JESS HAS LUCK
All of the other members of the Riddle Club stared at Artie in blank
wonder.
“Cabbages?” cried Fred.
“What do we pull up a cabbage for?” Margy demanded, curiously.
“To see whether you’ll be rich or poor,” said Artie, as though that
settled the matter.
“How will you know whether you’ll be rich and poor?” Ward demanded.
“Not rich and poor,” Artie corrected him. “Who ever heard of any one
being rich and poor? Rich _or_ poor, silly.”
“Well, all right,” agreed Ward, amiably. “Rich or poor then. How’ll we
know we’re going to be rich or poor by looking at a cabbage?”
Artie perceived that he would have to explain.
“You tell by the dirt,” he said seriously.
“The dirt?” echoed Margy. “What dirt?”
“The dirt on the roots of the cabbage,” said Artie. “If a lot of dirt
sticks, that’s a sign you’re going to be rich; if there isn’t much
dirt, you’re going to be poor.”
“Oh!” said Margy.
“I think that will be fun,” said Jess, briskly.
“I call it a fool stunt, but we’ll try it,” Fred decided. “Know any
more, Artie?”
Artie thought for a moment.
“I know about making wishes,” he said, and paused.
“Well, don’t stop,” Polly urged. “Go on and tell us.”
Artie was as fond of talking as any of the rest, but he had an odd
habit of stopping suddenly, just when his listeners thought he was well
started.
“You make a wish,” he began again, “and then you must go upstairs and
down twice, outdoors and all around the house and around the barn--Of
course, Mr. Williamson hasn’t any barn,” Artie interrupted himself to
say; “but the summerhouse will do, I guess. The book said an ‘outdoor
building,’ and a summerhouse must be an outdoor building. Say, Fred,
isn’t a summerhouse an outdoor building?”
“Oh, of course it is,” the impatient Fred assured him. “Hurry up,
Artie, I’m going to sleep.”
“Where was I?” asked Artie, calmly.
“The wishes,” Margy prodded. “We make a wish and walk upstairs and
downstairs twice and around the house----”
“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Artie. “Well, you walk around the house and
the barn and then you come in again.”
“Then what happens?” asked Ward.
“Your wishes come true,” Artie said.
“Well, I call that too queer for anything,” remarked Jess, and the
others were inclined to agree with her.
“I don’t see how walking around like that can make wishes come true,”
said Fred.
“It’s the not speaking,” explained Artie. “That does it.”
Polly stared at her brother.
“The--the _what_?” she demanded.
“Not speaking. You know, even if some one calls to you or asks a
question, you can’t say a word till you’ve been all around and come
back,” said Artie.
“You never said anything about that,” Margy informed him. “Can’t we
speak while we’re walking around the house?”
“My, no, not a word,” said Artie, placidly. “After you make the wish,
you can’t say another word till you’ve been up- and downstairs and
around the house and barn.”
“Let’s do that! It sounds awfully spooky,” declared Margy.
“Be sure you find out about the false-faces to-night, Fred,” said
Polly. “If your father hasn’t any, we’ll have to make some.”
Nothing ever daunted Polly. If she could not find what she wanted
ready-made, she made it herself.
“And another thing,” said Margy. “Being the Riddle Club, why can’t we
ask some riddles? I mean short ones--one apiece.”
“All right,” agreed Jess.
“Maybe we can get some about animals,” suggested Artie.
“Oh, any kind of riddle will do,” declared the president of the club.
The plans for the party made, the six chums made fudge as a grand
wind-up to the afternoon. They went home to supper, where the candy
apparently made little difference in their hearty appetites.
Hallowe’en was not far away, and if their animal costumes were to be
made, it was necessary to start work upon them at once. Fred’s father
had almost every kind of false-face manufactured, but he had no animal
ones. Perhaps, as Jess proudly said, they were the first to dress up as
animals for Hallowe’en. Anyway, Polly would have to make the faces.
That was clear.
There was a great deal of laughing and whispering going on every
afternoon after school in each of the three houses on Elm Road. Artie
and Ward shared some joke together, and they might be heard shouting
and laughing soon after they had turned the key in Ward’s or Artie’s
room door, as the case might be.
“I think they’re dancing,” Jess confided to Polly. “They shake the
ceiling of the dining-room. Ward’s room is right over the dining-room,
you know.”
“Artie hates to dance,” Polly returned. “You couldn’t make him. No,
it’s something else. I don’t know what. They shake the house when
they’re over here, too.”
For not even Polly was to know what animals were represented. Every one
was so determined to keep his or her costume a secret that it had been
decided that “any kind of face” was to be worn.
“Of course they won’t match,” said Jess. “But that will be even more
fun.”
Jess was having a thrilling time trying to get her costume together.
She had set her heart on going as a chicken, and every one knows that
if there is one thing a chicken cannot do without, it is feathers.
“I can manage the wings,” she confided to Dora, the good-natured maid
in her mother’s kitchen, “because I can use those two turkey wings we
had left from last Thanksgiving. But where will I get the rest of the
feathers?”
Good fortune smiled unexpectedly on Jess. At least, she thought it was
good fortune. Passing Mrs. Pepper’s house one morning on her way to the
store for her mother--it was Saturday--Jess spied a barrel standing at
the edge of the drive. It was filled with soft, fluffy chicken feathers!
“Oh, Mrs. Pepper, are you throwing those feathers _away_?” asked Jess,
in the tone of one who has found a neighbor tossing out a gold mine.
Mrs. Pepper was raking leaves from her lawn. Carrie usually stayed in
bed late Saturday mornings, and she was not up yet.
“Why, yes, Jess, I put that barrel out for the junk man. He comes
through town on Saturdays,” answered Mrs. Pepper. “Those feathers
aren’t good enough to save for pillows, and I don’t like to burn them.”
“Could--could I have them?” asked Jess, her eyes shining.
“My lands, child! what do you want with them?” exclaimed Mrs. Pepper.
“Take them and welcome, of course; but I’ll need the barrel back.
Barrels are scarce, and I like to make mine last.”
“I’ll bring the barrel right back,” promised Jess, joyfully. “Thank you
ever so much, Mrs. Pepper.”
Mrs. Pepper stared at her as the small girl began to roll the barrel
toward her side lawn. The Pepper property joined Mr. Larue’s, and Jess
had not far to go. The feathers, of course, weighed almost nothing, and
the task was not difficult, but Mrs. Pepper stood racking her brains to
think what use Jess could have for the down and bits of feathers she
had thrown away. She was still standing there ten minutes later when
Carrie came out.
“Jess Larue took those feathers?” Carrie repeated, when her mother told
her. “I don’t see what on earth she wants them for! Why didn’t you make
her tell you before you gave her the barrel?”
“I believe in minding my own affairs,” said Mrs. Pepper, tartly.
She kept a great many chickens and sold them dressed; that is, killed
and with the feathers taken off. Her good feathers she saved for
pillows, but the stuff that filled the barrel was down from young
chickens and broken feathers that were of no use to her.
Jess rolled her barrel up to the side door of the house and reached
the hall before Dora spied her.
“Where you going, Jess, with that dirty old barrel?” she asked
suspiciously.
“I’m taking it up to my room,” replied Jess.
“What’s in it--let me look,” replied Dora. “Feathers! Jess, for
goodness’ sake, roll that barrel outside, quick! If your mother was
to catch you scattering those nasty little pin feathers all over the
house, she’d tell you a thing or two!”
“I’m not going to scatter them,” Jess argued. “Help me carry the barrel
up to my room, will you, Dora? I have to take it back.”
When Dora understood that the barrel was to go back to Mrs. Pepper, she
was more determined than ever that Jess should not take it up to her
room.
“I know exactly what you’d do, Jess,” Dora said. “You’d dump those
feathers out on your bedroom floor and take the empty barrel back; and
in less than five minutes, every rug and carpet in this house, to say
nothing of the chairs and the sofas, would have pin feathers sticking
in them.”
“Well, where can I put them?” asked Jess, realizing that unless Dora
was willing to help her she could not hope to get the barrel up the
stairs. “I have to have these feathers for Hallowe’en, Dora.”
“Take them out in the barn, to be sure,” said Dora. “Why you and
Ward don’t want to play in the barn, beats me. Many a child would be
thankful for such a light, clean place to stay in. You can make all the
noise you want, too, and do as you please out there. And you’re forever
hanging around the house.”
“It’s cold,” said Jess, absently, but her mind was busy with another
problem. She had remembered that she needed flour paste.
“If I take the feathers out to the barn, Dora,” she said coaxingly,
“how about some flour paste? Let me make some?”
“You’re too hard on the flour barrel,” declared Dora, good-naturedly.
“Be off to the barn now and leave your barrel there; then go and get
the soap your mother promised me and I’ll have the paste ready for you
when you come back.”
Jess was willing, and she rolled the barrel out to the barn. She
was glad that Ward was over with Artie Marley, for it gave her an
opportunity to make her Hallowe’en costume without an audience. She
dumped the feathers on the floor of the barn, not minding in the least
that they flew about and lighted, many of them, in her hair and on
her blouse and skirt, then rolled the empty barrel back to the Pepper
driveway.
Carrie saw her and called to her to wait, but Jess shouted that she
was going to the store and ran off quickly. It was not part of her plan
to have Carrie’s sharp eyes and Carrie’s quick tongue ferret out her
secret.
True to her promise, Dora had a generous basin of flour paste ready for
Jess when she came back from the store, and the girl took it gratefully
and went out to the barn. She made several trips to the house for
things she needed, scissors, newspapers, and a paper of pins were among
them, but at last she was evidently equipped, for she stayed in the
barn.
“Where’s Jess?” asked Polly and Margy, half an hour later, at the Larue
back door.
“Out in the barn--at least, she was a little while ago,” answered Dora.
“I haven’t heard a word from her since I made her a bowl of flour
paste.”
Polly and Margy went out to the barn. The sliding door was pushed
half-way open, and there on the barn floor they beheld a remarkable
sight. They stared, wondering what it could be.
“Jess!” called Polly, uncertainly. “Jess! is that you?”