CHAPTER XXII_Rainbow Hill

SARAH HAS AN IDEA

Rosemary walked home slowly. Louisa, worn out by worry and work, had

yielded to the luxury of a good cry and though, when she had wiped her

eyes, she declared she felt much better and more cheerful than for a

week. Rosemary was not convinced. A glimpse of Alec, thin and brown,

with the same worried look in his nice clear eyes, had not helped to

convince her. It was plain that both Louisa and Alec were expecting

the foreclosure of the mortgage on the farm and anticipating the

separation of the family.

"I couldn't stand it," said Rosemary earnestly to a chipmunk, who shook

his head in sympathy. "I couldn't stand it, if Sarah and Shirley and I

had to go live in different houses. Suppose we didn't have Mother and

Hugh and Winnie!"

The realization of her own blessings only emphasized the hard position

of the Gays without a father or mother. By the time she had come to

the Rainbow Hill orchard, Rosemary was feeling very blue indeed.

"Come on up!" two sweet little voices called to her. "Come on up,

Rosemary!"

Rosemary peered at the trees, and giggles floating from one gnarled old

apple tree revealed where Sarah and Shirley were hidden.

"What's the matter?" asked Shirley instantly, when Rosemary had swung

herself up to a seat beside them.

"I've been to see Louisa Gay," explained Rosemary, "and they haven't a

cent of money for the interest on that awful mortgage. It's due the

first of September and Louisa says the man will take the farm and

they'll all be on the town!"

"I thought you had to go and live in the poor house, if folks took your

farm," objected Sarah.

"It's all the same," said Rosemary impatiently. "Louisa says so. When

you're 'on the town' that means the town supports you and you live at

the poor farm. Girls, we just have to get some money for the Gays!"

"Ask Hugh," suggested Shirley, as her favorite way out of money

difficulties.

"We can't," Rosemary told her. "Louisa and Alec don't like strangers

and Hugh is a stranger to them. We mustn't even tell grown-up people

about them, because if they know the Gays are poor, they'll come and

take them to the poor farm, anyway. Alec says they don't even go to

the Center any more because he doesn't want people to ask him

questions."

When Winnie rang the bell to signal that lunch was ready, the three

girls had not succeeded in forming any definite plan to help the Gays.

They had made up their minds that money must be obtained, but the way

was anything but clear.

"You see," said Rosemary, taking up the question again after lunch, "we

can't ask Warren or Richard for any money. They are saving all they

earn to get them through agricultural college and Hugh told me they

have to do some work in the winter to get enough. Jack never has any

money of his own--he will have some at the end of the month, but he's

set his heart on buying his mother something lovely with the first

money he has ever really earned. There doesn't seem to be anybody to

help Louisa and Alec, except us."

"And we haven't a cent, except the five-dollar gold pieces Aunt Trudy

sent us Fourth of July," said Sarah practically.

"We must think," declared Rosemary solemnly. "You think _hard_, Sarah,

and you, too, Shirley. And I'll think with all my might."

Such concentration of thought should have produced some result, but the

next morning each had failure to report. Then Richard announced that

Solomon must be shod and offered to take anyone over who felt free to

spend the morning in Bennington.

"I have to make up my lost practising," said Rosemary, "and Hugh is

going to take Mother and Shirley with him--he telephoned he'd stop for

them. Sarah would like to go--she was wailing that everyone went to

places and left her home."

Sarah climbed happily into her place by Richard and they drove off to

Bennington, at a slower pace than usual for Richard wished to "favor"

the shoeless foot.

"Ph, look!" the rather silent Sarah kindled into animation at the sight

of a gay-colored poster tacked to a telegraph pole along the road.

"What's that, Richard?"

"Circus!" he answered smilingly. "Coming next month. See the lions,

Sarah? How would you like one of those to play with, eh?"

He obligingly pulled in the willing Solomon, and Sarah studied the

poster with intent, serious dark eyes. Driving on, Richard found her

curiously self-absorbed. She answered him in monosyllables and was

apparently deep in a brown study.

"A penny for your thoughts?" he offered, wondering what she could be

pondering over.

But Sarah refused to sell and continued to be silent.

Richard would have been surprised indeed, could he have seen what was

going on in that active little brain. The circus poster had shown

Sarah, besides the wonderful lions, a marvelous performing bear,

dancing on his hind legs. A crowd of people laughed at him and

applauded.

"Bony can do that!" Sarah had thought with pride, and then, like a

flash, followed the thought: "I could sell Bony to the circus and give

the money to Louisa!"

The rest of the way to Bennington was occupied, as far as Sarah was

concerned, in selling Bony to the owner of the bear, who promised to

give the pig a kind home and explain to him frequently why his mistress

had consented to let him leave Rainbow Hill.

Sarah had reached the moment when she put her precious pig into the

bear man's hands (she innocently assumed that he must have charge of

all the circus animals) just as Richard drew up before the blacksmith's

shop.

"You don't want to hang around here," said Richard authoritatively,

lifting her down from the seat. "I'll have to give some orders about

shoeing Solomon and you wait for me on the side porch of the hotel. I

won't be long."

He led Sarah unprotestingly--though at any other time she would have

teased to be allowed to stay and watch the fascinating work of the

smithy--across the street and to the steep little flight of steps that

led to the pleasant, vine-covered side porch of the country hotel.

"Good morning, Mrs. King," he said, lifting his hat as a gray-haired

woman peered over the railing at them. "This is Sarah Willis--I want

to have her wait here while I'm over at the shop."

"She'll be all right," answered Mrs. King kindly. "She can sit here

and rest; it's nice and shady."

Mrs. King was shelling peas, and Sarah sat down in the cretonne-covered

rocking chair next to her. There was one other person on the porch--a

stout gentleman, stretched out in an arm chair, sound asleep. His face

was covered with a white silk handkerchief which partially hid his

round, bald head.

"Do you like the country?" asked Mrs. King, glancing toward her small

visitor while her clever, quick fingers sent a continuous shower of

peas rattling into the pan in her lap.

"Oh, yes, I like it," nodded Sarah with enthusiasm. "I like it lots

better than Eastshore and going to school. I wouldn't mind living in

the country for always."

"But you'd have to go to school if you lived in the country," said Mrs.

King mildly. "You can't get away from lesson-books, no matter where

you go."

"Not in Africa?" suggested Sarah who never disdained an argument.

"I've never been in Africa," Mrs. King replied, "so I can't tell you

positively. But my guess is all the children who aren't natives, have

to be educated."

"What do the children who are natives do?" asked Sarah.

Mrs. King considered.

"I imagine they go around without any clothes on and the tigers eat

them," she decided, recalling to mind several doleful pictures she had

seen in an old geography.

Sarah shivered, not in sympathy with the scantily clad children, but

because of the tigers mentioned.

"I wouldn't want to be eaten by a tiger," she declared, rocking

violently back and forth, "but I would love to have a baby tiger to

play with me."

"Look out you don't go over backward," warned the landlady. "Don't you

know a baby tiger would grow up to be a fierce, wild animal and

probably end up by eating you?" she added.

"He wouldn't eat me, if I brought him up tame," said Sarah. "Baby

tigers are like kittens--I saw some pictures of them once. I'd keep

mine to guard my farm and I'll bet no robbers would come if they knew a

live tiger was roaming around."

"No, robbers wouldn't come, or your friends, either," Mrs. King said

grimly. "And the butcher would be afraid to turn up, for fear the

tiger might think he was the meat ordered for his dinner. You and your

tiger would get lonely after a while."

"I have a tiger cat home," volunteered Sarah. "But she isn't very

exciting. I like big animals. Maybe a baby elephant would be more

fun."

"Than a tiger?" said Mrs. King, pausing to admire a freshly opened pod

in her hand. "Seven perfect peas," she murmured.

"Yes, I could use a baby elephant," Sarah informed her. "They are very

strong. I have an animal book that tells all about them. Even baby

elephants are strong. I saw a picture of one pulling a tree over."

"My land, a farm won't be big enough for you," commented Mrs. King.

"What you ought to do is to go out West and start a place in the middle

of the desert. But the snakes would probably send you back home before

long."

She was quite unprepared for Sarah's cry of rapture.

"Snakes!" repeated that small girl in a voice of ecstasy. "Are there

snakes in the desert?"

Mrs. King shook her pan vigorously in the effort to find a stray pod

that had slipped through her fingers.

"I've heard that the place is full of snakes," she answered. "Man or

beast isn't safe from them. Rattlesnakes and all kinds--sometimes,

I've heard folks say, if the nights are the least bit chilly, the

rattlers crawl under the blankets to get warm. Imagine waking up in

the morning and finding a snake in bed with you!"

"He wouldn't hurt you, if you didn't provoke him," Sarah asserted.

"Snakes are polite and they'll let you alone if you let them do as they

please. I think snakes are the most interesting things to see!"

"I don't!" said Mrs. King. "I'd run a mile before I'd face one. There

is nothing, to my mind, more disgusting than a wriggling snake."

Sarah looked grieved.

"That's the same way my Aunt Trudy talks," she observed. "She is

scared to death of little, tiny snakes. Even water snakes. And a

water snake never hurts anyone."

"Don't show me one," said Mrs. King hurriedly. "I don't care what kind

of a snake it is, they're all alike as long as they can move. I never

want to see one on the place."

Sarah wisely concluded that another topic would be welcome and

unconsciously the huge gray cat that climbed over the porch railing and

leaped heavily to the floor, provided it.

"What a darling cat!" cried Sarah, abandoning her chair in such haste

that it narrowly missed falling backward. "Is it yours, Mrs. King?"

"Yes, he's mine," said the landlady. "He used to be a right handsome

cat but lately he's getting too fat. The girls in the kitchen feed him

all the time. I don't believe he has caught a mouse or a rat for six

weeks."

"He wouldn't catch mice," Sarah declared feelingly. "Would you,

darling? He's too nice for that," and she sat down in the

cretonne-covered rocker again, holding the cat in her arms.

"No cat is worth his board, to my way of thinking, who _doesn't_ catch

mice and rats," retorted Mrs. King. "Garry used to be a famous mouser."

"I guess the poor mice want to live," Sarah protested, stroking the

thick fur of the purring cat with a practised hand.

"It's a question of human beings living, or the mice," declared Mrs.

King. "Of course if you want the mice to move into your house and you

move out, that's another matter. Till I get ready to do that, I'm

going to set traps in the pantry every night and leave Garry shut up in

the kitchen."

"Just like Winnie," murmured the hapless Sarah.

"Seems to me you ought to run a zoo," said Mrs. King glancing curiously

over her spectacles at the small girl rocking the fat cat. "Though how

you're going to keep the mice and the cats and the snakes and the

tigers all happy and contented together, is more than I'm able to

figure out."

"I could make 'em love each other," said Sarah confidently.

"I don't know about that," argued Mrs. King. "Even in the circus they

can't bring that about. Mr. Robinson would tell you that," and she

pointed to the stout man who was still asleep in his chair.

"Who's that?" whispered Sarah, wondering why anyone should want to

sleep with a handkerchief over his face.

"That's Mr. Robinson, dearie," replied Mrs. King, her swift fingers

never pausing in their work. "He's advance agent for the circus."

Sarah sat up with a jerk.

"Does he own the circus?" she asked eagerly.

"Bless you, no," said Mrs. King smiling, "he doesn't own it, though he

has a good deal to do with it, in one way or another. He comes every

year to see that the posters are put up and to arrange for space for

the tents and some extra help, if it's needed. He goes around to all

the towns, ahead of the circus, you see, and tells folks it is coming;

and in the winter he does considerable buying of animals and whatnot

and hiring of performers, they tell me."

Sarah stared at the silk handkerchief in spellbound fascination. One