Mabel, with a long afternoon before her and tempted by the pleasant day, decided to take a walk in the grove. Perhaps she could find a hickory nut. On the veranda she overtook little Lillian Thwaite, obviously waiting for some one to walk with.
“Come on, Lill,” said Mabel. “Let’s go down to the grove.”
“Can’t,” returned Lillian, shrugging her small shoulders. “I’m going in to practise my duet.”
“Then why did you put your things on?” demanded Mabel, suspiciously.
“Just for instance,” returned Lillian, pertly.
Mabel discovered Grace Allen poking among the leaves in the grove.
“Hello, Grace!” said she, hopefully. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing. I’m going back to the house in a minute.”
“Come along with me—it’s nice out.”
“Don’t care to,” returned Grace, snippishly.
Mabel found the deserted grove rather gloomy and uninteresting. Beyond it the sunny prairie stretched for miles and miles with just one visible break—a small house with a tumble-down fence far off toward the south. It was out of bounds of course. Still, the girls had wandered out on the prairie and not one of the Rhodes family had said a word. It looked like an entirely safe and harmless place. Mabel looked speculatively at the faraway little house.
“I wonder if I couldn’t walk there and back before it gets dark. I’d have something to tell the girls. It would be fun to peek over that fence. Perhaps there are nuts under those trees by the gate. I wish Marjory and Bettie were here, but they had letters to read and this is Jean’s day at the gym. Maude’s too. Anyhow, I’m going a little way.”
It proved a splendid day for walking. Mabel’s brown eyes brightened, a fine color glowed in her cheeks and, for the moment, all her troubles evaporated. She even forgot her danger of becoming a boarding school orphan. Presently she looked back and was pleased to find herself quite a distance from Highland Hall. The school looked quite imposing, on top of its own little hill.
“I can get to that cottage quite easily,” said Mabel, trudging along cheerfully. “Perhaps there are chickens and things in the yard—I hope there isn’t a goat. Too bad the ground is all brown. There isn’t anything left to pick.”
The trees, when Mabel reached them, were apple trees; but all the apples were gone except a withered one. There were chickens in the yard; and a woman who was peering anxiously down the road that began at her gateway and wandered off toward the southwest.
“Say,” said she, catching sight of Mabel. “Would you mind coming in and staying with my children until Lizzie McCall gets here? She’s due any minute and I’ve got to get over to the trolley—I’m late now. I have a job cleaning cars over at the Centerville Station, this time every day, and Lizzie always stays with the kids—they’d tear the house down if I left them alone.”
“If you’re sure Lizzie is coming—”
“Oh, yes, she’s never missed yet. Just go in and see that they don’t meddle with the fire. Lizzie’ll be right along.”
The woman hastened away. She looked what she was, an honest working woman with many family cares. Mabel went inside. Four small children stared at Mabel, as she entered. A boy of four, two small girls evidently twins, aged three, and a toddling baby of perhaps a year and a half. A delightful family to take care of for ten minutes but certainly not the kind of family to leave for very long to its own devices; for the twins were reaching for the sugar bowl and the boy had already discovered the poker and was poking the fire.
“Let’s all watch out the window for Lizzie,” suggested Mabel. “Stand on these two chairs.”
Watching for Lizzie proved more of an occupation than Mabel had counted on. They watched and watched with all their eyes but no Lizzie appeared. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes. No Lizzie.
“Does Lizzie always come?” queried Mabel, now decidedly uneasy.
“Sure,” replied the small boy.
“Where is your father?”
“Haven’t any. Him all gone on choo choo cars. Far away.”
“Does your mother come home to supper?”
“No. Lizzie makes our supper. Lizzie puts Tommy to bed and Susy to bed and Sairy to bed and Jackie to bed.”
“Well,” remarked Mabel, crossly, “I wish she’d come right now and do it. I ought to be a mile from here this very minute. I shouldn’t have come in. And now I don’t know what to do. It isn’t right for you to be left by yourselves and it isn’t right for me to stay. Now what does anybody do in a case like that? I must be back by six o’clock; but I’d be wicked if I went away—and it’s awfully wrong of me not to go.”
“Don’t go,” wheedled Tommy. “You is nicer than Lizzie.”
“Nicer ’an ’Izzie,” echoed Susy.
“Nicer ’an ’Izzie,” echoed Sairy.
Mabel peered anxiously down the road. The days were short and already it was growing darker. For another half hour Mabel, pressing closer and closer to the window, watched the road. By that time it was really dark. There was a lamp with oil in it on the kitchen table; Mabel discovered matches on the shelf and managed to light it.
“What do you have for supper?” asked Mabel. “I suppose I’ll have to feed you.”
“Oatmeal,” said Tommy. “It’s in the kettle on the stove. And milk—in the cupboard. And bread.”
“What do you have for breakfast?”
“Oatmeal and milk and bread.”
“Where do you get them?”
“My muvver cooks ’em.”
“Hum,” said Mabel, investigating the cupboard, “there’s just about enough bread for two meals so I guess I’d better not eat very much if I have to stay to supper; but I hope I don’t.”
But she did. Lizzie still remained mysteriously absent; and before long the children began to beg for food. Mabel arranged their simple supper under Tommy’s directions and the friendly infants appeared pleased with their new nurse.
It was lonely in the solitary little house; but Mabel didn’t mind that as long as the children were awake. But very soon after supper they began to nod. Tommy, very sweet and drowsy himself, showed Mabel where the other little people were to sleep. The baby was fretful; he had eaten very little supper and now his heavy head felt hot against Mabel’s cheek as she rocked him to quiet his complaining little cry. Presently he was asleep, so she tucked him very tenderly into the old clothes-basket that Tommy assured her was the baby’s bed. Then the chubby, yawning twins were tucked into their crib, for which they were a tight fit; and in two minutes, they were asleep. After that, Tommy removed all his clothes except his shirt and climbed into the double bed.
“You can sleep by me,” invited Tommy, “until my muvver comes. Lizzie does sometimes, after she washes the dishes.”
That at least was something for a worried and lonely young person to do. Mabel washed the tin spoons and thick saucers and put them neatly away. By this time it was exceedingly dark outside.
“Even if Lizzie were to come,” said Mabel, “I’d be afraid to go home alone. Dear me, I suppose I’ll have to stay all night. By this time everybody will know I’ve been out of bounds and goodness only knows what Doctor Rhodes will say to me. But I’ll skip home as soon as it’s daylight and ask that nice fat cook to let me in at the kitchen door.”
The bed was not particularly inviting but at last Mabel locked the outer door and climbed in beside Tommy, who was fast asleep. She hoped that the baby was all right; he seemed restless and made little moaning noises and tossed uneasily in his basket. She was sure that she herself wouldn’t be able to sleep for a moment in that strange place, so far away from her own friends; but presently she was slumbering quite peacefully. It was broad daylight when she awoke.
And still no Lizzie.
“Tommy,” demanded Mabel, sitting up in bed, “when does your mother get home? Who cooks your breakfast every day?”
“My muvver does. Where is my muvver?”
“Well, that’s what I’d like to know. I suppose I could take you all over to the school—no, I couldn’t carry that heavy baby all that way even if the twins could manage to walk so far. If it was just you, Tommy, I know we could do it. And I don’t like that baby’s looks.”
“He’s getting another toof,” said Tommy, wisely.
The baby was sick, there was no doubt about that. There was barely enough food for breakfast, there was no doubt about that, either. To be sure there were potatoes, turnips and cabbages in the cellar. Thanks to her play-housekeeping in Dandelion Cottage, Mabel knew how to boil potatoes but she also knew that potatoes were hardly a proper food for a sick infant.
By noon the children were hungry so Mabel fed them potatoes and gave the baby a drink of water; but the supply of wood was getting low and Mabel could see no way of replenishing it.
“I suppose,” said she, bitterly, “that woman just wanted to get rid of all these children; and here I am! Four of them on my hands and nothing to eat. One of them sick and getting teeth! It’s just my luck. I’ll keep away from strange houses after this. I don’t believe there ever was a Lizzie. But we must have a fire—perhaps there’s something in that shed that will fit that stove.”
There wasn’t, but there was a large and clumsy baby carriage.
Mabel examined it hopefully.
Two hours later, at least half of the inmates of Highland Hall, greatly exercised over Mabel’s mysterious disappearance, beheld a strange sight. A twin baby carriage, containing three infants and propelled by a plump, sturdy and perspiring young person, was rolling up the broad walk toward the school. A small boy trudged along behind.
“It’s Mabel!” gasped Jean.
“It’s Mabel!” shrieked Marjory.
“Mabel, Mabel, Mabel,” cried Bettie, Maude and Jane Pool. Mabel’s friends rushed down to greet her. The girls who were not her friends and who had been saying unkind things about her hung back; but they looked and listened.
“We might have known,” said Bettie, “that she’d bring something home with her—she always does.”
“But this time,” laughed Jean, “she’s outdone herself.”
Doctor Rhodes, stern and disapproving, eyed Mabel, coldly. To say the least it was unusual for a pupil to vanish for twenty-four hours and then turn up unexpectedly with a family of four. It certainly needed explaining.
Mabel, however, was too much out of breath to do any explaining. She beamed at the girls—it was pleasant to see them again after that long, anxious absence—and then glanced at Doctor Rhodes.
Horrors! How was anybody to explain things to a man who glared like that! Mabel stood still, her smile frozen on her plump, perspiring countenance.
“Leave those children right where they are,” said Doctor Rhodes, sternly, “and go into my office. I want to know what this conduct means.”
“Ye—yes, Sir,” faltered Mabel, toiling up the steps. Marjory skipped along beside her, to impart a bit of news.
“We missed you at supper time,” breathed Marjory, in an undertone; “but Doctor Rhodes didn’t know until about an hour ago that you were lost. We knew you so we were sure you’d do some queer thing like this and would get home all right if we just gave you a chance, so we kept still. If you’d only come just a little sooner we could have kept the secret. Miss Woodruff got after us and found out. I must skip, now—he’s coming.”
“Now,” demanded Doctor Rhodes, “where have you been?”
“I went for a walk,” said Mabel, dropping into the chair that was reserved for culprits. “I—I’ve always had the habit of bringing things home with me—cats, dogs and once an Indian baby. But—but this is the worst I’ve done yet.”
Doctor Rhodes turned suddenly to look out the window. The disappearance of a pupil from the school was a serious matter; but there was something about Mabel’s rueful countenance, her dejected attitude and her apologetic tone that was provocative of laughter.
“There was a woman,” pursued Mabel, earnestly, “and she said there was a Lizzie. I believed her at first but now I don’t. She asked me to stay with her children until Lizzie came and Lizzie didn’t come. I had to stay. It wasn’t safe to leave them with a fire in the stove. Today there wasn’t any fresh milk for the baby and I couldn’t split the wood. But there was a twin baby carriage and it’s taken us more than two hours to get here.”
“Where was that house? In the village?”
“Oh, no,” returned Mabel, wearily, waving her hand toward the south. “Way over that way across the prairie.”
“What! that small house that we can just see from the upper veranda? What were you doing away over there?”
“Just taking a walk—I thought I’d be back by six. I knew I was going pretty far; but my feet just kept going.”
“And what do you propose doing with all those children?”
“I thought we’d feed them,” said Mabel, “and then find somebody that knows them. There’s a vacant room across from mine. I’ll take care of them for the night. The baby is getting a tooth.”
“A teething baby!”
“And twins!” added Mabel. “And a boy named Tommy. But I got them all here alive and that was something.”
“Of course I shall have to punish you for going out of bounds. But the rest of your—your behavior is so unusual that I don’t know just how to meet it. I’ll have to think about it awhile. Now take those children to the room you mentioned and I’ll have one of the maids send up some supper—”
“Milk and oatmeal and bread,” pleaded Mabel, wearily.
An hour later, the mother of the forsaken children appeared at the kitchen door. She had followed the wheels of the baby carriage all the way to Highland Hall.
Charles was peeling potatoes, the two neat maids were helping him. At sight of the woman in the doorway, Charles rose suddenly to his feet, dropped his pan of potatoes and turned as if to flee. But the visitor rushed across the room and threw her arms about his neck.
And then tall, lanky Charles, with a sheepish glance at the two astonished maids, returned her kiss.
“He’s my husband,” said the woman. “I thought he’d gone to Detroit to get work. And here he is, not three miles from home!”
Charles explained blushingly that he had temporarily deserted his wife because he found it so pleasant to be considered a bachelor.
“The ladies,” said Charles, waving a hand toward the fat cook and the two neat maids “make so much of a single man. And I like being made much of—any man does.”
“And where,” demanded Mrs. Charles, “are my children?”
The neat maid who had carried the milk upstairs was able to lead her to her family; and Mabel learned that Lizzie had sent a note explaining that she couldn’t come; but the messenger had failed to deliver the note. Mrs. Charles had been later than usual in starting her cleaning work on the train and the train had started, carrying her to Chicago.
“And I thought,” said she, “I might as well make the most of a free ride while I was about it; so I went all the way, bought my provisions in town and got the noon train back.”
Charles hitched the school horse to the school wagon. With his sharp elbows sticking out and his sandy hair on end, he perched on the front seat and drove his family home that evening. He remained in the employ of Doctor Rhodes, but the two neat maids no longer “made much of him.” As for the fat cook, she told him exactly what she thought of a man who deserted a good wife and four fine children for the sake of flattering attentions from other ladies. And crestfallen Charles promised to mend his ways.