ORIGINAL PLANS
During the next half hour the girls busied themselves playing store.
Ruth was almost as keenly interested in the little place as was Nancy,
herself, but it was noticeable that Vera was more curious. She poked
into the farthest corners, even opening obscure little cubby-holes that
Nancy had not yet discovered. All the while they talked about the
Townsends and the mysterious Mr. Sanders, declaring that something
around the Whatnot Shop held the clue to the Townsend disagreement, and
Mr. Sanders' mysterious power of disappearing.
"I think it's the funniest thing," ruminated Nancy, clapping the wrong
cover on the white thread box, "here we came away out here to be
peaceful, quiet and studious. Mother looked for a place just to keep Ted
and me busy, and then we run into a regular hornet's nest of rumors."
"Don't you know," replied Ruth, "that still waters run deepest?"
"But I didn't know we had to take on a whole Mother Goose set of fairy
tales with a little two cent shoe-string shop," protested Nancy. "Of
course it will serve me right if I get into an awful squall. My
rebellion against the long-loved house-work idea, is sure to get me into
some trouble, isn't it?"
"Who doesn't rebel secretly?" admitted Ruth. "Isn't it fairer to up and
say so than to be always hoping the dishpan will spring a leak, and
dish-towels will blow away?" Ruth was making rapid strides in gaining
Nancy's affection. She was so unaffected, so frank, and so sensible.
Vera wasn't saying much but she was poking a lot. Just now she was
fussing with some discarded and disabled toys. She held up a helpless
windmill.
"Imagine!" she said, simply.
"Well, what of it?" asked Ruth. "It was pretty--once!"
"Pretty! As if anyone around here would ever buy a thing like that."
"Let me see it," Nancy said. "I'm sure Ted would love 'a thing like
that.' He'd spend days tinkering with it." Nancy took the red and blue
tin toy and inspected it critically. As she wound a tiny key a little
bell tinkled.
"Lovel-lee!" cried Ruth. "That's a merry wind. Or is it a tinkle-ly
wind? Anyway it's cute. Save it for the small brother, Nancy. And I
think he's awfully cute. Here's something else for his camp," she
offered, handing Nancy over a red, white and blue popgun.
"Great!" declared Nancy. "Ted has been too busy to rummage yet, but he's
sure to be thrilled when he does go at it. Yes, I think Ted is cute, and
I hope the disappearing man won't cast a spell on him," she finished,
laughing at the idea, and meanwhile inspecting the toy windmill.
"You can joke," warned Vera, "but my grandmother insists that what
everyone says must be true, and everyone says Baldy Sanders is
freakish."
"Baldy," repeated Nancy gaily. "I noticed that. But he has enough of
eyes to make up for the lost hair. I never saw such merry twinkling
eyes."
"Really!" Vera commented. "I never notice men's eyes."
"Just their bald heads," teased Ruth. "Now Vera, if Mr. Sanders is a
professor, as some folks claim, and if he ever gets our class in
chemistry, I'm afraid you would just have to notice his merry, twinkling
eyes. Anyhow," and Ruth cocked up a faded little blue muslin pussy cat,
"he's merry, and that is in his favor. What are you doing with that
windmill, Nancy?"
"Inspecting it. It's a queer kind of windmill. Look at the cross pieces
on top and this tin cup."
All three girls gave their attention to the queer toy. It was, as Nancy
had said, different from the usual model. It had cross pieces on top
instead of on the side, and one piece was capped off with a metal cup.
"I'll save it for Ted," Nancy concluded. "But I hope it isn't dangerous.
It takes boys to find out the worst of everything. Just before we moved,
most of our furniture is in storage you know," she put in to explain the
scarcity of things at the country place, "Ted went up to the attic and
found an old wooden gun. It would shoot peas, and what those boys didn't
shoot peas at wasn't worth mentioning. I'll put the freak windmill away
for him, though. It looks quite harmless."
"Oh, I think it's just joyous to have a shop," exclaimed Ruth, "and if
you'll let me, Nancy, I'll come in and 'tend sometimes."
"I'd love to have you," replied Nancy earnestly. "I did expect my chum,
Bonny Davis, to visit me, but she's gone down to the shore first.
Bonny's lots of fun. I'm sure you'd like her if she does come," declared
Nancy, loyally.
"I like her name," Ruth answered. "What is it? Bonita?"
"No, it's really Charlotte, but she's so black we've always called her
Bonny from ebony, you know. Now Vera, what have you discovered?" broke
off Nancy, looking over to the comer in which Vera was plainly
interested. "Anything spooky?"
"Not spooky," replied Vera, "but I never saw such odd looking fishing
things. No wonder the Townsends went bankrupt. Here are boxes and boxes
of wires and weights, and I don't know what all. Oh, I'll tell you!" she
exclaimed, in a rare burst of enthusiasm. "Let's have a fishing sale?"
"And sell fish!" teased Ruth.
"No," objected Nancy, taking Vera's part. "I think a special sale of
fishing and sport supplies would be great. Let's see what we've got
toward it."
"It would draw the boys and that's something," joked Ruth. "But I'll
tell you what, Nancy, you had better be careful what you try to sell to
the young fishermen around here. They're pretty particular and rather
good at the sport. I like to fish myself."
"Oh, I'd love to," declared Nancy. "Where do you go?"
"Dyke's pond and sometimes the old mill creek," replied Ruth. "But we
only get sunnies there. There's perch in the pond, though."
This led to discussing the fishing prospects in brooks, ponds and other
waterways around Long Leigh, until it was being promptly decided that
Ruth and Vera should very soon introduce Nancy to the sport. The idea of
having a sale of the outfit at the shop was also entered upon
enthusiastically, until the afternoon was melting into shadows before
the girls realized it.
"But what ever you do," Ruth cautioned Nancy, "don't let any one induce
you to take the Whatnot out of the window. That's the sign of this old
shop that's known for miles and miles."
"I think a cute little windmill would be lots nicer," suggested Vera.
"That Whatnot is--atrocious."
"Windmill!" repeated Ruth. "But we don't sell windmills."
"Certainly not. Neither do we sell Whatnots," contended Vera.
"But we sell the things that are on the Whatnot," argued Ruth. "And
besides Whatnot stands for _What Not!_"
It was amusing Nancy to listen to their assumed partnership. They were
both talking about "_our_ shop" and insisting upon what "_we_ sell."
This established at once a comradeship among all three, and Nancy was
convinced that her own desire to go into business was not, after all,
very queer. Other girls, no doubt, shared it as well, but the difference
was--Nancy's mother. She was the "angel of the enterprise," as Nancy had
declared more than once.
"And I'll tell you," confided Vera, quite surprisingly, "if you'll let
me, I'll help you with your housework. I don't mind it a bit, and you
hate it so."
"Oh, that's just lovely of you, Vera," Nancy replied, while a sense of
fear seized her, "but I really must do some of it, you know. Even a good
store keeper should know how to cook a little," she pretended, vowing
that her house would be in some kind of order before Vera ever even got
a peek into the living rooms.
When they were finally gone Nancy stood alone in the little store, too
excited to decide at once which way to turn. She liked the girls,
especially Ruth, and even Vera had her interesting features. At least
she said odd things in an odd way, and her drawl was "delicious," Nancy
admitted. Of course she was gossipy. There was all that nonsense about
Mr. Sanders. As if any human being could really disappear. Ted would
just howl at the idea, Nancy knew, and if the man were really a
professor of some sort, that ought to make him interesting, she
reflected. At any rate, he was, the girls had said, a friend of the
Townsends, and Nancy would make it her business to ask Miss Townsend
about him the very next time she came into the store.
Her mind busy with such reflections, Nancy hooked the screen door, (the
shop was not yet supposed to be open for business) and turned toward the
upset kitchen.
"I've just got to do something with it," she promised, "before mother
comes. I wish Ted would hurry along home. Of course, he's a boy and boys
don't have to worry about kitchens."
Nevertheless, as Nancy dashed around she did make a real effort to
adjust the disordered room, for her pride was now prompting her.
Whatever would Vera Johns say to such a looking place? And was all this
fair to a mother so thoughtful and so good-natured as was Nancy's?
"I begin right here at this door," she decided, feeling she had to begin
at a definite spot, "and I just straighten out every single thing from
here to the back door."
Peach baskets idling with the odds and ends of packing, Ted's red
sweater, Nancy's blue one, Nancy's straw hat that she felt she must have
within reach and which therefore had been "parked" on the floor, safe,
however, under a big chair, and a paste-board box of books that she also
didn't want to lose track of, the portable phonograph cover, the
phonograph itself was reposing safely on the corner of the sink where
Ted had been trying a new record; all these and as many more
miscellaneous articles Nancy was briefly encountering in her general
clearing up plan "from one door to the other."
But she forged on, the old broom doing heroic duty as a plough cutting
through the d├ębris. Finally, having gotten most of the stuff into a
corner, she undertook to scatter it in a way peculiar to one with
business, rather than domestic, instincts.
"I'll need the baskets, all of them, when I'm settling the store," she
promptly decided, "and I'll get Ted to put the box of books in there
too, so I can read while I'm waiting. Then the phonograph--That can go
in there just as well, it may draw customers." At this Nancy laughed,
but she picked up the little black box, it had been her birthday
present, and put it right on the small table under the old mantle in the
store. A phonograph in the store seemed attractive.
"I guess we'll find the store handy for lots of things," Nancy was
thinking, for the difference in the size of their old home, and the
limits of this new one, was not easy to adjust.
With a sort of flourish of the broom at the papers and bits of excelsior
that were still an eyesore about, Nancy at length managed to "make a
path," as she expressed it, through the kitchen.
"And I'll gather some flowers to greet mother with," she insisted.
"There's no reason why we shouldn't make a pretty room of a kitchen like
this, with one, two, three, good sized windows," she counted.
But the glorious bunch of early roses must have felt rather out of
place, trying to conserve their wondrous perfume from contamination with
the remains of a smudgy odor from burnt potatoes--which by-the-way, had
not yet come to light, not to say anything of the real fire smell of
burnt meat, that ran over from a pan-cake griddle into a seething gas
flame.
"Oh, those flowers!" exhaled the triumphant Nancy, pushing the dishpan
away so as not to bend the longest stalk, which was brushed against it.
"Won't mother just love it here?"
After all, is not the soul of the poet more valuable than the skill of a
prospective housewife?