PLANS FOR THE FUTURE
There was one rule the great detective, O’Gorman, had tried to instill
in the mind of his daughter Josie, and that was, if possible, never to
meddle in other folks’ affairs, but if, by any chance, Fate so ordained
it that you must meddle, stick to it until those affairs were settled
and the meddling was no longer necessary. Josie felt that, from the
beginning, she had put her finger in Mary Louise’s pie and she must not
draw it out until she could extract some kind of plum for her little
friend.
She did not ring the bell at the Hathaway house but opened the great
front door with the latch-key Colonel Hathaway had given her on her
first visit to them and which he had insisted upon her keeping and
using as a member of the family. She found Mary Louise hovering over
rather a forlorn fire in the den.
“Why do people always begin to economize in coal as soon as they get
a bit hard up?” Josie asked herself. “It is a strange question in
psychology.”
She greeted Mary Louise cheerfully and seizing the poker gave the
sputtering coal a few masterly punches which sent the flames leaping up
the chimney. Then she vigorously poked out the ashes under the grate
and, in a few moments, the fire was burning as brightly and cheerily as
though the Colonel’s money had been found and no tragic happenings had
recently taken place in that very house which the grate helped to warm.
“That’s better!” laughed Mary Louise. “Uncle Eben is so lugubrious
about the coal’s getting low and so strict lately in regard to fires
that I find myself shivering half the time. Fires have always been
Uncle Eben’s specialty and, now that times are hard, his one idea is to
save coal. Uncle Eben and Aunt Sally are my biggest problem right now,
Josie.”
Josie smiled in what might almost have been termed a self-satisfied
way. Had she not asserted but a few moments before to the girls at the
Higgledy Piggledy that Mary Louise would still always be thinking of
others?
“What are you planning to do with them, Mary Louise?” she asked quite
casually. Josie had an idea that Mary Louise’s friends were handling
her too gingerly. Instead of asking direct questions that called for
direct answers, they were dealing too much in innuendoes, afraid all
the time of intruding. She well knew that Irene’s exquisite sense of
propriety would keep her from going into Mary Louise’s affairs until
she was asked to discuss them by Mary Louise herself. Josie felt that
the girl had brooded long enough and the time had come to talk things
over.
“Now don’t you tell me if you’d rather not, but it seems to me you
might as well talk it out with me. I’m a kind of father confessor
anyhow, you know, honey,” continued Josie.
“Why I want to talk it over, Josie dear. I don’t want to burden anyone
with my complicated affairs but--”
“Burden anyone! Why you little goose! Come on now, let’s decide what
you are going to do and then let’s do it.”
Mary Louise laughed, and her laugh sounded quite merry and like her
old self. “Josie, you certainly do help me with your plain, straight
methods. You know, I fancy, that there is no money to be found--none
at all--and I am penniless?”
“Yes, I know it, and I’m glad of it!”
“So am I! Wouldn’t that astonish Uncle Peter? He is having a fit, poor
man. He has almost determined to begin digging around the place here to
try and unearth the treasure. Of course, that is foolishness because we
always saw Grandpa Jim come in the house and, if he ever left his room
at night, I knew it and was up like a flash for fear he was sick or
something.”
“Of course! Colonel Hathaway was not the kind of man to dig holes and
put money away. He may have concealed his property somewhere and it
will turn up sooner or later. In the meantime, it will be mighty bad
business to let it get out that we don’t know where the stuff is, for
that might bring down on your place a swarm of treasure seekers who
would prove very annoying to you.”
“Uncle Peter thinks he invested most of it in gold mines and he says he
hopes to find papers relating to the transaction somewhere.”
“Well now, go on and tell me what you mean to do. You are going to have
to make your living and I, for one, think it is a good thing. How are
you going to make it?”
“Have you any suggestions?”
“Of course!” answered Josie laconically. “That’s what I’m here for, not
just idle curiosity.”
Mary Louise laughed again and Aunt Sally, in the kitchen, stopped a
minute from her eternal scrubbing--her only solace of late--and dropped
a tear in her bucket of hot suds, but the tear was a kind of happy
tear at hearing once more the sound of laughter from her darling young
mistress.
“Listen ter that, Eben! That there li’l perliceman gal air in the
settin’ room. She sho do cheer up our baby lamb.”
“Yes, an’ she done stirred up the fire too. I ain’t a sayin’ the coal
air a gonter las’ out the month if’n we ain’t pow’ful ’ticular.”
“G’long, nigger! You all time talkin’ ’bout coal. If’n you don’t look
sharp, when yo’ time comes, Peter’ll be a-sayin’ when you knocks on the
pearly gates, ‘Go on down ter perdition, you Eben! You ain’t fit fer
nothin’ but stokin’ nohow.’ You much better be makin’ hot, cheerful
fires fer po’ li’l Miss Mary Louise than countin’ over yo’ lumps er
coal. The Lord air a gonter pervide. He knows as well as anybody an’
better than mos’ that we-alls is quality folk an’ he ain’t a gonter let
us go col’.”
“You’s silly, Sally,” declared Eben, nimbly skipping beyond reach of
the deluge of hot suds with which Sally retaliated. “‘Co’se you is
silly. Ain’t we been a-hearin’ many tales ’bout kings and queens an’
sich what air a beggin’ in the streets since this here war that done
stirred up the worl’ ter such a ixtent? If kings an’ queens air took
ter beggin’, I don’t see why you air so proudified as ter think we-alls
air safe.”
“Humph! Kings an’ queens ain’t nothin’ but furriners--some er them even
low down wops an’ sich. I wan’t a talkin’ ’bout kings an’ queens but
’bout sho’ nuf quality folks whose amcestors comed from Virginny.”
And so the old couple wrangled in the kitchen while Mary Louise and
Josie continued their talk in the den.
“What is your suggestion?” asked Mary Louise.
“Bonnets and hats! A millinery department of the Higgledy Piggledy! It
will pay like preferred stock in the best investment in the country.
At first, people will swarm there just to see you being a milliner.
You’ll have to submit to being a nine days’ wonder and then, when
you do their things so well and put so much style in their hats and
bonnets, they will come back because they like what you do. Why, honey,
you are going to be the successful business woman of Dorfield.”
“Oh Josie!”
“Certainly you are! You have it in you to be a success. Whatever you
have undertaken, you have pushed through with sureness until you have
reached the goal. Of course you have been spoiled in a way by having
money come too easily but that isn’t going to hurt your business career
any. It may help it. It will give you a larger outlook and keep you
from being so all-fired particular about small bits of money. I think
that is the trouble with so many women who go into business. They have
heard so much about ‘taking care of the pennies and the dollars will
take care of themselves’ that they spend too much time and thought over
unimportant sums and forget the other saying ‘Penny wise and pound
foolish.’”
Josie was mounted on one of her hobbies and she rode gaily on, clucking
to her nag and switching his flanks with proverbs and arguments until
Mary Louise was in a gale of merriment.
“Josie, Josie, you are too delicious!”
Aunt Sally stopped scrubbing and arose from her knees.
“Jes’ listen ter that! Lawsamussy, if that ain’t music ter my ol’
years! Git a move on yer, Eben, you ol’ Virginia creeper! I’s
a-thinkin’ ’bout stirring up some waffles fer supper. I ’lows our young
mistress is done sanctified her stomick sufficient with nothin’ but
toast an’ tea, tea an’ toast.”
“Well praise the Lawd! My back an’ front air a stickin’ tergither fer
lack er nourishment,” declared Uncle Eben.
In a short while, the aroma of waffles was wafted through the house.
“If my old nose don’t tell no lies--” quoted Josie.
“I believe Aunt Sally is cooking waffles,” finished Mary Louise. “Now
you must stay to supper, Josie.”
“Of course I will, if you truly want me. In fact, I think I’ll stay
whether you do or not.”
“It’s strange how dependent we are on food,” mused Mary Louise a half
hour later. Aunt Sally had given the girls a cozy little meal by the
fire in the den. The dining room seemed so big and gloomy now that
there were no men in the house.
“I believe I have not been eating enough. Aunt Sally brings me
something, but I am sure that more than half the time I forget to eat
it.”
“Just as I thought! You need a bossy, fussy person more or less like
me to egg you on. Now start in and tell me what you are planning to
do with these expensive, although devoted, retainers and this fine,
extravagant house.” And Josie settled herself comfortably in a big
chair by the fire on which Uncle Eben had deigned to waste much coal.
“I simply don’t know--I plan and plan but can’t fix on anything. Of
course, Aunt Sally and Uncle Eben will be sad at not living on with
me and declare they won’t leave me for the wealth of Greasus as Eben
calls Croesus. There is no money in the bank, at least only a tiny bit.
Grandpa Jim used to have two accounts, a checking account and a special
account, but he seems to have withdrawn the special account and
checked very closely on the other. Thank goodness, there are no bills
to be paid! Grandpa Jim always kept bills paid up to the minute.”
“That’s one reason I feel that you are going to prove a good business
woman. You have his blood in your veins and his ways about you. I see
them cropping out constantly. Now, come on and tell me what plans you
have made, even though you haven’t fixed on anything.”
“First, I think I’ll sell the car.”
“Which car?”
“The big new one, of course! Grandpa Jim’s old car wouldn’t bring in
thirty cents and it is so precious to me somehow, I can’t bear to think
of getting rid of it. I feel more strongly about it even than I did
about his clothes. He changed his clothes and got rid of them as they
wore out, but he hung on to his old car with such pertinacity that I
feel like still hanging on to it. It has not been used for months but
it’s jacked up out there in the garage. Do you think I am foolish?”
“No, my dear Mary Louise, I think you are very sensible. Certainly, the
new car would bring in a tidy sum and give you bank account enough to
look around a bit. Have Eben and Sally any savings?”
“Yes, they have been at no expense to speak of for many years and they
have always had good wages. You know Grandpa Jim was always lavish in
such expenditures. The dear old creatures have come and offered me
their savings and are quite outdone because I refuse to touch them.
In his will, Grandpa Jim mentions them, leaving them a farm he owns
in Virginia and recommending that I see that they are well taken care
of. He left them nothing but the farm but, thank goodness, that is a
tangible something. I want them to go live on it and I believe they are
beginning to look forward to it with some pleasure.”
“Splendid! That is surely a solution as far as the faithful retainers
go. Now proceed! How about the house?” Josie was determined now, since
she had started Mary Louise, she would keep her going until her plans
took some shape and were in working order.
“Oh, the house! I can’t tell what to do about it. It is all I have and
Uncle Peter Conant says a forced sale would be a great mistake, but if
I can just put off selling it for several years, it might bring in a
whole lot. I think I might rent it.”
“Furnished?”
“Y--e--s! But, oh, how I’d hate it! It would be awful to have strangers
living with all of our household goods.”
“Yes, so it would, but because persons are strangers is no sign
they are not pretty nice. I myself would rather have my things used
by persons who could enjoy them than have them stored in heartless
warehouses where, no doubt, the rats would gnaw holes in them and they
would do nobody any good. I’d rent the house furnished for a goodly sum
if possible and be careful about the tenant. Don’t take one who is not
responsible. Storing furniture is like pouring money down rat holes. It
costs and costs and finally, when you take the things out, they seem
of so little value you wonder what on earth you have been paying for
all the months or years. Sell or rent, but don’t store unless it is
for a given, definite period. You have not thought of selling all your
things?”
“I just couldn’t yet. I feel like putting off that evil hour for
awhile. Grandpa Jim collected the pictures and rugs and furniture with
such care. I can’t contemplate getting rid of them even though I may
need the money sorely.”
“Nonsense! You won’t need the money sorely at all, not if you get busy
and ship the dear old darkeys and come stay with me at the Higgledy
Piggledy and begin to earn your salt and plenty of good beefsteaks to
sprinkle it on, to say nothing of butter gravy and bread to sop in it.”
“Oh Josie, you are so funny!”
“Well, settle with the faithful retainers this very night. Call them
now and let them know you are going to break up housekeeping tomorrow
and they must pack up and start for their farm in Virginia. There is no
use in dragging the thing out. Every day that this huge house is kept
running is draining your already depleted bank account just that much
more than it can stand. Let’s begin tomorrow to sort and ‘pick rags’
and get the house ready for a tenant. There is a lot of work connected
with it and we’d best begin immediately.”