WHERE IS NUMBER SIX?
“Come, go wadin’; Molly, please come,” coaxed Donald, pulling at his
sister’s skirt before the English girls were out of hearing.
“Yes, in a minute, little brother.”
Molly lingered to tell the fish-wife in painstaking French that they
were sorry to have interrupted her netting.
The woman puzzled over Molly’s words as Molly and Pauline had
previously puzzled over her own, for the language of Paris is far
different from the _patois_ of Normandy.
“She looks as black as the boat-house,” observed roguish Pauline, at
the same time glancing tenderly at the old peasant, as if paying her a
compliment.
“You sha’n’t guy the poor woman, Polly; that’s shabby,” expostulated
her comrade. “But tell me how to make her understand what I said.”
“Smile at her, Molly, and shake your head at Donald, then at the seine.
See how that will work.”
Apparently it worked well. The fish-wife smiled at Molly in return and
spread out the seine to show that it was uninjured.
“It’s a minute now!” cried Donald at the end of his scanty allowance of
patience. “Please go, Molly, please, please!”
“We’re going this very second, Donny; but what a little tease you are!”
returned his sister, taking his chubby hand in hers.
Then, bidding adieu to the matron of the quaint, thatched cottage, they
all walked down to the beach in the direction pointed out by Miss Edith.
The cobble-stones were rounded and smooth like paper-weights, and
moved beneath their feet with every step. Molly was obliged to support
her little brother very carefully to prevent his stumbling, and he
dragged so heavily upon her arm that she reached the pool quite
fatigued.
Once there, divested of shoes and stockings, and with his sailor
trousers rolled above the knee, Donald skipped about in the shoal
water, laughing and screaming at the top of his little lungs.
“It’s ’most as good as bavin’,” he called to Weezy. “Come wade wiv me!”
“Pretty soon,” replied Weezy, seating herself upon the rough ledge that
separated the pool from the ocean, and beginning to unbutton her boots.
At the second button her hand was arrested by a shout from the summit
of the cliff that rose abruptly at her side. It was Kirke’s voice, as
clear and shrill as a trumpet.
“Come up here, all of you! Come up and see the ruins!”
Pauline sprang in haste from her perch on a rock, crying,--
“We’ll do it, Molly, won’t we? I’m on tiptoe for it.”
All the morning she had been longing to explore this ancient Roman
fortress, of which the boys had talked the night before. Her
imagination had been revelling in its half-buried donjon, its secret
passages and its mouldering lookout, from which, according to Kirke’s
extravagant statement, they could “almost see the north pole.”
And now was the very time to visit the old gray walls; yes, the very
time, for her father and Paul and Kirke were wandering up there
photographing the ruins, and could help Molly and herself over the
risky places. It was a damper to her enthusiasm when Molly sorrowfully
replied,--
“You and Weezy can go, Polly, but I can’t; I can’t leave Donald.”
“There’d be no fun without you, Molly.” Pauline made a wry face. “Can’t
we take Donald up with us?”
“Not peaceably, I’m afraid,” whispered Molly with a sage smile.
“Certainly not just yet.”
“Supposing he _should_ cry a little; that wouldn’t hurt him,” persisted
Pauline, hard-hearted in her eagerness.
Molly flushed an indignant crimson. “I’m not going to drag my little
brother out of the water for anybody,” she retorted quickly. “I think
’twould be a burning shame, when he loves it so and has hardly been in
it two seconds.”
Donald entertained the same opinion, and when Pauline essayed by sweet
words to coax him upon dry land, he retreated with all speed to the
middle of the pool. This, though scarcely nine feet across and but
four inches in depth, was an ocean to him; and from its secure centre
he shook his wilful little head at his would-be captor.
His sisters smiled indulgently; but Pauline betrayed an impatience that
wounded Molly.
“I want to see the ruins as much as Polly does,” she reflected; “but I
won’t cheat Donald of his little rights.”
Then a bright idea occurred to her. “I’ve a great mind, Pauline, to ask
Kirke to come down here and stay with Donny while we go up there.”
And she bent her neck backward to gaze to the top of the dizzy height.
Upon the side where they stood and also upon the side fronting the
ocean the cliff was almost perpendicular.
“Oh, do ask him!” returned Pauline. “He and Paul have been through the
fortress twice, and we haven’t seen so much as the shed.”
“_I’d_ scream to him and ask him, Molly,” said Weezy, ever free with
advice.
“Come up--to see--the ru-ins!” repeated Kirke on a higher key,
wondering why they vouchsafed no reply.
“Answer him, Molly, do, or he’ll crack the ears of France,” cried
Pauline at her elbow.
Molly laughed.
“Take pity on me, Miss Ready-wit, and stop being so funny,” she
entreated, proceeding to make a speaking-tube of her hands, and calling
energetically to Kirke, “Will you--come down--to look out--for Donald?”
Though sweet and full, her tones were not very strong. “_Look out_”
was all that Kirke could distinguish of her sentence. “Can’t hear,” he
vociferated; “speak louder.”
“We’ll go--if you’ll--_look out_--for _Don_!” shouted Molly
explosively, nearly splitting her throat. “_Will you_ do it?”
“Of course I will! Come right along!” thundered Kirke, who had caught
a word here and a word there and had “jumped” at his sister’s meaning.
She wanted him to go with her to the Lookout, that tumble-down tower
overlooking the sea. He was sure that was what she wished, for she was
always turning giddy in high places and clinging to him, afraid to take
a step by herself.
So, not to vex her with needless questions, Kirke simply waved his hand
to put an end to the talk, and went back to the lofty tower to mount
anew the broken steps within; for he wanted to decide how far up it
would be safe for Molly and Pauline and Weezy to climb.
Meanwhile the girls below expected at any moment to see him descending
the winding path that led from the chalk cliffs to the fishing village.
When he failed to appear, Pauline bethought herself of the secret
passages she had heard of. Probably he had chosen one of these to
shorten the distance. Why, of course he had, and there was no knowing
just where he would come out.
“He must be here soon, Molly,” said Pauline impatiently, “and it’s
getting hotter and hotter. Why can’t we be going on slowly?”
“Will you keep Donald happy till Kirke gets here, darling?” asked
Molly, smiling at her sister. “If you will, I’ll give you a nickel.”
“I’ll give you another, and that’ll be a dime,” added Pauline.
Weezy gladly consented to the bargain. She was filling a scrap-book
with paper flags of all nations, and a dime would purchase several of
these.
“You can run to overtake us, you know, Weezy, as soon as Kirke comes,”
called Molly from the entrance of the path. “Tell him not to let Donald
wade too long.”
“I won’t forget,” screamed Weezy, as the two girls passed from her
view behind a bend in the hill.
At their last glimpse of Donald, he was standing outside the pool with
Weezy, looking at some peasant women who were washing at the margin of
the beach. The women were kneeling with their backs to the children,
rubbing the clothes white upon the smooth stones.
Twenty minutes may have elapsed, and Pauline and Molly were approaching
the dry moat, that half surrounded the hoary fortress, when they were
startled by piercing shrieks from Weezy, following one another in quick
succession.
Shrieking in their turn to Captain Bradstreet and Paul above them, they
rushed madly down the descent, and as they drew near the foot, met
Weezy herself, sobbing wildly,--
“Donald’s drownded. I know he’s drownded.”
And choking with grief and terror, she faltered out her pitiful story:--
Tired of waiting for Kirke, she had left Donald for “just a teeny
second,” and skipped away to look at the kneeling washer-women. On her
return the child had vanished, and his little blue sailor-suit lay in a
tumbled heap upon the brink of the pool.
“Donny had been teasing again to go in bathing, and I wouldn’t let
him go,” wailed his despairing little sister; “so I s’pect when I
wasn’t there he skipped into the ocean all alone by himself. Donald,
Don-_ald_, _where_ are you? Oh, dear, dear. I wish I was dead!”
“Run to the inn, Weezy, for papa and mamma; run as fast as you can,”
cried Molly, in a husky voice.
The sympathetic peasant women, having discovered the cause of the
outcry, had deserted their washings and clattered in their hob-nailed
shoes toward the base of the cliff, near the tell-tale garments. Here
the water was deeper than on the beach in front of the boat-house,
and it dashed over a ledge worn into many chambers. The peasants were
pointing to these deep chambers with gloomy looks, and muttering low to
one another, when Mr. and Mrs. Rowe and Weezy came flying from the inn,
and met Captain Bradstreet and the boys upon the shore.
Though pale with anguish, Mrs. Rowe had shed no tears. But when her
eyes fell upon the little empty sailor-suit, she gathered it in her
arms with the bitter cry, “O Donald, my little Donald, come back to
your poor mamma!”
Then it was that something unexpected happened--something which changed
her mourning into gladness. A little golden head shot suddenly up from
behind a neighboring rock, and a shrill little voice cried out, “Here
I is, mamma. Oh, please come qui-ck.”
Everybody jumped as if an earthquake had swallowed the cliff.
“It’s Donald, it’s Donald! I didn’t drown him at all!” shouted Weezy,
dancing up and down in frantic joy.
Her mother had rushed behind the sheltering rock to embrace her lost
baby.
“Oh, my sweet, cold darling,” she cried, pressing the wet child to her
breast; “how could you frighten mamma so?”
“Didn’t mean to, truly. Was only just a-bavin’,”--here disobedient
Donald hung his head,--“and Weezy comed back, and then I runned and
hid,--just for fun, mamma!”
“But after that, Donald dear, you heard people call to you. Why didn’t
you answer them and tell them where you were?”
[Illustration: “HERE I IS, MAMMA”
_Page 142_]
Donald snuggled closer to his mother’s breast. “I hadn’t a bit o’
clo’es on, mamma, don’t you know?” he whispered; “not a single bit
o’ clo’es on! S’pose I wanted the queer old womens to see?”
Mrs. Rowe answered him with a kiss. And when she had hurried on his dry
garments, she yielded him up to his father and the rest of the family
to be loved and petted, as if he had been a very good instead of a very
mischievous little fellow.