Ethel Morton at Sweetbriar Lodge Part 7

Perhaps because he felt that he was soon to be parted from his old comrade d.i.c.ky's affection for Christopher seemed to increase and he developed a habit of carrying him about, sometimes in his hand and sometimes in a little basket which Dorothy had made for Christopher's Christmas gift. To-day he had brought him to the chicken yard in his hand and had laid him down on the ground while he examined his flock and called Ayleesabet's attention to the beauties of this or the other miniature hen.

Elisabeth's words were few, but she managed to make her wants and opinions known with surprising ease, and she never had the least trouble about expressing her emotions. Her little playmate had learned this and therefore when he heard loud howls behind his back he knew that it was not anger that was disturbing the usually placid baby, but terror. Shriek after shriek arose although it seemed to him that he turned about almost instantly.

He was not in time, however, to prevent her from being thrown down in some mysterious way, or to see the cause of the commotion among the chickens. They fluttered and squawked and ran to and fro, tumbling over each other and running with perfect indifference over the baby as she lay yelling on the ground. Her blue romper legs came up every now and then out of the ma.s.s of chicken feathers, and their kicking only added to the disturbance and confusion of the chicks.

The hubbub did not go unnoticed. Roger ran from his vegetable garden to see what was the matter; Helen appeared from her garden of wild flowers; Miss Merriam, the baby's caretaker, ran from the porch where she was talking with the Ethels who were waiting for the out-of-town members of the U. S. C. to arrive. At the moment when all these people were rus.h.i.+ng to the rescue, Margaret and James Hanc.o.c.k, just off the Glen Point street car, hurried from the corner, and Della and Tom Watkins, arrived by the latest train from New York, burst open the gate in their excitement.

To meet all these inquiries came d.i.c.ky, tugging after him by the leg, the baby, howling pitifully by this time as she was dragged over the gra.s.s.

Miss Merriam seized her and hugged her tight.

"What's the matter with the little darling precious?" she crooned.

Ayleesabet gathered herself together courageously and her sobbing died away.

"What was it all about?" Miss Merriam inquired of d.i.c.ky.

"I don't know," replied d.i.c.ky, his own lip trembling as he tried to understand the rapid, thrilling experience.

"Tell Gertrude what happened," Miss Merriam urged the baby, wiping away her tears and setting her down on her feet on the gra.s.s just as Christopher Columbus b.u.mped his way over the sod to join them.

Ayleesabet's conversational powers were not equal to the explanation, but her little hands could tell a great deal, and her caretaker was skilled in interpreting them. She pointed to the turtle and called him by the nickname that d.i.c.ky had given him, "Chriththy"; then she spread out her fat little fingers and waved a forward motion with her hand.

"Chrissy stuck out his head and legs and walked ahead," interpreted Miss Merriam. "Where was he, d.i.c.ky?"

"In the chicken yard."

Elisabeth was kneeling beside the turtle now, tapping his sh.e.l.l with a chubby forefinger; after which she rolled over on her back and screamed.

Miss Merriam shook her head at this demonstration, but d.i.c.ky translated it out of his previous experience.

"The chickenth hit hith thh.e.l.l with their beakth, and, when he moved they were frightened and knocked her over," he guessed.

"That's just what happened, I believe," said Roger, setting Elisabeth on her feet once more. "I've seen the chickens run like anything from Christopher, and probably they ran between the baby's legs and upset her and then scampered all over her. I don't wonder she was scared."

Christopher gave no testimony in the case. He may have been overcome by the confusion; at any rate he withdrew into his sh.e.l.l and preserved a studied calm from which he could not be roused.

"I think you can have him," said d.i.c.ky suddenly to Dorothy, who had come through the fence at the corner where her yard joined her cousins'. "He botherth me."

"Very well," said Dorothy. "Let's take him over to Sweetbrier Lodge this afternoon. We're all going over there anyway--bring him along, d.i.c.ky."

So the procession set forth, d.i.c.ky and his sh.e.l.l-covered friend at the fore, escorted by all the rest of the United Service Club, while Miss Merriam and her charge, whose walking ability had not yet developed much speed, brought up the rear.

As they all toiled up the hill to Sweetbrier Lodge Mrs. Smith and Mrs.

Morton came out on the veranda of the new house to watch them.

"Has anything happened?" called Mrs. Smith as soon as they were within earshot.

"We're just bringing Christopher over to his new home," Dorothy explained to her mother.

"'The time of the singing of birds is come, And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land,'"

quoted Mrs. Morton. "I used to think that that meant a turtle like d.i.c.ky's and not a turtle-dove," and the two mothers laughed and disappeared within the house while the younger people kept on to the garden and the concrete pool.

When they reached there d.i.c.ky gazed at the pool in dismay.

"There ithn't any water in it," he objected, shaking his head doubtfully.

"We can reach it with the hose and fill it up in no time," his cousin explained.

"It'll run out of the hole," pointing to the hole made by the broomstick when the concrete was soft.

"We'll put a plug in the hole."

"He hasn't any log to sit on."

"Roger will find him a stick."

"I don't want to leave him here all alone," screamed d.i.c.ky, overcome by a renewal of his former misgivings. Casting himself on the ground he hugged his treasure to his breast and waved his legs in the air.

"You can take him back again if you want to," Ethel Brown reminded him, "but you know he's always getting into trouble with the chickens now. He seems to run away every day."

As the memory of the latest encounter between Christopher and the chicks with Elisabeth's overthrow, flashed before him, d.i.c.ky howled again. There seemed to be no haven on earth for his favorite.

"I'll tell you what we'll do," suggested Dorothy soothingly. "Let's go down to the house. The laundry is finished, and we can put him in one of the tubs there until this pool is fixed to suit you."

"It'th dark in the laundry," objected d.i.c.ky again.

"Not in this laundry. You see," explained Dorothy, sitting down beside the sufferer and patting him gently, "the house is built on the side of a hill, so the laundry has full sized windows and is bright and cheerful though it's on a level with the cellar. I think Christopher will like it."

d.i.c.ky stood up, his face smeared with tears, but a new interest gleaming in his reddened eyes.

"Come on," urged Ethel Blue, tactfully; "let's all go and see if we can't make him comfortable."

"I'll pick up a piece of log for him as we go along," promised Roger, and he and Tom and James went off towards the woods to look for just the right thing.

"What a perfectly dandy cellar. Why, it's as bright as the upper part of the house!" exclaimed Margaret as the procession invaded the lower regions of the Lodge.

"Isn't it fine!" agreed Dorothy. "The workmen have cleared it all up, and, if this part were all, it might be lived in right off."

"The whitewashed walls make it look bright."

"And the large windows! I never saw such windows in a cellar."

"Mother says I may put little cheesecloth curtains in them."

"Curtains will look sweet the day after you take in the winter supply of coal," grinned Roger, who appeared with the other boys, carrying Christopher's bit of log.

"They won't look dirty, if that's what you mean by 'sweet,'" Dorothy retorted. "Look--" and she opened the door of a coal bin--"the coal is put in through a concrete chute that leads directly into the bin and the bin is entirely shut off from the cellar. No dust floats out of that, young man."