Chapter XII
THE LETTUCE BOX
“The best thing to do,” said Poor Cecco next morning, when they had bidden the Woodchucks good-bye and were walking down the hill, “is to go home. This life of adventure is all very well, but we have been away for a long time, and by now every one will be wondering what has become of us.”
“Home!” shouted Bulka. “Hurray! Let’s go home!” And he turned a somersault at once.
It was all very well to say, but how would they get there? It wasn’t so easy. For one thing, no one had the faintest idea, now, in which direction home lay. It might be East, West, North or South, but after taking so many turns and coming through so many adventures even Poor Cecco had lost his sense of direction completely. As for Bulka, he had never even troubled his head about anything of the kind.
Poor Cecco thought and thought, and in the end he took a piece of stick, and finding a smooth bit of earth began to trace on it, as well as he could remember, the way they had come. It looked a queer sort of map when he had done, with stones and scraps of twig stuck in here and there to mark the different points of their journey, and certainly no one but Poor Cecco himself could have explained it.
“First,” he said, “we came down a road, and here is the bridge, and the old man, and those pebbles are the ducks—there ought to be more of them, but never mind—and that twisty line is the river. And then we crossed a field, only I can’t make that very well because it was all dark, but somewhere there is the little dog’s cottage, and this is the ash-heap country, and that white stone is Jensina. And here is where the rats attacked us, and then we went back to the road again. Stop a minute—I must put the road further over; there isn’t room. And then we took the automobile.”
Ah, the automobile! That was the real trouble. No one knew which way the automobile had gone. For one thing, they were half asleep most of the way. Certainly the automobile mixed everything up. If it hadn’t been for that, Poor Cecco was quite sure his map would have come out all right.
“Let’s leave the automobile out,” suggested Bulka.
“We can’t,” said Poor Cecco. “The automobile must gave gone this way.” And he traced another line.
“But it would have gone straight into the long grass!” Bulka objected.
“Don’t be silly!” said Poor Cecco. “Can’t you see it’s only a map? The question is, where are we now?”
“That isn’t the question at all,” put in Jensina, rather snappily, for she was getting bored with watching Poor Cecco stick in his twigs and stones. “I know perfectly well where we are now. I’m not an idiot! What I want to know is where we are going.”
“Can’t you have patience?” Poor Cecco exclaimed. “All you can put in a map are the places you've already been. That’s what a map’s for. No one ever heard of a map that showed the places people haven’t been yet. There’d be no sense to it.”
“There’s no sense to this,” said Jensina, “so far as I can see! Look where you’ve put the river—just where Bulka’s going to step in it!”
Bulka drew back, alarmed, but seeing only a line on the earth, stepped over it, and wandered off to look for huckleberries. Some one would have to find the way home; it didn’t trouble him.
Poor Cecco folded his legs and lay down sulkily. He thought it was too bad of Jensina to be so critical when he really was trying his best.
Suddenly Jensina sat up and thumped the ground.
“Listen! I have an idea!”
“Well?” said Poor Cecco, still sulky.
“Do you know the name of your house?”
“What do you mean?”’ asked Poor Cecco. “It’s just called the house.”
“Do you know what house it is?” Jensina explained.
“Of course I do!” said Poor Cecco.
“Then if you can write what house it is,” Jensina cried. “And if we’ve got three pennies, we’ll go back by R.F.D.”
Poor Cecco pricked up his ears.
“What's that?”
“It’s a man in a car,” said Jensina, “and he rides up and down the world all day taking things where they have to go. He’s got to take them. And whatever you write the name of the place on he’s got to take it there.”
“But why is he called R.F.D.?” Poor Cecco asked.
Jensina thought a moment. “R.F.D. means Rides For Dolls, of course,” she returned, very superior. “Every one knows that.”
“It might mean Rides for Dogs,” said Poor Cecco, who didn’t see why Jensina should have it all her own way.
Just then Bulka poked his head up through the long grass. “Who’s going to ride?” he asked.
“All of us!” said Jensina promptly. “Dear me, Bulka, you do look a sight! Brush all that grass-seed off you, do, and Poor Cecco find a clean piece of paper, and we’ll write the address.”
Bulka had been hunting huckleberries in the pasture. He hadn’t found one, but he had found a great many other things instead—hayseed and dried leaves and bits of twig and burrs—which were sticking all over him, and while he sat down obediently and began to pick them off, one by one, Poor Cecco found a clean bit of pasteboard, from a cigarette packet some one had thrown away, and dipping a twig into blackberry juice he began to write, while Jensina looked over his shoulder.
This is what he wrote, in a fine round hand:
THE-WOODEN-HOUSE-WITH-TWO-TREES-IN-FRONT
Left-hand corner of the road
Going to Strawberryville.
It looked very well when he had done, but Poor Cecco was still a little doubtful.
“Do you think he’ll find it?” he asked.
“Of course he’ll find it,” said Jensina. “That’s what he’s for. And now we must go and wait by the letters-box.”
So, Bulka being by now fairly tidy, Poor Cecco tucked the label under his arm, and with Jensina carrying her precious bundle they all three made their way under the pasture bars and back to the road. And sure enough, before they had gone very far, there was a grey box on a post by the roadside with R.F.D. written on it, just as Jensina had said.
“You see I was right!” she exclaimed. “Here is the letters-box, and if you’ll help me up all we’ve got to do is to sit here till the letter-man comes by.”
Poor Cecco climbed up first, by the help of a vine that twined about the post, and with a little pushing and pulling they were soon all three seated up there, safe and sound, with their legs dangling over the edge.
Jensina set up the flag, to be sure the letter-man would stop for them, while Bulka, leaning over, peered into the box.
“I don’t see any lettuce!” he cried.
“Where?” Jensina asked.
“In the box. You said it was a lettuce-box!”
“It’s not that kind of lettuce,” explained Jensina. “I said letters-box, where they post the letters!”
“There’s only one kind,” returned Bulka, offended. “I see the post all right, but there’s no lettuce. I'm hungry! I’m going back to look for huckleberries again.”
“You can’t!” cried Jensina, and she caught him by one leg just as he was getting ready to slide down. “You musn’t be hungry, Bulka. We’re going home!”
At the word “home” Bulka ceased to resist, and sat down again beside them. For safety Jensina made him sit in the middle with the address label across his tummy, and then, taking a piece of pink string she had picked up by the roadside, she bound them all three firmly together, in case, as she explained, they might get separated on the journey.
The three pennies, taken from the bundle, were laid on the letter-box beside them. It was agreed that Bulka should pay his own fare, while Poor Cecco would pay for himself and Jensina. Thus there was exactly one penny, belonging to Poor Cecco, left over.
It was not very pleasant waiting there, for the sun beat down on their heads and the iron top of the letter-box soon became uncomfortably hot to sit upon; in fact it was almost like an oven. Poor Cecco had the idea of picking some leaves from the vine that grew near, and with these they contrived parasols to keep the glare from their faces.
“I wish the letter-man would hurry!” said Jensina, examining her painted shoes, which were beginning to blister from the sun.
Bulka was asleep, as usual.
Presently, however, a little cloud of dust appeared far away on the road. It was the letter-man’s car, and at length, with much banging and rattling, it drew up before them. The driver was a pleasant-faced man. He stared hard at the little party sitting, all tied together, on the top of the letter-box, and he scratched his head.
“That’s a queer sort of a parcel!” he said.
Still, the label was there, in Poor Cecco’s beautiful round handwriting, and the pennies were there, so he had no choice but to pick them up, which he did rather gingerly and set them on the seat beside him, after first licking three stamps and sticking them, one on Poor Cecco’s forehead, one on Bulka’s forehead, and one on Jensina’s.
Then the car went on its way, rattling and bumping, to the next letter-box.
Scarcely had it started before two rats poked their noses from the tall weeds behind the post, and with one swift glance about them, set out on a steady businesslike trot along the road.
