"Where do you live?" asked Billie, turning to the oldest of the three
children. "Tell us quick, so we can get you there."
"We live wiv our muvver, Polly Haddon," said the little one quaintly,
pointing with a shivering finger out across the lake. "We runned away
dis mornin'."
"So we see," said Laura, adding, as she turned to Billie: "I think I
know where they live. Teddy pointed the house out to me one day when we
were taking a hike through the woods. Said he and the boys had stopped
there one day and had bought some waffles and real maple syrup from Mrs.
Haddon. Of course, I don't know whether it is the same one or not----"
"Well, come on--we'll find out," said Billie, lifting the largest of the
three children in her strong arms. "You and Vi can manage the other two
kiddies, I guess. You lead the way, Laura, if you know where the house
is."
"But hadn't we better take our skates off and walk around?" suggested
Vi.
"We can make it quicker on skates," said Billie impatiently, "because we
can cut across the lake----"
"But the ice!" Laura objected. "It may not be solid----"
"We'll have to take a chance on that," Billie returned, adding with an
exasperated stamp of her foot, "if you don't hurry and show us the way,
Laura, I'll do it myself."
So Laura, knowing that nothing could change Billie's mind when it was
once made up, caught the little boy in her arms and started off across
the lake, Billie and Vi following close behind her.
Luckily the children were not heavy, being thin almost to emaciation, or
the girls could never have made their goal. As it was, they had to stop
several times and set the children down on the ice to rest.
And more than once the treacherous ice cracked under their feet,
frightening them horribly. They made it at last, however, and with a
sigh of relief set the children on the ground while they fumbled with
numbed fingers at their skate straps.
"Is this where you live?" asked Billie of the elder of the two little
girls. Billie had undone the last strap buckle and was peering off
through the woods in search of some sort of habitation.
"Yes," answered the little girl through chattering teeth. "Our house is
just a little way off, along that path."
She pointed to a narrow foot path, or rather, to the place where a foot
path had once been. For now it was obliterated by snow and was indicated
only very faintly by footprints recently made.
Billie, seeing that the other girls were ready, caught up the little
girl again, holding her close for warmth and started down the
snow-covered path, Laura and Vi following.
The snow was hard, which made the going a little easier, and in a minute
or two they came in sight of a shabby cabin set in the heart of a small
clearing.
If the place had been a mansion, the girls could not have greeted the
sight of it any more joyfully. They stumbled forward recklessly at the
imminent risk of dropping the poor little children in the snow.
Before they could reach the cottage the door of it opened and a woman
stood on the threshold, hatless and coatless and staring at them
anxiously.
When she recognized the children she gave a gesture of relief and backed
into the house, motioning to the girls to follow her.
This the girls were not in the least reluctant to do, for they were
chilled through, and the warmth of Mrs. Haddon's kitchen was wonderfully
comforting.
They set the children on the floor, and the little ones ran straight to
their mother. Polly Haddon dropped to her knees and put her arms around
the three of them, cuddling them hungrily.
"My precious little lambs, you frightened mother so!" she said. "She
thought you were lost--but you are wet--or you have been!" She rose to
her feet and faced the girls while the children clung to her skirts.
"Where did you find my little ones?" she asked abruptly, looking
anxiously from one to the other of them.
"We found them up to their waists in icy water," Billie explained,
knowing that no time was to be lost if the children were to be saved
from a bad cold. "They fell through the ice on the lake."
"Fell through the ice!" the woman repeated dumbly, then, seeming
suddenly to realize the full seriousness of the situation, she roused
herself to action.
With a quick motion she swept the children nearer to the warmth of the
coal stove, then started for a door at the opposite end of the room.
Then as if she realized that something was due the girls, she paused and
looked back at them.
"Draw up chairs close to the fire and warm yourselves," she directed.
"You must be nearly frozen."
The girls managed to find three rather rickety old chairs, and these
they drew as close to the stove as they could without scorching their
clothes. They tried to draw the children into their laps, but the
children were either too miserable to want to be touched by strangers or
they had become a little shy. At any rate, they drew away so sharply
that one of them nearly fell on the stove. This frightened them all and
they began to cry dismally.
The girls were glad when Mrs. Haddon returned with three shabby but warm
little bath robes which she hung close to the stove. Then she undressed
the children quickly, rubbed their little bodies till they were in a
glow, then slipped them into the snug robes.
And all the time she was doing it she kept up a running fire of
conversation with the girls.
"Thank goodness," she said, "I only missed the children a little while
ago. They have always been so good to play close to the house, and I was
so busy I didn't look out as usual. And to think that they ran away and
fell into the lake! Well, it's only one more trouble, that's all. It's
funny how a person can become used to trouble after a while."
"But it would have been so much worse," Billie suggested, gently, "if
the kiddies had fallen through into deeper water."
"Eh?" said Mrs. Haddon, looking up at Billie quickly, then down again.
"Yes, I suppose that would have been worse." Then she added, with a
bitterness the girls did not understand: "It isn't often that the worst
doesn't happen to me."
Puzzled, the girls looked at each other, then around the bare,
specklessly clean little kitchen.
That Mrs. Haddon was very poor, there could be no doubt. The shabbiness
of the place, her dress, and the children's clothes all showed that. But
could poverty alone account for the sadness in her voice?
Mrs. Haddon had once been a very pretty woman, and she was sweet looking
yet, in spite of the lines of worry about her mouth. She had lovely
hair, black as night and thick, but she had arranged it carelessly, and
long strands of it had pulled loose from the pins and straggled down
over her forehead. At this moment, as though she felt the eyes of the
girls upon her, she flung the untidy hair back with an impatient
movement.
"How old are the kiddies?" asked Laura, feeling that the silence was
becoming awkward. "They look almost the same age."
"There isn't more than a year's difference between Mary and Peter here,"
indicating the taller of the two little girls and the boy. "And Isabel
is thirteen months younger than Peter. Mary is nine years old," she
added as a sort of afterthought.
"Nine years old!" cried Vi, in surprise. "Why, that would make Peter
eight and the little girl seven. I thought they were much younger than
that."
"Yes," added Laura, thoughtlessly, "they are very tiny for their age."
As though the innocent words had been a deadly insult, the woman rose
from her knees and shot the girls so black a glance from her dark eyes
that they were frightened.
"My children are tiny--yes," she said in a hard voice, repeating what
Laura had said. "And no wonder they are small, when for years they have
been half starved."
Then she turned quickly and herded the three frightened little ones out
of the room.
"You go to bed," she said to them as they disappeared through the door.
Left to themselves, the girls looked blankly at one another.
"Billie, did you hear what I heard?" asked Laura, anxiously. "Did she
really mean that the kiddies are so little because they don't get enough
to eat?"
"Sounds that way," said Billie pityingly. "Poor little things!"
"We must find some way to help them," Vi was beginning when Mrs. Haddon
herself came into the room.
She seemed to be sorry for what she had said, and she told them so. She
drew up the only chair that was left in the bare little room and sat
down, facing the chums.
"You must have thought it very strange for me to speak as I did," she
began, and went on hurriedly as the girls seemed about to protest. "But
I have had so much trouble for years that sometimes I don't know just
what I'm doing."
"Have you lived alone here for very long?" asked Billie, gently.
"Ever since my husband died," answered Polly Haddon, leaning back in her
chair as though she were tired and smoothing her heavy hair back from
her forehead. "He was an inventor," she went on, encouraged by the
girls' friendly interest, to tell of her troubles. "For years he made
hardly enough to keep us alive, and after the children came we had a
harder pull of it than ever. Then suddenly," she straightened up in her
chair and into her black eyes came a strange gleam, "suddenly, my
husband found the one little thing that was wrong with the invention he
had been working on for so long--just some little thing it was, that a
child could almost see, yet that he had overlooked--and we were fairly
crazy with happiness. We thought we had at last realized our dream of a
fortune."
She paused a moment, evidently living over that time in her mind, and
the girls, fired by her excitement, waited impatiently for her to go on.
"What happened then?" asked Vi.
"Then," said the woman, the light dying out of her eyes, leaving them
tired and listless again, "the invention was stolen."
"Stolen!" they echoed, breathlessly.
The woman nodded wearily. She had evidently lost all interest in her
story.
"My husband suspected a Philadelphia knitting company, whom he had told
of his invention and who were very enthusiastic over it, of having some
hand in the robbery. But when he accused them of it they denied it and
offered a reward of twenty thousand dollars for the recovery of the
models of the machinery."
"Twenty thousand dollars!" repeated Billie in an awed tone. "I guess
they must have liked your husband's invention pretty well to offer all
that money for it."
The woman nodded, drearily, while two big tears rolled slowly down her
face.
"Yes, I think they would have accepted it and paid my husband almost
anything he would have asked for it," she answered.
"But haven't you ever found out who stole it?" asked Vi, eagerly. "I
should think that the thief, whoever he is, would have brought the
invention back because of the twenty thousand dollars."
The woman nodded again.
"Yes, that was the queer thing about it," she said. "When the knitting
company first told us of the reward we were jubilant, my husband and I.
We thought surely we would recover the precious invention then. But as
the weeks went by and we heard nothing, the strain was too much. Poor
Frank, after all those years of struggle, with victory snatched away at
the last minute, when he had every right to think it in his grasp--my
poor husband could fight no longer. He died."
With these words the poor woman bowed her head upon her hands and sobbed
brokenly. The girls, feeling heartily sorry for her trouble but helpless
to comfort her, rose awkwardly to their feet and picked up their skates
from the floor where they had thrown them.
Billie went over to the sobbing woman and patted her shyly on the
shoulder.
"I--I wish I could help you," she ventured. "I--we are dreadfully sorry
for you."
Then as the woman neither moved nor made an answer, Billie motioned to
Laura and Vi and they stepped quietly from the room into the chill of
the open, closing the door softly behind them.