Freddy was puzzled. “I beg your pardon,” he said; “I don’t believe I …”
“Poem!” said Miss Elmira.
“She’d like you to recite one of your poems,” Mr. Camphor explained. “Aunt Elmira is very fond of poetry.”
“She’d like you to recite one of your poems.”
Mrs. Wiggins always said that one of the nicest things about Freddy was that when he was asked to perform—to recite one of his poems or do card tricks—he didn’t wriggle and have to be coaxed. Jinx didn’t agree with her. He said: “Coaxed! You can’t mention anything to that pig that doesn’t remind him of some poem he’s just written, and then he holds you down and reads it to you. Just a big show-off.” But of course Jinx didn’t like poetry much.
“There’s a little thing on spring I wrote the other day,” Freddy said.
“Spring is in the air;
Birds are flying north;
And though trees are bare,
Now they’re putting forth
Leaves. The fields are green.
Sun is getting higher.
Monday Mr. Bean
Put out the furnace fire.
Birds are building nests;
In the swamp are peepers;
Men discard their vests;
Eggs are getting cheaper.
All the girls and boys—”
“Stop!” said Miss Elmira.
“I—I beg your pardon?” Freddy stammered.
“Gloomy poem,” she said.
“Gloomy!” he exclaimed. “Why it’s all about spring and birds singing and …”
“Aunt Elmira doesn’t mean that your poem is gloomy,” Mr. Camphor interrupted. “She wants you to recite a gloomy one. It’s the only kind she likes.”
“Oh,” said Freddy. “Well, I don’t believe I’ve ever written a gloomy one. I’m sorry, ma’am. Maybe if I get time this afternoon I could write you one.”
“My aunt will be very pleased,” said Mr. Camphor. “Well, if you’ll excuse us, Aunt …” He led his guests up to the terrace on the west side of the house. “I suppose you’re wondering,” he said, “why I’m so anxious for your help in getting my aunts to leave.”
“Well, yes,” said Freddy. “Of course we’ve only met Miss Elmira, but I shouldn’t think she’d be much bother.”
“She isn’t. But how’d you like to have her around all summer?”
“I guess she’d make me feel kind of depressed.”
“Depressed! Ha!—just plain squashed. All day long she sits in that chair. You think of something nice to do, and then you look out the window and see her. It’s as if a black cloud came over the sun. It’s as if you had a stomach ache that you’d forgotten about, and then it starts up again. Nothing seems like fun, and the more you look at her, the more you wonder why you don’t just go up and lock yourself in your room and set fire to the house.”
“It does take the joy out of life, having her around,” Freddy said. “Maybe you could get her to do something. What’s she interested in?”
“Sorrow,” said Mr. Camphor. “Misery. Grief, woe and tribulation.”
“Well, I feel sorry for her,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “She must have had a pretty hard life, to be so gloomy all the time.”
“On the contrary,” said Mr. Camphor, “she’s had an easy one. Plenty of money, no troubles. Yet the more you try to cheer her up the gloomier she gets. Bannister and I have worn ourselves out trying to be pleasant, and telling jokes and so on.”
“And your other aunt,” said Freddy. “You said you wanted them both to leave. Is she gloomy too?”
“I’d rather you formed your own opinion,” Mr. Camphor said. “I don’t want you to think I’m just an old crab who can’t get along with his relatives. You tell me what you think after you’ve met her. In the meantime, have you—have you any ideas?” He looked hopefully from one to the other.
“Oh, yes,” said Freddy; “yes, lots of ’em. Dozens. It’s only just being sure to select the right one.” He spoke confidently, but although it was perfectly true that he had plenty of ideas, there wasn’t a single one that was any good. It wasn’t very practical, for instance, to get rid of Miss Elmira by having a giant bird, like the Roc in the Arabian Nights, fly away with her, or to tie her to a big rocket and shoot her off into space. So many of the schemes people think up for doing quite reasonable things are like that.
“Well,” said Mrs. Wiggins, “I should think the sensible thing to do would be to help that Mrs. Filmore get Lakeside open for business. Your aunts would go over there then, wouldn’t they?”
“My goodness,” said Freddy admiringly; “why couldn’t I have thought of that?”
Mrs. Wiggins laughed comfortably. “I guess you could, all right. But you’re awful smart, Freddy, and you always try to think of new ways to do things. You invent new things that I couldn’t think up in a month of Sundays. But if you want to get something done in a hurry, the quickest way is to work with what you’ve got, seems to me.”
“You’re right,” Mr. Camphor said; “only I don’t know what we can do. I’ve offered to help Mrs. Filmore with money. But she’s proud; she won’t take it, even though she’s just about broke. And anyway, she says, there’s more to it than that. The hotel is haunted. That’s why all her help left. They were scared out.”
“Haunted?” said Freddy. “Golly, I’ve always wanted to spend the night in a haunted house. Do you suppose there really are ghosts there?”
“Well, I don’t suppose so for one minute,” said the cow. “I don’t believe in ghosts. Just the same, you won’t catch me spending any nights there. I should be scairt to death.”
“I don’t see how you could be scared of something you don’t believe in,” said Mr. Camphor.
“I don’t believe in driving a car seventy miles an hour,” said Bannister, “but I’d be scared to do it.”
“Oh, shut up, Bannister,” said Mr. Camphor, “you’re trying to mix us up. Anyway, we’re not going out in the car. Unless,” he added, as a thought struck him, “we drive around and talk to Mrs. Filmore. Or wait a minute. It’s thirty miles around the lake, and only a mile across.” He looked doubtfully at Mrs. Wiggins. “I don’t suppose we could all go in the canoe?”
“We’ll all go in the lake if we try,” said the cow. “But anyway, I’m not going. That shore over there is the southern edge of the Adirondacks—nothing but woods for miles—and woods are no place for a cow. You can’t half see and you stumble over things and get twigs in your eye—and I’m not as young as I used to be. But if you two go, you ought to stay and investigate—not just talk to Mrs. Filmore. Because if you ask me, there’s something funny about this ghost business. You know, Mr. Camphor, we had some trouble with a ghost once before—that old Ignormus. But he wasn’t much of a ghost when you got to know him, and we nailed his hide to the barn door, didn’t we, Freddy?”
“Yes, I guess we ought to look into it,” said Freddy. “But my goodness, we’re detectives, not ghost busters. If we suspect somebody of something, our business is to shadow him and find out what he’s up to, and if he’s doing wrong, get the sheriff to put him in jail. But you can’t put a ghost in a jail. And how can you shadow him?”
“Set a thief to catch a thief,” said Bannister.
“Ha, you mean if you want to catch a ghost, you’d have to hire another ghost to follow him, Bannister?” said Mr. Camphor. “Not bad, not bad at all. Where can we find an unemployed ghost, Freddy? How about that Ig—Ig—”
“Ignormus,” said Freddy. “He isn’t around any more. Anyway, he wasn’t a real ghost, and I don’t believe Mrs. Filmore’s is either. But I’ll have to wear a disguise if I expect to find out anything. If there’s somebody back of this ghost, he’ll go into hiding if he sees a detective snooping around.”
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” said Mr. Camphor. “He wouldn’t suspect campers. I’ve got a complete camping outfit—tent, sleeping bags, everything. What do you say we go camping?”
Fre
ddy thought it wasn’t a bad idea. “But are you sure you want to go yourself? It may be dangerous.”
“Danger is the spice of life,” said Mr. Camphor, and Bannister said: “Faint heart ne’er won fair lady.”
“Don’t be silly, Bannister,” Mr. Camphor said. “I don’t want any fair lady; I want to have some fun. Anyway, we’ve got two aunts here—isn’t that enough fair ladies for one summer? Well, let’s look at the camping stuff.”
Chapter 3
The camping outfit was certainly complete. Mr. Camphor spread everything out on the living-room floor, and they selected the things they would need. There was a light-weight eight-sided tent with a center pole, rather like a tepee, just big enough for two people, which Mr. Camphor said could be set up in three minutes. There were two comfortable sleeping bags that zipped up the sides. There was a folding table and two folding chairs, and a folding water pail and a folding candle lantern, and even a frying pan with a handle that folded down so that it could be packed in a bag with the cooking pails and the cups and plates and knives and spoons.
“We’ll be camping in one place,” Mr. Camphor said, “so we can take more stuff than we could if we had to carry it on our backs. Bannister, take one of these duffel bags and fill it up with canned goods from the storeroom. And there’s a list somewhere—here it is: sugar, salt, flour; yes, fill these containers in the pantry. And we’ll take this telescope, and the …” He stopped suddenly, and Freddy looked up and saw a tall, severe looking woman with a very long sharp nose standing in the doorway.
“Jimson Camphor!” she exclaimed in a shrill voice. “Look what you’ve done to this nice clean living room! All this dirty old junk strewn all over everything; why it looks like a pigpen.”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Minerva,” said Mr. Camphor mildly, “but you see we …”
“Sorry?—sorry?” she caught him up. “What good does that do? That’s what you always say. Why don’t you think a little beforehand? Now you clean up this mess—at once, do you hear me? And see that you wash your face and hands before lunch. I never in my life …” She broke off abruptly, having caught sight of Mrs. Wiggins and Freddy, and gave a sort of screech. “Oh! Animals! Animals in the living room! Jimson, have you gone stark, staring crazy?”
“Why, these are friends of mine, Aunt Minerva,” he said, and tried to introduce them. But she wouldn’t listen. “Get them out of here!” she demanded. “Shoo!” she said to Mrs. Wiggins, making shooing motions with her hands. “Outside! Scat!”
Freddy and Mrs. Wiggins looked at each other, and the cow’s left eyelid drooped over a large brown eye. Then they started for the door.
“Animals!” Miss Minerva exclaimed disgustedly. “Animals in the house!”
“Well, what’s the matter with that?” said Mr. Camphor. He was very red in the face, but he spoke calmly. “After all, you and I are animals too, Aunt Minerva.”
“Oh, are we!” said his aunt sarcastically. “Are we indeed! And I suppose that is why you wish to turn this house into a stable. How dare you call me an animal!”
“All right, all right,” said Mr. Camphor wearily. “We’ll go out.” He picked up the sleeping bags. “Freddy, take the tent. Bannister’ll bring the rest.”
Out on the lawn they could still hear Miss Minerva scolding and complaining. Mr. Camphor looked shamefacedly at his friends. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I ought to have stood up for you better. After all, it is my house.”
Freddy grinned. “Not any more, it isn’t.”
“I guess you’re right, at that.” Mr. Camphor sighed. “It’s been like this ever since she got here. She drove my cook away the third day. Does the cooking herself now. But she’s not much good. Burns everything. I don’t suppose she burns everything, really. But you know how it is; after a while everything tastes burned.”
“I’m kind of burned up myself,” said Freddy.
“I know. I’m sorry about that remark she made about the pigpen …”
“Oh, forget it,” Freddy said. “I didn’t mean that. It’s for you I’m burned up. A gloomy aunt outside and a cranky aunt inside; there isn’t much peace and quiet for you anywhere. Unless you just move right out.”
“And if I did,” Mr. Camphor said, “she’d go right along with me. She says I don’t know the first thing about running a house, and it’s a blessing she came to stay when she did, because the place is going to rack and ruin the way I run it. She says it’s her duty to look after me. You see, I was an orphan, and she brought me up. I went to live with my aunts when I was five, and the trouble was, as I got older, Aunt Minerva always treated me as if I was still the same age. Now that I’m forty she still does.”
“And maybe you’ll excuse my saying so,” put in Mrs. Wiggins, “but with her, you still act as if you were five years old yourself.”
“What do you mean?” Mr. Camphor asked, and then answered his own question. “Oh, I know; she orders me around, and I obey her and don’t answer back. But after all, she’s my aunt. And then, she’s my guest, too. You have to be polite to guests.”
“Land sakes, up to a certain point you do,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “But when the guest has such bad manners that she yells at you and orders you out of your own home, she isn’t a guest any more. And doing what she tells you is all right too, when you’re five, or even when you’re twenty. But good grief, when you’re a grown-up man …” She stopped. “I’m talking too much,” she said.
“On the contrary,” said Mr. Camphor. “You’re perfectly right. I shouldn’t give in to her. But I do hate unpleasantness.”
“You get it anyway,” said the cow.
Mr. Camphor frowned. “Everything’s very difficult. Here I’ve asked you to come up and stay a few days and now I’ve got to take my invitation back. You see how she acts. I can’t even have you stay to lunch. Not that it would be any treat, everything tasting burned.”
“I still don’t see why you let her get away with it,” said Mrs. Wiggins.
“Why, because I didn’t want to get her mad.”
“But she couldn’t get mad; she was mad anyway.”
“H’m,” said Mr. Camphor, “that’s an idea. She’s mad anyway; I get the unpleasantness anyway; so why shouldn’t I do what I want to, eh?”
“She can get madder,” said Bannister.
“I doubt it. If she did, she’d just burst.”
“And what a break that would be!” said the butler.
“Come, Bannister—no slang,” said Mr. Camphor. “Well, we’ll try it. Two extra places for lunch, Bannister. Though I don’t know,” he said doubtfully; “it won’t be very pleasant for you two.”
“We won’t mind, if it’ll help you out,” Freddy said. “I suppose she doesn’t—she won’t throw things at us?”
“Frankly, I don’t know. Except for bad temper and a good deal of yelling, she’s always been a lady. I don’t think she’ll throw anything—not anything very big, anyway. But you’d better be ready to duck.”
They took the camping things down and stowed them in the canoe, and then went back to the house. When Bannister announced lunch, they went into the dining room. Miss Minerva was still in the kitchen. Mrs. Wiggins was seated at Mr. Camphor’s right, and Freddy opposite her. Freddy, of course, could handle his knife, fork and spoon with ease, and even with elegance, but cows seldom acquire such skills, and indeed would find but little use for them, and so when Bannister brought in the soup plates, he put before Mrs. Wiggins a large platter of freshly cut alfalfa. Which was certainly very thoughtful of him.
He put before Mrs. Wiggins a large platter of freshly cut alfalfa.
It was then that Miss Minerva came in. She had been standing over the stove, and her glasses were a little fogged with the steam from the cooking, so that when Freddy rose politely and pulled out her chair she merely said “Thank you” rather ungraciously, and sat down and began to eat. Then as her glasses cleared she raised her eyes—and with a loud angry cry she jumped up, so violently that her chair
crashed over backward on the floor. “Jimson!” she exclaimed furiously. “What are these—these creatures doing here? Now, clear them out! I spoke to you once about them and I shan’t speak to you again.”
Mr. Camphor squinched his eyes up and seemed to be trying to lift his shoulders to cover his ears, but Freddy gave him a poke under the table and whispered: “Come on; we’re right with you.” So he straightened his shoulders and looked up and said quietly: “Oh, I think you will, Aunt.”
“What’s that?” she snapped. “Such impertinence! How dare you speak to me like that? Bringing these disgusting animals to the lunch table, and then saying you think I will!”
“Will what, Aunt Minerva?” he asked.
“Will—will …” She got mixed up and sputtered for a minute like a pinwheel, going round and round and throwing off sparks, but not getting anywhere in particular. Then as Freddy and Mr. Camphor continued to eat their soup, and Mrs. Wiggins to munch her alfalfa, she drew a deep breath and said: “Very well! Very well! If you choose to bring the farmyard into your dining room, I wash my hands of you. I’ve never eaten with pigs, and I’m not going to begin at my age.”
“Better late than never, eh, Bannister?” said Mr. Camphor, and giggled faintly into his soup spoon.
“As you say, sir,” the butler replied. “There’s no time like the present.”
Miss Minerva turned and stamped out of the room. But before Freddy could congratulate his host on his success, she came back and sat down determinedly in her chair. “I’m not going to be driven out of my own home by a parcel of animals, even if you haven’t the decency to drive them out,” she said. Then she turned to Mrs. Wiggins. “I should think you’d be ashamed to force yourself in here where you’re not wanted,” she said.
“Well, ma’am,” said the cow, “if that’s what you think, that’s what you think,” and went on eating.
Miss Minerva started on her soup. She didn’t say anything more for a while, but kept glancing with distaste at Freddy, and then putting her handkerchief to her nose and turning away. And at last this made Mr. Camphor angry. He could stand her picking on him, but he wasn’t going to have her picking on his friends. He said: “Does the soup smell burned to you, Aunt?”
Freddy Goes Camping Page 2