THE MAGIC FOUNTAIN
Father Blossom did not seem to be afraid of Mr. Bennett, though the
carpenter’s red face and angry eyes and the way he pounded the desk
scared Bobby speechless. Father Blossom continued to sit quietly in his
chair and when Mr. Bennett started toward the door, repeating that he
was going uptown and “get warrants,” Father Blossom merely said again,
“I don’t think you will do that, Mr. Bennett.”
“Why not?” blustered the carpenter, stopping half-way in the hall. “Why
not? What’s to stop me, I’d like to know?”
“Well, in the first place,” said Father Blossom evenly, “the recorder
isn’t likely to take a complaint against boys seriously; and if he did,
he would require more evidence than you seem to have. For instance, are
you sure your cat didn’t upset this varnish and oil you speak of?”
“The cat!” sputtered Mr. Bennett. “It’s likely a cat would do that,
isn’t it? I never heard such nonsense.”
“You didn’t see the cat do it, of course,” admitted Father Blossom.
“But neither did you see the boys. You only surmise. And a police
complaint needs evidence to back it, Mr. Bennett.”
The carpenter scolded and raged another ten minutes, but in the end
he went away muttering that he guessed he’d wait a few days before
having the boys arrested. When the front door banged behind him, Bobby
breathed a sigh of relief.
“Now I want to know all about this affair,” said Father Blossom
gravely, and Bobby told him.
“We didn’t set the shop on fire, honestly we didn’t, Daddy,” he
concluded. “We didn’t knock over anything. And I only touched the cat.”
“No, I don’t believe you set the place on fire, either,” said Father
Blossom. “But remember after this, Bobby, that it is never right to go
into a room or a shop or building that belongs to someone else when
it is locked expressly to keep people out. You should have left the
ball there and asked for it back when you could find Mr. Bennett. But
then, boys don’t think of that when they are playing and I won’t blame
you too severely for crawling through the window. But you made another
mistake and one I think you must have known when you made it.”
Bobby looked at the floor. “I--I didn’t say anything ’bout the fire,”
he faltered.
“You didn’t come straight to me when you heard Mr. Bennett was angry
and accused you,” said Father Blossom. “It makes me feel bad to learn
that my boy was afraid to tell me he was in trouble.”
This was too much for Bobby and he flung himself into his father’s lap
and cried a little, even if he was seven and a half years old.
“I wanted to tell you, Daddy,” he insisted. “Honestly I did.
But--but--the fellows----”
“Someone didn’t want to tell, I suppose,” said Father Blossom. “Well,
we don’t like to go against our friends’ wishes and sometimes they say
we will get them into trouble if we do. But I think it is always best
for a boy to tell his daddy, at least of his own share in anything like
this. Next time you’ll know better what to do.”
Bobby was silent for a little while and then he asked timidly if the
carpenter could have them arrested.
“I don’t know, Son, but I doubt it,” replied Father Blossom, who never
pretended to know when he was not sure. “You want to say as little
about this as possible and don’t talk unkindly of Mr. Bennett with the
other boys. You were not wholly in the right, you know, and he has lost
a valuable collection of tools and much fine work. It is natural that
he should feel bitter. If you are patient, some day he will find out
that he has been mistaken and I know he is man enough to admit it when
he discovers he is wrong.”
Bobby was very quiet through dinner that night and he stayed closely
to the house over Sunday. He did not tell even Meg about Mr. Bennett,
though usually he told her everything that happened to him. Mother
Blossom knew, of course, but she did not speak of it. It was not till
Meg went to school Monday morning that she heard of the mischief the
five boys were supposed to have done.
“Oh, Bobby!” she gasped when she met him at the school gate at noon.
“Bobby, do you know what that awful Charlie Black is saying about you?
He says you and Fred Baldwin and Palmer Davis and Bertrand Ashe and
that Lambert boy who was visiting Bertrand over Thanksgiving, set fire
to Mr. Bennett’s carpenter shop!”
“Charlie Black is a fibber!” said Bobby hotly. “We didn’t set fire to
the shop.” And then, because there was no hope of satisfying Meg with
anything less, he told her the whole story.
She was as indignant as any small sister would be and she assured Bobby
that she knew he had not burned down the shop. But not everyone had
so much faith, and as the news travelled through the school--as such
news will--Bobby and the three other boys (Elmer Lambert had gone home
Saturday afternoon and was safely out of trouble) had to submit to
much teasing and questioning. Charlie Black and Tim Roon taunted Bobby
openly with having set fire to the carpenter shop, and one recess a
pitched battle started between Bobby and his friends and Charlie Black
and Tim Roon and their chums.
Fighting was strictly forbidden in the school yard and the culprits
were marched in disgrace to the principal’s office by one of the
teachers who said that it was “a mercy Mr. Carter is here today and can
punish you as you deserve.”
Mr. Carter asked a few questions, scolded them all for breaking the
rule against fighting and then sent Tim and Charlie and their three
followers down to the gymnasium to wash off the dirt, first warning
them that they were not to molest Bobby or his chums or make any
reference whatever to the carpenter shop fire again.
Then the principal kept Bobby and Fred Palmer and Bertrand a few
minutes longer while he told them that he did not believe they were
responsible for the fire and that he thought very few people would
ever believe it. But, he said, it was foolish to pay any attention to
taunts or teasing, and that when people were wrongly accused, if they
were brave, it didn’t matter to them what unkind things were said about
them.
“And now you may go,” said Mr. Carter smiling. “But there must be no
more fighting. Another time I shall have to be more severe.”
“I didn’t even know he’d heard about the fire,” said Bobby, walking
home that noon with Meg. “I guess everybody in Oak Hill knows about it;
and Mr. Bennett probably goes around telling everyone we set fire to
his shop. Oh, dear, I wish I’d never played football!”
But Bobby forgot his troubles when he and Meg reached home and found
that Dot and Twaddles were planning to give a play that afternoon.
“You must hurry right home from school,” announced Dot importantly.
“Mother is coming and so is Norah. The curtain raises at three.”
“You talk as if the curtain were Norah’s bread,” giggled Meg. “You
should say the curtain ‘rises’ at three, Dot.”
“Huh, it doesn’t rise, either,” remarked Twaddles, who had come to the
lunch table with his face streaked with dust. “It pulls apart!”
“How dirty your face is,” observed Bobby, big-brother fashion. “Where
are you going to give this play, Twaddles?”
“Up garret,” answered Twaddles. “You pay six pins and you can come. And
we have seats and everything.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” laughed Mother Blossom when Bobby
asked her what kind of a play the young ones were planning. “Dot and
Twaddles have done it all themselves; they have been working all
morning and aside from considerable racket, I wouldn’t know there was
to be a play. You and Meg will have to wait and see. And, Twaddles,
my dear little son, how could you come to the table with such a dirty
face?”
“That’s shadows,” said Twaddles comfortably. “Will you hurry, Meg?”
Meg and Bobby promised to hurry home from school that afternoon and
they were home twenty minutes after the dismissal bell had sounded.
They paid their six pins to Twaddles, who stood at the door of the
garret, and went in. Mother Blossom and Norah were already there,
seated on a board placed on two small footstools.
“’Tisn’t a very high seat,” whispered Norah to Meg, who sat down beside
her, “but then you haven’t far to fall.”
Meg and Bobby stared in surprise at the corner of the attic which the
twins had curtained off for the stage. They would not let anybody help,
so they had not been able to hang their curtains very high. A string
had been stretched from one side of the wall to the other, where the
garret roof began to slope, and two old lace curtains were flung over
this. The audience could see through the lace without the slightest
trouble but, as Dot said, they were supposed to pretend they couldn’t.
“The play will begin in a minute,” announced Twaddles, stepping out
from behind the curtain. “It is called ‘The Magic Fountain’ and I
invented some of it and Dot did, too.”
The audience politely clapped, and Twaddles reached up to pull the
curtains apart. Something went wrong, the string broke and curtains and
cord came down upon the unfortunate stage manager. Bobby untangled him
and Twaddles said he thought they could get along without curtains.
“Hurry up, Dot,” he called in a loud whisper. “Come on, and begin. What
are you waiting for?”
“I got it!” cried Dot, climbing out of a trunk that stood open on the
“stage.” She wore a blue silk dress that had been her grandmother’s and
was the pride of her heart because it had a long train.
“This is the fountain,” declared Twaddles, pointing to the open trunk.
“I am a witch-man and I point my wand at it and a beautiful princess
comes out. You watch.”
The summer before, Twaddles and Dot had seen an electric fountain and
had watched fascinated while pretty girls and beautiful scenery and
once what Dot called a “whole house” had risen apparently out of the
water. This had given them the idea for their play.
“You have to wait a minute while I put on my hair,” said Dot so
seriously that the audience did not dare laugh.
The desire of Dot for long golden curls was something no one could
understand. All her dolls had to have yellow hair and she was always
sighing for long, springy curls instead of the short, thick dark hair
that covered her head. Now she carefully put on a circlet of pasteboard
to which she had pinned long streamers of yellow crepe paper twisted to
look something like curls.
“You look crazy,” said Bobby frankly, but Twaddles withered him with a
look.
“A heap you know about a princess,” he said scornfully. “They always
have long hair. Go on, Dot.”
Dot curled herself into the trunk and Twaddles stood by it. He rapped
with his wand three times and up rose the princess, slowly and
gracefully, her yellow curls dangling half-way to her waist.
“Now go back!” commanded the witch-man, striking the trunk with his
wand again to make the princess disappear.
She disappeared, but more quickly than she had intended. Twaddles’
stick had jarred the heavy lid of the trunk and it crashed down, hiding
the princess from view, but not shutting out her shrieks of fright.
“Mother!” screamed poor Dot. “Mother! Ow! Open it, Twaddles!”
“You’re a fine witch-man,” scolded Bobby, rushing for the trunk; but
Mother Blossom and Norah reached it first.