AT THE STUDIO
"You don't mind my running away again, girls?" Mrs. Dunbar asked,
folding the yellow telegram into the most unnecessarily minute squares.
"It is such a nuisance, but I have to see some of those delegates
safely out of New York. Mere artists are not always prudent tourists."
"Auntie dear, we hate to have you go." Cleo dipped her head in the
quaint bird-like perk. "But we can have a lovely time here even
alone--I mean without you. Oh, no, not without you----" And the burst
of laughter that applauded her confusion was like a full colored
illustration of a verbal mistake. "Now, you all know what I mean," she
finished, pouting prettily.
"Of course we do," acceded her aunt. "You can have a perfectly lovely
time without me, and get into the most delicious mischief, tagging poor
Jennie along. I have given her orders, you know, to report to me by
phone if you take a notion to go up in an airship, or tie a kite by
hand to the moon, so don't venture too far from good old earth. Mary,
you are getting rosy already. It seems to me, for an old nurse your
Reda has rather suddenly given up her charge, not to have inquired for
you this morning."
"Oh, Reda wouldn't. She is dreadfully afraid of strangers," replied
Mary.
"Why--pray?" asked Mrs. Dunbar simply. Mary shifted uneasily,
shrugging her shoulders in the only foreign mannerism she carried, and
answering with nothing more than a fleeting expression of annoyance.
"Oh, Reda is so queer, Aunt Audrey," Grace assisted, "she would run
like an Indian if you just looked at her square in the eye."
"Is she Indian, Mary?" pressed Mrs. Dunbar gently.
"Yes, that is, she is from a Pacific Island outside of Central America.
You see, we were there when Loved One--went away."
Jennie was dusting the rails of the porch, and the little family kept
moving about to accommodate her brush and polishing cloth.
"I must take a bag this time," Mrs. Dunbar said, reverting to her
necessary New York trip. "I rather envy you chickens running around
with no other cares than the next hour's adventure. Mine are all cut
and antiseptically dried."
"And we never know what ours are going to be," remarked Madaline who
was vainly trying to trap a feeble little fly, to feed to the pitcher
plant.
"Come on," suggested Grace, "if we are not going to the Sanitarium
let's go to the village. I haven't spent every single cent of my
allowance yet, and I should hate to have my princely remittance
overlap."
"Whackies on the nut-sundae!" cried Madaline. "I am bankrupt till my
ship comes in."
"And I have to send home my Scout Sacrifice," said Cleo. "I promised
mother I would not forget a little personal contribution to a charity
case we are interested in. A child has to have an operation on her
eyes, and we scouts are providing the comforts."
"Oh yes, Mumsey gave mine. She was afraid I would disgrace the troop
by forgetting to remit," confessed Madaline.
"And daddy turned mine in, likely for the same reason," said Grace.
"Cleo, you are the only one trusted to do her part at this distance.
Mary, when you are a scout, you will better understand all our secrets.
They're just deli-cious," and she rolled her round eyes till they
threatened to take tucks in her dimples.
It required some coaxing to induce Mary to go to the village with them,
but they finally won out, and when Mrs. Dunbar embarked for her train,
the four little girls waved a happy good-by, interspersed with
reiterated promises to be good, and all mind Jennie.
"Can you come to my house now?" asked Mary after the luxury of nut
sundaes, purchased with the combined balance of Madaline's and Grace's
cash on hand had been disposed of, and the girls faced the early
afternoon on Bellaire Center.
"I don't know," faltered Cleo. "We didn't ask Jennie."
"But I am so anxious to see if our things are all right," Mary almost
begged. "You needn't be afraid of Reda, I am sure she is gone away."
"How do you know?" Grace asked frankly.
"She would be too frightened to remain at our house after last night.
Besides she often goes to New York with Janos. She gets all my clothes
there."
"Doesn't she take you to see them, or be fitted?" asked the literal
Madaline.
"Oh no, I am not allowed to go on trains. Someone might see me."
Everyone laughed at this, and Mary saw the joke herself. Nevertheless,
she made no attempt to explain why she was not supposed to be seen by
people outside of the little mountain town.
"I am afraid I shall have to go alone, if you girls feel you ought not
to come," she said presently. "I really have to attend to some
important things, and we all left in such a hurry last evening."
"Oh, if you have to go we simply must go with you," Cleo decided
promptly.
"Surely, Captain Cleo," spoke up Grace. "You see, Mary, Cleo is our
captain when we are away from headquarters. Oh, Mary, I do wish you
were a scout, you would just love it."
"I am sure I should, I know it takes a lot of courage, and one must do
many noble deeds to keep up to the pledges. I should just love to know
all about it, and I hope you will tell me some day. Still," and she
shrank a little in that timid self-conscious way, "I don't want you to
take any risks with me, on account of your scout pledge."
"Please don't think that way, Mary," begged Madaline, always ready with
sympathy. "We all just love you, and want to be with you, it has
nothing to do with scouting."
"No, indeed," Grace enthusiastically seconded this opinion. "What we
are doing with you is a positive joy."
"I don't know what would have become of us in Bellaire if we hadn't met
you," Cleo chimed in, serious beyond contention. "Of course, we met a
few girls, but we are so accustomed to adventures and activities. I
guess we require more things to happen than do most girls. Now, Mary,
we will go with you up to the studio, if I can find a boy to take a
message to Jennie. I don't want to phone, as she might not understand."
The small boy, not difficult to find around soda fountains on summer
afternoons, was glad to accept the offer of a nickel to take a note to
Cragsnook, and thereupon the girls set out for Second Mountain.
Mary led the way, romping over vacant lots, climbing fences and
otherwise taking short cuts to the hillside.
"We accidentally found your mountain cave one day in a shower," Cleo
told her, as they neared that cedar covered mountain table. "We were
up here in that dreadful storm the other day."
"Oh, were you? Reda and I had been to the village for Grandie's
medicine, and we were also caught in it," said Mary.
No reference was made to the overheard conversation. Not that Cleo
wanted to be secretive, but because she felt it might be embarrassing
to refer to it.
In spite of the fortifying sunshine, and the fact that Mary had talked
of neighbors not far from the studio, the girls each felt a certain
apprehension as they neared the scene of their recent exciting
adventure. Madaline was noticeably quiet, and not even a beautiful
gray squirrel, that hopped directly in their path, with a saucy flirt
of its bushy tail, evoked so much as a joyous shout from her. Still
she wanted to go to the studio, and now they were in full sight of the
low terra cottage lodge.
"Oh, it will seem so strange without Grandie," Mary commented, "but I
am so happy that his memory is coming back. If only he could
remember--" She checked herself, as she always did, when accidentally
she might mention the urgent necessity for Professor Benson
"remembering."
In a very business-like way, quite astonishing to her companions, Mary
slipped her finger in a tiny pocket, made in her black velvet belt,
produced from it a latch key, and with this opened the big, heavy door.
Grace and Cleo were at her heels, determined to show their courage, but
within the room everything was still, too still to be pleasant.
"Reda put things in order before she left," Grace remarked. "What a
pretty, low, rumbly place this is!"
"How can you be sure Reda is gone?" Cleo asked, staring at the glass
door through which the queer lights had warned them of the intruders'
danger the night before.
"Here's her everyday fichu," Mary replied. "She never goes out without
one--even wears it around the house, so she has donned her best. Yes,
she has gone to New York. Here's her yellow handkerchief; she has
dressed all up in her nicest things. Let's see if she has taken her
bag."
Opening a small door off the hall, opposite the sinister glass portal,
Mary entered a sleeping room profusely trimmed up with the brightest of
chintz draperies and colorful hangings.
"Yes, her bag is also gone. Well, girls," and Mary turned to them with
a frank smile, "I did like Reda, of course, but sometimes she has
frightened me so, and then Janos was so awfully rough with dear
Grandie."
"But whatever will you do without a housekeeper?" asked Cleo.
"I don't know really"--and she blinked threateningly--"but at any rate
I am glad to be free!"
A sense of security had now come to the girls, and they were flitting
around, looking at this thing and that, quite as if they had just
stepped into some attractive shop to inspect its wares. But they did
not go near the leaded glass door!
"Now, girls," Mary called quite soberly, emerging from Reda's room, "I
am going to give you a real treat. Just watch."
She sprang to the big glass door and, pressing the set in the lock, the
portal slid smoothly back.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" The exclamation was a soft cadenza, uttered by all
three spectators.
The open door revealed a glorious collection of blooming orchids!