CHAPTER XXV
The Response To Mabel's Telegram
THE night of their flitting from Dandelion Cottage the girls had hastily eaten all the radishes in the cottage garden to prevent their falling into the hands of the grasping Milligans. Now, the morning after their visit to Mr. Downing, they were wishing that they hadn't; not because the radishes had disagreed with them, but for quite a different reason. They could not enter the cottage, of course, but it had occurred to them that it might be possible to derive a certain melancholy satisfaction from tending and replenishing the little garden. That pleasure, at least, had not been forbidden them; but before beginning active operations, they took the precaution of enlarging the hole in the back fence, so that instantaneous flight would be possible in case Mr. Downing should stroll cottage-ward.
Their motive was good. When Mr. Black returned, if he ever should, Bettie meant that he should find the little yard in perfect order
"We'll keep to our part of the bargain, anyway," said Bettie, as the four girls were making their first cautious tour of inspection about the cottage yard. "There's lots of work to be done."
"Yes," agreed Jean, "we said we'd keep this yard nice all summer and it wouldn't be right not to do it."
"I wonder if we ought to ask Mr. Downing?" asked conscientious Bettie, stooping to pull off some gone-to-seed pansies.
"Perhaps you'd like the job!" suggested Marjory, with mild sarcasm.
"My sakes!" said Mabel, "I wouldn't go near that man again if I was going to swallow an automobile the next moment if I didn't. I could hear him roar 'NO' every few minutes all night. I fell out of bed twice, dreaming that I was trying to get off of that old porch of his before he could grab me."
"Well, I guess we'd better not ask," said Jean, "because I'm pretty sure he'd have the same answer ready."
"He certainly ought not to mind having us take care of our own flowers," said Marjory.
"That's true," said Bettie, poking the moist earth with a friendly finger. "They're growing splendidly since the rain. See how nice and full of growiness the ground is."
"I can get more pansy plants," offered Marjory, "to fill up these holes the Milligan dog made."
"Mrs. Crane promised to give us some aster plants," said Mabel. "Let's put 'em along by the fence."
"Let's do," said Jean. "You go see if you can have them now."
"I know Mr. Black will be pleased," declared Bettie, "if he finds this place looking nice. I'm so thankful we didn't remember to ask Mr. Downing about it."
"We didn't have a chance," said Jean, ruefully, "but just the same, I'm willing to keep on forgetting until Mr. Black comes."
It began to look, however, as if Mr. Black were never coming. Bettie had written as she had promised but had had no reply, although the letter had not been mailed for ten minutes before she began to watch for the postman. Even Mabel, having had no response to her telegram and supposing it to have gone astray, had given up hope.
Mabel, ever averse to confessing the failure of any of her enterprises, had decided to postpone saying anything about the telegram until one or another of the girls should remember to ask what had become of the thirty-five cents. So far, none of them had thought of it.
Still, it seemed probable, in spite of Mr. Black's continued absence, that he would get home sometime, for he had left so much behind him. There was a huge building, in the business portion of the town, whose sign read: "PETER BLACK AND COMPANY." Then, in the prettiest part of the residence district, where the lawns were big and the shrubs were planted scientifically by a landscape gardener and where the hillside bristled with roses, there was a large, handsome stone house that, as everybody knew, belonged to Mr. Black. Although there were industrious clerks at work in the one, and a middle-aged housekeeper, with a furnace-tending, grass-cutting husband equally busy in the other, it was reasonable to suppose that Mr. Black, even if he had no family, would have to return sometime, if only to enjoy his beloved rose-bushes.
Thanks to Mabel's telegram (Bettie's letter, forwarded from Washington, did not reach him for many days) he did come. He had had to stop in Chicago, after all, and there had been unexpected delays, but just a week from the day the Milligans had left the cottage, Mr. Black returned.
Without even stopping to look in at his own office, the traveller went straight to the rectory to ask for Bettie. Bettie, Mrs. Tucker told him, he would probably find in the cottage yard.
Mr. Black took a short cut through the hole in the back fence, arriving on the cottage lawn just in time to meet a procession of girls entering the front gate. Each girl was carrying a huge, heavy clod of earth, out of the top of which grew a sturdy green plant; for the cottageless cottagers had discovered the only successful way of performing the difficult feat of re-stocking their garden with half-grown vegetables. Their neighbours had proved generous when Bettie had explained that if one could only dig deep enough one could transplant anything, from a cabbage to pole-beans. Some of the grown-up gardeners, to be sure, had been skeptical, but they were all willing that the girls should make the attempt.
"Oh Mr. Black!" shrieked the four girls, dropping their burdens to make a simultaneous rush for the senior warden. "Oh! oh! oh! Is it really you? We're so glad—so awfully glad you've come!"
"Well, I declare! So am I," said Mr. Black, with his arms full of girls. "It seems like getting home again to have a family of nice girls waiting with a welcome, even if it's a pretty sandy one. What are you doing with all the real estate? I thought you'd all been turned out, but you seem to be all here. I declare! If you haven't all been growing!"
"We were—we are—we have," cried the girls, dancing up and down delightedly. "Mr. Downing made us give up the cottage, but he didn't say anything about the garden—and—and—we thought we'd better forget to ask about it."
"Tell me the whole story," said Mr. Black. "Let's sit here on the doorstep—I'm sure I could listen more comfortably if there were not so many excited girls dancing on my best toes."
So Mr. Black, with a girl at each side, and two at his feet, heard the story from beginning to end, and he seemed to find it much more amusing than the girls had at any time considered it. He simply roared with laughter when Bettie apologised about Bob and the tin.
"Well," said he, when the recital was ended, and he had shown the girls Mabel's telegram, and thoroughly delighted Mabel had been praised and enthusiastically hugged by the other three, "I have heard of cottages with more than one key. Suppose you see, Bettie, if anything on this ring will fit that keyhole."
Three of the flat, slender keys did not, but the fourth turned easily in the lock. Bettie opened the door.
"Possession," said Mr. Black, with a twinkle in his eye, "is nine points of the law. You'd better go to work at once and move in and get to cooking; you see there's a vacancy under my vest that nothing but that promised dinner party can fill. The sooner you get settled, the sooner I get that good square meal. Besides, if you don't work, you won't have an appetite for a great big box of candy that I have in my trunk."
"Oh," sighed Bettie, rubbing her cheek against Mr. Black's sleeve, "it seems too good to be true."
"What, the candy?" teased Mr. Black.
"No, the cottage," explained Bettie, earnestly. "Oh, I do hope winter will be about six months late this year to make up for this."
"Perhaps it'll forget to come at all," breathed Mabel, hopefully. "I'd almost be willing to skip Christmas if there was any way of stretching this summer out to February, Somebody please pinch me—I'm afraid I'm dreaming—Oh! ouch! I didn't say everybody."