CHAPTER V
OLD TIN-BACK
"Isn't he provoking!" murmured Grace, sinking into a seat beside Mollie,as the train slowly pulled out.
"Who?" asked Mollie, leaning toward the window to wave to the boys onthe platform.
"My brother Will. He's up to something--he has a secret and he won'ttell me!"
"Don't let him know you care, and he'll tell you all the quicker. Boysare that way," declared Mollie, with the accumulated wisdomof--say--seventeen years.
"Yes, I suppose so," agreed Grace, and then she began a hurried searchamong the various articles she had deposited on the seat between herselfand Mollie.
"What is it--lost something?" asked the latter.
"My bag of--oh, here they are," and Grace, with a look of contentment,began munching some chocolates.
"It is awfully nice of you, Mrs. Nelson, to ask us down for the summer,"said Amy Blackford to her hostess when they were settled in the speedingtrain. "I do so love the seashore."
"Then I think you will like it at Ocean View," remarked Betty's mother."And we think Edgemere a pretty place."
"I'm sure it must be from what Betty has told me."
"Do you like lobsters?" asked Mr. Nelson, looking over the top of hispaper, with a twinkle in his eyes.
"Lobsters?" repeated Amy, questioningly. "I haven't eaten many."
"It's a great place for lobsters at Ocean View," went on Betty's father."That's one reason I decided on it."
"The idea!" cried his wife. "To hear you talk anyone would think younever ate anything else, and you know if you take too much _a laNewburg_ you don't feel well the next day."
"I'm going to take only the plain boiled, and salads," declared Mr.Nelson. "But there's an old lobsterman--Tin-Back, they call him--nearEdgemere in whom I think you girls will be interested," he went on."He's quite a character."
"Why do they call him Tin-Back?" asked Amy. "Has he really a----"
"A tin back? How funny that would be?" laughed Betty.
"You must ask him," declared her father. "I didn't have time when I camedown to see if everything was all right."
"Oh, what lovely times we'll have, girls!" sighed Mollie, when, a littlelater, the four chums were conversing. "We can go sailing, bathing andsit on the sands and watch the tide come in."
"And perhaps find buried pirate-treasure in some cave," added Betty,with a laugh.
"Can we, really?" asked Amy, perhaps the most unsophisticated of thequartette.
"Really what?" asked Grace, silently offering her bag of sweets. Thehabit was almost automatic with her.
"Find buried treasure," said Amy, eagerly. "I should love to do that.I've often read----"
"That's all you can do--read about it," spoke Mollie, regretfully."There isn't any romance left in this world. If there was a pirate'scave it would be lighted with electricity and an admission fee charged.And yet the New England coast ought to contain some treasure. Somepirates used to land there."
"Did they, Mr. Nelson?" asked Amy, catching sight of Betty's fatheragain glancing over the top of his paper.
"Did pirates ever land on the coast near where we are going?"
"Well, perhaps, yes. I believe there are several stories about Kidd'streasure being buried somewhere around Ocean View. Or, perhaps it wouldbe more correct to say that _one_ of Kidd's treasures. On the verylowest count he must have had at least a double score, all hidden indifferent places."
"Really?" demanded Amy, with glistening eyes, and flushed cheeks.
"Well, as really as any other treasure story, I suppose," answered Mr.Nelson, while Betty murmured:
"Oh, Daddy! Don't tease her!"
"I'm not!" he declared. "It is possible that there may be some treasureburied in the sand near Ocean View. Stranger things have happened."
"Oh, what if _we_ should find it!" cried Amy. "I'm going to look thefirst thing I do."
"Find what?" asked Grace, who had been looking from the window as theypassed through a town.
"Buried treasure," Amy said.
"Oh, I thought you meant Will's secret," observed Grace. "I wonderwhere that train boy is?" she went on.
"What for?" asked Betty.
"I want another box of those chocolates. They were a new kind and----"
"Grace Ford! If you buy another bit of candy before we arrive I--I don'tknow what I'll do to you!" threatened Betty.
The train rolled on, as all trains do, and, eventually, the littleseaside resort of Ocean View was reached. There was the usual scrambleon the part of our friends, and other passengers, to alight, and whenthe girls stood on the rather dingy platform of the station Mollie,looking about her in some disappointment, said:
"Ocean View! I don't see why they call it that. You can't see the oceanat all."
"It's down that way," said Mr. Nelson, with a wave of his hand towardthe east. "Property is too valuable along the shore to allow of thevillage being there. The town is about a mile back from the water. We'lltake a carriage to the cottage. You see the railroad doesn't run veryclose to the ocean."
Ocean View was like most summer resorts, built some distance back fromthe shore, which property was held by cottage or bungalow owners. Therewere several shell roads running from the main street of the town downto the water's edge, however. And soon, in a carriage, with theirvalises piled around them, our party set off for Edgemere, leaving atruckman to bring the trunks.
"Oh what a perfectly dear place!" exclaimed Grace, as the carriageturned along a highway that paralleled the beach. "And how blue thewater is!"
They were up on a little elevation. Down below them was a large bay,enclosed in a point of land that ran out into the ocean, forming aperfect breakwater.
"Where is Edgemere?" asked Mollie.
"Over there," answered Betty, pointing.
The girls beheld a large cottage nestling amid a group of evergreen andother trees, on the very point of land that jutted out, with the bay onone side and the ocean on the other.
"Oh, how perfectly charming!" exclaimed Amy. "And we can have stillwater bathing as well as that in the surf."
"Exactly," answered Betty. "That's why mamma and I decided on it. I likestill water myself."
"So do I," murmured Amy.
"I don't! I want the boiling surf!" declared Mollie, who was anexcellent swimmer.
They drove up to the cottage, finding new delights every moment, andwhen the carriage stopped within the fence, at the side porch, the wholeparty waited a moment before alighting to admire the place.
"It _is_ nice," decided Mrs. Nelson. "I had forgotten part of it, but Ilike it even better than I thought I should."
"It's sweet!" declared Grace.
"Horribly fascinating, as Percy Falconer would say," mocked Mollie.
"Don't!" begged Betty, making a wry face.
As they were alighting, a quaint figure of an old man, bent andshuffling, with gnarled and twisted hands, and a face almost lost in abush of beard, yet in whose blue eyes twinkled kindliness and goodfellowship, came around the side path.
"Wa'al, I see ye got here!" he exclaimed in hoarse tones--his voiceseemed to be coming out of a perpetual fog.
"Yes, we've arrived," Mr. Nelson said.
"Glad ye come. Ye'll find everything all ready for ye! 'Mandy has a firegoin', an' th' chowder's hot."
"Who is he?" asked Mrs. Nelson, in a whisper.
"Old Tin-Back," replied her husband. "He's a lobsterman and acharacter. I engaged his wife to clean the cottage, and be here when youarrived."
"Yes, I'm Old Tin-Back," replied the man with a gruff but not unpleasantlaugh. "Leastways they all calls me that. I'll take them grips," he wenton, as the girls advanced, and into his gnarled hands he gathered thevalises.
"Oh, what a delicious smell!" exclaimed Mollie, as they went up thesteps.
"That's th' chowder," chuckled the old lobsterman. "I reckoned it'd betasty. Plenty of quahogs in _that_."
"What?" gasped Amy.
"Quahogs--big cla
ms, miss," he explained. "Old Tin-Back dug 'em thismornin' at low tide. Nothin' like quahogs for chowder, though some folkslikes soft clams. But not for Old Tin-Back."
"Is--is that really your name?" asked Amy.
"Wa'al not _really_, miss. It's a sort of nickname. You see, I sellclams, lobsters and crabs, but I don't never sell no tin-back crabs, andso they sorter got in the habit of callin' me that."
"What are tin-backs?" asked Amy, but before the lobsterman could answer,Betty, from within the cottage, called to her chums:
"Come, girls, and select your rooms!"