Chapter X: “you’d Hardly Know Greenacres”

Isabel had not found relief, as Prue had, in tears while the scene with Kathie and Dolly was enacted. She kept from crying till she poured out the story of the quarrel to her mother that night at twilight, but then she poured out tears with the story and cried till, big girl as she was getting to be, her mother gathered her into her lap--all of her that it would hold!--and tried to check the flood.

Isa was not a child that cried easily, but, like most people to whom tears are difficult, when she did cry she cried so hard that it often made her a little ill. Mrs. Lindsay dreaded one of her breakdowns.

“There, there, my dear; there, my little Isabel!” she murmured patting Isa’s heaving shoulder. “It really is not so bad as you think it is. It will be straightened out. Kathie resented being questioned, but it will look different to her to-morrow morning. You still think she is the one who climbed up into your room? Her being so angry over the suspicion might mean that she had not been there, or it might mean that she was angry at being found out.”

“I’d believe her if she said she hadn’t gone, but she wouldn’t say it, so I think it was--her? She?” Isabel tried at once to speak correctly and to speak at all, keeping down her sobs.

“She. After was, or is, you know,” Mrs. Lindsay helped her in both ways, supplying the pronoun and smoothing Isa’s hair. “It wasn’t a crime to climb up and go in, after all. If Kathie did it, I think she must be forgiven.”

“But taking out our things, mother?” cried Isabel, sitting erect with symptoms that the storm was past.

“Oh, I forgot about that! No, that was not right. It doesn’t seem to me like Kathie Stevens, either! Curious little affair, isn’t it? I hear what story books might call ‘a well-known footstep!’ I think a person called Harvey Lindsay is coming in!” Isabel’s mother arose as Isabel got off her knees, and went to meet her husband, Isabel languidly following.

“Why, what’s wrong, Lady Bird?” cried Mr. Lindsay at once.

“Isa is greatly troubled by a falling out between her and Kathie Stevens, in fact between our four intimate children, and Kathie and Dolly. Isa may have made a little mistake in the way she approached a question that had to be asked Kathie, but she has not provoked the quarrel, and I’m sure it will be healed soon.” Mrs. Lindsay explained to her husband, but smiled hopefully at her tear-stained and swollen daughter.

“Come now, that’s everything, not to be the cause of a rumpus, and to be in the right!” Mr. Lindsay’s big voice sounded heartening. “I don’t mind greatly what the other fellow does, not after a time, though I may at first. I do mind like the mischief to see, when I cool off, that I was in the wrong! Your trouble is not going to last, my dawtie! And when I was about your age and had cried my fill, I found nothing as refreshing to my throat and to my spirits as ice cream! So I’ll slip back to Ebers’ and bring up a quart in a nice little tape-handled box. What flavor, Lady Isabel-ladybird?”

“Maple walnut and strawberry,” said Isabel without an instant’s hesitation. “Thank you, you dear Person,” she added with a smile rather like melted ice cream, sweet, but lacking vigor.

When her father returned her mother helped herself and her husband to a little less than a third of the cream apiece and handed Isa the box, because she preferred it thus. Seated on the upper step under the brilliant summer stars, taking heaped spoonfuls of the delicious cream for which Ebers was famous for miles, and licking the top of each spoonful into a cone to get the full flavor, a mannerless way of eating that the night and out-of-doors allowed, Isabel began to feel comforted. The strawberry ice cream was dotted with seeds to prove that fruit, not flavoring gave it its flavor; the maple walnut was as strong of maple syrup taste as a Vermont sugar camp vat.

Isabel licked her spoon blissfully, if inelegantly, since no one could see her, and felt that life still held a great deal to enjoy. As to her father, who had taken the walk to get the cream for her when he was surely tired, how could she express the flavor of his love for his girl?

“Father, you blessing, my throat does feel scrumptious after that cream, and I hope some day, I’ll have a big, hard thing to do for you and mother, just to show you!” Isabel said at last, getting up from the step with a contentedly-weary yawn, and going over to kiss her best-beloveds good-night.

The first thing in the morning, while Isa was still at breakfast, there appeared Mark in a state of great excitement.

“Well, what do you suppose!” he burst forth at once. “Oh, good morning, Mrs. Lindsay! I forgot. But what _do_ you suppose, honest?”

“What are we to suppose about, Mark?” hinted Mrs. Lindsay.

“I’d say about ’most anything,” returned Mark. “Things are happening in all directions. You couldn’t guess this; you didn’t know about it, I suppose. Say, Isa, you know Kathie Stevens’ coins?”

“’Course,” said Isa, leaning forward breathlessly.

“Gone!” cried Mark.

“Gone?” echoed Isabel. “Where? How do you mean gone?”

“If I only knew where!” said Mark. “Don’t you know I put the box down in the secret passage? They stayed there all right; I’ve looked once in a while. Nobody on earth but us--father and Motherkins and we four youngsters--knew a word about that passage. Kathie and Dolly knew there was one, but they didn’t know how you got into it, not either from the house, nor the woods end of it. I heard Kath once telling the girls at school how we had a secret passage, made in the Revolution, when Tories were around here, but I could tell she had no sort of idea where it was. And somebody has got into it and taken off that box with the coins in it! Isn’t it tough luck? What do you suppose Kathie will say, or her father, for that matter? You see they are valuable. The minute Pops came home and told about the fuss, how mad with you Kathie was, I thought of the coins, and made up my mind I’d have them out of there, ready to hand her if she came after them this morning--as I’m pretty sure she will. So I got right out after them the first thing--and there you are! Or there they’re not!” Mark waved his hands outward as if to signify a flight.

“Well, of all awful things!” said Isabel slowly.

“It is awful,” agreed Mark. “It’s bad as it can be to lose the coins, but it’s almost worse to have somebody know that secret passage and be wriggling around in it! I never in all my life heard of anything like these things--father going to lose that money almost certainly; that queer little man in the woods, and the same man asking Mr. Burke for father, and our club room entered, and now this! Why, you’d hardly know Greenacres!”

“Well,” said Isabel slowly, weighing her words, “I don’t like it; I’m sure I don’t like it, but I do think it is interesting--all but your money being taken away; that’s just awful, every side and up and down of it! But the other things are exciting! And interesting! We always knew nothing would happen when we went to the woods, but now you can’t tell.”

“Ah, but that makes _me_ feel that I can’t tell whether you may go there now,” interposed Mrs. Lindsay. “I am far from pleased to think that our safe woods are invaded by this queer little man.”

“Oh, mother, please don’t be afraid!” begged Isabel. “And he is in lots of other places. Mr. Burke met him over toward Hertonsburg. We wouldn’t like it a bit if we couldn’t go. We’ll take Semp; he could hold a man down. Mark’s father says he would take any one by the throat who tried to touch us, and you know how big and strong he is. Besides, the man seemed to be afraid himself; he ran away when the girls came that day. We want to go to Château Branche this very morning!”

“Oh, not to-day! Wait till your father decides it. I think, perhaps, some one must lie in wait for this queer little man and find out about him. The loss of the coins puts a new color on the case; that is theft, you know,” said Mrs. Lindsay.

“But maybe he found them in the secret passage and didn’t think they belonged to any one; maybe he isn’t a thief, Mrs. Lindsay,” cried Mark.

“Jack-in-the-Box, you are defending him, less from charity than because you want to be free to roam the woods as you always have!” laughed Isa’s mother. “And so do I want you still free, but we must wait to find out more, so be content to keep away from Château Branche a short time, please, dear!”

“All right, motherdy, but we want to go!” said Isabel kissing her mother, and going with Mark to find Prue, and to work in their gardens at Hawthorne House. The exciting events of the recent days had given a chance to the weeds which they were quick to use, and, to be quite truthful, the children’s enthusiasm for gardening cooled in proportion as the weather warmed, nor had their first trip to market their produce yielded the fortune that they had hoped to count.

Prue came out tying a last ribbon on her tight, light braid of hair; she had seen Isabel and Mark coming and wanted to lose no time.

She listened with tense attention, frowning severely, to the story of the disappearance of Kathie’s ancient coins.

“Well, she will be madder’n a whole army,” said Prue when it was ended. “She will be right up this morning to get them, and when she doesn’t----!” Prue did not attempt to describe what would happen when Kathie did not get her coins.

“But, my goodness gracious, she knew where they were, and she let them be put there!” cried Isabel. “It isn’t our fault, is it?”

“When you’re mad, you’re mad, and you’ve got to blame somebody,” said Prue, with deep knowledge of human injustice. “Kathie will blame us; you’ll see! I say let’s go down the secret passage first, and look for the box again. I’ll run back and get my searchlight, and I’ll borrow mother’s. We’ll go right in there and _hunt_!”

Now this was a much more heroic proposition than it sounds, coming from Prue. She was deadly afraid of spiders, snakes, rats, of black beetles almost most of all, and she had always had a horror of the secret passage greater than Isabel’s, because she felt sure that it was inhabited by all these things and others similar to them which she had never seen, and she had not Isabel’s imagination to turn the passage into a romantic story and thus off-set the dread of reptiles, insects and beasts.

Isabel knew how Prue hated to explore the underground way that had been a refuge in Revolutionary days. She stopped short and regarded her friend with respectful admiration.

“You are great, Prue! You are truly _great_! I think if there were a war you’d fire cannon, like Molly Stark, and hang out flags like Barbara Frietchie, and do all those things, though when there isn’t a war you don’t seem quite so brave,” Isa declared.

“I don’t know what I’d do, but, sometimes, I suppose you’ve got to do what you hate. I’d heaps rather fire--well, hang out a flag, anyway!--than walk on a squishy bug, or something,” said Prue trying to look modest.

There was a walled opening to the secret passage in the woods, at the place where Isabel and Prue had first seen Mark; they had dubbed it “the Toy Shop” because there was where they got their Jack-in-the-Box, and again Mark was a “jack-in-the-box” because he appeared and disappeared through this opening.

The opening was so thoroughly hidden by shrubbery and trees that the little girls had not then suspected it was there, nor could it be better seen now.

This morning Mark went down first and turned back to help Isabel and Prue. Prue had first nobly gone back after searchlights and had overtaken the other two, breathless, scared, but resolute.

Both little girls were struggling to hold their skirts tight around their legs, which did not help their progress.

Mark laughed at them as he watched this strapped-in descent.

“Nothing will get on you!” he said.

“It’s all very well for you, Mark Hawthorne, in knickers, but we’ve got skirts, and _anything_ could cling on them,” said Prue sternly. “It makes me _sick_!” She persisted nevertheless, and the three went rapidly to the spot where Mark said he had set the box of coins.

“You see!” said Mark, holding up the searchlight which he carried to show a rock in the side of the wall with nothing on it. “I put it there and now where is it?”

“Let’s hunt all around--but of course it didn’t walk off itself, and whoever took it would take it--I mean carry it off!” Isabel said. “Oh, dear, oh, dear! We _are_ in trouble! Kathie will be nearly crazy, and there’s her father! He will--why, we can’t tell what he’ll do to us! We hardly know him at all; we don’t know whether he’s one of those awful stern men, or not! Oh, if only we hadn’t brought it here! But how could we guess there was a thief around, in this place? Do you suppose it is a den of thieves now?”

The secret passage was full of turns, dark, sharp turns, around which no one could see; only by making the turn and throwing a light ahead could whatever chanced to be around these bends be seen.

“I am not a thief!” came a voice out of the darkness as Isabel finished speaking.

Prue shrieked and shrieked. Isabel uttered one agonized scream, and fell to trembling silently. Mark gasped, almost a groan, and after an instant’s pardonable hesitation, went toward the sound of the voice.

“Say, keep off!” the same voice said in a high, squeaky tone. “Don’t you come after me! I’ll run faster’n you can and I’ll never be caught. You stay off. I’ve’s good a right in here’s you have; better! If you want that black box of money just go look for it where I say, but don’t you chase _me_! Count your turns. Count three turns back the way you come. Then go down a short little narrow path somebody must of dug and got sick of once. There’s a box, and it isn’t one penny lighter’n ’twas when I found it. If you want it, take it. But I ain’t any more a thief than you are, and I won’t let you call me one. I’ll make you good’n sorry if you do.”

“My goodness, whoever you are!” cried Mark, his spirits rising as he found a chance to answer the mystery. “If you return the box you’re not a thief, so why should we call you one?”

“We’re very much obliged; you are very kind,” Isabel managed to say faintly, feeling compelled to politeness for the favor done them.

“I won’t make trouble for kids,” said the voice. “Good-by.”

“Oh, come out and let us see you!” cried Prue, all her fear wiped out by the sentiment the voice had just expressed, and curiosity seizing her.

No answer came to this appeal. The children called several times, but no sound came in return. A bat, aroused by the lights, flapped heavily across Prue’s head, so close to her face that she screamed louder than she had when the voice had first startled her.

“Oh, for mercy’s sake, get the old box and come out of here!” she cried. “I don’t want to be buried first, and then killed by bats and stuff!”

Isabel and Mark began to laugh, but there was no resisting the fervor of poor Prue’s voice. They began to retrace their steps, counting as the voice had bade them count. There, at the spot it had indicated, they came upon the black box, and, as Mark lifted it, he said:

“It does feel exactly as heavy as ever! Maybe it is all right.”

The children came out of the secret passage at the end which led them out into the grounds of Hawthorne House. Motherkins came to meet them.

“Kathie and Dolly are waiting for you,” she said. “If only you could find the coins!”

“We have found them, Motherkins!” cried Isabel. “Just you wait till you hear!”

Without delaying for the soap and water that the three faces needed after passing through the secret passage, the children went in to find Kathie and Dolly in the library.

“We came to get my coins, Mark,” said Kathie, ignoring Isabel’s feeble “Hallo,” and not so much as seeing Prue, who did not attempt to speak to them.

“All right; they’re here. We went to bring them up from where I put them,” said Mark. “I don’t know how many there were, but I don’t believe any are lost.”

“Thank you, Mark,” said Kathie with dignity. “You needn’t think we’re mad with you, Mark, because we’re not. You didn’t ask us mean questions!”

“Nobody did; we all wanted to know if you’d been into that room. I asked the question just as much as any one else, if that’s all, but there’s no sense in being mad about it. Only if mad you are, please count me in. It’s just as much my mess as the girls’.” Mark spoke so firmly that Isabel and Prue were proud of him.

“Just as you like. Then we’ll be mad with you, too. Come, Dolly!” Kathie took the yielding Dolly under her command with a stern glance. Neither Kathie nor Dolly had any desire to quarrel with Mark, whom they admired greatly, but if he joined himself with Isabel and Prue, there was no help for it. Mark escorted them to the door, polite in his own home.

“Good-by; come again!” he said with a laugh as they departed.