Читать книгу The Gordon Elopement - Carolyn Wells - Страница 7

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The morning after the arrival of Grace and Robert Gordon at Umbagog House they walked down the path to the lake, still wondering at the inexplicable state of things in the hotel.

“It wouldn’t be so strange,” Grace said, “if there were just a few people about, but an immense hotel, in such perfect working order, and no guests, is the very weirdest thing I ever saw. Do you suppose, Robert, that there was an epidemic of some sort and they all fled for their lives?”

“Hardly that, I think; but it is a mighty curious thing that we haven’t seen one of our fellow guests; nobody in the dining-room at breakfast except ourselves. Wonder if they’re all crazy and locked in their rooms?”

“Oh, Bob, you don’t think this is an insane asylum, do you?”

“Well, it looks a little like it. Hello! Where’d the dog come from?”

They stood and watched a big dog that swaggered by with an assumed air of indifference, and as he passed them they heard some one call: “Joseph, come here!” Joseph walked slowly on. He did not bound to meet his mistress. He walked sidewise, looking off over the lake as though he were thinking deeply.

Joseph was a personage. He was a dog of parts. Long, narrow, and black, with eyes that by long association with Aunt Zip had taken on something of her sharpness of vision, he seemed to know things, and he not only seemed to know them, but he did know them, and he was used to tell Aunt Zip what he knew in a series of staccato barks, accompanied by melodic waggings of a tail which had met with an accident in his puppy days and had remained permanently crooked.

Grace leaned farther over the hedge and they watched the dog as he poked his nose around the corner of the veranda where Aunt Zip was watering her geraniums. Seeing her, Joseph stopped and peered tentatively. Aunt Zip saw him.

“Joseph Rodman Payne,” she began severely—“Joseph Rodman Payne, you come here this minute. What have you been a-doin’?”

Joseph’s wandering mind came back to mundane things. With an audible sigh he faced Mrs. Payne.

“Joseph,” she repeated, “what have you been a-doin’? Ain’t you ashamed of yourself, a great big dog like you, goin’ off chasin’ after dogs that ain’t kin to you? Where’s your bringin’ up? How many times have I got to tell you that mornin’s I want you to set right here and see to them chickens? Just look at ‘em now, clawin’ up them tomato-plants that Josiah Quincy’s hired man had so much trouble a-plantin’. Just you look at ‘em! You needn’t tell me,” she went on, as Joseph entered a plea of goodness by a tentative promise with his tail—“you needn’t tell me that you ain’t been chasin’ that dog that was around here yesterday. You needn’t do it. I know, ‘cause if you had been tendin’ to business you’d have had them chickens out of that garden long and long ago. How many times have I got to tell you about Susy?”

Here Grace became so much interested that she crept through the gate of the garden hedge hoping to command a view of the speaker without herself being seen.

Robert followed and saw on the veranda a large woman of the type known as “comfortable looking.” He felt sure that he must call her “Aunt” if he spoke to her.

Looking over her spectacles at the dog, who had settled himself with a resigned expression, knowing that a tirade would follow, Aunt Zip continued:

“Didn’t I tell you about Susy when you was a little bit of a puppy? Didn’t I tell you how she was a hen that never amounted to nothin’ at all? She was just the same sort of a hen as you are—she never could keep her mind sot on nothin’. She was industrious enough when it come to layin’, and she laid ten of the nicest Plymouth Rock eggs you ever saw, and then she decided she wanted to set.

“Well, she began all right enough, but the strain was too much for her weak mind. She just had to go off and tell the other hens about the ten chickens she was goin’ to have come the 5th of June. Well, while she was off tellin’ what she was goin’ to do, them eggs all got cold and every single blessed one of ‘em got chilled and spoiled; they wasn’t no use, even for scramblin’ for the boarders, and I threw ‘em all into the lake. I argued a lot with Susy, but it didn’t do any good. She couldn’t keep her mind on her business, and I had to get Cap’n Haskins to chop her head off, and I cooked her for dinner.”

Finding that his mistress’s lecture promised to be longer than he anticipated, Joseph stretched himself, yawned, lay down with his head on his paws, and listened with apparent attention.

“I know you feel bad about it, Joseph,” she went on; “I know you feel bad, and you’re a-promisin’ now that you won’t ever do it again, but you just see what comes when a hen don’t keep her mind on her business. Hens ain’t so much different from dogs, I guess, and dogs ain’t so much different from folks—not particular different—and unless you want your head chopped off and get boiled, why, you just go on chasin’ after strange dogs and neglect your business. Now you go right out to that garden and you set there and watch them chickens.”

Joseph bounded off to the garden, letting off yelps to terrify the predatory chickens. Aunt Zip went on watering her geraniums. “Hens and dogs and folks are pretty much alike,” she said.

Cap’n Haskins came up from the stable yard, marking time with his uneven gait to the deep-sea chantey that one might hear off Madagascar or in the far North Pacific, but which seemed strangely unfamiliar when it was whistled along the shore of the peacefulest of Maine lakes.

Grace saw him from her hiding-place behind the hedge and stepped out. Robert followed. Joseph, the big Newfoundland, came in from the garden. The chickens scurried away toward the barnyards. Aunt Zip set down the watering-pot and wiped her hands on her apron. Cap’n Haskins stopped whistling. Nobody spoke, and the silence became oppressive.

“Good morning, Cap’n Haskins,” said Robert at last. “I was just coming to look for you. We want to go driving this morning. Can you give us a horse?”

“I can let you have a team.”

“Oh, we don’t want two horses,” said Grace.

“I didn’t say anythin’ about two horses,” growled Cap’n Haskins.

“Why, you said a team, and that certainly means two horses.”

“Not in Maine,” said the Captain.

“Well, call it what you like; we want to go driving,” said Robert; “that is, unless all your teams are in use. Have the other guests of the hotel engaged them all?”

For a moment the Captain looked as if he were going to smile. “No,” he said. “I guess there’s one that ain’t engaged; you can have that.”

“Goin’ to be gone all day?” inquired Aunt Zip cordially. “If you are, you’ll need some lunch.”

“Thank you,” said Grace; “that will be lovely.”

And this was the Gordons’ introduction to Mrs. Zipporah Payne, sister of Josiah Quincy Hurd, proprietor of Umbagog House.

When Cap’n Haskins returned with the “team,” the head waiter appeared bearing a basket, which Aunt Zip directed him to place carefully under the seat of the buckboard.

“Have any of the other ladies from the hotel gone driving to-day?” asked Grace.

Aunt Zip smiled. “I don’t think many of them have gone out yet,” she said.

The Gordons drove away.

“We didn’t find out much from the old lady, did we?” said Robert.

“No,” said Grace, “but if I don’t find out something about it pretty soon I shall send for a detective.”

“Do!” said Robert.