Paying the Rent
"This is a whopping big yard," said Mabel, looking disconsolately at two dandelions and one burdock in the bottom of a bushel basket. "There doesn't seem to be any place to begin."
"I'm going to weed out a place big enough to sit in," announced Bettie. "Then I'll make it bigger and bigger all around me in every direction until it joins the clearing next to mine."
"I'm a soldier," said Marjory, brandishing a trowel, "vanquishing my enemies. You know in books the hero always battles single-handed with about a million foes and always kills them all and everybody lives happy ever after—zip! There goes one!"
"I'm a pioneer," said Jean, slashing away at a huge, tough burdock. "I'm chopping down the forest primeval to make a potato patch. The dandelions are skulking Indians, and I'm capturing them to put in my bushel-basket prison."
"I'm just digging weeds," said prosaic Mabel, "and I don't like it."
"Neither does anybody else," said Marjory, "but I guess having the cottage will be worth it. Just pretend it's something else and then you won't mind it so much. Play you're digging for diamonds."
"I can't," returned Mabel, hopelessly. "I haven't any imagination. This is just plain dirt and I can't make myself believe it's anything else."
By supper time the cottage yard presented a decidedly disreputable appearance. Before the weeds had been disturbed they stood upright, presenting an even surface of green with a light crest of dandelion gold. But now it was different. Although the number of weeds was not greatly decreased, the yard looked as if, indeed, a battle had been fought there. Mr. Black, passing by on his way to town, began to wonder if he had been quite wise in turning it over to the girls.
At four o'clock the following morning, sleepy Bettie tumbled out of bed and into her clothes. Then she slipped quietly downstairs, out of doors, through the convenient hole in the back fence, and into the cottage yard. She had been digging for more than an hour when Jean, rubbing a pair of sleepy eyes, put in her appearance.
"Oh!" cried Jean, disappointedly. "I meant to have a huge bare field to show you when you came, and here you are ahead of me. What a lot you've done!"
"Yes," assented Bettie, happily. "There's room for me and my basket, too, in my patch. I'll have to go home after a while to help dress the children."
Young though she was—she was only twelve—Bettie was a most helpful young person. It is hard to imagine what Mrs. Tucker would have done without her cheerful little daughter. Bettie always spoke of the boys as "the children," and she helped her mother darn their stockings, sew on their buttons, and sort out their collars. The care of the family baby, too, fell to her lot.
The boys were good boys, but they were boys. They were willing to do errands or pile wood or carry out ashes, but none of them ever thought of doing one of these things without first being told—sometimes they had to be told a great many times. It was different with Bettie. If Tom ate crackers on the front porch, it was Bettie who ran for the broom to brush up the crumbs. If the second-baby-but-one needed his face washed—and it seemed to Bettie that there never was a time when he didn't need it washed—it was Bettie who attended to it. If the cat looked hungry, it was Bettie who gave her a saucer of milk. Dick's rabbits and Rob's porcupine would have starved if Bettie had not fed them, and Donald's dog knew that if no one else remembered his bone kind Bettie would bear it in mind.
The boys' legs were round and sturdy, but Bettie's were very much like pipe stems.
"I don't have time to get fat," Bettie would say. "But you don't need to worry about me. I think I'm the healthiest person in the house. At least I'm the only one that hasn't had to have breakfast in bed this week."
Neither Marjory nor Mabel appeared during the morning to dig their share of the weeds, but when school was out that afternoon they were all on hand with their baskets.
"I had to stay," said Mabel, who was the last to arrive. "I missed two words in spelling."
"What were they?" asked Marjory.
"'Parachute' and 'dandelion.' I hate dandelions, anyway. I don't know what parachutes are, but if they're any sort of weeds I hate them, too."
The girls laughed. Mabel always looked on the gloomiest side of things and always grumbled. She seemed to thrive on it, however, for she was built very much like a barrel and her cheeks were like a pair of round red apples. She was always honest, if a little too frank in expressing her opinions, and the girls liked her in spite of her blunt ways. She was the youngest of the quartet, being only eleven.
"There doesn't seem to be much grass left after the weeds are out," said Bettie, surveying the bare, sandy patch she had made.
"This has always been a weedy old place," replied Jean. "I think the whole neighborhood will feel obliged to us if we ever get the lot cleared. Perhaps our landlord will plant grass seed. It would be fine to have a lawn."
"Perhaps," said Marjory, "he'll let us have some flower beds. Wouldn't it be lovely to have nasturtiums running right up the sides of the house?"
"They'd be lovely among the vines," agreed Bettie. "I've some poppy seeds that we might plant in a long narrow bed by the fence."
"There are hundreds of little pansy plants coming up all over our yard," said Jean. "We might make a little round bed of them right here where I'm sitting. What are you going to plant in your bed, Mabel?"
"Butter-beans," said that practical young person, promptly.
"Well," said Bettie, with a long sigh, "we'll have to work faster than this or summer will be over before we have a chance to plant anything. This is the biggest little yard I ever did see."
For a time there was silence. Marjory, the soldier, fell upon her foes with renewed vigor, and soon had an entire regiment in durance vile. Jean, the pioneer, fell upon the forest with so much energy that its speedy extermination was threatened. Mabel seized upon the biggest and toughest burdock she could find and pulled with both hands and all her might, until, with a sharp crack, the root suddenly parted and Mabel, very much to her own surprise, turned a back somersault and landed in Bettie's basket.
"Hi there!" cried a voice from the road. "How are you youngsters getting along?"
The girls jumped to their feet—all but Mabel, who was still wedged tightly in Bettie's basket. There was Mr. Black, with his elbows on the fence, and with him was the president of the Village Improvement Society; both were smiling broadly.
"Sick of your bargain?" asked Mr. Black.
The four girls shook their heads emphatically.
"Hard work?"
Four heads bobbed up and down.
"Well," said Mr. Black, encouragingly, "you've made considerable headway today."
"Where are you putting the weeds?" asked the president of the Village Improvement Society.
"On the back porch in a piano box," said Bettie. "We had a big pile of them last night, but they shrank like everything before morning. If they do that every time, it won't be necessary for Mabel to jump on them to press them down."
"Let me know when you have a wagon load," said Mr. Black. "I'll have them hauled away for you."
For the rest of the week the girls worked early and late. They began almost at daylight, and the mosquitoes found them still digging at dusk.
By Thursday night, only scattered patches of weeds remained. The little diggers could hardly tear themselves away when they could no longer find the weeds because of the gathering darkness. Now that the task was so nearly completed it seemed such a waste of time to eat and sleep.
Bettie was up earlier than ever the next morning, and with one of the boys' spades had loosened the soil around some of the very worst patches before any of the other girls appeared.
By five o'clock that night the last weed was dug. Conscientious Bettie went around the yard a dozen times, but however hard she might search, not a single remaining weed could she discover.
"Good work," said Jean, balancing her empty basket on her head.
"It seems too good to be true," said Bettie, "but think of it, girls—the rent is paid! It's 'most time for Mr. Black to go by. Let's watch for him from the doorstep—our own precious doorstep."
"It needs scrubbing," said Mabel. "Besides, it isn't ours, yet. Perhaps Mr. Black has changed his mind. Some grown-up folks have awfully changeable minds."
"Oh!" gasped Marjory. "Wouldn't it be perfectly dreadful if he had!"
It seemed to the little girls, torn between doubt and expectation, that Mr. Black was strangely indifferent to the calls of hunger that night. Was he never going home to dinner? Was he never coming?
"Perhaps," suggested Jean, "he has gone out of town."
"Or forgotten us," said Marjory.
"Or died," said Mabel, dolefully.
"No—no," cried Bettie. "There he is; he's coming around the corner now—I can see him. Let's run to meet him."
The girls scampered down the street. Bettie seized one hand, Mabel the other, Marjory and Jean danced along ahead of him, and everybody talked at once. Thus escorted, Mr. Black approached the cottage lot.
"Well, I declare," said Mr. Black. "You haven't left so much as a blade of grass. Do you think you could sow some grass seed if I have the ground made ready for it?"
The girls thought they could. Bettie timidly suggested nasturtiums.
"Flower beds too? Why, of course," said Mr. Black. "Vegetables as well if you like. You can have a regular farm and grow fairy beanstalks and Cinderella pumpkins if you want to. And now, since the rent seems to be paid, I suppose there is nothing left for me to do but to hand over the key. Here it is, Mistress Bettie, and I'm sure I couldn't have a nicer lot of tenants."