CHAPTER IV

ORIOLE IS WORRIED

Nat Jardin was quite as amazed as Oriole when he came out of the sitting room and found that Teddy Ford had departed. But when he considered the boy's garments drying around the stove, and the fact that those Teddy had on were quite too ridiculous for him to wear very far, the old lightkeeper was relieved.

"I cal'late he ain't gone far," he said to Oriole soothingly. "He'll come back. How did you get him mad?"

"I never, Uncle Nat!" cried the girl. "I never said a thing to him. But----" and she volubly told her old friend the strange things Teddy Ford had said about the father of the twins. "Did you ever?" was her conclusion.

"Never heard the beat of that," agreed Nat Jardin. "Looks like he came from clear out West--like Mr. Langdon did. Knowed him at home, I cal'late."

"Why--why, Teddy Ford must be a Western cowboy, too!" Oriole cried.

"He's a boy all right; and I cal'late he's from the West," chuckled Nat Jardin. "What he knows about cows is another matter. And I cal'late I better go milk our'n right now. 'Tis time."

He got his storm hat and coat and started out with the milk pail to do the chores. But actually he was more anxious to find out what had become of Teddy Ford than anything else. The night was bound to be a cold one, and the strange boy was but thinly dressed.

But he found him nowhere among the outbuildings which were nearer to the lighthouse tower than they were to the cottage on the northern bluff which Nat Jardin now occupied. During this winter, because of an accident that had occurred and a long siege of rheumatism he had suffered, Nat Jardin had been replaced in the care of the light by a substitute lightkeeper. But he expected to go back to his old job in the spring.

For more than twenty years Nat Jardin had lived on Harbor Island and had kept the Harbor Light. He would have been "fair on his beam ends" if he had been obliged to go elsewhere to live, as he often declared. But old as he was, he was of a vigorous constitution and save when the rheumatism took him down, he was quite able to attend to the lamp and to the heavier chores about the island. Finally Nat Jardin brought in the milk, announcing that everything was "shipshape" for the night.

"But I cal'late that boy laid a course for the main," he added. "And him only half dressed. I don't understand it, Oriole."

"He seemed like such a nice boy," sighed the girl.

"I guess if he plunged right into that water and saved you all, as he did, he must be nice," said Ma Stafford briskly.

"But we know Mr. Harvey Langdon is a nice man," said Oriole warmly.

Myron and Marian had been given bread and milk and were now in bed, with a hot flatiron at their feet. Ma Stafford was taking no chances in the matter of the twins taking cold after their exposure.

Marian had cried for "cakes." The ducking had not caused her to forget those delicacies, and she was an insistent little thing when she was roused.

"Never see the beat!" Ma exclaimed. "Let that young one see a new moon and she'd think 'twas a silver spoon and would cry for it. But bread and milk is all they are going to have this hour of the night. No knowing how much their stomachs are upsot."

Then she gave further attention to the discussion about the strange boy and his stranger actions.

"Mr. Langdon is a nice feller," said Nat Jardin reflectively. "But mebbe this boy don't know him as well as we do."

"He can't know him," cried Oriole. "And yet he spoke as though he came right from where Mr. Langdon lives."

"That he did," admitted the lightkeeper. "Well, 'tis a mystery. But I cal'late it'll be cleared up like most mysteries."

Oriole sighed again. "Like most mysteries 'cepting the whereabouts of my dear mother and father," she whispered. But neither Nat Jardin nor Ma Stafford heard this.

Oriole considered that she had many worries--and this was possibly true, when one considered her age; and this mystery about the curly-haired boy, Teddy Ford, was an added burden of anxiety. She could not understand anybody not liking Mr. Harvey Langdon. And that strange boy spoke as though he actually hated the father of the twins.

Ma Stafford said that Myron and Marian could not be taken back to the mainland that night. This began to worry Oriole.

"It will worry Mrs. Joy and Lyddy Ann if I don't get back," she said thoughtfully. "But it will be worse for Mr. Langdon when he returns to the hotel to-night and doesn't find the children in his rooms."

"Where did Langdon go?" asked Uncle Nat, smoking in the corner of the settee by the stove, while Ma fried fishcakes and watched a bannock turning golden brown in the oven.

"He went to the county seat, to the hospital there to see how Sadie Brown, the nurse, is getting along," explained Oriole. "He can't get back until after supper time. But he will expect me to be back with the twins by the time the train arrives."

"That poor creeter," said Ma Stafford, referring to the twins' nurse, who had been badly injured when Myron and Marian were rescued from the wreck of the Portland steamboat. "How is she gettin' on, anyway?"

"The doctors say she will recover. She is anxious to go back to the ranch with Mr. Langdon too. That is why he has waited so long before returning home."

Nat and Ma looked at each other. Oriole thought that was the whole reason for Harvey Langdon's delay in starting West with his recovered children. But the lightkeeper and his housekeeper knew better than that.

Ma suggested, however, that Mr. Langdon might not be much alarmed if he came back to the inn and found the twins and Oriole not there. "He will think, maybe, that you have taken them to Mrs. Joy's until morning."

"But what will Mrs. Joy and Lyddy Ann think?" demanded Oriole. "They will expect me back by bedtime."

"I never! I suppose that's so," murmured the housekeeper.

"And Mr. Langdon will go to Mrs. Joy's to make sure."

"I don't see for the life of me, then," said Ma, "what we're to do. We can't get word to the main."

"If only that boy hadn't run away----"

"I cal'late," put in Nat Jardin firmly, "that I can get over to the main somehow."

"I cal'late you _won't_," declared Ma. "I won't hear to your going, 'Thaniel."

"News travels fast around Littleport--'specially what ye might call bad news. The iceboat-men will tell about the accident all right. They see Oriole and the twins in the water."

"And they must have seen Teddy Ford pull us all out, too," said Oriole hopefully.

"They must be pretty funny folks," murmured Ma Stafford, "to sail right away and never try to stop and save you children. Reg'lar Floyd Iresons--that's what _they_ are."

"Oh, my!" cried Oriole, who had a retentive memory, "you mean 'Old Floyd Ireson, for his har-rd hear-rt'--_I_ know about him."

"And you know wrong about him--like Ma and other folks. That's an exploded doctrine," said Nat Jardin, puffing more quickly on his pipe. "_If_ Cap'n Ireson ever left the crew of another craft without standin' by, 'twas 'cause his own crew or the weather wouldn't admit of it. And the women o' Marblehead ne'er tarred and feathered him, nor drug him in no cart. They was ladies, same as the women of Littleport air, and they wouldn't do such an unseemly thing.

"But that ain't neither here nor there. Them iceboats can't be stopped, as Ma supposes, within their own length. You can't tack, or back your wagon, just in a second or two. By the time they could have gone about in that racer and run down to the hole again, Oriole and the twins would have been fathoms deep."

"Don't talk of it, 'Thaniel," said Ma, shuddering.

"Anyhow," said Uncle Nat, "they'll take news of the accident back to town and it'll spread there like wildfire. Mr. Langdon will hear of it first thing he lands off that train. And I wager Becky Joy has heard the news before now."

"She will be dreadfully scared," said Oriole.

"I cal'late," said Uncle Nat, but smiling broadly, "that that Lyddy Ann woman will be wuss scare't than she was when she took Marm Joy for a ghost."

Ma clucked her tongue again at this, but Oriole smiled--then giggled.

"That was _so_ funny," she said. "You ought to have seen poor Lyddy Ann with her apron over her head. But, dear me! wasn't it lucky we saw Mrs. Joy that time? Otherwise the silver casket might never have been found and lots of people would still think I stole it."

This mention was of a very serious incident in Oriole's career at Mrs. Joy's house, and one that she was not likely soon to forget.

While they were at supper a step sounded upon the porch. Oriole jumped up, hoping it might be the strange boy returning. But Uncle Nat boomed out:

"Ahoy, Payton Orr! Come aboard, shipmate. What's the good word?"

The substitute lightkeeper--a young, tanned, smiling and smooth-faced man--pushed open the door and entered. He was bundled up in a knitted "comforter" and mittens, as well as a thick pea-coat.

"Mighty cold, Nat," he declared. "How-de-do, Ma? And here's Oriole! I declare, Oriole, what you been doing now?"

"Er--why--eating," admitted Oriole.

"'Tain't to be wondered at. Anybody would eat Ma's fishcakes and Injun bannock. No, no! Don't you ask me! I stowed away a cargo o' biscuit and corned-beef hash 'fore I went up to light the lamp. Now I'm over here to get the news--not anything to eat."

"What kind of news are ye after?" chuckled Nat Jardin.

"I want to know what Oriole is falling into the breathin' holes out there for? And who it was that got her out, and then she chased off the island so fast? I want to know."

"Oh, Mr. Orr! did you see Teddy Ford? Did you see where he went to?"

"I don't know him by name," said the other. "But I seen where that boy run to, if you want to know that."

"Oh, I do!" gasped the girl. "If--if anything has happened to him----"

"And him not half dressed," put in Ma Stafford.

"Does seem as though the lad might not have been just right in his mind," ruminated Jardin, "to have gone off like that."

"There warn't nothin' the matter with his legs, if there is with his mind," said Payton Orr. "He run down and across the ice like a scare't rabbit."

"And where 'did he go, Mr. Orr?" begged Oriole.

"He made the Flow station--and he got there all right, too," said Orr. "I watched him close from the lamp gallery. He's some runner, that boy. Who did you say he was?"

"Said his name was Ford," Uncle Nat observed. "Stranger about here. But a real civil-spoken boy."

"And he certainly did snatch Oriole out o' the water. I seen that," said the caller.

"And the twins. He saved the twins, too," said Oriole emphatically, and proceeded to tell the story of the adventure in full.

"He's something of a boy, I do say!" declared Orr. "But what made him run away? 'Fraid to be thanked for what he done?"

Oriole was silent, but Uncle Nat nodded slowly. "I shouldn't wonder," he said composedly enough. "'Fraid to meet Mr. Langdon--and be thanked--like enough."

The old lightkeeper had mixed truth with guile. Ma stared at him, but Oriole was secretly delighted. Payton Orr had one very big fault. He was a dreadful gossip.

"What Payt Orr don't know won't ever hurt him--nor nobody else," said Nat Jardin, when the younger man had gone. "Tell him the particulars of what that boy said to us about Langdon, and the whole world and his wife will know it all. I cal'late a little caution is allowable with Payt."

"Humph! I'm thinkin' you're runnin' pretty close to the wind, 'Thaniel," admonished Ma. "You want to have a care what you're doin' on. Right before Oriole, too."

"I hope Oriole will take after my virtues not after my faults," chuckled Uncle Nat, smiling broadly at the girl he loved so well.

Oriole was getting sleepy and she nodded more than once before supper was over. Ma made her go to bed in her own little room upstairs without helping with the dish wiping.

"If you ain't got your death of cold plungin' into that icy water, it's more by good luck than good management," said the old woman. "You take a hot flat to bed with you, too. If you got sick, Oriole, what would happen to them little twins? I cal'late Mr. Langdon just about depends on you to look after them till that nurse of theirs gets on to her feet again."

"But he didn't expect me to drag them overboard in that sled," said Oriole, in an anxious tone. "I don't know what he _will_ say. And about that Teddy Ford----"

She went off to bed rather stumblingly without finishing her speech. She was very sleepy indeed.

"Funny about that boy," Ma Stafford said to the old lightkeeper when Oriole was gone.

"You're right."

"He does seem to dislike Mr. Langdon, doesn't he? Do you suppose Mr. Langdon is a bad man, 'Thaniel?"

"Ain't none of us perfect," answered Nat Jardin.

"No. I s'pose not. But those Western men--they are pretty tough characters, ain't they?"

"They be in the movies," chuckled the old man. "But I wouldn't worry about Langdon none, if I was you, Ma. He seems a pretty nice feller."

"But he wants to take Oriole along with the twins--you know he does, 'Thaniel. Do you think it's safe? P'r'aps we ought to know more about him first. If Oriole's parents do turn up----"

Uncle Nat made a clucking noise with his tongue and shook his head, intimating that he could not hope much for this wished-for occurrence.

"Well, 'Thaniel, they _might_. And we are responsible for her. Besides loving her," Ma said earnestly. "We must not let her get into bad hands. Maybe that boy knows more about Harvey Langdon than we do."

"Maybe."

"Then we ought to find out," she said vigorously.

"Sho, Ma!" murmured the old lightkeeper, "you are as hungry for gossip as Payt Orr himself."

Ma sniffed angrily at this, but said no more.