My sisters and I have never done you any harm, Trix;quite the contrary, as you would remember had you any gratitude atall. This hotel is not the only place at Pleasant Cove where we canfind shelter, I am sure."
"Oh, Ruth! don't go!" begged Pearl. "This mean girl is not telling thetruth, I am sure. You'll break up our party," Pearl wailed.
"I couldn't stay here now," the oldest Corner House girl declared. "Iam going to secure a tent for us. I am quite sure we will becomfortable in one. If other people can stand it under canvas, ofcourse _we_ can."
She took Agnes by the hand and they went out of the hotel. Tess andDot had not come with them, but had been left at the neighbor's wherethey had all spent the night.
Pearl and the other girls could not very well follow them; they werenot so independently situated as the Corner House girls. Ruth had awell filled pocket-book, as well as checks from Mr. Howbridge and anintroductory letter to the branch bank at Pleasant Cove.
She had been so used to going ahead, and arranging matters for thewhole family, during the past three years, that she was not troubledmuch by this emergency. She was sorry that the pleasant party had tobe broken up, that was all. She was not sure that she and her sistersknew any of the campers along the riverside.
There were two men who supplied tents and outfits for those who wishedto live under canvas, and so there were two distinct tent colonies,though they were side by side.
One was called Camp Enterprise, and the other Camp Willowbend. Thelatter was just at the bend of the river, and there were a few willowson the low bluff back of it.
There were not more than a dozen tents erected in either camp as yet,for it was early in the season. The Corner House girls rode quite amile from the hotel to Willowbend Camp and selected a tent that wasalready erected.
It was a large wall-tent and it was divided in half by a canvaspartition that made a bedroom of one end and a living-room of thefront part. In the latter was a small sheetiron cookstove, with a pipethat led the smoke outside of the tent. But there was an oilstove,too, and Ruth decided that they would make arrangements for buyingmost of their food cooked, so as to reduce the details ofhousekeeping.
Agnes cheered up at once when she saw the tent-cities. And the smallergirls were delighted with the prospect of living under canvas.
There were four cots in the tent, with sheets and blankets, andapologies for pillows; there was matting laid down on the sand, too,in this bedroom part of the tent.
The remainder of the furnishings consisted of four camp-chairs, aplain deal table, a chest of drawers that contained the chinaware andcooking utensils, and a small icebox. This front apartment had a plankfloor, made in sections.
It was a rough enough shelter, and the camping arrangements werecrude; nevertheless, the Corner House girls saw nothing but fun aheadof them, and they were as busy as bees all that day "getting settled."
There were pleasant people in the other tents of Camp Willowbend, butnone of them chanced to be Milton people. There were several girls ofages corresponding to those of the Corner House girls, and the latterwere sure they would find these neighbors good sport.
The Kenways were so busy at noon that they only "took a bite in theirfists," as good Mrs. MacCall would have expressed it. Ruth had beenwise enough to buy some cooked food in the village before they cameover to the camp, but she learned from some of the ladies in the tentsthat there was a woman in the neighborhood who baked bread to sell,and sometimes cookies and pies.
"You go to see Mrs. Bobster. She's the nicest old lady!" declared onecity matron. "Make your arrangements for bread now, Miss Kenway, forafter she takes orders for as many as she can well supply, shewouldn't agree to bake another loaf. She has a real New Englandconscience, and she wouldn't promise to bake a single biscuit morethan she knows she can get in her oven."
The directions for finding Mrs. Bobster interested and amused theCorner House girls.
"She is the little old woman who lives in the shoe," laughed theirinformant. "You can't miss the house, if you go along the beach roadtoward town. It's just beyond the other camp."
"Oh!" cried Dot, eagerly, "_I_ want to see the lady who lives in ashoe. She must have lots of children, for they were a great bother."
"And," said Tess, "do you suppose she _does_ whip them all soundly andsend them to bed with a piece of bread to eat?"
"We'll discover all that," promised Ruth, and soon after luncheon,having fixed up the tent, and set to rights their things that theexpressman had brought over from the Spoondrift bungalow, the foursisters set out to find Mrs. Bobster.
The girls had ridden over from the village along the highroad, onwhich they had traveled two days before in the auto-stage. This lower,or "beach" road was a much less important thoroughfare. In places itfollowed the line of the shore so closely that the unusual high tidesthat had prevailed that s
pring, had washed a great deal of white sandacross the swamp-grass and out upon it.
So, in places, the girls plodded through sand over their shoe tops."Might as well go barefooted," declared Agnes, sitting down for thethird time to take off her oxfords and shake out the sand.
"You'd find it pretty different, if you tried it," laughed Ruth. "Thissand is hot."
"It does seem as though you slipped back half a step each time youtried to go forward," said Tess, seriously. "Aren't we ever going toget there, Ruth?"
"Oh!" cried Dot, suddenly, "isn't that a giraffe? And there's acamel!"
"For goodness' sake!" gasped Agnes, plunging to her feet, and hoppingalong after her sisters, trying to get on her left shoe. "Is this theAfrican desert?"
"It looks like it," said Ruth, herself amazed.
"And it's hot enough," grumbled Agnes. "Oh! I see! it's a wreckedcarousel."
There were decrepit lions and tigers, too; the rain-washed and brokenanimals were the remains of a carousel, the machinery of which hadbeen taken away. Once somebody had tried to finance a small pleasureresort between the real village of Pleasant Cove and the two tentcolonies, but it had been unsuccessful.
The wreck of a "shoot the chutes," the carousel, a dancing pavilionand a short boardwalk with adjacent stands, had been abandoned by theunfortunate promoters. There was a tower--now a "leaning" tower;broken-down swings; an abandoned moving picture palace; and back fromthe rest of the wreckage, several hundred yards from the sandy shore,the girls saw a rusty looking frame structure, shaped like a shoe,with a flagstaff sticking out of the roof.
"There it is!" cried Tess, eagerly. "And it _does_ look like a shoe."
Originally the house had been a tiny brown cottage set in the midst ofa garden. The fence surrounding the place was still well kept. Thesecond story of the cottage had been transformed into the semblance ofa congress-gaiter, with windows in the sides and front. It looked asthough that huge shoe had been carefully placed upon the rafters ofthe first floor rooms of the cottage.
"What a funny looking place!" exclaimed Agnes. "Did you ever see thelike, Ruth? I wonder if Mrs. Bobster is as funny as her house."
At that moment a figure bobbed up among the beanpoles in the garden,and the girls saw that it was a little woman in a calico sunbonnet.Her face was very small and hard and rosy--like a well-shined Baldwinapple. She had twinkling blue eyes, as sharp as file-points.
"Shoo!" exclaimed the little woman. "Shoo, Agamemnon! Git aout o' thempea-vines like I told you!"
For a moment the Corner House girls did not see Agamemnon; they couldnot imagine who he was.
"Shoo, I tell ye!" exclaimed the little old woman who lived in a shoe,and she struck out with the short-handled hoe she was using.
There was a squawk, and out leaped, with awkward stride, a long leggedrooster--of what "persuasion" it was impossible to tell, for he wasswathed from neck to spurs in a wonderful garment which hadundoubtedly been made out of a red flannel undershirt!
Two or three bedraggled tail-feathers appeared at the aperture in theback of this garment; otherwise Agamemnon seemed to be quitefeatherless. And when, clear of his mistress' reach, he flapped hisalmost naked wings and crowed, he was the most comical looking objectthe Corner House girls had ever seen.
The Corner House Girls Under Canvas Page 11