A SURPRISE
Belle Ringold, who was really nervous over the noise, forgot for the
moment her feud with the Roselawn girls. She cried:
“Jess Norwood! do you mean to say you knew snakes were here in this
house?”
“Henrietta killed two here,” said Jessie, looking at the closed door
of the stairway. “But if there are others up there they can’t get
down while the door is shut.”
“I don’t believe it!” scoffed Sally Moon. “Somebody is trying to
scare us.”
“Anyhow,” drawled Amy, “it probably isn’t a ghost.”
Her brother laughed aloud. “If it is,” he said, “it must be the ghost
of an old hen. Sounds like a hen scratching on a barn floor.”
“Something with long toenails anyway,” declared Burd seriously. “You
can hear ’em.”
“Would you say, Burd, that it sounded to you like a bear, for
instance?” his college friend said with equal gravity.
“Now, boys, hush!” cried Amy. “We are not to be scared. Jess and I
_were_ worried that time by the snakes. But we saw them——”
“And nobody has seen these mysterious critters,” put in Chip Truro,
who was of the party. “I shut that door when we came in here to fix
the tables. Listen! I believe they are hopping down the stairs.”
“Perhaps they _are_ snakes!” shrieked Amy, jumping up from her seat.
“Don’t sound like those others did,” said Henrietta, who had kept on
steadily eating, and now spoke between swallows. “Them black snakes
was fighting before.”
“Maybe they have patched up a truce,” said Darry Drew. “I tell you it
is a chicken.”
“It may be a crysomela bypunktater,” remarked Burd recklessly. “Does
that fact keep me from having another sandwich, Amy?”
“It ought to,” said Amy, while Henrietta’s eyes opened so wide when
she heard Burd’s make-believe Latin that she could scarcely bite her
own sandwich.
“My!” Henrietta whispered to Jessie. “What lots of things they learn
you at them colleges, don’t they?”
“There is more than one thing hopping down those stairs,” declared
Chip. “I reckon it must be a whole flock of those ‘bypunktaters’ you
mentioned, Alling.”
“I’m going to find out what it means,” declared Sally, who was of
a defiant nature. She hopped up and made for the stairway door.
“Somebody is trying to play a joke on us.”
“Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” urged Amy. “You don’t know, Sally. It
might be snakes.”
“Snakes with claws on them?” scoffed Sally.
She grabbed the handle of the door. All was silent behind the panels
at that moment. A big headlight lantern had been brought along, and
this stood upon the old chimney mantel, lighting the whole room. The
blazing ray of it was aimed right at the stairway door.
Everybody stopped eating to look at Sally. That is, everybody but
Henrietta. The freckle-faced girl was so absorbed in the good things
Jessie and Amy had heaped on her wooden plate that she gave small
attention to anything else.
“Here goes!” cried Sally Moon.
She jerked open the door. The blaze of lamplight revealed all the
stairway landing. There was a black-and-white striped, bushy-tailed
creature and several small replicas of the larger one on the stairs.
The lamplight evidently dazzled them. They blinked and made no sound.
“For the land’s sake!” shouted Belle Ringold, and started up in haste.
“Why, it’s a cat and a bunch of kittens,” said Sally.
But most of the older members of the crowd, as well as all the
Dogtown children, made hastily for the exit of the kitchen.
“Mephitis mephitica!” Darry sang out. “Beat it, folks!”
“What _does_ he mean?” gasped Sally Moon, falling back from the door.
The general although unexplained desire of everybody to get away
from the vicinity of the stairway amazed Sally, but it startled her
too. The group of little animals on the loft stairs seemed the most
harmless things in the world.
Suddenly Henrietta came to sudden action. She dropped the cake she
had begun on and rushed for the stairway. Sally screamed and fell
back out of the freckled little girl’s way. Amy screamed to Henrietta
to return. But the latter reached the door, grabbed the handle,
and slammed it shut again before what Darry had called “Mephitis
mephitica” could emerge. At the same time she explained to the
bewildered Sally:
“They’s skunks, lady.”
“Good kid!” shouted Burd Alling. “You certainly take the strawberry
tart.”
“Have you got any?” asked the practical Henrietta. “I didn’t taste
any of that yet.”
This caused more than a little hilarity among the picnic groups;
but like Sally and Belle and their friends, the crowd from Roselawn
voted to remove to the out-of-doors to finish supper. The moonlight
was sufficiently bright for all purposes, and the near presence of
the pariah of the woods and her family made them all “feel creepy,”
as Amy expressed it.
“This old Carter place certainly offers some startling experiences,”
Jessie said. “It is nice to come to, but snakes and—an—well, whatever
Darry calls them, seem to fancy the place, too.”
“Next time we come picnicking I’ll send some of the men ahead with a
dog and drive out all the wild animals,” declared Belle.
“If your dog ever ran into those kitties on the stairway there, he
would be the wilder animal,” Chip Truro said, laughing. “But they are
perfectly harmless if you don’t disturb them.”
“I hope they won’t object to music and dancing,” Sally Moon said. “I
am going to start the machine again.”
“If we only had a radio set here, we could get the ten o’clock
entertainment from Stratfordtown,” Amy suddenly suggested.
“Why couldn’t we, next time we come?” Belle said, catching at the new
suggestion instantly.
“You don’t rig a radio outfit as simple as all that, do you?” Sally
asked.
“You might bring your antenna rigged as a loop,” Jessie said quietly.
“It would not take long to make the necessary connections.”
“Is that so?” Sally observed.
Belle broke in suddenly and called Sally Moon away. She was very
eager, and the two friends held a long and private conversation. Amy
and Jessie were not usually interested in the personal affairs of
Belle and her chum, but it struck the Roselawn radio girls that Amy’s
remark must have given Belle a new idea. They were to learn more
about this later.
The renewal of the dancing gained the attention of all the party, and
for an hour more the moonlit space before the Carter house continued
a gay scene. Then it was eleven o’clock and Darry’s party, at least,
thought it time to go home.
Jessie insisted that Henrietta and her party go back to Dogtown, too.
The canoe which had been partly wrecked by Amy’s misfortune had been
repaired very neatly by the oldest Foley boy and Monty Shannon.
“Really,” Amy said to her chum, “that Shannon boy is a smart little
fellow. It’s too bad——”
“Hush! Don’t let’s say it,” whispered Jessie.
“I don’t know that we ought to try to hide it, if he did take that
watch,” grumbled Amy.
“Oh, I hope he didn’t!” said Jessie gravely.
“I asked him where he was buying his radio set. He said of the
Stratford Electric Company,” Amy laughed. “If he sold Mark’s watch
to get money to buy a radio set, the Stratfords will get fifteen
dollars back, anyway.”
“How you talk!” exclaimed Jessie. “That beautiful watch is worth
several hundred dollars. Whoever bought the watch—if Monty sold
it—knows of course that it is valuable and that no boy in Dogtown
could rightfully own such a thing. Dear me! I do wish I knew what to
do about it.”
“How about taking legal advice?” suggested Amy roguishly, for both
their fathers were lawyers.
“I am afraid to do that,” confessed Jessie. “As I said before, to
arouse suspicion against Monty Shannon would be a very cruel thing
to do if it turned out afterward that he was innocent. No, Amy, I
couldn’t even tell Daddy Norwood.”