BOOKS BY PENN SHIRLEY

LITTLE MISS WEEZY SERIES

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Little Miss Weezy
Little Miss Weezy’s Brother
Little Miss Weezy’s Sister

THE SILVER GATE SERIES

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Young Master Kirke
The Merry Five

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LEE AND SHEPARD Publishers BOSTON

“Mamma has found her lost baby.”

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THE SILVER GATE SERIES

THE MERRY FIVE

BY
PENN SHIRLEY
AUTHOR OF “LITTLE MISS WEEZY” “LITTLE MISS WEEZY’S
BROTHER” “LITTLE MISS WEEZY’S SISTER”
“YOUNG MASTER KIRKE”

BOSTON
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS
10 MILK STREET

Copyright, 1896, by Lee and Shepard

All Rights Reserved

The Merry Five
TYPOGRAPHY BY C. J. PETERS & SON, BOSTON.

PRESSWORK BY BERWICK & SMITH.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE MERRY FIVE

CHAPTER I
THE MERRY FIVE

The Merry Five were Molly, Kirke, and Weezy Rowe, and their twin comrades, Paul and Pauline Bradstreet, who lived over the way. Paul, Pauline, and Molly were now fourteen years old, Kirke was twelve, and little Miss Weezy seven. The story begins with the Rowes at luncheon-time.

“O papa! I’m so glad we’re going to the beach,” cried Molly, laying down her fork.

“And I’m glad we’re going to be so near Captain Bradstreet’s camp,” added Kirke, flourishing his napkin. “Oh! we shall have a famous outing.”

“Exquit!” chirped Weezy, not at all sure what an outing might be, only that it must be something jolly.

“Me too, mamma,” lisped Baby Donald, paddling with his spoon in his bowl of milk.

Mr. Rowe had caused this unusual excitement by reading aloud a letter from Mrs. Kitto, who kept a boarding-house at Santa Luzia. The letter stated that she had received Mr. Rowe’s note of inquiry, and that if he desired it, she would take himself and family as boarders on the following Wednesday.

“You do desire it, papa; don’t you?” added Molly eagerly.

“If your mamma does, my daughter.”

“It will be difficult to leave so soon,” remarked Mrs. Rowe, thoughtfully stroking Donald’s restless fingers.

“But we children can help,” said Molly quickly. “We have helped a great deal since vacation; now, haven’t we, mamma?”

“Certainly you have, my dear,” returned Mrs. Rowe with a smile. Did Molly remember that this vacation was as yet hardly two days old?

The first thing that Molly did after luncheon by way of helping, was to run across the street to Captain Bradstreet’s to signal to Pauline in the cheery trill that all school-girls know.

“Mrs. Kitto can take us, Polly! We’re going Wednesday!” she cried, as Pauline came dancing out, her long hair floating behind her like a black flag.

“You are, Molly? Papa says we sha’n’t be off before the first of next month. But he has partly promised to let Paul and me stop at Santa Luzia on the way.”

“O Pauline, how perfectly lovely!”

“I didn’t believe he’d ever think of such a thing,” said Pauline, braiding her hair. “He’s so silly about us twins since mamma died. Can’t bear to have us out of his sight.”

“I don’t wonder, Polly, I’m sure.” Molly’s eyes glowed with pity, as they always did when Pauline spoke of her dead mother. She longed to tell Pauline how sorry she was for her, but the words would not come. What she did say was only this, “Your shoe-string’s untied, Polly, the right one.”

“Is it? Well, it might as well be the right as the left. It’s sure to be one or the other,” returned easy-going Pauline, stooping to fasten the offending lacing.

“Oh! won’t it be delightful if you and Paul can come to Santa Luzia, Polly? I hope you can stay at Mrs. Kitto’s a whole week.”

“Thank you, Molly dear, and I”—Pauline had been about to say that she hoped Molly and Kirke would stay at least that length of time at the camp; but suddenly remembered that there might not be room enough for them. She must ask her father.

“I—I suppose Auntie David will meet us at Santa Luzia,” she said, to finish the sentence.

“What does make you call her Auntie David, Pauline? You’ve never told me.”

“Oh, Paul and I began to call her that when we were little snips, and we’ve done it ever since. Auntie doesn’t mind. Her name is Davidson, you know. She married Uncle John Davidson.”

“Will Mr. Davidson come to Santa Luzia too, Polly?”

“Oh, no; Uncle John has gone East. He goes East every summer on business, and then Auntie comes to live with us. Lucky for Paul and me; lucky for papa too! Auntie David is papa’s only sister. I believe he thinks she made the world!”

“Well, I must skip back,” said Molly, with an important air. “Kirke has gone over to Mrs. Carillo’s to see if Manuel wants to keep Kirke’s cart and burro while we’re away; and mamma may want me to do some errands.”

All the rest of the week there was a pleasant bustle in the Rowe household, the bustle of preparing for a journey.

“We’re going to ride in the cars,” little Miss Weezy explained to all callers. “We’re going to Sandy Luzia. It’s ’most a hundred miles.”

The little maiden was very busy these days; for she had to hunt up her scattered dolls, many of them having strayed out of sight.

Mr. Rowe, though still far from strong, was very busy too.

“I must drive over to the gardener’s this morning to instruct him in regard to the hedge,” he said to Mrs. Rowe the next Monday.

“Shall we shut up Zip?” asked Mrs. Rowe, as she brought her husband a glass of milk.

“No, my dear,” Mr. Rowe smiled. “Let the little Mexican follow. I believe his dogship thinks none of the family can be trusted anywhere without him.”

As soon as Mr. Rowe had gone, Mrs. Rowe hastened to call Molly from the book she was reading.

“Come, Molly, while papa is away we will begin our packing. Please ask Hop Kee to take the largest trunk from the store-room, and set it down in the upper hall in front of the grate.”

Molly put “Alice in Wonderland” upon the table with a little sigh, and walked out to the kitchen rather more slowly than a girl ought to walk when she goes on her mother’s errands. She was thinking about Alice and that surprising rabbit. What would he do next?

“Now, children, you can collect the articles that you cannot do without,” said Mrs. Rowe, after the trunk had been placed before the unused grate. “The necessary articles must be put in first, for we sha’n’t have room for everything you’d like.”

Kirke immediately brought his tennis-racket, his foot-ball, and his jointed fishing-rod, and flung them into the trunk.

“I must have my tool-box, too, mamma, and the ship I’m rigging, and”—

“Any clothes, Kirke?” interrupted Molly mischievously, as she appeared with an armful of bathing-suits.

Kirke had not thought of clothes; and when these had been hunted up, and laid smoothly over the bathing-suits, he grudged them the space they occupied.

But his mamma did not let him remain idle.

“You may get the hammock next, Kirke, and papa’s afghan and pillows.”

Kirke skipped down-stairs two steps at a time, and speedily returned with the hammock slung over his shoulder, and bulging in a very peculiar manner.

“Here’s a big hang-bird’s nest, mamma. It has one wee bird in it. Do you want to see the fellow hop?”

“O Kirke! what made you bring Donald here now?” said Mrs. Rowe, with a vexed laugh, as Kirke spilled his baby brother at her feet.

Donald scrambled up, and rested his chin on the edge of the trunk to see his mamma put in the sofa-pillows, and spread blankets over them. “P’itty ’itty bed,” said he.

“So you think that’s a bed do you, little brother?” cried Kirke, much amused. “It does look like your cribby, that’s a fact.”

“P’itty ’itty mamma,” pursued the young rogue, throwing his arms about his mother’s neck, partly because he loved her, partly because he feared she was going to send him away.

“There, sweetheart, that will do,” said she at last, between his kisses. “Mamma is busy now. Brother must take little Donald down-stairs.”

“Pit-a-bat, pit-a-bat,” pleaded the baby. He saw he must go, and, as that was the case, preferred to go in state, riding on his brother’s back.

“Well, pick-a-back it is, then,” exclaimed Kirke, slinging the teasing child across his shoulders. In the lower hall he met Captain Bradstreet and Pauline.

“You’re the very young man I want to speak to,” cried the cheery captain; “I want”—

“Now, papa, Kirke’s not so very young, I’m sure,” interrupted Pauline archly.

Captain Bradstreet chuckled as though his motherless daughter had made a witty remark.

“True, my little girl, Kirke’s not so very young; but then, on the other hand, not so old as he may be later.”

“I’m going on thirteen, Captain Bradstreet,” said Kirke, jealous for his own dignity.

The captain chuckled again, and wiped his sunburned face so hard that Kirke half looked for a crimson stain on the white pocket-handkerchief.

“Yes, yes, to be sure, you’ll overtake your father before long, Kirke. Hop Kee says your father’s not at home.”

“No; papa has gone to Mr. Gleason’s, Captain Bradstreet.”

“We’ve come, Pauline and I, to engage you and that big sister of yours to visit us at our camp when we’re settled in it. Pauline won’t sleep a wink till this thing’s arranged. Can we see your mother?”

Kirke set Donald down upon the floor, and hastened to the upper hall, where Molly was capering about in the wildest excitement.

“O mamma! did you hear what Captain Bradstreet said? Did you hear? He wants Kirke and me to make a visit at his camp—I never made a visit at a camp in my life!”

“Yes, mamma,” said Kirke, in the same low tone, “Captain Bradstreet wants to ask you if Molly and I can go. Came on purpose.”

“O mamma! you’ll say yes; won’t you?” begged Molly.

Mrs. Rowe was hastily laying aside her apron.

“We’ll ask papa, Molly. Captain Bradstreet is certainly very kind.”

“I don’t think Captain Bradstreet’s kind—I don’t think he’s kind a bit,” muttered little Miss Weezy, as the others went down-stairs. “Never ’vited me at all! Didn’t I ’vite him to my seven-years-old party, ice-cream to it too? O dear, dear, dear!”

Unloading an apronful of dolls in a heap by the trunk, offended little Weezy stole down the back staircase into the garden to confide her sorrows to Ginger, Molly’s yellow kitten.

“Captain Bradstreet said I was a nice, sweet little girl; he said it two times, he truly did. And now he’s gone and asked Kirke and Molly to go to his—to his something—oh, yes, he’s asked them, and never asked me.”

Ginger purred softly, and rubbed her head against her little mistress’s feet; but Weezy could not be comforted. What a miserable old world it was to be sure, where captains called you nice, sweet little girls, and then went and didn’t invite you to their—to their—she couldn’t quite remember what.

Grown-up people liked big boys and girls like Kirke and Molly; they didn’t like little ones like herself and Donald.

Poor little Donald, he was crying too. She heard him. What was he crying about? Weezy wondered. And where was he? He seemed a great way off, by the sound, ’most up in the sky. Why didn’t somebody find him and make him happy?

CHAPTER II
DONALD HIDES

“Weezy, Weezy, is Donald out there in the garden with you?”

This was Molly calling from the back porch.

“No, he isn’t,” answered Weezy, in a discouraged tone.

“He’s screaming himself hoarse, Weezy, and we can’t find him anywhere in the house.”

“I haven’t seen him.” Weezy walked slowly toward her sister. “Has Captain Bradstreet gone, Molly?”

“Yes, Weezy, and Pauline.”

“Did Captain Bradstreet say”—

“Maybe Donald followed Pauline and her father home, Molly,” suggested Mrs. Rowe from the doorway.

“No, mamma, I’ve been over to ask. I couldn’t hear Donald on that side of the street, either. He must be in this house.”

“Then, I’d like to know where, Molly,” exclaimed Kirke, springing out upon the porch. “I’ve dived into all the wardrobes and under all the beds.”

His face was crimson, and his hair on end like the spines of a sea-urchin. A cobweb dangled from his coat-sleeve.

“Have you looked in the sideboard, Kirke?”

“No, I haven’t, Molly; and I haven’t looked in the salt-cellars.”

“Oh, you funny boy!” tittered Weezy, who regarded the search as a protracted and rather diverting game of hide-and-go-seek.

Mrs. Rowe, on the contrary, was becoming seriously troubled.

“Where can the darling be, Molly?” she cried, rushing back into the house, and hurrying from room to room. “I can hardly hear his voice now. How faint it has grown!”

“It is loudest here in the hall, mamma,” said Molly, who had run ahead, and halted abruptly at the foot of the front stairway.

“Donny is up chimney, I guess,” cried little Louise, dancing to the fireplace.

“Nonsense, Weezy; do you think he is a bat?” retorted Molly.

Kirke dropped on his knees before the hearth. He had been stuck in a chimney once himself, and the recollection always made his flesh creep.

“If Donald has crawled up this flue, Molly, it’s no laughing matter, let me tell you.”

“What are you talking about, Kirke? Donald couldn’t crawl up that flue; it is altogether too small.”

“I’m not so sure, Molly. Don can squeeze through a knothole.”

“Donald, Donald darling,” called Mrs. Rowe shrilly. “Where are you, Donald? Tell mamma.”

A plaintive, muffled wail floated down the air.

“Tum, mamma, tum.”

“Donald is in the chimney, mamma! Oh, I’m so afraid he is in here!” groaned Kirke, trying to gaze into the chimney’s blackened throat.

But he only bumped his head against the andirons and twisted his neck for nothing.

“There are bricks in the way, mamma, stacks of them. I can’t see a single thing.”

“Tum, oh, tum!” cried the choked voice again; and this time they were sure it came from above them.

But did it actually proceed from the throat of the chimney? It was Mrs. Rowe who first thought of the unused grate in the upper hall. Might not Donald have wedged his restless little body into that? He was constantly teasing to go up on the roof.

“Here I am, dearest, mamma is here,” she called, mounting the staircase, the children at her heels, and stumbling across the clothing that strewed the floor.

Before the grate stood the large trunk she had been packing. She had left it open, and now it was closed; but she was too agitated to notice the change.

“Quick, Kirke, this trunk is in the way. Help me move it out from the grate.”

Kirke laid hold of the handle nearest.

“What a heavy trunk, mamma! What makes”—

At that moment there was a stifled cry of “Mamma, mamma!”

Kirke jumped as if he had been shot, for the words seemed spoken directly in his ear.

“Donald’s in the trunk,” he roared, letting go the handle. “The little monkey is in the trunk!”

“He’s packed himself, Donny’s packed himself!” shouted Weezy, hopping about on one foot. “What an ever-so-queer baby!”

Molly flew to the trunk, but it was fastened.

“Oh, this lock! This hateful, hateful spring-lock. Where is the key?”

“I left it in the lock. I know I left it in the lock,” exclaimed Mrs. Rowe, groping hastily about the carpet. “Help me, children, do help me find it!”

“Tum, mamma. Why don’t oo tum?”

The voice was very low, oh, very, very low, little more than a sigh.

“Yes, yes, my baby; mamma will come.”

Mrs. Rowe was yet hunting the key, and hunting to no purpose.

“Bring a hammer, Kirke,” she cried hurriedly. “Bring a screw-driver—no, a chisel. Call Hop Kee.”

It seemed centuries before Kirke returned with the tools; in reality it was only three minutes. Then Hop Kee came flying in as though fired from a sling or swung by his own long pigtail. Behind him appeared Captain Bradstreet and Pauline to learn if Donald had been found; and among them all the trunk was speedily opened.

Little Donald lay upon the pillows gasping for breath, and clasping in his chubby hand the missing key.

“Peepaboo, Donny! Peepaboo!” cried Weezy.

But the released prisoner did not answer. Mrs. Rowe caught the pale, limp little fellow to her breast with a sob of thanksgiving.

“Mamma is here, my baby. Did you think mamma never, never would come?”

The child snuggled close in her arms, too exhausted to utter a word.

“Look up, dearest; mamma has you! Smile, mother’s darling, mamma has found her lost baby.”

“Yes, praise God! You’ve found your boy, Mrs. Rowe, and found him not one minute too soon,” muttered Captain Bradstreet, throwing up the windows. “If he had not made himself heard, he might have shared the fate of Ginevra.”

“Don’t mention it, Captain Bradstreet,” shuddered Mrs. Rowe. “The story of Ginevra flashed into my mind the moment I discovered where Donald was.”

“Who was Ginevra, anyway, Molly?” asked Kirke, a little later.

The Captain and Pauline had gone, Mr. Rowe had come home, and the color was returning to Donald’s cheeks.

“Oh! don’t you know, Kirke? Why, Ginevra was that gay young bride,—Italian, I believe,—who ran off after her wedding, and hid herself in a chest.”

“What did she do that for?”

“Why just for fun, to make the guests hunt for her. They were all playing hide-and-go-seek.”

“Well, what next, Molly?”

“And the chest had a spring-lock.”

“Oh! I see.”

“Yes, the springiest kind of a spring-lock; and the poor little bride was no sooner inside the chest than the lid snapped down on her. There she had to stay; and she wasn’t found for a hundred years?”

“A hundred years!” echoed Weezy, in dismay. “O Molly! didn’t she have anything to eat for a whole hundred years?”

“I guess she didn’t want anything to eat, Weezy,” said Kirke, with a sly wink at Molly. “Not toward the last of it, anyway. I guess she had lost her appetite.”

“O Kirke! you wretched boy,” said Molly.

But Kirke’s shocking sarcasm had been quite lost on Weezy. She had picked up a box-cover from the floor, and was fanning Donald as he lay across his mother’s lap. “Did you think that was a truly, truly little bed, Donald?”

Donald nodded drowsily.

“Babies shouldn’t go to sleep in trunks. Oh, you droll, droll little brother!”

Weezy’s remark had called up a painful memory, and Donald’s lip began to quiver.

“Don’t wike p’itty ’itty bed. All dark. Mamma all gone.”

“We won’t talk about it, darling,” said Mrs. Rowe, kissing the tear-stained face. “Here you are in sister’s arms, and sister shall sing to you. What do you want to hear her sing?”

“Sing Robbitty-bobbitty,” replied Donald, swallowing a sob. And Weezy piped up in a clear, sweet treble:—

“Robinty-bobbinty bent his bow

To shoot a pitcher and killed a crow.”

CHAPTER III
SANTA LUZIA

“Here comes Miss Hobbs, mamma, rolling along with the clothes-basket.”

Wednesday morning had arrived, and Kirke was upon the side porch helping his mother strap her grip-sack. Miss Hobbs was bringing home some starched clothes too fine to be laundered by Sing High, the “wash-man;” and beside her walked her roly-poly niece and nephew, Essie and Harry.

“I daren’t leave them at ’ome by their little selves, Mrs. Rowe,” she wheezed in mounting the steps. “Hessie is that contriving of mischief, an’ such an obstinate child.”

Essie hung her head, though not too low to see the banana that Mrs. Rowe presently brought her.

“What do you say, Hessie? For shame! Can’t you thank the lady?”

“Tank oo,” mumbled Essie in the act of skinning the fruit with her sharp little teeth.

“That’s a good gell, Hessie. You and ’Arry must heat your bananas ’ere on the porch while I carry in the clothes.

“If you’ll believe it, Mrs. Rowe, that rogue of a Hessie ran away again yesterday,” she continued, following Mrs. Rowe into the side hall. “A beastly race she led us. She tired ’Arry hall out.”

“Harry looks delicate this summer,” remarked Mrs. Rowe, as she began to sort the clothes into piles.

“’Arry’s fat, Mrs. Rowe, but he isn’t rugged. If I could lay ’ands on the gold I’ve buried I’d take him away for his ’ealth.”

“Why can’t Miss Hobbs get her gold, mamma?” whispered Weezy, coming in just then. “Can’t Kirke and I dig it up for her?”

“Miss Hobbs means, dear, that she has spent her money for land that she cannot sell, and so she can’t afford to take Harry into the country this summer.”

“You’d better let him go to Santa Luzia with the Rowe family,” laughed Kirke, as his mother gave him some garments to carry up-stairs. “Let him go, and I’ll see to him.”

“Thank you, Master Kirke,”—Miss Hobbs’s ample sides shook merrily,—“but while you’re seeing to ’Arry who’ll see to you?”

Kirke looked nettled, especially when she went on to say, “No, no, your ma’ll have enough young folks to keep steady without ’aving my ’Arry.”

“You’d better let him go to Santa Luzia.”

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Mrs. Rowe smiled thoughtfully at these jesting remarks. A fortnight at the beach would doubtless be a benefit to the ailing child. Could this be arranged? She must consider the question.

“We are all fond of Harry,” she remarked, in handing Miss Hobbs the empty basket. “He’s a good little boy.”

“Oh, ’Arry’s decent, Mrs. Rowe,” responded Miss Hobbs, with a complacent glance at the hall clock.

“The clock is too fast, Miss Hobbs.”

“Is she? I thought she must be quite a few minutes on; but we won’t stay to hinder you.” And Miss Hobbs tied her sunbonnet.

“You’ll come around again this afternoon, Miss Hobbs, to close the house?”

“For certain, Mrs. Rowe. I’ll close the ’ouse, and take charge of the key.”

“Which key, Miss Hobbs? Hop Kee, or door-key?” asked Kirke, with mock innocence.

“Not Hop Kee, you may rely on that, Master Kirke,” retorted Miss Hobbs, putting on her shawl as if it had been a bandage. “I wouldn’t take charge of a Chinaman for all the teapots he could break.”

“Hop Kee will work for the Bradstreets while we’re away, Miss Hobbs.”

“So there is where he’s going. I knew the captain’s housekeeper was sick.”

“And when the family move into camp, they’ll take Hop Kee along with them.”

Captain Bradstreet’s name had reminded Weezy of her old grievance.

“O Miss Hobbs! Captain Bradstreet has ’vited Kirke and Molly to go into that camp thing, and he hasn’t ever ’vited me,” she complained, holding the door ajar for Miss Hobbs to pass out. “I don’t think it’s fair.”

“Never mind, little woman! You’ll have your share of hinvitations before many years,”—Miss Hobbs gave the others a wise look. “I’m sorry to ’ave you all go; but I ’ope you’ll ’ave a good summer, and I pray the Lord’ll keep you well and ’appy.”

“Oh! He will; He always does,” answered little Miss Weezy for the family. “Good-by, Miss Hobbs.”

After that Harry and Essie came in with sticky hands and faces to make their farewell speeches; and then their Aunt Ruth waddled homeward between them like a plump mother-duck between two plump ducklings.

They were met at the corner by a handsome, dark-eyed Spanish boy. It was Manuel Carillo, coming to take away Kirke’s burro and cart to keep during vacation.

“You’ll be good to Hoppity, this summer, won’t you, Manuel?” said Kirke playfully, as he helped him harness the sleek gray burro into the trig gray cart. “You won’t be mad with him because he threw you and broke your leg.”

“Mad? Oh, no! that’s all right.”

Manuel grinned, and slapped the limb in question to show how strong it was.

“Hoppity ought to help you carry around your newspapers to pay for that bad trick of his. Now, oughtn’t you, Hoppity?” said Kirke, giving the little beast a parting love-pat.

Kirke was glad to lend Manuel the burro. It seemed one way of making amends for the sad accident of the year before that had been caused partly by his own recklessness.

When Kirke returned to the house the family were sitting down to an early luncheon. Molly made room for him beside herself, saying cheerily,—

“Manuel drove by the window just now, smiling all over his face. How much he does think of you, Kirke!”

“I don’t know about that, Molly, but he thinks a good deal of Hoppity. He’ll have a splendid time with the little trotter while we’re away.”

“Kirke has made many friends at Silver Gate City,” remarked his mother. “Harry Hobbs for one.” Then, turning to Mr. Rowe, she added, in a sprightly tone,—“Kirke proposes doing a little missionary work during vacation, papa. Have you any objection to his taking care of a ‘fresh-air child’ for a fortnight?”

“A ‘fresh-air child,’ my dear? I don’t quite understand.”

“Well, Harry Hobbs, for instance. Harry is in need of a change of scene. Do you approve his coming to Santa Luzia by and by?”

“O papa! I was only in fun,” exclaimed Kirke in hot haste. “I don’t want Harry to come; really and truly I don’t. Paul and I have planned no end of good times there on the beach by ourselves.”

“And you think Harry wouldn’t enjoy those good times? Is that it, my son?”

“No, papa; Harry would enjoy them fast enough,” Kirke laughed and blushed; “the bother is that Paul and I wouldn’t enjoy him. The little kid would be frightfully in the way with his mud-pies, and his tagging, and his chattering. Don’t you see, papa?”

“Then, Miss Hobbs dresses Harry so oddly, papa,” added Molly, as her father did not reply. “She makes him look for all the world like one of Mr. Palmer Cox’s brownies; and people at Santa Luzia wouldn’t know but Harry was one of our family.”

“What a shocking thought, Molly!” cried Mr. Rowe, vastly entertained by her expression of deep distress. “In the face of a danger like this it never will do for us to take Harry.”

“You’re laughing at me, papa; but you don’t understand how girls feel about such things. Kirke doesn’t understand, either.”

“Girls have too many feelings, I think,” said Kirke, not very politely. “They’re always afraid of doing something queer.”

“I wish boys were a little more like them, then,”—Molly pushed back her plate with a saucy air, “boys never care a fig what is said of them.”

“That’s because they’re independent, Molly.”

“It’s because they don’t know what is proper, I say,” retorted Molly between fun and earnest. “Why, I’ve seen boys that would walk into church with monkeys on their backs and never blush.”

“I’m afraid Kirke will consider you rude, Molly,” interposed her mother gently. “Aren’t we wandering very far from Harry?”

“The farther the better,” was Molly’s secret comment, as Mrs. Rowe continued,—

“I hoped you children would want to do something nice for Harry. His aunt is not able to give him many pleasures.”

“She gave him a Caroline cooky yesterday, mamma,” put in Weezy; “full of seeds, it was. Harry let me bite.”

“But, mamma, we can’t take Harry with us,” exclaimed Molly, elated by the sudden thought; “Miss Hobbs can’t possibly get him ready in time for the train.”

“As to that, Molly, she can send him next month by Captain Bradstreet.”

“May be Mrs. Kitto won’t have room for Harry,” suggested Molly faintly.

Kirke dashed this hope to the ground. Harry, he affirmed, could be rolled into any corner like a foot-ball.

“The question is simply this, children,” said Mrs. Rowe, buttering a biscuit for Donald to eat on the car; “will you devote a part of your vacation to your little neighbor, or will you spend the whole of it in amusing yourselves? You shall decide.”

“O mamma! please don’t leave it that way. Don’t put us on our honor,” entreated Molly, with a shrug.

“Because, when you put us on our honor, we have to do a thing, even if we hate it like poison,” added Kirke, groping under the sideboard for the yellow kitten.

Kitty’s basket was ready, with a slice of roast beef at the bottom, and a smart blue bow on top; and now at the last moment Ginger had refused to be put in.

“Head her off, Molly. Shut the door, Weezy. Look out, Don, or I shall run over you!”

Kirke shouted his orders like a general in battle. Everybody jostled against everybody else, and Ginger was no sooner captured than the carriage came to take them all to the station. Then followed the excitement of the journey and of the arrival at Santa Luzia; and for several days nothing further was said about Harry Hobbs.

CHAPTER IV
LEARNING TO SWIM

The children were delighted with the lovely little city of Santa Luzia, which lay upon the coast, snuggling in its arms a placid, sunny bay. For the first week after their arrival Weezy never tired of watching the sails on the water, and of counting how many she could see from her window at “The Old and New.”

“The Old and New” was Mrs. Kitto’s boarding-house, overlooking Santa Luzia Beach. The Old was the back part, built of brown adobe, with walls two feet thick; the New was the modern wooden front, with a breezy veranda stepping down toward the sea.

“The house puts its best foot forward,” prattled Molly, as she and Kirke and Weezy set off one morning for a lesson in swimming.

“That’s all right,” replied Kirke, “if it keeps steady on its pins.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” sniffed Weezy with disapproval. “Houses don’t have feet; and they don’t have pins.”

“No, nor soles either, you precious snip of a goosie.”

Kirke held his little sister’s hand, swinging it to and fro as they walked together across the beach.

“Are you going to squeal to-day when you go into the water? The last time you scared the swimming-master half out of his wits.”

“O Kirke, what a story!”

“I’ll leave it to Molly if the man didn’t duck.”

“You silly, silly boy! You know he ducked on purpose.”

Weezy flirted her sunny head in high disdain, while Kirke and Molly exchanged amused glances.

“Do you think so, Weezy? Well, may be he did duck on purpose. I mean to try that ducking business myself this morning. Whatever you do, little sister, don’t grab me around the neck; you might pull me under.”

Kirke spoke in jest. He could already swim quite well, for he had learned the art a year or two before in the East. Molly and Weezy, on the contrary, had only taken three lessons.

“Hoh, Kirke! I couldn’t pull you under. Of course not, ’cause you’re biggerer’n I am,” said Weezy, stopping to watch a small urchin scooping ovens in the sand.

He was a plump little boy in “brownie” overalls, which Molly insisted made him look like a fat, twisted doughnut.

“He looks like Harry Hobbs,” responded Kirke, hurrying Weezy on towards the bath-house.

Molly felt a sudden twinge of conscience.

“That makes me think, Kirke, what shall we do about Harry? If he comes, he’ll have to come next week with the Bradstreets. Mamma has left it to us, you know, to ask him or not, as we please.”

Kirke whistled, and kicked aside a tangle of seaweed.

“Oh! we might as well invite the young Britisher, I suppose.”

“But if Harry comes, Kirke, you and I’ll each have to keep an eye on him to”—

“Yes, that’ll be an eye apiece, Molly.”

“To see that he doesn’t get drowned or anything.”

“Pooh, Miss Fidgetibus, who’s going to drown him? You couldn’t sink that dumpy boy any more’n you could sink the buoy on the rock yonder.”

“I thought you didn’t want Harry any more than I did, Kirke.”

“Who says I do want him? Only I was thinking he could burrow here in all outdoors like a gopher; and it seems sort of mean, doesn’t it, Molly, to shut down on the poor little kid?”

“I—don’t—know.”

Molly’s glance had wandered from the sturdy young oven-builder to a group of well-dressed tourists climbing the long flight of steps to the bluff overhead. How mortifying it would be to take Harry about among people like those, and pose as his sister. Where did Miss Hobbs get the patterns of his clothes?

“The beach will make Harry weller, mamma says,” observed Weezy, always ready to fill the pauses.

“Better, you mean, don’t you, Weezy?” corrected Molly. “Mamma is always wanting to make somebody better.”

“You’re right, ma’am,” Kirke nodded emphatically. “Mamma is kind, way through. She isn’t much like you and me, Molly. Sometimes we’re kind, and then again sometimes we’re kind of not.”

“Thank you, sir; you can speak for yourself, if you please,” retorted Molly, bridling.

She had secretly prided herself on being unselfish and warm-hearted, and this frank remark was wounding to her self-love.

“For my part, I’m willing to send for Harry,” she added virtuously.

“So am I, Molly,—on a pinch,” said Kirke. “And I suppose Pauline will bring him,—on a pinch!”

“Then, as soon as we get home to The Old and New, Kirke, we’ll ask mamma to write to Miss Hobbs, and have it over with.”

“Agreed. The Bradstreets will be here by next Thursday, won’t they? Will they stay at The Old and New a week?”

“They’ll stay till the captain and Hop Kee get Camp Hilarious in running order,” answered Molly, as they mounted the steps of the bath-house.

While Kirke presented their tickets at the office, she and Weezy waited in the main room. This had a large oblong bathing-tank in the centre, surrounded on its four sides by a broad walk. The dressing-rooms opened upon this walk, and the door of each one had painted on it near the top either a number or a letter of the alphabet.

“Which room would you like, Molly?” asked Kirke, quickly returning with the keys and their bathing-suits. “You can take ‘H’ or ‘No. 7.’”