Chapter III: Hurrah and Hurrahing

Poppy ate her supper in a daze that did not interfere with her appetite, but did keep her from knowing what she ate.

Mark was not much less excited. It really was an amazing thing to come home from the post office with a horse and buckboard, “precisely as if it had been sent parcel post,” Mark said.

“And you would have to go down to get it, if it had come that way, because the carrier won’t carry awful big packages,” Poppy added.

Mr. Hawthorne had raised his eyebrows doubtfully when they asked him if Hurrah might stay on the place, but he had not the heart to say no, and when he saw the horse he said yes, willingly.

“He’s not a colt, but he’s a healthy, good looking elderly gentleman, and he’s welcome,” Mr. Hawthorne said. “You and Mark must take care of him between you, Poppy, bed him, curry him and feed him; that’s fair if I buy him feed. We’re the sort of people, thank God, that a horse, or even a child more or less, can be tucked away among and not worry us.”

“Oh, dad, you peach! I like everything about you best of anything else; I think the best thing about you is whatever I happen to think of, but the very best thing about you, straight, right along, all the time, is the way you are with birds and beasts and us kids!” cried Mark, beaming adoringly on this ideal father of his.

After supper Mark came out on the piazza. Poppy’s rockers were making such a racket that she did not hear him, so he stood still, shaking with laughter, watching and listening to her.

She was deep in a great porch rocker, clasping its arms with her thin, well-shaped little hands. She was rocking furiously, swinging her body forward and back with the motion of the chair. Her flaming red hair swung forward and back as she rocked; it had the effect of flames in the wind--and indeed her excited little brain was on fire.

The rockers struck hard on their rear tips, then just as hard on their front tips and made a great noise on the piazza floor as they rocked, but high over their noise soared Poppy’s remarkably clear, true and sweet voice, fairly shouting a song which she had just made. It relieved her feelings, but the words were hardly poetry.

She sang:

“Hurrah, hurrah for Hurrah, rah, rah!
He’s brown and alive and better’n a car.
He can eat oats and hay and not old gasoline;
And his nose is so soft you might think it was cream.
Hurrah! Hurrah loves me, if I am a red-head!
He’s my own horsie darling and I’ve put him to bed.”

In her ecstasy Poppy lurched over an arm of the chair and caught sight of Mark, crimson from suppressed laughter, his hand over his mouth.

“Laugh if you want to!” she shouted. “Just laugh! It’s all so, and I’ve got a horse, and if I don’t die in the night thinking about it I’m going to sing a whole uproar about it to-morrow. Oh, Jack-in-the-Box, honest to goodness, am I Poppy; honest, am I?”

“You dear child, don’t you know no one but Poppy could be so glad?” said Motherkins coming out past Mark and taking the quivering little body in her arms. “Dear, your head is burning and your hands are icy! You must quiet down, childie, or you won’t be able to look after Hurrah. Come, sit on the arm of my chair, and let us plan how we’ll drive through sweet, shady roads with Hurrah, when it is June.”

“You don’t know how it feels to have a horse given you. Who’ll wipe the dishes?” cried Poppy.

Motherkins laughed. “You and I, perhaps, after a while, but we’ll rest first. And the day after to-morrow we shall have some one to do it for us.”

Mr. Hawthorne drew a chair into the farther corner of the piazza and Mark came to sit on the arm of his chair, as Poppy sat on Motherkins’.

“Are you bothered, dad?” whispered Mark, sensing something unnatural in his father’s silence.

Mr. Hawthorne rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder as the other dropped on the rough coat of Semper Fidelis, “Semp,” his devoted dog, never far from his master.

“S-sh!” warned Mr. Hawthorne. “Don’t let Motherkins hear that! I don’t know, my laddie, whether I am bothered or not, or rather whether I’m reasonably bothered or not. I suppose I do know that I am a little uneasy in my mind.”

“Could I know?” hinted Mark.

“Not to-night. If there’s anything to tell you shall know, of course. I’m not sure that there is. You tell me, instead, what you are going to do about furnishing your club room--isn’t it a club room? You told me that you’d given up making the furniture,” Mr. Hawthorne diverted Mark’s thoughts.

“I guess the furniture gave up letting us make it!” Mark laughed. “We’re going to see if we can’t get some, enough, from Mrs. Lindsay and Mrs. Wayne; old stuff stored in their attics. We’re going in the morning, Poppy and I, with Hurrah in the buckboard, and if there’s any for us we’ll load it up.”

“I’ll drive,” Poppy called across. She had not heard anything else that Mark and his father had said, but she instantly caught the allusion to Hurrah.

Before it was light Poppy was out of bed the next morning, creeping down the stairs, her shoes in her hand, making no more sound than a red maple leaf makes eddying down from the tree in the wind of October.

She put on her shoes on the back porch and sped over the wet grass, frantic to get into the stable to see whether Hurrah were a fact or a dream. Almost she had convinced herself that she had dreamed the whole marvelous story, and there was no one about to tell her that her joy was real.

There was Hurrah, real enough, looking immense in the dim light. But Poppy’s anxiety underwent a swift change. Hurrah was a fact, but he was lying down! Poppy had never before seen a horse off his feet; instantly she made up her mind that he was desperately ill.

“Oh, my darling, my darling, my darlingest!” she wailed, bursting into a tempest of tears. “It’s those nasty little sharp oats! I thought they’d stick you! Oh, Hurrah, Hurrah! That you can’t do! Get up and speak to me, angel!”

Hurrah looked at Poppy languidly, then he yawned prodigiously, and this finished her hope of him. She had never seen anything so alarming as this cavernous mouth, stretched to show uneven brownish teeth. She did not know that Hurrah was not accustomed to being called at four in the morning and was not anxious to waken.

Poppy turned away with a great rending sob, and rushed back to the house, crying so hard at the top of her penetrating voice that by the time she got to the house Motherkins, Mr. Hawthorne and Mark all had their heads out of windows on the side of the house nearest to the stable.

“Poppy, dear, what is it?” cried Mr. Hawthorne. He was sure that some one had stolen Hurrah in the night, or else that he had hung himself in his halter.

“Come, come, come! He’s dying! My horse is dying!” shrieked Poppy.

“Choking in his halter probably,” said Mr. Hawthorne. “All right, Poppy; wait there. I’ll be down in a minute.”

“But, daddy, we didn’t put a halter on the horse,” said Mark as they both hurried to their rooms to throw on some clothes and go to Hurrah’s rescue. They ran to the stable, Mark and his father out-stripping Poppy, whose breath was nearly used up from running.

Hurrah had risen and stood sleepily looking over the low door at the rear of his stall as his new friends entered.

“What’s wrong with you, old chap?” asked Mr. Hawthorne, putting one hand on the soft brown ears, the other under Hurrah’s fore leg to try his temperature. “Why, Poppy, I don’t see anything wrong with your horse, except that he feels, like the Sluggard: ‘you have waked me too early, let me slumber again.’ Why did you think he was dying?”

“He--he was lying down,” sobbed Poppy, “and he opened his mouth fearful, as if he was sick at his stomach and gasping for breath.”

Mark uttered a shout of pure joy and his father laughed.

“Horses lie down to sleep; didn’t you know that, little Poppy? And he was yawning. He doesn’t want to be called at four in the morning, at his age. To tell the truth, neither do I! Let’s all turn in again, and I’m afraid I’ll have to forbid your visiting Hurrah till we’re all up. Never mind this time; I’ll wager you thought you’d dreamed him, and came out to see if he were real.”

Mr. Hawthorne gently rumpled Poppy’s hair, which was already sufficiently disturbed by a night of restless tossing.

After breakfast Mark, seated on the rear of the buckboard, with his feet dangling, and Poppy on the seat to drive, started away in pursuit of furniture.

Mr. Hawthorne called after them to say that Mark must get up beside Poppy to be ready to help her if she needed help, but otherwise their triumphal start was not hindered, and Hurrah showed no sign of dangerous illness.

They found Prue at Isabel’s house. Both little girls hailed them gleefully.

“We didn’t believe it was so; we thought we must have imagined it, but there he is, and you have him!” cried Isabel. “Mother, motherums, come see the horse! Poppy’s driving him. Where’s your whip, Pops?”

“I never strike him,” said Poppy sternly, as if she had driven Hurrah for years.

“Well, he’s really a nice looking horse. Really very nice! And how happy you are, little Poppet! I am delighted that you have him.” Mrs. Lindsay looked delighted. She had a beautiful face, sweet and calm, with a lovely light in her eyes, the beauty of one who had suffered. She had lost her other children in an epidemic of diphtheria; only Isabel had been left to her, and through the brightness of her smile shone the strength that had conquered grief unselfishly.

“I asked my mother, and she says we may have some things she stowed away,” said Prue.

“And you are welcome to several chairs and a table from my attic,” added Mrs. Lindsay. “Shall we go up and look them over? Tie Hurrah, Mark, and come up with us.”

The children trooped up the stairs, up the first and second flights, but Poppy lagged behind unnaturally; she was usually ahead of the others. She was sorely tempted to stay with Hurrah and keep flies off him, though the flies were still not abundant.

Mrs. Lindsay was one of those delightful people who remember precisely what they liked when they were in short skirts with their hair braided and ribbon-tied.

She selected a low rocking chair that would fit any one not above four feet high; another with a cheerful design of flowers painted on its wooden back; a low, bulging willow armchair that had seen better days, but might then have been stiffer; a queer old footstool covered with worsted embroidery, and a table of oak with a drawer in it and a shelf across the bottom which would comfortably hold games and sizable books, besides not being too good to put one’s feet on, in case one were writing at the table.

“Now, with Mrs. Wayne’s contributions, you will have enough,” said Mrs. Lindsay dusting her hands as she emerged from beneath the eaves. “But I think I shall contribute some dishes, for I’m sure you’ll like to have your own, in case you ever entertain. And I have a small kerosene stove I’ll let you use, if Mrs. Hawthorne isn’t afraid of fire; it’s really quite safe. You can boil water and make tea on it, or candy, if you watch it and don’t let it boil over.”

“Isn’t she the duckiest duck of a mother!” cried Isabel hugging this Lady Bountiful of the Understanding Heart. “You see we can sort of keep house.”

“And my mother has a cot bed she’s going to let us have for a couch, with a cover thrown over it, so if anything happened we could stay right there, over night, one or two of us!” Prue added.

“We’ll have to make a lot of trips to haul this all up on the buckboard, but we can take our time at it,” said Mark.

“I’m perfec’ly willing to lend my horse, but I don’t want him tired out,” said Poppy with much dignity.

“We’ll all walk beside him and sing to him as we march, Pops,” said Mark, as Isabel and Prue chuckled over Poppy’s magnificence.

It did require many trips, but the loads were light, and even Poppy was satisfied that the effort was not too much for Hurrah’s health since they themselves bore up well trotting along beside him.

Mrs. Wayne had an old rug that gave the last touch of completeness to the Club Room. They spread it in the middle of the room, and though it did not reach far in either direction, as Prue pointed out, it made the room look quite different than it would if the floor had been entirely bare.

With the cot set up and spread with a faded striped cover, and the chairs carefully set in careless positions, as if they had just been used, and the table with books on its four corners and a checkerboard and steeple chase and a box of Lotto, and Authors on the shelf underneath, and an inkstand and paper and pens and pencils placed exactly in the middle of the table top, the room looked as though there might be a reason for calling it a Club Room. If there were such reason the children had no notion of what it was. There was a Club Room, but in no true sense was there a club.

“You may come in to see it, Motherkins,” said Mark, as Mrs. Hawthorne peeped in at the door, asking if she might see what they had done. “Of course we do want you to see it, but we shall ask you to come formally, you and daddy, and Mrs. Wayne and Mrs. Lindsay--our Benefactors’ Day, it will be, and then you must try to feel as if you hadn’t seen it before. But come right in; we say it looks nifty; what do you say?”

“Nifty indeed!” cried Motherkins admiringly. “Why, it’s a regular treasure house of grandeur! And it’s in bad taste to have everything spick and span new, as if you were all varnished, and never had anything in all your lives before! I see that the fastening is off that window, but that doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, dear, no; nobody will bother these windows,” said Mark confidently.

“Your father could put a fastening on,” Motherkins went on, as if not satisfied to feel that the window could not be fastened.

“Little Motherkins-wee is afraid some one will creep in here and carry her off,” chanted Isabel, catching Mrs. Hawthorne around the waist and making her dance.

“Because she’s so little and so nice, nice nice!” Poppy joined in the song, dancing around Isabel and Motherkins, waving her hands to the rhythm.

The children all treated Motherkins as if she were a superior sort of toy.

“No fear of any one getting into the Club Room,” said Mark again.

And this showed exactly how much he knew about it!