Baby Island (13 page)

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Peterkin!” cried Jean.

“Don’t thank me,” said the honest seaman crossly. “It’s for me little Lizzie.”

“For who?” Jean was puzzled.

“I mean ’er,” said Mr. Peterkin, pointing at Ann Elizabeth.
Ann Elizabeth, smiling engagingly, crawled to Mr. Peterkin’s feet and stretched up her arms to be taken.

“Pitty,” she said happily. “Pitty-pitty!”

“Was they trying to starve me little Lizzie?” cooed Mr. Peterkin, taking the delighted baby into his arms. “Was they tryin’ to starve ’er, an’ ’er old Huncle ’Arvey with all the milk she could ’old right around on t’other side of the hi’land? Bless ’er little gizzard!”

Jean stared at them as hard as she could. Then she let out a howl of delight and started to run for the beach.

“Baby talk! Mary, Mr. Peterkin’s talking baby talk! Come quick!”

Mary was walking slowly up the beach with Jonah in her arms, when Jean called to her. Jonah was cooing happily, and Mary wore a rapturous smile on her tired face. But Jean saw with irritation that Mary’s angelic smile had nothing whatever to do with the wonderful new path through the jungle, nor with the highly amusing fact that Mr. Peterkin was talking baby talk. She tried again.

“Mary, he’s talking silly to Ann Elizabeth just the way you do! Baby talk, Mary!”

“Well, of course, that was bound to happen sooner or later, dear,” said Mary. “I’m glad it’s come so soon. But, oh, Jean, something most
remarkable
has happened to Jonah!
Wonderful
, Jean!”

Jean’s mouth fell open again in surprise. If Mary could accept a path through the jungle and Mr. Peterkin’s baby talk so calmly, whatever in the world had happened to Jonah to make her say “remarkable” and “wonderful”?

“Come here and look, Jeannie,” she went on, “and tell me if you ever saw a more beautiful sight.”

Filled with awe, Jeannie drew near and gazed into Jonah’s round, pink face.

“Open up, dovey darling,” begged Mary. “Open the itsy, bitsy mouthey for its ownest Mary. That’s a lamb!”

Jonah gave them a wan smile, and Jean had a brief glimpse of something white showing against his red gum.

“It’s just like a pearl, isn’t it?” said Mary proudly.

“What?” asked Jean, still mystified.

“Why, his first tooth! Didn’t you see it? That’s why he was crying so this morning, poor cherub. It hurt when it was coming through. But now it’s all right, and Mary’s so proud of her gweat big baby boy!”

“Oh, you and Mr. Peterkin and your baby talk!” said Jean in disgust. “I’m going to see the trail through the jungle!” And away she went, whistling to Halfred and Charley to join her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A
FTER
the path was cut through the jungle, Mr. Peterkin became a more and more frequent visitor at the tepee. He had decided to deliver the babies’ milk himself. But the girls knew now that it was not entirely because of the milk that he came. They knew that Mr. Peterkin liked their cooking better than his own, and even more he liked to have Ann Elizabeth tell him that his beard was pretty. He insisted that Ann Elizabeth should have the freshest and richest milk, and he nearly always brought some trinket for her which he himself had carved.

Once Mr. Peterkin’s hard heart had started to soften, it was just like ice cream in the sun. He began to carry the twins pickaback or ride them cockhorse on his knee, and Jonah was allowed to chew his gold watch chain. Even Mary and Jean came in for a good share of his kindliness. Naturally he still grumbled a good deal and pretended to be angry with them all, but after all one can’t throw off the habits of years in a moment.

As the girls often remarked, Ann Elizabeth was probably
the cutest baby ever seen. She was plump and dimpled, with shiny curls that stood up all the wrong way on the back of her head, and big blue eyes. But it very much looked as if her fatal beauty had made her lazy. She only had to smile or point or whimper a little to have people running to bring her a drink or a banana or to lift her up and carry her about. So it had never seemed necessary to her to learn to walk. When she wanted to do a bit of exploring by herself, she went on all fours like Prince Charley.

This had begun to worry Mary. Here was Jonah with new teeth, and Ann Elizabeth still could not walk.

“Do you think possibly she’s weak in the knees?” she asked Mr. Peterkin one day when he was calling.

“Not ’er! Not my Lizzie!” said that gentleman indignantly.

“She’s so contented!” sighed Mary.

“Look ’ere,” said Mr. Peterkin. “You need some kind of contraption for ’er. A baby walker! That’s what it is.”

“A baby walker?”

“That’s what it is,” repeated the honest seaman. “Maggie an’ ’Enry ’ad one for their twelve. Bly’me, I’ll make ye one!”

“It won’t hurt her, will it?” asked Mary cautiously.

“Me ’urt Lizzie?” shouted Mr. Peterkin. “What do you think?”

So Mr. Peterkin constructed a beautiful baby walker out
of tough vines, a couple of boards, and a piece of the canvas sail. It was something like a swing, and was suspended from the branch of a tree at such a height that Ann Elizabeth’s feet could easily touch the ground without having to hold up the whole weight of her own body. She pranced around delightedly, and the whole thing seemed to be a huge success.

“Well, that’s some good that came out of ’Enry and Maggie anyway!” remarked Jean, as she admired Mr. Peterkin’s handiwork.

But there were others who were not so pleased. Pink and Blue stood looking on, and it was more than they could bear to see Ann Elizabeth the center of all eyes.

“Ba-ba bye-bye, too!” said Blue.

“Ba-ba fwing!” added Pink.

Their lower lips began to drop lower and lower, trembling piteously. Large tears rolled silently down their cheeks. A more pathetic sight would be difficult to imagine.

“But you already know how to walk, twinsies,” said Mary sensibly.

“Ba-ba go bye-bye too,” persisted Blue.

“Ba-ba fwing,” wept Pink.

Their lower lips continued to drop farther and farther, and suddenly they let out twin howls that echoed dismally through the jungle.

“It’s no use trying to persuade them, once they make up
their minds!” said Mary. “I guess you’ll just have to build two more baby walkers, Mr. Peterkin.”

Mr. Peterkin behaved very nicely, indeed. With scarcely a murmur he went to work, and before the day was over the delighted twins were dangling in baby walkers too.

Jean and Prince Charley had looked on with interest all the while that Mr. Peterkin worked.

“And now,” said Jean politely, when the three baby walkers were finished, “will you please make one for Charley?”

“ ’Ow’s that?”

“A baby walker for Charley, please.”

“For that monkey?”

“If you please.”

“Sliver my timbers!” yelled Mr. Peterkin, “an’ strike me red, white, an’ blue! if you catch me making a baby walker for a monkey! No, sir! no baby walkers for no monkeys! What’s ’e got ’is tail for, may I hask?”

So Charley never got his baby walker, and it must be admitted that the twins soon tired of theirs, but Ann Elizabeth’s legs were greatly strengthened and benefited by hers. One day she was sitting on the tarpaulin outside of the tepee when she saw Mr. Peterkin coming through the jungle with his milk, and, rising on unsteady legs, she took her very first steps to meet him. Mr. Peterkin thought that that was the smartest thing a baby had ever been known to do. After
a while even Mary got a little tired of hearing Mr. Peterkin tell about it.

“Of course all babies learn to walk
sometime,”
she said sensibly. “I suppose you did the same thing yourself when you were a baby, or you’d still be going around on fours.”

“But look ’ere!” cried Mr. Peterkin. “The little beggar walked to
me
, she did. It weren’t just a hordinary first step. She got right up an’ came awalkin’ to
me
, an’ “Pitty!’ she says, areachin’ for my chin, ‘Pitty!’ “

Jean had had some hopes of finding out what was in Mr.
Peterkin’s chest, now that he had grown so tender hearted. On one of her cleaning days she baked Mr. Peterkin a beautiful pie full of sliced bananas and pieces of cocoanut whipped up with gulls’ eggs and sugar. It seemed like a wonderful mixture to Jean, and all it needed was a bit of flavoring, but unfortunately she couldn’t find either vanilla or nutmeg in Mr. Peterkin’s cupboard. However, there was plenty of garlic, and, knowing that this was the honest seaman’s favorite flavor, Jean put it in with a lavish hand.

The pie came out of the oven a beautiful, golden brown, and, when Jean set it before Mr. Peterkin at luncheon, she felt that this was the very moment to ask him about his chest.

“Hah!” said Mr. Peterkin, rubbing his hands together with delight, and preparing to plunge his knife into the pie. “Blow me down, if it ain’t a tart, an’ w’at a tart at that!”

“Mr. Peterkin,” said Jean hurriedly, “sometime will you let me see what’s in your chest? Really I think I ought to clean it out for you. You know moths might get in or rust corrupt. May I?”

“Well, now, little Jeannie—” began Mr. Peterkin amiably, raising the first forkful of pie to his lips.

“Yes—yes?” said Jeannie eagerly.

But, at the first taste of pie, Mr. Peterkin’s eyes suddenly seemed to start from his head. He gave a loud, strangling cough and started for the door. This was a very bad omen,
indeed. Jean sniffed at the pie and it did smell strongly of garlic, but after all if garlic was Mr. Peterkin’s favorite flavor—

“No!” roared Mr. Peterkin. “Don’t you
never
look in that chest no ’ow! Do you ’ear? An’ mind you’ve fed that tart to the goats an’ gulls before I get back.”

Away went Mr. Peterkin to the jungle. Only one thing was clear to Jean. There was something about the combination of bananas, cocoanut, sugar, and garlic that brought out the worst in a reformed man. That was the second “No!” she’d had out of Mr. Peterkin, and it proved to Jean that the battle wasn’t entirely won yet. She looked wistfully at the brass-bound chest and wondered if it were lost forever.

It was about this time that Mary consulted her calendar one day and saw that Christmas was approaching.

“We haven’t any place to hang our stockings,” said Jean.

“Oh, we can fix up something. We must have a real Christmas for the babies’ sakes. It would be awful if they grew up without knowing about Christmas.”

“And we can make presents for them too! And, Mary, let’s give Mr. Peterkin and Halfred presents!”

“Why, of course!” said Mary. “What did you think?”

After that the tepee buzzed with mystery and excitement. The girls were busy making presents out of clam and
cocoanut shells, palm leaves, moss, clay, and sticks, anything they could find which gave them an idea for a gift.

“W’at’s this? W’at’s this?” inquired Mr. Peterkin, arriving one day with his milk while they were in the midst of their preparations.

“Oh, Mr. Peterkin, it’s for Christmas!” said Mary, and Jean sang:

“We live on an island

And not on an isthmus
,

But we can have Christmas

And Christmas and Christmas!”

“Christmas!”
said Mr. Peterkin. “Blow me down! I’d forgotten there was such!” He kept saying over and over
“Christmas!
Strike me pink!” and before he left that day, he had invited them all to his house to hang up their stockings over his stove and to eat Christmas dinner from his table!

“But no garlic in the pudding!” he warned.

Jean blushed, but naturally Mary paid no attention to such a silly remark.

“I’m so glad,” she said. “I want the babies to get used to things as they are at home—and Christmas in a tent
is
rather odd! Thank you, Mr. Peterkin.”

“Don’t mention it, Miss,” said Mr. Peterkin, and Jean added sensibly, “Christmas is nice anywhere, Mary.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN