The Corner House Girls Growing Up

by Grace Brooks Hill

  CHAPTER XIV

  AN UNEXPECTED DELIGHT

  Sammy and Dot, held prisoners in the hold of the _Nancy Hanks_, made onepainful discovery at least. They learned that without light the timepassed with great slowness.

  It seemed as though they had been in the dark many hours longer than wasactually the case. They sat down side by side and seriously ate all thegumballs. These scarcely satisfied their youthful appetites and, anyway,as Dot said, it _must_ be supper time.

  So they ate all of the provisions they could possibly swallow. Thisattack made fearful inroads upon the stock of provisions. There was nocheese left, few of the animal crackers, and half of the peanut butterwas literally "licked up," for they had to use their fingers.

  "Ho!" said Sammy, "what's the odds? Fingers was made before spoons."

  "Not our fingers, Sammy Pinkney," retorted Dot. "But maybe pirates don'tmind about table manners."

  Just then her boy comrade was not thinking much about the pirate play.If he had ever felt that he was fitted to rove the seas under the JollyRoger banner, on a career of loot and bloodshed, he had quite got overthe hallucination.

  He wanted to go home. He wanted to get Dot home. He had a very decidedbelief that if his father interviewed him after this escapade somethingserious would happen to him.

  Dot, having recovered from her first fright, and being blessed now witha very full stomach, began to nod. She finally fell fast asleep with herhead on Sammy's shoulder. He let her sink down on the boards, puttingthe sack of potatoes and his jacket under her head for a pillow.

  He could not sleep himself. Of course not! He must keep watch all nightlong. No knowing when the people who had stolen the barge might come andopen the hatchway and attack them. Sammy was quite convinced that theman and the girl had illegally taken possession of the canalboat.

  He sat beside the softly breathing Dot and listened to certain rustlingsounds in the hold, wondering fearfully what they meant. It seemed tohim that no rats could make such noises.

  "Might be wolves--or snakes," thought the boy, and shivered desperatelyas he sat in the dark.

  The canalboat continued to go its blundering way, and scarcely a soundfrom out-of-doors reached the little boy's ears. Captain Bill Quigg fellasleep at the rudder arm and only woke up now and then when he cameclose to losing his pipe from between his teeth. "Lowise" kept close atthe heels of the ancient mules, urging them with voice and goad. Thehound, misnamed Beauty, slept the unhappy sleep of the flea-ridden dog.

  The thunderstorm had cleared the air. It was a beautiful afternoon. Foralthough the children in the hold thought it long past their usualsupper-time, it was nothing of the kind.

  The air in the hold began to feel close and it made Sammy very sleepy aswell as Dot. But the boy was faithful to his trust. He propped hiseyelids open and manfully held his watch.

  Frightened? Never more so, was Sammy Pinkney. But there was some pluckin the youngster and he felt he must put on a bold front before Dot.

  As for the canalboat captain and his "crew," they apparently went theeven tenor of their way. Cap'n Bill Quigg was not a very smartman--either physically or mentally. The blacksmith at Milton had toldLuke Shepard the truth. Little Louise was the smartest member of theQuigg family, which consisted only of herself, her father and the hounddog, Beauty.

  She practically "ran the business." In some way Quigg had becomepossessed of the old _Nancy Hanks_ and the mules. He plodded back andforth from one end of the canal to the other, taking such freight as hecould obtain. If there chanced to be no freight, as on this occasion, hewas quite philosophical about it.

  Louise worried. She was of a keen, anxious disposition, anyway. Sheshowed it in her face--a hatchet-face at best behind the plentifulsprinkling of freckles that adorned it. But by no means was the faceunattractive.

  She had had little schooling--only such as she had obtained in winterwhen the _Nancy Hanks_ was frozen up near a schoolhouse. Then shestudied with avidity. Had she ever remained long enough for the teachersreally to get acquainted with the shy, odd child, she might have madegood friends. As it was, she knew few people well and was as ignorant oflife as it was lived by comfortably situated people as a civilized humanbeing could be.

  She had begun to scheme and plan for daily existence, and to keep thewolf of hunger away from the door of the canalboat cabin, when she was avery little girl--no older than Dot Kenway herself, in fact. Now sheseemed quite grown up when one talked with her, despite her crassignorance upon most subjects.

  This afternoon she paddled on in her bare feet through the mire of thetowpath, while the thunder storm passed over and the sun came out again.As she urged on the mules she was planning for a delight that had neveryet entered into her crippled life.

  She had not urged her father to stop for the farmer's potatoes, whereason any other occasion she would have insisted upon doing so. A dollarto be earned was an important thing to Louise Quigg.

  But she had two half dollars saved and hidden away in the cabin. She hadsqueezed the sum out of her bits of housekeeping money during the pasttwo months. For all that time the dead walls and hoardings aboutDurginville had been plastered with announcements of a happening thethought of which thrilled little Louise Quigg to the very tips of herfingers and toes.

  When they reached the Bumstead Lock this afternoon there was a chancefor the girl to leave the mules grazing beside the towpath while thewater rose slowly in the basin, and she could board the boat and talkwith Cap'n Bill.

  The hound, awakened by her approach, began sniffing around the edge ofthe forward hatch cover.

  "Wonder what Beauty smells there?" Louise said idly. But her mind was onsomething else. The captain shook his head without much reflection and,now more thoroughly awakened, lit his pipe again.

  "I say, Pap!"

  "Wal, Lowise?" he drawled.

  "We're going to lay up to-night short of the soapworks at Durginville."

  "Heh?" he demanded, somewhat surprised, but still drawling. "What for,Lowise?"

  "I want to hitch there by the Lawton Pike."

  "Lawsy, Lowise! you don't wanter do no sech thing," said Cap'n Bill.

  "Yes I do, Pap."

  "Too many folks goin' to be there. A slather of folks, Lowise. Why! thecircus grounds is right there. This is the day, ain't it?"

  "That's it, Pap. I want to see the circus."

  "Lawsy, Lowise!" the man stammered. "Circuses ain't for we folks."

  "Yes they are, Pap."

  "Ain't never been to one in all my life, Lowise," Cap'n Bill saidreflectively.

  "No more ain't I," agreed the girl. "But I'm goin' to this one."

  "You goin'?" he demanded, his amazement growing.

  "Yes. And you're goin' too, Pap."

  "Git out!" gasped Cap'n Bill, actually forgetting to pull on his pipe.

  "Yes, you are," declared Louise Quigg, nodding her head. "I've got thetwo half dollars. Beauty will stay and mind the boat. I jest got a tastein my mouth for that circus. Seems to me, Pap, I'd jest _die_ if Ididn't see it."

  "Lawsy, Lowise!" murmured Captain Bill Quigg, and was too amazed to sayanything more for an hour.

  The _Nancy Hanks_ got through the lock and the mules picked up the slackof the towrope again at Louise's vigorous suggestion. Inside the holdSammy and Dot both wondered about the stopping of the boat. Dot wasawakened by this.

  "Sammy," she murmured, "is it morning? Have we been here all night?"

  "I--I guess not, Dot. It can't be morning. Are you hungry?"

  "No-o. I guess not," confessed the little girl.

  "Then it can't be morning," Sammy declared, for what better time-keepercan there be than a child's stomach?

  "But aren't they going to let us out--not ever, Sammy?" wailed thelittle girl.

  "Pshaw! Of course they will. Some time they'll want to load up this oldboat. And then they'll have to open the door up there in the deck. Sowe'll get out."

  "But--but suppose it should be a long, long time?" br
eathed Dot,thrilled with the awfulness of the thought.

  "We got plenty to eat," Sammy said stoutly.

  "Not now we haven't, Sammy," Dot reminded him. "We ate a lot."

  "But there's all the potatoes--"

  "I wouldn't like 'em raw," put in Dot, with decision. "And you can'tcatch any fish as you were going to with your hook and line, Sammy. Iheard that girl that's with the other pirates," she added, "tell theirdog that he couldn't even catch rabbits along the canal. And what do youthink, Sammy Pinkney!"

  "What?" he asked, drearily enough.

  "Why, Sadie Goronofsky said last spring that she had an uncle that was arabbit. What do you think of that? I never heard of such a thing, didyou?"

  "He was a rabbit, Dot?" gasped Sammy, brought to life by this strangestatement.

  "That's just what she said. She said he was a rabbit, and he wore around black cap and had long whiskers--like our goat, I guess. And heprayed--"

  "Je-ru-sa-_lem_!" ejaculated Sammy.

  "And the rabbit, Sadie's uncle, prayed," went on Dot, uninfluenced bySammy's ejaculation. "Now what do you think of that?"

  Master Sammy was as ignorant of the Jewish ritual and synagogue officersas was Dot Kenway. He burst out with disgust:

  "I think Sadie Goronofsky was telling a fib, that's what _I_ think!"

  "I'm afraid so," Dot concluded with a sigh. "But I don't like to thinkso. I meant to ask Ruthie about it," and she shook her head again, stillmuch puzzled over Sadie's uncle who was a rabbi.

  The day waned, and still the two little stowaways heard nothing fromabove--not even the snuffing of the old hound about the hatch-cover.They were buried it seemed out of the ken of other human beings. It madethem both feel very despondent. Sammy stuck to his guns and would notcry; but after a while Dot sobbed herself to sleep again--with a greatluscious peach from Ruthie's basket of fruit, clutched in her hand andstaining the frock of the Alice-doll.

  The _Nancy Hanks_ was finally brought to a mooring just across the canalfrom the tented field where the circus was pitched. The dirty browncanvas of the large and small tents showed that the circus had alreadyhad a long season. Everything was tarnished and tawdry about the show atthis time of year. Even the ornate band wagon was shabby and thevociferous calliope seemed to have the croup whenever it was played.

  But people had come from far and near to see the show. Its wonders wereas fresh to the children as though the entertainment had just leftwinter quarters, all spic and span.

  From the deck of the _Nancy Hanks_ there looked to be hundreds andhundreds of people wandering about the fields where the tents wereerected.

  "Oh, come on, Pap, le's hurry!" exclaimed Louise Quigg, gaspingly. "Oh,my! Everybody'll see everything all up before we get there!"

  The mules were driven aboard over the gangplank and stabled in theforward end of the house. The cabin door was locked and Beauty set onguard. Without the first idea that they were leaving any other humanbeings upon the barge when they left it, Louise and her father walkedtoward the drawbridge on the edge of town, over which they had to passto reach the showgrounds.

  Louise had hurriedly cooked supper on the other side of the partitionfrom the coop where the mules were stabled. The fire was not entirelyout when she had locked the door. Her desire to reach the showgroundsearly made the child careless for once in her cramped life.

  The mules, quarreling over their supper, became more than usuallyactive. One mule bit the other, who promptly switched around, strivingto land both his heels upon his mate's ribs.

  Instead, the kicking mule burst in the partition between the stable andthe living room, or cabin, of the _Nancy Hanks_. The flying planksknocked over the stove and the live coals were spread abroad upon thefloor.

  This began to smoke at once. Little flames soon began to lick along thecracks between the deck planks. The mules brayed and became more uneasy.They did not like the smell of the smoke; much less did they like thevicinity of the flames which grew rapidly longer and hotter.

  As for Beauty, the hound, her idea of watching the premises was to curldown on an old coat of Quigg's on deck and sleep as soundly as though noperil at all threatened the old canalboat and anybody who might beaboard of it.