CHAPTER VI

A MERRY PARTY

TOM SWIFT caught hold of one edge of the overturned van and started to right it. At the same time he called out:

“Take hold here alongside of me, Dad! You too, Mr. Nestor! You lift over there, Mr. Pietro,” he added to the Italian standing beside the weeping young woman.

“Pardon, my name is Notine—Pietro Notine,” said the foreigner, with a smile that showed his white, even teeth. “And there is no need to be in such a rush. I thank you kindly for your offer. But I think if you have a lifting jack it will be better so to raise my car.”

“Get out a jack when the poor children are crushed inside?” cried Tom. “What’s the matter with you? Get hold here, everybody! Maybe you can help a little, Mary, and you too, Mrs. Nestor! And if your wife——”

Tom paused questioningly and eased his lifting efforts for a moment.

“Yes, Maria is my wife,” said Pietro Notine. “But, a thousand pardons, my kind friend, there is no need to so rapidly exert yourself. The damage is done!”

“You must be crazy!” cried Tom. “Children crushed in there and you want to wait!”

“Oh, Pietro, there you do it again!” cried the young woman, suddenly drying her eyes and smiling. “I told you everybody doesn’t understand your poetical talk. Calling them children!”

“Why, aren’t there children in that wreck?” asked Tom, hardly knowing what to think.

“I call them my children,” said the Italian man, with a sigh.

“But they are only marionettes—animated dolls that we use in giving our plays,” explained the young woman.

“Marionettes?” murmured Tom Swift.

“Plays! Oh, how lovely!” exclaimed his wife.

“Animated dolls!” ejaculated Mr. Nestor.

“Like Punch and Judy, I suppose?” asked Mrs. Nestor.

“Somewhat, and yet different,” explained Mrs. Notine. “We like to think our marionettes are different from dear Mr. Punch.”

“Oh, but my dear children are all killed, I know!” sighed the Italian. “It was such a crash!”

“Look here! Let me get this right!” said Tom, desisting from his efforts to right the van. “Do you travel about giving Punch and—I mean marionette shows?” he asked, for he knew the difference between the two performances.

“That’s it!” exclaimed Mr. Notine, who was peering first into one end of his overturned van and then the other. “I am sorry if I unduly alarmed you by calling the marionettes my children. But they are very dear to me. I made them—every one—with the help of my wife. Now—alas!”

“But, Pietro dear,” murmured his wife, “they may not be as badly damaged as you fear. I am sure if these kind people will help us right the van we may save something and be able to give our show.”

“Of course we’ll help you get things to rights!” exclaimed Tom. “I don’t believe your chariot is badly damaged,” he went on, looking with critical eyes at the overturned flivver. “These busses can stand a lot of punishment. How did it happen?”

“I turned to one side quickly, to avoid running over a dog,” explained the Italian puppet master. “Then—poof—over we went! Oh, what a crash for my poor children! We jumped and saved ourselves. But——”

“Do not grieve, my dear!” cried his wife, putting her arms around him like a mother.

“Tom, aren’t they dear?” whispered Mary. “We must help them!”

“Of course,” he responded.

Then, when the traveling show people were calmer and a survey had been made of the situation, Tom Swift saw that it would be very easy for him to attach a rope to the top of the van and pull it back on its wheels, for the road here was very wide.

“I’ll soon have you in shape,” the young inventor told Mr. Notine. “Mr. Nestor, will you lend a hand?”

“Of course, Tom.”

“Count me in!” cried Mr. Swift.

“You’d better take it easy, Dad,” Tom said. But his father insisted on doing at least some of the lighter tasks, and in a short time, with the pull exerted by the powerful House on Wheels, the marionette van was righted, little the worse for its mishap.

Mary murmured in delight when she saw that the van was like a little traveling theater—in effect a glorified Punch and Judy show. The sides of the van opened outward, a little stage was made, and from behind it the Italian and his wife could manipulate the strings that worked the puppets, or animated dolls.

“Ah, my dear children! My little ones!” murmured the Italian when the van was righted and he delved into its interior. He came out with several long, calico bags, their necks tied with strings. From each bag stuck out a curious wooden contrivance with many black strings wound about it.

“Try some of them, Pietro, and see if they are damaged,” suggested his wife. “I think most of them are all right.”

“May the good fairies grant it!” murmured the puppet master. He whisked off the calico bag from a grotesque figure representing a clown, and in a trice he had stepped into his van, behind some scenery representing a forest. Then, to the wondering eyes of Tom, Mary, and the others, the clown with its painted wooden face seemed to come to life, dancing about, cutting up antics, while the puppet master’s voice came out with such effect that it seemed the clown was speaking.

“Oh, how wonderful!” cried Mary.

“Clever!” murmured Tom.

“Where are you going to give a show?” asked Mrs. Nestor. “I should like to see it.”

“We planned to exhibit at the hotel in Colchester,” said Mrs. Notine. “But if our car is so damaged that it cannot go on——” she paused, and made a gesture of resignation.

“We’ve going to Colchester,” Tom said. “If your machine won’t go I’ll either make it go or take you there in ours.”

“It is kind of you,” the Italian said. “But I need my scenery, my effects, and——”

“Perhaps our van will go on, though,” interrupted his wife, more hopefully.

“That’s the way to talk!” cried Tom. “I’ll have a look, and we’ll give it a trial.”

So while the Italian puppet master examined his characters, which is to say his various marionettes, Tom went over the mechanism of the van. He found that a few broken wires of the ignition system constituted the total damage, except for some scratches, and he soon had the car in working order.

“A thousand thanks!” exclaimed the enthusiastic Mr. Notine. “Now we can go on!”

“It was wonderful of you!” murmured the pretty Italian woman. And she made such “eyes” at Tom that later Mary laughingly said she would soon have been jealous.

“I should like very much to see a marionette show,” said Mrs. Nestor.

“Nothing is easier,” returned Tom. “We planned at least to call at the Colchester hotel, for I told Mr. Jackson if he had any messages he could reach me there. So we’ll stop, anyhow, and if you like you can spend the night there and see this performance.”

So it was arranged, and after Tom Swift and his party had seen the marionette van start off, they followed in the House on Wheels and both soon arrived at Colchester. The House on Wheels was put in a garage for the night and the hotel proprietor warmly welcomed the traveling marionette company to his establishment. He was in need of a night’s entertainment for his guests, and a good crowd was assured. For be it known that marionettes are as much a source of amusement to adults as they are to children. The plays Mr. Notine and his wife gave with the puppets were poetical and historical and not juvenile plays.

So it was a merry party that gathered in the hotel parlor that evening to watch the marionette show, a temporary stage having been set up and the scenery and effects brought in from the van.

Tom was thoroughly enjoying himself and so was his wife. There was plenty of applause for the marionette show and its picturesque proprietors, and a goodly sum was realized for their benefit.

After the show there was a jolly gathering about the Italian and his wife, and they made much of the “rescue,” as Pietro Notine termed it, on the part of Tom Swift.

“Without my benefactor I should never be here!” said the Italian, with dramatic gestures.

“Oh, cut it out!” chuckled Tom.

The hotel guests were examining the workings of the marionettes from “behind the scenes,” and Mary, who had met a few acquaintances among the persons in the audience, was talking and laughing with them when a bellboy came along calling:

“Telegram! Telegram for Mr. Swift!”

“Here!” exclaimed Tom, slipping the lad a quarter.

“Oh,” murmured Mary, as her husband tore open the yellow envelope, “I hope there is no bad news.”