CHAPTER IV
“LONESOME LIZ”

“Oh, galloping grasshoppers!” gasped Bobby Hargrew, clinging tight to Laura and Nellie Agnew in the dressing-room. “Do you hear what she says?”

“What language, Bob!” said Nellie, in horror. “How can you?”

“Of whom are you speaking?” asked Laura, with an admonishing look.

“That Lil Pendleton. The gall of her!”

“Stop, Bob!” commanded Laura. “You talk like a street urchin.”

“I don’t care if I talk like a sea urchin,” complained the smaller girl. “She says she’s going with us.”

“Where?” asked Nell.

“Camping.”

“Who?” exclaimed Laura, promptly.

“That Pendleton girl. Says her mother just told her. Your mother said so, Laura Belding. So there!”

“Why – why–”

“I don’t want to complain of your mother, Laura,” said the grocer’s daughter, “but it seems too bad we can’t pick and choose whom we’ll have go camping in our crowd.”

“Mother doesn’t understand! I am sure she never meant to make us take Lil if we didn’t want her.”

“And surely we don’t,” declared the doctor’s daughter, with more emphasis than she usually used in commenting upon any subject.

“Let’s put the rollers under her and let her zip,” exclaimed the slangy Bobby.

“If Gee Gee should hear you,” laughed Laura, referring to one of the very strict lady teachers of Central High, Miss Grace Gee Carrington.

“She’s too busy with Margit Salgo – Beg pardon!” exclaimed Bobby. “Margaret Carrington, as she will in future be known. Gee Gee has scarcely called me down this week.”

“Now, if it was Margit who wanted to go,” sighed Nell Agnew, speaking of the half-Gypsy girl who had just come under the care of Miss Carrington.

“Or Eve Sitz,” added Bobby. “But Eve says she gets out-of-door work enough on the farm in the summer. Camping out is no fun for her.”

“I don’t know what to say about Lily,” began Laura. “I cannot understand mother promising such a thing. If anybody should decide, it should be Jess’ mother. She is going with us.”

“Oh! there’s another thing,” interrupted the fly-away Bobby. “If Lil goes, she’s going to take along a lady’s maid.”

“What?” gasped the other girls.

“Mrs. Pendleton is going to pay the wages of a girl to go with us and do the camp work,” announced Bobby, and now she spoke with some enthusiasm.

“Goodness!” exclaimed Laura.

“Not so bad,” sighed Nellie, who really did not like hard work and had dreaded that division of labor which she knew must fall to her if they went camping without “help.”

“Having a girl along to cook and do up the beds and wash dishes and the like wouldn’t be so bad,” announced Bobby, growing braver as Nell seemed to encourage the idea.

“Well! Miss Hargrew!” accused Laura. “I believe you have gone over to the enemy. You really want Lil to go with us to Acorn Island.”

“No. But I’d be glad to have her mother pay the wages of somebody to do most of the hard work,” grinned Bobby.

There was a regular “buzz society,” as Bobby called it, after the girls were dressed. The original six who had planned to go camping on Acorn Island did hum like a colony of bees when they all learned that Lily Pendleton was likely to be foisted upon them.

“It’s a shame!” exclaimed Jess, angrily. “She knows well enough we don’t want her.”

“Well,” murmured one of the Lockwood twins. “She asked us and we said the invitation would have to come through Laura.”

“Cowards!” exclaimed Mother Wit, dramatically. “That’s why she got her mother to go to mine. And I am real angry with mother–”

“Oh, Laura! we wouldn’t offend your mother for anything,” said Nell, hastily.

“Or put her in an uncomfortable position,” Bobby added. “She’s been too nice to us all.”

“And, of course, we have to stand Lil in the school and gymnasium. She won’t kill us; she’s only silly,” went on Nell.

“I believe you’re all more or less willing to have Lil go,” declared Laura, in wonder.

“We-ell,” drawled Bobby. “There’s the chance of having somebody to do the camp work for us–”

“Not Lil!” shrieked Jess. “She never lifts her hand at home.”

“No,” said Nell. “But Mrs. Pendleton will pay a maid’s wages.”

“Ah – ha!” ejaculated Jess Morse. “I smell a mice, as the Dutchman says. We are to be bribed.”

And bribed they were. At least, none of them wished to put Laura’s mother to any trouble. So they agreed to let Lily Pendleton go camping with them. Mrs. Pendleton left it to the girls to find anyone they wanted to help about the camp, and promised to pay good wages.

“I know just whom we can get,” Bobby said, eagerly, that evening when the girls – and some of the boys – were assembled as usual on the Belding front porch.

“Who’s that?”

“That Bean girl,” said the groceryman’s daughter.

“Who’s she? Miss Boston Bean?” chuckled Chet.

“Lizzie Bean! I know who she is,” exclaimed Laura.

“She’s the girl who’s been helping the Longs since Alice came back to school. Now Alice will keep house for her father and the other children again, and Lizzie will be out of a job,” explained Bobby.

“Whew! ‘Lonesome Liz?’” ejaculated Lance Darby. “Short and Long calls her that. Says she’s about half cracked–”

“I guess she isn’t cracked enough to hurt,” said Dora Lockwood, quickly. “Is she, Dorothy?”

“Of course not,” agreed her twin. “And she keeps the house beautifully clean, and looks after Tommy fine.”

“Let me tell you Master Tommy Long is some kid to look after,” chuckled Chet.

“And that’s no dream,” agreed his chum, Lance.

Bobby began to laugh, too. “Did you hear his latest?” she demanded of the crowd.

“Who’s latest,” asked Jess.

“Tommy Long – the infant terrible?”

“Let’s hear it, Bobs,” said Jess. “If he can say anything worse than you can–”

“But this break on Master Tommy’s part was entirely unintentional. Alice was telling me about it. She sends him to Sunday School and he has to memorize the Golden Text and repeat it to her when he comes home.

“The other Sunday he had been skylarking in Sunday School, it was evident, for when she asked him to tell her the text, he shot this one at her: ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get the blanket.’”

“What?” gasped Laura.

“That’s a teaser,” said Lance. “What did the kid mean?”

“That’s what troubled Alice,” chuckled Bobby. “She couldn’t get it at all; but Tommy stuck to it that he had given her the text straight. So she looked it up herself and what do you suppose Tommy had twisted into ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get the blanket?’”

“Give it up,” said Jess. “Let’s have it.”

“Why, the text was,” said Bobby, more seriously, “‘Fear not; the Comforter shall come unto you.’”

“That kid is a terror,” said Chet, when the laugh had subsided. “And so’s Short and Long. I believe he agreed to let Pretty Sweet go along with us to Lake Dunkirk just because he likes to play jokes on Purt.”

“Dear me!” sighed Bobby, with unction. “With Pretty in your camp and Lil in ours, the sun of no day should go down upon us without, seeing some fun.”

“And if you have ‘Lonesome Liz’ along,” chuckled Lance, “you girls certainly won’t forget how to laugh.”

It was agreed that Laura and Jess should see Lizzie Bean the next morning and engage her for the position – if she would accept. They started early, for although they were only juniors and would have another year to attend Central High before graduation, this last day of school would be a busy one for them as well as for the graduating class.

Billy and Alice Long, who were their schoolmates, lived in a much poorer quarter of the town; it was down toward the wharves, and not far from the Central High’s boathouses.

The street was a typical water-side street, with small, gaily painted cottages, or cottages without any paint at all save that put on lavishly by the ancient decorating firm of Wind & Weather. Each dwelling had its own tiny fenced yard, with a garden behind. The Longs’ was neatly kept both front and rear, and the house itself showed no neglect by the tenants.

Mr. Long was a hard working man, and although the children were motherless, Alice, the oldest, kept the home neat and cheerful for her brothers and sisters. All the children were old enough to go to school save Tommy; and he had been to kindergarten occasionally this last term and would go to school regularly in the fall.

Laura and Jess, hurrying on their errand, came in sight of the Long cottage abruptly, and of a wobegone little figure on the front step.

“Why, it’s Tommy!” exclaimed Laura Belding. “Whatever is the the matter, Tommy?” for the little fellow was crying softly.

He was a most cherubic looking child, with a pink and white face, yellow curls that swept the clean collar of his shirt-waist, and a plump, “hug-able” little body.

“Yes, what is the matter, dear?” begged Jess Morse.

“H-he’s gone an’ cut off th-the tails of the pu-puppies,” sobbed Master Tommy, his breast heaving.

“Who has?” demanded Laura.

“He. That man what co-comed here,” choked the little fellow.

“What a pity! I’m awfully sorry,” Laura pursued, soothingly. “The poor little puppies.”

“Ye-yes. Pa s-said I should chop ’em off myself!” concluded Master Tommy in a burst of anger.

“My goodness me!” gasped Jess, horror-stricken. “Will you hear that boy talk? He’s a perfect little savage.”

“No, he isn’t,” said Mother Wit, shaking her head. “He’s only a boy – that’s all. You never had a brother, Jess.”

“I know well enough Chet was never like that,” declared Josephine, confidently.

They went in by the front gate and walked around the house, leaving the disappointed youngster wiping his eyes. They expected to find Lizzie Bean at the back.

In that they were not mistaken. At the well-curb was a lank, bony girl, who might have been Laura’s age, or perhaps a couple of years older. She was dreadfully thin. As she hauled on the chain which brought the brimming bucket to the top of the well, she betrayed more red elbow and more white stockinged ankle-bone than any one person should display.

“My goodness, she’s thin!” whispered Jess.

“We are not looking for a Hebe to help us at the camp,” Laura returned in the same low tone.

Lizzie Bean turned to see who was approaching. Her face was as thin as the rest of her figure. Prominent cheek bones, a sharp, long nose, and a pointed chin do not make a beautiful countenance, to say the least.

Besides, the expression of her face was lachrymose in the extreme. It did seem, as Jess afterward said, that Lizzie must have lost all her relatives and friends very recently, and was mourning for them all!

“Goodness me!” she whispered to Laura. “No wonder they call her ‘Lonesome Liz.’ She’s so sad looking she’s positively funny.”