A Hurried Retreat
The girls, of course, had been barred out while all these exciting latest events were taking place in their dear cottage; but Marjory, who lived next door to it, had seen something of the Milligans' hasty exit and had guessed at part of the truth. Mrs. Knapp, who seemed a pleasant, likable little woman, in spite of her unwillingness to accommodate her new landlord, unknowingly confirmed their suspicions when she told her friend Mrs. Crane about it; for Mrs. Crane, in her turn, told the news to the four little housekeepers the next morning as they sat homeless and forlorn on her doorstep. It was always Mrs. Crane to whom the Dandelion Cottagers turned whenever they were in need of consolation and, as in this case, consolation was usually forthcoming.
The girls, in their excitement at hearing the news about their late possession, did not notice that sympathetic Mrs. Crane looked tired and worried as she sat, in the big red rocking chair on her porch, peeling potatoes.
"Oh!" squealed Mabel, from the broad arm of Mrs. Crane's chair, "I'm glad! I'm glad! I'm glad!"
"I can't help being a little bit glad, too," said fair-minded Jean. "I suppose it wasn't very pleasant for the Milligans, but I guess they deserved all they got."
"They deserved a great deal more," said Marjory, resentfully. "Think of these last awful days!"
"If they'd had much more," said Mrs. Crane, "they'd have been drowned. Why, children! the place was just flooded."
"I'm ashamed to tell of it," said Bettie, "but I'm awfully afraid that our boys took off part of the pieces of tin that they nailed on the roof last spring. I heard them doing something up there the night we moved; but Bob only grinned when I asked him about it."
"Good for the boys!" cried Marjory, gleefully. "I wouldn't be unladylike enough to set traps for the Milligans myself, but I can't help feeling glad that somebody else did."
"It was Bob's own tin," giggled delighted Mabel, almost tumbling into Mrs. Crane's potato pan in her joy. "I guess he had a right to take it home if he wanted to."
"Anyway," said Jean, from her perch on the porch railing, "I'm glad they're gone."
"But it doesn't do us any good," sighed Bettie. "And the summer's just flying."
"Yes, it does," insisted Jean. "We can stand having the cottage empty—we can pretend, you know, that it's an enchanted castle that can be opened only by a certain magic key that—"
"Somebody's baby has swallowed," shrieked Mabel, the matter-of-fact.
"Mercy no, goosie," said Marjory. "She means a magic word that nobody can remember."
"That's it," said Jean. "Of course we couldn't do even that with the cottage full of Milligans."
"No," assented Marjory, "the most active imagination would refuse to activate—"
"To what?" gasped Mabel.
"To work," explained Marjory.
"I should say so," agreed Mabel, again threatening the potatoes. "It was just as much as I could do to come over here this morning to breathe the same air with that cottage with those folks in it staring me in the face, but now—"
"After all," sighed Bettie, sorrowfully, from the other arm of Mrs. Crane's big chair, "having the Milligans out of the cottage doesn't make much difference, as long as we're out, too. Oh, I did love that little house so. I just hated to think of cold weather coming to drive us out; but I never dreamed of anything so dreadful as having to leave it right in this lovely warm weather."
"If Mr. Black had stayed in town," said Mabel, feelingly, "we'd be dusting that darling cottage this very minute."
Mrs. Crane sniffed in the odd way she always did whenever Mr. Black's name was mentioned. This scornful sniff, accompanying Mrs. Crane's evident disapproval of their dearest friend, was the only thing that the girls disliked about Mrs. Crane.
"I know you'd like Mr. Black if you only knew him," said Bettie, earnestly. "In some ways you're a good deal like him. You're both the same color, your eyebrows turn up the same way at the outside corners, and you both like us. Mr. Black has a beautiful soul."
"Indeed," said Mrs. Crane. "And haven't I a beautiful soul too?"
"Why, of course," said Bettie, leaning down to rub her cheek against Mrs. Crane's. "I meant both of you. We like you both just the same."
"Only it's different," explained Jean. "Mr. Black doesn't need us, and sometimes you do. We like to do things for you."
"I'm glad of that," said Mrs. Crane, "for I need you this very minute. But don't you be too sure about his not needing you as well. He must lead a pretty lonely life, because it's years since his wife died. I never heard of anybody else liking her, but I guess he did. He's one of the faithful kind, maybe, for he's lived all alone in that great big house ever since. I guess it does him good to have you little girls for friends."
"What was his wife like?" asked Mabel, eagerly. "Did you use to know her?"
"No, indeed," said Mrs. Crane, again giving the objectionable sniff. "That is, not so very well—a little light-headed, useless thing, no more fit to keep house—but there! there. It doesn't make any difference now, and I've learned that it isn't the best housekeepers that get married easiest. If it was, I wouldn't be so worried now."
"Is anything the matter?" asked Jean, quick to note the distress in Mrs. Crane's voice.
"Yes," returned the good woman, "there are two things the matter."
"Your poor foot?" queried Bettie, instantly all sympathy.
"No, the foot's all right. It's Mr. Barlow and my eyes. Mr. Barlow is going to be married to a young lady he's been writing to for a long time, and I'm going to lose him because he wants to keep house. It won't be easy to find another lodger for that little, shabby, old-fashioned room. I'm trying to make a new rag carpet for it, but I'm all at a standstill because I can't see to thread my needle. I declare, I don't know what is going to become of me."
"When I grow up," said Bettie, "you shall live with me."
"But what am I to do while I'm waiting for you to grow up?" asked Mrs. Crane, smiling at Bettie's protecting manner.
"Let us be your eyes," suggested Jean. "Couldn't we thread about a million needles for you? Don't you think a million would last all day?"
"I should think it might," said Mrs. Crane, somewhat comforted. "I haven't quite a million, but if Marjory will get my cushion and a spool of cotton I'll be very glad to have you thread all I have."
The girls worked in silence for fully five minutes. Then Mabel jabbed the solitary needle she had threaded into the sawdust cushion and said:
"Don't you suppose Mr. Downing might let us have the cottage now, if we went to him? Nobody else seems to care about it. What do you think, Mrs. Crane?"
"Why, my dear, I suppose it wouldn't do any harm to ask. You'd better see what your own people think about it."
"Let's go ask them now," cried impetuous Mabel, springing to her feet. Forgetting all about the needles and without waiting to say good-by to Mrs. Crane, the eager girl made a diagonal rush for the corner nearest her own home.
The others remained long enough to thread all the needles. Then they, too, went home with the news about the cottage and about Mrs. Crane. They were realizing, for the first time, that their good friend might become helpless long before they were ready to use her as a grandmother for their children, but they couldn't see just what was to be done about it. The idea of going to Mr. Downing, however, soon drove every other thought away, for the parents and Aunty Jane, too, advised them to ask. They even encouraged them.
But when Jean and Bettie, hopefully dressed in their Sunday-best, and Marjory and Mabel, with their abundant locks elaborately curled besides, presented themselves and their request at Mr. Downing's house that evening, they were not at all encouraged by their reception.
Mr. Downing, a man of moods, had just come off second-best in an encounter with Mrs. Milligan, whom he had accidentally met on his way home to dinner, and, at the moment the girls appeared, the cottage was just about the last subject that the badgered man cared to discuss. Before Jean had fairly stated her errand, the enraged Mr. Downing roared "No!" so emphatically that his four alarmed visitors backed hurriedly off the Downing porch and fled as one girl. Mabel, to be sure, measured her length in the canna bed near the gate, but she scrambled up, snorting with fright and indignation, and none of them paused again in their flight until Jean's door, which seemed safest, had closed behind them.