Chapter IV: Olly Burdeen's New Clothes

There was but one boarding-house at Beman's Beach in those days. Originally a farm-house, it stood in not the very best situation, a little distance back from the sea, in a hollow of the hills. It was kept by a farmer's widow, Mrs. Murcher, who, as her business expanded, had built on additions until her house looked as if it had the mumps in one enormously swollen cheek.

While his Frog-End mates were driving thither-ward in the tip-cart, and talking about him, Master Oily Burdeen, the third hero in our story (counting the twins as one), was standing before a bureau in Mrs. Murcher's best corner room, and smiling graciously at his image in the oval-shaped looking-glass.

He held a hair-brush in his right hand and a comb in his left, and after giving his sleek locks an artistic touch or two, he would tip the mirror a trifle and recede a step, to get a still more pleasing view of his personal perfections.

It was not his own room, there in the new part--the swollen cheek, as it were--of the summer boarding-house. Nor can I have the satisfaction of declaring that it was his own brush and comb with which he was making so free, nor his own cologne that had imparted to his naturally rough, rusty hair its extraordinary fragrance and smoothness. But the broadly smiling mouth, snub nose, and freckles were possessions nobody would have thought of disputing with Master Olly; and the tolerably well-fitting, genteel, grayish-brown suit he had on had belonged to him about eight hours.

Olly Burdeen was not, in fact, one of Mrs. Murcher's boarders. He was only a boy-of-all-work employed by her for the season. The room belonged to Mr. Hatville, who had gone yachting that afternoon; and Olly had taken temporary possession to admire himself in his new clothes before the convenient glass.

For new they were to him, although they had been rather well worn that summer by the friendly young boarder, who, on departing in the morning, had made Oily a present of them in return for the errands Oily had done for him.

This was the first opportunity to try them on that the proud recipient had found. He had never in his life worn anything so stylish, and we can smile tolerantly at the innocent vanity with which he surveyed himself in Mr. Hatville's mirror. His liberal use of Mr. Hatville's hair-brush and cologne-bottle was not, perhaps, so excusable. And when with fearful joy he took from its embroidered case by the mirror the tempting gold watch which Mr. Hatville had, either by accident or design, left hanging there, on changing his clothes that afternoon to go yachting,--when, I say, Master Burdeen lifted out that valuable time-piece by its dangling chain, and placed it in the watch-pocket of his new waistcoat, it must be owned that he was carrying his ideas of hospitality too far.

"It only needed a watch to set it off," he said; "and here it is!"

In his button-hole he hooked the gold guard, letting the heavy seal hang, and the chain fall in a graceful curve on his vest. Then he drew out the watch and opened it with a pressure of the spring (it was a hunter's case), and looked at the time; shutting it again with a delightful snap, and replacing it in his pocket, as he strutted the while with amiable satisfaction before the tilted glass.

"I'll have just such a watch of my own some day," he said to himself, proudly, "and just such a gold chain, with a seal as big as that! See if I don't!"

With a sigh he started to put it back in the embroidered case where he had found it. But that required too great an effort of self-denial.

"I'd like to wear it a few minutes; where'll be the harm?" he thought. "Of course, I wont let any accident happen to it."

He looked at the time again; it was half-past six. The two or three men boarders who remained with Mrs. Murcher (for it was now late in the season) had gone yachting, and the ladies were at tea. It was an hour of leisure with Olly, and having put on his new rig, he thought it would be pleasant to take a stroll on the beach, a sort of rehearsal of his rôle of "walking gentleman," before going that evening to show himself to the admiring natives at Frog-End. He couldn't resist the temptation to carry the watch, on this preliminary excursion; buttoning the guard and seal under the top buttons of his coat, so that they shouldn't be observed as he left the house.

"I only wish _she_ could see me!" he whispered blushingly to himself, as he went down the stairs.

"She" was Miss Amy Canfield, the youngest of the lady boarders, and in his eyes the prettiest. She had been kind to Olly, as, indeed, the most of the boarders had been; and it put him into a warm glow, from his cheeks to his shins, as he thought of meeting her surprised gaze.

But Amy was at tea with the rest, and as oblivious of him at that moment as if he had never existed. So he passed out of the house unnoticed, and went to enjoy his little strut alone; unbuttoning his coat again, and glancing down at the superb chain and seal, as he took the sandy path to the beach.

"If I see the Susette," he said,--for that was the name of the yacht,--"I'll hurry back, and have the watch in its place again long before Mr. Hatville lands."

This he fully intended to do. But neither from the intervening sand-hills, nor from the shore itself, which he reached after a short walk from the boarding-house, was the yacht anywhere to be seen.

The sea had gone down rapidly since the recent gale. It rolled on the beach, in breakers made dark and turbid by the sea-weed which, uptorn by the storm and mixed with sand, still tumbled and washed to and fro in the waves.

"Wind's got around square in the west," observed Olly. "The yacht'll have a mean time beating up!"

The sky was partly covered by heavy masses of broken clouds, in an opening of which the sun was just setting over dark growths of pine and spruce that rose behind the dunes, a little back from the beach. As it went down, the shadows of the woods stretched out, like wings, over the dunes and the smooth, glistening slope of beach sand, just washed by the receding tide. Then the sunset light on the white crests of the breakers was quenched, and the whole sea was in gloom. For a moment only, for now the flying clouds caught a flush which spread swiftly over the sky, until the entire heavens, almost down to the sea rim, appeared one burning flame. The sea itself had a strange, wild beauty, the dark and sullen waters but half consenting to reflect the glow of the clouds on their heaving waves.