A House Party with the Tucker Twins

CHAPTER XIX

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

New York! The very sound of the name thrilled me. It was all I could do to keep from following the twins in their demonstration of joy and gratitude lavished on their father. I contented myself, however, by rumpling up my father's hair.

"When?" gasped Father, when I had finished with him.

"Immediately if not sooner!" said Zebedee, coming out unscathed from the embraces of his girls. "I have been thinking a lot about it and I really believe it would be the best thing for them. They can in a way find themselves, and they don't get in any more scrapes without us than they do with us."

"That's so," agreed Father.

"Oh, we won't get in any scrapes at all!" declared Dee.

"Not a single one, if you only trust us!" maintained Dum.

"I'm not going to take my oath upon it that you won't get into some, but if you talk over anything you are contemplating, in the way of adventure, with wise little Page, I don't believe your scrapes will amount to much."

Zebedee always complimented me by insisting that my judgment was good, and for a wonder, the girls did not mind when he praised me. They were very jealous of their father's praise when it was laid on too thickly, except where I was concerned, but they agreed with him heartily when he lauded me to the skies.

"You shouldn't say that," I said, blushing. "I might prove myself unworthy of the trust imposed in me, – and then what?"

"Then I shall have to declare myself at fault in character reading."

"But, Page, you know you always hold us down! When we get into trouble it is against your judgment. If we listen to you, we keep straight," said Dum.

"You mean I preach!"

"That's the funny thing about you, Page: you give us sage, grown-up advice without preaching. We wouldn't listen a minute if you preached."

"All right, I promise never to do that objectionable thing," I laughed. "But really and truly, I don't think Father ought to afford this trip for me."

"Child, it's not a trip," and Father put his arm around me again. "It's part of your education. New York need not be such an expensive place if you girls go there with economical ideas in your heads, instead of extravagant ones."

"Certainly! We had better allowance them and that will be part of their training, as well as what they will get from the several schools. My girls know very little about finances and it is high time they learned. Experience is the only way for them to learn, as whenever I try to instill in them principles of economy they say I am Mr. Tuckerish," and Zebedee tried to look stern.

The idea of his instilling principles of economy in anybody's mind was so funny all of us had to laugh. One thing Mr. Tucker insisted on was not spending money until you had it; but the minute you did have it, what was it meant for but to spend? "Easy come, easy go!" was the motto for the whole Tucker family.

"Oh, we will live so cheap I haven't a doubt we'll save oodlums of money!" cried Dum. "Mrs. Edwin Green told me a lot about how cheap one can live in Bohemia. She told us whenever we went to New York she was going to give us a letter of introduction to her brother and sister-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Kent Brown."

Mrs. Edwin Green was the lovely young woman we had met in Charleston when we took our famous trip down there. She was a Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky who had married Professor Edwin Green of Wellington College. They were the very nicest couple I ever knew and we became great friends with them. We corresponded with her and a letter from "Molly Brown" was highly prized by all of us.

"Yes, and she said we were to visit her at Wellington if we got anywhere near. Won't it be great?" and Dee danced around the library from pure glee.

"How will we live in New York?" I asked. "Shall we board or what?"

"Board, by all means! If you try to live any other way you will run into debt, I am afraid," said Zebedee.

"But we just naturally despise boarding," pouted Dum. "We've been boarding all our lives, it seems to me."

"But when you board, you are in a measure chaperoned," said her cautious parent.

"Chaperoned! Oh, Zebedee, you make me laugh. What boarding-house keeper has time to chaperone? Besides, isn't Page along to chaperone?"

"What do you think about it, Page? Come along now with that sage advice," teased Father.

"I have never boarded and don't know how I'd like it, but it seems to me the best thing for us to do would be to board when we first get there, and then if we can't stand it, take a little flat and keep house, or rather, flat."

"Ah, I see why your advice is so sought after by our worthy friends, the Tuckers; you are as wise as Solomon and cut the baby in two and satisfy all parties. You will go to boarding to suit Tucker and then get a flat to suit the daughters, eh, honey?"

"Fifty-fifty is a safe course to pursue, and safety first is best and wisest for an official umpire," I maintained.

"I must say that the oracle has spoken well," said Zebedee. "Of course, if they are not happy boarding they must not keep to it, but it is better for them to start that way. They can learn the ropes and decide later on to get a flat if it seems wiser. We can go on with them and establish them, eh, doctor?"

"I reckon so, if my patients behave. Now that old Mrs. Reed is dead, I can leave perhaps – Ellen Miller's baby safely here, too!"

"Oh, Father, that will be simply grand, if you can only go!"

"I haven't had a trip for a long, long time, and I think it is up to me to treat myself."

All of us thought so, too. It made it easier for me if Father was contemplating going with us for a little recreation. He worked so hard, had so little fun in his life. What fun there was he made for himself by treating life as something very amusing when all was told. His patience was only equalled by his sense of humor.

"Don't give out that you are going on a trip, Father, and then all of your cranky patients won't have time to trump up any illnesses. If Sally Winn hears of your intended departure, she will get up seven fits of heart failure and more fluterations and smotherines than enough to keep you at home."

"Poor Sally! I wish she could go on a trip herself. It would do more towards curing her than all the pink, pump water in the world."

Sally Winn was Father's hypochondriacal patient who called him up at all hours of the day and night for an imaginary heart trouble that was supposed to be carrying her off. She did not feel safe with Father out of the county and never let him get away if she could help it.

"Why don't you suggest it to her? She might come on and visit her cousin, Reginald Kent."

"Reginald Kent! By Jove, I forgot that fellow when I proposed New York as a good place for you girls to top off your very incomplete education," and Zebedee groaned.

"Well, what is the matter with Reginald Kent?" bridled Dum.

"Matter! Nothing's the matter, that's what's the matter. See here, Dum Tucker, if you go to New York and fall in love with that good-looking, clever young man I'll kill myself," declared the desperate Zebedee, always afraid that some man would come along and cut him out with his girls.

"Nonsense, Zebedeedlums! Reginald Kent will have to fall in love with me before I fall in love with him."

"Well, if that's so, I'll fix him! I'll tell him what a bad proposition you are: mean, ungenerous, deceitful, secretive. I'll put him on to you." As these were all the things Dum was not, we felt safe.

"Shan't we let Mary Flannagan know our plans? She may want to join us there," suggested Dee.

"Of course we want dear old Mary," Dum and I cried together.

We all of us thought with regret of what a winter like the one we were planning to have would have meant to Annie Pore.

Mary was a great favorite with both Father and Mr. Tucker, so they readily consented to our writing to her, suggesting that she should join us in New York if her mother thought well of the plan.

"She can go on with her movie stunts, and take up dancing and gym work in real earnest under the right instructors," said Dee.

"I hope she won't try to climb down any walls in New York," I laughed. "We mustn't get in a flat with ivy on the walls."

"Oh, so it is to be a flat, is it? I understood you were to board first," said Zebedee, pretending to be insulted.

"So we are, but of course we will end up in a flat, and I fancy Mary will stand in awe of the boarding-house keeper enough to keep her from scaling her walls."

Our whole evening was spent in talking over our plans for topping off our education in New York. Father and Zebedee were like two boys in the suggestions they made. They had perfect faith in us, knowing that we had sense enough to bring us safely through the experience. I have wondered since if our mothers had been alive if they would have consented to the plan, but, of course, if our mothers had been alive, our education would not have been quite so loose-jointed. Mothers are much more particular than fathers about their daughters' education.

To be sure, Mrs. Flannagan did consent to Mary's going, but then she was rather a haphazard lady herself, looking upon life with a humorous twinkle in her Irish eye. She believed heartily in the doctrine of live and let live, and, forsooth, if Mary had mapped out for herself a career as a movie actress, why let her work it out! She, her mother, was certainly not going to block her game.

Mammy Susan was the one who kicked up about my going. For once she and Cousin Park Garnett were of the same mind. Cousin Park almost got out an injunction on Father to restrain him as one who was not in his right mind. A lunacy commission would have had him locked up in the State Asylum, according to that irate dame.

She never would have known about my going if she had not chosen to make a visitation at Bracken just when I was in the throes of getting ready to spend the winter in New York. Her own house was having some repairs, so she had made a convenience of our hospitality to escape the discomforts of paperhangers and painters. I was afraid at first that she would stay so long Father could not get away, but a lawsuit she was engaged in came to court and she was forced to cut her untimely visit short. I found out afterwards that the case, which was a trifling matter of back-yard fences, was put up first on the docket by some adroit wire-pulling done by no less a person than Mr. Jeffry Tucker, the ever ready. It was done so silently that Cousin Park never found it out. She was forced to return to her dismantled house, much to the regret of the workmen who were revelling in the absence of an exacting housekeeper.

Mammy Susan, however, had her say out in regard to my going away from home: "I's gonter speak my min' if'n it's the las' ac' er my life. Gals ain't called on ter be a-trapsin' all the time. Mammy's baby ain't never gonter be content at Bracken no mo'. Always a-goin' an' never a-comin'. An' me'n Docallison so lonesome, too. I wisht you was twins – I 'low I'd keep one er you at home."

"Which one, Mammy Susan?"

"T'other one!"

CHAPTER XX

A LETTER FROM ANNIE PORE TO PAGE ALLISON

My dearest Page:

It takes such an interminable time to get mail in these war times that I am afraid my letter will seem like last year's almanac by the time it reaches you. I must begin at the beginning and tell you of our journey across the ocean, but before I plunge into the lengthy recital I must inform you that I am very happy in my new home. I could not be anything but happy when I realize how much better off poor Father is. Of course the family is in the deepest mourning because of the death of Uncle Isaac and my cousin Grant, and there is an air of sadness in the whole village of Grantley; but everybody is very kind to us and I am sure I shall soon grow to love my aunts, the Misses Grace and Muriel Pore. These ladies are older than my father but they are quite strong and robust and it is wonderful what they can accomplish in the way of work.

All the women of England are busy at one thing or another. Women, great ladies who have never done any form of work before, not even dressed their own hair, are washing dishes in hospitals or doing other menial tasks.

Uncle Isaac was a widower, so the aunts have had entire charge of the housekeeping at Grantley Grange for many years. I think they are very kind to me in not looking upon me as an interloper.

Aunt Grace tells me that their father, my grandfather, bitterly regretted his sternness towards my father and mother and was willing at any time to make amends, but my father would never answer his letters. Poor Father is so sensitive. That has always been his trouble. I live in constant terror now for fear someone will hurt his feelings and he will refuse to see people or make himself miserable. He is to make himself useful and serve his country by teaching the boys in a school at Grantley. All of the young teachers have gone to the front and the nation needs teachers for the boys and girls. I am so happy that Father is to serve his country, somehow, and this is, after all, a very noble service as it is for the future good of the British Empire.

I know you wonder what I am going to do. I was willing to nurse if my aunts thought it wise, but was relieved when they decided that I could be of more use doing other things that life has already trained me to do. I know I should fail at the crucial moment as a nurse. I am so timid and do not seem to be able to shake off this shyness. It has been decided that I shall go every day to sing to the soldiers in the neighboring hospitals. That sounds like very little to do but when I tell you that I spend on an average of seven hours a day going to the various hospitals, you will realize that while it is very little to do, it takes a great deal of time to do it.

So many of the old estates near here have been turned over to the Government for hospitals that one can motor from one to the other in a short time. The wounded soldiers are very kind to me and express themselves as liking very much to hear me sing. They like the American songs, especially the darky songs. I sang "Clar de Kitchen" to them yesterday and they made me give them three encores. I thought of the last time I sang it when we had the circus at Maxton, and I choked with emotion at the remembrance of all of my dear friends.

Life at Price's Landing seems very far off and unreal, although there are times when this life seems to be the unreal thing and I expect any moment to awaken and find it all a dream. I remember in my little room over the store how low the ceiling was, so low over my bed where it sloped to the dormer window that I could lie there and touch it with my hand, and many a time have I bumped my head when I sprang too hurriedly from my bed. I learned to put up my hand and gauge the distance before I got up, in that way saving my poor head many a bump. I find myself now, when morning comes and the sun peeps in the windows of my great bedroom, reaching up expecting to touch the low ceiling of my little room in Virginia. It gives me a strange sensation, almost as great a shock as when you take one more step up when you have reached the top of the stairs.

The ceilings at Grantley Grange are quite as high as any I have ever seen. Too high for beauty, I think, but I don't dare say so. My aunts think perhaps there are more wonderfully beautiful places than the Grange, but they have never seen them, – except the great show places, of course. It is very beautiful and the time may come when I shall feel at home, but I still feel strange and something of an alien.

Father is as at home as though he had never left England. I wish all of you could see poor Father in his proper surroundings. He always was so out of place in the store. I think he felt irritated all the time that he was doing what he was doing, but a certain obstinacy in his character kept him from seeking more congenial employment. His sisters are very tender with him and I am hoping that he will begin to show to them the affection that I am sure he feels.

Now haven't I put the cart before the horse? I intended first to tell you all about our voyage over, and then lead up to conditions here, but I have left the first to the last.

In the first place poor Father was dreadfully seasick from the moment we got on the steamer, even before we started. There is something about the smell of machinery and rigging that makes him very ill. I tried to persuade him to stay on deck, but he would go to his stateroom, and there he stayed for the entire crossing.

I was anxious to see the last of my country. (I realize now that United States is my country. I realized it the moment I knew I was to live in England.) I stayed on deck as we steamed out of the harbor and kissed my hand good-by to New York's sky line and the Statue of Liberty. I felt very lonesome and very far away from all of my dear friends. There were letters down in my stateroom and I turned to go get them, when whom should I find at my side but George Massie? Page, I was never more astonished in all my life! I was glad, too, very glad. All the lonesome feeling left me. He told me that you and the Tuckers knew all about his coming and approved, so that was enough for me. The ocean did not seem near so vast nor the sky so high up.

Father was very miserable, so miserable that I had to call in the ship's surgeon. The doctor made light of his malady but that did not make it any easier to bear. I had to nurse him a great deal, and as he shared his stateroom with another man it was rather embarrassing for me to go in at night and attend to poor Father's many wants. In fact, the man objected.

Then it was I decided to tell Father of George Massie's presence on board. Of course, he had no way to know my friend was there. He was very angry at first, but I had sudden courage and told him that we had not chartered the ship and other passengers had as much right there as we had, and that Mr. Massie was going abroad to serve the Allies. I also told him that George was willing to do anything for him he could, and would attend to him during the night when I could not come in his stateroom. Father became reconciled to George's presence then, and he could hardly have kept up his anger after the faithful way in which he nursed him for the rest of the journey.

Of course, he did not have to be nursed all the time and we had much time on deck. The weather was perfect and I was not ill one moment. I had a seat at the captain's table and that dear old man saw to it that I was bountifully served. He was so kind to me, and to everyone in fact, but he seemed to think I needed especial care and my own father could not have been more attentive to me.

I know that the news of our boat having struck a mine must have been a great shock to all of my friends. I am sure that George's cablegram that all was well must have set your minds at rest, however.

It happened just at dusk after a wonderfully calm day. The sea had been like a mill-pond all day and the sun very hot, so hot that we had sought the shade of the boats on deck. Towards sunset the wind had suddenly risen and the waves had begun to look very high. Of course all waves look high to me, as I am fully aware that I am the most timid person in all the world. It turned quite cold, so cold that I put on my heavy coat. We were almost at the end of our journey. I had everything packed and in order; and at last we had persuaded Father to dress and come on deck. He had been much better for days and had been able to retain nourishment, which meant a return of his normal strength. He had even ventured down to dinner on that evening.

We had hoped to arrive in Liverpool by eight o'clock but we were proceeding very slowly and cautiously as the danger zone was filled with possible disaster. The captain assured us that we would land sometime during the night but he advised all of us to go to bed at the usual hour. Our voyage had been a very pleasant one. I had made many friends and was glad to feel that I had been able to throw off some of the miserable shyness that has always been such a handicap to me.

For several days we had been wearing life-preservers by command of the captain. Of course we felt confident that there was no use in it, but still we had to do it. George was too big for any of those furnished by the ship's company, the straps refusing to meet; but I had pieced out the straps with some stout cotton cloth.

We were at dinner on that eventful day, all of us looking very strange and bulky in our safety-first garb, when suddenly there was an explosion that shook all of us out of our seats. I was dreadfully frightened but managed to appear calm for Father's sake, who because of his recent illness was much unnerved.

"Get your warm coats and any small hand baggage with your valuables!" the captain shouted, "and report on deck immediately."

I tell you we obeyed without any demur! Many of the passengers hurried up, not going to their staterooms at all, but Father felt he must get his Gladstone bag and I had a small satchel all packed, which I took. I never heard so much shouting in all my life. The women were screaming and the men shouting. There was only one child on board, a dear little girl of seven, and she and I were the calmest ones among the females. I was frightened at first but a sudden courage came to me. It may have been because the little girl slipped her hand in mine. Her mother had fainted and her husband was carrying her up on deck. The child's name was Winnie. She was a gentle little thing. We had made friends the very first day on board and had had many long talks together. Her mother was ill most of the time and Winnie and I had time to become very intimate. When she slipped her hand in mine, I knew that she expected me to look after her, and then it was God sent me strength to do it.

The engines stopped the moment we hit the mine and the boat was listing so that when we got on deck we found a decided slant, so much so that it was difficult to walk. The life-boats were being loaded and launched. I was shocked to see how some of the men crowded in. The sailors were a rude lot from all the quarters of the globe, and few of them showed any desire to save anything but their own skins.

George Massie was everywhere. I was astounded at his powers of swearing, but he said afterwards that it was the only way to control people in times like that. He simply took command of the boats, for which the captain had no time. The officers were a rather weak lot and one and all concerned for their own safety. They say so many of the good seamen have enlisted that many of the passenger ships are manned by weaklings. The captain was splendid and did his duty like the English gentleman he was.

Of course at first we feared it was a submarine that had hit us. Its being a mine that we had hit made us much more comfortable. At least, we were not to fall into the hands of the Germans.

"The ship is sinking so slowly that I can assure you there is no immediate danger," George had had time to tell Father and me. "It is safe to wait for the last boat, so let me help launch these others first and then I can get into the boat with you. These sailors are too crazy to trust without a commander."