Chapter VIII: Round Red Radishes

“There was an old Woman, as I’ve heard tell,
Went to market her eggs for to sell!”

sang Isabel close to Poppy’s ear, who was far too interested in what she was planning to hear her.

“Five cents a bunch ’s awful little,” Poppy was saying, frowning over her calculations. “But if you have a whole lot o’ bunches----”

“They ought to be ten cents a bunch. Everything is twice as much as it was, and think what it would cost to go around peddling them if you had a car, when gasoline is so high! You’ve got to think of gasoline when you go out with the buckboard and Hurrah,” said Mark so gravely that it did not seem as if he were talking nonsense.

Isabel laughed, but Prue said:

“Would she have to? Anyway, Hurrah has to eat, so you could think of oats just as well, if you’d rather. I say ten cents a bunch, too, Poppy.”

“Now, for pity’s sake, Pops, _don’t_ open another pea pod!” remonstrated Isa, as Poppy pinched one of her pods to see how full it felt. “You won’t have any peas at all if you keep on trying them! When they’re ripe you can tell without opening the pods. It won’t be long; they’re getting big.”

“My lettuce is nice,” remarked Prue with satisfaction. “It isn’t headed up, but it’s as sweet and tender! Let’s start soon.”

“We’re to have an early lunch. I’m going to feed Hurrah now, ’cause you hadn’t ought to drive a horse on his dinner,” said Poppy, turning from the contemplation of her garden and picking up the can of glowing balls of radishes which she intended to offer for sale that afternoon.

“No; it’s better to drive a horse on the road than on his dinner. And it’s better to say ‘you ought not’ than ‘you hadn’t ought,’” hinted Mark.

“Well, I gotta get something wrong once’n a while,” Poppy said cheerfully. “You caught talking right from your families; I gotta learn it. Do you s’pose I’ll sell ’em?”

“Gladys Popham Meiggs, that’s the nine hundred and ninety-ninth time--pretty near--you’ve asked that! And how can we tell?” cried Prue. “Do you think my lettuce will sell? That’s just as much to find out.”

“Where is your lettuce, Prue?” asked Mark.

“I picked it early, came up before Isa did and picked it. It’s on the ice. Motherkins lent me a flat tin pan--it would be great to cool taffy in!--and we set it right on the ice, on top. I was going to put it in a basket all trimmed with dandelions when we started--yellow and green are so pretty!--but the dandelions would all shut up on the way, so what’s the use?” Prue sighed over the ways of dandelions.

Isabel pulled Mark’s sleeve, and he fell behind the other two with her as they went toward the house.

“Any more news? About the will? Did your father hear?” Isa asked.

Mark nodded without speaking.

“Oh, dear! It’s true!” groaned Isabel.

“Looks bad, dad’s lawyers say,” Mark said soberly. “This Maurice Ditson is going to put it over. He’s got people to swear to another will that left all Mr. Ditson had to his son, so that lets us out. I’m afraid, Isa, dad and I will have to take Motherkins on our shoulders--and I’ll have to carry Pincushion, too!--and go out of this house. It makes us pretty sick!”

“Anybody as nice as Motherkins, who did so much for everybody, gave Poppy a home and Bunkie, too, even when she was quite poor and didn’t know how she could do it, ought not to lose this house,” said Isabel emphatically. “Of course, you wouldn’t care for yourself; you’d be happy in any house till you were old enough to earn a really nice one.”

“Suppose we had to leave Greenacres?” suggested Mark.

Isabel stopped short and stared at him, growing a little pale.

“Jack-in-the-Box! Why? Why should you leave Greenacres?” she cried.

“Dad would have to earn money; we wouldn’t have enough, and suppose he couldn’t find a way to do it in Greenacres? We’d have to go, wouldn’t we?” Mark spoke gently, as if to soften to Isabel the edge of his words; her eyes were dilating with tears which brimmed on their lids, but did not fall, and her lips were parting with her quickened breath.

“I never once, not ONCE, thought of that! I never ONCE thought you could go away, Jack-in-the-Box!” she whispered, sharply realizing what it would be to lose this dear boy, his quick fancy, his merry ways, like a creature of the woods, half wild, wholly gentle; his charm, his unfailing understanding of the thoughts, the imaginings which Prue never could enter into.

“Well, there’s no saying how I hope we won’t have to go,” sighed Mark.

“Oh, you can’t go, Jack-in-the-Box!” cried Isabel. She used the first name by which she had called him, unconsciously connecting her meeting him with the awful threat of losing him.

“I can’t stay if I can’t, Isa. What do people do when they _must_ do a thing? They do it and try to stand it, don’t they?” asked Mark sadly.

Isabel looked at him long and steadily, trying to adjust her mind to this new idea. Then she straightened herself, throwing back her slender shoulders, and tossed her dark, breeze-rumpled hair out of her tear-dimmed, blue-gray eyes.

“It won’t happen! It can’t happen! Anything so dreadful _can’t_ happen. I won’t think of it for another single minute!” she declared. “Hurry and catch up with the others, and talk about what we’ll do this afternoon, when we go to take our garden things to market. If only my flowers were ready! They’re budded. I dread to go, do you know that! It seems funny to be hucksters right in Greenacres. Poppy always--well, you know! The Meiggs family was poor, but my father is president of the bank and Mr. Wayne is a lawyer, and your father is Mr. Hawthorne, and people know the Hawthornes. You don’t think they’ll call it something like going around begging, do you?”

“Selling isn’t one bit like begging, you know, it’s going into business, Isa. But don’t, if you don’t want to! Let Poppy have all we raise and sell it, and keep the money,” suggested Mark.

“Oh, she never would,” declared Isabel. “Besides, it’s rather backing out. I’ll go, but I do feel rather queer about it.”

At the last minute, as it happened, Isabel did not go. Her mother telephoned for her to come home because a friend of her mother’s, who had not seen Isa since she was a baby, had unexpectedly arrived on a tour which she was making in her car, and Isabel had to be summoned home to see her for the brief hour which was all that she could spare to visit Mrs. Lindsay.

So all that Isabel shared of this expedition to market with Prue’s lettuce and Poppy’s radishes was storing the baskets, two of them, under the seat of the buckboard and seeing her friends start. After this she ran home.

Hurrah was in no mood for hurrying; the day was growing warm, the air heavy, showers threatened to come up at night. Poppy sat straight and stiff, driving, with Prue beside her. Mark sat on the end of the buckboard, dangling his long legs, amusing himself by turning the toes of his shoes toward each other, and admiring his ribbed brown stockings, or else experimenting in keeping his legs out stiff and straight while he raised himself on his hands and tried to hold himself thus as long as he could while they jolted along.

They had decided to go first of all to Mrs. Wilkins’. She was a merry, kindly old lady, nearing seventy, so friendly to children that half of the youngsters in Greenacres called her “Grandma Wilkins,” though she had no grandchild to give her the title.

“Whoa!” shouted Poppy, louder than was necessary, since Hurrah was not in the least deaf. She hoped that Mrs. Wilkins would hear and come out.

This happened, and when she appeared on her piazza Poppy called:

“Radishes! Round, red radishes! Raised by a Red-head! Round red radishes!” in a voice worthy of her new occupation.

“For goodness’ sake, Poppy! And you, Prudence Wayne! And Mark Hawthorne! Are you turning into hucksters? Well, I want to know!” cried Mrs. Wilkins.

“We’ve got gardens, and this is the first out o’ them, Mis’ Wilkins,” said Poppy. “The other things ain’t ready, but just lettuce and round red radishes--they’re mine, and the lettuce is Prue’s. We’ve gone into business. This is our first trip; you’re our first stop.”

“Because you knew I’d want a lot of radishes! Though I don’t eat ’em myself, other people do, and I like to send my neighbors some tidbits occasionally. But lettuce I’m partial to; it’s a great help to a good tea, with nice bread and butter. Give me all you can spare of your stuff,” said the dear old plump person cordially.

“Now, Mrs. Wilkins, you mustn’t say that just to help us,” interposed Prue, scowling anxiously. “We want to sell, but we don’t want to have people do what isn’t fair, take what they don’t want.”

“Trust you, Prudence Wayne, to want to deal square,” laughed Mrs. Wilkins. “But it isn’t good business to talk folks out of buying, my dear! Don’t you worry; I’ve got a use for anything I buy.”

She produced a worn pocketbook, with a nickel clasp, and a bill fold, and pocket for change. Mark said afterward “it looked as if it belonged to her.”

Prue put into the bright new pan, which Mrs. Wilkins fetched, a large quantity of the tender young lettuce and three bunches of Poppy’s “round red radishes.” The combination was pretty against the shining tin.

“Well, we’ve begun!” Prue remarked, taking a long breath as they went on their way with cordial good-bys and good wishes from Mrs. Wilkins, the money of their first sale in Mark’s pocket, he being elected treasurer, and four perfectly fresh, creamy cookies apiece, deliciously sprinkled with cocoanut, held on the cookie by a coating of melted sugar. No one, it had long ago been decided by Greenacres children, ever made such cookies as Grandma Wilkins did.

“We can’t have such luck everywhere,” said Poppy, speaking with difficulty as she removed cocoanut from her cheek at the extreme reach of her tongue’s length because Hurrah had whisked his tail over the lines and spoiled her aim when she took a bite of cookie. “There ain’t many people so awful nice as she is. But we’ll keep right at it.”

They “kept right at it,” and, selling a little lettuce here, a bunch of radishes there, soon got rid of all the stock except a few ragged lettuce leaves.

Most people regarded the new vendors as a great joke, but one severe person held them up to lecture them on taking trade from the poor--and did not buy when Prue and Poppy refused to cheapen their wares.

“Gee, she might of took the stuff when we had to let her preach at us!” said Poppy, too disgusted to remember the lessons in English which the other children gave her, and which she was so anxious to learn.

Hurrah was turned homeward--he went that way more willingly than he started out--and the children were wondering how much they had made.

“Don’t take it out to count it, Mark!” cried Prue. “It joggles so, you might drop some. Help me count up in my head. I can remember just what we sold.”

Prue began to recall aloud where they had stopped, what sales they had made, and Mark added for her as she went along. He was a marvel at mental addition; indeed, his quick brain excelled in all feats demanded of it.

Poppy took no part in this calculation except to correct Prue sometimes when she made a mistake in her recollection of sales.

There was a wagon ahead of them, a long one with a top, and it emitted a pleasant sound of a bell hung somewhere upon it.

Poppy’s sharp eyes had been upon it for some time. At last she said:

“I like Hurrah terrible well, but I do wish I could hurry him up to catch that wagon! He won’t hurry for a cent.”

“I’ll hurry him; he’ll go for me, Pops,” said Mark. “He knows your soft heart by this time. I always can make animals do things, you know.”

As Poppy, to his surprise, instantly accepted Mark’s offer, he added:

“Why do you want to overhaul that wagon, Poppy?”

“It looks like a friend of mine,” said Poppy, mixing the wagon with its driver in her reply. “If I know what, that’s Mr. Thomas Burke, 906 North Street, Hertonsburg, what took me along home that time I went off, and I’d just love to see him, and I know he’d be crazy to see me.”

“Is it, honest?” cried Mark. “Well, we’ll overhaul him, all right. See Hurrah!”

Sure enough, true to Mark’s prophecy, Hurrah was trotting along to oblige Mark as he never did for Poppy. Soon the buckboard came up close to the wagon, and Poppy made sure that the bulky form on its seat was, indeed, her rescuer, the bottle dealer, and she shrieked wildly:

“Mr. Burke, Mr. Burke! Turn around and see me!”

Mr. Burke turned, not his head, but his whole body, which was a large and thick one.

“Well, if it ain’t little Redtop!” shouted Mr. Burke, and, stopping his horse, got down to greet Poppy, his broad face red with pleasure.

Poppy took him around the neck with gusto. She hugged him hard.

“You’re just as welcome as a flower in the spring!” she poetically said.

“Which I ain’t so strikin’ like!” said Mr. Burke with a grin. “Lucky I haven’t got a gas truck, or you couldn’t have caught me. Say, how are you, anyway, little Redtop? Just as calm an’ sort of slow an’ lazy as you was? Don’t move around quick, nor fly off these days, do you? Are these your friends you told me about? Miss Isabel Lindsay, that you wrote the post card to?”

“This is Miss Prue Wayne; Isabel didn’t come,” explained Poppy, and as Mr. Burke touched his hat to Prue she added: “This is my own horse and buckboard, Mr. Burke.”

“Never!” exclaimed Mr. Burke.

“Ever!” Poppy corrected him. “It was a present to me from another friend of mine, Mr. Babcock, the postmaster; he’s very nice, not quite straight--I mean his back ain’t.”

“Well, you do be the great one for friends, little Poppy Redtop,” said Mr. Burke admiringly. “It’s congratulations that’s due you, an’ that’s the truth. Now I’ve met you, I might tell you my errand. I was aimin’ to see your--well, I don’t know the title you give ’em, but whoever takes care of you--Mr. Gilbert Hawthorne, ’tis. I’ll not be goin’ to the house, now I can tell you what I had to say.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Burke,” Mark cried. “Please come. Dad will be glad enough to see you. He would be annoyed with us, with me, if you didn’t come. Please come. We all know you well through Poppy. Motherkins--my grandmother, Mrs. Hawthorne--would love to thank you for taking care of Poppy last summer.”

“You’re a little gentleman!” declared Mr. Burke, regarding with frank admiration Mark’s radiant face. “It’s no thanks are due me for pickin’ up a bit of a girl, out gettin’ herself into trouble. But I’ll go along with pleasure. I’ve something to tell your father that maybe he ought to know, an’ maybe it’s no matter. Will I lead an’ will you follow, or will we turn it the other way, an’ me follow that war horse of Poppy’s? How do you name him?”

“Hurrah,” said Poppy. “He’s not a war horse; he’s peaceful and loving.”

“’Deed, then, he looks it! An’ Hurrah is a name that couldn’t be beat for belongin’ to a horse that you own, little Redtop; you’re the one to go with a hurrah, as the sayin’ is!” Mr. Thomas Burke grinned at Poppy so warmly that she could not suspect him of looking down on Hurrah, as she at first thought he might do.

Mr. Burke went back and climbed up on his wagon, with grunts that revealed the effort it cost him, and the two vehicles took their way up to the Hawthorne house, Mr. Burke in the lead, Hurrah and his friends in the rear.

At the gateway they were met by Isabel, too excited to stand still or to wonder at Mr. Burke.

“Oh, I’ve been dying! I thought you’d never come back!” she cried, jumping from one to the other foot. “Mother’s friend went and I came back here to wait for you. I went up to the Club Room, and what do you s’pose?”

Isabel barely paused at the end of her question, which she did not expect answered. The other children murmured something, but Isabel went on hurriedly.

“Some one’s been up there, in our room! They’ve been eating, and moved things around. And they took out a pillow!”

“Who?” demanded the other three together.

“Well, who?” echoed Isabel. “I think it was Kathie and Dolly. Kathie can climb up as easy! You know she did the other day. They aren’t members yet; I don’t think they ought to go there when we’re not there, and, of course, they can’t take anything out. Even one of us couldn’t; we own those things together.”

“Well, that’s rather queer,” said Mark slowly. “I wouldn’t think they’d do that. Maybe it was some one else--but who?”

“Yes, who?” echoed Isabel again. “Well, anyway, I’ve been crazy to have you get back and come up to see.”

“We’ll come,” said Mark. “I’ve got to find dad and introduce Mr. Burke to him. This is Mr. Burke, who found Poppy for us that time; this is Isabel Lindsay, Mr. Burke.”

“Pleased to meet you, miss,” said Mr. Burke, again touching his cap. His eyes lighted with pleasure at the sight of lovely little Isa. “I had the honor to write you a post card, but I’d rather see you, an’ that’s no lie for me.”