The Response to Mabel's Telegram
The night of their flitting from Dandelion Cottage, the girls had
hastily eaten all the radishes in the cottage garden to prevent their
falling into the hands of the grasping Milligans. Now, the morning after
their visit to Mr. Downing, they were wishing that they hadn't; not
because the radishes had disagreed with them, but for quite a different
reason. They could not enter the cottage, of course, but it had
occurred to them that it might be possible to derive a certain
melancholy satisfaction from tending and replenishing the little garden.
That pleasure, at least, had not been forbidden them; but before
beginning active operations, they took the precaution of enlarging the
hole in the back fence, so that instantaneous flight would be possible
in case Mr. Downing should stroll cottageward.
Their motive was good. When Mr. Black returned, if he ever should,
Bettie meant that he should find the little yard in perfect order.
"We'll keep to our part of the bargain, anyway," said Bettie, as the
four girls were making their first cautious tour of inspection about the
cottage yard. "There's lots of work to be done."
"Yes," agreed Jean. "We said we'd keep this yard nice all summer, and it
wouldn't be right not to do it."
"I wonder if we ought to ask Mr. Downing?" asked conscientious Bettie,
stooping to pull off some gone-to-seed pansies.
"Perhaps you'd like the job!" suggested Marjory, with mild sarcasm.
"My sakes!" said Mabel. "I wouldn't go near that man again if I was
going to swallow an automobile the next moment if I didn't. I could hear
him roar '_No_' every few minutes all night. I fell out of bed twice,
dreaming that I was trying to get off of that old porch of his before he
could grab me."
"Well, I guess we'd better not ask," said Jean, "because I'm pretty sure
he'd have the same answer ready."
"He certainly ought not to mind having us take care of our own flowers,"
said Marjory.
"That's true," said Bettie, poking the moist earth with a friendly
finger. "They're growing splendidly since the rain. See how nice and
full of growiness the ground is."
"I can get more pansy plants," offered Marjory, "to fill up these holes
the Milligan dog made."
"Mrs. Crane promised to give us some aster plants," said Mabel. "Let's
put 'em along by the fence."
"Let's do," said Jean. "You go see if you can have them now."
"I _know_ Mr. Black will be pleased," declared Bettie, "if he finds this
place looking nice. I'm so thankful we didn't remember to ask Mr.
Downing about it."
"We didn't have a chance," said Jean, ruefully; "but just the same, I'm
willing to keep on forgetting until Mr. Black comes."
It began to look, however, as if Mr. Black were never coming. Bettie had
written as she had promised but had had no reply, though the letter had
not been mailed for ten minutes before she began to watch for the
postman. Even Mabel, having had no response to her telegram and
supposing it to have gone astray, had given up hope.
Mabel, ever averse to confessing the failure of any of her enterprises,
had decided to postpone saying anything about the telegram until one or
another of the girls should remember to ask what had become of the
thirty-five cents. So far, none of them had thought of it.
Still, it seemed probable, in spite of Mr. Black's continued absence,
that he would get home some time, for he had left so much behind him. In
the business portion of the town there was a huge building whose sign
read: "PETER BLACK AND COMPANY." Then, in the prettiest part of the
residence district, where the lawns were big and the shrubs were planted
scientifically by a landscape gardener and where the hillside bristled
with roses, there was a large, handsome stone house that, as everybody
knew, belonged to Mr. Black. Although there were industrious clerks at
work in the one, and a middle-aged housekeeper, with a furnace-tending,
grass-cutting husband equally busy in the other, it was reasonable to
suppose that Mr. Black, even if he had no family, would have to return
some time, if only to enjoy his beloved rose-bushes.
Thanks to Mabel's telegram (Bettie's letter, forwarded from Washington,
did not reach him for many days) he did come. He had had to stop in
Chicago, after all, and there had been unexpected delays; but just a
week from the day the Milligans had left the cottage, Mr. Black
returned.
Without even stopping to look in at his own office, the traveler went
straight to the rectory to ask for Bettie. Bettie, Mrs. Tucker told him,
he would probably find in the cottage yard.
Mr. Black took a short cut through the hole in the back fence, arriving
on the cottage lawn just in time to meet a procession of girls entering
the front gate. Each girl was carrying a huge, heavy clod of earth, out
of the top of which grew a sturdy green plant; for the cottageless
cottagers had discovered the only successful way of performing the
difficult feat of restocking their garden with half-grown vegetables.
Their neighbors had proved generous when Bettie had explained that if
one could only dig deep enough one could transplant _anything_, from a
cabbage to pole-beans. Some of the grown-up gardeners, to be sure, had
been skeptical, but they were all willing that the girls should make the
attempt.
"Oh, Mr. Black!" shrieked the four girls, dropping their burdens to make
a simultaneous rush for the senior warden. "Oh! oh! oh! Is it really
you? We're so glad--so awfully glad you've come!"
"Well, I declare! So am I," said Mr. Black, with his arms full of girls.
"It seems like getting home again to have a family of nice girls waiting
with a welcome, even if it's a pretty sandy one. What are you doing with
all the real estate? I thought you'd all been turned out, but you seem
to be all here. I declare, if you haven't all been growing!"
"We were--we are--we have," cried the girls, dancing up and down
delightedly. "Mr. Downing made us give up the cottage, but he didn't say
anything about the garden--and--and--we thought we'd better forget to
ask about it."
"Tell me the whole story," said Mr. Black. "Let's sit here on the
doorstep. I'm sure I could listen more comfortably if there were not so
many excited girls dancing on my best toes."
So Mr. Black, with a girl at each side and two at his feet, heard the
story from beginning to end, and he seemed to find it much more amusing
than the girls had at any time considered it. He simply roared with
laughter when Bettie apologized about Bob and the tin.
"Well," said he, when the recital was ended, and he had shown the girls
Mabel's telegram, and the thoroughly delighted Mabel had been praised
and enthusiastically hugged by the other three, "I _have_ heard of
cottages with more than one key. Suppose you see, Bettie, if anything on
this ring will fit that keyhole."
Three of the flat, slender keys did not, but the fourth turned easily in
the lock. Bettie opened the door.
"Possession," said Mr. Black, with a twinkle in his eye, "is nine points
of the law. You'd better go to work at once and move in and get to
cooking; you see, there's a vacancy under my vest that nothing but that
promised dinner party can fill. The sooner you get settled, the sooner I
get that good square meal. Besides, if you don't work, you won't have an
appetite for a great big box of candy that I have in my trunk."
"Oh," sighed Bettie, rubbing her cheek against Mr. Black's sleeve, "it
seems too good to be true."
"What, the candy?" teased Mr. Black.
"No, the cottage," explained Bettie, earnestly. "Oh, I do hope winter
will be about six months late this year to make up for this."
"Perhaps it'll forget to come at all," breathed Mabel, hopefully. "I'd
almost be willing to skip Christmas if there was any way of stretching
this summer out to February. Somebody please pinch me--I'm afraid I'm
dreaming--Oh! ouch! I didn't say _everybody_."
By this time, of course, all the young housekeepers' relatives
were deeply interested in the cottage. After living for a
never-to-be-forgotten week with the four unhappiest little girls in
town, all were eager to reinstate them in the restored treasure. The
girls, having rushed home with the joyful news, were almost overwhelmed
with unexpected offers of parental assistance. The grown-ups were not
only willing but anxious to help. Then, too, the Mapes boys and the
young Tuckers almost came to blows over who should have the honor of
mending the roof with the bundles of shingles that Dr. Bennett insisted
on furnishing. Marjory's Aunty Jane said that if somebody who could
drive nails without smashing his thumb would mend the holes in the
parlor floor she would give the girls a pretty ingrain carpet, one side
of which looked almost new. Dr. Bennett himself laid a clean new floor
in the little kitchen over the rough old one, and Mrs. Mapes mended the
broken plaster in all the rooms by pasting unbleached muslin over the
holes. Mr. Tucker replaced all broken panes of glass, while his busy
wife found time to tack mosquito-netting over the kitchen and pantry
windows.
So interested, indeed, were all the grown-ups and all the brothers that
the girls chuckled delightedly. It wouldn't have surprised them so very
much if all their people had fallen suddenly to playing with dolls and
to having tea-parties in the cottage; but the place was still far too
disorderly for either of these juvenile occupations to prove attractive
to anybody.
In the midst of the confusion, Mr. Downing stopped at the cottage door
one noon and asked for the girls, who eyed him doubtfully and
resentfully as they met him, after Marjory had hesitatingly ushered him
into the untidy little parlor.
Mr. Downing smiled at them in a friendly but decidedly embarrassed
manner. He had not forgotten his own lack of cordiality when the girls
had called on him, and he wanted to atone for it. Mr. Black had
tactfully but effectively pointed out to Mr. Downing--already deeply
disgusted with the Milligans--the error of his ways, and Mr. Downing, as
generous as he was hasty and irascible, was honest enough to admit that
he had been mistaken not only in his estimate of Mr. Black, but also in
his treatment of the little cottagers. Now, eager to make amends, he
looked somewhat anxiously from one to another of his silent hostesses,
who in return looked questioningly at Mr. Downing. Surely, with Mr.
Black in town, Mr. Downing _couldn't_ be thinking of turning them out a
second time; still, he had disappointed them before, probably he would
again, and the girls meant to take no chances. So they kept still, with
searching eyes glued upon Mr. Downing's countenance. All at once, they
realized that they were looking into friendly eyes, and three of them
jumped to the conclusion that the junior warden was not the heartless
monster they had considered him.
"I came," said Mr. Downing, noticing the change of expression in
Bettie's face, "to offer you, with my apologies, this key and this
little document. The paper, as you will see, is signed by all the
vestrymen--my own name is written _very_ large--and it gives you the
right to the use of this cottage until such time as the church feels
rich enough to tear it down and build a new one. There is no immediate
cause for alarm on this score, for there were only sixty-two cents in
the plate last Sunday. I have come to the conclusion, young ladies, that
I was overhasty in my judgment. I didn't understand the matter, and I'm
afraid I acted without due consideration--I often do. But I hope you'll
forgive me, for I sincerely beg _all_ your pardons."
"It's all right," said Bettie, "as long as it was just a mistake. It's
easy to forgive mistakes."
"Yes," said Marjory, sagely, "we all make 'em."
"It's all right, anyway," added Jean.
Mr. Downing looked expectantly at Mabel, who for once had preserved a
dead silence.
"Well?" he asked, interrogatively.
"I don't suppose I can ever really _quite_ forgive you," confessed
Mabel, with evident reluctance. "It'll be awfully hard work, but I guess
I can try."
"Perhaps my peace-offering will help your efforts a little," said Mr.
Downing, smiling. "It seems to be coming in now at your gate."
The girls turned hastily to look, but all they could see was a very
untidy man with a large book under his arm.
"These," said Mr. Downing, taking the book from the man, who had walked
in at the open door, "are samples of inexpensive wall papers. You're to
choose as much as you need of the kinds you like best, and this man will
put it wherever it will do the most good, and I'll pay the bill. Now,
Miss Blue Eyes, do I stand a better chance of forgiveness?"
"Yes, yes!" cried Mabel. "I'm almost glad you needed to apologize. You
did it beautifully, too. Mercy, when _I_ apologize--and I have to do a
_fearful_ lot of apologizing--I don't begin to do it so nicely!"
"Perhaps," offered Mr. Downing, "when you've had as much practice as I
have, it will come easier. I see, however, that you are far more
suitable tenants than the Milligans would have been, for my humble
apologies to them met with a very different reception. I assure you
that, if there's ever any rivalry between you again, my vote goes with
you--you're so easily satisfied. Now don't hesitate to choose whatever
you want from this book. This paperhanger is yours, too, until you're
done with him."
"Oh, thank you, thank you, _thank_ you," cried the girls, with happy
voices, as Mr. Downing turned to go; "you _couldn't_ have thought of a
nicer peace-offering."
Of course it took a long, long time for so many young housekeepers to
choose papers for the parlor and the two bedrooms, but after much
discussion and many differences of opinion, it was finally selected. The
girls decided on green for the parlor, blue for one bedroom, and pink
for the other, and they were easily persuaded to choose small patterns.
Then the smiling paperhanger worked with astonishing rapidity and said
that he didn't object in the least to having four pairs of bright eyes
watch from the doorway every strip go into place. It seemed to be no
trouble at all to paper the little low-ceilinged cottage, and, oh! how
beautiful it was when it was all done. The cool, cucumber-green parlor
was just the right shade to melt into the soft blue and white of the
front bedroom. As for the dainty pink room, as Bettie said rapturously,
it fairly made one smell roses to look at it, it was so sweet.
It was finished by the following night, for no paperhanger could have
had the heart to linger over his work with so many anxious eyes
following every movement. Mrs. Tucker washed and ironed and mended the
white muslin curtains; and, with such a bower to move into, the second
moving-in and settling, the girls decided, was really better than the
first. When their belongings were finally reinstalled in the cottage
even Mabel no longer felt resentful toward the Milligans.