FullReads

[Her name was really Hutchinson; but it took so long to say it at the rate she ran the car that Tish changed it to Hutchins.]

Really the whole experiment seemed to be an undoubted success, when Aggie got the notion of Canada into her head. Now, as it happened, owing to Tish’s disapproval, Aggie gave up the Canada idea in favor of Nantucket, some time in June; but she had not reckoned with Tish’s subconscious self. Tish was interested that spring in the subconscious self.

You may remember that, only a year or so before, it had been the fourth dimension.

[She became convinced that if one were sufficiently earnest one could go through closed doors and see into solids. In the former ambition she was unsuccessful, obtaining only bruises and disappointment; but she did develop the latter to a certain extent, for she met the laundress going out one day and, without a conscious effort, she knew that she had the best table napkins pinned to her petticoat. She accused the woman sternly–and she had six!]

“Nantucket!” said Tish. “Why Nantucket?”

“I have a niece there, and you said you hated Canada.”

“On the contrary,” Tish replied, with her eyes partly shut, “I find that my subconscious self has adopted and been working on the Canadian suggestion. What a wonderful thing is this buried and greater ego! Worms, rifles, fishing-rods, ‘The Complete Angler,’ mosquito netting, canned goods, and sleeping-bags, all in my mind and in orderly array!”

“Worms!” I said, with, I confess, a touch of scorn in my voice. “If you will tell me, Tish Carberry–“

“Life preservers,” chanted Tish’s subconscious self, “rubber blankets, small tent, folding camp-beds, a camp-stove, a meat-saw, a wood-saw, and some beads and gewgaws for placating the Indians.” Then she opened her eyes and took up her knitting. “There are no worms in Canada, Lizzie, just as there are no snakes in Ireland. They were all destroyed during the glacial period.”

“There are plenty of worms in the United States,” I said with spirit. “I dare say they could crawl over the border–unless, of course, they object to being British subjects.”

She ignored me, however, and, getting up, went to one of her bureau drawers. We saw then that her subconscious self had written down lists of various things for the Canadian excursion. There was one headed Foodstuffs. Others were: Necessary Clothing; Camp Outfit; Fishing-Tackle; Weapons of Defense; and Diversions. Under this last heading it had placed binoculars, yarn and needles, life preservers, a prayer-book, and a cribbage-board.

“Boats,” she said, “we can secure from the Indians, who make them, I believe, of hollow logs. And I shall rent a motor boat. Hutchins says she can manage one. When she’s not doing that she can wash dishes.”

[We had been rather chary of motor boats, you may remember, since the time on Lake Penzance, when something jammed on our engine, and we had gone madly round the lake a number of times, with people on various docks trying to lasso us with ropes.]

Considering that it was she who had started the whole thing, and got Tish’s subconscious mind to working, Aggie was rather pettish.

“Huh!” she said. “I can’t swim, and you know it, Tish. Those canoe things turn over if you so much as sneeze in them.”

“You’ll not sneeze,” said Tish. “The Northern Lights fill the air with ozone.”

Aggie looked at me helplessly; but I could do nothing. Only the year before, Tish, as you may recall, had taken us out into the Maine woods without any outfit at all, and we had lived on snared rabbits, and things that no Christian woman ought to put into her stomach. This time we were at least to go provisioned and equipped.

“Where are we going?” Aggie asked.

“Far from a white man,” said Tish. “Away from milk wagons and children on velocipedes and the grocer calling up every morning for an order. We’ll go to the Far North, Aggie, where the red man still treads his native forests; we’ll make our camp by some lake, where the deer come at early morning to drink and fish leap to see the sunset.”