The Excursion

== THE EXCURSION ==
=== By Edwina Stanton Babcock ===
From The Pictorial Review 1917
Mrs.
Tuttle arrived breathless, bearing a large gilt parrot-cage. She swept up the
gangway of the Fall of Rome and was
enthusiastically received. There were, however, concealed titterings and
suppressed whispers. "My sakes! She's went and brought that bird."
"I won't believe it till I see
it."
"There he sets in his gold coop."
Mrs. Turtle brought Romeo to the excursion
with the same assurance that a woman of another stamp brings her Pekingese dog
to a restaurant table. While the Fall of
Romesounded a warning whistle, and hawsers were loosed she adjusted her
veil and took cognizance of fellow passengers.
In spite of wealth and "owning her own
automobile," Mrs. Turtle's fetish was democratic popularity. She greeted
one after another.
"How do, ,
and Mister, too! Who's keeping store while you're away?
"Carrie Turpin! You here? Where's Si?
Couldn't come? Now that's too bad!" After a long stare, "You're some
fleshier, ain't you, Carrie?"
A large woman in a tan-colored linen duster
came slowly down the deck, a camp-stool in either hand. Her portly advance was
intercepted by Mrs. Tuttle.
"Miss Tinneray! Same as ever!"
Mrs. Tinneray dropped the camp-stools and
adjusted her smoked glasses; she gave a start and the two ladies embraced.
Mrs. Tuttle said that "it beat
all," and Mrs. Tinneray said "she never!"
Mrs. Tuttle, emerged from the embrace,
re-adjusting her hat with many-ringed fingers, inquiring, "How's the
folks?"
Up lumbered Mr. Tinneray, a large man with
a chuckle and pale eyes, who was introduced by the well-known formula, "Miss
Tuttle, Mr. Tinneray, Mr. Tinneray, Miss Tuttle."
The Tinnerays said, "So you brought
the bird along, hey?" Then, without warning, all conversation ceased. The Fall of Rome, steaming slowly away from
the pier, whistled a sodden whistle, the flags flapped, every one realized that
the excursion had really begun.
This excursion was one of the frank
displays of human hopes, yearnings, and vanities, that sometimes take place on
steamboats. Feathers had a hectic brilliancy that proved secret, dumb longings.
Pendants known as "lavaleers" hung from necks otherwise innocent of
the costly fopperies of .
Old ladies clad in princess dresses with yachting caps worn rakishly on their
grey hair, vied with other old ladies in automobile bonnets, who, with opera
glasses, searched out the meaning of every passing buoy. Young girls carrying
"mesh-bags," that subtle connotation of the feminine character,
extracted tooth-picks from them or searched for bits of chewing gum among their
over scented treasures.
As it was an excursion, the Fall of Romecarried a band and booths laden
with many delicious superfluities such as pop-corn and the misleading compound
known as "salt-water taffy." There were, besides, the blue and red
pennants that always go on excursions, and the yellow and pink fly-flappers
that always come home from them; also there were stacks of whistle-whips and
slender canes with ivory heads with little holes pierced through. These canes
were bought only by cynical young men whose new straw hats were fastened to
their persons by thin black strings. Each young man, after purchasing an
ivory-headed cane retired to privacy to squint through it undisturbed. Emerging
from this privacy the young man would then confer with other young men. What
these joyless young men saw when they squinted they never revealed. But among
their elders they spread the strong impression that it was the Capital at or .
Besides bottled soda and all soft drinks
the Fall of Romecarried other stimuli
in the shape of comic gentlemen--such beings, as, more or less depressed in
their own proper environment, on excursions suddenly see themselves in their
true light, irresistibly facetious. These funny gentlemen, mostly husbands,
seated themselves near to large groups of indulgent women and kept up an
exquisite banter directed at each other's personal defects, or upon the
idiosyncrasies of any bachelor or spinster near. These funny gentlemen kept
alluding to the excursion as the "Exertion." If the boat rolled a
little they said, "Now, Mother, don't rock the boat."
"Here, girls, sit up close, we'll all
go down together."
"Hold on to yer beau, Minnie. He'll
fall overboard and where'll you git another?"
The peals of laughter at these sallies were
unfailing. The crunch of peanuts was unfailing. The band, with a sort of
plethoric indulgence, played slow waltzes in which the bass instruments
frequently misapplied notes, but to the allure of which came youthful dancers
lovely in proud awkward poses.
Mrs. Tuttle meanwhile was the social
center, demonstrating that mysterious psychic force known as being the
"life of the party." She advanced upon a tall sallow woman in
mourning, challenging, "Now Miss Mealer, why don't you just set and take a
little comfort, it won't cost you nothing? Ain't that your girl over there by
the coffee fountain? I should ha' known her by the ressemblance to you; she's
rill refined lookin'."
Mrs. Mealer, a tall, sallow widow with
carefully maintained mourning visage, admitted that this was so. Refinement,
she averred, was in the family, but she hinted at some obscure ailment which,
while it made Emma refined, kept her "mizzable."
"I brought her along," sighed Mrs.
Mealer, "tain't as if neither of us could take much pleasure into it, both
of us being so deep in black fer her Popper, but the styles is bound to do her
good. Emma is such a great hand for style."
"Yuess?" replied Mrs. Tuttle
blandly. This lady in blue was not nearly so interested in Emma as in keeping a
circle of admirers hanging around her cerulean presence, but even slightly
encouraged, Mrs. Mealer warmed to her topic.
"Style?" she repeated
impressively, "style? Seems like Emma couldn't never have enough of it.
Where she got it I don't know. I wasn't never much for dress, and give her
Popper coat and pants, twuz all _he_ wanted. But Emma--ef you want to make her
happy tie a bow onto suthin'."
Mrs. Tuttle nodded with ostentatious
understanding. Rising, she seized Romeo's cage and placed it more conspicuously
near her. She was critically watched by the older women. They viewed the thing
with mingled feelings, one or two going so far as to murmur darkly, "Her
and her parrot!"
Still, the lady's elegance and the known
fact that she owned and operated her own automobile cast a spell over most of
her observers, and many faces, as Mrs. Tuttle proceeded to draw out her pet,
were screwed into watchful and ingratiating benevolence.
Romeo, a blasé bird with the air of having
bitter memories, affected for a long time not to hear his mistress's
blandishments. After looking contemptuously into his seed-cup, he crept slowly
around the sides of his cage, fixing a cynical eye upon all observers.
"How goes it, Romeo?" appealed
Mrs. Tuttle. Making sounds supposed to be appreciated by birds, the lady put
her feathered head down, suggesting, "Ah there, Romeo?"
"Rubberneck," returned Romeo
sullenly. To show general scorn, the bird revolved on one claw round and round
his swing; he looked dangerous, repeating, "Rubberneck."
At this an interested group gathered around
Mrs. Tuttle, who, affable and indulgent, attempted by coaxings and flirtings of
a fat bediamonded finger to show Romeo off, but the pampered bird saw further
opportunity to offend.
"Rubberneck," screamed Romeo
again. He ruffled up his neck feathers, repeating "Rubberneck, I'm cold as
the deuce; what's the matter with Hannah; let 'em all go to grass."
Several of the youths with ivory-headed
canes now forsook their contemplations to draw near, grinning, to the
parrot-cage.
Stimulated by these youths, Romeo reeled
off more ribald remarks, things that created a sudden chill among the
passengers on the _Fall of Rome_. Mrs.
Tinneray, looked upon as a leader, called up a shocked face and walked away;
Mrs. Mealer after a faint "Excuse _me_," also abandoned the parrot-cage;
and Mrs. Bean, a small stout woman with a brown false front, followed the large
lady with blue spectacles and the tan linen duster. On some mysterious pretext
of washing their hands, these two left the upper deck and sought the calm of
the white and gold passenger saloon. Here they trod as in the very sanctities
of luxury.
"These carpets is nice, ain't
they?" remarked Mrs. Bean.
Then alluding to the scene they had just
left: "Ain't it comical how she idolizes that there bird?"
Mrs. Tinneray sniffed. "And what she
spends on him! 'Nitials on his seed-cup--and some says the cage itself is true
gold."
Mrs. Bean, preparing to wash her hands,
removed her black skirt and pinned a towel around her waist. "This here
liquid soap is nice"--turning the faucets gingerly--"and don't the
boat set good onto the water?" Then returning to the rich topic of Mrs.
Tuttle and her pampered bird, "Where's she get all her money for her
ottermobile and her gold cage?"
Mrs. Tinneray at an adjacent basin raised
her head sharply, "You ain't heard about the Tuttle money? You don't know
how Mabel Hutch that was, was hair to everything?"
Mrs. Bean confessed that she had not heard,
but she made it evident that she thirsted for information. So the two ladies,
exchanging remarks about sunburn and freckles, finished their hand-washing and
proceeded to the dark-green plush seats of the saloon, where with appropriate
looks of horror and incredulity Mrs. Bean listened to the story of the hairs to
the Hutches' money.
"Mabel was the favorite; her Pa set
great store by her. There was another sister--consumpted--she should have been
a hair, but she died. Then the youngest one, Hetty, she married my second
cousin Hen Cronney--well it seemed like they hadn't nothing but bad luck and
her Pa and Mabel sort of took against Hetty."
Mrs. Bean, herself chewing calculatingly,
handed Mrs. Tinneray a bit of sugared calamus-root.
"Is your cousin Hen dark-complexioned like
your folks?" she asked scientifically.
Mrs. Tinneray, narrowing both eyes,
considered. "More auburn-inclined, I should say--he ain't rill smart, Hen
ain't, he gets took with spells now and then, but I never held _that_ against
him."
"Uh-huh!" agreed Mrs. Bean
sympathetically.
"Well, then, Mabel Hutch and her
Popper took against poor little Hetty. Old man Hutch he died and left
everything to Mabel, and she never goes near her own sister!"
Mrs. Bean raised gray-cotton gloved hands
signifying horror.
"St--st--st----!" she deplored.
She searched in her reticule for more calamus-root. "He didn't leave her nothing?"
"No, ma'am! This one!" With a
jerk of the head, Mrs. Tinneray indicated a dashing blue feather seen through a
distant saloon window. "This one's got it all; hair to everything."
"And what did she do--married a
traveling salesman and built a tony brick house. They never had no children,
but when he was killed into a railway accident she trimmed up that parrot's
cage with crape--and now,"--Mrs. Tinneray with increasing solemnity chewed
her calamus-root--"now she's
been and bought one of them ottermobiles and runs it herself like you'd run
your sewin'-machine, just as shameless--"
Both of the ladies glared condemnation at
the distant blue feather.
Mrs. Tinneray continued, "Hetty
Cronney's worth a dozen of her. When I think of that there bird goin' on this
excursion and Hetty Cronney stayin' home because she's too poor, I get nesty, Mrs. Bean, yes, I do!"
"Don't your cousin Hetty live over to
Chadwick's Harbor," inquired Mrs. Bean, "and don't this boat-ride
stop there to take on more folks?"
Mrs. Tinneray, acknowledging that these
things were so, uncorked a small bottle of cologne and poured a little of it on
a handkerchief embroidered in black forget-me-nots. She handed the bottle to
Mrs. Bean who took three polite sniffs and closed her eyes. The two ladies sat silent
for a moment. They experienced a detachment of luxurious abandon filled with
the poetry of the steamboat saloon. Psychically they were affected as by
ecclesiasticism. The perfume of the cologne and the throb of the engines swept
them with a sense of esthetic reverie, the thrill of travel, and the atmosphere
of elegance. Moreover, the story of the Hutch money and the Hutch hairs had in
some undefined way affiliated the two. At last by tacit consent they rose, went
out on deck and, holding their reticules tight, walked majestically up and
down. When they passed Mrs. Turtle's blue feathers and the gold parrot-cage
they smiled meaningly and looked at each other.
* *
*
As the Fall
of Rome approached Chadwick's Landing more intimate groups formed. The air
was mild, the sun warm and inviting, and the water an obvious and
understandable blue. Some serious-minded excursionists sat well forward on
their camp-stools discussing deep topics over half-skinned bananas.
"Give me the Vote," a lady in a
purple raincoat was saying, "Give me the Vote and I undertake to close up
every rum-hole in God's World."
A mild-mannered youth with no chin, upon
hearing this, edged away. He went to the stern, looking down for a long time
upon the white path of foam left in the wake of the Fall of Romeand taking a harmonica from his waistcoat pocket began
to play, "Darling, I Am Growing Old." This tune, played with
emotional throbbings managed by spasmodic movements of the hands over the sides
of the mouth, seemed to convey anything but age to Miss Mealer, the girl who
was so refined. She also sat alone in the stern, also staring down at the white
water. As the wailings of the harmonica ceased, she put up a thin hand and
furtively controlled some waving strands of hair. Suddenly with scarlet face
the mild-mannered youth moved up his camp-stool to her side.
"They're talkin' about closing up the
rum-holes." He indicated the group dominated by the lady in the purple
raincoat. "They don't know what they're talking about. Some rum-holes is
real refined and tasty, some of them have got gramophones you can hear for
nothin'."
"Is that so?" responded the
refined Miss Mealer. She smoothed her gloves. She opened her "mesh"
bag and took out an intensely perfumed handkerchief. The mild-mannered youth
put his harmonica in his pocket and warmed to the topic.
"Many's the time I've set into a
saloon listening to that Lady that sings high up--higher than any piano can go.
I've set and listened till I didn't know where I was settin'--of course I had
to buy a drink, you understand, or I couldn't 'a' set."
"And they call that _vice_,"
remarked Miss Mealer with languid criticism.
The mild-mannered youth looked at her
gratefully. The light of reason and philosophy seemed to him to shine in her
eyes.
"You've got a piano to your
house," he said boldly, "can you--ahem--play classic pieces, can you
play--ahem--'Asleep on the Deep'?"
In another group where substantial
sandwiches were being eaten, the main theme was religion and psychic phenomena
with a strong leaning toward death-bed experiences.
"And then, my sister's mother-in-law,
she set up, and she says, 'Where am I?' she says, like she was in a store or
somethin', and she told how she seen all white before her eyes and all like
gentlemen in high silk hats walkin' around."
There were sighs of comprehension, gasps of
dolorous interest.
"The same with my Christopher!"
"Just like my aunt's step-sister afore
she went!"
Mrs. Tuttle did not favor the grave
character of these symposia.
With the assured manner peculiar to her,
she swept into such circles bearing a round box of candy, upon which was tied a
large bow of satin ribbon of a convivial shade of heliotrope. Opening this box
she handed it about, commanding, "Help yourself."
At first it was considered refined to
refuse. One or two excursionists, awed by the superfluity of heliotrope ribbon,
said feebly, "Don't rob yourself."
But Mrs. Tuttle met this restraint with
practised raillery. "What you all afraid of? It ain't poisoned! I got more
where this come from." She turned to the younger people. "Come one,
come all! It's French-mixed."
Meanwhile Mrs. Bean and Mrs. Tinneray,
still aloof and enigmatic, paced the deck. Mrs. Tuttle, blue feathers
streaming, teetered on her high heels in their direction. Again she proffered
the box. One of the cynical youths with the ivory-headed canes was following
her, demanding that the parrot be fed a caramel. Once more the sky-blue figure
bent over the ornate cage; then little Mrs. Bean looked at Mrs. Tinneray with a
gesture of utter repudiation.
"Ain't she _terrible_?"
As the steamboat approached the wharf and
the dwarf pines and yellow sand-banks of Chadwick's Landing, a whispered consultation
between these two ladies resulted in one desperate attempt to probe the heart
of Mabel Hutch that was. Drawing camp-stools up near the vicinity of the
parrot's cage, they began with what might to a suspicious nature have seemed rather
pointed speculation, to wonder who might or might not be at the wharf when the Fall of Romegot in.
Once more the bottle of cologne was
produced and handkerchiefs genteelly dampened. Mrs. Bean, taking off her green
glasses, polished them and held them up to the light, explaining, "This
here sea air makes 'em all of a muck."
Suddenly she leaned over to Mrs. Tuttle
with an air of sympathetic interest.
"I suppose--er--your sister Hetty'll
be comin' on board when we get to Chadwick's Landing--her and her
husband?"
Mrs. Tuttle fidgeted. She covered Romeo's
cage with a curious arrangement like an altar-cloth on which gay embroidered
parrakeets of all colors were supposed to give Romeo, when lonely, a feeling of
congenial companionship.
Mrs. Bean, thus evaded, screwed up her eyes
tight, then opened them wide at Mrs. Tinneray, who sat rigid, her gaze riveted
upon far-off horizons, humming between long sighs a favorite hymn. Finally,
however, the last-named lady leaned past Mrs. Bean and touched Mrs. Turtle's
silken knee, volunteering,
"Your sister Hetty likes the water, I
know. You remember them days, Miss Tuttle, when we all went bathin' together
down to old Chadwick's Harbor, afore they built the new wharf?"
Mrs. Tinneray continued reminiscently.
"You remember them old dresses we
wore--no classy bathin'-suits then--but my--the mornings used to smell good!
That path to the shore was all wild roses and we used to find blueberries in
them woods. Us girls was always teasin' Hetty, her bathin'-dress was white
muslin and when it was wet it stuck to her all over, she showed through--my,
how we'd laugh, but yet for all," concluded Mrs. Tinneray sentimentally, "she
looked lovely--just like a little wet angel."
Mrs. Tuttle carefully smoothed her blue
mitts, observing nervously, "Funny how Miss Tinneray could remember so far
back."
"Is Hetty your sister by rights,"
suavely inquired Mrs. Bean, "or ony by your Pa's second marriage, as it
were?"
The owner of the overestimated parrot
roused herself.
"By rights," she admitted
indifferently, "I don't see much of her--she married beneath her."
The tip of Mrs. Tinneray's nose, either
from cologne inhalings or sunburn, grew suddenly scarlet. However she still
regarded the far-off horizons and repeated the last stanza of her hymn, which
stanza, sung with much quavering and sighing was a statement to the effect that
Mrs. Tinneray would "cling to the old rugged cross." Suddenly,
however, she remarked to the surrounding Summer air,
_"Hen Cronney is my second cousin on
the mother's side. Some thought he was pretty smart until troubles come and his
wife was done out of her rights._"
The shaft, carefully aimed, went straight
into Mrs. Turtle's blue bosom and stuck there. Her eyes, not overintelligent,
turned once in her complacent face, then with an air of grandiose detachment,
she occupied herself with the ends of her sky-blue automobile veil.
"I'll have to fix this
different," she remarked unconcernedly, "or else my waves'll come
out. Well, I presume we'll soon be there. I better go down-stairs and primp up
some." The high heels clattered away. Mrs. Bean fixed a long look of
horror on Mrs. Tinneray, who silently turned her eyes up to heaven!
As the Fall
of Rome churned its way up to the sunny 's
Landing, the groups already on the excursion bristled with excitement. Children
were prepared to meet indulgent grandparents, lovers their sweethearts, and
married couples old school friends they had not seen for years. From time to
time these admonished their offspring.
"Hypatia Smith, you're draggin' your
pink sash, leave Mommer fix it. There now, don't you dare to set down so
Grammer can see you lookin' good."
"Lionel Jones, you throw that old
pop-corn overboard. Do you want to eat it after you've had it on the
floor?"
"Does your stomach hurt you, dear?
Well, here don't cry Mommer'll give you another cruller."
With much shouting of jocular advice from
the male passengers the Fall of Rome was
warped into Chadwick's Landing and the waiting groups came aboard. As they
streamed on, bearing bundles and boxes and all the impedimenta of excursions,
those already on board congregated on the after-deck to distinguish familiar
faces. A few persons had come down to the landing merely to look upon the
embarkation.
These, not going themselves on the
excursion, maintained an air of benevolent superiority that could not conceal
vivid curiosity. Among them, eagerly scanning the faces on deck was a very
small thin woman clad in a gingham dress, on her head a battered straw hat of
accentuated by-gone mode, and an empty provision-basket swinging on her arm.
Mrs. Tinneray peering down on her through smoked glasses, suddenly started violently.
"My sakes," she ejaculated, "my sakes," then as the
dramatic significance of the thing gripped her, "My--my--my, ain't that _terrible_?"
Solemnly, with prunella portentousness,
Mrs. Tinneray stole back of the other passengers leaning over the rail up to
Mrs. Bean, who turned to her animatedly, exclaiming,
"They've got a new schoolhouse. I can
just see the cupola--there's some changes since I was here. They tell me
there's a flag sidewalk in front of the Methodist church and that young Baxter
the express agent has growed a mustache, and's got married."
Mrs. Tinneray did not answer. She laid a
compelling hand on Mrs. Bean's shoulder and turned her so that she looked
straight at the small group of home-stayers down on the wharf. She pointed a
sepulchral finger,
"_That there, in the brown with the
basket, is Hetty Cronney, own sister to Miss Josiah Tuttle._"
Mrs. Bean clutched her reticule and leaned
over the rail, gasping with interest.
"Ye don't say--that's her? My! My!
My!"
In solemn silence the two regarded the
little brown woman so unconscious of their gaze. By the piteous wizened face
screwed up in the sunlight, by the faded hair, nut-cracker jaws, and hollow
eyes they utterly condemned Mrs. Tuttle, who, blue feathers floating, was also
absorbed in watching the stream of embarking excursionists.
Mrs. Tinneray, after a whispered
consultation with Mrs. Bean went up and nudged her; without ceremony she
pointed,
"Your sister's down there on the
wharf," she announced flatly, "come on over where we are and you can
see her."
Frivolous Mrs. Tuttle turned and
encountered a pair of eyes steely in their determination. Re-adjusting the gold
cage more comfortably on its camp-stool and murmuring a blessing on the
hooked-beak occupant, the azure lady tripped off in the wake of her flat-heeled
friend.
Meanwhile Mr. Tinneray, standing well aft,
was calling cheerfully down to the little figure on the wharf.
"Next Summer you must git your nerve
up and come along. Excursions is all the rage nowadays. My wife's took in four
a'ready."
But little Mrs. Cronney did not answer.
Shading her eyes from the sun glare, she was establishing recognizance with her
cerulean relative who, waving a careless blue-mitted hand, called down in
girlish greeting,
"Heigho, Hetty, how's Cronney? Why
ain't you to the excursion?"
The little woman on the wharf was seen to
wince slightly. She shifted her brown basket to the other arm, ignoring the
second question.
"Oh, Cronney's good--ony he's
low-spirited--seems as tho he couldn't get no work."
"Same old crooked stick, hey?"
Mrs. Tuttle called down facetiously.
Mrs. Bean and Mrs. Tinneray stole horrified
glances at each other. One planted a cotton-gloved hand over an opening mouth.
But little Mrs. Cronney, standing alone on the pier was equal to the occasion.
She shook out a small and spotless handkerchief, blowing her nose with elegant deliberation
before she replied,
"Well--I don't know as he needs to
work _all_ the time; Cronney is _peculiar_, you know, he's one of them that is
high-toned and nifty about money--he ain't like _some_, clutching onto every
penny!"
By degrees, other excursionists, leaning
over the railing, began to catch at something spicy in the situation of these
two sisters brought face to face. At Mrs. Cronney's sally, one of the funny men
guffawed his approval. Groups of excursionists explained to each other that
that lady down there, her on the wharf, in the brown, was own sister to Mrs. Josiah
Tuttle!
The whistle of the Fall of Rome now sounded for all aboard. It was a dramatic moment,
the possibilities of which suddenly gripped Mrs. Tinneray. She clasped her
hands in effortless agony. This lady, as she afterward related to Mrs. Bean,
felt mean! She could see in her mind's eye, she said, how it all looked to
Hetty Cronney, the Fall of Rome with
its opulent leisurely class of excursionists steaming away from her lonely
little figure on the wharf; while Mabel Tuttle, selfish devourer of the
Hutches' substance and hair to everything, would still be handing aroun' her
boxes of French-mixed and talking baby talk to that there bird!
At the moment, Mrs. Tinneray's mind,
dwelling upon the golden cage and its over-estimated occupant, became a mere
boiling of savage desires. Suddenly the line of grim resolution hardened on her
face. This look, one that the Tinneray children invariably connected with the
switch hanging behind the kitchen door, Mr. Tinneray also knew well. Seeing it now,
he hastened to his wife.
"What's the matter, Mother, seasick?
Here I'll git you a lemon."
Mrs. Tinneray, jaw set, eyes rolling, was
able to intimate that she needed no lemon, but she drew her husband
mysteriously aside. She fixed him with a foreboding glare, she said it was a
wonder the Lord didn't sink the boat! Then she rapidly sketched the
tragedy--Mrs. Tuttle serene and pampered on the deck, and Hetty Cronney
desolate on the wharf! She pronounced verdict.
"It's _terrible_--that's what it
is!"
Mr. Tinneray with great sagacity said he'd
like to show Mabel Tuttle her place--then he nudged his wife and chuckled
admiringly,
"But yet for all, Hetty's got her
tongue in her head yet--say, ain't she the little stinger?"
_Sotto voce_ Mr. Tinneray related to his
spouse how Mabel Tuttle was bragging about her brick house and her shower-bath
and her automobile and her hired girl, and how she'd druv herself and that
there bird down to 
and back.
"Hetty, she just stands there, just as
easy, and hollers back that Cronney has bought a gramophone and how they sets
by it day and night listening, and how it's son and daughter to 'em. Then she
calls up to Mabel Tuttle, 'I should think you'd be afraid of meddlin' with them
ottermobiles, _your_ time of life.'"
Mr. Tinneray choked over his own rendition
of this audacity, but his wife sniffed hopelessly.
"_They_ ain't got no
gramophone--_her_, with that face and hat?--Cronney don't make nothing; they
two could _live_ on what that Blue Silk Quilt feeds that stinkin' parrot."
But Mr. Tinneray chuckled again, he seemed
to be possessed with the humor of some delightful secret. Looking carefully
around him and seeing every one absorbed in other things he leaned closer to
his wife.
"She's liable to lose that bird,"
he whispered. "Them young fellers with the canes--they're full of their
devilment--well, they wanted I shouldn't say nothing and I ain't sayin'
nothing--only--"
Fat Mr. Tinneray, pale eyes rolling in
merriment, pointed to the camp-stool where once the parrot's cage had rested
and where now no parrot-cage was to be seen.
"As fur as I can see," he nudged
his wife again, "that bird's liable to get left ashore."
For a moment Mrs. Tinneray received this
news stolidly, then a look of comprehension flashed over her face. "What you
talkin' about, Henry?" she demanded. "Say, ain't you never got grown
up? Where's Manda Bean?"
Having located Mrs. Bean, the two ladies
indulged in a rapid whispered conversation. Upon certain revelations made by
Mrs. Bean, Mrs. Tinneray turned and laid commands upon her husband.
"Look here," she said, "that
what you told me is true--them young fellers--" she fixed Mr. Tinneray
with blue-glassed significant eyes, adding _sotto voce_, "_You keep Mabel
Tuttle busy_."
Fat Mr. Tinneray, chuckling anew, withdrew
to the after-rail where the azure lady still stood, chained as it were in a
sort of stupor induced by the incisive thrusts of the forlorn little woman on
the wharf. He joined in the conversation.
"So yer got a gramophone, hey,"
he called down kindly--"Say, that's nice, ain't it?--that's company fer
you and Cronney." He appealed to Mrs. Tuttle in her supposed part of
interested relative. "Keeps 'em from gettin' lonesome and all," he
explained.
That lady looking a pointed unbelief, could
not, with the other excursionists watching, but follow his lead.
"Why--er--ye-ess, that's rill
nice," she agreed, with all the patronage of the wealthy relative.
Little Mrs. Cronney's eyes glittered. The
steamboat hands had begun lifting the hawsers from the wharf piles and her time
was short. She was not going to be pitied by the opulent persons on the
excursion. Getting as it were into her stride, she took a bolder line of
imagery.
"And the telephone," looking up
at Mr. Tinneray. "I got friends in Quahawg Junction and --we're
talkin' sometimes till 
at night. I can pick up jelly receipts and dress-patterns just so easy."
But Mrs. Tuttle now looked open
incredulity. She turned to such excursionists as stood by and registered
emphatic denial. "Uh-huh?" she called down in apparent acceptance of
these lurid statements, at the same time remarking baldly to Mr. Tinneray, who
had placed himself at her side,
"_She_ ain't got no telephone!"
At this moment something seemed to occur to
little Mrs. Cronney. As she gave a parting defiant scrutiny to her opulent
sister her black eyes snapped in hollow reminiscence and she called out,
"Say--how's your parrot? How's your
beau--Ro-me-o?"
At this, understood to be a parting shot,
the crowd strung along the rail of the Fall
of Rome burst into an appreciative titter. Mrs. Tuttle, reddening, made no
answer, but Mr. Tinneray, standing by and knowing what he knew, seized this
opportunity to call down vociferously,
"Oh--he's good, Romeo is. But your
sister's had him to the excursion and he's got just a little seasick comin'
over. Miss Tuttle, yer sister, is going to leave him with you, till she can
come and take him home, by land, ye know, in her ottermobile--she's coming to
get you too, fer a visit, ye know."
There was an effect almost as of panic on
the Fall of Rome. Not only did the
big whistle for "all aboard" blow, but some one's new hat went overboard
and while every one crowded to one side to see it rescued, it was not
discovered that Romeo's cage had disappeared! In the confusion of a band of
desperadoes composed of the entire group of cynical young men with ivory-headed
canes, seized upon an object covered with something like an altar-cloth and ran
down the gangplank with it.
Going in a body to little Mrs. Cronney, these
young men deposited a glittering burden, the gold parrot-cage with the green
bird sitting within, in her surprised and gratified embrace. Like flashes these
agile young men jumped back upon the deck of the Fall of Rom ejust before the space between wharf and deck became
too wide to jump. Meanwhile on the upper deck, before the petrified Mrs. Tuttle
could open her mouth, Mr. Tinneray shouted instructions,
"Your sister wants you should keep
him," he roared, "till she comes over to see you in her ottermobile--to--fetch--him--and--git--you--for--a--visit!"
Suddenly the entire crowd of excursionists
on the after-deck of the Fall of Rome gave
a rousing cheer. The gratified young men with the ivory-headed canes suddenly
saw themselves of the age of chivalry and burst into ragtime rapture; the
excursion, a mass of waving flags and hats and automobile veils, made
enthusiastic adieu to one faded little figure on the wharf, who proud and happy
gently waved back a gleaming parrot's cage!
It was Mr. Tinneray, dexterous in all such
matters, that caught at a drooping cerulean form as it toppled over.
"I know'd she'd faint," the
pale-eyed gentleman chuckled. He manfully held his burden until Mrs. Tinneray
and Mrs. Bean relieved him. These ladies, practised in all smelling-bottle and
cologne soothings, supplied also verbal comfort.
"Them young fellows," they
explained to Mrs. Tuttle, "is full of their devilment and you can't never
tell what they'll do next. But ain't it _lucky_, Miss Tuttle, that it's your
own sister has charge of that bird?"
When at last a pale and interesting lady in
blue appeared feebly on deck, wiping away recurrent tears, she was received
with the most perfect sympathy tempered with congratulations. There may have
been a few winks and one or two nods of understanding which she did not see, but
Mrs. Tuttle herself was petted and soothed like a queen of the realm, only, to
her mind was brought a something of obligation--the eternal obligation of those
who greatly possess--for every excursionist said,
"My, yes! No need to worry--your
sister will take care of that bird like he was one of her own, and then you can
go over in yer ottermobile to git him--and when you fetch him you can take her
home with yer--fer a visit."
==
Category:Babcock
Category:Pictoral Review