A CRASH IN THE KITCHEN
For a moment Jan and Ted stood looking at their little brother, fast
in the mud, while Trouble, laughing and gurgling, held out the green
watercress “posy-tree” to the cow.
“Oh, how will we ever get him out?” questioned Jan. “Mother will be so
worried! What shall we do, Teddy?”
“I’ll wade in and get him.”
“But you’ll get all mud too!”
“I’ll take off my shoes and stockings,” and the boy began to do this.
There came a laugh from Trouble.
“What’s the matter now?” asked Jan, who had been looking to see if she
could not find a board with which to make a little bridge over the mud
so she could reach her baby brother without getting her feet wet. “What
did you do, Trouble?” asked Jan.
“Bossy-cow frow water on Trouble. Make Trouble all wet!” and he
laughed joyously.
“Oh, look!” gasped Jan.
Ted, who by this time had taken off his shoes and stockings and rolled
up his knickerbockers, looked and cried:
“Oh, he’s soaking wet! He might just as well have gone in swimming!”
Trouble was certainly wet. The cow, in stamping her front legs to get
rid of some biting flies, had splashed water from the brook over the
little boy standing in front of her, still holding out the “posy-tree”
of watercress. Trouble was splattered from his head to his waist, which
was all of him that was out of the brook, his fat, chubby legs, far
past his knees, now being sunk deep in the water and mud of the brook.
“Get him out quick!” ordered Jan. “The cow might bite him!”
“Cows don’t bite,” declared Ted. “I’m not scared.”
“Well, get him out anyhow,” went on Jan. “Oh, Trouble!”
Ted waded in, and, putting his arms around Trouble, pulled out his baby
brother, who tossed the greens to the cow. Then, laughing and kicking,
thus splashing mud and water on Ted, Trouble was dragged to dry ground
and hurried into the house.
“Oh, my dear Trouble!” cried Mother Martin, who was just coming out to
look for him, “you are such a sight! As if there wasn’t trouble enough
without this!”
“Is there more trouble, Mother?” asked Jan, while the maid, Nora,
carried off the wiggling little fellow to wash him.
“Yes, there is more trouble,” said Mrs. Martin slowly, while Nora was
putting some clean clothes on Baby William. The children’s mother still
held in her hand the letter Jan had taken to her from the postman.
“There is much more trouble.”
“What about?” asked Ted.
“It’s about Cherry Farm.”
“You mean grandpa’s--where we’re going for our vacation?” inquired Jan,
looking at her mother with wide-open eyes.
“Yes. But I don’t know whether or not we’re going there for the
vacation days. That’s the other trouble, children.”
There was silence for a moment. Ted and Jan, looking with wondering
eyes at one another, felt as if, for them, the bottom had somehow or
other dropped out of the world.
From the bathroom could be heard the giggles and squeals of Trouble
as Nora was combing his hair. It was not as curly as the tousled wigs
of his brother and sister. To Ted and Jan, at that minute, the baby’s
cries seemed the only real thing in the house.
Not to go to Cherry Farm for their vacation! Could such a thing happen?
They just stared at their mother and then at the letter still in her
hand.
“Can’t we--can’t we _ever_ go to grandpa’s?” asked Jan slowly.
“Then where can we go on our vacation?” Ted questioned, before his
mother had a chance to answer his sister.
To the Curlytops Cherry Farm meant a great deal. Ever since they could
remember they had heard it talked of at home, and more than once they
had gone there for visits, sometimes in winter and again in summer.
Grandpa was Daddy Martin’s father, and Cherry Farm was the nicest place
in the whole world, so the Curlytops thought.
There was a big white house. There were red barns, broad, green fields,
shady trees, horses, cows, sheep, a little brook, a lake--oh, so many
delightful things! And now----
“Why can’t we go to Cherry Farm?” asked Jan again.
“Because there may not be a Cherry Farm any more,” answered Mother
Martin, and her voice was sad.
“Did--did somebody take it?” asked Ted, and yet he did not quite see
how anyone could pick up a big farm and walk off with it, especially
when it had on it houses and barns to hold it down, as teacher used to
put a weight on the papers of her desk to keep the wind from scattering
them about the room.
“Somebody may take it,” said Mother Martin. “It’s too much for you
little folks to understand. However, I’ll tell you about it as well as
I can. But here comes daddy. Wait until after supper, then we’ll talk.”
“Hello, everybody!” cried Daddy Martin, coming into the room and
catching up first Jan and then Ted. “Where’s Trouble?” and he looked
around for Baby William.
“Oh, Trouble had--trouble,” said his wife with a smile. “He waded in
the mud of the brook. Nora is cleaning him now.”
“Little Trouble in a brook,
Nora cleans him with a--washrag!”
Daddy Martin laughed as he made up this little verse. Then came a
patter of bare feet in the room, and a joyous cry.
“Ah, here’s my bunch of Trouble!” exclaimed Mr. Martin as he caught
up the little fellow who, now all sweet and clean, ran crowing and
laughing into his father’s arms.
“Well, I guess all the trouble is over now,” said Daddy Martin, as he
tossed William toward the ceiling, being careful, of course, not to
bump it, which might have made the plaster fall down. Oh, yes, and it
might have hurt Trouble too. I almost forgot that part.
“There’s more trouble,” said Jan, as her father sat down in the easy
chair to wait for Nora to say that supper was on the table.
“More trouble? I hope our old rooster hasn’t caught cold! We must send
for the doctor at once!”
“No, it isn’t that,” answered Ted, laughing, for his father was always
making some joke about the rooster catching cold.
“What is it then?”
“Grandpa is going to lose Cherry Farm!”
Jan gave a gasp as Ted said this.
“Lose Cherry Farm!” cried Daddy Martin, as he looked over at his wife
in surprise.
“Yes, there is bad news,” she said. “But maybe it will turn out all
right in the end, as Nora would say. I’ll tell you after supper.
There’s the bell.”
And while the family is at table I will tell you just a little about
them, so you will feel that you have been properly introduced. I did
not have time to do it before, on account of so much happening--Trouble
getting stuck in the mud and all that.
I have told you why Ted and Jan were called Curlytops, so you know that
much about them, anyhow. And you have really met all the family, from
daddy and mother, down to Trouble and Nora, with Ted and Jan coming in
between, you might say.
The Martins lived in the town of Cresco in an Eastern State, and Mr.
Martin owned a store. He also owned a nice home just outside the place.
Grandpa Martin, who was Daddy Martin’s father, lived with Grandma
Martin on Cherry Farm. This was near the country village of Elmburg,
close to Clover Lake. And, while I am about it, I may as well tell you
that the children had an Uncle Frank Barton, who owned a large cattle
ranch near Rockville, Montana. Then there was Aunt Josephine Miller,
a maiden lady who lived in Clayton and had a summer place at Mt. Hope
near Ruby Lake. She was a sister of Mrs. Martin’s. The children always
called her Aunt Jo.
Theodore, Teddy or Ted Martin, any of which names he answered to, was
aged seven and his sister was six years old. The children’s birth
anniversaries came on the same day, but they had been born a year
apart. I have told you of their curly hair, and I can’t do more than
add that never were such ringlets, twists, whorls, waves and whatever
else goes to make up curly hair, seen on children before. Once Grandma
Martin’s thimble was lost and--well, I’ll tell you about that when we
get to it. At any rate “Curlytops” was the best name in the world for
Jan and Ted, just as Trouble was for Baby William.
I call him a baby, though really he was getting to be quite a
good-sized boy. He was “half-past two years growing on three,” as Jan
always said whenever anyone asked his age, and he was bright and quick.
“Well, now let’s hear about the trouble,” said Daddy Martin, as, having
finished his supper, he pushed back his chair from the table, and took
his little boy up in his lap.
“I gived posy-tree to bossy-cow, an’ bossy sneezed an’ I got
wet-muddy,” said William, reaching up to kiss his father.
“Yes, I heard about what happened to you, Trouble,” said Mr. Martin,
pretending to bite off one of the baby’s ears as a sort of dessert
after his meal. “But what is worrying you, Mother?” and he looked over
at his wife.
“There is trouble at Cherry Farm.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“High water has spoiled the wheat, your father has lost money, and now
he may lose the farm.”
Mr. Martin gave a long whistle.
“That _is_ bad,” he said. “Who told you about it?”
“A letter came this afternoon. It was from Grandmother Martin. Here it
is.”
Jan and Ted watched their father as he read what the postman had left.
Then Mr. and Mrs. Martin talked together in low voices.
Jan and Ted did not know what it was all about, but they heard enough
to tell them that it was real trouble. Something had happened to
grandpa’s farm, he had lost much money, and unless he paid some men
more money to get rid of some queer thing called a “mortgage,” he might
have to move away from Cherry Farm.
And that, Jan and Ted knew, would be dreadful. Dreadful not only for
them, for they would have no place to spend the long vacation, but bad
also for grandpa and for Grandma Martin. For Cherry Farm was their home.
“However,” said Daddy Martin after a bit, “it may not be so bad as it
seems now. I’ll see what I can do.”
Ted and Jan felt better. When Daddy Martin talked this way something
good was always sure to happen. It always had, and it always would,
they were sure. Daddy Martin could do almost everything.
“Do you think we can go to Cherry Farm?” asked Ted anxiously.
“Oh, yes, I think so,” answered his father slowly. “Even if trouble
comes it will not get here right away. You’ll have the summer there
anyhow.”
“And cherries?” asked Jan, who was very fond of them.
“Oh, yes. Grandma writes that they’ll have a bigger crop of cherries
than ever before. They weren’t hurt by the high water that flooded and
spoiled the wheat.
“And now I think I’ll write grandpa a letter,” went on Daddy Martin.
“I’ll tell him I’ll help all I can, and----”
“So will we!” chimed in Jan and Ted, while Trouble gurgled:
“Me help too!”
“Yes, I guess you will--help eat cherries and get sick!” laughed Jan,
throwing her arms about him.
“Maybe grandpa won’t want us all to go out there for the summer,” said
Mother Martin. “If he has to save his pennies----”
“Oh, there’ll be plenty to eat--there always is at Cherry Farm,” said
her husband; “and that’s all the children want. The old house is big
enough for us all, and more. We’ll go surely enough. It wouldn’t seem
right if we didn’t. Summer would not be summer without Cherry Farm.”
Jan and Ted thought so too.
Daddy Martin had set Trouble on the floor, to go away to write his
letter. Mrs. Martin was talking to Nora about the work, while the
Curlytops drew their chairs to the table, now cleared of dishes, and
began to talk of what they would do in the country.
“Maybe we can pick cherries and sell ’em,” said Ted.
“Maybe,” agreed Jan. “If we had a little cart and a pony----”
“Oh, that would be great!” cried her brother. “I could drive and you
could dish out the cherries! Let’s write a letter to grandpa and ask
him----”
Just then, before Ted could finish what he was saying, there came a
crashing sound from the kitchen. A look around showed that Trouble had
slipped away. The reason for the crash was consequently explained--at
least, in part.
“Oh, Nora, what is it?” called Mrs. Martin who had just gone upstairs.
“Oh, nothin’ much, Ma’am,” was the answer. “It’ll be all right, I
guess.”
“But, Nora! What _was_ it?”
“Oh, nothin’; only William pulled a big pan full of milk over on
himself. I was goin’ to make junket of it, but now Turnover is lappin’
it up. It’s all right; she hadn’t had her supper yet, and the milk’ll
do her good.”