By that time the fellows began to feel pretty small, and they crowded
round and wanted to hear every word about it. Then Jake and Frank
tantalized them, and said of course it was no Fourth at all, it was only
just fun, till the fellows could not stand it any longer, and then Frank
jumped up from where he was sitting on his front steps, and holloed out,
"I'll show you how Dave looked when his pole pulled him in," and he acted
it all out about Dave's pole pulling him into the water.
Jake waited till he was done, and then he jumped up and said, "I'll show
you how Frank and me looked when we got swept overboard," and he acted it
out about the limb of the tree scraping them off the raft while they were
laughing at Dave and not noticing.
As soon as they got the boys to yelling, Jake and Frank both showed how
they fought the bumblebees, and how the dogs got stung, and ran round
trying to rub the bees off against the ground, and your legs, and
everything, till the boys fell down and rolled over, it made them laugh
so. Jake and Frank showed how they ran out into the rain from the barn,
and stood in it, and told how good and cool it felt; and they told about
sitting up in the mulberry-tree, and how twenty boys could not have made
the least hole in the berries. They told about the quails and the
squirrels; and they showed how Frank had to keep whipping up his pony,
and how Jake's horse kept wheeling and running away; and some of the
fellows said they were going with them the next Fourth.
Hen Billard tried to turn it off, and said: "Pshaw! You can have that kind
of a Fourth any day in the country. Who's going up to the court-house yard
to see the fireworks?"
He and Archy Hawkins and the big boys ran off, whooping, and the little
fellows felt awfully, because their mothers had said they must not go.
Just then, Pony Baker's father came for him, and he said he guessed they
could see the fireworks from Frank's front steps; and Jake stayed with
Frank, and Frank's father came out, and his aunt and mother leaned out of
the window, and watched, while the Roman candles shot up, and the rockets
climbed among the stars.
They were all so much taken up in watching that they did not notice one of
the neighbor women who had come over from her house and joined them, till
Mrs. Baker happened to see her, and called out: "Why, Mrs. Fogle, where
did you spring from? Do come in here with Manda and me. I didn't see you,
in your black dress."
"No, I'm going right back," said Mrs. Fogle. "I just come over a minute to
see the fireworks--for Wilford; you can't see them from my side."
"Oh," said Mrs. Baker, softly. "Well, I'm real glad you came. You ought to
have heard the boys, here, telling about the kind of Fourth they had at
Pawpaw Bottom. I don't know when I've laughed so much."
"Well, I reckon it's just as well I wasn't here. I couldn't have helped in
the laughing much. It seems pretty hard my Wilford couldn't been having a
good time with the rest to-day. He was always such a Fourth-of-July boy."
"But he's happy where he is, Mrs. Fogle," said Mrs. Baker, gently.
"Well, I know he'd give anything to been here with the boys to-day--I
don't care where he is. And he's been here, _too_; I just know he has;
I've felt him, all day long, teasing at me to let him go off with your
Frank and Jake, here; he just fairly loved to be with them, and he never
done any harm. Oh, my, my! I don't see how I used to deny him."
She put up her apron to her face, and ran sobbing across the street again
to her own house; they heard the door close after her in the dark.
"I declare," said Mrs. Baker, "I've got half a mind to go over to her."
"Better not," said Pony Baker's father.
"Well, I reckon you're right, Henry," Mrs. Baker assented.
They did not talk gayly any more; when the last rocket had climbed the
sky, Jake Milrace rose and said in a whisper he must be going.
After he was gone, Frank told, as if he had just thought of it, about the
boy that had fooled them so, at Pawpaw Bottom; and he was surprised at the
way his mother and his Uncle Henry questioned him up about it.
"Well, now," she said, "I'm glad poor Mrs. Fogle wasn't here, or--" She
stopped, and her brother-in-law rose, with the hand of his sleepy little
son in his own.
"I think Pony had better say good-night now, while he can. Frank, you've
had a remarkable Fourth. Good-night, all. I wish I had spent the day at
Pawpaw Bottom myself."
Before they slept that night, Pony's mother said: "Well, I'd just as soon
you'd kept that story to yourself till morning, Henry. I shall keep
thinking about it, and not sleep a wink. How in the world do you account
for it?"
"I don't account for it," said Pony's father.
"Now, that won't do! What do you think?"
"Well, if it was _one_ boy that saw the fourth boy it might be a simple
case of lying."
"Frank Baker never told a lie in his life. He couldn't."
"Perhaps Jake could, or Dave. But as they all three saw the boy at
different times, why, it's--"
"What?"
"It's another thing."
"Now, you can't get out of it that way, Henry. Do you believe that the
child longed so to be back here that--"
"Ah, who knows? There's something very strange about all that. But we
can't find our way out, except by the short-cut of supposing that nothing
of the kind happened."
"You can't suppose that, though, if all three of the boys say it did."
"I can suppose that they think it happened, or made each other think so."
Pony's mother drew a long sigh. "Well, I know what _I_ shall always
think," she said.