Chapter II: Saws, Hammers and Nails--Two Kinds!

Prue sat back on her heels, her thumb in her mouth and that mouth sagging at its corners.

Mark was sawing on the side of a packing case, making a cheerful whistling through his teeth, but the saw was slender; it swayed and bent a good deal, and the course it had so far followed through the side of the box was as scalloped as if it had been cut by a cheese scoop.

Isabel and Poppy were tacking bright colored chintz in deep pleats over a much smaller box. Isabel was silent; she looked pale and her lips were closed in a line that was almost grim. Poppy on the other hand was red even to the tips of her ears, and she betrayed a decided tendency to scold some one, any one who gave her the least opening.

As no one paid any attention to Prue, who had been hammering nails out backward from a third box, she was forced to voice her woes in a bid for pity.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if I had lockjaw,” she said plaintively. Isabel looked up, saw her best friend’s miserable face and the thumb in her mouth, around which she had spoken indistinctly, and jumped up to run over to her.

“Did you hurt yourself, Prue darling?” she asked.

“I struck my nail like--like--I struck my thumb nail _awful_ hard, Isabel! Do you suppose it doesn’t hurt? I just about can’t stand the way it aches. I think likely I’ll have lockjaw, or lose the nail, or something.” Prue struggled to keep back the tears, but her voice was sadder than tears.

“Oh, no, dear!” cried Isabel. “It must be fearful, but it won’t come off, or make lockjaw. Let me see. Poor, poor thumbling! It’s a dark red!”

Isabel examined the short, sturdy little thumb with the air of a whole college of physicians, and Prue bitterly turned it and bent it back and forth as if newly introduced to it.

“I was not meant for a carpenter,” she said, feeling unjustly put upon.

“Well, who was?” exploded Poppy. “I can’t get these darned----”

“Poppy! You _must not_ say darned!” cried Prue, forgetting her pain in her passionate desire to keep Poppy straight.

“They are!” said Poppy. “Well then: These sweet pretty red and blue chintz parrots, or hens, or something! I can’t get ’em on straight. And Isa keeps a-pulling the stuff all round and how can I?”

“Some job to saw through this box straight with a saw like a lemonade straw, if you want to know,” Mark added to the lamenting chorus.

“Let’s chuck it!” cried Poppy. “It’s too hard to make our own furniture, and ’twon’t be one bit of good if we do fuss and muss it, and all our poor fids get pounded bust!”

“We’ve got to furnish this room, and where’d we get the money? It would cost a lot. Mother bought some new piazza chairs, and she said the kind that used to be about three and a half she paid seven for,” said Prue removing her thumb to say this. It was like Prue to know about high prices, and like her to be ready to keep on with the work in hand, though for her it had proved to be work _on_ hand, most painful to endure.

The instant she had spoken she jabbed her thumb quickly between her lips again and wriggled the fingers on the same hand because it hurt so much.

“Let’s go out and do stunts in the streets and people’d give us money for it, and we’d buy furniture,” cried Poppy.

“Oh, Poppy! They’d know us!” Isabel’s voice was horrified.

“Sure. And not be afraid we’d be gypsies, or something, if they gave it to us,” Poppy answered as if being known were a good thing, but she understood Isabel nevertheless.

“’Course we couldn’t go around like that,” said Mark. “Maybe we could get some stuff out of people’s attics; I mean maybe people have things they don’t use and we could borrow them, or pay for ’em by doing errands or weeding--if they’d sell them. I’m kind of thinking we shan’t make much of a go at tinkering boxes into chairs and tables, and by the time we got done we’d be too old to sit down if we could do it. By the time we got ’em done we’d be ninety-nine, and stiff from old age.”

Isabel laughed. “Prue and I would be only ninety-eight when you were ninety-nine, and Pops would be a young thing of ninety-six, nearly! We’d have to stand, and let our callers sit down. Well, then, what are we to do, Jack-in-the-Box? You’re the one that was so keen to make the furniture, and Motherkins has given us this lovely chintz that I know she wanted herself.”

“Beg,” said Prue. She found it sounded like “beck” with her thumb in her mouth, so she removed it, and went on.

“My mother has lots of kind of wobbly chairs in the attic; so has yours, Isa. It would be easier to brace ’em up than to fuss like this. Besides there are some kind of outgrown, odd ones, that used to be pretty. They are strong, but they got ugly. I don’t see why, but mother always says when we go up there: ‘Do see those really awful chairs! And when I was first married, and my mother bought them for me, we thought they were beautiful!’ So they’d do for us; we’d be younger’n she was when she was married, and maybe we’d think they were beautiful. Anyway they’re chairs, and they’re heaps prettier than our packing box ones would ever be, and I know mother’d let us have them.”

“Well, so would mother,” said Isabel, her meaning, if not her expression clear. “I suppose--But we were planning to do it all ourselves.”

“It’s awful silly to do things when you can’t,” said Poppy decisively.

“I think that would be pretty clever, Miss Gladys!” laughed Mark. “All right, then; jig’s up! Jig saw? Mine wasn’t that kind. We’ll gather up these tools and put them all back in dad’s bench drawer. Nothing gets my sweet-tempered dad going like having me use his tools and not put them back! Then we’ll go out begging furniture, like survivors of a fire.”

“I know!” cried Poppy hopping around on her right foot, holding her left ankle in her hand. “We’ll dress up! We must put on funny tastic things and pretend we were all burnt up--I mean all we had in our houses.”

“Trust you to see a chance to dress up, Popsy!” laughed Mark. “The word is fantastic, my dear, but I shouldn’t wonder if funny tastic was better when you’re the one dressing up!”

“It don’t make no odds to me, Mark Hawthorne,” said Poppy with dignity. “I’m getting my learning as I go along, and I’m not near done with it, and I don’t put on one single luggs, making believe I was to college.”

Isabel dove into one of the packing cases, pretending to be searching for a screwdriver; it never would do to let Poppy see her laugh when Poppy was so solemnly in earnest as she then was.

Isabel emerged flushed and short breathed.

“We might go right to Prue’s house and mine and see what’s there,” she said.

The spring was coming on so fast that now, on the 27th of April, the sunshine was warm enough to do away with the necessity of much preparation for going out. Prue and Isabel and Poppy needed no more than their blue serge coats, all similar, and their hats. Mark pulled a slip-on sweater over his head, caught up a cap, and they were ready. Stopping only long enough to put the borrowed tools back in their place, the four sallied out.

The big house, the old Hawthorne house, stood just beyond the woods. There was a subterranean passage that had been made in Revolutionary days, leading up to the house from the woods. It was because Mark knew this passage and used mysteriously to appear and disappear through it, to the wonder of Prue and Isabel, who almost suspected him of being Peter Pan, or another citizen of fairyland, that they had dubbed Mark Jack-in-the-Box when they had first seen him.

Now they did not go through the hidden passage, though they had come to use it freely themselves, but they did go by the woods; no matter where they were going, these four children nearly always were able to persuade themselves that the nearest way to get there was to start by going through the woods. Much as they loved them, well as they knew them, there was always more to love, more to discover in the woods each time that they went into them. To-day, with the buds swelling to bursting on the trees, the willows, distant along the brook, showing a golden mist through the shadows; the maples red in bud; the ferns palely green, with brown caps on their full heads, turned over like a bishop’s shepherd-crozier, the woods were lovely as a dream, a dream that was at the same time an assured promise of joys to come. And the air was fragrant with arbutus, lying deep under the damp brown deposit of last year’s leaves, modestly anxious to hide its perfection, but, like a lovely soul, revealing itself by its sweetness as it hid.

Isabel drew a long, inward breath. “Oh, how can it be so heavenly!” she sighed.

“We must go down to the brook soon and see how Château Branche is getting on,” said Prue, forgetting to nurse her thumb.

“Dad said we must not get up into it till he examines it, to make sure it is strong after the winter,” said Mark. “But I’m sure it’ll be all right. Dad built it to last. Say, isn’t it pretty nice to have a house like that in a pine tree waiting for us when spring comes back? We’re lucky kids!”

“Of course it is only a platform in the branches, really,” said Prue, the exact. “But that’s nicer than a house with a roof--and it doesn’t rain on us unless it simply pours down.”

“Château Branche is a house; don’t you spoil it, Prue Wayne, calling it a platform,” cried Poppy. Prue’s literal way of getting everything labelled exactly exasperated Poppy, and there was always within her heart jealousy of Isabel’s affection for Prue; to Poppy Isa was adorable perfection. On the other hand Prue had less patience with Poppy than Isa had; her impatience, her flaming quick temper, her sudden extremes of mood tried sensible Prue; she had to struggle to be just to Poppy. It is to Prue’s credit that she did struggle to do her justice, kept in mind her unfortunate childhood, and did not let Poppy feel coolness toward her. Prue was a thoroughly good little girl, though she was not as interesting as brilliant Mark, nor as exquisite Isabel, nor as clever, wild little Poppy herself.

“I won’t spoil Château Branche, Poppy; I just was thinking it was a platform after all. But I always think of it as our house in the tree, same’s you do,” Prue answered gently.

“You can get some rustle in the dry places, but not like in the fall,” said Poppy. She had forgotten her warning about Château Branche, and was going along scuffling her feet through the piles of leaves which eddying winter winds had heaped in places.

“I’ll be glad when we can come here and sit around; it’s a little weeny bit damp yet,” said Isabel with a slight shiver.

“Race me out, the way we always did; you’ll get cold,” said Prue with an anxious look at more delicate Isa.

“Oh, but I can’t go straight to your house, either of your houses,” said Poppy unexpectedly, and with trouble as to her plurals. “I forgot! Motherkins told me this morning I had to go to the store for her some time to-day, and this is the last chance. Come with me.”

“Why didn’t you say so before, Poppy?” cried Prue.

“Well, what’s the odds? We’d go through the woods anyway, and turn around,” Poppy reminded her.

“Nice to know,” observed Isabel, but they did “turn around,” and struck out of the woods by another path leading to the business end of the town, instead of keeping on toward Prue and Isabel’s homes.

Poppy’s errand was at the grocer’s, but she also went to the druggist to get an insect destroyer for Motherkins’ beloved garden, to do away with the hungry slugs waiting for her plants to put up their tender shoots. The drug store was next to the post office. Greenacres’ postmaster was a character, a small, weazened, deformed man named Babcock, toward whom all the children of Greenacres held two distinct attitudes of mind in the first and second stages of their knowing him. When they were small they were all afraid of him; his deformed body, and sharp, curious face filled them with terror. After they were past seven they swung from fear of him to love for Mr. Babcock; he was eccentric, but kind, and did many things for the children that won their gratitude; it mingled with pity for him to make them love him.

Now, as Isabel, Prue, Poppy and Mark came out of the drug store they saw Mr. Babcock in the post office doorway.

“Saw you out of my private office,” he said. “How are you, Hawthorne sprig? And how are you, Isabel Lindsay and Prudence Wayne? And you, Miss Meiggs? Want a horse, Poppy?”

“Oh, my gracious!” gasped Poppy. “What do you mean?”

“A horse, a horse, a horse,” Mr. Babcock thrice repeated. “H-o-r-s-e, an animal that used to be common, but got side-tracked by gasoline engines and the farmers’ flivvers, but is still useful, and to my mind beats autos. I’ve got a horse, a buckboard--old-time, sagging buckboard!--to give away, and I sort of picked you out as the one to have it.”

“Me! Me!” Poppy sat straight down on the sidewalk regardless of everything.

“I won’t sell him. I could, to some one who’d get what was left in him out of him in a year and let him starve after that,” said Mr. Babcock, in a fury at his own imagining. “I won’t sell him. He’s twenty-two years old, but he’s good for a long time, decently treated; sound and can trot right along, not a bad looking fellow, chestnut, came of good stock. Think your folks’d let Poppy have him, Mark?”

“I think so, I’m sure so,” said Mark, as surprised as Poppy, but rising to the occasion as she was too overcome to do. “My father said he’d like to have a horse on the place. I think he’d keep yours for Poppy, if she’d let dad use him sometimes.”

“I won’t sell him,” said Mr. Babcock again, shaking his head hard. “I’d just’s lieves as not Gilbert Hawthorne’d use him. When he was a littler boy’n you are now he was as kind to animals as a lamb! But he’s to be Poppy’s horse, mind that! _And_ her buckboard! Want to see him? Will you have him, Poppy?”

“Oh, my days, my days!” cried Poppy, bursting into excited tears. “I don’t want to see him! He’s a horse, he’s alive, he goes, don’t he? Oh my, a horse! Say, I’ll die! He’ll haul me to the cemetery first thing! Oh, Mr. Babcock, you ain’t postmaster, you’re an angel, just an angel! Le’me hug you! Oh my land of lollypops, I’ll bust!”

“Well, come along to the stable; it’s better for busting than the street, and you can see the horse,” said Mr. Babcock, laughing. “Here, get up off the walk! I’ll hitch him up, or do you want to ask your father first, Mark?”

“No. Dad’ll say yes, but if he doesn’t I’ll bring the horse back. I’d better take a bag of oats home on the buckboard,” said Mark.

Isabel and Prue had not spoken. This was too amazing to allow of speech. They silently followed to the stable, and were introduced to the horse, whose long brown nose thrust itself forward over the stall door as they entered, showing that it was used to sugar in the pockets of visitors.

“I’ve done my best for you, old man; I’d keep you if I could, but you’ll be all right where you’re going. I wouldn’t sell you,” Mr. Babcock said with a quaver in his voice.

Poppy solemnly took the brown face between her palms and kissed the middle of the boney nose.

“My little darling, you are to be my child,” she said with rapturous tears running down her own short, freckled nose.

Mr. Babcock led the horse out. He proved to be decidedly well-built, with fine, straight legs, a full tail, a good head.

Mr. Babcock put on the harness and led the horse out to be backed into the shafts of the buckboard, standing in the stable yard.

“Get up on the seat, Poppy. He’s yours, so you drive home. He won’t play a trick on any one, not for the world. Mark, you might get up along side of her. Good-by, all of you. Good-by, old friend. I’ve done my best for you. I wouldn’t sell you,” Mr. Babcock said, handing Poppy the lines.

Isabel and Prue climbed up on the buckboard. There was no question in their minds of not going back to the Hawthorne house; this was too exciting an adventure to leave unfinished.

As the horse began to move, obedient to Poppy’s tightening of the lines, and Mark’s order to: “Get up,” Poppy being unable to speak, Isabel found her tongue for the first time.

“What’s his name, Mr. Babcock?” she asked.

“Hurrah. He was born on the day of Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay,” said Mr. Babcock.

He did not smile, but Isabel, Prue and Mark fell over rocking with laughter.

Poppy was unable so much as to hear the horse’s name.

The quest of furniture was completely forgotten. Slowly and with decorum, the buckboard started away, drawn by Hurrah and watched and watched out of sight by Mr. Babcock whose eyes glistened with moisture.

After they had gone beyond the business streets, Hurrah voluntarily began to trot.

Poppy held the lines and Isabel and Prue jounced up and down on the body of the buckboard, singing with Mark at the tops of their voices: “Hurrah, Hurrah, Hurrah!”