THE LOSS
Barbara couldn’t believe it; Miss Davis’ model was gone! Stolen from
the Dutch oven and no one had seen them hide it there. That is, no one
but Nicky.
It was not yet nine o’clock next morning when Miss Davis came around
and told Barbara. She had decided not to oppose her sister and went
out to the Community House to get the family heirloom: and it was
gone!
Early as it was some of the ladies were already there, and she made
straight for the oven without telling them what she was going for.
“I almost fainted,” she told Barbara, not being far from a faint even
then, “when I opened that cubby-hole door and saw the place empty I
just screamed.”
“Gone!” Barbara repeated incredulously. “Who could have found it?”
“Well, you know,” sobbed Miss Davis, “there were youngsters watching
in that window, and we’ve got to find that Italian boy right away,
before he has a chance to sell it.”
“You mean Nickolas Marcusi?”
“I mean that little fellow who shot out in the road before us and then
scurried off like a rat,” replied the woman bitterly. “Mean to say
that wasn’t a guilty thing to do?”
“I couldn’t think that boy guilty of doing anything dishonorable,”
Barbara retorted, “I’ve known him to be too fine a little fellow.”
“Fine little fellows can fool you, my girl,” snapped the woman who was
still fanning herself with her hat although the morning was
delightfully cool. “Sometimes they think it’s fun to be brave, and
they think it smart to be able to steal things.”
“Nicky wouldn’t steal anything,” wailed Barbara. She never cried; but
if she had been given to tears they would have flooded her eyes then.
To call Nicky a thief!
“Well, come along and let’s see if we can find him,” ordered Miss
Davis, for her tone was too emphatic to be otherwise termed. “No
telling what a boy might do with a boat like that. He might put it on
a string in the ocean. Oh, mercy me! What an unlucky woman I am? Why
did I go against Tillie?” She sobbed again, and there was no denying
the genuineness of her grief.
Dr. Hale was out and Dora seemed out of reach, which was fortunate for
Barbara. She would not have had them hear of her trouble for anything.
“I’ll be ready in a minute, Miss Davis,” she told her caller. “We’ll
go over to the pavilion and I’ll phone Cara Burke. She’ll drive me out
to where the Italians live, but there really isn’t any use of your
coming. It’s an awful place to go.” She didn’t want Miss Davis to go.
She felt her presence would have hindered her greatly in her search
for Nicky.
“But _I_ must go,” insisted the woman. “I wouldn’t wait any place, I’m
too nervous,” and she almost pulled the brim off her hat in an attempt
to get it on her head. “Yes, I’ll go right along. I’ve got to keep
moving. You’ve no idea what it means to me. Why, we were offered a
pile of money for that little model, but, of course, we wouldn’t think
of selling it. Oh, dear,” and she jabbed her handkerchief against her
cheek, “why ever did I do such a thing! Pride, just foolish pride.
Wanted to show it off. Well, this is what I get for it.”
She talked and talked, and Barbara was almost as nervous as was the
woman herself. If her father should come back he would have to hear
all the story, and if Dora came back she would listen to every word
that she could catch.
“Come on, Miss Davis,” said Barbara, squatting her little felt hat on
her head without even knowing she was doing it. “Of course I’m awfully
sorry, terribly. But still, I can’t feel it is my fault; I just
followed your advice you know, and it was my idea that you shouldn’t
have left the model there.”
“Oh, I know it. Don’t make me feel worse——”
“I don’t want you to feel any worse, you know that, Miss Davis,”
Barbara interrupted, for indeed she was very sorry enough for the
poor, distressed little lady. “I merely want it to be understood that
I didn’t and couldn’t take the responsibility of any goods left there.
We girls are only supposed to do the things that the ladies tell us to
do. You see, we are merely a sub-committee.”
“But, thank goodness, you were there and that I didn’t confide in any
of the women,” exclaimed Miss Davis. “If I had told that to a single
woman, Tillie would be dying of grief now. Women can’t keep anything
to themselves,” she declared a little surprisingly, under the
circumstances.
“Don’t you suppose your sister will miss it from the cabinet?”
“No, not for this week, because she left for Blueberry Corners this
very morning. That’s the only comfort. If I’ll only be able to get it
back before _she_ gets back. Do hurry, dear. I don’t know what I’m
saying I’m so upset. I hope I wasn’t cross to you?”
“Oh, no, not at all, Miss Davis,” Babs assured her. “I can easily
understand how you feel. And I feel dreadfully about it too. Somehow I
couldn’t sleep last night and I didn’t know why. Come along, I’m
ready,” and they went off, Babs dropping a note on her father’s desk
as she went.
Cara met them before they reached the corner. The original plan was to
have Cara call at the house, but because of Miss Davis’ excited state
of mind, and the constant danger of Dora overhearing her, Babs had
hurried out before the appointed time. She knew she would meet Cara
before she turned into Landing.
“Hop right in,” was Cara’s cheerful greeting. Then she paused to give
Babs a chance to introduce the stranger.
“And if you don’t mind, Cara,” Babs continued after the brief
introduction, “we’ll drive out to the Italian settlement. We want to
see Nicky.”
“Nicky!” Cara’s tone was in dispute. She meant to convey again to Babs
her opposition to her constant interest in the Italians.
“Yes, and it’s very important,” put in Miss Davis before Babs could
answer. “In fact we’ve _got_ to find him.”
“Oh,” said Cara in bewilderment. This was something new, she
understood now; something new, but what?
Babs took her place in the front seat of the auto beside Cara, and
while Miss Davis was settling herself in the back seat, managed to
whisper enough to Cara to give the very least inkling of the matter.
“Something we lost,” she said, “and maybe Nicky has seen it. He was
there yesterday when we were closing up.”
“Oh,” said Cara again, and then she drove on.
Miss Davis seemed suddenly to have become speechless. Perhaps it was
exhaustion, for she must have labored under a heavy strain since
discovering the loss of the model, but, at any rate, she was now
drooping in the back seat of Cara’s car as if “every friend in the
world had deserted her”; that was the way her attitude impressed the
girls.
They tried to talk casually but it was a failure as far as Babs was
concerned, and when the usual group of urchins surrounded their car,
when it was stopped as near to Nicky’s house as Babs wanted Cara to
drive, it was a discouraged girl who alighted. Barbara Hale was sorry
she had ever bothered about these little foreigners, yet, quickly as
that thought darted through her mind, there came another.
What about Nicky saving the lighthouse lamp from darkness during that
awful storm? What other boy of his age would have been as brave as he
had been then?
“I’ll run over and see if he’s around,” she told Cara and Miss Davis,
in real fear that Miss Davis would insist upon going with her. “I’ll
be back in a few minutes.”
Over the rough tracks she stumbled. Everything seemed horrid. The air
was thick with smoke, there were odors of all kinds, from factory
fumes to puddles from rain, left standing in hidden places where even
the sun couldn’t find them.
And as she hurried along her opinion of all this had suddenly changed.
Yesterday she would have pitied those poor people living in such a
disordered place, but today she pitied herself that she had to go
through there.
“If I only hadn’t been so foolish,” she kept thinking. “And I’ve
missed a lot of good times this summer just by this.”
Presently she called to a group of children. And their answer brought
Babs to a sudden stop.
“You don’t mean that the Marcusis have moved away?” she repeated in
surprise.
“Yes, Mam, lit out last night,” a small boy told her. “Guess they
hadda skip,” he added impishly.
“They did not either,” defended another. “Some one took sick or
somthin’.”
But Barbara had to be sure. She could not believe that those people
were gone, without letting her know. But why should they have let her
know?
She stumbled on farther, the children tagging along at her heels,
saying all sorts of foolish things about Nicky’s family.
But she paid little attention to them, although her ears at least
heard every word they said.
“Yep, they didn’t pay the milk-man either,” one saucy little fellow
gaily announced. “An’ the old man’s in jail so they can’t do nawthin’
to him——”
“Shut up, you Tony, your folks ain’t such a much. Whata you knockin’
about?”
“Oh, run along about your business,” ordered Barbara sharply turning
unexpectedly around and facing them. “You don’t have to come with me.
I didn’t ask you to.”
“Beat it, fellers,” the big boy took up the cause. “She don’t want
you. I’ll show her the house.”
“Maybe you think she wants _you_, Smarty Leganto,” came back a
challenge for the chivalrous one. “She knows the place, don’t she? But
they ain’t anybody in it. They’s moved, we told you.”
It was no use. She couldn’t get rid of them. So she hurried along and
was now in front of that place likely called a house, by the man who
owned it, but was merely a shack to all other eyes.
The windows were raised, the hideously pictured curtains were not to
be seen, and the door stood wide open.
“Now you see,” came a taunt from the crowd. “They’s gone, ain’t they?
What did we tell you? Now, ain’t they gone?”
“Oh, do stop,” begged Barbara. “Of course they are gone. But why
shouldn’t they move if they wanted to?” This was by no means a
question, rather it was a declaration. She was trying to answer her
own question. “Why shouldn’t this family move if they wanted to?”
It takes so little to make excitement for such children as those
surrounding her, that even the difference in their clothes and hers,
the fact that she came in a car, and the still more surprising fact
that she should evince interest in a family like Nicky’s, served to
give the youngsters a wonderful time. And in spite of her protests
they were bound to make the most of it. And they did.
As she turned back to the car she wondered what she would say to Miss
Davis. If only she had not come along with them Babs might have told
the whole story to Cara, and together they could have thought up
something to do about it. Even a little delay would have helped so
much. But there Miss Davis sat in the car, her head out the side,
waiting eagerly for Babs’ return.
“I just can’t tell her they have moved,” Babs decided quickly, “not
just yet. I’ll say there was no one in.”
“All out!” exclaimed Miss Davis, just as Barbara knew she would. “But
we’ve got to find that boy——”
“I’ll come back with Cara in a little while,” Babs interrupted. “You
see, those people have to work, even the children, and it’s pretty
early to expect to find them around home.”
“But that boy,” (how Barbara wished she would not so persistently
attack Nicky) “he must be around some place. It seems to me I have met
him along the road every day this summer but just today,” wailed Miss
Davis.
“Don’t worry,” Cara ventured to remark. “We know how to find the
youngsters; don’t we Babs?” and she shot a look at Babs that was
infinitely comforting.
“Yes,” the other girl replied, already seated beside Cara. “We know
the haunts. I guess we’ll have to go over to the Community House now,”
she proposed. “I’m supposed to be around there some time this
morning.”
“Then drop me off home, please,” begged the still perturbed little
woman. “I couldn’t go over there again, that is, not just now,” she
hurried to modify, lest Cara might suspect she was really in distress
about something.
Just as if Cara didn’t.