_Ptolemy's Tale_
Four defiant, determined-looking Polydores came up the steps and bore
down upon us. Then Silvia as usual thought she saw land ahead.
"Oh, boys," she asked hopefully, "did your father send for you to meet
him here? And when is he going to take you home?"
"Didn't I tell you," I thundered at Ptolemy, "that you were not to
leave that house--"
"It left us," interrupted Emerald with a grin.
"Went up in smoke," added Pythagoras blithely, "ghost and all."
"Four minutes quicker," said Demetrius, "and it would have took father
and mother, too."
"Oh, is it the haunted house they are talking about?" asked Miss
Frayne joyfully. "What a story I'll have!"
Life to Miss Frayne seemed to be one story after another. Well, it was
certainly becoming the same way to us.
"Did the ghost set fire to the house?" asked Beth.
"What are you all talking about," demanded Silvia, "and how did you
know these boys were there? How long have you been here?" she asked,
turning to Ptolemy.
"I told you," I repeated angrily to the subdued boy, "not to leave.
Those were plain orders. If the house did burn up, you could have
stayed in your tent in the woods."
Ptolemy's lips twitched faintly.
"The house burned up and all our clothes and our stuff to eat, and our
bats and things, and father and mother went away and I didn't know
what to do, so--I came here. But we'll go back to our own house. We
have learned to cook. Come on, boys."
"You'll stay right here with me, son," and Rob's hand came down
intimately on Ptolemy's shoulder.
"It isn't likely we'll turn them out into the woods, when they haven't
a roof over their heads," declared Silvia, drawing Emerald to her
side.
"I think you are absolutely inhuman, Lucien," cried Beth. "I don't see
what has changed you so," and she proceeded to make room for
Pythagoras in the porch swing.
"Did the fire scare you?" asked Miss Frayne gently, as she put her
arms about Demetrius.
"Et tu, Brute? Well, I plainly see this is no place for an inhuman,
childless, married man," I said with a laugh, walking down the
veranda.
In the doorway I met Diogenes, who raised his chubby arms invitingly.
"Up, up, Ocean!" he begged sweetly.
I lifted him to my shoulder, and then turned and walked triumphantly
back to the family group.
"Now," I said, "here is the whole d-dashed family. And I propose that
each keep unto his charge the child he has now under his wing."
Miss Frayne quickly relinquished the dirty Demetrius. Beth shrank away
from Pythagoras.
As I seated myself still holding Diogenes, his brothers sprang toward
him in greeting, but he spat at one, kicked at another, and pulled the
hair of a third, although he patted Ptolemy's cheek gently.
"Now, we'll have this affair thrashed out," I declared in my most
authoritative, professional manner, and I then proceeded to explain to
Silvia the housing of the Polydores, and our strategies to keep their
arrival a secret simply on her account.
"Because you know," interpolated Beth, with a consideration for the
feelings of the young Polydores--a consideration they had never before
encountered--"we wanted you to have a nice rest."
Silvia looked quite penitent and remorseful for her seeming lack of
appreciation of our combined efforts. When I had answered all her
inquiries satisfactorily, Miss Frayne's curiosity regarding the
progeny of the eminent Polydores had to be fully relieved.
"And do you mean that the scribbling lady I saw at the table is really
the mother of these five boys?" she asked, unable to grasp the fact.
"Yes; and the father hereof is the man who explained the ghosts to you
so scientifically that you cannot remember what he said. Now, Ptolemy,
we'll hear your story of the fire and the whereabouts of your parents.
Take your time and tell it accurately."
"Well, you see we did just as you said to, and took the ghost out of
the window and went out to the woods early this morning so as not to
let the paper lady see us."
"Oh!" cried Miss Frayne, "am I the paper lady? I begin to see
daylight. Are these boys the ghost perpetrators, and were you in on
the put-up job?"
"You're a good guesser," I replied.
"And why wasn't I taken into your confidence?"
"For two reasons. First, because your friend Rob said you'd get better
results for copy--more inspirations and thrills, if you weren't behind
the scenes on the ghost business,--and then we didn't want to tell you
about the presence of the Polydores lest inadvertently you betray the
fact to my wife. Now, proceed, Ptolemy."
"After we were in the woods, I heard an automobile coming down the
lane, and I went up near the edge of the woods and peeked out behind a
tree, and pretty soon I saw father and mother come over the hill and
go in our haunted house, so I came up there and hid under the window
and heard mother say: 'What an ideal place to write this is. It looks
as if I might really get a chance to write unmo--'
"'--lested,'" I finished for him.
"I guess so," he allowed. "Well, she began writing, so I didn't go in,
but when father came outside I went up to him and told him you and
mudder were at the hotel and that we were all with you. He told me
they came up here to write an article for some big magazine about the
ghost. He hired an automobile down at Windy Creek to bring them up to
the house and the man was going to come back for them tomorrow
morning. I didn't let on the ghost was a fake, because I thought he'd
be so disappointed to have all his trouble for nothing, and he'd be
mad at me for swiping his skull. I told him a paper lady was coming
and then I went back to the woods. He went down with me to see the
boys, and he said he would come back and have lunch with us. Mother
doesn't ever stop to eat at noon when she is writing.
"He went back and talked to the paper lady and pretty soon he came
down and ate with us. I told him all about how we couldn't get any
girl to do the work for us and so we had been living with you, and how
Di got sick and mudder was all worn out taking care of him and came
down here to rest, and that you wouldn't cash the check, so I did and
was spending it and he said that was all right." Here Ptolemy flashed
me a most triumphant glance.
"He said you must be paid for all your expense and trouble, so he made
out a check and gave it to me and told me to make mudder a nice
present. He ain't so bad when he ain't thinking about dead stuff. When
he felt in his pocket for his check book, he found a letter he had got
yesterday and forgotten to open, so he read it then and found it was
from some magazine, and the man said he'd pay his and mother's
expenses to go to Chili and write up some stuff about--something. So
father said they must go at once."
"Not to Chili!" I exclaimed.
"Yes; we all went up to the house with him and I took mother's pencil
and paper away so she would have to listen. She was wild for Chili,
and I had to go and hunt up a farmer who had a machine to take them
down to Windy Creek. Father signed another blank check for you and
said you could board us with it or do anything you thought best.
"Then mother took a lot of papers out of her bag, some stuff she had
written and didn't get suited with, and she stuffed them in the stove
and set fire to them. Then we all went down to the lane to see father
and mother off and when we got back the house was on fire. The chimney
burned out."
"Guess mother must have written some hot stuff," said Emerald.
"It was burning so fast," continued Ptolemy, "that we didn't dast go
in to save anything and all our food and clothes and balls and bats
and fishing tackle are gone, and we didn't know what to do, or what to
eat, and so--we came here."
"You did just right, Ptolemy," I admitted. "I shouldn't have called
you down--not until I heard your story, anyway."
I held out my hand, which he shook solemnly, but with an injured air.
"Do you mean to tell me," asked Miss Frayne, "that your father and
mother went away without seeing the baby?"
Ptolemy flushed a little.
"You see," he explained apologetically, "mother gets woolly when she
writes and she's forgotten there's Di. She thinks Demetrius is the
youngest. She's mad about writing. If she sees a blank paper
anywhere, she ain't happy until she has written something on it, and
the sight of a pencil makes her fingers itch."
[Illustration: I held out my hand, which he shook solemnly, but with an
injured air]
"Take warning, Miss Frayne," I said, "and don't get too literary."
"Some day," resumed Ptolemy, "mother'll get the antiques all out of
her system and then she'll remember us."
I liked the boy's defense of his mother, and I began to see that Rob
was right in thinking there were possibilities in the lad, but it was
Silvia's influence that had developed them, for in the days when he
borrowed soup plates of us, there had been no redeeming trait that I
could discern.
And while I was recalling this, I heard Silvia saying to him kindly:
"And in the meantime, I'll be 'mudder' to you."
"So will I," chimed in Beth.
"I'll be a big brother," offered Rob.
"I'll be next friend, Ptolemy," I contributed.
Strange to say, my offer seemed to make the most impression on him. He
came to me and gazed into my eyes earnestly.
"I'll do just as you say," he promised.
"Where do we'uns come in?" asked Pythagoras, with one of his satanic
grins.
Miss Frayne saved the day.
"You all come in with me," she said, "and have lunch. I haven't eaten
since breakfast, and I understand there is warm ginger cake and
huckleberry pie. Aren't you hungry?"
"You bet," spoke up Pythagoras. "We only had coffee, peanuts, and
beans down in the woods, and father ate the beans and drank all the
coffee."
"We're out of the frying pan into the fire," said Silvia woefully,
when we were alone.
"I wish the Polydore parents had gone up in smoke," I declared.
"Then your last hope of getting rid of the children would have gone up
in smoke, too," argued Beth.
"No; in case of the demise of their parents, we could have turned them
over body and soul to the probate court," I informed her.
"We will fill out this blank check for any amount, Lucien," declared
Silvia, "that will induce a housekeeper to take charge of their house.
I shall keep Diogenes, though, until he is older."
"I wouldn't mind Ptolemy, either," I admitted. "I shall be interested
in seeing what I can make of him, and he hasn't a bad influence over
Diogenes, but I'll be hanged if anything would induce me to have 'Them
Three' Chessy cats running wild over us. They can live in their house
alone, or be put in a reformatory. We won't have them. We're under no
obligations, pecuniary or moral, to look after them."
"I think, Lucien, we might as well go home now. We've had a good rest
and a good time, and I am anxious to be back and see how Huldah is
getting on."
As Huldah had never mastered two of the three R's, we had not been
able to receive any reports from her.
"I'll tell you what we'll do," proposed Beth. "Rob and I will take all
the Polydores save Diogenes, and go home tomorrow and prepare the
house and Huldah for the overflow. Then you two can come on with
Diogenes the next day."
"Good idea, Beth!" I approved. "I'd hate to face Huldah, unprepared,
with the return of the Polydores _en masse_."
"I am glad," said Silvia, "that Huldah has been having a rest from
them for a few days."