"Well, I think it's disgusting, perfectly disgusting, of them to have gone off without us that way, without telling us or anything," Portia said to Lucy, and Lucy agreed.
"Boys think they're the only ones who are entitled to adventure," she said. "I bet we would have been just as brave as they were."
"Braver!" declared Portia, and she stayed mad at Julian for two whole days.
Because of course the story of the boys' escapade had come out almost immediately.
In the first place they had overslept that morning. When they woke up, it was broad daylight; the rain was gone and the sun was out; Uncle Sam was clicking restlessly about the room.
"Jumping cats, it's almost nine o'clock!" Tom yelped. "I'll be late to the store and Mr. Bilmeyer will bawl me out!"
"I'll be late with my newspapers, and everyone will bawl me out!" said Julian. Hastily they bundled their belongings together and made for the back stairs, Uncle Sam following.
The only trouble was that there were no back stairs. They apparently had collapsed or been hacked away by vandals years ago.
"There might be a tree by a window, or something," Tom offered hopefully. "We could get down that way."
But there was no tree that grew near enough; and to jump was out of the question.
"All we can do is yell," Julian said; so they leaned out of a window on the north side of the house and bellowed till they were hoarse.
"Uncle Pi-in! Oh, Uncle Pi-in!"
But there was no sign of him, and it was getting later by the minute, so they went to a window on the south side of the house and bellowed there.
"Aunt Minneha-ha! Aunt Minneha-haaa!" they bawled.
And she, luckily, did hear them. She came out of her house, Tarrigo barking beside her, and glanced to and fro, searching for the source of the yells.
"Up here, Aunt Minnehaha, up here in Judge Chater's house!"
Mrs. Cheever settled her spectacles on her nose and peered up at them.
"So that's where you are! Well, I declare! Your parents are worried to death, boys, and my brother has gone off in the Machine to search for you. You had better come down at once!"
"But we can't, Aunt Minnehaha!" And they explained the matter to her.
"Ma-a-a-a!" contributed Uncle Sam, as he joined them at the window and looked out, with his beard draped over the sill.
"Meet our roommate," Tom said, and Mrs. Cheever laughed and laughed.
"So that's where he is. My brother will be relieved to know—and here he comes right now, thank fortune!"
But then, as luck would have it, Mr. Payton had no ladder tall enough—Judge Chater's taste had run to lofty ceilings—so Mr. Caduggan had to be fetched with his. And even after the boys were safely on the ground, poor Uncle Sam remained aloft, bleating wistfully, for though goats are very good at climbing cliffs, they are very poor at climbing ladders, particularly down.
In the end, Mr. Caduggan had to improvise a sort of hammock and, with the aid of a couple of friends, got Uncle Sam into the thing and lowered him from a window. One of the friends, who had thoughtfully brought a camera along, took a picture of the majestic descent and turned it over to the Pork Ferry Sentinel, which printed it, subsequently, with a complete account of the situation.
So that any element of secrecy for which the boys had hoped lay shattered in a thousand pieces.
"You can't get away with anything in this life," Julian remarked gloomily. "At least I can't."
He and Tom had been roundly scolded: by their parents, by their employers, by the girls. The little boys, however, showed the proper perspective and regarded them as heroes. And Joe was deeply envious.
"Here I just simply went to bed, just for a little cat-nap, all dressed and everything," he told them. "I even took the alarm clock with me to make certain. I stuffed it in between two pillows, right under my ear (because I didn't want my folks to know, you know), and then what did I do! When the doggone clock went off, I just reached in and shut it off! In my sleep I mean! How about that! To think you can double-cross yourself like that, in your own sleep!"
"I think I'll stay mad at them another day," Portia said. "It's getting hard to do it; I keep forgetting, but I'm going to try."
"All right, then I will, too," Lucy said cheerfully. "Madame Vavasour says Librans are apt to be too kind-hearted for their own good."
She and Portia had been consulting, as they often did, Mme. Vavasour's Gypsy-Witch Fortune Teller; a useful volume they had found in Mrs. Brace-Gideon's library. The only parts they really read were those concerning people born under the sign of Libra, as Portia and Lucy both had been, within a week of one another, early in October.
"You are inordinately fond of luxury," Madame Vavasour had informed them. "All the appointments and appurtenances of the haut monde—Lucy had some trouble reading haut monde out loud, but it didn't matter—are to you as the glowing candle-flame is to the fluttering moth. Visits to elegant spas and watering places, luxurious railroad travel, fine horses, fine wines and impeccable cuisine, are hardly less than necessities to one of your elegant and pleasure-loving tastes. If you are a member of the fair sex, you will concern yourself with naught but the most exquisite gems, the finest furs, the handsomest members of the opposite sex—"
"The heck with the handsomest members of the opposite sex," Portia had interrupted. "What I like is the part about fine horses and luxurious railroad travel."
"Well, I don't mind about the exquisite gems and finest furs," Lucy confessed, giving herself a sideways glance in the mirror. She was fairly sure she was going to be pretty when she grew up; in fact, she thought she might be starting to be already.
However, they knew that section of the Gypsy-Witch Fortune Teller by heart, so they skipped it today and went on to the section called: "The Inner Sanctum: Mme. Vavasour's Incomparable and Invaluable Compendium of Mystic Insights. Supernaturally-Directed Counsels on Matters of Health, Money, and the Heart; also a Definitive Listing of the True Meaning and Prophecies of Dreams."
"Wow!" Lucy said the first time she read it. "And look; she's got twelve pages, a page for each month, for every single sign of the Zodiac. They tell you what to expect and what to do about it and all."
"Now how could she know, though," Portia had objected. "I mean how could she know about now? The book came out in 1889, for goodness' sake!"
"I don't know. She probably had some sort of secret power or something: after all she was right about our characters, wasn't she? Luxury-loving and generous and kind-hearted, and all. You know that's the way we are, Portia, even if some people don't realize it."
"Well, I guess so. I hope so," Portia said a little dubiously. She was the one who had the book today—they were very strict about taking turns—and as she riffled through the pages, she was stopped for a moment by the Dream section. She usually was.
"Listen; did you know that if you dream about darning socks, it means you're going to find money in the street?"
"No. And I don't think that's very useful information; how can you make yourself dream about darning socks? I never dreamed about that in my whole life."
"I don't think I ever did, either. Well, here we are: 'Advice to Librans for the Month of August.'"
Portia began to read aloud. August, in Madame Vavasour's point of view, was rather a poor month for Librans. Caution was the keynote. They would have to be careful all month long; careful of their health, careful of their possessions, careful about accidents, suspicious of Good Offices proffered by any but their Nearest and Dearest, and constantly on the lookout for Traducers—"Whatever they are," Lucy said.
"Traitors, probably, like Julian and Tom and Joe," was Portia's opinion.
Above all, Librans were to be careful about money and valuables. They could not be too careful, and were to Lie Low. "This month will not be profitable or eventful to those of you born under the Sign of the Scales," Madame Vavasour concluded. "Expect little in the way of pleasure or enrichment. It will be vexing, nay, onerous to you who so highly value the Good Things of Life; but attempt to accept this period of retrenchment with Patience and Humility. Wait and Hope, and guard with care those valuables already in your possession."
Portia threw the book down.
"What valuables; my tooth braces?" she demanded sarcastically. "Lucy, I wish we'd never read it. Now we have nothing to look forward to but being bored!"
"Oh, pooh, I don't believe a word of it. I don't really believe she had any secret power. Neither do you. I think she was just writing about some dead old boring August in eighteen-eighty-whatever-it-was."
"Do you really?"
"I really do. But I still think she was very good about character," Lucy said....
The girls were sitting on the window seat in Portia's room with the door closed. It was a dull, gray day, and Foster and Davey had thunderously invaded the house, bringing with them a fresh supply of boys their own age. They seemed to be doing an extraordinary amount of shouting and pounding up and downstairs.
"Boys just have to be noisy," Lucy observed critically. "They just naturally have to be noisy, the way a chicken has to have feathers. I don't know why."
"Daddy always says what Mark Twain said about them—you know, the Tom Sawyer man—he said that what a small boy is, is a 'loud noise with dirt on it'.... Listen to Gulliver, too, but of course he can't help it; he's a boy himself."
"They should take lessons from Mousenick," Lucy said, stroking the tiny cat, asleep beside her. "Wouldn't it be nice if we could keep him a kitten forever?"
"I wish we could." Portia stood up, stretching and yawning. "And I wish there was something to do."
There seemed to be nothing whatever to do. It was that sort of day. The big boys had gone off somewhere; but of course it didn't matter to her because she and Lucy were mad at them; and the little boys were busily unraveling peace inside the house.... Portia wandered over to the mirror and looked at herself.
"And I wish I didn't have these freckles," she complained.
"It is too bad." Lucy agreed wholeheartedly. "Isn't there a cure for them? Some kind of cold cream or something? Listen; what about that stuff of Mrs. Brace-Gideon's: that Princess Something-or-other's Elixir of whatcha-macallit that was supposed to give you a 'pearly complexion'? Has your mother thrown it away?"
"Why no, I don't think so, yet. But she will any minute because Mr. Horton's about ready to paint the bathroom, finally. Why, that's a good idea, Lucy, and if the stuff is all dried up, we'll just add water to it. Maybe after all these years it will be stronger, too...."
At this moment the door of Portia's room burst open, and small boys came flooding in, wearing Indian war bonnets and whooping like yahoos.
"I'm Big Chief Fang!" Foster shouted happily. "We've come to scalp you! We've come to tomahawk you and scalp you!"
"No, you have not! You get right out of my room!" commanded Portia, giving him a whack with the Gypsy-Witch Fortune Teller. She and Lucy, being older, larger, and more impressive, were able to sweep them out of the room and close the door.
"They won't stay out, though," Portia said, as she and Lucy leaned against the door and heard the scuffles and giggles going on outside. "We'll just have to make a break for the bathroom. It has a real lock on it, thank goodness."
They held the door fast a moment longer, then released it suddenly, leaping away as it flew open and the little tribe of aborigines came spilling in, in a tangle.
The girls sprinted down the hall, laughing and lively now, leaped into the bathroom, and closed and locked the door, just in time.
"Heck, no fair," objected Big Chief Fang in the hall. "You're not supposed to use locks. Come on out!"
"Never!" sang Portia.
"Never, never, never!" sang Lucy.
"Oh, well, who cares! Stay in there then; stay all year. All you'll have to eat is withered-up old pills," said Big Chief Fang.
"Oig," said another Indian who sounded like Davey.
"Come on, you guys; let's go and ask my mother for a cooky," invited the Chief, and away they all thundered, down the hall and down the stairs.
"Peace at last," said Lucy. Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the basin. "Heavens, is my skin really that color? Green?"
"Oh, no, it makes everybody look like that. But that's not where she kept her medicines. They're over here in this wall thing."
Portia tugged at the handle of the little cabinet door.
"You should have seen Jule searching for Mrs. Brace-Gideon's safe in here. In a bathroom, imagine! Honestly!"
"Honestly," echoed Lucy.
"Now, what's the matter with this door? The rainstorm's made everything stick all over again."
She gave the handle a mighty yank, and to her infinite amazement the whole cabinet swung forward; swung outward toward her from the wall like a heavy little door, which is exactly what it was.
And there behind it was the safe.