An Obdurate Landlord
Twenty minutes later when Mr. Downing roared "Come in" in the terrifying voice he usually reserved for agents and other unexpected or unwelcome visitors, he was plainly very much surprised to see four pale girls with shocked, reproachful eyes file in and come to an embarrassed standstill just inside the office door, which closed of its own accord and left them imprisoned with the enemy. They waited quietly.
"Oh, good morning," said he, in a much milder tone, as he swung about in his revolving chair. "What can I do for you? Have you brought the key so soon?"
"We came," said Jean, propelled suddenly forward by a vigorous push from the rear, "to see you about Dandelion Cottage. We think you've made a mistake."
"Indeed!" said Mr. Downing, who did not at any time like to be considered mistaken. "Suppose you explain."
So sweet-voiced Jean explained all about digging the dandelions to pay the rent, about Mr. Black's giving them the key at the end of the week, and about all the lovely times they had had and were still hoping to have in their precious cottage before giving it up for the winter.
Mr. Downing, personally, did not like Mr. Black. He had a poor opinion of the older man's business ability, and perhaps a somewhat exalted opinion of his own. He considered Mr. Black old-fashioned and far too easy-going. He felt that parish affairs were more likely to flourish in the hands of a younger, shrewder, and more modern person, and he had an idea that he was that person. At any rate, now that Mr. Black was out of town, Mr. Downing was glad of an opportunity to display his own superior shrewdness. He would show the vestry a thing or two, and incidentally increase the parish income, which as everybody knew stood greatly in need of increasing. He had no patience with slipshod methods. He was truly sorry when business matters compelled him to appear hard-hearted; but to him it seemed little short of absurd for a man of Mr. Black's years to waste on four small girls a cottage that might be bringing in a comfortable sum every month in the year.
"Now that's a very pretty little story," said Mr. Downing, when Jean had finished. "But, you see, you've already had the cottage more than long enough to pay you for pulling those few weeds."
"Few!" exclaimed Mabel, in indignant protest and forgetting her promise of silence. "Few! Why, there were billions of 'em. If we'd been paid two cents a hundred for them, we'd all be rich. Mr. Black promised us we could have that cottage for all summer and our rent hasn't half perspired yet."
"She means expired," explained Marjory, "but she's right for once. Mr. Black did say we could stay there all summer, and it isn't quite August yet, you know."
"Hum," said Mr. Downing. "Nobody said anything to me about any such arrangement, and I'm keeping the books. I don't know what Mr. Black could have been thinking of if he made any such foolish promise as that. Of course it's not binding. Why, that cottage ought to be renting for ten or twelve dollars a month!"
"But the plaster's very bad," pleaded Bettie, eagerly, "and the roof leaks in every room in the house but one, and something's the matter underneath so it's too cold for folks to live in during the winter. It was vacant for a long time before we had it."
"It looked very comfortable to me," said Mr. Downing, who had lived in the town for only a few months and neither knew nor suspected the real condition of the house. "I'm afraid your arrangement with Mr. Black doesn't hold good. Mr. Morgan and I think it best to have the house vacated at once. You see, we're in danger of losing the rent from the next house, because the Milligans have threatened to move out if you don't."
"If—if seven dollars and a half would do you any good," said Mabel, "and if you're mean enough to take all the money we've got in this world—"
"I'm not," said Mr. Downing. "I'm only reasonable, and I want you to be reasonable too. You must look at this thing from a business standpoint. You see, the rent from those two houses should bring in twenty-five dollars a month, which isn't more than a sufficient return for the money invested. The taxes—"
"A note for you, Mr. Downing," said a boy, who had quietly opened the office door.
"Why," said Mr. Downing, when he had read the note, "this is really quite a remarkable coincidence. This communication is from Mr. Milligan, who has found a desirable tenant for the cottage he is now in, and wishes, himself, to occupy the cottage you are going to vacate. Very clever idea on Mr. Milligan's part. This will save him five dollars a month and is a most convenient arrangement all around. He wishes to move in at once."
"Mr. Milligan!" gasped three of the astonished girls.
"Those Milligans in our house!" cried Mabel. "Well, isn't that the worst!"
"You see," said Mr. Downing, "it is really necessary for you to move at once. I think you had better begin without further loss of time. Good morning, good morning, all of you, and please believe me, I'm sorry about this, but it can't be helped."
"I hope," said Mabel, summoning all her dignity for a parting shot, "that you'll never live long enough to regret this—this outrage. There are seven rolls of paper on the walls of that cottage that belong to us, and we expect to be paid for every one of them."
"How much?" asked Mr. Downing, suppressing a smile, for Mabel was never more amusing than when she was very angry.
"Five cents a roll—thirty-five cents altogether."
Mr. Downing gravely reached into his trousers pocket, fished up a handful of loose change, scrupulously counted out three dimes and a nickel, and handed them to Mabel, who, with averted eyes and chin held unnecessarily high, accepted the price of the Blossom wall paper haughtily, and, following the others, stalked from the office.
The unhappy girls could not trust themselves to talk as they hastened homeward. They held hands tightly, walking four abreast along the quiet street, and barely managed to keep the tears back and the rapidly swelling lumps in their little throats successfully swallowed until Jean's trembling fingers had unlocked the cottage door.
Then, with one accord, they rushed pell-mell for the blue-room bed, hurled themselves upon its excelsior pillows, and burst into tears. Jean and Bettie cried silently but bitterly; Marjory wept audibly, with long, shuddering sobs; but Mabel simply bawled. Mabel always did her crying on the excellent principle that, if a thing were worth doing at all, it was worth doing well. She was doing it so well on this occasion that Jean, who seldom cried and whose puffed, scarlet eyelids contrasted oddly and rather pathetically with her colorless cheeks, presently sat up to remonstrate.
"Mabel!" she said, slipping an arm about the chief mourner, "do you want the Milligans to hear you? We're on their side of the house, you know."
Jean couldn't have used a better argument. Mabel stopped short in the middle of one of her very best howls, sat up, and shook her head vigorously.
"Well, I just guess I don't," said she. "I'd die first!"
"I thought so," said Jean, with just a faint glimmer of a smile. "We mustn't let those people guess how awfully we care. Go bathe your eyes, Mabel—there must be a little warm water in the tea kettle."
Then the comforter turned to Bettie, and made the appeal that was most likely to reach that always-ready-to-help young person.
"Come, Bettie dear, you've cried long enough. We must get to work, for we've a tremendous lot to do. Don't you suppose that, if we had all the things packed in baskets or bundles, we could get a few of your brothers to help us move out after dark? I just can't let those Milligans gloat over us while we go back and forth with things."
Bettie's only response was a sob.
"Where in the world can we put the things?" asked Marjory, sitting up suddenly and displaying a blotched and swollen countenance very unlike her usual fair, rose-tinted face. "Of course we can each take our dolls and books home, but our furniture—"
"I'm going to ask Mother if we can't store it upstairs in our barn. I'm sure she'll let us."
"Oh, I wish Mr. Black were here. It doesn't seem possible we've really got to move. There must be some way out of it. Oh, Bettie, couldn't we write to Mr. Black?"
"It would take too-oo-oo long," sobbed Bettie, sitting up and mopping her eyes with the muslin window curtain, which she could easily reach from the foot of the bed. "He's way off in Washington. Oh, dear—oh, dear—oh, dear!"
"Why couldn't we telegraph?" demanded Marjory, with whom hope died hard. "Telegrams go pretty fast, don't they?"
"They cost terribly," said Bettie. "They're almost as expensive as express packages. Still, we might find out what it costs."
"I dow the telegraph-mad," wheezed Mabel from the wash-basin. "I'll go hobe ad telephode hib ad ask what it costs—I've heard by father give hib bessages lots of tibes. Oh, by, by dose is all stuffed up."
"Try a handkerchief," suggested Jean. "Go ask, if you want to; it won't do any harm, nor probably any good."
Mabel ran home, taking care to keep her back turned toward the Milligan house. During her brief absence, the girls bathed their eyes and made sundry other futile attempts to do away with all outward signs of grief.
"He says," cried Mabel, bursting in excitedly, "that sixty cents is the regular price in the daytime, but it's forty cents for a night message. It seems kind of mean to wake folks up in the middle of the night just to save twenty cents, doesn't it?"
"Yes," said Bettie. "I couldn't be impolite enough to do that to anybody I like as well as I like Mr. Black. If we haven't money enough to send a daytime message, we mustn't send any."
"Well, we haven't," said Jean. "We've only thirty-five cents."
"And we wouldn't have had that," said Mabel, "if I hadn't remembered that wall paper just in the nick of time."
Strangely enough, not one of the girls thought of the money in the bank. Perhaps it did not occur to them that it would be possible to remove any portion of their precious seven dollars and a half without withdrawing it all; they knew little of business matters. Nor did they think of appealing to their parents for aid at this crisis. Indeed, they were all too dazed by the suddenness and tremendousness of the blow to think very clearly about anything. The sum needed seemed a large one to the girls, who habitually bought a cent's worth of candy at a time from the generous proprietor of the little corner shop. Mabel, the only one with an allowance, was, to her father's way of thinking, a hopeless little spendthrift, already deeply plunged in debt by her unpaid fines for lateness to meals.
The Tucker income did not go round even for the grown-ups, so of course there were few pennies for the Tucker children. Marjory's Aunty Jane had ideas of her own on the subject of spending-money for little girls—Marjory did not suspect that the good but rather austere woman made a weekly pilgrimage to the bank for the purpose of religiously depositing a small sum in her niece's name; and, if she had known it, Marjory would probably have been improvident enough to prefer spot cash in smaller amounts. Only that morning tender-hearted Jean had heard patient Mrs. Mapes lamenting because butter had gone up two cents a pound and because all the bills had seemed larger than those of the preceding month—Jean always took the family bills very much to heart.
The girls sorrowfully concluded that there was nothing left for them to do but to obey Mr. Downing. They had looked forward with dread to giving up the cottage when winter should come, but the idea of losing it in midsummer was a thousand times worse.
"We'll just have to give it up," said grieved little Bettie. "There's nothing else we can do, with Mr. Black away. When I go home tonight I'll write to him and apologize for not being able to keep our promise about the dinner party. That's the hardest thing of all to give up."
"But you don't know his address," objected Jean.
"Yes, I do, because Father wrote to him about some church business this morning, before going away, and gave Dick the letter to mail. Of course Dick forgot all about it and left it on the hall mantelpiece. It's probably there yet, for I'm the only person that ever remembers to mail Father's letters—he forgets them himself most of the time."
"Now let's get to work," said Jean. "Since we have to move let's pretend we really want to. I've always thought it must be quite exciting to really truly move. You see, we must get it over before the Milligans guess that we've begun, and there isn't any too much time left. I'll begin to take down the things in the parlor and tie them up in the bedclothes. We'll leave all the curtains until the last so that no one will know what we're doing."
"I'll help you," said Bettie.
"Mabel and I might be packing the dishes," said Marjory. "It will be easier to do it while we have the table left to work on. Come along, Mabel."
Mabel followed obediently. When the forlorn pair reached the kitchen, Marjory announced her intention of exploring the little shed for empty baskets, leaving Mabel to stack the cups and plates in compact piles. Mabel, without knowing just why she did it, picked up her old friend, the cracked lemonade-pitcher and gave it a little shake. Something rattled. Mabel, always an inquisitive young person, thrust her fingers into the dusty depths to bring up a piece of money—two pieces—three pieces—four pieces.
"Oh," she gasped, "it's my lemonade money! Oh, what a lucky omen! Girls!"
The next instant Mabel clapped a plump, dusty hand over her own lips to keep them from announcing the discovery, and then, stealthily concealing the twenty cents in the pocket that still contained the wall-paper money, she stole quickly through the cottage and ran to her own home.