Barbara couldn’t believe it; Miss Davis’ model was gone! Stolen from the Dutch oven and no one had seen them hide it there. That is, no one but Nicky.
It was not yet nine o’clock next morning when Miss Davis came around and told Barbara. She had decided not to oppose her sister and went out to the Community House to get the family heirloom: and it was gone!
Early as it was some of the ladies were already there, and she made straight for the oven without telling them what she was going for.
“I almost fainted,” she told Barbara, not being far from a faint even then, “when I opened that cubby-hole door and saw the place empty I just screamed.”
“Gone!” Barbara repeated incredulously. “Who could have found it?”
“Well, you know,” sobbed Miss Davis, “there were youngsters watching in that window, and we’ve got to find that Italian boy right away, before he has a chance to sell it.”
“You mean Nickolas Marcusi?”
“I mean that little fellow who shot out in the road before us and then scurried off like a rat,” replied the woman bitterly. “Mean to say that wasn’t a guilty thing to do?”
“I couldn’t think that boy guilty of doing anything dishonorable,” Barbara retorted, “I’ve known him to be too fine a little fellow.”
“Fine little fellows can fool you, my girl,” snapped the woman who was still fanning herself with her hat although the morning was delightfully cool. “Sometimes they think it’s fun to be brave, and they think it smart to be able to steal things.”
“Nicky wouldn’t steal anything,” wailed Barbara. She never cried; but if she had been given to tears they would have flooded her eyes then. To call Nicky a thief!
“Well, come along and let’s see if we can find him,” ordered Miss Davis, for her tone was too emphatic to be otherwise termed. “No telling what a boy might do with a boat like that. He might put it on a string in the ocean. Oh, mercy me! What an unlucky woman I am? Why did I go against Tillie?” She sobbed again, and there was no denying the genuineness of her grief.
Dr. Hale was out and Dora seemed out of reach, which was fortunate for Barbara. She would not have had them hear of her trouble for anything.
“I’ll be ready in a minute, Miss Davis,” she told her caller. “We’ll go over to the pavilion and I’ll phone Cara Burke. She’ll drive me out to where the Italians live, but there really isn’t any use of your coming. It’s an awful place to go.” She didn’t want Miss Davis to go. She felt her presence would have hindered her greatly in her search for Nicky.
“But I must go,” insisted the woman. “I wouldn’t wait any place, I’m too nervous,” and she almost pulled the brim off her hat in an attempt to get it on her head. “Yes, I’ll go right along. I’ve got to keep moving. You’ve no idea what it means to me. Why, we were offered a pile of money for that little model, but, of course, we wouldn’t think of selling it. Oh, dear,” and she jabbed her handkerchief against her cheek, “why ever did I do such a thing! Pride, just foolish pride. Wanted to show it off. Well, this is what I get for it.”
She talked and talked, and Barbara was almost as nervous as was the woman herself. If her father should come back he would have to hear all the story, and if Dora came back she would listen to every word that she could catch.
“Come on, Miss Davis,” said Barbara, squatting her little felt hat on her head without even knowing she was doing it. “Of course I’m awfully sorry, terribly. But still, I can’t feel it is my fault; I just followed your advice you know, and it was my idea that you shouldn’t have left the model there.”
“Oh, I know it. Don’t make me feel worse——”
“I don’t want you to feel any worse, you know that, Miss Davis,” Barbara interrupted, for indeed she was very sorry enough for the poor, distressed little lady. “I merely want it to be understood that I didn’t and couldn’t take the responsibility of any goods left there. We girls are only supposed to do the things that the ladies tell us to do. You see, we are merely a sub-committee.”
“But, thank goodness, you were there and that I didn’t confide in any of the women,” exclaimed Miss Davis. “If I had told that to a single woman, Tillie would be dying of grief now. Women can’t keep anything to themselves,” she declared a little surprisingly, under the circumstances.
“Don’t you suppose your sister will miss it from the cabinet?”
“No, not for this week, because she left for Blueberry Corners this very morning. That’s the only comfort. If I’ll only be able to get it back before she gets back. Do hurry, dear. I don’t know what I’m saying I’m so upset. I hope I wasn’t cross to you?”
“Oh, no, not at all, Miss Davis,” Babs assured her. “I can easily understand how you feel. And I feel dreadfully about it too. Somehow I couldn’t sleep last night and I didn’t know why. Come along, I’m ready,” and they went off, Babs dropping a note on her father’s desk as she went.
Cara met them before they reached the corner. The original plan was to have Cara call at the house, but because of Miss Davis’ excited state of mind, and the constant danger of Dora overhearing her, Babs had hurried out before the appointed time. She knew she would meet Cara before she turned into Landing.
“Hop right in,” was Cara’s cheerful greeting. Then she paused to give Babs a chance to introduce the stranger.
“And if you don’t mind, Cara,” Babs continued after the brief introduction, “we’ll drive out to the Italian settlement. We want to see Nicky.”
“Nicky!” Cara’s tone was in dispute. She meant to convey again to Babs her opposition to her constant interest in the Italians.
“Yes, and it’s very important,” put in Miss Davis before Babs could answer. “In fact we’ve got to find him.”
“Oh,” said Cara in bewilderment. This was something new, she understood now; something new, but what?
Babs took her place in the front seat of the auto beside Cara, and while Miss Davis was settling herself in the back seat, managed to whisper enough to Cara to give the very least inkling of the matter.
“Something we lost,” she said, “and maybe Nicky has seen it. He was there yesterday when we were closing up.”
“Oh,” said Cara again, and then she drove on.
Miss Davis seemed suddenly to have become speechless. Perhaps it was exhaustion, for she must have labored under a heavy strain since discovering the loss of the model, but, at any rate, she was now drooping in the back seat of Cara’s car as if “every friend in the world had deserted her”; that was the way her attitude impressed the girls.
They tried to talk casually but it was a failure as far as Babs was concerned, and when the usual group of urchins surrounded their car, when it was stopped as near to Nicky’s house as Babs wanted Cara to drive, it was a discouraged girl who alighted. Barbara Hale was sorry she had ever bothered about these little foreigners, yet, quickly as that thought darted through her mind, there came another.
What about Nicky saving the lighthouse lamp from darkness during that awful storm? What other boy of his age would have been as brave as he had been then?
“I’ll run over and see if he’s around,” she told Cara and Miss Davis, in real fear that Miss Davis would insist upon going with her. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Over the rough tracks she stumbled. Everything seemed horrid. The air was thick with smoke, there were odors of all kinds, from factory fumes to puddles from rain, left standing in hidden places where even the sun couldn’t find them.
And as she hurried along her opinion of all this had suddenly changed. Yesterday she would have pitied those poor people living in such a disordered place, but today she pitied herself that she had to go through there.
“If I only hadn’t been so foolish,” she kept thinking. “And I’ve missed a lot of good times this summer just by this.”
Presently she called to a group of children. And their answer brought Babs to a sudden stop.
“You don’t mean that the Marcusis have moved away?” she repeated in surprise.
“Yes, Mam, lit out last night,” a small boy told her. “Guess they hadda skip,” he added impishly.
“They did not either,” defended another. “Some one took sick or somthin’.”
But Barbara had to be sure. She could not believe that those people were gone, without letting her know. But why should they have let her know?
She stumbled on farther, the children tagging along at her heels, saying all sorts of foolish things about Nicky’s family.
But she paid little attention to them, although her ears at least heard every word they said.
“Yep, they didn’t pay the milk-man either,” one saucy little fellow gaily announced. “An’ the old man’s in jail so they can’t do nawthin’ to him——”
“Shut up, you Tony, your folks ain’t such a much. Whata you knockin’ about?”
“Oh, run along about your business,” ordered Barbara sharply turning unexpectedly around and facing them. “You don’t have to come with me. I didn’t ask you to.”
“Beat it, fellers,” the big boy took up the cause. “She don’t want you. I’ll show her the house.”
“Maybe you think she wants you, Smarty Leganto,” came back a challenge for the chivalrous one. “She knows the place, don’t she? But they ain’t anybody in it. They’s moved, we told you.”
It was no use. She couldn’t get rid of them. So she hurried along and was now in front of that place likely called a house, by the man who owned it, but was merely a shack to all other eyes.
The windows were raised, the hideously pictured curtains were not to be seen, and the door stood wide open.
“Now you see,” came a taunt from the crowd. “They’s gone, ain’t they? What did we tell you? Now, ain’t they gone?”
“Oh, do stop,” begged Barbara. “Of course they are gone. But why shouldn’t they move if they wanted to?” This was by no means a question, rather it was a declaration. She was trying to answer her own question. “Why shouldn’t this family move if they wanted to?”
It takes so little to make excitement for such children as those surrounding her, that even the difference in their clothes and hers, the fact that she came in a car, and the still more surprising fact that she should evince interest in a family like Nicky’s, served to give the youngsters a wonderful time. And in spite of her protests they were bound to make the most of it. And they did.
As she turned back to the car she wondered what she would say to Miss Davis. If only she had not come along with them Babs might have told the whole story to Cara, and together they could have thought up something to do about it. Even a little delay would have helped so much. But there Miss Davis sat in the car, her head out the side, waiting eagerly for Babs’ return.
“I just can’t tell her they have moved,” Babs decided quickly, “not just yet. I’ll say there was no one in.”
“All out!” exclaimed Miss Davis, just as Barbara knew she would. “But we’ve got to find that boy——”
“I’ll come back with Cara in a little while,” Babs interrupted. “You see, those people have to work, even the children, and it’s pretty early to expect to find them around home.”
“But that boy,” (how Barbara wished she would not so persistently attack Nicky) “he must be around some place. It seems to me I have met him along the road every day this summer but just today,” wailed Miss Davis.
“Don’t worry,” Cara ventured to remark. “We know how to find the youngsters; don’t we Babs?” and she shot a look at Babs that was infinitely comforting.
“Yes,” the other girl replied, already seated beside Cara. “We know the haunts. I guess we’ll have to go over to the Community House now,” she proposed. “I’m supposed to be around there some time this morning.”
“Then drop me off home, please,” begged the still perturbed little woman. “I couldn’t go over there again, that is, not just now,” she hurried to modify, lest Cara might suspect she was really in distress about something.
Just as if Cara didn’t.