Chapter VI: The Dear House

Dolly and Kathie did not appear the next day. “The Lucky Four” had been sure that they would come, they were so delighted with the idea of the club and so anxious to belong to it.

It was the second day before they came, however. Isabel, Prue, Mark and Poppy were working hard in their gardens. Poppy always worked hard in hers; it seemed doubtful if anything planted in it could escape being hoed up, so hard and so recklessly did she weed it.

Kathie and Dolly came across the grass toward the workers so slowly, and Kathie’s face was so flushed and woe-begone that Isabel noticed it and called: “What’s the matter?” as soon as she could make Kathie hear.

“Nothing. Aren’t you going up to the club room?” Kathie called back.

“We’re going to work out here exactly one hour; we’ve been at it twenty minutes, only, so you may as well find the nicest seat on the ground there is and wait for us,” said Mark.

“Oh, my land! More’n half an hour!” groaned Kathie, but Dolly bumped down under a tree, where the grass grew thick, and, picking a blade, began to blow on it without wasting time on argument.

“Why don’t you leave it, and do it in the morning before it gets hot?” Kathie asked impatiently.

“We work one hour in the morning, one in the afternoon, Miss Stevens, for we are out after first-class gardens,” Mark answered loftily.

“If I had a hoe I’d help, then you’d get through sooner,” said Kathie.

“No, you wouldn’t--thanks just the same,” Prue spoke with decision. “Nobody who hadn’t planted it could tell what to dig up when things are starting. I wouldn’t let any one loose to dig my garden for the world.”

“You might think I was a hen!” grumbled Kathie, throwing herself down beside Dolly and joining in her blade of grass solo with a louder, shriller blade.

“Bet you didn’t bring those cones!” exclaimed Poppy, who had been eyeing the pair sharply.

“Did, too; here they are.” Kathie motioned to a box which she had carried as if it were heavy. “They’re not cones; they’re coins, Poppy Meiggs, and I got them; they are here. I won’t open them till we’re in the club room, and then I’ll tell you something.”

“We’ll be as quick as we can, Kathie,” said Isabel.

“We can’t be quicker than twenty minutes, because we said we’d work an hour, and we can’t stop sooner.” Prue was the firm person who made this announcement. “Jack-in-the-Box keeps the time; we’re wasting some.”

One worker in each corner of the lot given over to these gardeners, the hoes dug fast from this moment in a silence broken only by the dreadful cries of the grass blowers, getting horrible sounds, now high, now low, from the helpless blades.

“Time’s up!” Mark announced at last, looking at his wrist watch. “Say, it’s a whole lot easier to eat vegetables than it is to raise them!”

“I guess it is! I’ve got a crick in my back from my neck all the way to my heels,” Prue said, straightening herself with a heavy sigh.

“Quite a long back, Prue. You’ll be tall when you’re grown up,” remarked Isa.

“It begins as a crick in my back. I suppose it gets to be cramp in my legs after a while. Let’s make lemonade in our glasses in the Club Room,” Prue suggested.

“No lemons, no sugar! I’ll go buy ’em,” cried Poppy, tired, but always ready to do errands.

“But there are! Both things, Pops; I took them there yesterday. There are nice lemons, the plump, smooth kind, and two pounds of sugar.” Prue enjoyed the triumph of her foresightedness, though the rest expected Prue to think of things of this sort.

The six children went toward the house, the workers mopping their crimson faces, Kathie and Dolly still blowing grass till Isabel, warm and tired, begged them to stop.

“All right; I don’t like it myself, much, but it’s something you keep right on doing, once you start, though I get awful sick of it before long,” said Dolly, amiably throwing away her grass blade.

“I’m going to climb in,” announced Kathie, surveying the balcony, which was built out from one of the windows of the Club Room, and the roof of the piazza, which ran all along the rear of the house, below the room.

“Oh, don’t, Kathie! The posts may be weak,” protested Isabel.

“’Course they’re not!” Kathie maintained. “I love to climb. Now, you all watch me go up! Here, some one, take my box. Don’t lose it; it’s the coins. Now, watch!” Kathie spat on her hands like a boy, but she went up the piazza post and swung on the balcony like a monkey. Wriggling her body expertly, she got herself into position to catch the top of the balcony rail, from which it was no feat to get over and open the window into the club room.

“Hey-yeh, pokies, I’m in! Hurry up if you’re coming through the house!” she called down.

The others made haste to join her by the usual way, and the moment that she got inside the door Prue made a dash for her lemons, while Poppy caught up the club’s own private and particular water pitcher, and ran off for water.

“Do show us the coins, Kathie,” said Mark. “I’m wild to see them.”

“Well, I will,” began Kathie slowly. “But, look here! You said you wouldn’t divvy them up till I regularly belonged? Well, if I never divvied, couldn’t I belong?”

“Oh, oh! Injun giver!” exclaimed a frowning Poppy, appearing in the doorway with a steaming water pitcher, spilling its contents over the top.

“No, honest; no, I’m not!” Kathie cried eagerly. “But my father says I can’t give them away, and so I can’t. ’Tisn’t my fault. I’d do it in a jiffy, but if he says I can’t, why, how can I?”

“Thought they were yours!” observed Prue, disgustedly, not because she cared the least bit for the coins, but because she thought she had caught Kathie pretending.

“They are mine. But they aren’t mine to do what I please with; not now,” Kathie was quick to explain. “They were left to me, in a will; some one father knew left ’em. They are mine, but father says I can’t do one thing with them till I’m grown up and can tell a hawk from a handsaw. That’s what he said; I don’t know what he meant, but I suppose that’s two kinds of coins. I’ll show you how they are; they’re awful old! Some of ’em go all the way back to Julius Cæsar and to old Egypt.”

“Oh, Kath, honest!” cried Mark, instantly excited; he was studying Cæsar with his father, out of school, and the great Roman was one of his heroes--Mark had many heroes, and so had Isabel.

Kathie opened the case that held the coins and began laying them out on the table.

“I couldn’t bring all. This isn’t half, but it was so heavy Dolly and I had to keep shifting hands; she helped me carry them,” Kathie said.

“We know it’s heavy; we carried it up stairs,” said Prue, coming over with the brown paper bag of sugar in her hands. “They’re not so much; just pieces of money. Our money’ll be nice ages from now.”

“Lots of people think it’s pretty nice now,” laughed Isabel. “I think these coins are perfectly wonderful! Only think, when this one was made in England George Washington was a little boy----”

“Cutting down a cherry tree!” Prue interrupted her unexpectedly. “What of it if he was? We all know he had to be a little boy first. I think it’s silly to make a fuss over that! Like it very sweet, Kath and Doll? I don’t want to put in so much sugar that it stays at the bottom.”

“I guess I like it same as the rest,” said Kathie, and Dolly also thought that she did.

“Oh, Mark, Mark, please see! This one is Queen Elizabeth! Shakespeare had one like this in his pocket, most likely!” sighed Isabel, almost tearful from emotion.

“He didn’t have much money in his pocket, did he?” laughed Mark. “Yes, Isa; it does make you feel funny, doesn’t it? But only see this one! Cæsar!”

“You didn’t say whether it made any difference about my belonging, now I can’t divide up the coins,” hinted Kathie anxiously.

“Oh, it won’t; it isn’t your fault,” said Dolly easily. “And I’m going to belong, and I haven’t one thing to do with the coins.”

“We thought we’d call it half-membership for awhile. Then we can go either way with the other half. That’s fair, not to decide too soon, isn’t it?” Isabel’s voice betrayed her anxiety not to offend Kathie and Dolly.

“I’ve thought of such a splendid plan! There’s the secret passage into this house! Nobody, hardly, knows about it, and nobody ever goes into it. Put the box down there--it’s as safe as safe; safer than in any house--and let’s play it is buried treasure. We could have lots of fun knowing it was there and keeping it secret. Will you do that, Kathie?”

“And I belong?” Kathie would not yield her point.

“Y-es, but half-membership!” said Isabel, and Kathie accepted the terms.

“Well, this lemonade certainly does taste fine!” said Dolly, sipping hers with a spoon and letting the refreshing drops trickle down her throat. “I’d rather have this than the coins!”

“They’re different,” Kathie needlessly remarked. “Both are good, I guess; I can tell more about lemonade myself. Doll, we’ve got to get back. Didn’t your mother say something about your getting dressed early?”

“Oh, mercy! ’Course she did! Her aunt, my great aunt, is coming, and I’ve got to be fixed up; mother’s terribly anxious to please her. And she’s as big as a haystack and just as deaf! Come on, Kathie; mother’ll never forgive me if I don’t get to the station to meet her.” Indolent Dolly sighed with real dismay at the prospect before her and slowly got on her feet.

“I’ll take you down,” said Poppy, with a splendid air of young ladyhood. “I can harness my horse myself now; he’s just as gentle as a cream peppermint, and I’ll drive you home.”

“Maybe we would get there quicker if we walked; maybe he is as slow as a cream peppermint!” cried Kathie cruelly.

“Then walk ’f you think so!” cried Poppy, angry in an instant. “Hurrah is a lovely, lovely horse, and he goes like everything! Just walk! Serves you right!”

“You harness and let me go, too, Pops! Show them how Hurrah trots,” whispered Isa into Poppy’s burning ear. “Take us all down; Prue, too, and meet Mr. Daddé and bring him home. He’s coming on the 4.30 train.”

“All right, Isa, for you I will. Not for any one who consults Hurrah,” said Poppy. She meant “insults Hurrah,” but Isabel did not correct her.

It was true that Poppy had learned to harness her pet. She was small for her not-great age, and had to stand on a box to do it, but Hurrah knew, like the good and intelligent creature that he really was, that a small girl must be considered. He put down his head for the bridle, and moved over exactly as Poppy bade him, she meanwhile straining her arms over his back, but refusing help, for her joy in Hurrah and being about him increased with each day.

The five little girls piled on the buckboard, leaving to Mark, who was not going with them, the task of placing the box of coins in the secret passage.

Bunkie jumped up beside Isa as a matter of course; the small dog enjoyed and approved the sociable, springy buckboard with all his might.

Poppy gathered up the lines and ordered Hurrah to “get up,” with a dignity intended to show how many years she had driven spirited steeds.

Hurrah had preserved through his two decades an excellent gait. As he trotted off down the driveway, and thence on down the street, Poppy glanced scornfully over her shoulder at Kathie and Dolly, as one who would say:

“Now do you see?” yet disdained to say it.

But she did say as they drew near the Harding and Stevens houses, which stood next each other:

“I hope I can stop him! You get off quick, girls, ’cause Hurrah hates to stand.”

“Good-night. We’ll be right up to the club!” Kathie called back as Hurrah started up the instant they were off, as if he were young and impatient, but Isabel, sitting beside Poppy, saw the twitch that young jockey gave the lines.

Isabel and Prue stayed with Poppy as she drove toward the station, instead of going straight home. It was understood between them and Mark that Poppy was not to be left alone with her horse; quiet though Greenacres streets were, Poppy was capable of getting into trouble in them.

Mr. Hawthorne came from the train before they reached the station. He took off a new straw hat and waved it gayly at the children, but all six sharp eyes saw that the handsome face beneath the hat was grave and anxious.

“Oh, dear Mr. Daddé, is it all right?” Isabel ventured to ask, after he had jumped on the buckboard and it had been turned around, a feat that always frightened Poppy more than it would have done had she realized that Hurrah attended to the doing of it himself, leaving nothing to her. Evidently he had no more confidence in Poppy’s wisdom in directing him than she had herself.

“Dear little Isa, we must try to feel that it is all right, but it looks as though it might not be as we want it to be,” said Mr. Hawthorne sadly. “My lawyers told me to-day that Maurice Ditson has made out a case that promises success for him. He claims that his father’s will was not valid--I won’t try to explain to you how he proves it. My lawyers are sure that he is hiring false witnesses, that the whole thing is what they call ‘a frame up,’ fraud, you know! But the thing is to prove that it is fraud, and my lawyers seem to fear it may be more than difficult. If Maurice Ditson gets his case I lose the money his father left to me, and----”

“The house? Oh, the house?” cried Isabel, clasping her hands.

“The house. Not because Ditson can claim that, but because it would have to be sold; I put some of the money into buying it.” Mr. Hawthorne showed how hard this was to say.

With a wail that made a man passing stop short and stare at them, Poppy burst out crying.

“Hurrah, oh, Hurrah? Would my darling go?” she shrieked.

“Perhaps we can keep him to help us to earn our living, little Poppy,” said Mr. Hawthorne, smiling, though his eyes were profoundly sad.

“I was so happy in putting my little mother back into her old home,” he added.

“Oh, yes, oh, yes! And her garden, and the old flowers, and everything!” cried Isabel. “Oh, dear, Mr. Daddé, it can’t happen, it can’t possibly happen! But if it does, Motherkins has you and Mark, and that’s more than a house.”

“I try to remember that, dear little loving heart!” Mr. Hawthorne’s smile for the child he dearly loved was tender and grateful. “I know it is true.”

“It is true,” said Prue dismally. “But, oh, the dear house!”

“Ah, yes; the dear house!” echoed Isabel.

“Oh, my jiminy, the dear house!” Poppy chimed in most tragically of all.