A POSTPONEMENT
Margy caught Ward and Artie at the gate of the school yard and Polly
herself met Fred as he came down the stairs, his mouth puckered to
whistle as soon as he should be safely out of the door. Whistling
inside the building was forbidden.
“What is it? What is it?” cried Jess, who had caught the excitement
from Margy. “Hurry up, Polly, and tell us.”
“Well, you know that room at the back of the house we just had finished
this fall?” demanded Polly.
“The one your mother is going to have as another spare room?” asked
Jess.
“With painted furniture and a gray and pink rug?” said Margy.
“Yes. Only there isn’t going to be any gray and pink rug,” answered
Polly. “Mother told me this noon. She has talked it over with Daddy,
and she wants to wait till spring when he goes off to the Hardware
Convention. She’ll go with him and buy the furniture then and get the
latest--she said so. And what do you think?”
No one thought. They stared at the sparkling Polly.
“Mother said,” Polly announced with a rush, “that, as long as she
wasn’t going to use the room, we could have it for our clubroom this
winter!”
“Polly! How perfectly lovely!” squealed Margy, in delight.
“When did she say so?” asked Artie, this being the first time he had
heard the news.
“This noon, after you had gone,” Polly told him. “And it’s the nicest
room--three windows and a window seat and as warm as toast. The
radiator is under the window seat. There isn’t a bit of furniture in
it, so we can move our own stuff in. And it’s over the back hall, so it
won’t matter if we do make a little noise. No one will hear us.”
“I said last night I wished we had a room we could use,” declared Jess.
“But our house is so little we use every single place. In winter Dora
doesn’t go home to sleep, and that takes an extra room.”
“My goodness, Jess Larue,” said Polly, “don’t you think you’ve done
enough? We’ve had that perfectly fine room in your barn ever since the
club was started. We’ll never have as nice a place as that, and the
minute it is warm we’ll move back. But I certainly am glad we can have
this room.”
“I am, too,” declared Fred. “I say three cheers for your mother. Do you
suppose we can meet there to-morrow afternoon, Polly?”
“Well, we can, if you’re willing to help move this afternoon,” said
Polly. “I think, if every one will help, we can get everything done in
time. If there is one thing I will not stand,” she announced firmly,
“it is to meet in the room before we get our stuff moved in. I’d rather
postpone the meeting.”
“Come on,” was Fred’s reply to this speech. “What are you all standing
here for? We’ve got to move the table and the chairs and all that junk
before supper time.”
He started to run, and after him ran the other members of the Riddle
Club. The pavements were wet from the stray snow flakes which had
melted as fast as they fell, and Margy slipped once or twice, but she
never complained. She, too, felt that getting to the barn and starting
the moving was the most important thing to be considered. At a time
like this, mere legs and feet were of little consequence.
They dashed into the three houses, to tell three mothers that they
were home from school, and then dashed out again and made for the barn.
As Ward complained, pantingly climbing the loft ladder, they acted as
though the barn was on fire and they had to save their furniture from
the flames.
“Well, it gets dark so soon that we have to hurry,” said Fred. “Hurry
up and unlock the door, Ward.”
“I haven’t the key,” answered Ward. “It’s in my other pocket.”
“You mean the pocket of your other coat,” Artie corrected him.
“Well, isn’t that my other pocket?” argued Ward. “How could I have the
same pocket in my other coat that I have in this one?”
“We don’t care about your other pocket or this pocket or which pocket
is where,” broke in Fred. “Go get the key, Ward. And hurry. It isn’t
going to be so easy taking this stuff down that ladder as it was to
bring it up.”
Ward went off to get the key for the padlock, and the others sat down
in the old, dry hay to wait for him.
“Why don’t we lower the table out of the window?” suggested Artie.
“That’s the way they took the new safe into the lodge hall; they
pulled it up to the second story on a rope. If you can take something
in that way, why can’t you take it out?”
“Window’s too narrow,” Fred objected.
“If you can let it out of a window, what’s the matter with lowering it
over the loft on a rope?” said Jess, slowly.
“We could! Good for you, Jess!” cried Fred. “I’m not anxious to go down
that ladder, let me tell you, with one end of the table and some one
else at the other end liable to let the whole thing slip and knock me
off. Let’s get a rope and let the table down.”
As Margy had once disconsolately remarked, if there was one thing
that was scarce and hard to find in River Bend, it was a good rope.
It was her complaint that there was never anything on hand to serve
as a jumping rope, and the boys were always discovering that they had
no rope to use when they really needed rope. Mothers guarded their
clotheslines jealously, and woe betide the boy or girl who cut it in
two, or even chopped a tiny length off. “You’d think a clothesline was
made of gold,” to quote the exasperated Margy.
“I’ll go get a rope,” offered Artie. “Dad has some down at the store,
and he said I could have it, if I came after it. I’ll be back in a
jiffy.”
“I don’t see what Ward calls it, he is doing,” said Jess, presently.
“Even if he had to stop to get his breath, he’s had time to find that
key and be back. Perhaps I’d better go down and see if he needs me to
help him hunt.”
Fred and Margy and Polly waited in the loft till the shadows deepened
to such a dark gray that they began to think it must be nearly supper
time.
“I don’t know what you think,” said Fred. “But I know we’ve waited long
enough. I’m going in.”
Margy and Polly followed him down the ladder. To the natural shadows
of a wintry afternoon, the heavy gray snow clouds had added a deeper
tinge, and though it was only a little past four, a light in the
sewing-room of the Marley house showed that Polly’s mother had found it
necessary to have the help of artificial light in finishing her work.
“Let’s go over and look at the room,” suggested Polly, and the three
went in the side door and up the back stairs, which brought them to the
room set aside for their use.
“It’s fine,” commented Fred. “Just fine, Polly. We’re mighty lucky to
have it. There’s room for everything, and that shelf will be just the
place to put the loving cup.”
Polly was pleased. She had been so delighted to have the room to offer
the Riddle Club that she had taken their pleasure for granted; and now
Ward and Jess and Artie were apparently making no effort to help her
take possession. However, if the critical Fred approved of the room, it
must be all right.
“Hello!” said Mrs. Marley, passing through the hall and seeing them
sitting on the window seat. “Why, I thought this was the big afternoon!
Where are all the others? And you haven’t moved a thing!”
“Ward went to get the key and he didn’t come back,” explained Polly,
dully. “And Artie went down to the store to get some rope, and he
hasn’t come back, either. And we waited and waited and waited for them.”
“Why, Polly dear, didn’t you go after them?” asked Mrs. Marley, in
surprise. “Of course something has happened. You mustn’t be so ready to
believe that it’s their fault. They’re just as much interested in the
Riddle Club as you are, dear.”
“No, they’re not,” said Polly. “They like it as long as I’ll do all the
work and the planning, but they won’t do a thing to help.”
“And this isn’t the first time Ward’s gone off and forgotten to come
back,” declared Margy. “He always thinks there is plenty of time for
everything.”
“There they are now,” said Mrs. Marley, as the doorbell sounded. “I’ll
go down and send them up.”
Ward and Jess came stamping up the stairs, with Artie following them.
He carried a large coil of rope over his arm.
“What you doing up here?” asked Ward. “We went up in the loft and you
weren’t there. Then we went to Williamson’s, and you weren’t there,
either.”
“How are we going to get anything moved, if you don’t do anything?”
said Jess.
“Do anything!” exploded Margy. “Where’ve you been all this time? Here
it is half-past four, and you talk about us doing something! Where have
you been all this time?”
“Is it half-past four?” asked Jess. “Why, Dora was baking cookies and
we stayed to watch her a little while. She said we could scrape the
bowl, but we didn’t wait for that. We hurried back as fast as we could.”
Polly said nothing at all. Fred glanced at her uncertainly.
“What happened to you, Artie?” he said.
“Why, nothing,” Artie replied. “I went down to the store and got the
rope; here it is.”
“Did it take you an hour?” asked Fred.
“An hour? I wasn’t gone an hour,” Artie protested. “All I did was to
turn the emery wheel for Mr. Kelper a little while; but it wasn’t an
hour.”
“Come on and let’s do the moving,” urged Ward. “What are you waiting
for? It’s almost dark now.”
“It’s too dark to begin getting things down from the loft,” said Polly,
quietly. “And, anyway, there’s no hurry; we can’t have a meeting till
after Thanksgiving.”
“Why, to-morrow!” said Jess. “It’s our day to-morrow, Polly.”
“But we won’t be moved,” Polly pointed out. “We can’t get our things
in here and in place and have a meeting, too. And if we go over our
regular day we have to wait till the next meeting. I said I won’t hold
a session without everything in order, and I won’t.”
“Are you mad, Polly?” asked Jess, anxiously. “Perhaps we didn’t hurry
right back, but we meant to.”
“No, I’m not mad,” said Polly, calmly. “I’m only telling you that there
won’t be any meeting to-morrow. We can move to-morrow, if you want to.”
“But let’s move now, Polly,” urged Artie. “I have the rope and
everything. There’s lots of time.”
“We could start, Polly,” said Fred.
“I think Polly is exactly right,” declared Margy. “It’s almost dark
now, and we couldn’t see to get up and down the loft ladder. Besides, I
nearly froze to death waiting up there for you. It will serve you right
to have to wait till after Thanksgiving.”
“Well, you’ll have to wait, too,” Jess retorted.
Polly, usually the gentlest of girls, could, when aroused, be like “a
little cake of cement,” her father said. If she said that no meeting
of the Riddle Club was to be called till after Thanksgiving, the other
members knew that no amount of persuasion could make her change her
mind. Jess was not exactly easy in her conscience, for she had lingered
beyond all reason; and Ward and Artie, too, knew that they had been
thoughtless and selfish to keep the rest waiting.
“We’ll start to move the first thing after school to-morrow,” said
Jess. “And I’ll bring the key with me, so we’ll be sure we have it.”
Fred thought wistfully of the lost dues, but he resisted the temptation
to speak of them.