Chapter IX: Queer Happenings

“Could we hear what you are going to tell, Mr. Burke?” asked Poppy. Her sharp little face almost looked as though it had been whittled, so much was its natural pointedness increased by her devouring curiosity. Poppy was always as curious as a cat.

Mr. Burke looked down on her with kindly amusement.

“Considerin’ it’s next to nothin’, unless Mr. Hawthorne has some missin’ bits to put to it, like them pitcher puzzles, you may hear what I’ve got to tell’s far’s I’m concerned--which is next to nothin’, as I’ve just said,” he replied.

“But first be sure you will not have something more--one more cup of tea?” suggested Motherkins hovering, anxious to do all that she could for this kind man who had once been good to Poppy.

“’Deed, then, ma’am, there’s no more desire nor space left in me!” declared Mr. Burke. “But I’d dearly love my pipeful of tobacco, if there’s a place on the grounds where I could smoke it an’ not be puttin’ you out.”

“My mother lets me smoke on the piazza, in the house, too, when it is too chilly to sit outside. Come, then, Mr. Burke, and open your budget of news!” said Mr. Hawthorne.

“It’s not much,” began Mr. Burke, when they were seated and he had drawn deeply on his wooden pipe to get it going. All four children--Isabel and Prue had obtained permission by telephone to stay on at the Hawthorne house--sat close to Mr. Burke, not to miss a word.

“Well, then,” Mr. Burke fairly launched himself in his story this time, “it was this way: I was drivin’ along one day, I’d say ten days back, but it might be a matter of a few days more; time does be greatly alike, seen from a cart seat. I came up wid a small man trampin’ along the side of the way, an’ when he looks up at me I passed the time o’ day with him, civil like. He answered kind of funny, not just grumpy like, but yet not ready; sort of hesitatin’. An’ the queerest face I ever set me two eyes on was on the front side of the head of that same little man! He had a nose you might use as a screwdriver, on a pinch, that long and thin ’twas! He had a pair of dark eyes that shone like a glass bottle beside the road when the sun strikes on it, an’ they was never still a minute. He was a little misshapen creature besides----”

“The queer man in the woods!” cried Mark and Isabel at the same instant, as Poppy shouted: “We saw him! We saw him! Out by Château Branche and we were scared!”

“Did you see him now!” exclaimed Mr. Burke. “Small blame to you for being scared, says I, for one! Then it’s you who knows how he looked without me tellin’ you. Did he find you, sir?”

“No,” said Mr. Hawthorne. “This is the first I’ve heard of him; the children did not speak of seeing any one so peculiar in the woods.”

“For fear you’d think we hadn’t ought--ought not to go there,” explained Poppy.

“I certainly should want his record investigated,” said Mr. Hawthorne. “Why did you ask if he found me, Mr. Burke? Was he looking for me?”

“When he’d eyed me for a minute, queer and uncertain like,” Thomas Burke resumed, “he asked did I know the countryside well? An’ I told him I ought to, drivin’ it constant for upwards of seven years. An’ he asked did I know any one named Hawthorne, Gilbert Hawthorne, an’, says I, I do. Leastways, I know a little about him, nor did I say he was lookin’ after me friend, Poppy, though I might have, I might have!” Mr. Burke smiled into Poppy’s face, thrust forward as she perched on the edge of a chair as if afraid that a word might slip past her.

“Then he asked me, an’ I told him where you lived, sir, an’ he listened tight, an’ he sort of muttered that maybe he’d see you. ‘Maybe I will,’ he said, an’ he shook his head hard. I misdoubted he was right in his mind, but I let him go on--he wouldn’t ride wid me, though I asked him. Ever since it’s been botherin’ me that maybe it was something you ought to know about, an’ more an’ more did it bother me the longer I thought about it, till the missus says: ‘Gwan wid you, Tom, an’ see Mr. Hawthorne. Make it your way to go to Greenacres sooner than you’re due there, an’ see him an’ tell him the little there is to tell, an’ get it off your conscience.’ So I’m here, an’ you’re told, an’ for my part of it, there’s no more about it. You don’t know the man; there’s no mischief afoot, is there?”

“Not that I know of; no, I don’t know any one like the person you describe. Curious, too, especially that he was in the woods near the children’s tree house--if it were the same man,” said Mr. Hawthorne slowly.

“Oh, it was, daddy; it had to be!” cried Mark. “There couldn’t be two like that in one neighborhood. Say, isn’t it great? It sounds like a story with a plot to it.”

“It sounds like a fairy story. The queer man is a gnome, or wicked fairy, or maybe he is enchanted and unhappy and is trying to do good to you, to get free of the spell upon him!” cried Isabel, who always wove stories out of all material that came to her hand. “I think it’s _terribly_ interesting! And strange! Last year we found Jack-in-the-Box in the woods and thought he was a fairy at first, and now it is a gnome!”

Prue had sat in rigid silence, listening, but not speaking. Her face betrayed her alarm. Now she jumped up and said:

“I hope you don’t think they’re anything alike! Jack-in-the-Box was the nicest thing that ever happened to us, but this is horrid! Perfectly, horrid-awful! And I’m going home before it gets any darker, and, Mark and Poppy, you must go half way with me, even now!”

“Let me see you home, little misses,” said Mr. Thomas Burke, rising. He had received and accepted an invitation to stay over night at the Hawthorne house, and his big horse, Cork, was to keep Hurrah company in the next stall to him.

“Oh, we sha’n’t be afraid with Mark and Poppy,” said Prue hastily.

Prue was a proper little person, with considerable respect for social distinctions; she did not care to be taken home by a bottle dealer.

Isabel, cleverer and finer than Prue, made friends with all sorts of people, knew how to get pleasure out of talking to them, yet never for an instant was less than an exceedingly fine little fine lady.

“Well, if you wouldn’t mind, if you aren’t tired, Mr. Burke, it would be much nicer to have you come with us,” Isabel said, adding in an undertone that only Prue could hear:

“Don’t be a goose, Prue Wayne!”

So Mr. Thomas Burke, dealer in second-hand bottles, escorted Isabel Lindsay and Prue Wayne to their homes, Poppy trotting beside him, holding his hand, admiringly looking up at him as he talked nonsense and made the children laugh.

“He’s splendid!” said Isabel, when Mr. Burke had bade her and Prue good-night and had gone off with Poppy and Mark. “He is as kind as kind, and doesn’t he tell wonderful stories! I would like to ride in his cart all over the country, hearing him talk and seeing life. To-morrow, Prue, we must pitch into Dolly and Kathie for taking things out of the Club Room, though, of course, it was only Kath climbed up. Fancy lazy Dolly climbing up there!”

“We’ve got to ask them first if they did it,” said Prue justly. “Kathie will not say she didn’t if she did. It seems to me rather queer for her to do that; I can’t seem to believe she did.”

“Who else?” demanded Isabel. “I think it’s queer, too, but who else would it be likely to be?”

“It isn’t likely to be Kathie, either,” persisted Prue. “Anyway, find out before you say anything.”

“I’ve got to say, ‘did you?’ haven’t I, or how shall I find out? Good-night, Grandma Wayne! Didn’t they know just how you were going to turn out when they named you Prudence!”

Isabel kissed Prue hard; she loved her when she was so sensible and cautious, partly because, though she, too, was sensible, Isabel was likely to be rash.

Then Isabel ran into the house for her hour which she always spent in intimate talk with her mother at twilight, and for which to-night she was late.

The next morning Isabel was awake early, having a great deal on her mind. The story of the queer man lost nothing of its interest in telling it to her mother; she had gone to bed excited over its mystery.

Then there was the fact that the Club Room had been entered from outside. Isabel was impatient to see Kathie and Dolly and find out what they knew about it. She was tempted to feel a little hard-used that she could not omit her lessons that morning. School had been closed in the middle of April because of an epidemic of measles that hung along, a new case coming on when it all seemed to be over, so late that there would be no more school that season. Isabel and Prue were compelled to keep on with their studies at home; this morning Isabel found the rule hard. It was eleven before she was ready to go to call Prue, and set out to find Kathie and Dolly.

They met Poppy running with all her might to meet them.

“I thought you’d be coming,” she panted. “I knew you’d go for those girls soon’s you could get done. Mark’s taken Hurrah to the blacksmith; his feet’s long, Mr. Burke said. Ain’t he a peach? I just love him! He’s coming again and bring his missus. He calls her ‘the missus.’ I like that name. They’re both’s peachy as they can be. I might go help c’lect bottles, if Mr. Hawthorne’s prop’ty gets swiped by that nasty Ditson man. Say, what I run to tell you was that one of the dishes out o’ the Club Room’s under a tree. So it was took out, and who done it?”

“Oh, Poppy, there were more bad mistakes in what you’ve just said than you’ve made for I-don’t-know-how-long!” sighed Prue, not to be torn from her duty of correcting Poppy by any interest, however strong. And this was an absorbing interest, the entering of the Club Room.

“Oh, well, I’m going to be a lady if I bust, but you can’t keep right at it, no matter what you’re thinking about!” cried Poppy. “Who done--did it?”

“We’re going right off this minute to ask Kathie and Dolly what they know,” said Isabel, swinging around to carry out her words. And Poppy joined her and Prue as a matter of course.

They found Dolly and Kathie eating strawberry sundaes in the drug store.

“We can’t treat because we had just enough money to pay for two, but we’ll wait for you, if you’re after some,” said Kathie nobly.

“We’re not,” said Isabel, though Poppy looked exceedingly sorry that this was true. “Walk with us if you’re through, we want to ask you something. Now: Who climbed up into the Club Room by the piazza roof?”

“Me; you saw me,” said Kathie promptly, taking instant offence from a tone in Isabel’s voice of which she was herself unconscious, but which sprang from her certainty that Kathie had climbed in again, alone.

“Yes, but since; just the night before last, or that day,” Isabel went on her voice still more accusing. “Do you know anything about it?”

“Why don’t you ask straight out if I did it?” demanded Kathie.

“I will: Did you?” said Isabel.

“I wouldn’t tell if I did, and I won’t say I didn’t,” said Kathie angrily. “I’d just like to know, Isabel Lindsay, why you come at me like this?”

“She--I mean we--aren’t coming at you, Kathie,” interposed Prue. “Isabel is speaking sort of hard because she’s so bothered--I mean we are. Some one went in there, and they took out a few little things, and we’ve got to know if anybody’s breaking in. Greenacres is a little queer lately; there’s a man in it.”

Kathie burst into mocking laughter, not in the least soothed by Prue’s evident desire to keep the peace. “I always knew there was a man in Greenacres! You silly, Prue Wayne!”

“Silly nothin’!” broke in Poppy in a blaze of wrath. “Think you’re smart! Anybody that wasn’t a gump would know she meant a queer man----”

“You tend to your own affairs, you meddlesome monkey!” Dolly now took a hand in the fast thickening atmosphere of thunder and lightning.

“Poppy, please don’t!” begged Prue distressed. “I don’t care what Kathie said.”

“No! I’m not worth caring about! That’s what you mean, so just say so,” stormed Kathie.

“I did not! I meant I didn’t feel mad,” cried Prue beginning to cry, dismayed to find the battle around her head when she had but meant to head off a battle.

“Well, but that isn’t the thing,” Isabel began over again. “There’s no sense scrapping, saying things back and forth. What I want to know is was it you who went up there alone and took out a pillow and a dish or two? If it wasn’t you, it’s awful. If it is you, you hadn’t any right to do it, for you’re not even a real member, and we real members can’t take things away. So I want to know.”

“Oh, you want to know, do you!” echoed Kathie in a towering temper by this time. “Well, then, find out! You won’t get me to tell you. I might have told, if you hadn’t talked as if I was a thief or something! Now you can find out any way you can work it, but not from me. Why don’t you get up a detector from New York and lock me up, if I’m the one?”

“Detective,” murmured Prue in spite of herself, which did not make things better.

“Oh, Kathie, how can you!” cried Isabel, following Prue’s tears with sobs that brought no tears, but which shook her delicate little body from head to foot.

“Oh, I hate a fuss, I can’t stand a fuss! I did not speak as you say. I didn’t mean to speak unkindly. I just want to know, Kathie! Oh, Kathie, don’t you see it’s dreadful to have some one coming in there and not know who it is? Won’t you please, please, Kathie, tell if it’s you? Just if it’s you, you know!”

“I won’t tell you one single thing, Isabel Lindsay,” said Kathie. “And Dolly shall not!” she added, seeing Prue about to turn to Dolly.

Kathie put her hand on her chum’s shoulder with no gentle touch, and Dolly would not have spoken for the world.

“’Cause you’re the one, that’s why!” shouted Poppy at the top of her voice.

“Oh, hush, Pops!” cried Isabel, suddenly calm again. “I’m afraid that is the reason, Kathie,” she added with great dignity. “I am afraid that Poppy is right and that you did go up there, and that is why you won’t answer. I’m afraid you can’t be a member, ever, and I think you’d better stop being on trial now.”

“I suppose everything’s as you say! I suppose Mark hasn’t one thing to say, only just mind you! Well, we wouldn’t be in that club, not for the wealth of Indians! We resign. Dolly and me resign--don’t you, Doll?” Kathie demanded shaking her friend without knowing that she did so.

“Sure!” said frightened Dolly, who never quarreled nor exerted herself when she could help it.

“Isa said it first! Isa said it first! You can’t--what-do-you-call-it! Isa put you out first!” chanted Poppy dancing around the girls so excited that she had no consciousness of being in the street, nor of the amazed amusement of some grown-up on-lookers.

“Because she knew we wouldn’t stay in!” cried Kathie, quite beside herself at this triumphant war dance of Poppy’s.

“Well, it’s horrid! It’s awful! Why, _why_ do we have such a row? Just asking--just asking--just asking----” Isabel broke down in another storm of tearless sobbing.

“Come on home, Isa, my darling! I’ll wipe my shoes of their dust!” said Prue, herself now in a white heat of anger since her beloved Isa was so shattered.

“Dust! Yes, I guess! Shoes! Wipe!” Kathie’s scorn was scathing, though its expression was not striking.

The two parties turned without another word and walked in opposite directions, every muscle in each of the five bodies tautly declaring the indignation that burned within them.

Isabel walked on sobbing uncontrollably, but not crying. Prue was no longer in tears; her anger had dried them when she saw Isabel so hurt. Poppy was in such a rage that it might have been funny if either of the others had been capable of seeing it. She spun around and around, making progress, but always as a top progresses, and she ceaselessly uttered funny sounds, almost as if she were a furious little beast.

“Oh, it’s awful, it’s awful! It’s just like having a sort of fight!” mourned Isabel.

“’Course!” cried Prue, and to her own surprise she laughed.

“Be nicer to fight,” said Poppy.

“Well, I think the worst is not knowing who got into that room,” said Prue. “If Kathie wants to act like this, let her. You did speak sort of stern, Isa darling, but anybody’d know you were stirred up; you’re so gentle and not-hurting always, not even flies! I don’t care about Kathie, because--I don’t! But who was it?”

“Oh, it was Kathie. I know it was now, and I knew it before--I mean I was as sure as anything. Well, it won’t happen again. She’s too mad with us to come either climbing in, or walking in and up the stairs,” sighed Isabel.

“If only we hadn’t let them half-come, be the least bit members!” Prue said, also sighing.