Dandelion Cottage/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
An Embarrassing Visitor
PREVIOUSLY to the time of the unpleasantness with Laura, the girls had unlocked the cottage in the morning and had left it unlocked until they were ready to go home at night, for the girls spent all their waking hours at Dandelion Cottage. Bettie, indeed, had the care of the youngest two Tucker babies, but they were good little creatures and when the girls played with their dolls they were glad to include the two placid babies, just as if they, too, were dolls. The littlest baby, in particular, made a remarkably comfortable plaything, for it was all one to him whether he slept in Jean's biggest doll's cradle, or in the middle of the dining-room table, as long as he was permitted to sleep sixteen hours out of the twenty-four. When he wasn't asleep, he sucked his thumb contentedly, crowed happily on one of the cottage beds, or rolled cheerfully about on the cottage floor. The older baby, too, obligingly stayed wherever the girls happened to put him. After this experience with the Tucker infants, the Milligan baby had proved a great disappointment to the girls for they had hoped to use him, too, as an animated doll, but he had refused steadfastly to make friends even with Bettie, whose way with babies was something beautiful to see.
The girls were all required to do their own mending but they found it no hardship to do their darning on their own doorstep on sunny days, or around the dining-room table if the north wind happened to be blowing, for they always had so many interesting things to talk about.
During the daytime, the cottage was never left entirely alone. It was occupied even at meal-times because the four families dined and supped at different hours; for instance, Marjory's Aunty Jane always liked her tea at half past five, but Jean's people did not dine until seven. Owing to the impossibility of capturing all the boys at one time, supper at the Tucker house was a movable feast, so Bettie usually ate whenever she found it most convenient. As for Mabel, it is doubtful if she knew the exact hours for meals at the Bennett house because she was invariably late. After the handkerchief episode, the girls planned that one or another of them should always be in the cottage from the time that it was opened in the morning until it was again locked for the night. The morning after the later quarrel, however, the girls met by previous arrangement on Mabel's doorstep, went in a body to the cottage and, after they were all inside carefully locked the door.
"We'll be on the safe side, anyway," said Jean, "but I shouldn't think that Laura would ever want to come near the place again."
"Oh, she'll come fast enough," said Mabel. "She's cheeky enough for anything. Do you 'spose she told her mother about it? She said she was going to."
"Pshaw!" said Marjory, "she was always threatening to tell her mother but nothing ever came of it. If she'd told her mother half the things she said she was going to, she wouldn't have had time to eat or sleep."
It was hopeless, the girls had decided, to attempt to mend the ruined photograph, so, at Bettie's suggestion, they had sorrowfully cut it into four pieces of equal size, which they divided between them. They had just laid the precious fragments tenderly away in their treasure boxes when the doorbell rang with such a loud, prolonged, jangling peal that everybody jumped.
"Laura!" exclaimed the four girls.
"No," said Jean, cautiously drawing back the curtain of the front window and peeping out. "It's Mrs. Milligan!"
"Goodness!" whispered Marjory, "there's no knowing what Laura told her—she never did tell anything straight."
"Let's keep still," said Mabel. "Perhaps she'll think there's nobody home."
"No hope of that," said Jean. "She saw us come in. But, pshaw! she can't hurt us anyway."
"No," said Marjory. "What's the use of being afraid—we didn't do anything to be ashamed of. Aunty Jane says we should have turned Laura out the day she took the handkerchiefs."
"I'm not exactly afraid," said Bettie, "but I don't like Mrs. Milligan—still, we'll have to let her in, I suppose."
A second vigorous peal at the bell warned them that their visitor was getting impatient.
"You're the biggest and the most dignified," said Marjory, giving Jean a shove. "You go."
"Don't ask her in if you can help it," warned Bettie, in a pleading whisper. "The doorbell sounds as if she doesn't like us very well."
But the visitor did not wait to be asked to come in. The moment Jean turned the key the door was flung open and Mrs. Milligan brushed past the astonished quartette and sailed into the parlour, where she seated herself bolt upright on the cosey corner.
"I'd like to know," demanded Mrs. Milligan, in a hard, cold tone that fell unpleasantly on the cottagers' ears, "if you consider it ladylike for four great overgrown girls to pitch into one poor innocent little child and a helpless baby? Your conduct yesterday, was simply outrageous. You might have injured those children for life or even broken the baby's back."
"Broken the baby's back!" gasped Bettie, in honest amazement. "Why, I simply lifted him with my two hands and set him just outside the door—I never was rough with any baby in all my life."
"I happen to know, on excellent authority," said Mrs. Milligan, "that you slapped both of those helpless children and threw them down the front steps. Laura was so excited about it that she couldn't sleep and the poor baby cried half the night—we fear that he's injured internally."
"Nobody here injured him," said Mabel. "He always cries all the time, anyhow."
"We did put them out and for a very good reason," said Jean, speaking as respectfully as she could, "but we certainly didn't hurt either of them. I'm sorry if the baby isn't well, but I know it isn't our fault."
"Laura walked down the steps," said Bettie, "and the baby turned over and slid down on his stomach the way he always does."
"I should think that a minister's daughter," said Mrs, Milligan, with a withering glance at poor shrinking Bettie, "would scorn to tell such lies."
Bettie, who had never before been accused of untruthfulness, looked the picture of conscious guilt; a tide of crimson flooded her cheeks and she fingered the buttons on her blouse nervously. She was too dumbfounded to speak a word in her own defence; Mabel, however, was only too ready.
"Bettie never told a lie in her life," cried the indignant little girl. "It was your own Laura that told stories if anybody did—and I guess somebody did, all right. Laura never tells the truth; she doesn't know how to."
"I have implicit confidence in Laura," returned Mrs. Milligan, frowning at Mabel. "I believe every word she says."
"Well," retorted dauntless Mabel, "that's more than the rest of us do. We kept count one day and she told seventy-two fibs that we know of."
"Oh Mabel, do hush," pleaded scandalised Bettie.
"Hush nothing," said Mabel, not to be deterred. "I'm only telling the truth. Laura took our handkerchiefs and then fibbed about it and we've missed a dozen things since that she probably carried off and"
"Mabel, Mabel!" warned Jean, pressing her hand over Mabel's too reckless lips. "Don't you know that we decided not to say a word about those other things? They didn't amount to anything and we'd rather have peace than to make a fuss about them."
"I can see very plainly," said Mrs. Milligan, with cold disapproval, "that you're not at all the proper sort of children for my little Laura to play with—I forbid you to speak to her again; I don't care to have her associate with you. I can believe all she says about you for I've never been treated so rudely in my life."
"Apologise, Mabel," whispered Jean, whose arm was still about the younger girl's neck.
"If I was rude," said candid Mabel, "I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to be impolite, but every word I said about Laura was true."
"I shall not accept your apology," said Mrs. Milligan, rising to depart, "until you've sent a written apology to Laura and have retracted everything you've said about her, besides."
"It'll never be accepted then," said quick-tempered Mabel, "for we haven't done anything to apologise for."
"No, Mrs. Milligan," said Jean, in her even, pleasant voice, "no apology to Laura can ever come from us. We stood her just as long as we could and then we turned her out just as kindly as anyone could have done it. I told mother all about it last night and she agreed that there wasn't anything else we could have done."
"So did mamma," said Bettie.
"So did Aunty Jane."
"Well," said Mrs. Milligan, pausing on the porch, "I'd thank you young gossips to keep your tongues and your hands off my children in the future."
Jean closed the door and the four girls looked at one another in silence. None of their own relatives was at all like Mrs. Milligan and they didn't know just what to make of their unpleasant experience. At last, Marjory gave a long sigh.
"Well," said she, "I came awfully near telling her when she forbade our playing with Laura that my Aunty Jane has forbidden me to even speak to her poor abused Laura."
"As for me," said Mabel, with lofty scorn, "I don't need to be forbidden."
"Come girls," said Jean, "I'm sorry it had to happen, but I'm glad the matter's ended. Let's not talk about it any more. Let's have one of our own good old happy days like we had before Laura came."
"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Bettie, "we'll each write out a bill of fare for Mr. Black's dinner party, and we'll see how many different things we can think of. In that way, we'll be sure not to forget anything."
"But the Milllgans," breathed Marjory, promptly seeing through Bettie's tactful scheme.