“MISS” POPPY OTT
Yes, sir, the more we messed the matter around in our minds the more we
were made to realize how very little Dr. Madden had told on himself.
His secrets were still shut up. And, “man of mystery” that he was, the
only reason why he had told us about the hidden diary was to give the
granddaughter a square deal. Knocked out himself, he wanted us to help
her, if we could, and thus defeat the scheming lawyer.
That old hunk of human fat! How we hated him! We wanted to trim him to
a frazzle. But how were we going to do it? It looked kind of hopeless.
But Poppy isn’t the kind of a kid to give up without a struggle. I
guess not. And it was his gritty scheme now to waylay the lawyer, when
he came that night, and lock him up in the barn. If necessary, we would
keep the human lard-pail shut up for several days, which would give us
a chance to look around for the granddaughter. Then, if we found her,
we would turn him loose, and she could stare at him in surprise and
say: “Well, old hunk, where have _you_ been all summer?” Do you catch
on? Having been shut up in the barn, he wouldn’t be able to _prove_
that she hadn’t tripped into the house in time to save her fortune. A
kind of tricky scheme, it’s true, but look who we were fighting!
Ma, poor old soul, seemed sort of shrunken over the fact that the
red-plush settee hadn’t been mentioned in the diary. She _just knew_
that she wasn’t going to get it. Or, worse, she might not get anything
at all! Never having heard people talk so open and frank-like about
such things, it was kind of funny to us. But, bu-lieve me, we got the
grin out of our eyes in a hurry when the wilted little old lady began
to cry. We saw then how much the settee meant to her. And realizing
that she might get left out, after all, we wondered if we couldn’t buy
the piece for her. We still had sixteen dollars.
To our surprise, young fatty breezed in just before supper, having
brought another doctor--a tall, willowy geezer with mutton-chop
whiskers and a jug-handle nose. And speaking of noses, I wish you
could have seen squashy’s bugle. It was all over his face. Like a big
toadstool. And when he walked he sort of _spraddled_.
“Where was the wreck?” grinned Poppy.
That made the kid furious. For he knew, of course, who had sicked the
hornets on him.
“I’ll ‘wreck’ you,” he fired at us, “if you don’t crawl into a hole and
shut up.”
Crawl into a hole for _him_? Oh, yes! We’d even pull the hole in after
us, if he said so. Like so much mud!
Knowing his stuff, the new doctor soon found out the truth about old
Ivory Dome’s hives, and, in consequence, down came the quarantine sign.
It was fatty, of course, who yanked the sign down. But he met with a
snag when he tried to call the sheriff back. For the country officer
wasn’t at home.
“Just the same,” the fat hunk blustered around, as mean as mud, “you’ve
got to git out of here--every last one of you.”
Poppy had stood about enough.
“And suppose we don’t get out,” says he, kind of screwing his eyes down
to little black spots, “are you going to _put_ us out?”
Fatty saw that he was heading into trouble.
“My father will,” he blustered.
“With a posse, huh?”
“It won’t take much to put _you_ out,” was slung across the room, as
the fat one’s temper got away from him.
“No?” purred Poppy. “Would you like to try it ... yourself?”
“Two against one,” came the sneer.
Never have I known a kid who can hold his temper any better than Poppy.
And what the steady leader did now, instead of soaking the fat smart
aleck, was to give me a wink.
“Get a tapeline, Jerry.”
“What for?” says I.
“We’re going to do some measuring.”
I caught on then, for once before we had pulled this stunt of making a
monkey out of the other guy. And perfectly suited with the program, I
borrowed a tape measure from the housekeeper and got busy.
“Five feet six,” says I, giving fatty’s height.
Poppy gravely wrote that down.
“Twenty-eight inches from starboard to poop deck,” says I, meaning
across the hips.
That was written down, too.
“Eighteen inches under the cover,” says I.
The writer looked at me.
“Does that allow room on the breast for a wreath of calla lilies?” he
inquired solemnly.
“Maybe you better make it twenty inches,” I corrected, not wanting to
crush the funeral bouquet.
Fatty got away from me then.
“Don’t git fresh,” says he, scowling, “or you’ll find yourself playing
a harp.”
Poppy held his pencil ready.
“How many handles do you want on it?” says he.
“I’ll put a ‘handle’ on your nose, if you don’t shut up.”
“Like your own, huh?” I put in.
“Three handles on a side is the usual plan,” says the writer
thoughtfully. “But maybe I better make it four on a side for _you_....
East and west or north and south?”
Old thick-skull wasn’t traveling fast enough for us now.
“I mean,” the writer explained patiently, “do you want us to dig the
grave so it’ll lay east and west or north and south?”
“Grave? Whose grave?”
“_Good_ night!” I yipped. “You sure are dumb. What did you think we
were measuring you up for? --a new dress suit?”
“Go lay an egg,” says fatty.
“And here’s a nice little epitaph to go on the tombstone,” says Poppy:
Once I was fat and sassy--
The village shiek in my day--
Then I got too blamed brassy
And they tenderly laid me away--with a brick.
“I’ll ‘lay’ you away!”
Poppy suddenly dropped his game.
“The point is, kid, that we’re harder than nails. Our middle name
is dynamite. When we hits ’em, they lay. And while this may be a
disappointment to you, I’ll have to tell you outright that we don’t
intend to move out of here to-night. So, if you want to stay here,
yourself, the less you blow around about putting us out, the better it
will be for you. Do you git me?”
The doctor driving away, Ma called us to supper, and what do you know
if fatty didn’t have the nerve to park himself at the table along with
the rest of us!
“It’s his scheme,” says Poppy, when we were outside, “to wait here for
his old man.”
“He’ll have a long wait,” I laughed, thinking of how we were going to
coop up the fat lawyer in the bottle room.
“Maybe we ought to lock the kid up, too,” came thoughtfully. “Then he
won’t be able to give us away.”
I caught on. With the kid in the house, we couldn’t very well let on
afterwards that the granddaughter had been there when it was known to
him that she wasn’t. Yet I didn’t like the idea of locking him up. Too
much of this “locking-up” stuff would get us into trouble.
“Say, Poppy,” I laughed, as a crazy idea began to stagger around in my
head. “Do you want to do the trick up right?”
“It’s a cinch,” came earnestly, “that I don’t want to fumble.”
“Then listen to this,” I laughed again, more eager to further make a
monkey of fatty than to jump on him. “We catch old law-book and lock
him up. Then, having drawn cuts, the short-straw fellow is the ‘she.’”
“‘She?’ What she?”
“The granddaughter.”
I had him puzzled.
“For example,” I went on, “we’ll suppose that you’re the ‘she.’ And
having borrowed one of Ma Doane’s petticoats, we dress you up in it.
Then, just before midnight the ‘granddaughter’ trips in. Kisses and
hugs at the front door. ‘Ruthie, dearest, I’m _so_ glad to see you--and
did you have a pleasant journey, my love?’ Fatty is there, taking it
all in. But gloom and disappointment for him. Do you catch on?”
“Jerry, you’re cuckoo.”
“Cuckoo, nothing,” I hung on, seeing the fun that we could have.
“Not me,” he held off.
“What are you scared of?”
“I’d feel cute dressed up like a girl!”
“It’ll be a scream.”
“Yah--for you!”
I was grinning more than ever.
“When you flutter in, kid, looking like Mary Pickford on her wedding
day, I’ll meet you at the door and give you an old smacker right on the
two-lip bed.”
“It won’t work, Jerry. For I’m too bow-legged to pass for a girl.”
“Say, what do you think we’re going to pull off?--a bathing-beauty
contest?”
“It would be a _side-show_ if you had your way about it.”
“Suppose your legs _are_ sort of corkscrewed,” says I, looking him
over. “Your petticoat will cover that up.”
His eyes were dancing now. For big monkey that he is, he’s as full of
crazy fun as the next fellow.
“I get to fix the straws, huh?”
“Sure thing--if you don’t cheat.”
The straws fixed, I drew first, hopeful that I would be luckier than
the other time in the barn.
“Mine’s the shortest,” the other tried to snudge.
“Like so much mud!” I yipped happily.
Running into the house, we quickly told the little old lady about our
scheme.
“What nonsense!” she sputtered.
“But if we don’t do it, Mrs. Doane,” I hung on, “how are we going to
pretend afterwards that the girl was here before midnight?”
“Oh, dear! I don’t want Miss Ruth to lose her fortune. Even if I get
nothing myself--and I noticed several odd dishes in the cupboard
just like my company set--I don’t want Lawyer Chew to walk off with
everything.”
“Of course not,” says I quickly. “So any scheme to help the
granddaughter is worth trying.”
“I hardly know what to say. For after the way things have been stirred
up here, I haven’t confidence in my judgment any more.”
“Which means ‘yes,’ huh?”
“But can you really do it?” came doubtfully.
“Leave it to old Poppy,” I bragged, slapping my chum on the back. “He’s
clever.”
“I won’t feel clever,” the other suffered in advance, “with petticoats
on.”
“You’ll make a swell flapper,” I stepped around.
Oh, boy, I kept thinking to myself, wasn’t I the lucky little thing
that it wasn’t me.
He gritted his teeth.
“Jerry, if you ever tell about this at home!... Gr-r-r-r!”
Cornering old Goliath, whose hair, you’ll remember, hung to his
shoulders, we got busy on him with a pair of shears. He didn’t mind.
When we got through with him he looked like a bald-headed convict.
Working in the closed room, Ma’s fingers flew as she took the hair
as we clipped it and made it into a wig. As a sort of rehearsal, I
privately helped Poppy into the outfit--and standing there in the
middle of the room, did he ever look like a whipped puppy! First came
slippers and long silk stockings. Then a fancy petticoat of Ma’s. And
over that a hand-worked dress that the elder, fortunately, had brought
along as a present for the younger relative. With the wig on, and
his eyebrows touched up with a burnt match, “Miss” Poppy Ott was the
snappiest little chicken that ever cracked a shiek’s heart.
Ma came back to the room.
“I swan!” she told Poppy. “You look more like a girl than Miss Ruth,
herself. For, if the truth is known, _she_ always acted like a tomboy.”
Poppy wiggled.
“It’s too tight,” he suffered at the waist.
“You don’t want to look like a tub,” I stood off and admired him.
“I feel like a fool,” he grunted.
“Nix on the bass-drum talk,” says I. “Squeak.”
“What do you think I am?--a rusty hinge?”
“Make your voice sound like a girl’s.”
He puckered up gamely.
“And do I sound like a girl now?” he squeaked.
“You’ll do, Poppy,” I slapped him on the back. “Gee, kid, you’re
clever.”
“Remember,” he glared at me, as he powdered his nose, “one word of this
when we get home, and your folks will pick you up with a blotter.”
We were all set now. And as it was getting close to nine o’clock, we
took old Goliath with us and went out to the front gate, where we tied
a rope from pillar to pillar.
“The trick is,” Poppy explained to the giant, “that we’ve got to stop
old Chew from going into the house. And being big and husky, we brought
you along to help us.”
“Sure thing,” waggled old baldy. “What do you want me to do?--wring his
neck?”
“He deserves it,” grinned the leader, “but I guess we hadn’t better do
that. For it might get us into trouble with the law. A safer plan will
be to lock him up in the barn.”
Pretty soon the lawyer came along, having learned from his smart son,
of course, that the quarantine sign was a trick.
“Gid-dap!” the driver flopped the lines, when the horse stopped at the
gate. But the old nag never budged. Grumbling, the big one got out to
see what was wrong, which gave us a chance to tackle him, football
style, after which Goliath lugged him off to the barn.
With the horse and buggy out of sight, we ran back to the kitchen,
where we found young fatty helping himself to one of Ma Doane’s choice
apple pies. The big pig! Poppy and I had spotted that particular pie
for ourselves.
The door-bell ringing at eleven-thirty, the fat kid beat it into the
hall, sure now, after an uneasy hour, that his father had finally
arrived to do the will reading.
“Why,” came a familiar squeaky voice from the open door, “if it isn’t
little _Egg_bert!”
Now, I’ll admit right off the bat that this “girl” stuff of ours was a
crazy mess. We probably shouldn’t have done it. Certainly, it didn’t
get us anything in the end. But, even so, before I go any farther,
I think I ought to hand old Poppy a hunk of praise. For he sure was
carrying out his part to perfection. Not only did he _look_ like a
girl, but he acted like one. His voice was a bit off-key, of course.
But that was nothing.
“Miss Ruth!” cried the housekeeper, playing her part. “Miss Ruth has
come at last!”