Dandelion Cottage/Chapter 22
CHAPTER XXII
Mabel Plans A Surprise
THE girls were indignant later when they discovered Mabel's apparent desertion. It was precisely like Mabel, they said, to shirk when there was anything unpleasant to be done. For once, however, they were wronging Mabel—poor, self-sacrificing Mabel, who with fifty-five cents at her disposal, was planning a beautiful surprise for her unappreciative cottage-mates. The girls might have known that nothing short of an ambitious project for saving the cottage from the Milligans would have kept the child away when so much was going on. For Mabel was at that very moment doing what was for her the hardest kind of work; all alone in her own room at home she was laboriously composing a telegram.
She had never sent a telegram, nor had she even read one. She could not consult her mother because Mrs. Bennett had inconsiderately gone down town to do her marketing. Dr. Bennett, however, was a very busy man and sometimes received a number of important messages in one day. Mabel felt that the occasion justified her studying several late specimens which she resurrected from the waste-paper basket under her father's desk. These, however, proved rather unsatisfactory models since none of them seemed to exactly fit the existing emergency. Most of them, indeed, were in cipher.
"I suppose," said Mabel, nibbling her pen-holder thoughtfully, "they make 'em short so they'll fit these little sheets of yellow paper, but there's lots more space they might use if they didn't leave such wide margins. I'll write small so I can say all I want to, but dear me, I can't think of a thing to say."
It took a long time, but the message was finished at last. With a deep sigh of satisfaction, Mabel folded it neatly and put it into an envelope which she carefully sealed. Then, putting on her hat, and taking the telegram with her, she ran to Bettie's home and opened the door—none of the four girls were required to ring each other's doorbells. There, sure enough, was the letter waiting to be mailed to Mr. Black. Mabel, who had thought to bring a pencil, copied the address in her big, vertical hand-writing, and without further ado ran with it to her friend, the telegraph operator, whose office was just around the corner. All the distances in the little town were short, and Mabel had frequently been sent to the place with messages written by her father, so she did not feel the need of asking permission.
The clerk opened the envelope—Mabel considered this decidedly rude of him—and proceeded to read the message. It took him a long time. Then he looked from Mabel's flushed cheeks and eager eyes to the little collection of nickels and dimes she had placed on the counter. Mabel wondered why the young man chewed the ends of his sandy moustache so vigorously. Perhaps he was amused at something; she looked about the little office to see what it could be that pleased him so greatly, but there seemed to be nothing to excite mirth. She decided that he was either a very cheerful young man, naturally, or else he was feeling joyful because the clock said that it was nearly time for luncheon.
"It'll be all right, Miss Mabel," said he at last. "It's a pretty good fifty-five cents' worth; but I guess Mr. Black won't object to that. I hope you'll always come to me when you have messages to send."
"I won't if you go and read them all," said Mabel, at which her friend looked even more cheerful than he had before.
Ten minutes later, Mabel mumbling something about having had an errand to attend to, presented herself at the cottage. Beyond a few meekly-received reproaches from Marjory, no one said anything about the unexplained absence. Indeed, they were all too busy and too preoccupied to care; the greater grief of losing the cottage having swallowed up all lesser cares.
At a less trying time the girls would have discovered within ten minutes that Mabel was suffering from a suppressed secret; but now, everything was changed. Although Mabel fairly bristled with importance and gave out sundry very broad hints, no one paid the slightest attention. Gradually, in the stress of packing, the matter of the telegram faded from Mabel's short memory, for preparing to move proved a most exciting operation; and also a harrowing one. Every few moments somebody would say: "Our last day," and then the other three would fall to weeping on anything that happened to come handy. Of course the packing had stirred up considerable dust; this mingled with tears added much to the forlornness of the cottagers' appearance, when they went home at noon with their news.
The parents and Aunty Jane said it was a shame, but all agreed that there was nothing to be done. All were sorry to have the girls deprived of the cottage, for the mothers had certainly found it a relief to have their little daughters' leisure hours so safely and so happily occupied. Mabel's mother was especially sorry.
Never was moving more melancholy nor house more forlorn when the moving, done after dark with great caution, and mostly through the dining-room window on the side of the house furthest from the Milligans, was finally accomplished. The Tucker boys had been only too delighted to help. By bedtime the cottage was empty of everything but the curtains on the Milligan side of the house. An hour later the tired girls were asleep; but under each pillow there was a handkerchief rolled in a tight, grimy little ball and soaked with tears.
In the morning, the girls returned for a last look, and for the remaining curtains. Dandelion cottage, stripped of its furniture and without its pictures, showed its age and all its infirmities. Great patches of plaster and wall-paper were missing, for the gay posters had covered a multitude of defects. The indignant Tucker boys had disobeyed Bettie and had removed not only the tin they had put on the leaking roof, but the steps they had built at the back door, the drain they had found it necessary to place under the kitchen sink, and the bricks with which they had propped the tottering chimneys.
Before the day was over, the tenants whom the Milligans had found for their own house were clamouring to move in, so the Milligans took possession of the cottage late that afternoon, getting the key from Mr. Powning, into whose keeping the girls had silently delivered it that morning. To do Mr. Downing justice, nothing had previously hurt him quite as much as did the dignified silence of the three pale girls who waited for a moment in the doorway, while equally pallid Jean went quietly forward to lay the key on his desk. He realised suddenly that not one of them could have spoken a word without bursting into tears; and, for the rest of that day, he hated himself most heartily.