The Adopting of Rosa Marie (A Sequel to Dandelion Cottage)

The Adopting Of Rosa Marie

_by_ CARROLL WATSON RANKIN

_Illustrated by_ FLORENCE SCOVEL SHINN

_Frontispiece and jacket in full color by_ MIRIAM SELSS

In this charming girl's book we meet again the four chums of _Dandelion Cottage_. Their friendship knit closer than ever by their summer at playing house, the girls enlarge their activity by mothering a pretty little Indian baby.

"Those who have read _Dandelion Cottage_ will need no urge to follow further.... A lovable group of four children, happily not perfect, but full of girlish plans and pranks and a delightful sense of humor."

--_Boston Transcript._

Just the type of book that every girl _from eight to fifteen_ enjoys.

[Illustration: "MY SOUL, WHAT ARE YOU, ANYWAY?"]

Dandelion Series

The Adopting Of Rosa Marie

(_A Sequel to Dandelion Cottage_)

By

Carroll Watson Rankin

Author of "Dandelion Cottage," "The Girls of Gardenville," etc.

_With Illustrations by_ FLORENCE SCOVEL SHINN

[Illustration]

New York Henry Holt And Company

Copyright, 1908, By Henry Holt And Company

Copyright, 1936, By Carroll Watson Rankin

Printed In The United States Of America

To

Emily, Phyllis, Polly And Suzanne

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE I. BORROWED BABIES 1 II. ROSA MARIE 9 III. MABEL'S DAY 18 IV. AN UNUSUAL EVENING 27 V. RETURNING ROSA MARIE 34 VI. THE DARK SECRET 43 VII. DISCOVERY 52 VIII. THE FUGITIVE SOLDIER 64 IX. A SURPRISE 73 X. BREAKING THE NEWS 83 XI. THE ALARM 91 XII. THE FIRE 101 XIII. A HEROINE'S COME-DOWN 111 XIV. A BIRTHDAY PARTY 119 XV. AN UNEXPECTED TREAT 130 XVI. A SCATTERED SCHOOL 140 XVII. AN INVITATION 151 XVIII. OBEYING INSTRUCTIONS 161 XIX. WITH HENRIETTA 173 XX. THE CALL RETURNED 183 XXI. GETTING EVEN 195 XXII. A FULL AFTERNOON 204 XXIII. TAKING A WALK 215 XXIV. THE STATUE FROM INDIA 226 XXV. COMPARING NOTES 237 XXVI. CHRISTMAS EVE 248 XXVII. A CROWDED DAY 256 XXVIII. A BETTIE-LESS PLAN 265 XXIX. ANXIOUS DAYS 275 XXX. AN APRIL HARVEST 286

The Persons Of The Story

BETTIE TUCKER, aged 12: } JEANIE MAPES, aged 14: } The Cottagers MARJORY VALE, aged 12: } MABEL BENNETT, aged 11: }

ROSA MARIE: The Unreturnable Baby.

The Mother Of Rosa Marie.

ANNE HALLIDAY: } THE MARCOTTE TWINS: } Borrowed Babies. THE LITTLE TUCKERS: }

HENRIETTA BEDFORD: The New Girl.

MRS. HOWARD SLATER: } Of Henrietta's Household. SIMMONS: }

THE JANITOR: An Unappreciated Hero.

DR. TUCKER: A Clergyman with More Children than Money.

DR. BENNETT: A Physician.

MR. BLACK: A Friend to Children.

MRS. CRANE: His Sister.

AUNTY JANE: Marjory's Sole Visible Relative.

Some Mothers And Brothers.

MRS. MALONY: The Light-hearted Egg-woman.

Illustrations

MY SOUL, WHAT ARE YOU, ANYWAY _Frontispiece_ PAGE ROSA MARIE AND THE SIDEWALK WERE ONE 16 THE STURDY FELLOW CARRIED HER OUT OF THE ROOM 112 THE DECIDEDLY DEPRESSED FOUR STARTED DOWN THE STREET 164 "ANOTHER 'EATHEN GOD FROM HINDIA" 234

The Adopting Of Rosa Marie

Chapter I

Borrowed Babies

THE oldest inhabitant said that Lakeville was experiencing an unusual fall. He would probably have said the same thing if the high-perched town had accidentally tumbled off the bluff into the blue lake; but in this instance, he referred merely to the weather, which was certainly unusually mild for autumn.

It was not, however, the oldest, but four of the youngest citizens that rejoiced most in this unusual prolonging of summer; for the continued warm weather made it possible for those devoted friends, Jean Mapes, Marjory Vale, Mabel Bennett and little Bettie Tucker, to spend many a delightful hour in their precious Dandelion Cottage, the real, tumble-down house that was now, after so many narrow escapes, safely their very own. Some day, to be sure, it would be torn down to make room for a habitable dwelling, but that unhappy day was still too remote to cause any uneasiness.

Of course, when very cold weather should come, it would be necessary to close the beloved Cottage, for there was no heating plant, there were many large cracks over and under the doors and around the windows; and by lying very flat on the dining-room floor and peering under the baseboards, one could easily see what was happening in the next yard. These, and other defects, would surely make the little house uninhabitable in winter; but while the unexpectedly extended summer lasted, the Cottagers were rejoicing over every pleasant moment of weather and praying hard for other pleasant moments.

Of all the games played in Dandelion Cottage, the one called "Mother" was the most popular. To play it, it was necessary, first of all, to divide the house into four equal parts. As there were five rooms, this division might seem to offer no light task; but, by first subtracting the kitchen, it was possible to solve this difficult mathematical problem to the Cottagers' entire satisfaction.

But of course one can't play "Mother" without possessing a family. The Cottagers solved this problem also. Bettie's home could always be counted on to furnish at least two decidedly genuine babies and Jean could always borrow a perfectly delightful little cousin named Anne Halliday; but Marjory and Mabel, to their sorrow, were absolutely destitute of infantile relatives. Mabel was the chief sufferer. Sedate Marjory, plausible of tongue, convincing in manner, could easily accumulate a most attractive family at very short notice by the simple expedient of borrowing babies from the next block; but nowhere within reasonable reach was there a mother willing to intrust her precious offspring a second time to heedless Mabel.

"Now, Mabel," Mrs. Mercer would say, when Mabel pleaded to have young Percival for her very own for just one brief hour, "I'd really like to oblige you, but it's getting late in the season, you are not careful enough about doors and windows and the last time you borrowed Percival you brought him home with a stiff neck that lasted three days."

"But I did remember to return him," pleaded Mabel.

"Do you sometimes forget?" queried Mrs. Mercer, with interest.

"I did twice," confessed always honest Mabel; "but truly I don't see how _I_ can help it when babies sleep and sleep and sleep the way those two did. You see, I made a bed for Gerald Price on the lowest-down closet shelf, and he was so perfectly comfortable that he thought he was asleep for all night."

"What about the other time?"

"That was Mollie Dixon. But then, I had five children that day and only one bed. Mollie slipped down in the crack at the back--she's awfully thin--and I never missed her until her mother came after her. That was rather a bad time [Mabel sighed at the recollection] for Mrs. Dixon found the Cottage locked up for the night and poor little Mollie crying under the bed."

"Mabel! And you want to borrow my precious Percival!"

"But it couldn't happen _again_," protested Mabel, earnestly. "Bettie says that I'm just like lightning; I never strike twice in the same place. That's the reason I get into so many different kinds of scrapes. I'll be ever so careful, though, if you'll let me borrow Percival just this one time."

Mrs. Mercer, however, refused to part with Percival. Other mothers, approached by pleading Mabel, refused likewise to intrust their babies to her enthusiastic but heedless keeping. They knew her too well.

"The thing for you to do," suggested Marjory, ostentatiously washing the perfectly clean faces of the four delightful small persons that she had been able, without any trouble at all, to borrow in Blaker Street, "is to find a mother that really _wants_ to get rid of her children."

"Yes," said Bob Tucker, who had dropped in to deliver the basket of apples that Mrs. Crane had sent to her former neighbors, "you ought to advertise for the kind of mother that feeds her babies to crocodiles. Perhaps some of them have emigrated to this country and sort of miss the Ganges River."

"You might try the orphan asylum," offered Jean, as balm for this wound. "It's only four blocks from here."

"I have," returned Mabel, dejectedly. "I went there early this morning."

"What happened?" demanded Bettie, who had just arrived with a little Tucker under each arm.

"They said they'd let them go 'permanently to responsible parties.' I didn't know just exactly what that meant, so I said: 'Does that mean that you'll lend me a few for two hours?'"

"And would they?"

"Well, they didn't. They said I'd better borrow a Teddy bear."

"How mean," said sympathetic Bettie. "Nevermind, I'll lend you Peter, this time."

"Say," queried Mabel, after she had accepted Bettie's proffered brother, "what does 'permanently' mean?"

"For keeps," explained Jean.

"What are 'responsible parties'?"

"Jean and Bettie and I," twinkled Marjory, "but not you."

"That's good," laughed Bob, who, like Marjory, loved to tease. "But never mind, Mabel. After you've practised a year or two on Peter, who's a nuisance if there ever was one, you'll find yourself growing respons---- Whoop! What was that?"

"That" was a sudden crash that resounded through the house. Everybody rushed to the kitchen. The big dish-pan that Mabel had left on the edge of the kitchen table was upside down on the floor. At least half of little Peter Tucker was under it. But the half that remained outside was so unmistakably alive that nobody felt very seriously alarmed--except Peter.

"Thank goodness!" said Mabel, removing the pan, "this is just a little Tucker and not any Percival Mercer! Cheer up, Peter. You're not as wet as you think you are. There wasn't more than a quart of water in that pan and it was almost perfectly clean."

And Peter, soothed by Mabel's reassuring tone, immediately cheered up.

Chapter II

Rosa Marie

NOT long after Mabel's ineffectual attempt to borrow an orphan Mrs. Bennett dispatched her small daughter to Lake Street to find out, if possible, why Mrs. Malony, the poultry woman, had failed to send the week's supply of fresh eggs.

Now, the way to Mrs. Malony's was most interesting, particularly to a young person of observing habits. There were houses on only one side of the street and most of those were tumbling down under the weight of the sand that each rain carried down the hillside. But the opposite side of the road was even more attractive, for there one had a grassy, shrubby bank where one could pick all sorts of things off bushes and get burrs in one's stockings; a narrow stretch of pebbled beach where one could sometimes find an agate, and a wide basin of very shallow water where one could almost--but not quite--step from stone to stone without wetting one's feet. It was certainly an enjoyable spot. The distance from Mabel's home to Mrs. Malony's was very short--a matter of perhaps five blocks. But if a body went the longest way round, stopped to scour the green bank for belated blackberries, prickly hazelnuts, dazzling golden-rod or rare four-leaved clovers; or loitered to gather a dress-skirtful of stony treasures from the glittering beach, going to Mrs. Malony's meant a great deal more than a five blocks' journey.

Just a little beyond the poultry woman's house, on the lake side of the straggling street, a small, but decidedly attractive point of land jutted waterward for perhaps two hundred feet. On this projecting point stood a small shanty or shack, built, as Mabel described it later, mostly of knot-holes. She meant, without knowing how to say it, that the lumber in the hut was of the poorest possible quality.

On this long-to-be-remembered day, a small object moving in the clearing that surrounded the shack attracted Mabel's attention. Curiosity led her closer to investigate.

"It's just as I thought!" exclaimed Mabel, peering rapturously through the bushes. "It's a real baby!"

Sure enough! It _was_ a baby.

Mabel edged closer, moving cautiously for fear of frightening her unexpected find. She saw a small toddler, aged somewhere between two and three years, roving aimlessly about the chip-strewn clearing. The child's round cheeks, chubby wrists, bare feet and sturdy legs were richly brown. A straggling fringe of jet-black hair overhung the stout baby's black, beadlike eyes.

Near the doorway of the rickety shack a man, half French, half Indian, stood talking earnestly and with many gesticulations to a dark-skinned woman, framed by the doorway. The woman had large black eyes, shaded by very long black lashes. She wore her rather coarse black hair in two long, thick braids that hung in front of her straight shoulders. In spite of her dark color, her worn shoes, her ragged, untidy gown, she seemed to Mabel an exceedingly pretty woman. The man, too, was handsome, after a bold, picturesque fashion; but the woman was the more pleasing.

Mabel approached timidly. She felt that she was intruding.

"Good-morning," said she, ingratiatingly. "Is this your little boy?"

"Him girl," returned the woman, with a sudden flash of white teeth between parted crimson lips. "Name Rosa Marie. Yes, him _ma petite_ daughtaire. You like the looks on him, hey?"

"Oh, so much," cried Mabel, impulsively. "Oh, _would_ you do me a favor?"

"A favaire," repeated the woman, with a puzzled glance. "W'at ees a favaire?"

"Oh, _would_ you lend your baby to me? Would you let me have her to play with for---- Oh, for all day?"

"Here?" queried the mother, doubtfully.

"No, not here. In my own home--up there, on the hill. _Could_ I keep her until six o'clock? I just adore babies, and she's so fat and cunning! Oh, please, _please_! I'd be just awfully obliged."

A look of understanding flashed suddenly between the man and the woman; but Mabel, stooping to make friends with little Rosa Marie, did not observe it.

"Your fodder 'ave nice house, plainty food, plainty money?" queried the woman, running a speculative eye over Mabel's plain but substantial wardrobe.

"Oh yes," returned Mabel, thoughtlessly. "And besides I have a playhouse. That is, it isn't exactly mine, but I just about live in it with three other girls, and that's where I want to take Rosa Marie. I'll be awfully careful of her if you'll only let me take her. Oh, _do_ you think she'll come with me? Couldn't you _tell_ her to?"

The woman, bending to look into Rosa Marie's black eyes, talked loudly and rapidly in some foreign tongue. The mother's voice was harsh, but her eyes, Mabel noticed, seemed soft and tender, and much more beautiful than Rosa Marie's.

"Now," said the woman, turning to Mabel and speaking in broken English, "eef you want her, you must go at once. Go now, I tell you. Go queek, queek! Pull hard eef she ees drag behind. But go, I tell you, _go_!"

The voice rose to an unpleasant, almost too stirring pitch that jarred suddenly on Mabel's nerves; but, obeying these hasty instructions, the little girl drew Rosa Marie out of the inclosure, led her across the street and lifted her to the sidewalk. Looking back from the slight elevation, Mabel noticed that the man was again talking earnestly and gesticulating excitedly; while the woman, once more framed by the doorway, followed, with her big black eyes, the chubby figure of Rosa Marie.

"I'll bring her back all safe and sound," shouted Mabel, over her shoulder. "Don't be afraid. Good-by, until six o'clock!"

Escorting Rosa Marie to Dandelion Cottage proved no light task. Her legs were very short, it soon became evident that she was not accustomed to using them for walking purposes, the way was mostly uphill and the little brown feet were bare. At first Mabel led, coaxed and encouraged with the utmost patience; but presently Rosa Marie sat heavily on the sidewalk and refused to rise. That is, she didn't _say_ that she wouldn't rise. She remained sitting with such firmness of purpose that it seemed hopeless to attempt to break her of the habit.

Mabel walked round and round her firmly seated charge in helpless despair. Rosa Marie and the sidewalk were one.

"Want any help?" asked a friendly voice. It belonged to a large, freckled boy who was carrying two pails of water from the lake to one of the tumble-down houses.

[Illustration: ROSA MARIE AND THE SIDEWALK WERE ONE.]

"Yes, I do," responded Mabel, promptly. "If you could just lift this child high enough for me to get hold of her I think I could carry her."

So the boy, setting his pails down, obligingly lifted Rosa Marie's solid little person, Mabel clasped the barrel-shaped body closely, and, after a word of thanks to the kind boy, proceeded homeward. But even now her troubles were not ended. By silently refusing to cuddle, Rosa Marie converted herself into a most uncomfortable burden. Her entire body was a silent protest against leaving her home.

"Do make yourself soft and bunchy," pleaded Mabel, giving Rosa Marie sundry pokes, calculated to make her double up like a jack-knife. "Here, bend this way. _Haven't_ you any joints anywhere? Do hold tight with your arms and legs. _This_ way. Pshaw! You're just like a stuffed crocodile. Well, _walk_ then, if you can't hang on like a real child. There's one thing certain, you shan't sit down again. I s'pose we'll get there _sometime_."

Chapter III

Mabel's Day

ALMOST hopeless as it seemed at times, Mabel and the silent brown baby finally reached Dandelion Cottage. There they found Jean, seated in a chair with her lovely little cousin Anne Halliday perched like a pink and white blossom on the edge of the dining table before her, tying Anne's bewitching yellow curls with wide pink ribbons. Anne was a perpetual delight, for, besides being a picture during every moment of the long day, her ways were so quaint and so attractive that no one could help admiring her.

Marjory, her countenance carefully arranged to depict the deepest sorrow, stood guard over the Marcotte twins, who, touchingly covered with nasturtiums, were laid out on the parlor cozy corner, awaiting burial. Their blue eyes blinked and their pink toes twitched; but, on the whole, they played their parts in a most satisfactory manner.

Bettie, with two small but attractive Tucker babies clinging to her brief skirts, was exclaiming: "These are my jewels," when tired, dusty Mabel, pushing reluctant Rosa Marie before her, walked in.

"For mercy's sake, what's that!" gasped Jean, sweeping Anne Halliday into her protecting arms.

"Is--is it something the cat dragged in?" asked Marjory.

"Is--_can_ it be a _real_ child?" demanded Bettie.

"This," announced Mabel, with dignity, "is _my_ child. Her name is Rosa Marie--with all the distress on the _ee_."

"The distress seems to be all over both of you," giggled Marjory.

"That's just dust," explained Mabel.

"Did you both roll home like a pair of barrels?" queried Jean, "or did the Village Improvement folks use you to dust the sidewalks?"

"What's the matter with that child's complexion?" demanded Marjory. "Is she tanned?"

"Coming home took long enough for us both to get tanned," returned Mabel, crossly, "but Rosa Marie's French, I guess."

"French! French nothing!" exclaimed Marjory. "She's nothing but a little wild Indian. Look at her hair. Look at her small black eyes. Look at her high cheekbones. Where in the world did you get her?"

Mabel explained. For once, the girls listened with the most flattering attention. Anne Halliday bobbed her pretty head to punctuate each sentence, the Tucker babies stood in silence with their mouths open, even the nicely laid-out Marcotte twins on the sofa sat up to hear the tale.

"And she's all mine until six o'clock," concluded Mabel, triumphantly.

"If she were mine," said Jean, "I'd give her a bath."

"I'd give her two," giggled Marjory.

So Mabel, assisted by Jean, Marjory, Bettie, little Anne, the two Tucker babies and the now very much alive Marcotte twins gave Rosa Marie a bath in the dish-pan. Although they changed the water as fast as they could heat more in the tea-kettle, although they used a whole bar of strong yellow soap, two teaspoonfuls of washing powder and a _very_ scratchy washcloth lathered with Sapolio, Rosa Marie, who bore it all with stolid patience, was still richly brown from head to heels, when she emerged from her bath.

"Let's play Pocohontis!" cried Marjory, seizing the feather duster. "Put feathers in her hair and drape her in my brown petticoat. I'll be Captain John Smith in Bob Tucker's rubber boots."

"You won't either," retorted Mabel, indignantly. "I guess, after I dragged this child all the way up here to play 'Mother' with, I'm not going to have her used for any old Pocohontises. She's my child, and I'm going to have the entire use of her while she lasts."

"After all," replied Marjory, cuttingly, "I don't want her. I'm sure _I_ wouldn't care for any of _that_ colored children. The usual shade is quite good enough for me."

But, while the novelty lasted and in spite of Marjory's declaration, Rosa Marie was a distinct success. Little Anne Halliday's cunningest ways and quaintest speeches went unheeded when Rosa Marie refused to wear shoes and stockings. She had never worn a shoe, and, without uttering a word, she made it plain that she had no intention of hampering her pudgy brown feet with the cast-off footgear of the young Tuckers.

Neither would she wear clothes, until Jean showed her the solitary garment she had arrived in, now soaking in a pan of soapy water. After they had arrayed her in a long-sleeved apron of Anne's--it didn't go round, but had to be helped out with a cheese-cloth duster--it was evident that the unaccustomed whiteness bothered her. She was not used to being so remarkably stiff and clean.

The Marcotte twins, again prepared for burial, quarrelled most engagingly as to which should be buried under the apple-tree, both preferring that fruitful resting-place to the barren waste under the snowball bush; but nobody listened because Rosa Marie was doing extraordinary things with her bowl of bread and milk. Having lapped the milk like a cat, she was deftly chasing the crumbs round the bowl with a greedy and experienced tongue. It was plain that Rosa Marie had no table manners.

As for the infantile Tuckers, they were an old story. On this occasion they crawled into the corner cupboard and went to sleep and nobody missed them for a whole hour, just because Rosa Marie was emitting queer little startled grunts every time Marjory's best doll wailed "Mam-mah!" "Pap-pah!" for her benefit. There was no doubt about it, Rosa Marie was decidedly amusing.

The day passed swiftly; much too swiftly, Mabel thought. Very much mothered Rosa Marie, who had obligingly consumed an amazing amount of milk--all, indeed, that the Cottagers had been able to procure--started homeward, towed by Mabel. That elated young person had declined all offers of company; she coveted the full glory of returning Rosa Marie to her rightful guardian. Mabel, indeed, was visibly swollen with pride. She had given the Cottagers a most unusual treat. She had not only surprised them by proving that she _could_ borrow a baby, but had kept them amused and entertained every moment of the day. It had certainly been a red-letter day in the annals of Dandelion Cottage.

Mabel more than half expected to meet Rosa Marie's mother at the very first corner. The other real mothers had always seemed desirous--over desirous, Mabel thought--of welcoming their home-coming babies back to the fold; but the mother of Rosa Marie, apparently, was of a less grudging disposition.

Mabel laboriously escorted her reluctant charge to the very door of the shanty without encountering any welcoming parent. The borrower of Rosa Marie knocked. No one came. She tried the door. It was locked.

"How queer!" said Mabel. "Seems to me I'd be on hand if I had an engagement at exactly six o'clock. But then, I always _am_ late."

Dragging an empty wooden box to the side of the house, Mabel climbed to the high, decidedly smudgy window and peered in.

There was no one inside. There was no fire in the battered stove. The doors of a rough cupboard opposite the window stood open, disclosing the fact that the cupboard was bare. There were no bedclothes in the rough bunk that served for a bed; no dishes on the table; no clothing hanging from the hooks on the wall. Both inside and outside the house wore a strangely deserted aspect. It seemed to say: "Nobody lives here now, nobody ever did live here, nobody ever will live here."

Chapter IV

An Unusual Evening

MABEL looked in dismay at Rosa Marie.

"Where do you s'pose your mother is?" she demanded.

It was useless, however, to question Rosa Marie. That stolid young person was as uncommunicative as what Marjory called "the little stuffed Indians in the Washington Museum." The Indians to whom Marjory referred were made of wax. Rosa Marie seemed more like a little wooden Indian. The countenance of little Anne Halliday changed with every moment; but Rosa Marie's wore only one expression. Perhaps it had only one to wear.

"I say," said Mabel, gently shaking her small brown charge by the shoulders, "where does your mother usually go when she isn't home?"

A surprised grunt was the only response.

Rosa Marie, too suddenly released, sat heavily on the ground, thoughtfully scratched up the surface and filled her lap with handfuls of loose, unattractive earth.

"Goodness! What an untidy child!" cried Mabel, snatching her up and shaking her, although Rosa Marie's weight made her youthful guardian stagger. "I wanted your mother to see you clean, for once. Here, sit on this stick of wood. I s'pose we'll just have to wait and wait until somebody comes. Well, _sit_ in the sand if you want to. I'm tired of picking you up."

Rosa Marie's home was in rather an attractive spot. The big, quiet lake was smooth as glass, and every object along its picturesque bank was mirrored faithfully in the quiet depths. The western sky was faintly tinged with red. Against it the spires and tall roofs of the town stood out sharply; but at this quiet hour they seemed very far away.

Mabel, seated on the wooden box that she had placed under the window, leaned back against the house and clasped her hands about her knees, while she gazed dreamily at the picture and listened with enjoyment to the faint lap of the quiet water on the pebbled beach.

Both Mabel and Rosa Marie had had a busy day. Both had taken unusual exercise. And now all the sights and sounds were soothing, soothing.

You can guess what happened. Both little girls fell asleep. Rosa Marie, flat on her stomach, pillowed her head on her chubby arms. Mabel's head, drooping slowly forward, grew heavier and heavier until finally it touched her knees.

An hour later, the sleepy head had grown so very heavy that it pulled Mabel right off the box and tumbled her over in a confused, astonished heap on the ground.

"My goodness!" gasped Mabel, still on hands and knees. "Where am I, anyway? Is this Saturday or Sunday? Why! It's all dark. This--this isn't my room--why! why! I'm outdoors! How did I get outdoors?"

Mabel stood up, took a step forward, stumbled over Rosa Marie and went down on all-fours.

"What's that!" gasped bewildered Mabel, groping with her hands. She felt the rough black head, the plump body, the round legs, the bare feet of her sleeping charge. Memory returned.

"Why! It's Rosa Marie, and we're waiting here by the lake for her mother. It--ugh! It must be midnight!"

But it wasn't. It was just exactly twenty minutes after seven o'clock but, with the autumn sun gone early to bed, it certainly seemed very much later. The house was still deserted.

"I guess," said Mabel, feeling about in the dark for Rosa Marie's fat hand, "we'd better go home--or some place. Come, Rosa Marie, wake up. I'm going to take you home with me. Oh, _please_ wake up. There's nobody here but us. It's way in the middle of the night and there might be _any_thing in those awfully black bushes."

But Rosa Marie, deprived of her noontide nap, slumbered on. Mabel shook her.

"Do hurry," pleaded frightened Mabel. "I don't like it here."

It was anything but an easy task for Mabel to drag the sleeping child to her feet, but she did it. Rosa Marie, however, immediately dropped to earth again. During the day she had seemed stiff; but now, unfortunately, she proved most distressingly limber. She seemed, in fact, to possess more than the usual number of joints, and discouraged Mabel began to fear that each joint was reversible.

"Goodness!" breathed Mabel, when Rosa Marie's knees failed for the seventh time, "it seems wicked to shake you _very_ hard, but I've got to."

Even with vigorous and prolonged shakings it took time to get Rosa Marie firmly established on her feet, and the children had walked more than a block of the homeward way before Rosa Marie opened one blinking eye under the street lamp.

If it had been difficult to make the uphill journey in broad daylight with Rosa Marie wide awake and moderately willing, it was now a doubly difficult matter with that young person half or three-quarters asleep and most decidedly unwilling.

"I wish to goodness," grumbled Mabel, stumbling along in the dark, "that I'd borrowed a real baby and not a heathen."

The longest journey has an end. The children reached Dandelion Cottage at last. Mabel found the key, unlocked the door, tumbled Rosa Marie, clothes and all, into the middle of the spare-room bed; waited just long enough to make certain that the Indian baby slept; then, reassured by gentle, half-breed snores, Mabel, still supposing the time to be midnight, ran home, climbed into her own bed nearly an hour earlier than usual and was soon sound asleep. Her mind was too full of other matters to wonder why the front door was unlocked at so late an hour.

Mrs. Bennett, dressing to go to a party, heard her daughter come in.

"How fortunate!" said she. "Now I shan't have to go to Jean's and Marjory's and Bettie's to hunt for Mabel. She must be tired to-night--she doesn't often go to bed so early."

Chapter V

Returning Rosa Marie

EARLY the next morning, Jean, needing her thimble to sew on a vitally necessary button, ran to the supposedly empty cottage to get it. Taking the short cut through the Tuckers' back yard she found Bettie feeding Billy, the seagull, one of Bob's numerous pets.

"Billy always wakes everybody up crying for his breakfast," explained thoughtful little Bettie. "Bob's spending a week at the Ormsbees' camp, so I have to get up to feed Billy so father can sleep."

"Why don't the other boys do it?"

"Mercy! _They'd_ sleep through anything. Going to the Cottage?"

"Yes, come with me," returned Jean, "while I get my thimble. It's so big that it almost takes two to carry it."

"All right," laughed Bettie, crawling through the hole in the fence.

Jean's thimble was a standing joke. A stout and prudent godmother had bestowed a very large one on the little girl so that Jean would be in no danger of outgrowing the gift. Jean was now living in hopes of sometime growing big enough to fit the thimble.

"Why!" exclaimed Jean, after a brief search, "the key isn't under the doormat! Where do you s'pose it's gone?"

"Here it is in the door. But how in the world did it get there? I locked that door myself last night and tucked the key under the mat. I _know_ I did."

"I saw you do it," corroborated Jean.

"Perhaps Marjory's inside."

"It isn't Mabel, anyway. She's always the last one up."

"Mercy me!" cried Bettie, who had been peeking into the different rooms to see if Marjory were inside. "Come here, Jean. Just look at this!"

"This" was brown little Rosa Marie sitting up in the middle of the pink and white spare-room bed, like, as Bettie put it, a brown bee in the heart of a rose. Her small dark countenance was absolutely expressionless, so there was no way of discovering what _she_ thought about it all.

"My sakes!" exclaimed Jean, with indignation, "that lazy Mabel never took her home, after all! Why! We'll have a whole band of wild Indians coming to scalp us right after breakfast! How _could_ she have been so careless. This is the worst she's done yet."

"But it's just like Mabel," said Bettie, giving vent, for once, to her disapproval of Mabel's thoughtlessness. "She likes things ever so much at first. Then she simply forgets that they ever existed."

"Who forgets?" demanded Mabel, bouncing in at the front door.

"You," returned Jean and Bettie, with one accusing voice.

"Prove it."

"You forgot to take Rosa Marie home last night."

"I never did. I took her every inch of the way home, stayed with her all alone in the dark for pretty nearly a _year_, and then had to bring her all the way back again, walking in her sleep. So there, now!"

"But why in the world didn't you leave her with her own folks?"

"Her horrid mother wasn't there. And between 'em, I didn't get any supper and only a little sleep."

"But what are you going to do?" queried astonished Jean.

"After she drinks this quart of milk," explained Mabel, "I'm going to take her home again."

"Where did you get so much milk?" asked Bettie, suspiciously.

Mabel colored furiously. "I begged it from the milkman," she confessed. "That's why I'm up so early. I've been sitting on our kitchen doorstep for two hours, waiting for him to come."

Mabel spent all that day industriously returning Rosa Marie to a home that had locked its doors against her. No pretty, dark, French mother stood in the doorway. No tall, dark man wandered about the yard. No neighbor came from the tumbling houses across the street to explain the woman's puzzling absence.

It proved a most tiresome day. Mabel was not only mentally weary from trying to solve the mystery, but physically tired also from dragging Rosa Marie up and down the hill between Dandelion Cottage and the child's deserted home. The girls went with her once, but, having satisfied their curiosity as to Rosa Marie's abiding-place, turned their attention to pleasanter tasks. Walking with Rosa Marie was too much like traveling with a snail. One such journey was enough.

Moreover, Mabel's pride had suffered. A grinning boy, looking from plump Mabel's ruddy countenance to fat Rosa Marie's expressionless brown one, had asked wickedly:

"Is that your sister? You look enough alike to be twins."

After that, Mabel feared that other persons might mistake the small brown person for a relative of hers, or, worse yet, mistake her for an Indian.

"Goodness me!" groaned Mabel, toiling homeward from her second trip, "it was hard enough to borrow a baby, but it's enough sight worse getting rid of one afterwards. There's one thing certain; I'll _never_ borrow another."

Late in the day Mabel thought of Mrs. Malony, the egg-woman. Perhaps she would know what had become of Rosa Marie's vanished mother. Dropping Rosa Marie inside the gate, Mabel knocked at Mrs. Malony's door.

"The folks that lived in the shanty beyant?" asked Mrs. Malony. "Sure, darlint, nobody's lived there for years and years save gipsies and tramps and such like."

"But day before yesterday--no, yesterday morning--I saw a young Frenchwoman----"

"A black-eyed gal wid two long braids and wan small Injin? Sure, Oi know the wan you mane. Her man, Injin Pete, died a month ago, some two days after they come to the shack."

"But where is she now?" asked Mabel.

"Lord love ye," returned Mrs. Malony, "how wud Oi be after knowin'? She came and she wint, like the rest av thim."

"There was a man--not a gentleman and not exactly a tramp--talking to her yesterday. Perhaps you know where _he_ is. I couldn't find _anybody_."

"Depind upon it," said Mrs. Malony, easily, "she's gone wid him. She's Mrs. Somebody Else by now, and good riddance to the pair av thim."

"But," objected Mabel, drawing the branches of a small shrub aside and disclosing Rosa Marie sprawling on the ground behind it, "she left her baby."

"The Nation, she did!" gasped Mrs. Malony, for once surprised out of her serenity. "Wud ye think of thot, now!"

"I've _been_ thinking of it," returned Mabel, miserably. "And I don't know what in the world to do. You see, she left the baby with _me_."

"Take her home wid ye," advised Mrs. Malony, hastily; so hastily that it looked as if the Irishwoman feared that _she_ might be asked to mother Rosa Marie. "I'll kape an eye on the shack for ye. If that good-for-nothin' black-haired wan comes back, Oi'll be up wid the news in two shakes of a dead lamb's tail, so Oi will. In the mane toime, be a mother to thot innocent babe yourself. She needs wan if iver a choild did."

"I've been that for two whole days now," groaned Mabel.

"Thot's right, thot's right," encouraged Mrs. Malony. "Ye were just cut out for thot same. Good luck go wid ye."

Rosa Marie spent a second night in the spare room of Dandelion Cottage. She, at least, seemed utterly indifferent as to her fate.

Chapter VI

The Dark Secret

THE four Cottagers sat in solemn conclave round the dining-room table next morning. Rosa Marie, flat on her stomach on the floor, lapped milk like a cat and licked the bowl afterwards; but now no one paid the slightest attention.

"I think," said Jean, removing her elbows from the table, "that we'd better tell our mothers and Aunty Jane all about it at once. They'll know what to do."

"So do I," said Marjory.

"So do I," echoed Bettie.

"_I_ don't," protested Mabel, whose hitherto serene countenance now showed signs of great anxiety. "If you ever tell _anybody_, I'll--I'll never speak to you again. This joke--if it _is_ a joke--is on _me_. I got into this scrape and it's _my_ scrape."

"But," objected Jean, "we always do tell our mothers everything. That's why they trust us to play all by ourselves in Dandelion Cottage."

"Give me just a few days," pleaded Mabel. "Perhaps that woman got kept away by some accident. I'm sure Rosa Marie's mother has mother feelings inside of her, _some_ place--I saw 'em in her face when I was leading Rosa Marie away. I _know_ she'll come back. Until she does, I'll take care of that poor deserted child myself."

"It's a blessing she never cries, anyway," observed Bettie. "If she were a howling child I don't know _what_ we'd do. As it is, she's not _much_ more trouble than a Teddy bear."

If Mrs. Mapes hadn't had a missionary box in her cellar to pack for Reservation Indians of assorted sizes and shapes with the cast-off garments of all Lakeville; if Mrs. Bennett had not been exceedingly busy with a seamstress getting ready to go out of town for an important visit; if Aunty Jane had not been even busier trying to make green tomato pickles out of ripe tomatoes; if Mrs. Tucker had not been too anxious about the throats of the youngest three Tuckers to give heed to the doings of the larger members of her family, these four good women would surely have discovered that something unusual was taking place under the Cottage roof. As it was, not one of the mothers, not even sharp Aunty Jane, discovered that the Cottagers were borrowing an amazing amount of milk from their respective refrigerators.

The novelty worn off, Rosa Marie became a heavy burden to at least three of the Cottagers' tender consciences. Mabel's conscience may have troubled her, but not enough to be noticed by a pair of moderately careless parents. Mabel, however, grew more and more attached to Rosa Marie; the others did not. To tell the truth, the borrowed infant was not an attractive child. Many small Indians are decidedly pretty, but Rosa Marie was not. Her small eyes were too close together, her upper lip was much too long for the rest of her countenance and her large mouth turned sharply down at the corners. But loyal Mabel was blind to these defects. She saw only the babyish roundness of Rosa Marie's body, the cunning dimples in her elbows and the affectionate gleam that sometimes showed in the small black eyes. But then, it was always Mabel who found beauty in the stray dogs and cats that no one else would have on the premises. During these trying days the Cottagers _almost_ quarreled.

"That child is all cheeks," complained Marjory, petulantly. "They positively hang down. Do you suppose we're giving her too much milk? She's disgustingly fat, and she hasn't any figure."

"She has altogether too much figure," declared Jean, almost crossly. "I fastened this little petticoat around what I _thought_ was her waist and it slid right off. So now I've got to make buttonholes. Such a nuisance!"

"Pity you can't use tacks and a hammer," giggled Marjory.

The clothing of Rosa Marie had presented another distressing problem. She owned absolutely nothing in the way of a wardrobe. The single, unattractive garment she had worn on her arrival had not survived the girls' attempts to wash it. They had left it boiling on the stove, the water had cooked off and the faded gingham had cooked also.

To make up for this accident, all four of the Cottagers had contributed all they could find of their own cast-off garments; but these of course were much too large without considerable making over.

"If," said Jean, reproachfully, as she took a large tuck in the grown-up stocking that she was trying to re-model for Rosa Marie, "you'd only let me tell my mother, she'd give us every blessed thing we need. One live little Indian in the hand ought to be worth more to her than a whole dozen invisible ones on a way-off Reservation; and you know she's always doing things for _them_."

"Jeanie Mapes!" threatened Mabel, "if you tell her, that's the very last breath I'll ever speak to you."

"I'll be good," sighed Jean, "but I just hate _not_ telling her. And this horrid stocking is _still_ too long."

"Button it about her neck," giggled Marjory, who flatly declined to do any sewing for Rosa Marie. "That'll take up the slack and save making her a shirt."

"Don't bother about stockings," said Bettie, fishing a round lump from her blouse. "Here's a pair of old ones that I found in the rag bag. One's black and the other's tan; but they're exactly the right size and that's _something_."

"What's the use," demurred Marjory. "She won't wear them."

"If Rosa Marie were about eight shades slimmer," said Jean, "I could easily get some of Anne Halliday's dear little dresses--her mother gave my mother a lot day before yesterday for that Reservation box; but goodness! You'd have to sew two of them together sideways to get them around _that_ child."

"She _is_ awfully thick," admitted Mabel.

Yet, after all, dressing Rosa Marie was not exactly a hardship. Indeed, it is probable that the difficulties that stood in the way made the task only so much the more interesting; then, of course, dressing a real child was much more exciting than making garments for a mere doll.

Whenever the Cottagers spoke of Rosa Marie outside the Cottage they referred to her as the D. S. D. S. stood for "Dark Secret." This seemed singularly appropriate, for Rosa Marie was certainly dark and quite as certainly a most tremendous secret--a far larger and darker secret than the troubled girls cared to keep, but there seemed to be no immediate way out of it.

Fortunately, the stolid little "D. S." was amiable to an astonishing degree. She never cried. Also, she "stayed put." If Mabel stood her in the corner she stayed there. If she were tucked into bed, there she remained until some one dragged her out. She spent her days rolling contentedly about the Cottage floor, her nights in deep, calm slumber. Never was there a youngster with fewer wants. Teaching Rosa Marie to talk furnished the Cottagers with great amusement. The round brown damsel very evidently preferred grunts to words; but she was always willing to grunt obligingly when Mabel or the others insisted.

"Say, 'This little pig went to market,'" Mabel would prompt.

"Eigh, ugh, ugh, ee, ee, _ee_, hee!" Rosa Marie would grunt.

Then, when everybody else laughed her very hardest, Rosa Marie's grim little mouth would relax to show for an instant the row of white teeth that Mabel scrubbed industriously many times a day. This rare smile made the borrowed baby almost attractive. But not to Marjory. From the first, Marjory regarded her with strong disapproval.

Fortunately for Mabel's secret, little Anne Halliday, the Marcotte twins and the two Tucker babies were too small to tell tales out of school, so in spite of sundry narrow escapes, Rosa Marie remained as dark a secret as one's heart could desire.

Chapter VII

Discovery

SCHOOL began the first day of October--fortunately, repairs to the building had delayed the opening. And there was Rosa Marie still on the Cottagers' hands, still a dark and undivulged secret. In the meantime, Mabel had paid many a visit to Mrs. Malony, who for reasons of her own had kept silence about the borrowed baby. Probably she felt that Mrs. Bennett would blame her for advising Mabel to harbor the deserted child.

"No, darlint," Mrs. Malony would say, encouragingly. "Oi ain't exactly _seen_ her, but she'll be back prisintly, she'll be back prisintly--Oh, most anny toime, now. Just do be waitin' patient and you'll see me come walkin' in most anny foine day wid yon blackhaired lass at me heels an' full to the eyes of her wid gratichude. Anny day at all, Miss Mabel."

Buoyed by this hope, Mabel had waited from day to day, hoping for speedy deliverance. And now, school!

"We'll just have to get excused for part of each day," said Marjory, always good at suggesting remedies. "Last year, all my recitations came in the morning; perhaps they will again. Then, if one of you others could do all your reciting during the afternoon we could manage it."

The year previously Mabel had been obliged to spend many a half-hour after school, making up neglected lessons. Now, however, she studied furiously. If she failed frequently it was only because she couldn't help making absurd blunders; it was never for lack of study. In this one way, at least, Rosa Marie proved beneficial.

The united efforts of all four made it possible for Rosa Marie to possess a more or less unwilling guardian for all but one hour during the forenoon. It grieves one to confess it, but Rosa Marie spent that solitary hour securely strapped to the leg of the dining-room table; but, stolid as ever, she did not mind that.

It was there that Aunty Jane discovered her, the second week in October. Aunty Jane had missed her best saucepan. Rightly suspecting that Marjory had carried it off to make fudge in, she hurried to the Cottage, discovered the key under the door-mat, opened the door and walked in.

Rosa Marie was grunting. "Eigh, ugh, ugh, ee, ee, _ee_, hee!" to her own bare brown toes.

"For mercy's sake! What's that?" gasped Aunty Jane, with a terrified start. "There's some sort of an animal in this house."

Arming herself with the broken umbrella that stood in the mended umbrella jar in the front hall, Aunty Jane peered cautiously into the dining-room. The "animal" turned its head to blink with mild, expressionless curiosity at Aunty Jane.

"My soul!" ejaculated that good lady, "what are you, anyway?"

The pair blinked at each other for several moments.

"Are--are you a _baby_?" demanded Aunty Jane.

No response from Rosa Marie.

"What," asked Aunty Jane, cautiously drawing closer, "is your name?"

Still no response.

"Who tied you to that table?"

Silence on Rosa Marie's part.

"I'm going straight after Mrs. Mapes," declared Aunty Jane, retreating backwards in order to keep a watchful eye on the queer object under the table. "I might have known that those enterprising youngsters would be up to _something_, if I gave my whole mind to pickles."

Excited Aunty Jane collected not only Mrs. Mapes, but Mrs. Tucker and Mrs. Bennett, before she returned to the Cottage. And then, the three mothers and Aunty Jane sat on the floor beside Rosa Marie and asked questions; useless questions, because Rosa Marie licked the table-leg bashfully but yielded no other reply.

This lasted for nearly half an hour. And then, school being out and the four Cottagers discovering their front door wide open, Jean, Bettie, Marjory and Mabel, all sorts of emotions tugging at their hearts, rushed breathlessly in. On beholding their mothers and Aunty Jane, they, too, turned suddenly bashful and leaned, speechless, against the Cottage wall.

"Whose child is that?" demanded all four of the grown-ups, in concert.

"Mine," replied Mabel.

"Mabel's," responded the other three, with disheartening promptness.

"What!" gasped the parents and Aunty Jane.

"I borrowed her," explained Mabel, "so she's _mostly_ mine."

"She's spending the day here, I suppose," said Mrs. Mapes.

"Ye-es," faltered Mabel. Marjory giggled, and Mabel turned crimson.

"I hope," said Mrs. Bennett, severely, "that you're not thinking of keeping her all night."

"I--I--we--" faltered Mabel, "we--we sort of did."

"Well!" exclaimed Mrs. Bennett, not knowing how very late she was, "I guess we've come just in time. Mabel, put that child's things on and take her home at once."

"I can't," replied Mabel.

"Why not?"

"She hasn't any home."

"No home!"

"No. It's--it's run away."

"What! That baby?"

"No," stammered Mabel, "that baby's home. Not--not the house. Just her mother. She--she--Oh, she'll be back, _some_ day."

"Mabel Bennett!" demanded Mrs. Bennett, suspecting something of the truth, "how long have you had that child here?"

"Not--Oh, not so _very_ long," evaded Mabel.

"Mabel," demanded her mother, "tell me, instantly, exactly how long?"

"About--yes, just about five weeks."

"Five weeks!" gasped Mrs. Bennett.

"Five _weeks_!" shrieked Mrs. Tucker.

"Five weeks!" groaned Mrs. Mapes.

"Fi--ve weeks!" cried Aunty Jane.

"It'll be five to-morrow," said Bettie.

"No, the day after," corrected Marjory.

For the next few moments the mothers and Aunty Jane were too astounded for further speech. The girls, too, had nothing to say. All four of the Cottagers kept their eyes on the floor, for they knew precisely what their elders were thinking.

"Jean," began Mrs. Mapes, reproachfully.

"I--I _wanted_ to tell," stammered Jean.

"I wouldn't let her," defended Mabel, looking up. "They _all_ wanted to tell, but I wouldn't let them. Truly, they did, Mrs. Mapes."

"But five whole weeks!" murmured Mrs. Bennett. "I wonder that you were able to keep the secret so long. Why! I've been over here half a dozen times at least to ask for my scissors and other things that Mabel has carried off."

"So have I," said Mrs. Mapes.

"So have I," echoed Mrs. Tucker.

"And so have I," added Aunty Jane, "and I've never heard a sound from that remarkable child."

"You see," confessed Bettie, flushing guiltily, "we kept the door locked. Whenever we saw anybody coming we whisked Rosa Marie into the spare-room closet."

"If Rosa Marie had been an ordinary child," explained Jean, "she would probably have howled; but you see, every blessed thing about us was so new and strange to her that she just thought that everything we did was all right. And anyhow, she doesn't have the same sort of feelings that Anne Halliday does. Anne would have cried."

"You naughty, naughty children," scolded Mrs. Mapes, "to keep a secret like that for five whole weeks."

"But, Mother," protested Jean, gently, "we never supposed it was going to be a five-weeks-long secret. We didn't _want_ it to be. We've been expecting her horrid mother to turn up every single minute since Rosa Marie came."

"It was all my fault," declared loyal Mabel. "_They'd_ have told, the very first minute, if it hadn't been for me. Blame me for everything."

"What," asked Mrs. Bennett, "do you intend to do with that--that atrocious child?"

"She _isn't_ atrocious!" blazed Mabel, with sudden fire. "She's a perfect darling, when you get used to her, and I _love_ her. She isn't so very pretty, I know, but she's just dear. She's good, and that--and that's--Why! You've said, yourself, that it was better to be good than beautiful."

"But what do you intend to do with her?" persisted Mrs. Bennett.

"Keep her," said Mabel, firmly. "She doesn't eat anything much but milk and sample packages."

"You can't. I won't have her in my house. Why! Her parents are probably dreadful people."

"That's why she ought to have me for a mother and you for a grandmother," pleaded Mabel, earnestly. "But if you don't like her, I'll keep her here."

"But you can't, Mabel. It's so cold that there ought to be a fire here this minute, and you can't possibly leave a child alone with a fire."

"Couldn't _you_ take her, Mrs. Mapes?" pleaded Mabel.

"No, I'm afraid I couldn't. If she were the least bit lovable----"

"Oh, she _is_----"

"Not to me," returned Mrs. Mapes, firmly.

"Wouldn't _you_ take her, Mrs. Tucker?"

"What! With all the family I have now? I couldn't think of such a thing."

"Then you," begged Mabel, turning to Aunty Jane. "There's only you and Marjory in that great big house. Oh, _do_ take her."

"Mercy! I'd just as soon undertake to board a live bear! Why! Nobody wants a child of _that_ sort around. She's as homely----"

"I'm extremely glad," said Mabel, with much dignity and a great deal of emphasis, "that _my_ child doesn't understand grown-up English."

"Perhaps," said Mrs. Mapes, smiling with sympathetic understanding, "we four older people had better talk this matter over by ourselves. Suppose you walk home with me.

"_I_ think," said Aunty Jane, forgetting all about the saucepan that had led her to the Cottage, "that the orphan asylum is the place for that unspeakable child."

"Yes," agreed Mrs. Bennett, "she'll certainly have to go to the asylum."

Chapter VIII

The Fugitive Soldier

THE Cottage door closed behind the three excited parents and Aunty Jane. The four Cottagers, all decidedly pale and subdued, looked at one another in silence. It is one thing to confess a fault; it is quite another to be ignominiously found out. Jean and Bettie and Marjory were feeling this very keenly; but Mabel was far more troubled at the prospect of losing Rosa Marie.

"The orphan asylum!" breathed Bettie, at length.

"It's wicked," blazed Mabel, "to make an orphan of a person that isn't."

"I've heard," said Marjory, reflectively, "that orphans have to eat fried liver."

"Horrors!" gasped Mabel.

"And codfish."

"Oh _horrors_!" moaned Mabel, who detested both liver and codfish.

"And prunes," pursued teasing Marjory, wickedly remembering Mabel's dislike for that wholesome but insipid fruit. The prunes proved entirely too much for Mabel.

"Pup--pup--prunes!" she sobbed. "And you stand there and don't do a thing to save her! I guess if I were Eliza escaping with my baby on cakes of ice----"

"Rosa Marie's about the right color," giggled Marjory, who could not resist so fine an opportunity to tease excitable Mabel.

"You'd all be glad enough to help, but when it's just me----"

"Oh, we'll help," soothed Jean, slipping an arm about Mabel. "You know we always do stand by you."

"Yes, we'll all help," promised Bettie, "if you'll just tell us what to do. Only _please_ don't get us into any more trouble with our mothers."

"There's the cellar," suggested Mabel, doubtfully, yet with glimmerings of hope. "I read a story once about a lady who sat on a cellar door, knitting stockings."

"Why in the world," demanded Marjory, "did she sit on the door?"

"Some soldiers were hunting for an escaped prisoner and she had him hidden there."

"Was the cellar all horrid with old papers and rats and mice and spiders and crawly things with legs?" asked Bettie, with interest.

"I hope not," shuddered Mabel, "but a soldier wouldn't mind. Dear me, I wish we'd cleaned that cellar when we first came into the Cottage. If we had, it'd be just the place to hide Rosa Marie in."

"Perhaps it isn't too late, now," said Marjory, stooping to loosen the ring in the kitchen floor. "Let's look down there, anyway."

"Let's," agreed Bettie. "It'll be something to do, at least."

Everybody helped with the door. When it was open and propped against the kitchen stove, the four girls crouched down to peer into the depths below. Even Rosa Marie, who had been released from the table-leg, crept to the edge to look.

They were not very deep depths. The place was filled with rubbish, mostly old papers and broken pasteboard boxes; but it was perfectly dry, and clean except for a thick layer of dust.

"Let's clean it out," said Mabel, recklessly grasping an armful of dusty papers and dragging them forth.

"Phew!" exclaimed Jean, tumbling back from the hole. "Er--er--er hash!"

"Oh, ki--_hash_! Hoo!" blubbered Bettie, likewise tumbling backwards.

"Who-is-she, who-is-she," sneezed Marjory.

"Kerchoo, kerchoo, kerchoo!" sneezed Rosa Marie, her head bobbing with each sneeze. "Kerchoo, kerchoo!"

"It's pepper," explained Mabel, when she had finished _her_ sneeze. "I spilled a lot of it the day of Mr. Black's dinner party. I didn't know what else to do with it, so I swept it down that biggest crack."

"Goodness! What a housekeeper!" rebuked Jean, wiping her eyes.

"It's good for moths," consoled Bettie. "At any rate, Rosa Marie won't get moth-eaten."

"Perhaps," suggested Mabel, hopefully, "it's driven away all the rats and crawly things."

Working more cautiously, the girls drew forth the yellowed papers and pasteboard left by some former untidy occupant of the Cottage. They burned most of the rubbish in the kitchen stove, Jean standing guard lest burning pieces should escape to set fire to the Cottage. The work of clearing the cellar, indeed, was precisely what the girls needed, after the humiliating events of the day. All four were growing more cheerful; but they worked as swiftly as they dared, for they felt certain that the cellar, as a place of concealment for Rosa Marie, would be speedily needed.

The cellar proved to be a square hole about three feet deep. When Mabel, who for once was doing the lion's share of the work, had swept the boarded floor and sides perfectly clean, it was really a very tidy, inviting little shelter; as neat a shelter as fugitive soldier could desire.

"Now," said Mabel, "we'll put a piece of carpet and an old quilt in the bottom, tack clean papers around the sides----"

"Papers rattle," offered Marjory, sagely.

"Then we'll use cloth," declared Mabel, snatching an apron from the hook behind the door. "We'll begin right away to practise with Rosa Marie, so she'll get used to it. Then we must rehearse our parts, too."

The retreat ready, Rosa Marie went without a murmur into the underground babytender--Marjory gave it that name. Rosa Marie, at least, would do her part successfully. But it was different above ground.

"Who," demanded Jean, "is to sit on the door and knit? _I_ couldn't--I'd fly to pieces."

"It's my child," said Mabel, "_I'm_ going to."

"But," objected Marjory, "you _can't_ knit. You don't know how."

"I can crochet," triumphed Mabel, "and I guess that's every bit as good."

"Where," asked Bettie, "is your crochet hook?"

But that, of course, was a question that Mabel could not answer, because Mabel never did know where any of her belongings were. Thereupon, Jean, Marjory and Mabel began a frantic search for the missing article. Mabel had used it the week previously; but could remember nothing more about it.

"Goodness!" groaned Mabel, groveling under the spare-room bed in hopes that the hook might be there. "If I'd dreamed that my child's life was going to depend on that hook, I'd have kept it locked up in father's fire-proof safe."

"That's what you get," said Marjory, with one eye glued to the top of a very tall vase, "for being so careless. It isn't in here, anyway."

"Here's one," announced Bettie, scrambling in hastily and locking the door behind her. "I skipped home for it. But there's no time to lose. All our mothers and Aunty Jane are going out of Mrs. Mapes's gate with their best hats and gloves on. There's something doing!"

In another moment, the cellar door was closed, a rocking chair was placed upon it, and Mabel, with ball of yarn and crochet hook in hand, was nervously twitching in the chair. Her fingers were stiff with dust--there had been no time to wash them--so the loop that she tied in the end of the white yarn was most decidedly black; but Mabel was thankful to achieve a loop of any color, with her whole body quivering with excitement and suspense.

"Goodness!" she quavered. "That soldier lady was a wonder! Think of her looking calm outside with her heart going like a Dover egg-beater. Do--do _I_ look calm?"

"Here," said Bettie, extending a basin of warm water. "Soak your hands in this. Warm water is said to be soothing."

"Also cleansing," giggled Marjory.

"Hurry!" gasped quick-eared Jean, snatching the basin and hurling a towel in Mabel's direction. "I heard our gate click. There's somebody coming."

"Don't let 'em in," breathed Mabel, defiantly.

"I'm afraid," said Jean, "we'll have to."

"Anyway," soothed Bettie, "we'll peek first--there's the door-bell!"

Chapter IX

A Surprise

JEAN and Bettie flew to one window, Marjory to the other. Mabel wanted to fly, too, but she remained faithfully at her post, feeling quite cheered by her own heroism.

"It's dark gray trousers with a crease in 'em; not skirts," announced Marjory, peering under the edge of the shade.

"Probably a man from the asylum," shuddered Bettie. "Let's keep very still. He may think that this is the wrong house and go somewhere else."

"But," objected Jean, "he'll only come back again."

"Yes," sighed Bettie. "I s'pose we will have to open the door. You do it, Marjory."

"I don't want to," returned Marjory, unexpectedly shrinking. "It seems too much like giving Rosa Marie into the hands of the enemy. After all, we're going to miss her dreadfully and Mabel'll be just about broken-hearted. She _does_ get so attached to things--Oh! He's ringing again."

"We'll have to unlock the door," sighed Jean, placing her hand on the key, "but dearie me, I feel just as Marjory does about it. Knit fast, Mabel."

The key turned in the lock, but the girls did not need to open the door; the visitor did that. Then there were rapturous cries of "Mr. Black! Mr. Black!"

Mabel wanted to greet Mr. Black, too, for there was nobody in the world that was kinder to little girls than the stout gentleman who had just opened their door; but she remembered that the soldier lady (in spite of the Dover egg-beater heart) had remained seated, placidly knitting; so Mabel likewise sat still and plied her crochet hook.

"Hi, hi!" exclaimed Mr. Black. "What are you all locked in for? And here I had to ring four times when I came with a present--apples right off the top of my own barrel. Began to be afraid I'd have to eat them all myself, you were so long letting me in."

"If we'd guessed that it was you and apples," said Marjory, "we'd have met you at the gate."

"Where's the other girl?" asked Mr. Black's big, cheery voice. "Doesn't she like apples, too?"

"In the kitchen," chorused Jean, Marjory and Bettie.

"Bless my soul!" said Mr. Black, striding kitchenward, "here she is, knitting like any old lady. Aren't you coming in here to eat apples with the rest of us?"

"Can't," mumbled Mabel.

"What's the matter, grandma?" teased Mr. Black. "Rheumatism troubling you to-day?"

"Nope," returned Mabel.

"Lost all your teeth?"

"Nope."

"Are you knitting me a pair of socks or is it mittens?"

"Just a chain," replied Mabel, suddenly beaming. "But, Mr. Black, does it really look as if I were knitting?"

"Precisely," smiled Mr. Black. "So much so that you remind me of the story of the woman who sat on the trap door and knitted--By Jove! That _is_ a trap door! Here's the ring sticking up."

The girls shot a quick glance at the floor. Then they gazed guiltily at one another. Sure enough! The tell-tale ring stood upright, ready for use. No one had thought to conceal it.

"Is there a wounded soldier down there?" asked Mr. Black, jokingly.

"No!" shouted all four with suspicious haste.

The deep silence that followed was suddenly punctuated by a muffled sneeze from Rosa Marie. Undoubtedly, some of the pepper dislodged from the crack in the floor had sifted down to the prisoner.

The faces of the four girls flushed guiltily. Mr. Black looked wonderingly at the little group. It was plain that something was wrong. Jean, who had always met her friend's glance with level, truthful eyes, was now looking most sheepishly at her own toes. Bettie, hitherto always ready to tell the whole truth, was now fiddling evasively with the corner of her apron. Marjory's fair skin was crimson; her usually frank blue eyes were intent on something under the kitchen table.

"Is there some sort of an animal in that cellar?" demanded Mr. Black.

Rosa Marie chose this moment to give another large sneeze.

"Is it something you're afraid of?" demanded Mr. Black.

"'Fraid of losing," mumbled Mabel, shamefacedly. Poor Mabel realized only too well that she, with her knitting and her too-perfect playing of the part, had given the secret away; and she felt all the bitterness of failure.

Seizing the back of Mabel's chair, Mr. Black drew it swiftly off the trap door. In another moment, he had the door open.

Rosa Marie, blinking at the sudden light, bobbed upward. Mr. Black involuntarily started back from the opening.

"What under heavens is that!" he gasped. "A monkey?"

And, indeed, the error was a perfectly natural one, for all he had been able to see was a tousled head of hair, beneath which gleamed small black eyes.

"I should say not!" blazed Mabel. "It's my little girl--my Rosa Marie."

"Does she bite? Is she dangerous? Is that why you treat her like potatoes?"

"Most certainly not," returned Mabel, with dignity. "She's an Indian."

"Bless me!" said Mr. Black, leaning cautiously forward. "Let's have a look at her."

Now that the secret was out, everybody eagerly clutched some portion of Rosa Marie's clothing. She was drawn, with some difficulty and sundry tearings of cloth, from the "Soldier's Retreat." Mabel cuddled the blinking small person in her lap.

"Did you pick her up in the woods?" asked Mr. Black, "or did you simply kidnap her? Or, dreadful thought! Did you order her by number from some catalogue? And did they charge you full price?"

Then Mabel, helped by the other three, told all that they knew of the history of Rosa Marie; and of Mabel's affection for the queer brown baby. They told him everything. Mabel, with visions of the orphan asylum's doors yawning to engulf precious Rosa Marie, considered it a very sad story. She felt grieved and indignant because Mr. Black, instead of sympathizing, laughed until his sides shook. Even the pathetic diet of liver, codfish and prunes seemed to amuse him.

"What would you have said if your mothers had asked you where this child was?" inquired Mr. Black presently. "I mean, when you had her down cellar?"

Jean looked at Bettie, Bettie looked at Marjory, Marjory looked at Mabel.

"We never thought of that," confessed Bettie.

"Oh," groaned Mabel, holding Rosa Marie closer, "our plan isn't any good after all. We'd have to tell the truth if they asked; we always do."

"Yes," said Jean, "they'd get it out of us at once."

"Even," teased Marjory, shrewdly, "if Mabel, sitting upon that trap door, were not every bit as good as a printed sign."

"Never mind," soothed Jean, slipping an arm about Mabel's shoulders, "we'd rather be honest than smart, since we can't be both."

Mabel needed soothing. She sat still and made no sound; but large tears were rolling down her cheeks and splashing on Rosa Marie's black head. Mr. Black regarded them thoughtfully. He noticed too that Mabel's moderately white hand was closed tightly over Rosa Marie's brown fingers. It reminded him, some way, of his own youthful agony over parting with a puppy that he had not been allowed to keep--he had always regretted that puppy.

Suddenly the front door, propelled by some unseen force, opened from without to admit the three mothers and Aunty Jane, followed closely by Mr. Tucker, Dr. Bennett and two young women in nurses' uniform. They crowded into the little parlor and filled it to overflowing. None of the Cottagers said a word; but Mabel, tears still rolling down her cheeks, silently clasped both arms tightly about Rosa Marie's body. It began to look as if Rosa Marie would have to be taken by force.

"It's all arranged," announced Mrs. Bennett, breathlessly. "The asylum is willing to take her and she is to go at once with these young ladies. Come, Mabel, don't be foolish. Take your arms away. You're behaving very badly--There, there, I'll buy you something."

"You're just a little too late," said Mr. Black, keeping watchful eyes on Mabel's speaking countenance. "I've decided to take the responsibility of Rosa Marie into my own hands."

Chapter X

Breaking the News

WHEN Mr. Black went home that afternoon to explain the matter to his good sister, Mrs. Crane, he took with him not only Rosa Marie, but Jean, Marjory, Bettie and Mabel, whose parents had given them permission to escort the brown baby to her new home.

"You see," said he, while waiting for Rosa Marie to be made somewhat more attractive, "I want you to tell the story to Mrs. Crane, precisely as you told it to me. But don't mention _me_ until you get to the very end."

With her hair brushed and braided and her fat little body stuffed into a pink gingham apron that the Cottagers had laboriously cut down from a wrapper of Mrs. Halliday's, Rosa Marie looked her best, in spite of the fact that she wore no shoes and stockings. She trotted contentedly at Mabel's side; but Bettie, who was supposed to be walking with Mr. Black, pranced delightedly about him in circles, to show her gratitude. Jean and Marjory followed more sedately but with beaming countenances.

Now that Mrs. Crane was no longer poor, she was always dressed very neatly in black silk. Except for that she was precisely the same jolly, good-natured woman that she had been when she lived alone in the little house just across the street from Dandelion Cottage. Now, however, she lived with her brother, Mr. Black, in his big, imposing, but rather gloomy house. She had no husband, he had no wife and neither had any children. Perhaps that is why they were both so fond of the Dandelion Cottagers.

Mrs. Crane was planting bulbs in the garden when Mr. Black ushered his procession in at the gate.

"Bless my soul!" said she, "here you are just in time to help. I always said that if ever I got a chance to plant all the tulip bulbs I wanted, I'd die of pure happiness; but I guess I stand _more_ chance of dying of a broken back. My land! I've planted two thousand three hundred and forty-eight of the best-looking bulbs I ever laid eyes on, and there ain't a hole in those boxes yet. They're all named, too. Here's Rachel Ruish, Rose Grisdelin, Rosy Mundi, Yellow Prince, the Duke of York--think of having _him_ in your front yard--and Lady Grandison, two inches apart, clear to the gate. But land! I suppose a body's tongue'd go lame counting _diamonds_."

"Why don't you let Martin plant them?" asked Mr. Black, with a twinkle in his eye. It was plain that he enjoyed his talkative elderly sister.

"And have them all bloom in China?" retorted Mrs. Crane. "Now you know, Peter, that Martin couldn't get a bulb right end up if there were printed directions on the skin of every bulb. But Jean there, and Bettie----"

"We'll do it," cried the girls. "Just tell us how."

"Two inches apart, pointed end up, all the way along those little trenches," directed Mrs. Crane, seating herself in the wheelbarrow. "No, not _you_, Mabel. You and Martin--Well, I won't _say_ it. Why! What's the matter with your face? Looks to me as if you'd dusted the coal bin with yourself and then cried about it. What's the trouble?"

Thereupon Mabel introduced Rosa Marie, who had been shyly hiding behind a rosebush, told her story and graphically described the horrors of the orphan asylum.

"While I don't believe that any orphan asylum is as black as you've painted that one," said Mrs. Crane, "it does seem a pity to shut a little outdoor animal like that up in a cage when she ain't used to it. Now, Peter, you listen to me. Why couldn't _we_ keep Rosa Marie here for a time. Like enough, her mother'll be back after her most any day. In the meantime, she'd be more company than a cat and easier to wash than a poodle."

"Well now, I don't know," returned Mr. Black, winking at Mabel. "A child is a great deal of trouble."

"Shame on you, Peter Black. It's only yesterday that you bought a wretched old horse to keep his owner from ill-treating him; and here you are refusing----"

"Oh, not exactly refusing----"

"Begrudging, anyway, to rescue that innocent lamb----"

"She means black sheep," whispered Marjory, into Jean's convenient ear.

"From that institution. Peter Black! I'm just going to keep that child, anyway."

At this, all five laughed merrily. Rosa Marie, cheered by the sound, reached gravely into a paper bag, gravely handed each person a tulip bulb and appropriated one herself. She took a generous bite out of hers.

"We'll plant 'em in a ring around that snowball bush," said Mrs. Crane, rescuing the bitten bulb, bite and all. "That shall be Rosa Marie's own flower bed."

"There's a nursery on the second floor," said Mr. Black. "You girls must help us fix it up. And, Mabel, perhaps _you_ would like to spend this money for some toys that would just exactly suit Rosa Marie."

Mabel beamed gratefully as she accepted the money and the responsibility. Never before had any one singled her out to perform a task that required discretion. It was always Jean, or Bettie, or sometimes even Marjory that was chosen. Never before had greatness been thrust upon Mabel. She lavished grateful, affectionate glances on Mr. Black and inwardly determined to save part of the cash with which to buy him a Christmas present, not realizing that that would be a misappropriation of funds.

Mabel, however, felt a pang of jealousy when Rosa Marie, digging contentedly in the sand at Mrs. Crane's feet, allowed her former guardian to depart absolutely unnoticed.

"I _did_ think," confided Mabel to Bettie, who walked beside her, "that she'd at least _look_ as if she cared."

That night the mothers made peace with their daughters, and Aunty Jane extended a flag of truce to Marjory.

"It was all for your own good," explained Mrs. Bennett, her arm about Mabel, who was missing the pleasant task of putting Rosa Marie to bed. "I couldn't let you grow up with a little Indian continually at your heels. You'd have grown tired of her, too. And by keeping silence so long, you did a great deal of harm. If we'd known about the matter at once, we might have been able to find her mother. Now it's too late."

"I never thought of that," said Mabel, contritely. "I'll tell right away, next time."

"Mabel! There mustn't _be_ a next time. Promise me this instant that you'll never borrow another baby unless you know that its mother really wants to keep it. Promise."

"All right, I promise," said Mabel, cheerfully.

"But I _can't_ think," remarked Mrs. Bennett, "what possessed Mr. Black to be so foolish as to take such a child into his own home."

There were other persons that wondered, too, why Mr. Black should burden his household with the care of what Martin, his man, called an uncivilized savage; but the truth of the matter was just this. The large silent tears rolling down Mabel's forlorn countenance had suddenly proved too much for the tender heart of Mr. Black. In some ways, perhaps, impulsive Mr. Black was not a wise man; but, where children were concerned, there was no doubt of his being an exceedingly tender person.

Chapter XI

The Alarm

NOW that the burden of caring for Rosa Marie was shifted to older and more competent shoulders, the Cottagers' thoughts returned to their school-work. It was time. Never had lessons been so neglected. Never before had four moderately intelligent little girls seemed so stupid. But of course with their minds filled with Rosa Marie, it had been impossible to keep the rivers of South America from lightmindedly running over into Asia, or the products of British Columbia from being exported from Calcutta.

These fortunate girls attended a beautiful school. That is, the building was beautiful. It stood right in the middle of a great big grassy block, entirely surrounded, as Bettie put it, by street, which of course added greatly to its dignity. It was built of "raindrop" sandstone, a most interesting building material because no two blocks were alike and also because each stone looked as if it had just been sprinkled with big, spattering drops of rain. It was hard when looking at it to believe that it wasn't raining, and certain naughty youngsters delighted in fooling new teachers by pointing out the deceiving drops that flecked the balustrade. Perhaps even the grass was fooled by this semblance to showers for, in summer time, it grew so thriftily that no one had to be warned to "Keep off," so a great many little people frolicked in the schoolyard even during vacation.

Of course the Dandelion Cottagers were not in the same classes in school. Jean, being the oldest, the most sedate and the most studious, was almost through the eighth grade. Marjory, being naturally very bright and also moderately industrious, was in the seventh. Mabel and Bettie were not exactly anywhere. You see, Bettie had had to stay out so often to keep the next to the youngest Tucker baby from falling downstairs, that naturally she had dropped behind all the classes that she had ever started with; and Mabel--of course Mabel _meant_ well, but when she studied at all it was usually the lesson for some other day; for this blundering maiden never _could_ remember which was the right page. But one day she happened by some lucky accident to stumble upon the right one, and on that solitary occasion she recited so very brilliantly that Miss Bonner and all the pupils dropped their books to listen in astonishment, and Mabel was marked one hundred.

But in spite of this high mark in good black ink (if one stood less than seventy-five red ink was employed) the thing did not happen again that fall because Mabel was too busy bringing up Rosa Marie to study even the wrong lesson. However, she was exceedingly fond of pretty Miss Bonner and, having learned the exact date of that young woman's birthday, hoped to appease her by a gift to be paid for by contributions from all the pupils in Miss Bonner's room. Mabel herself received and cared for the slowly accumulating funds, and the little brown purse was becoming almost as weighty a responsibility as Rosa Marie had been. Sometimes it rested in Mabel's untrustworthy pocket, sometimes in her rather untidy desk, sometimes under her pillow in her own room at home. One day Mrs. Bennett found it there.

"Why, Mabel!" she exclaimed. "Where did all this money come from? I know _you_ don't possess any."

"It's the M. B. B. P. F.," responded Mabel, who was brushing her hair with evident enjoyment and two very handsome military brushes. "I guess I'd better put it in my pocket."

"The what?" asked puzzled Mrs. Bennett.

"The Miss Bonner Birthday Present Fund. I'm the Cus--Cus--Custodium."

"The what kind of cuss?" asked Dr. Bennett, who had just poked his head in at the door to ask if, by any chance, Mabel had seen anything of his hair brushes.

"The Custodium," replied Mabel, with dignity.

"I think she means 'Custodian.'" explained Mrs. Bennett, rescuing the brushes.

"Well," retorted Mabel, "the toad part was all right if the tail wasn't. Marjory named me that, and she's always using bigger words than she ought to."

"So is somebody else," said Dr. Bennett, forgetting to scold about the brushes. "But I think the 'Custodium' had better hurry, or she'll be late for school."

That was Friday, and the little brown purse contained two dollars and forty-seven cents, which seemed a tremendous sum to inexperienced Mabel.

She remembered afterwards how very big, imposing and substantial the school building had looked that morning as she approached it and noticed some strangers fingering the "rain-drops" to see if they were real. Indeed, everybody, from the largest tax-payer down to the smallest pupil, was proud of that building because it was so big and because there was no more rain-drop sandstone left in the quarry from which it had been taken. Even thoughtless Mabel always swelled with pride when tourists paused to comment on the queer, spotted appearance of those massive walls. She meant to point that building out some day to her grandchildren as the fount of all her learning; for the huge, solid building looked as if it would certainly outlast not only Mabel's grandchildren but all their great-great-grandchildren as well. But it didn't.

The catastrophe came on Saturday. Afterwards, everybody in Lakeville was glad, since the thing had to happen at all, that the day was Saturday, for no one liked to think what might have happened had the trouble come on a schoolday. It was also a Saturday in the first week of November, which was not quite so fortunate, as there was a stiff north wind.

At two o'clock that afternoon the streets were almost deserted, but weatherproof Dick Tucker, with his hands in his pockets, was going along whistling at the top of his very good lungs. By the merest chance he glanced at the wide windows of Lakeville's most pretentious possession, the big Public School building.

From four of the upper windows floated thin, softly curling plumes of gray smoke. The windows were closed, but the smoke appeared to be leaking out from the surrounding frames.

"Hello!" muttered Dick, suddenly shutting off his whistle. "That looks like smoke. The janitor must be rebuilding the furnace fire. But why should smoke--I guess I'll investigate."

The puzzled boy ran up the steps, pulled the vestibule door open and eagerly pressed his nose against the plate-glass panel of the inner door, which was locked. Through the glass, however, he could plainly see that the wide corridor was thick with smoke. He could even smell it.

"Great guns!" exclaimed Dick. "There's things doing in there! That furnace never smokes as hard as all that and besides the Janitor always has Saturday afternoons off. Perhaps the basement door is unlocked."

Dick ran down the steps to find that door, too, securely fastened.

"I guess," said Dick, with another look at the curling smoke about the upper windows, "the thing for me to do is to turn in an alarm."

Dick happened to know where the alarm-box was situated, so, feeling most important, yet withal strangely shaky as to legs, the lad made for the corner, a good long block distant, smashed the glass according to directions, and sent in the alarm, a thing that he had always longed to do.

Five minutes later, the big red hosecart, with gong ringing, firemen shouting and dogs barking, was dashing up the street. The hook and ladder company followed and a meat wagon, or rather a meat-wagon horse, galloped after. The foundry whistle began to give the ward number in long, melancholy, terrifying toots and the hosehouse bell joined in with a mad clamor. People poured from the houses along the hosecart's route, for in Lakeville it was customary for private citizens to attend all fires.

Dick, feeling most important, stood on the schoolhouse steps and pointed upward. The hosecart stopped with a jerk that must have surprised the horses, firemen leaped down and in a twinkling the foremost had smashed in the big glass door.

"It's a fire all right," said he.

Meanwhile the Janitor, chopping wood in his own backyard (which was his way of enjoying his afternoons off), had listened intently to the fire alarm.

"Six-Two," said he, suddenly dropping his ax. "Guess I'll have a look at that fire. That's pretty close to my school."

Chapter XII

The Fire

JEAN, Bettie, Marjory and Mabel ran with the rest to see what was happening, for their homes were not far from the schoolhouse. Indeed, owing to its ample setting, the building was plainly visible from all directions; and from a distance, it always loomed larger than anything else in the town. To all the citizens it was a most unusual and alarming sight to see thick, black smoke curling about the eaves and rising in a threatening column above the familiar building. Such a thing had never happened before.

Marjory was the first of the quartette to discover what was going on. She had opened her bedroom window the better to count the strokes of the fire-bell when, to her astonishment, she saw the fire itself or at least the smoke thereof. Her first thought was of her three friends; for of course no Cottager could view such a spectacle as this promised to be without the companionship of the other three.

So Marjory flew around the block--like a little excited hen, Dr. Tucker said--and collected the girls. They ran in a body to join the swelling crowd that surrounded the smoking building.

"Keep back out of danger," called Aunty Jane, who was watching the fire from her upstairs window.

"We will," shrieked Marjory, who, with the other three, was rushing by.

"Don't get mixed up with the hose," warned Dr. Tucker, who was carrying young Peter to view the fire.

"We won't," promised Bettie. "We'll stand on the very safest corner."

"This is it," declared Jean, stopping short on the sidewalk. "We can see right over the heads of the folks that are close to the building."

"Should you think," panted Mabel, hopefully, "that there'd be school Monday?"

"Looks doubtful," said Marjory.

"Not upstairs, anyway," returned Jean. "Everything must be smoked perfectly black. And it's getting worse every minute instead of better."

"Goodness!" cried Mabel, suddenly turning pale at a new and alarming thought. "I do hope it won't burn _my_ room. The money for Miss Bonner's birthday present is in my desk. It's--it's a horrible lot of money to lose. I ought never to have left it there. Dear me! Do you think----"

"Phew!" cried Jean, paying no heed to Mabel. "Look at that!"

"That" was a terrifying flash of red that suddenly illumined six of the big upper windows.

"The High School room," groaned Bettie. "It's--it's _flames_!"

"Hang it!" growled an indignant tax-payer. "Why doesn't somebody _do_ something? That building cost fifty thousand dollars."

"Fire started from a defective flue on top floor," explained another bystander, "but that's no reason why the whole place should go. There's no fire downstairs, but there _will_ be--What's that? No water? Broken hydrant?"

Mabel listened attentively. The bystander continued:

"Then the whole building is doomed. It's had time enough to get a tremendous start."

"Oh, look!" cried Jean. "It's bursting through into the next room--_my_ room! Oh, how _dreadful_! All our plants, our books, our pictures--Oh, oh! I can't bear to look."

Firemen and volunteer helpers were, hurrying in and out the wide south door. Men carried out towering piles of books and tossed them ruthlessly to the ground. Miss Bonner's big pink geranium was added to the heap. The Janitor appeared with the big hall clock, that wouldn't go at all on ordinary occasions but was now striking seven hundred and twenty-seven--or something like that--all at one stretch. It seemed to be crying out in alarm. The roar of flames could now be heard, likewise.

"Why!" exclaimed Jean, wheeling suddenly. "Where's Mabel? Wasn't she right beside you a minute ago, Bettie? I certainly saw her there."

"She was--but she isn't now," returned Bettie, looking about anxiously. "I thought she was behind me."

"Dear me!" murmured motherly Jean. "I hope she hasn't gone any closer. Suppose the scallops on that roof should begin to melt off."

"Oh, look!" cried Marjory. "There! In the doorway!"

All three looked just in time to see a short, not-very-slender girl in an unmistakable red cap dart in at the smoky doorway.

"Oh," groaned Jean, "it's Mabel!"

"Oh," moaned Marjory, "why did I ever tell her that there was a fire?"

"I'm afraid," hazarded Bettie, "that she's gone to Miss Bonner's room to get that money."

Bettie was right. That was exactly what Mabel had done.

All along Mabel's way hands had stretched out to stop the flying figure. But the hands were always just a little too late. You see, the owners of the tardy hands did not realize quickly enough that rash little Mabel actually meant to enter a building whose top floor was all in flames. She was fairly inside before the onlookers grasped the situation.

"How perfectly foolish!" cried Marjory, stamping her foot in helpless rage. "Of course somebody'll get her out--there's two men going in now--but how perfectly silly for her to go in at all!"

Mabel, however, was not feeling at all foolish. No, indeed. The little girl, to her own way of thinking, was doing a worthy, even a heroic, deed. She was rescuing the precious two dollars and forty-seven cents that her class had so laboriously raised to buy Miss Bonner a birthday gift. She would have liked to accomplish it in a little less spectacular manner, but, no other way being available, she had made the best of circumstances and was ignoring the crowd. She hoped, indeed, that no one had noticed her; with so much else to look at it seemed as if one small girl might easily remain unobserved. To be sure she was risking her life, the life of the only little girl that her parents possessed; but that seemed a small affair beside two dollars and forty-seven cents. The roof might fall, the cornice might drop, the huge chimney might collapse, the suffocating smoke or scorching flames might suddenly pour into that still unburned lower room. Let them! Heroes never stopped for such trifles with such a sum at stake.

By this time, Jean, Marjory and Bettie were white and absolutely speechless with fear. Four firemen were sitting on Dr. Bennett to keep him from rushing in after the little girl he had promptly recognized as his own, and five women were supporting and encouraging Mrs. Bennett, who had grown too weak to stand although she still had her wits about her.

"Fifty dollars reward," Mr. Black was shouting, "to the man that gets that child!"

He would have gone after her himself, but Mrs. Crane had him firmly by the coat-tails and both Dr. and Mrs. Tucker were clinging to his arms.

"Be aisy, be aisy," Mrs. Malony, the egg-woman was murmuring to the world in general. "Miss Mabel's the kind thot's always escapin' jist be the skin av her teeth. Rest aisy. Thim fire-laddies'll be havin' her out av thot dure in another jiffy."

But, although the crowd rested as "aisy" as it could, the moments went by and no Mabel appeared.

With every instant the fire grew worse. By this time, the smoke and angry sheets of flame had burst through the roof and were streaming, with a mighty, threatening roar, straight up into the blackened sky--a splendid sight that was visible for a long distance. There was no water to check the mighty fire, for, a very few moments after the hose had been attached, the hydrant had burst and the water that should have been busy quenching the fire was quietly drenching the feet of many an unheeding bystander.

And presently the thing that everybody expected happened. With a lingering, horrible crash a large part of the upper floor dropped to the main hall below. Smoke poured from the lower doors and windows. In another moment leaping hungry flames were visible in every room except the basement. The entire superstructure seemed now just like a gigantic, topless furnace; and of course it was no longer possible for even the firemen to venture inside.

But _where_ was Mabel?

Chapter XIII

A Heroine's Come-Down

MABEL, with the Janitor and four pursuing firemen at her reckless heels, had made a bold dash through the long corridor that led to Miss Bonner's room. Owing to a strong upward draft, there was surprisingly little smoke in this corridor and none at all in Miss Bonner's distant corner.

Still hotly pursued, Mabel, who had the advantage of knowing exactly whither she was bound, darted down the narrow aisle, reached into her desk, and, unselfishly passing by sundry dearly loved treasures of her own, seized the fat brown purse. Such joy to find it when so many of the desks had been stripped of their contents!

She was none too soon, for the next moment the Janitor's hands had closed upon her and, plump as she was, the sturdy fellow easily carried her out of the room, although Mabel protested crossly that she would much rather walk. In this uncomfortable fashion they reached the corridor.

[Illustration: THE STURDY FELLOW CARRIED HER OUT OF THE ROOM.]

"Not that way--not that way!" shouted the firemen, pointing towards a glowing, spreading patch on the ceiling of the main hall. "It's breaking through--you can't reach the door! It's not safe at that end."

"Down to the basement!" shouted the Janitor, nodding toward a narrow doorway, through which the men promptly vanished.

Then, seemingly, a new thought assailed the Janitor.

"Open door number twelve," he shouted after the men.

Then, hurriedly pushing up a sliding door at the safest end of the hall and murmuring "Quicker this way," the Janitor unceremoniously lifted Mabel and dropped her down the big dust-chute.

What a place for a heroine! In spite of her surprise, Mabel felt deeply mortified. It was humiliating enough for a would-be rescuer to be rescued; but to be dropped down a horrid, stuffy dust-chute and to land with a queer, springy thud on a pile of sliding stuff--the contents of a dozen or more waste-baskets and the results of innumerable sweepings--was worse.

In a very few seconds, the hasty Janitor had opened the lower door of the chute and, with the firemen standing by, was calmly hauling her out by her feet--Oh! She could _never_ tell that part of it.

And then, as if that were not bad enough, that inconsiderate Janitor seized her by the elbow and hurried her right into the coal bin, forced her to march over eighty tons of black, dusty, sliding coal and finally compelled her to crawl--yes, _crawl_--out of a small basement window on the safest side of the building. The only explanation that the rescuer vouchsafed was a gruff statement that the fire was "More to the other end" and that short-cuts saved time. Mabel tried to tell him what _she_ thought about it, but the Janitor seemed too excited to listen.

Of course, by this time, the Bennetts, the Cottagers, the firemen, the Janitor's wife and most of the bystanders were in a perfectly dreadful state of mind; for the coal-hole window was not on their side of the building--Mabel was glad of that--so none of her friends witnessed her exit. The Cottagers, in particular, were clutching each other and fairly quaking with fear when a familiar voice behind them panted breathlessly:

"I saved it, girls."

Jean, Marjory and Bettie wheeled as one girl. It was certainly Mabel's voice, the shape and size were Mabel's, but the color----

"Oh!" cried Jean, in a horrified tone. "Are you _burned_? Are you all burned up to a crisp?"

But thoughtful Bettie, after one searching look to make certain that it really was Mabel, had not stopped to ask questions, nor to hear them answered. She remembered that the Bennetts were still anxious concerning their missing daughter, and straightway flew to relieve their minds.

"She's safe, Mabel's safe," she shouted, running to the Bennetts, to Mr. Black, to the Tuckers, to all Mabel's friends, and completely forgetting her own usual shyness. "Yes, she's all safe. No, not burned; just scorched, I guess."

Then everybody crowded around Mabel. Mrs. Bennett was about to kiss her, but desisted just in time.

"Mabel!" she cried, as Jean had done. "Are you burned?"

"No," mumbled Mabel, indignantly. "I'm not even singed. I--I just came out through the coal hole, but you needn't tell. That horrid Janitor dragged me out over a whole mountain of coal."

"Thank Heaven!" breathed Mrs. Bennett.

"Huh!" snorted Mabel, "that's a mighty queer thing to thank Heaven for, when it was only last night that I had a perfectly good bath. That's the meanest Janitor----"

"Where is he?" demanded Dr. Bennett, eagerly. "I must thank him."

"Yes," said Mrs. Bennett, "I must thank him too."

"And I," said Dr. Tucker, "should like to shake hands with him."

And would you believe it! Not a soul had a word of praise for Mabel's bravery. Not a person commended her for saving that precious purse. Instead, the local paper devoted a whole column to lauding the prompt action of that sickening Janitor, Dr. Bennett gave him a splendid gold watch, the School Board recommended him for a Carnegie medal--all because of the dust-chute.

"Don't let me hear any more," Dr. Bennett said that night, "about that miserable two dollars and forty-seven cents. I'd rather give you two hundred and forty-seven dollars than have you take such risks."

"Yes, sir," rejoined Mabel, meekly. "But you didn't say anything like that day before yesterday when I asked for three more cents to make it an even two-fifty. I must say I don't understand grown folks."

"Mabel, you go--go take that bath. And when you're clean enough to kiss, come back and say good-night."

"Yes, sir," sighed Mabel, "but I _do_ wish I _could_ raise three more cents."

Mr. Bennett fished two quarters and three pennies from his pocket and handed them to Mabel.

"There," said he, "you have an even three dollars, but I hope you won't consider it necessary to rescue them in case of any more fires."

Fortunately, there were no more fires; but the original one made up for this lack by lasting for an astonishing length of time. For seven days the school building continued to burn in a safe but expensive manner; for the eighty tons of coal over which Mabel had walked so unwillingly had caught fire late in the afternoon and had burned steadily until entirely reduced to ashes. It was a strange, uncanny sight after dark to see the mighty ruin still lighted by a fitful glare from within. Only the four walls, the bare outer shell of the huge structure, remained. You see, all the rest of it had been wood--and steam pipes. Every splinter of wood was gone; but the pipes, and there seemed to be miles of them, were twisted like mighty serpents. They filled the cellar and seemed fairly to writhe in the scarlet glow. It made one think of dragons and volcanoes and things like that; and caused creepy feelings in one's spine.

Even the dust-chute was gone. Mabel was glad of that. She hated to think of the Janitor proudly pointing it out to visitors and saying:

"I once dropped a girl down there."

Chapter XIV

A Birthday Party

BUT if Mabel derived little joy from her experience as a heroine, there was at least some satisfaction in knowing that there could be no school on Monday, for Mabel was decidedly partial toward holidays.

"If I ever teach school," she often said, "there'll be two Saturdays every week and no afternoon sessions."

Jean, however, really liked to go to school. So did Marjory, but Bettie was uncertain.

"If," said Bettie, "I could go long enough to know what grade I belonged in it might be interesting; but when you only attend in patches it's sort of mixing. There's a little piece of me in three different grades."

When Mrs. Crane realized that there could be no school on Monday, she too was pleased. She stopped a moment after church on Sunday to intercept the girls on their way to Sunday School.

"My!" said she. "How spruce you look!"

They did look "spruce." Tall Jean was all in brown, even to her gloves and overshoes. Marjory's trim little winter suit was of dark green broadcloth with gray furs, for neat Aunty Jane, whatever her other failings, always kept Marjory very beautifully dressed. Bettie's short, kilted skirt was red under a boyish black reefer that had once belonged to Dick, and a black hat that Bob had discarded as "too floppy" had been wired and trimmed with scarlet cloth to match the skirt. This hand-me-down outfit was very becoming to dark-eyed Bettie, but then, Bettie was pretty in anything. Plump Mabel was buttoned tightly into a navy blue suit. Although she had owned it for barely six weeks it was no longer big enough either lengthwise or sidewise.

"But," said Mabel, cheerfully, "by holding my breath most of the time I can stand it for one hour on Sundays."

"How would you like," asked Mrs. Crane, "to spend to-morrow with me and Rosa Marie?"

"We'd love to," said Jean.

"We'd like it a lot," said Marjory.

"Just awfully," breathed Bettie.

"Oh, goody!" gurgled Mabel.

"You see," said Mrs. Crane, "I'm not altogether easy about Rosa Marie. I do every living thing I can think of, but someway I can't get inside that child's shell. I declare, it seems sometimes as if she really pities me for being so stupid. And I think she's falling off in her looks."

"Oh, I _hope_ not," cried Mabel, fervently.

"No," agreed Marjory, "it certainly wouldn't do for Rosa Marie to fall off very _much_."

"However," returned Mrs. Crane, loyally, "she might be very much worse and at any rate she is warm and well fed, even if she does seem a bit--foreign. So that Janitor put you down through the dust-chute, did he, Mabel? You must have landed with quite a jolt."

"No," returned Mabel, rather sulkily, for every one was mentioning the dust-chute. "I had all September's and October's sweepings to land on. It was all mushy and springy, like mother's bed."

"How," pursued kindly Mrs. Crane, "did he get you out?"

"I'd--I'd rather not say," mumbled Mabel, flushing a brilliant crimson. No one else had thought to ask this dreaded question, and the papers, fortunately, had overlooked this detail.

"Why!" giggled teasing Marjory, "he _must_ have dragged her out by her feet because she's so fat that she couldn't possibly have turned herself over in that narrow space. It's just like a chimney, you know. I've often looked down that place and wondered if Santa Claus could manage the trip down. Oh, Mabel! It must have been funny! Tell us about it."

Mabel grinned, but it was rather a sickly grin.

"First," she said, "he clawed out a lot of papers and stuff. Ugh! It was horrid to feel everything sliding right out from under me--I didn't know _how_ far I was going to drop. Then he grabbed my two ankles and just jerked me out on the bias through the little door at the bottom. I suppose it was a lot quicker. But he _didn't_ need to make me climb all that coal."

"Yes, he did," returned Jean. "The cornice on the other three sides was all loose and flopping up and down in the flames. Pieces kept falling. The coal-bin side was the last to burn--the wind went the other way--and Miss Bonner's room was the last to catch fire."

"That Janitor," declared Mrs. Crane, with conviction, "knew exactly what he was about. Now, girls, you'll be sure to come to-morrow, won't you? I think it will do Rosa Marie good and there's a reason why I'd like a little company myself, but I shan't tell you just now what it is."

"Oh, do," begged all four.

"No," returned Mrs. Crane. "It's a secret, and not a living soul knows it but me. I'll tell you to-morrow."

"We'll _surely_ come," promised the girls.

Of course they kept their promise. The four Cottagers arrived very soon after breakfast, were let in most sedately by Mr. Black's man, who smiled when the unceremonious visitors rushed pell-mell past him to fall upon Mrs. Crane, who was watering plants in the breakfast room.

"Tell us the secret!" shouted Mabel. "Oh--I mean good-morning!"

"Good-morning," smiled Mrs. Crane, setting the watering pot in a safe place. "The secret isn't a very big one. It's only that to-day is my birthday and I thought I'd like to have a party. You're it. The cook is making me a birthday cake, but she doesn't know that it is a birthday cake."

"Goody!" cried Mabel.

"Doesn't Mr. Black know it's your birthday?" queried Jean.

"I don't think so. You see, it's a long time since Peter and I spent birthdays under the same roof, and men don't remember such things very well. We'll surprise him with the cake to-night. Now let's go to the nursery."

Rosa Marie's dull countenance brightened at sight of her four friends. She gave four solemn little bobs with her head.

"Mercy!" cried Marjory, "she's learning manners."

"And see," said Bettie, "she's stringing beads."

"That's a surprise," said Mrs. Crane, proudly. "I taught her that."

"Fourteen," said Rosa Marie, unexpectedly.

"Goodness me!" cried Mabel. "Can she count?"

"Ye-es," admitted Mrs. Crane, guardedly, "but not to depend on. In fact, fourteen is the only counting word she _can_ say. Peter taught her that."

"Fourteen," repeated Rosa Marie, holding up her string of beads.

"You ridiculous baby!" laughed Mabel, hugging her. "Who are the pretty beads for?"

Rosa Marie hurriedly clapped the string about her own brown throat.

"No, no," remonstrated Mrs. Crane. "You're making them for Mabel."

But Rosa Marie set her small white teeth firmly together and continued to hold the beads against her own plump neck.

"_She_ knows whose beads they are," laughed Jean.

"I can't teach her a single Christian virtue," sighed Mrs. Crane. "There isn't one unselfish hair in that child's head."

"She's too young," encouraged Bettie. "All babies are little savages."

"Not Anne Halliday," said Jean, who fairly worshiped her small cousin.

"That's different," said Marjory. "Anne was born with manners."

"The little Tuckers weren't," soothed Bettie. "Rosa Marie will be generous enough in time."

"I wish I could believe it," sighed Mrs. Crane.

"Hi, hi! What's all this racket?" cried Mr. Black from the doorway. "Is Rosa Marie doing all that talking? Get your things on quick, all of you, and come for a ride with me."

"A ride!" exclaimed Mrs. Crane. "What in?"

"An automobile," returned Mr. Black, turning to wink comically at Bettie.

"An automobile!" echoed Mrs. Crane. "I'd like to know whose. There's only one in town and I don't know the owners."

"Yours," twinkled Mr. Black. "It's your birthday present."

"How did you know that this was the day?"

"Perhaps I remembered," said Mr. Black, smiling rather tenderly at his old sister. "You _used_ to have them on this day."

"I do still," beamed Mrs. Crane. "That's why I invited the girls; they're my birthday party. But what's this about automobiles?"

"Only one. It's yours."

"Peter Black! I don't believe you."

"Look out the hall window."

Everybody rushed to the big window in the front hall. Sure enough! A splendid motor car stood at the gate.

"Peter," faltered Mrs. Crane, "have I _got_ to ride in that? I've never set foot in one, and I'm sure I'd be scared to at this late day."

"What! Not ride in your own automobile? Bless you, Sarah, in another week you'll refuse to stay out of it. Get your things on, everybody; and warm ones, too. Find extra wraps for these girls, Sarah. There's room for everybody but Rosa Marie."

"Now, isn't that just like a man?" said Mrs. Crane, looking about helplessly. "Whose clothes does he think you're going to wear for 'extra wraps'? His, or mine?"

Everybody laughed, for obviously Mr. Black's house was a poor one in which to find little girls' garments.

"We'll stop at your houses," said he, "and pick up some duds. Besides, perhaps your mothers might like to know that you've been kidnaped. What! no hat on yet? Here, pin this on," said Mr. Black, handing Mrs. Crane a pink dust-cap. "I can't wait all day."

"Mercy! That's not a bonnet," cried Mrs. Crane, scurrying away. "I'll be ready in two minutes."

Chapter XV

An Unexpected Treat

"PETER," demanded Mrs. Crane, stopping short on the horse-block, "who's going to run that thing?"

"I am."

"Not with me in it. You don't know how."

"My dear, I've been learning the business for five weeks."

"So _that's_ what has taken you to Bancroft every afternoon for all that time?"

"That's exactly what," admitted Mr. Black.

"And you're _sure_," queried Mrs. Crane, doubtfully, "that you understand all those fixings?"

"Every one of them."

"Will you promise to go slow?"

"There's a fine for exceeding the speed limit," twinkled Mr. Black.

"Well, I'm glad of that," said Mrs. Crane, permitting her patient brother to help her into the vehicle. "My! but these cushions are soft."

"Yes," said Bettie, "it's just like sitting on baking powder biscuits before they're baked."

"How do you know?" asked Mr. Black.

"Because I've tried it. You see, ministers' wives are dreadfully interrupted persons, and one night when Mother was making biscuits some visitors came. Instead of popping one of the pans into the oven, mother dropped it on a dining-room chair on her way to the door and forgot all about it. When I came in to supper that chair was at my place and I flopped right down on those biscuits! And I had to _stay_ sitting on them because Father had asked one of the visitors--_such_ a particular-looking person--to stay to tea; and I knew that Mother wouldn't want a perfectly strange man to know about it."

"That was certainly thoughtful," smiled Mr. Black. "Now, is every one comfortable? If she is, we'll go for those extra wraps."

The new machine rolled down the street and turned the corner in the neatest way imaginable. Mrs. Crane looked decidedly uneasy at first; but when Mr. Black had successfully steered the birthday present past the ice wagon, a coal team, a prancing pony and two street cars, she folded the hands that had been nervously clutching the side of the car and leaned back with a relieved sigh.

But when Mabel asked a question, Mrs. Crane silenced her quickly.

"Don't talk to him," she implored. "There's no telling _what_ might happen to us if he were to take any part of his mind off that--that helm, for even a single second. Don't even _look_ at him."

What did happen was this. After the extra wraps had been collected and donned, Mr. Black carried his charges all the way to Bancroft, a distance of seventeen miles, in perfect safety. The road was good, the day was mild and the only team they passed obligingly turned in at its own gate before they reached it. They stopped in front of the biggest and best hotel in Bancroft.

"Everybody out for dinner," ordered Mr. Black.

"But, Peter," expostulated Mrs. Crane, hanging back, bashfully, "I'm in my every-day clothes."

"Well, this isn't Sunday; and you always look well dressed. You're a very neat woman, Sarah."

"Well I _am_ neat, but black alpaca isn't silk even if my sleeves _are_ this year's. And for goodness' sake, Peter, don't ask me to pronounce any of that bill of fare if it isn't plain every-day English, for you know there isn't a French fiber in my tongue. You order for me. There's only one thing I can't eat and that's parsnips."

It was a very nice dinner and plain English enough to suit even matter-of-fact Mrs. Crane. After the first few bashful moments, the four girls chattered so merrily that all the guests at other tables caught themselves listening and smiling sympathetically.

"I never ate a really truly hotel dinner before," confided Bettie, happily.

"And to think," sighed Jean, contentedly, "of doing it without knowing you were going to! That always makes things nicer."

"And I _never_ expected to ride in a navy-blue automobile," murmured Marjory.

"Or to have four kinds of potatoes," breathed Mabel, who sat half surrounded by empty dishes--"little birds' bath-tubs," she called them.

"You must be a vegetarian," smiled Mr. Black.

"N-no," denied Mabel. "Only a potatorian."

"Mabel!" objected Marjory. "There isn't any such word."

"Yes, there is," returned Mabel, calmly. "I just made it."

"Well, I'm sure," sighed Mrs. Crane, "I never expected to have any such birthday as this."

"You see," said Mr. Black, giving his sister's plump elbow a kindly squeeze, "this is a good many birthdays rolled into one."

"It seems hard," mourned Mabel, who was earnestly scanning the bill of fare, "to read about so many kinds of dessert when you've room enough left for only three. I wish I'd began saving space sooner."

"You're in luck," laughed Bettie. "A very small, thin one is all _I_ can manage--pineapple ice, I guess."

"Anyway," said Marjory, "I shan't choose bread pudding. We have that every Tuesday and Friday at home. Aunty Jane has regular times for everything, so I always know just what's coming. I'm going to have something different--hot mince pie, I guess."

"Ice-cream," said Jean, "with hot chocolate sauce."

"Bring _me_," said Mabel, turning to the waiter, "hot mince pie, ice-cream with hot chocolate sauce and a pineapple ice with little cakes."

"Bring little cakes for everybody," added Mr. Black.

"I declare," said Mrs. Crane, "I don't know when I've been so hungry."

"Now," remarked Mr. Black, half an hour later, "I think we'd better be jogging along toward home because it won't be as warm when the sun goes down and I want to show you some of the sights in Bancroft--there's a pretty good candy shop a few blocks from here--before we start toward Lakeville. We can run down in about an hour."

"Peter," demanded Mrs. Crane, "what _is_ that speed limit?"

"About eight miles an hour."

"Hum--and it's seventeen miles----"

"Now, Sarah, don't go to doing arithmetic--you know you were never very good at it. If I were to keep strictly within that limit you'd all want to get out and push. Got all your wraps? Whose muff is this? Here's a glove. Whose neck belongs to this pussy-cat thing? Here's a handkerchief and two more gloves--Well, well! It's a good thing you had somebody along to gather up your duds. What! My hat? Why, that's so, I _did_ have a cap--here it is in my coat pocket."

There was still time after the pleasant ride home for a good frolic with Rosa Marie and a cozy meal with Mrs. Crane; strangely enough, everybody was again hungry enough to enjoy the big birthday cake and the good apple-sauce that went with it. Then Mr. Black carried them all home in the motor car and delivered each damsel at her own door. But only one stayed delivered, for the other three immediately ran around the block to meet at Jean's always popular home. You see, they had to talk it all over without the restraint of their host's presence.

"I think," said Mabel, ecstatically, "that Mr. Black is just too dear for words. _Some_ folks are too stingy to live, with their automobiles and horses and never _think_ of giving anybody a ride."

"He's certainly very generous," agreed Jean.

"Of course," ventured Marjory, meditatively, "he has plenty of money or he couldn't do nice things."

"He would anyway," declared Bettie. "It's the way he's made. Don't you remember how Mrs. Crane was always being good to people even when she was so dreadfully poor? Well, Mr. Black would be just like that, too, even if he hadn't a single dollar. He has a Santa Claus heart."

"There _are_ folks," admitted Marjory, "that wouldn't know how to give anybody a good time if they had all the money in the world. There's Aunty Jane, for instance. She's a _very_ good woman, with a terribly pricking conscience, and I know she'd like to make things pleasant for me if she knew how, but she doesn't, poor thing. She doesn't know a good time when she sees one. And Mrs. Howard Slater doesn't, either."

"Good-evening, girls," said Mrs. Mapes, coming in with a newspaper in her hand. "I _thought_ I heard voices in here. Have you had a nice day? You're just in time to read the paper; there's something in it that will interest you."

Chapter XVI

A Scattered School

IT seemed too bad for such a delightful day to end sorrowfully, but the evening paper certainly brought disquieting news. It stated that the School Board hoped to provide, within a very few days, suitable schoolrooms for all the pupils. And, in another item, the unfeeling editor complimented the Board on its enterprise.

"I'd like that Board a whole lot better," said Marjory, "if it weren't so enterprising. I s'posed we were going to have at least a month to play in."

"Just before Christmas, too," grumbled Mabel. "They might at least have waited until I'd finished Father's shoe-bag. And what do you think? Mother says I'd better give that Janitor a Christmas present!"

"Perhaps the paper is mistaken," soothed Jean. "You know it always is about the weather reports. If it says 'Fair,' it's sure to rain; and when it says 'Colder,' it's quite certain to be warm. Besides, there isn't a place in town big enough for all that school."

But this time it was Jean and not the paper that was mistaken. In just a few days the School Board announced that its hopes were realized. It had found "suitable quarters" for all the classes. Two grades went into the basement of the Baptist Church. The underground portion of the Methodist edifice accommodated two more. The A. O. U. W. Hall opened its doors to three others. A benevolent private citizen took in the kindergarten. A downtown store hastily transformed itself from an unsuccessful harness shop into nearly as unsuccessful a haven for two other grades. The City Hall gave up its Council Chamber to the Seniors, and the Masons loaned their dining-room to the Juniors, without, however, providing any refreshment. The enterprising Board had telegraphed for desks the very day of the fire; and as soon as that dreadfully prompt furniture arrived, it was remorselessly screwed into place. The Stationer, too, had speedily ordered books. They, too, traveled with unseemly haste from New York to Lakeville. By Thursday, less than a week after the fire, there were desks and seats and books for everybody; and would you believe it, they even kept school on Saturday, that week!

And now, an utterly unforeseen thing happened. Hitherto Jean, who was usually the first to be ready, had stopped for Marjory and Bettie. All three had stopped to finish dressing Mabel, who always needed a great deal of assistance, and then all four had walked merrily to school together. But now this happy scheme was entirely ruined, for here was Jean doing algebra under the Baptist roof, Bettie struggling with grammar in the Methodist basement, Marjory climbing two long flights of stairs to the A. O. U. W. Hall and Mabel passing six saloons to reach her desk in the made-over harness shop.

"It isn't just what we'd choose," apologized the School Board, "but it won't last forever. We'll build just as soon as we can."

Except for the inconvenience of having to go to school separately the children were rather pleased with the novelty of moving into such unusual quarters as the Board had provided; but the mothers were not at all satisfied.

"That Baptist cellar is damp and Jean's throat is delicate," complained Mrs. Mapes. "I know she'll be sick half the winter; but of course she'll have to go to school there as long as there's no better place."

"That Methodist Church is no place for children," declared Mrs. Tucker. "Its brick walls were condemned seven years ago and it's likely to fall down at any moment, even if they did brace it up with iron bands. But Bettie's too far behind now for me to take her out of school, so I suppose she'll just have to risk having that church tumble in on her."

"It's a shame," sputtered Aunty Jane, "for Marjory to climb all those stairs twice a day. It's all very well for the Ancient Order of United Workmen to climb two flights with grown-up legs, but it isn't right for delicate girls. However, there's no help for it just now, and I can't say I blame the child for sliding down the banisters, though of course I do scold her for it."

"There are saloons on both sides of that harness shop," said Mrs. Bennett, "and six more this side of it, besides a livery stable that is always full of loafers and bad language. Mabel has never been allowed to go to that part of town alone, and now I have to send a maid with her twice a day. But of course she has to go, even if the maid _is_ more timid than Mabel is."

"By next year," consoled the Board, "we'll have a bigger and better schoolhouse than the old one. In the meantime we must all have patience."

Except that Mabel, without the others to get her started, was always late and that Bettie, without Marjory to coach her on the way, found it difficult to learn her lessons, school life went on very much as usual, for matters soon settled down as things always do and Lakeville turned its attention to fresher problems.

Poor Bettie, indeed, was busier than ever because Miss Rossitor, the Domestic Science teacher, whose classes were temporarily housed in the Methodist kitchen, discovered that Bettie could draw. Every day or two she asked Bettie to remain after school to copy needed illustrations on the blackboard. One day, Miss Rossitor demanded a cow. She needed it, she explained, to show her class the different cuts of meat.

"A side view of a plain cow," said she.

"I think," said Bettie, reflectively nibbling the fresh stick of chalk, "that I could do the outside of that cow, but I know I couldn't get his veal cutlets in the proper spot."

"I'll give you a diagram," smiled Miss Rossitor, "for I see very plainly, that it wouldn't be safe not to."

"Perhaps Miss Bettie thinks," ventured a belated pupil, a pink-cheeked girl with an impertinent nose, "that one cow is a whole butcher shop."

"Well," returned Miss Rossitor, meaningly, "it isn't a great while since some other folks were of the same opinion. But, since you are now so very much wiser, you may label the parts after Bettie has drawn them."

The girl made such a comical face that Bettie's gravity was in sad danger, but she accepted the chalk. On the cow's shoulder she printed "Pork sausages," on the flank, "Mutton chops," on the backbone, "Oysters on the half-shell," on the breast, "buttons."

Bettie looked puzzled and doubtful but Miss Rossitor laughed outright.

"Henrietta Bedford," she said, "you're a complete humbug. If you don't settle down to business you won't get home to-night."

"I'm going to walk home with Bettie," returned Henrietta, quickly substituting the proper labels. "I can easily write out that luncheon menu while she's putting feathers on the cow's tail."

And the new girl did walk home with Bettie, and teased her so merrily all the long way that Bettie didn't know whether to like her or not.

Near the Cottage they met Jean, Marjory and Mabel just starting out to look for belated Bettie.

"This," said Bettie introducing her new acquaintance, "is Henrietta--Henrietta----"

"Plantagenet," assisted Henrietta Bedford, smoothly. "I am really a Duchess in disguise, but I've left all my retainers in Ohio and I'm simply dying for friends. This is my day for collecting them--I always collect friends on Tuesdays. You are indeed fortunate to have happened upon me on Tuesday. But, Elizabeth, why not finish your introductions?"

"This," obeyed overwhelmed Bettie, "is Jean, this is Marjory and this is Mabel Bennett."

"What! The Damsel of the Dust-chute! I am indeed honored."

Then, as her quick eye traveled over Mabel's plump figure, Henrietta added wickedly:

"Was that chute built to fit?"

Mabel flushed angrily.

"It is I," apologized Henrietta, "that should wear those blushes. Forgive me, dear Damsel. I have an over-quick tongue and all my speeches are followed by repentance. But I have a warm heart and I'm really much nicer than I sound. See, I kneel at your insulted feet."

Whereupon this ridiculous girl with the impertinent nose flopped down on her knees on the sidewalk and made such comically repentant faces that all four giggled merrily.

"Get up, you goose," laughed Mabel. "Your apology is accepted."

"Come along with us," urged Jean. "We're going to have hot chocolate at our house. Mother is trying to fatten Marjory, Bettie and me."

"She seems to succeed best with--hum--no personal remarks, please. Dear maiden, I will inspect your home from the outside, but I regret that I'm strictly forbidden to go _in_side any strange house without my grandmother's permission. You'll have to call on me first. She is _very_ particular in such matters. But," added Henrietta, with a sudden twinkle, "I'm not. So, if you'll kindly rush in and make that chocolate, there's no earthly reason why I shouldn't stand just outside your gate and drink it."

"Oh," cried Bettie, "is it possible that you're Mrs. Howard Slater's new granddaughter?"

"I am," admitted Henrietta, "but I'm not so new as you seem to think. She has owned me for fourteen years. Now, hustle up that chocolate. I've just remembered that I'm to have a dress tried on at four. It is now half-past."

Chapter XVII

An Invitation

"BETTIE," asked Jean, when the girls were "hustling up" the chocolate in Mrs. Mapes' kitchen (the weather was now too cold for Dandelion Cottage to be habitable), "where did you find her?"

"At school," replied Bettie. "She comes in for Domestic Science. I've seen her about three times, and every time she's had that stiff Miss Rossitor laughing. You know who that girl is, don't you?"

"I've heard something," said Marjory, "but I can't just remember what, about some girl named Henrietta."

"Well, you've seen Mrs. Howard Slater?"

All the girls had seen Mrs. Slater, the beautifully gowned, decidedly aristocratic old lady with abundant but perfectly white hair and bright, sparkling black eyes. Mrs. Slater, who seemed a very reserved and exclusive person, had spent many summers and even an occasional winter in her own handsome home in Lakeville. She lived alone except for a number of servants; for both her son and her daughter were married. The son lived abroad, no one knew just where; and some four years previously Mrs. Slater's daughter, who was Henrietta's mother, had died in Rome. Since that event Henrietta had been cared for by her uncle's wife; and she had spent a winter in California and another in Florida with her grandmother, but this was her first visit to Lakeville. It was said that Henrietta's mother had left her little daughter a very respectable fortune, that her father, an English traveler of note, was also wealthy, and it was known to a certainty that Mrs. Howard Slater was a moneyed person.

"Yes," said Marjory, replying to Bettie's question, "we sit behind Mrs. Slater in church, and she's the very daintiest old lady that ever lived. She's as slim and straight as any young girl. She's perfectly lovely to look at, but----"

"Yes, 'but,'" agreed Jean. "She seems very proud and not very--get-nearable. I don't know whether I'd like to live with her or not; but I know I'd feel terribly set up to own a few relatives that _looked_ like that."

"How do you like Henrietta?" asked Mabel.

"I don't know," said Bettie.

"Neither do I," replied Jean.

"It takes time," declared Marjory, "to discover whether you like a person or not. And when it's such a different person--truly, she isn't a bit like any other girl in this town--it takes longer."

"The chocolate's ready," announced Jean, opening a box of wafers. "Here, Bettie, you carry Henrietta's cup and I'll take these. Let's _all_ have our chocolate on the sidewalk."

Henrietta, her hands in her pockets, was leaning against the fence and humming a tune. Her voice, in speaking, was very nicely modulated--which was fortunate, because she used it a great deal. She straightened up when the door opened.

"I'm an icicle," said she. "I hope that chocolate's good and hot. My! What a nice big cup! And wafers! I'm glad I stayed for your party. I've had chocolate in France, in Germany, in Italy, in Switzerland and in England, but I do believe this is the very first time I've had any in America."

"I'm sorry," said Jean, "that you have to have your first on the sidewalk."

"I shan't, next time," promised Henrietta. "I have a beautiful plan. I made it while waiting for the chocolate. You're all to come after school to-morrow and pay me a formal call. Then I'll return it. After that, I suspect I shall be allowed to run in. But first you'll have to call, formally."

"A formal call!" gasped Bettie.

"We never made a formal call in all our lives," objected Jean.

"They're dreadful," agreed Henrietta, "but in this case you'll really have to do it. I've planned it all nicely. In the first place, you must hand your cards to the butler----"

"Cards!" gasped Jean and Bettie.

"Cards!" snorted Mabel, flushing indignantly. "We haven't a card to our names!"

"You _must_ have them," declared Henrietta, firmly, "or Simmons may consider you suspicious characters. Simmons is a very lofty person. You can write some, you know, because Simmons holds his chin so high that it interferes with the view, so he'll never know what's on them. Then you must be very polite to Grandmother and say 'Yes, ma'am,' 'No, ma'am,' 'Thank you, ma'am'--and not very much else. You've seen Grandmother, of course? Then you know how very formal and stiff she looks. Well, _you_ must be like that, too."

"I'll try," said Mabel, "but it'll be pretty hard work."

"Be sure to wear gloves," cautioned Henrietta. "Grandmother is exceedingly particular about shoes and gloves. I know it's a lot of trouble, but you'll find it pays; for after you've beaten down the icy barrier that surrounds me, you'll find me quite a comfortable person. And _do_ come just as early as you can--I'm really desperately lonely."

This was a different Henrietta from the merry one that Bettie had encountered. That other Henrietta had made her laugh. This one, with the wistful, sorrowful countenance and the four words "I'm really desperately lonely," was almost moving her to tears.

"You'll surely come," pleaded Henrietta.

"We'll come," promised Bettie, "cards and all."

"_Au revoir_," said Henrietta, carefully balancing her cup on the top rail of the fence. "I must run along now to try on my clothes."

"Was that French?" queried Mabel, gazing after the departing figure.

"I think so," replied Jean.

"She can certainly talk English fast enough," said Marjory. "I suppose just one language _isn't_ enough for anybody that chatters like that."

"Do you think," asked Bettie, "she meant all that about cards and gloves and butlers? She's so full of fun most of the time that I don't exactly know whether to believe her or not."

"I think she did," said Marjory. "You see, I sit behind Mrs. Slater in church--and I'm thankful that it's behind."

"Perhaps that's the reason," ventured Bettie, "that nobody'll rent the three pews in front of her. Father says it's hard to even give them away. No one likes to sit in them."

"That's it," agreed Marjory. "One would have to be sure that her back hair was absolutely perfect to be at all comfortable in front of Mrs. Slater."

"And that," groaned discouraged Mabel, "is the sort of person I'm to make my first formal call on."

"You'd better take your bath to-night," advised Jean, "and lay out all your very best clothes. And don't forget to polish your shoes."

"Father has some blank cards," said Bettie, "and he writes beautifully. I'll get him to do cards for all of us."

"I think," said Marjory, with a puzzled air, "that we ought to take five or six apiece. I know Aunty Jane leaves a whole lot at one house, sometimes."

"No," corrected Jean, "we need just two. One for Mrs. Slater and one for Henrietta. My aunt, Mrs. Halliday, always gets two whenever her sister-in-law is visiting there."

"There are holes in my best gloves," mourned Bettie. "They came in a missionary box, and missionary gloves are never very good even to start with. Besides, Dick wore them first--I never had a _new_ pair of kid gloves."

"Never mind," said always generous Mabel. "I must have about six pairs and I've never had any of the things on. I know I've outgrown some of them. Your hands are lots smaller than mine. Come over and I'll fix you out--Mother said we'd have to give them to somebody and I guess you're just exactly the right somebody. I hate the thing myself."

"Goody!" rejoiced Bettie.

"I wish," said Jean, "that my shoes were newer, but I'll get the boys to black 'em."

"I can't help _you_ out," laughed Mabel. "My shoes are short and fat and yours are long and slim."

"A coat of Wallace's blacking will be all that's needed, thank you, Mabel. There's nothing like having brothers when it comes to blacking shoes."

"We'll have to get up a little earlier to-morrow morning," said Marjory.

"Mercy!" exclaimed Jean, "are you leaving all those chocolate cups on the fence for _me_ to carry in?"

"Of course not," said obliging Bettie, seizing two. "Come on, you lazy people."

Chapter XVIII

Obeying Instructions

THE four girls were wonderfully excited all the next day. They were restless in school and fidgety at home.

"A body would think," scoffed Aunty Jane, at noon, "that you were going to your own wedding. Don't worry so. I'll have everything ready for you to put on the moment you get out of school."

"Oh, thank you," breathed Marjory, fervently. "That'll help a lot; but I do hope that Bettie's father will remember to do those cards. And, Aunty Jane, _could_ you lend me a perfectly inkless hankerchief?"

"Jumping January!" growled Wallace Mapes, Jean's older brother. "That makes nineteen times, Jean, that you've reminded me of those miserable shoes. I'll black them when I've finished lunch. I'm not going to rush off in the middle of my oyster soup to black _any_body's best shoes."

"Is it a reception?" asked Roger.

"No," replied Wallace, "just a formal call on Henrietta Bedford."

"She's in my French class," said Roger. "And kippered snakes! You ought to hear her recite. She talks up and down and all around poor little Miss McGinnis, whose French was made right here in Lakeville. It's a daily picnic."

"You won't forget my shoes, will you?" reminded anxious Jean.

"I'd like to know how I _could_," demanded Wallace, feelingly.

Although Mabel had taken a most complete bath the night before, she spent the noon-hour taking another. She put on her best stockings and shoes, but looked doubtfully at her Sunday suit.

"If I have to do my language in ink," reflected she, "it'll be all up with my clothes. I'll just have to change after school."

The girls were out by half-past three. Fortunately, Miss Rossitor needed no more cows that afternoon, so Bettie was home in good season. All four dressed speedily. Three of them got into their gloves unassisted; but Jean, Marjory and Bettie found plump, impatient Mabel seated on the piano stool with her mother working over one hand, her perspiring father over the other. Several other gloves that had proved too small were scattered on the floor.

"You needn't think," said Mabel, greeting her friends with an expressive grimace, "that _I_ ever picked out these lemon-colored frights. Somebody sent 'em for Christmas. None of the pretty ones were big enough--I've tried four pairs."

"Neither are these," returned Mrs. Bennett, "and the color certainly is outrageous, but it's Hobson's choice. And just remember, Mabel, if you touch a single door-knob they'll be black before you get there. And don't put your hands in your pockets. And _please_ don't rub them along the fences. There! Mine's on as far as it will go."

[Illustration: THE DECIDEDLY DEPRESSED FOUR STARTED DOWN THE STREET.]

"I guess you'd better finish this one," said Dr. Bennett, abandoning his task. "I rather tackle a case of smallpox than wrestle with another job like that. She'd look much better in mittens."

"Mittens!" snubbed Mabel. "You can't make formal calls in mittens! Now, Somebody, please put me into my jacket and hat, if I'm not to touch anything."

The decidedly depressed four, in their Sunday best, started down the street. Mabel's gloves, owing to their brilliant color, were certainly conspicuous, and unconsciously she made them more so by the careful and rigid manner in which she carried them. It was plain that she had them very much on her mind. And when her hat tilted forward over one eye she left it there rather than risk damaging those immaculate lemon-hued gloves.

"Take my muff," implored Marjory. "That yellow splendor lights up the whole street."

"No, siree," declined Mabel. "If Mrs. Slater wants gloves she's going to have 'em. Do you think I'm going to suffer like this and not have 'em _show_?"

So Mabel, a swollen, imprisoned but gorgeous hand dangling at each side, a big navy-blue hat flopping over one eye, strutted muffless down the street.

"That's the house," announced Jean, as they turned the corner. "That big one with the covered driveway."

"Ugh!" shuddered Marjory, "it gives me chills to think of ringing such a wealthy doorbell. Are the cards safe, Bettie? My! I hope you haven't lost them."

"In my pocket in an envelope," assured Bettie.

"Can you see any white?" queried Jean, nervously. "I think my top petticoat has broken loose."

"It seems all right," said Marjory, stooping to test it with little sharp jerks. "Firm as the Rock of Gibraltar."

"It won't be if you pull like that," objected Jean.

"Somebody open the gate," requested Mabel. "I can't touch things."

"Everybody stand up straight," commanded Marjory. "We must look our best when we go up the walk."

"I wish I hadn't come," demurred Bettie, hanging back, diffidently. "Let's wait till it's darker."

"No," asserted Jean. "We'd better get it over."

"Yes," agreed Mabel, "I don't want to wear these gloves a minute longer than I have to."

"All right," sighed Bettie, despondently, "but you go first, Jean."

They had waited on the imposing doorstep for a long five minutes when it occurred to Marjory to ask if any one had pushed the bell.

"No," replied Jean, with a surprised air. "I thought _you_ had."

"And I," said Bettie, "supposed that Mabel had."

"How could I," demanded Mabel, hotly, "in these gloves?"

And then, all four began to giggle. Never before had such an inopportune fit of helpless, hysterical giggling seized the Cottagers. No one could stop. Tears rolled down Mabel's plump cheeks, and, fettered by her lemon-colored gloves, she had to let them roll, until Bettie wiped them away. And that set them all off again. In the midst of it Marjory's sharp elbow inadvertently struck the push-bell and Simmons, the imposing, much-dreaded butler, opened the door. Instantly the giggling ceased. Four exceedingly solemn little girls filed into the big hall. Bettie groped nervously for her pocket, found it and endeavored to extract the cards. But the large, stiff envelope stuck and, for a long, embarrassing moment, Bettie fumbled in vain; while the butler, his chin "very high and scornful" as Marjory said afterwards, waited.

At last the cards were out. Diffident Bettie dropped them, envelope and all, on the extended plate; but Jean deftly seized the envelope and shook out the cards. Next followed a most unhappy moment. Simmons was evidently expecting them to do _something_, they hadn't the remotest idea what.

Then, to their great relief, there was a sudden "swish" of silken skirts, a flash of scarlet and lively Henrietta, who had slid down the broad banister, was greeting them warmly.

"Grandmother's out," said she. "Come up to my room and have a real visit before she gets back. Simmons, just toddle down to the lower regions for some fruit and anything else you can find; send them up to my room."

Something very like a smile flitted across Simmons's wooden countenance. Perhaps it amused him to be ordered to "toddle."

"Do you like my new gown?" queried Henrietta, leading the way upstairs and flirting her accordion-pleated skirts in graceful fashion. "It's my dinner dress. I have to dress for dinner every night--such a fuss for just two of us. Come in here--this is my sitting-room."

"How very odd," said Jean, finding her voice at last.

"Isn't it?" laughed Henrietta, shaking her brown curls. She wore them tied back with two enormous black bows. "Grandmother's a mixture of everything, you know--French, English, New York Dutch--and her furniture shows it. Lots of it came from Europe and Father picked up things in India and China--such a jolly dad as he is. That's why this place is such a jumble."

"I like it," declared Jean. "It looks interesting--as if there were lovely stories in it."

"There are," said Henrietta, drawing aside a heavy, silken curtain, "and I keep making new ones to fit. This is my bedroom, this next one is my dressing-room and this is my bath."

"Ugh!" shuddered Mabel, "do you take shower baths?"

"Every morning," laughed Henrietta.

"What a lovely dressing table!" exclaimed Bettie, peering into the oval mirror and smiling into her own dark eyes. "I never saw such pretty things, even in a catalogue."

"It's French," said Henrietta, "but all those little jeweled boxes came from Calcutta--Father just loves to buy little boxes with inlaid tops. Oh, here's Greta, with things to eat." Henrietta hastily swept her belongings from a dainty little table and the smiling maid deposited the heavy tray.

"Tangerines, nuts, figs and sponge cake," chattered Henrietta. "That's very nice, Greta. Help yourselves to chairs, girls. Here's a tabouret for you, little Marjory. Catch, Jean," and the merry little hostess tossed a golden tangerine to Jean. "Oh, wait," she added. "You mustn't take off your gloves or get them soiled, because Grandmother always gets in about this time, and you know you must be very formal with Grandmother. I'll peel them for you. Now draw up closer. You mustn't spot your gloves, so I'll feed you. First, a bit of sponge cake all around. Now an almond. Now the orange. Oh, I'm forgetting myself! Now more sponge cake."

"This is fine," said Bettie. "I'm always hungry after school."

"So am I," said Jean.

"If I'd s'posed," said Mabel, "that formal calls were like this, I'd have started sooner."

"Are you a different person every time anybody sees you?" asked Bettie, curiously.

"Why?" queried Henrietta.

"Because," explained Bettie, "you seem so very changeable. You're a mischief in school, yesterday you seemed almost sad and to-day you're so polite."

"Oh, _thank_ you," said Henrietta, rising to sweep a deep and very much exaggerated courtesy. "Nobody _ever_ before said that I was polite."

"Miss Henrietta," said Greta, tapping at the door, "the carriage has just turned the corner."

"Follow me," said Henrietta, with an instant change of tone, as she hurriedly brushed the crumbs from her lap and pulled Mabel's jacket into place. "Follow me and don't make a sound. It's time to be formal."

Chapter XIX

With Henrietta

THROUGH a long corridor, around several corners and down two flights of back stairs, the formal callers, their hearts in their throats, followed Henrietta, who finally paused at the basement door.

"There," said Henrietta, mysteriously, "you're safe at last. Now listen. You must slip out through the alley, walk slowly round the block, approach the house with dignity, ring the doorbell and present your cards to Simmons."

"We--we can't," faltered Bettie. "He has them _now_."

"I'll poke them out through the letter slot," laughed resourceful Henrietta. "You're not going to escape that formal call. Wait, your hat's over one ear, Mabel. There now, you're perfectly lovely. Now don't forget to pick up the cards."

Entirely bewildered by Henrietta's pranks, the conventional visitors walked out through the alley, strolled round the block and nervously ascended the front steps. There, sure enough, were eight white cards popping out through the letter slot.

"My goodness!" gasped Jean, "they're not _our_ cards. This one says 'Mrs. Francis Patterson.'"

"And this," said Marjory, picking up another, "says 'John D. Thomas, sole agent for Todd's shoes.'"

"According to mine," giggled Bettie, "I'm Miss Ethel Louise Cartwright. What's on yours, Mabel?"

"'With love from Father,'" groaned Mabel.

"What in the world shall we do?" queried Jean, gathering up the remaining cards. "Not one of them will fit _us_."

"Give them to Simmons in a bunch," suggested Marjory. "He didn't look at the last lot, so perhaps he won't now."

So the girls, gathering what courage they could, touched the bell, presented their odd assortment of cards to Simmons--who almost succeeded in not looking astonished at seeing the callers again so soon--and were ushered into the reception room.

Such a sedate Henrietta advanced to meet them! Such a dignified, but charming old lady rose to shake hands all around! Such a sheepish quartette of visitors perched on the extreme edge of the nearest four chairs! Mrs. Slater smiled encouragingly; but Henrietta, from her post behind her grandmother's chair, displayed every sign of abject terror.

"We--we came to call," faltered Jean.

"That was pleasant," responded Mrs. Slater. "You are just in time to have some tea. Midge, will you please ring for Greta? I'm very glad you came, for I wanted my granddaughter to meet some of the young people."

Mrs. Slater, her slender, beringed fingers moving daintily among the cups, made the tea. Henrietta, in absolute silence and much subdued in manner, passed the cups, the delicate sandwiches and the little frosted tea cakes.

"Midge," demanded Mrs. Slater, turning suddenly to her granddaughter, "what in the world is the matter with you? You haven't said a word for fifteen minutes. I never knew you to be still for so long a time."

"It's my conscience," groaned Henrietta, dolefully. "I'm in another scrape."

"What have you done now?" asked Mrs. Slater, who seemed very much less terrifying than the girls had expected to find her. "Confession is good for the soul, my dear."

Henrietta's infectious laugh gurgled out suddenly and merrily.

"I've frightened four girls almost into spasms," said she. "You see, Grannie, I told them that they'd _have_ to call formally if they wanted me to visit them. When they came you were out, so I took them upstairs, gave them things to eat and a jolly good time, generally. Then, just for a joke, I had Greta tell me when you were coming and I led them carefully down the back way, made them go round the block and do it all over again, cards and all. You see, Grannie, they don't know you. They haven't seen anything but your husk; and I had them scared blue; didn't I, girls?"

"Midge, you shouldn't have done it," reproved Mrs. Slater, whose black eyes, however, were sparkling with only half-suppressed merriment. "That wasn't quite a courteous way to treat your guests!"

"Forgive me," pleaded Henrietta, flopping down on her knees and looking the very picture of penitence. "Walk on me, Jean. Wipe your shoes on me, Bettie. I grovel at your feet--at _every_body's feet."

"Don't grovel too hard in that dress," warned Mrs. Slater.

"Am I forgiven?" implored Henrietta, gathering up her ruffles with elaborate care.

The girls were not certain. Their pride had been injured and they eyed Henrietta doubtfully.

"When you've known Midge as long as I have," said Mrs. Slater, "you'll discover that she is really too tender-hearted to hurt a fly. But you'll also discover that she never misses an opportunity to play pranks on every soul she loves. It's a symbol of her favor. She will never tell you an untruth, she is too honorable to practise downright deceit; but depend on it, girls, she will fool you until you won't believe your own ears. And she's always sorry, afterwards. She spends half her time apologizing."

"Ah, _do_ forgive," pleaded extravagant Henrietta, suddenly extending imploring hands. "I mean it, truly. It _wasn't_ nice of me."

Jean, stooping suddenly, kissed the upturned lips.

"Why!" exclaimed Jean, genuinely surprised, "I didn't know I was going to do that."

"She gets around everybody," said Mrs. Slater, "and the worst of it is she's so good and so naughty that you'll never know whether you like her or not."

"Why, Grannie!" exclaimed Henrietta, "don't _you_ know?"

"I know that I like you," said the old lady, smiling fondly at pretty, whimsical Henrietta, "but you know very well that I also regard you with strong disapproval. I consider you a very faulty young person."

"You're a dear Grannie," breathed Henrietta, kissing the old lady's delicate hand, "but I'm quite sure you're spoiling me; isn't she, Bettie?"

"Were you like Henrietta," queried Jean, "when you were young?"

"My dear, you've found me out," laughed Mrs. Slater. "I was just such a piece of impishness; but my father was very severe, and I think I began earlier to restrain my prankishness. Midge, unfortunately, has a lenient father and a doting grandmother. Between them she is having pretty much her own way."

"I'll be good," promised Henrietta, comically, "in spite of them; but you see, girls, with such a pair of relatives dogging my footsteps, it's uphill work."

After a little more conversation, the girls rose to depart. Mrs. Slater begged them to come again. She said that she enjoyed young people. Then the big front door was closed behind them and the dreaded visit was over.

"So," said Marjory, "_that's_ what Mrs. Slater is like inside."

Mabel, unable to bear them longer, was recklessly peeling off her lemon-colored gloves.

"She's lovely, inside and out," declared Bettie, "but I never dreamed that she was like _that_."

"She wouldn't have cared if I _had_ gone without gloves," mourned aggrieved Mabel. "I'd like to pay Henrietta back for _that_."

"Girls," asked Marjory, "do you