>CHAPTER 8An Unexpected Crop of DandelionsIn spite of the prospect of losing her, the last week of Miss Blossom's stay was a delightful one to the girls because so many pleasant things happened. The best of all concerned the cottage dining-room.This room had proved the hardest spot in the house to make attractive, for it seemed to resist all efforts to make a well-furnished room of it. Most of the fadedpaper was loose and much of it had dropped off in patches during the time that the cottage was vacant, showing the ugly, dark, painted wall underneath. It was only too evident that the pictures that the girls had fastened up carefully with pins had been put up for purposes of concealment, the ceiling was stained and dingy, and the rug was far too small to cover the floor where some industrious former occupant had daubed paint of various gaudy hues while trying, perhaps, to find the right shade for the woodwork.Moreover, what little furniture there was in the dining-room showed very plainly that it had not been intended originally for dining-room use; the buffet, in particular, proclaimed loudly in big black letters that it was nothing but a soap box, and Bettie's best efforts could not make anything else of it. Now that the day for the long-postponed dinner party was actually set, the girls' attention was more than ever directed toward the forlorn appearance of the little dining-room."Dear me," said Bettie, one day when the five friends, seated around the table, were cutting out pictures for a wonderful scrap-book for the little lame boy whom Miss Blossom had discovered living near one of the churches, "I do wish this dining-room didn't look so sort of bedroomy.""Yes," said Jean, "I've tried putting the buffet inevery corner and all around the walls, and itwon'tlook like anything but a wooden box.""I tried covering it with a gathered curtain," said Mabel, "but that made it look so like a washstand that I took it off again.""Why," exclaimed Miss Blossom, "you've given me a beautiful idea! I believe we could make a splendid sideboard out of that piano box that's so in our way on the back porch. We'd just have to saw the ends down a little, nail on some boards, paint it some plain, dark color, and spread a towel over the top, and we'd have a beautiful Flemish oak sideboard. I'll buy the can of paint.""I'll do the painting," said Jean. "I helped Mother paint our kitchen floor, so I know a little about it.""That would be lovely. I've been thinking, too, that it would be a good idea to fix a little shelf under this window to hold your petunia and these two geraniums that are suffering so for sunshine. I think I could make it from the boards in that soap box.""Oh, thank you!" cried Bettie. "I don't believe there'sanythingyou don't know how to do."The piano box, transformed by Miss Blossom and the four girls into a very good imitation of a Flemish oak sideboard, did indeed make such an imposing piece of furniture that the rest of the room looked shabbier than ever by contrast."I'm afraid," said Miss Blossom, surveying the effect with an air of comical dismay, "that the rest of our dining-room really looks worse than it did before; it's like trying to wear a new hat with an old gown. But I'm proud of our handiwork.""Yes," said Jean, "it's a great deal more like a sideboard than it is like a piano box.""It's the sideboardiest sideboard I ever saw," said Mabel, "but it's certainly too fine for this room.""Never mind," said cheerful Bettie. "We'll let Mr. Black sit so he can see the sideboard, and we'll have Mrs. Crane face the geraniums on that cunning shelf. If their eyes begin to wander around the room we'll just call their attention to the things we want them to see. When Mamma entertains the sewing society she always invites the first one that comes to sit in the chair over the hole in the sitting-room rug so the others won't notice it. If we catch Mr. Black looking at the ceiling we'll say: 'Oh, Mr. Black, did you notice the flowers on the sideboard?'"Everybody laughed at Bettie's comical idea. This desperate measure, however, was not needed, for one afternoon, the day after the sideboard was finished, something happened, something lovelier than the girls had ever even dreamedcouldhappen.It was only three o'clock, yet there was Miss Blossom coming home two whole hours earlier than usual; herwhite-haired father was with her and under his arm in a long parcel were seven rolls of wall paper."My contribution to the cottage," said Mr. Blossom, laying the bundle at Bettie's feet and smiling pleasantly at the row of girls on the doorstep."It's paper for the dining-room," explained Miss Blossom. "We happened to pass a store, on our way to work this noon, where they were advertising a sale of odd rolls of very nice paper at only five cents a roll. There were two rolls that were just right for the ceiling, and five rolls for the side wall. It seemed just exactly the right thing for Dandelion Cottage, so we couldn't help buying it.""It would have been wicked," said Mr. Blossom, cutting the string about the bundle, "not to buy such suitable paper at such a ridiculous price.""Oh! oh!" cried the delighted girls, as Mr. Blossom held up a roll for inspection. "It might have been made for this house!""Dandelion blossoms in yellow, with such lovely soft green leaves," said Bettie, "and such a lovely, light, creamy background. Oh! what's that?""That's the border," replied Miss Blossom. "See how graceful the pattern is, and how saucily those dandelions hold their heads. Show them the ceiling paper, Father.""Oh!" cried Mabel, "just picked-off dandelions scattered all over an ocean of milk—how pretty!""We'll have the Village Improvement Society after us," laughed Marjory. "They don't allow a dandelion to show its head.""I love dandelions," said Miss Blossom; "real ones, I mean; they're such gay, cheerful things and such a beautiful color.""I love them, too," said Jean, "because, you know, they paid our rent for us.""But," said Mabel, "I'm thankful we haven't got to dig all these dandelions.""Now," said Miss Blossom, "we must go right to work. If everybody will help, Father and I will put it on for you. You needn't be afraid to trust us, because last spring we papered our two biggest rooms, and they really lookedalmostprofessional except for one strip that Father got upside-down; but your dining-room will be in no danger on that score, for Father never makes the same mistake twice. Jean, you and Mabel can move all the furniture except the table and sideboard into the kitchen—we'll have to stand on the table. Bettie, take down all the pictures. Father, you can be trimming the ceiling paper here on the sideboard while Marjory starts a fire in the kitchen stove so I can have hot water for my paste.We'll have our wall covered with dandelions in just no time!""Now," said Mr. Blossom, when the furniture was out and the pictures were all down, "we must dig the soil up well or our dandelions won't grow. Everybody must tear as much as she can of this old paper off the wall; it's so ragged it comes off very easily.""The roof used to leak," said Bettie, "but my brother Rob unrolled some tin cans and nailed them over the place where the truly shingles are gone, and it never leaked a mite the last four times it rained.""The plaster seems fairly good," said Mr. Blossom. "I could mend these holes with a little plaster of Paris if some obliging young lady would run with this dime to the drugstore for ten cents' worth.""I'll go," said Mabel. "I don't think I like peeling walls.""Mabel," said Miss Blossom, "isn't really fond of work, though I notice that she usually does her share."Everybody helped to mend the cracks, and everybody watched with breathless interest to see the first long strip, upheld by Mr. Blossom and guided by Miss Blossom and the cottage broom, go into place."Wouldn't it be awful," whispered Mabel, "if it shouldn't stick?"But it did stick, smooth and flat, and the paper was even prettier on the wall than it had been in the roll."A side strip next, Father, so we can see how it's going to look," pleaded Miss Blossom. "Remember, we're just children."At five o'clock, when half of the ceiling and one side of the wall were finished, the front door was opened abruptly."Hi there!" said Mr. Black, putting his head in at the dining-room door. "Why don't you listen when I ring your bell? Is that dinner of mine ready? I'm losing a pound a day.""No," said Bettie, jumping down from her perch on the sideboard, "but it will be next Friday. We're getting it ready just as fast as ever we can. We're even papering the dining-room for the occasion.""Well," said Mr. Black, "I just stopped in to say that unless you could give me that dinner this very minute, I shall have to go hungry for the next five weeks.""Oh!" cried Bettie, in dismay, "why?""Because I'm going to Washington tonight by the six o'clock train and I shall be gone a whole month—perhaps longer.""Oh, dear," cried Bettie, "we justcouldn'thave you tonight. We're papering the dining-room, and besides we haven't a single thing to eat but some stale cake that Mrs. Pike gave us.""I strongly suspect," said Mr. Black, smiling overBettie's head at Mr. Blossom, "that you don't reallywantme to dinner.""Oh, we do, we do," assured Bettie, earnestly, "but we justcan'thave company tonight. If you'll just let us know exactly when you're coming home, you'll find a beautiful dinner ready for you.""All right," said Mr. Black, "I'll telegraph. I'll say: 'My dear Miss Bettykins, of Dandelion Cottage: It will give me great pleasure to dine with you tomorrow—or would you rather have me say the day after tomorrow?—evening. Yours most devotedly and-so-forth.'""Yes, yes," cried Bettie, "that will be all right, but you must give us three days to get ready in."After all, however, it was Mabel that sent the telegram, and it was a very different one.>CHAPTER 9Changes and PlansWhen the little dining-room was finished it was quite the prettiest room in the house, for the friendly Blossoms had painted the battered woodwork a delicate green to match the leaves in the paper; and by mixing what was left of the green paint with the remaining color left from the sideboard, clever Miss Blossom obtained a shade that was exactly right foras much of the floor as the rug did not cover. Of course all the neighbors and all the girls' relatives had to come in afterwards to see what Bettie called "the very dandelioniest room in Dandelion Cottage."It seemed to the girls that the time fairly galloped from Monday to Thursday. They were heartily sorry when the moment came for them to lose their pleasant lodger. They went to the train to see the last of her and to assure her for the thousandth time that they should never forget her. Mabel sobbed audibly at the moment of parting, and large tears were rolling down silent Bettie's cheeks. Even the seven dollars and fifty cents that the girls had handled with such delight that morning paled into insignificance beside the fact that the train was actually whisking their beloved Miss Blossom away from them. When she had paid for her lodging she advised her four landladies to deposit the money in the bank until time for the dinner party, and the girls did so, but even the importance of owning a bank account failed to console them for their loss. The train out of sight, the sober little procession wended its way to Dandelion Cottage but the cozy little house seemed strangely silent and deserted when Bettie unlocked the door. Mabel, who had wept stormily all the way home, sat down heavily on the doorstep and wept afresh.Pinned to a pillow on the parlor couch, Jean discovered a little folded square of paper addressed to Bettie, who was drumming a sad little tune on the window pane."Why, Bettie," cried Jean, "this looks like a note for you from Miss Blossom! Do read it and tell us what she says.""It says," read Bettie: "'My dearest of Betties: Thank you for being so nice to me. There's a telephone message for you.'""I wonder what it means," said Marjory.Bettie ran to the talkless telephone, slipped her hand inside the little door at the top, and found a small square parcel wrapped in tissue paper, tied with a pink ribbon, and addressed to Miss Bettie Tucker, Dandelion Cottage. Bettie hastily undid the wrappings and squealed with delight when she saw the lovely little handkerchief, bordered delicately with lace, that Miss Blossom herself had made for her. There was a daintily embroidered "B" in the corner to make it Bettie's very own.Marjory happened upon Jean's note peeping out from under a book on the parlor table. It said: "Dear Jean: Don't you think it's time for you to look at the kitchen clock?"Of course everybody rushed to the kitchen to see Jean take from inside the case of the tickless clock alovely handkerchief just like Bettie's except that it was marked with "J."Marjory's note, which she presently found growing on the crimson petunia, sent her flying to the grindless coffee-mill, where she too found a similar gift."Well," said Mabel, who was now fairly cheerful, "I wonder if she forgot all aboutme."For several anxious moments the girls searched eagerly in Mabel's behalf but no note was visible."I can't think where it could be," said housewifely Jean, stooping to pick up a bit of string from the dining-room rug, and winding it into a little ball. "I've looked in every room and—Why! what a long string! I wonder where it's all coming from.""Under the rug," said Marjory, making a dive for the bit of paper that dangled from the end of the string. "Here's your note, Mabel.""I think," Miss Blossom had written, "that there must be a mouse in the pantry mousetrap by this time.""Yes!" shouted Mabel, a moment later. "A lovely lace-edged mouse with an 'M' on it—no, it's 'M B'—a really truly monogram, the very first monogram I ever had.""Why, so it is," said Marjory. "I suppose she did that so we could tell them apart, because if she'd putM on both of them we wouldn't have known which was which.""Why," cried Jean, "it's nearly an hour since the train left. Wasn't it sweet of her to think of keeping us interested so we shouldn't be quite so lonesome?""Yes," said Bettie, "it was even nicer than our lovely presents, but it was just like her.""Oh, dear," said Mabel, again on the verge of tears, "I wish she might have stayed forever. What's the use of getting lovely new friends if you have to go and lose them the very next minute? She was just the nicest grown-up little girl there ever was, and I'll never see—see her any—""Look out, Mabel," warned Marjory, "if you cry on that handkerchief you'll spoil that monogram. Miss Blossom didn't intend these for crying-handkerchiefs—one good-sized tear would soak them."Miss Blossom was not the only friend the girls were fated to lose that week. Grandma Pike, as everybody called the pleasant little old lady, was their next-door neighbor on the west side, and the cottagers were very fond of her. No one dreamed that Mrs. Pike would ever think of going to another town to live; but about ten days before Miss Blossom departed, the cheery old lady had quite taken everybody's breath away by announcing that she was going west, just assoon as she could get her things packed, to live with her married daughter.When the girls heard that Grandma Pike was going away they were very much surprised and not at all pleased at the idea of losing one of their most delightful neighbors. At Miss Blossom's suggestion, they had spent several evenings working on a parting gift for their elderly friend. The gift, a wonderful linen traveling case with places in it to carry everything a traveler would be likely to need, was finished at last—with so many persons working on it, it was hard to keep all the pieces together—and the girls carried it to Grandma Pike, who seemed very much pleased."Well, well," said the delighted old lady, unrolling the parcel, "if you haven't gone and made me a grand slipper-bag! I'll think of you, now, every time I put on my slippers.""No, no," protested Jean. "It's a traveling case with places in it for 'most everythingbutslippers.""We all sewed on it," explained Mabel. "Those little bits of stitches that you can't see at all are Bettie's. Jean did all this feather-stitching, and Marjory hemmed all the binding. Miss Blossom basted it together so it wouldn't be crooked.""What didyoudo, Mabel?" asked Grandma Pike, smiling over her spectacles."I took out the basting threads and embroidered these letters on the pockets.""What does this 'P' stand for?""Pins," said Mabel. "You see it was sort of an accident. I started to embroider the word soap on this little pocket, but when I got the S O A done, there wasn't any room left for the P, so I just put it on thenextpocket. I knew that if I explained that it was the end of 'Soap' and the beginning of 'Pins' you'd remember not to get your pins and soap mixed up."During the lonely days immediately following Miss Blossom's departure, Mrs. Bartholomew Crane proved a great solace. The girls had somewhat neglected her during the preceding busy weeks; but with Miss Blossom gone, the cottagers became conscious of an aching void that new wall paper and lace handkerchiefs and a bank account could not quite fill; so presently they resumed their former habit of trotting across the street many times a day to visit good-natured Mrs. Crane.Mrs. Crane's house was very small and looked rather gloomy from the outside because the paint had long ago peeled off and the weatherbeaten boards had grown black with age; but inside it was cheerfulness personified. First, there was Mrs. Crane herself, fairly radiating comfort. Then there was a bright rag carpet on the floor, a glowing red cloth on the little table,a lively yellow canary named Dicksy in one window, and a gorgeous red-and-crimson but very bad-tempered parrot in the other. There were only three rooms downstairs and two bed-chambers upstairs. Mrs. Crane's own room opened off the little parlor, and visitors could see the high feather bed always as smooth and rounded on top as one of Mrs. Crane's big loaves of light bread. The privileged girls were never tired of examining the good woman's patchwork quilts, made many years ago of minute, quaint, old-fashioned scraps of calico.Even the garden seemed to differ from other gardens, for every inch of it except the patch of green grass under the solitary cherry tree was given over to flowers, many of them as quaint and old-fashioned as the bits of calico in the quilts, and to vegetables that ripened a week earlier for Mrs. Crane than similar varieties did for anyone else. Yet the garden was so little, and the variety so great, that Mrs. Crane never had enough of any one thing to sell. She owned her little home, but very little else. The two upstairs rooms were rented to lodgers, and she knitted stockings and mittens to sell because she could knit without using her eyes, which, like so many soft, bright, black eyes, were far from strong; but the little income so gained was barely enough to keep stout, warm-hearted, overgenerous Mrs. Crane supplied with foodand fuel. The neighbors often wondered what would become of the good, lonely woman if she lost her lodgers, if her eyes failed completely, or if she should fall ill. Everybody agreed that Mrs. Crane should have been a wealthy woman instead of a poor one, because she would undoubtedly have done so much good with her money. Mabel had heard her father say that there was a good-sized mortgage on the place, and Dr. Bennett had instantly added: "Now, don't you say anything about that, Mabel." But ever after that, Mabel had kept her eyes open during her visits to Mrs. Crane, hoping to get a glimpse of the dreadful large-sized thing that was not to be mentioned.On one occasion she thought she saw light. Mrs. Crane had expressed a fear that a wandering polecat had made a home under her woodshed."Is mortgage another name for polecat?" Mabel had asked a little later."No," imaginative Jean had replied. "A mortgage is more like a great, lean, hungry, gray wolf waiting just around the corner to eat you up. Don't ever use the word before Mrs. Crane; she has one.""Where does she keep it?" demanded Mabel, agog with interest."I promised not to talk about it," said Jean, "and I won't."Miss Blossom had been gone only two days when something happened to Mrs. Crane. It was none of the things that the neighbors had expected to happen, but for a little while it looked almost as serious. Bettie, running across the street right after breakfast one morning, with a bunch of fresh chickweed for the yellow canary and a cracker for cross Polly, found Mrs. Crane, usually the most cheerful person imaginable, sitting in her kitchen with a swollen, crimson foot in a pail of lukewarm water, and groaning dismally."Oh, Mrs. Crane!" cried surprised Bettie. "What in the world is the matter? Are—are you coming down with anything?""I've already come," moaned Mrs. Crane, grimly. "I was out in my back yard in my thin old slippers early this morning putting hellebore on my currant bushes, and I stepped down hard on the teeth of the rake that I'd dropped on the grass. There's two great holes in my foot. How I'm ever going to do things I don't know, for 'twas all I could do to crawl into the house on my hands and knees.""Isn't there something I can do for you?" asked Bettie, sympathetically."Could you get a stick of wood from the shed and make me a cup of tea? Maybe I'd feel braver if I wasn't so empty.""Of course I could," said Bettie, cheerily."I tell you what it is," confided Mrs. Crane. "It's real nice and independent living all alone as long as you're strong and well, but just the minute anything happens, there you are like a Robinson Crusoe, cast away on a desert isle. I began to think nobody wouldevercome.""Can't I do something more for you?" asked Bettie, poking scraps of paper under the kettle to bring it to a boil. "Don't you want Dr. Bennett to look at your foot? Hadn't I better get him?""Yes, do," said Mrs. Crane, "and then come back. I can't bear to think of staying here alone."For the next four days there was a deep depression in the middle of Mrs. Crane's puffy feather bed, for the injured foot was badly swollen and Mrs. Crane was far too heavy to go hopping about on the other one. At first, her usually hopeful countenance wore a strained, anxious expression, quite pathetic to see."Now don't you worry one bit," said comforting little Bettie. "We'll take turns staying with you; we'll feed Polly and Dicksy, and I believe every friend you have is going to offer to make broth. Mother's making some this minute.""But there's the lodgers," groaned Mrs. Crane, "both as particular as a pair of old maids in a glass case. Mr. Barlow wants his bedclothes tucked in allaround so tight that a body'd think he was afraid of rolling out of bed nights, and Mr. Bailey won't have his tucked in at all—says he likes 'em 'floating round loose and airy.' Do you suppose you girls can make those two beds and not get those two lodgers mixed up? I declare, I'm so absent-minded myself that I've had to climb those narrow stairs many a day to make sure I'd done it right.""Don't be afraid," said Jean, who had joined Bettie. "Marjory's Aunty Jane has taught her to make beds beautifully, and I have a good memory. Between us we'll manage splendidly.""But there's my garden," mourned the usually busy woman, who found it hard to lie still with folded hands in a world that seemed to be constantly needing her. "Dear me! I don't see how I'm going to spare myself for a whole week just when everything is growing so fast.""We'll tend to the garden, too," promised Bettie."Yes, indeed we will," echoed Mabel. "We'll water everything and weed—""No, you won't," said Mrs. Crane, quickly. "You can do all the watering you like, but if I catch any of you weeding, there'll be trouble."The young cottagers were even better than their promises, for they took excellent care of Mrs. Crane, the lodgers, the parrot, the canary, and the garden,until the injured foot was well again; but while doing all this they learned something that distressed them very much, indeed. Of course they had always known in a general way that their friend was far from being wealthy, but they had not guessed how touchingly poor she really was. But now they saw that her cupboard was very scantily filled, that her clothing was very much patched and mended, her shoes distressingly worn out, and that even her dish-towels were neatly darned."But we won't talk about it to people," said fine-minded Jean. "Perhaps she wouldn't like to have everybody know."Even Jean, however, did not guess what a comfort proud Mrs. Crane had found it to have her warm-hearted little friends stand between her poverty and the sometimes-too-prying eyes of a grown-up world.Unobservant though they had seemed, the girls did not forget about the Mother-Hubbardlike state of Mrs. Crane's cupboard. After that one of their finest castles in Spain always had Mrs. Crane, who would have made such a delightful mother and who had never had any children, enthroned as its gracious mistress. When they had time to think about it at all, it always grieved them to think of their generous-natured, no-longer-young friend dreading a poverty-stricken, loveless, and perhaps homeless old age; forthis, they had discovered, was precisely what Mrs. Crane was doing."If she were a little, thin, active old lady, with bobbing white curls like Grandma Pike," said Jean, "lots of people would have a corner for her; but poor Mrs. Crane takes up so much room and is so heavy and slow that she's going to be hard to take care of when she gets old. Oh,whycouldn't she have had just one strong, kind son to take care of her?""When I'm married," offered Mabel, generously, "I'll take her to live with me. I won'thaveany husband if he doesn't promise to take Mrs. Crane, too.""You shan't have her," declared Jean. "I want her myself.""She's already promised to me," said Bettie, triumphantly. "We're going to keep house together some place, and I'm going to be an old-maid kindergarten teacher.""I don't think that's fair, Bettie Tucker," said Marjory, earnestly. "I don't see how my children are to have any grandmother if she doesn't live withme. Imagine the poor little things with Aunty Jane for a grandmother!">CHAPTER 10The MilligansTo the moment of Grandma Pike's departure, all their neighbors had been so pleasant that the girls were deceived into thinking that neighbors were never anythingbutpleasant. Although they felt not the slightest misgiving as to their future neighbors, they had hated to lose dear old Grandma Pike, who had always been as good to them as if she had really beentheir grandmother, and whose parting gifts—sundry odds and ends of dishes, old magazines, and broken parcels of provisions—gave them occupation for many delightful days. In spite of the lasting pleasure of this unexpected donation, however, they could not help feeling that, with Mr. Black away, Miss Blossom gone, Mrs. Pike living in another town, and only disabled Mrs. Crane left, they were losing friends with alarming rapidity. Grief for the departed, however, did not prevent their taking an active interest in the persons who were to occupy the house next door, which Mrs. Pike's departure had left vacant."I wonder," said Marjory, pulling the curtain back to get a better view of the empty house, "what the new people will be like. It's exciting, isn't it, to have something happening in this quiet neighborhood? What did Grandma Pike say the name was?""Milligan," replied Bettie."Kind of nice name, isn't it?" asked Jean."Yes," agreed Mabel, brightening suddenly. "I made up a long, long rhyme about it last night before I went to sleep. Want to hear it?""Of course.""This one really rhymes," explained Mabel, importantly. Her verses sometimes lacked that desirable quality, so when they did rhyme Mabel always liked to mention it. "Here it is:"As soon as a man named MilliganGot well he always fell ill again—ill again—ill—"Dear me, I can't remember how it went. There was a lot more, but I've forgotten the rest.""It's a great pity," said Marjory, drily, "that you didn't forgetallof it, because if there's really a Mr. Milligan, and I ever see him, I'll think of that rhyme and I won't be able to keep my face straight.""We must be very polite to the Milligans," said considerate Bettie, "and call on them as soon as they come. Mother always calls on new people; she says it makes folks feel more comfortable to be welcomed into the neighborhood.""Mrs. Crane does it, too. We're the nearest, perhaps we ought to be the first.""I think," suggested Jean thoughtfully, "we'd better wait until they're nicely settled; they might not like visitors too soon. You knowwedidn't.""They're going to move in today," said Mabel. "Goodness! I wish they'd hurry and come; I'm so excited that I keep dusting the same shelf over and over again. I'm just wild to see them!"It was sweeping-day at the cottage when the Milligans' furniture began to arrive, but it looked very much as if the sweeping would last for at leasttwodays because the girls were unable to get very far away from the windows that faced west. These werethe bedroom windows, and, as there were only two of them, there were usually two heads at each window."There comes the first load," announced Marjory, at last. "There's a high-chair on the very top, so there must be a baby.""I'm so glad," said Bettie. "I just love a baby."Two men unpacked the Milligans' furniture in the Milligans' front yard, and each load seemed more interesting than the one before it. It was such fun to guess what the big, clumsy parcels contained, particularly when the contents proved to be quite different from what the girls expected."Somehow, I don't think they're going to be very nice people," said Mabel. "I b'lieve we're going to be disappointed in 'em.""Why, Mabel," objected Jean, "we don't know a thing about them yet.""Yes, I do too. Their things—look—they don't lookladylike.""Oh, Mabel," laughed Marjory, "you're so funny.""Perhaps," offered Jean, "the Milligans are poor and the children have spoiled things.""No," insisted Mabel. "They've got some of the newest and shiningest furniture I ever saw, but I b'lieve it's imitation.""Oh, Mabel," laughed Jean, "I hope you won't watch the loads whenImove. For a girl that's sleptfor three weeks on an imitation pillow, you're pretty critical."Presently the Milligans themselves arrived. Mabel happened to be counting the buds on the poppy plants when they came."Girls!" she cried, rushing into the cottage with the news. "They've come. I saw them all. There's a Mr. Milligan, a Mrs. Milligan, a girl, a boy, a baby, and a dog. The girl's the oldest. She's just about my size—I mean height—and she has straight, light hair. The baby walks, and none of them are so very good-looking."It did not take the newcomers long to discover that their next-door neighbors were four little girls. Mrs. Milligan found it out that very afternoon when she went to the back door to borrow tea. Bettie explained, very politely, that Dandelion Cottage was only a playhouse, and that their tea-caddy contained nothing but glass beads. When Mrs. Milligan returned to her own house, she told her own family about it."You might as well run over and play with them, Laura," she said. "Take the baby with you, too. He's a dreadful nuisance under my feet. That'll be a real nice place for you both to play all summer."The girls received their visitors pleasantly; almost, indeed, with enthusiasm; but after a very few moments, they began to eye the baby with apprehension.He refused to make friends with them but wandered about rather lawlessly and handled their treasures roughly. Laura paid no attention to him but talked to the girls. She seemed a bright girl and not at all bashful, and she used a great many slang phrases that sounded new and, it must be confessed, rather attractive to the girls."Oh, land, yes," she said, "we came here from Chicago where we had all kinds of money, and clothes to burn—we lived in a beautiful flat. Pa just came here to oblige Mr. Williams—he's going to clerk in Williams's store. Come over and see me—we'll be real friendly and have lots of good times together—I can put you up to lots of dodges. Say, this is a dandy place to play in—I'm coming over often."Jean looked in silence at Bettie, Bettie at Mabel, and Mabel at Marjory. Surely such an outburst of cordiality deserved a fitting response, but no one seemed to be able to make it."Do," said Jean, finally, but rather feebly, "we'd be pleased to have you."Except for a few lively but good-natured squabbles between Marjory, who was something of a tease, and Mabel, who was Marjory's favorite victim, the little mistresses of Dandelion Cottage had always played together in perfect harmony; but with the coming of the Milligans everything was changed.To start with, between the Milligan baby and the Milligan dog, the girls knew no peace. Mrs. Milligan was right when she said that the baby was a nuisance, for it would have been hard to find a more troublesome three-year-old. He pulled down everything he could reach, broke the girls' best dishes, wiped their precious petunia and the geraniums completely out of existence, and roared with a deep bass voice if anyone attempted to interfere with him. The dog carried mud into the neat little cottage, scratched up the garden, and growled if the girls tried to drive him out."Well," said Mabel, disconsolately, in one of the rare moments when the girls were alone, "Icouldstand the baby and the dog. But Ican'tstand Laura!""Laura certainly likes to boss," said Bettie, who looked pale and worried. "I don't just see what we're going to do about it. I try to be nice to her, but Ican'tlike her. Mother says we must be polite to her, but I don't believe Mother knows just what a queer girl she is—you see she's always as quiet as can be when there are grown people around.""Yes," agreed Mabel, "her company manners are so much properer than mine that Mother says she wishes I were more like her.""Well," said Marjory, uncompromisingly, "I'm mighty glad you're not. Your manners aren't particularly good, but you haven't two sets. I thinkLaura's the most disagreeable girl I ever knew. Just as she fools you into almost liking her, she turns around and scratches you.""Perhaps," said Jean, "if her people were nicer—By the way, Mother says that after this we must keep the windows shut while Mr. Milligan is splitting wood in his back yard so we can't hear the awful things he says, and that if we hear Mr. and Mrs. Milligan quarreling again we mustn't listen.""Listen!" exclaimed Mabel. "We don'tneedto listen. Their voices keep getting louder and louder until it seems as if they were right in this house.""Of course," said Marjory, "it can't be pleasant for Laura at home, but, dear me, it isn't pleasant foruswith her over here."Badly-brought-up Laura was certainly not a pleasant playmate. She wanted to lead in everything and was amiable only when she was having her own way. She was not satisfied with the way the cottage was arranged but rearranged it to suit herself. She told the girls that their garments were countrified, and laughed scornfully at Bettie's boyish frocks and heavy shoes. She ridiculed rotund Mabel for being fat, and said that Marjory's nose turned up and that Jean's rather large mouth was a good opening for a young dentist. Before the first week was fairly over, the four girls—who had lived so happily before her arrival—weregrieved, indignant, or downright angry three-fourths of the time.Laura had one habit that annoyed the girls excessively, although at first they had found it rather amusing. Later, however, owing perhaps to a certain rasping quality in Laura's voice, it grew very tiresome. She transposed the initials of their names. For instance, Bettie Tucker became Tettie Bucker, Jeanie Mapes became Meanie Japes, while Mabel became Babel Mennett. It was particularly distressing to have Laura speak familiarly in her sharp, half-scornful tones, of their dear, departed Miss Blossom, whose name was Gertrude, as Bertie Glossom. Mr. Peter Black, of course, became Beter Plack, and Mrs. Bartholomew Crane was Mrs. Cartholomew Brane, to lawless young Laura."I don't think it's exactly respectful to do that to grown-up people's names," protested Bettie, one day."Pooh!" said Laura. "Mrs. Cartholomew Brane looks just like an old washtub, she's so fat—who'd be respectful to a washtub? There goes Toctor Ducker, Tettie Bucker. Huh! I'd hate to be a parson's daughter—they're always as poor as church mice. What did you say your mother's first name is?""I didn't say and I'm not going to," returned Bettie."Well, anyhow, her bonnet went out of style fouryears ago. I should think the parish'd take up a subscription and get her a new one.""I wish, Laura," said exasperated Jean, another day, "that you wouldn't meddle with our things. This bedroom is mine and Bettie's, and the other one is Mabel's and Marjory's. We wouldn'tthinkof looking into each other's private treasure boxes. I've seen you open mine half a dozen times this week. The things are all keepsakes and I'd rather not have them handled.""Huh! I guess I'll handle 'em if I want to. My mother can't keep me out of her bureau drawers, and I don't think you're so very much smarter."A day or two later, the girls of Dandelion Cottage were invited to a party in another portion of the town. The invitations were left at their own cottage door and the delighted girls began at once to make plans for the party."Let's carry our new handkerchiefs," suggested Jean, going to her treasure box. "I believe I'll take mine home with me—I dreamed last night that the cottage was on fire and that mine got burned. Besides, I'll have to get dressed at home for the party and it would be handier to have it there.""Guess I will, too," said Bettie."Great idea," said Marjory, taking her own box from its shelf. "I never should have thought of anythingso bright. Let's all write to Miss Blossom and tell her that we carried our—Why! mine isn't in my box!""Neither is mine," cried Mabel, who had turned quite pale at the discovery. "It was there this morning. Girls, did any of you touch our handkerchiefs?""Of course we didn't," said Jean. "See, here's mine with 'J' on it, and there are no others in my box.""Of course not," echoed Laura."Mine's here, all right," said Bettie, who had been struggling with her box, which opened hard. "Are you sure you left them in your boxes?""Certain sure," replied Mabel. "I saw it this morning.""So did I see mine," asserted Marjory. "After I'd shown it to Aunty Jane I brought it back to put in my treasure box.""Laura," asked Jean, "was Marjory's handkerchief in her box when you looked in it this morning? I heard the cover make that funny little clicking noise that it always makes, and just a minute afterward you came out of her room.""I—I don't know," stammered Laura. "I didn't see it—I never touched her old box. If you say I did, I'll go right home and tell my mother you called me a thief. I'm going now, anyway."The girls were in the dining-room just outside ofthe back bedroom door. As Laura was brushing past Jean, the opening of the new girl's blouse caught in such a fashion on the corner of the sideboard that the garment, which fastened in front, came unbuttoned from top to bottom. From its bulging front dropped Bettie's bead chain, various articles of doll's clothing, and the two missing handkerchiefs."They're mine!" cried Laura, making a dive for the things."They're not any such thing!" cried indignant Jean. "I made that doll's dress myself, and I know the lace on those handkerchiefs.""They're my mother's," protested Laura. "I took 'em out of her drawer.""They're not," contradicted Mabel, prying Laura's fingers apart and forcing her to drop one of the crumpled handkerchiefs. "Look at that monogram—'M B' for Mabel Bennett.""It's no such thing," lied Laura, stoutly. "It stands for Bertha Milligan and that's my mother's name.""Give me that other handkerchief this instant," demanded Jean, giving Laura a slight shake. "If you don't, we'll take it away from you.""Take the old rag," said Laura. "My mother gives away better handkerchiefs than these to beggars. I just took 'em anyway to scare Varjory Male and Babel Mennett, the silly babies."After this enlightening experience, the girls never for a moment left their unwelcome visitor alone in any of the rooms of Dandelion Cottage. They stood her for almost a week longer, principally because there seemed to be no way of getting rid of her. Mabel, indeed, had several lively quarrels with her during that time, because quick-tempered Mabel, always strictly truthful herself, could not tolerate deceit in anyone else, and she had, of course, lost all faith in Laura.The end came suddenly one Friday afternoon. Miss Blossom had sent to the girls, by mail, a photograph of her own charming self, and nothing that the cottage contained was more precious. After one of the usual tiffs with Mabel, high-handed Laura spitefully scratched a disfiguring mustache right across the beautiful face, ruining the priceless treasure beyond repair.Even Laura looked slightly dismayed at the result of her spiteful work. The others for a moment were too horror-stricken for words. Then Mabel, with blazing eyes, sprang to her feet and flung the cottage door wide open."You go home, Laura Milligan!" she cried. "Don't you ever dare to come inside this house again!""Yes, go," cried mild Bettie, for once thoroughly roused. "We've tried to be nice to you and therehasn't been a single day that you haven't been rude and horrid. Go home this minute. We're done with you.""I won't go until I'm good and ready," retorted Laura, tearing the disfigured photograph in two and scornfully tossing the pieces into a corner. "Such a fuss about a skinny old maid's picture.""You shan't stay one instant longer!" cried indignant Jean, stepping determinedly behind Laura, placing her hands on the girl's shoulders, and making a sudden run for the door. "There! You're out. Don't you ever attempt to come in again."Bettie, grasping the situation and the Milligan baby at the same time, promptly set the boy outside. She had handled him with the utmost gentleness, but he always roared if anyone touched him, and he roared now."Yah!" yelled Laura, "I'll tell my mother you pinched him—slapped him, too.""Sapped him, too," wailed the baby."Well," said Jean, turning the key in the lock, "we'll have to keep the door locked after this. Mercy! I never behaved so dreadfully to anybody before and I hope I'll never have to again."
>
An Unexpected Crop of Dandelions
In spite of the prospect of losing her, the last week of Miss Blossom's stay was a delightful one to the girls because so many pleasant things happened. The best of all concerned the cottage dining-room.
This room had proved the hardest spot in the house to make attractive, for it seemed to resist all efforts to make a well-furnished room of it. Most of the fadedpaper was loose and much of it had dropped off in patches during the time that the cottage was vacant, showing the ugly, dark, painted wall underneath. It was only too evident that the pictures that the girls had fastened up carefully with pins had been put up for purposes of concealment, the ceiling was stained and dingy, and the rug was far too small to cover the floor where some industrious former occupant had daubed paint of various gaudy hues while trying, perhaps, to find the right shade for the woodwork.
Moreover, what little furniture there was in the dining-room showed very plainly that it had not been intended originally for dining-room use; the buffet, in particular, proclaimed loudly in big black letters that it was nothing but a soap box, and Bettie's best efforts could not make anything else of it. Now that the day for the long-postponed dinner party was actually set, the girls' attention was more than ever directed toward the forlorn appearance of the little dining-room.
"Dear me," said Bettie, one day when the five friends, seated around the table, were cutting out pictures for a wonderful scrap-book for the little lame boy whom Miss Blossom had discovered living near one of the churches, "I do wish this dining-room didn't look so sort of bedroomy."
"Yes," said Jean, "I've tried putting the buffet inevery corner and all around the walls, and itwon'tlook like anything but a wooden box."
"I tried covering it with a gathered curtain," said Mabel, "but that made it look so like a washstand that I took it off again."
"Why," exclaimed Miss Blossom, "you've given me a beautiful idea! I believe we could make a splendid sideboard out of that piano box that's so in our way on the back porch. We'd just have to saw the ends down a little, nail on some boards, paint it some plain, dark color, and spread a towel over the top, and we'd have a beautiful Flemish oak sideboard. I'll buy the can of paint."
"I'll do the painting," said Jean. "I helped Mother paint our kitchen floor, so I know a little about it."
"That would be lovely. I've been thinking, too, that it would be a good idea to fix a little shelf under this window to hold your petunia and these two geraniums that are suffering so for sunshine. I think I could make it from the boards in that soap box."
"Oh, thank you!" cried Bettie. "I don't believe there'sanythingyou don't know how to do."
The piano box, transformed by Miss Blossom and the four girls into a very good imitation of a Flemish oak sideboard, did indeed make such an imposing piece of furniture that the rest of the room looked shabbier than ever by contrast.
"I'm afraid," said Miss Blossom, surveying the effect with an air of comical dismay, "that the rest of our dining-room really looks worse than it did before; it's like trying to wear a new hat with an old gown. But I'm proud of our handiwork."
"Yes," said Jean, "it's a great deal more like a sideboard than it is like a piano box."
"It's the sideboardiest sideboard I ever saw," said Mabel, "but it's certainly too fine for this room."
"Never mind," said cheerful Bettie. "We'll let Mr. Black sit so he can see the sideboard, and we'll have Mrs. Crane face the geraniums on that cunning shelf. If their eyes begin to wander around the room we'll just call their attention to the things we want them to see. When Mamma entertains the sewing society she always invites the first one that comes to sit in the chair over the hole in the sitting-room rug so the others won't notice it. If we catch Mr. Black looking at the ceiling we'll say: 'Oh, Mr. Black, did you notice the flowers on the sideboard?'"
Everybody laughed at Bettie's comical idea. This desperate measure, however, was not needed, for one afternoon, the day after the sideboard was finished, something happened, something lovelier than the girls had ever even dreamedcouldhappen.
It was only three o'clock, yet there was Miss Blossom coming home two whole hours earlier than usual; herwhite-haired father was with her and under his arm in a long parcel were seven rolls of wall paper.
"My contribution to the cottage," said Mr. Blossom, laying the bundle at Bettie's feet and smiling pleasantly at the row of girls on the doorstep.
"It's paper for the dining-room," explained Miss Blossom. "We happened to pass a store, on our way to work this noon, where they were advertising a sale of odd rolls of very nice paper at only five cents a roll. There were two rolls that were just right for the ceiling, and five rolls for the side wall. It seemed just exactly the right thing for Dandelion Cottage, so we couldn't help buying it."
"It would have been wicked," said Mr. Blossom, cutting the string about the bundle, "not to buy such suitable paper at such a ridiculous price."
"Oh! oh!" cried the delighted girls, as Mr. Blossom held up a roll for inspection. "It might have been made for this house!"
"Dandelion blossoms in yellow, with such lovely soft green leaves," said Bettie, "and such a lovely, light, creamy background. Oh! what's that?"
"That's the border," replied Miss Blossom. "See how graceful the pattern is, and how saucily those dandelions hold their heads. Show them the ceiling paper, Father."
"Oh!" cried Mabel, "just picked-off dandelions scattered all over an ocean of milk—how pretty!"
"We'll have the Village Improvement Society after us," laughed Marjory. "They don't allow a dandelion to show its head."
"I love dandelions," said Miss Blossom; "real ones, I mean; they're such gay, cheerful things and such a beautiful color."
"I love them, too," said Jean, "because, you know, they paid our rent for us."
"But," said Mabel, "I'm thankful we haven't got to dig all these dandelions."
"Now," said Miss Blossom, "we must go right to work. If everybody will help, Father and I will put it on for you. You needn't be afraid to trust us, because last spring we papered our two biggest rooms, and they really lookedalmostprofessional except for one strip that Father got upside-down; but your dining-room will be in no danger on that score, for Father never makes the same mistake twice. Jean, you and Mabel can move all the furniture except the table and sideboard into the kitchen—we'll have to stand on the table. Bettie, take down all the pictures. Father, you can be trimming the ceiling paper here on the sideboard while Marjory starts a fire in the kitchen stove so I can have hot water for my paste.We'll have our wall covered with dandelions in just no time!"
"Now," said Mr. Blossom, when the furniture was out and the pictures were all down, "we must dig the soil up well or our dandelions won't grow. Everybody must tear as much as she can of this old paper off the wall; it's so ragged it comes off very easily."
"The roof used to leak," said Bettie, "but my brother Rob unrolled some tin cans and nailed them over the place where the truly shingles are gone, and it never leaked a mite the last four times it rained."
"The plaster seems fairly good," said Mr. Blossom. "I could mend these holes with a little plaster of Paris if some obliging young lady would run with this dime to the drugstore for ten cents' worth."
"I'll go," said Mabel. "I don't think I like peeling walls."
"Mabel," said Miss Blossom, "isn't really fond of work, though I notice that she usually does her share."
Everybody helped to mend the cracks, and everybody watched with breathless interest to see the first long strip, upheld by Mr. Blossom and guided by Miss Blossom and the cottage broom, go into place.
"Wouldn't it be awful," whispered Mabel, "if it shouldn't stick?"
But it did stick, smooth and flat, and the paper was even prettier on the wall than it had been in the roll.
"A side strip next, Father, so we can see how it's going to look," pleaded Miss Blossom. "Remember, we're just children."
At five o'clock, when half of the ceiling and one side of the wall were finished, the front door was opened abruptly.
"Hi there!" said Mr. Black, putting his head in at the dining-room door. "Why don't you listen when I ring your bell? Is that dinner of mine ready? I'm losing a pound a day."
"No," said Bettie, jumping down from her perch on the sideboard, "but it will be next Friday. We're getting it ready just as fast as ever we can. We're even papering the dining-room for the occasion."
"Well," said Mr. Black, "I just stopped in to say that unless you could give me that dinner this very minute, I shall have to go hungry for the next five weeks."
"Oh!" cried Bettie, in dismay, "why?"
"Because I'm going to Washington tonight by the six o'clock train and I shall be gone a whole month—perhaps longer."
"Oh, dear," cried Bettie, "we justcouldn'thave you tonight. We're papering the dining-room, and besides we haven't a single thing to eat but some stale cake that Mrs. Pike gave us."
"I strongly suspect," said Mr. Black, smiling overBettie's head at Mr. Blossom, "that you don't reallywantme to dinner."
"Oh, we do, we do," assured Bettie, earnestly, "but we justcan'thave company tonight. If you'll just let us know exactly when you're coming home, you'll find a beautiful dinner ready for you."
"All right," said Mr. Black, "I'll telegraph. I'll say: 'My dear Miss Bettykins, of Dandelion Cottage: It will give me great pleasure to dine with you tomorrow—or would you rather have me say the day after tomorrow?—evening. Yours most devotedly and-so-forth.'"
"Yes, yes," cried Bettie, "that will be all right, but you must give us three days to get ready in."
After all, however, it was Mabel that sent the telegram, and it was a very different one.
>
Changes and Plans
When the little dining-room was finished it was quite the prettiest room in the house, for the friendly Blossoms had painted the battered woodwork a delicate green to match the leaves in the paper; and by mixing what was left of the green paint with the remaining color left from the sideboard, clever Miss Blossom obtained a shade that was exactly right foras much of the floor as the rug did not cover. Of course all the neighbors and all the girls' relatives had to come in afterwards to see what Bettie called "the very dandelioniest room in Dandelion Cottage."
It seemed to the girls that the time fairly galloped from Monday to Thursday. They were heartily sorry when the moment came for them to lose their pleasant lodger. They went to the train to see the last of her and to assure her for the thousandth time that they should never forget her. Mabel sobbed audibly at the moment of parting, and large tears were rolling down silent Bettie's cheeks. Even the seven dollars and fifty cents that the girls had handled with such delight that morning paled into insignificance beside the fact that the train was actually whisking their beloved Miss Blossom away from them. When she had paid for her lodging she advised her four landladies to deposit the money in the bank until time for the dinner party, and the girls did so, but even the importance of owning a bank account failed to console them for their loss. The train out of sight, the sober little procession wended its way to Dandelion Cottage but the cozy little house seemed strangely silent and deserted when Bettie unlocked the door. Mabel, who had wept stormily all the way home, sat down heavily on the doorstep and wept afresh.
Pinned to a pillow on the parlor couch, Jean discovered a little folded square of paper addressed to Bettie, who was drumming a sad little tune on the window pane.
"Why, Bettie," cried Jean, "this looks like a note for you from Miss Blossom! Do read it and tell us what she says."
"It says," read Bettie: "'My dearest of Betties: Thank you for being so nice to me. There's a telephone message for you.'"
"I wonder what it means," said Marjory.
Bettie ran to the talkless telephone, slipped her hand inside the little door at the top, and found a small square parcel wrapped in tissue paper, tied with a pink ribbon, and addressed to Miss Bettie Tucker, Dandelion Cottage. Bettie hastily undid the wrappings and squealed with delight when she saw the lovely little handkerchief, bordered delicately with lace, that Miss Blossom herself had made for her. There was a daintily embroidered "B" in the corner to make it Bettie's very own.
Marjory happened upon Jean's note peeping out from under a book on the parlor table. It said: "Dear Jean: Don't you think it's time for you to look at the kitchen clock?"
Of course everybody rushed to the kitchen to see Jean take from inside the case of the tickless clock alovely handkerchief just like Bettie's except that it was marked with "J."
Marjory's note, which she presently found growing on the crimson petunia, sent her flying to the grindless coffee-mill, where she too found a similar gift.
"Well," said Mabel, who was now fairly cheerful, "I wonder if she forgot all aboutme."
For several anxious moments the girls searched eagerly in Mabel's behalf but no note was visible.
"I can't think where it could be," said housewifely Jean, stooping to pick up a bit of string from the dining-room rug, and winding it into a little ball. "I've looked in every room and—Why! what a long string! I wonder where it's all coming from."
"Under the rug," said Marjory, making a dive for the bit of paper that dangled from the end of the string. "Here's your note, Mabel."
"I think," Miss Blossom had written, "that there must be a mouse in the pantry mousetrap by this time."
"Yes!" shouted Mabel, a moment later. "A lovely lace-edged mouse with an 'M' on it—no, it's 'M B'—a really truly monogram, the very first monogram I ever had."
"Why, so it is," said Marjory. "I suppose she did that so we could tell them apart, because if she'd putM on both of them we wouldn't have known which was which."
"Why," cried Jean, "it's nearly an hour since the train left. Wasn't it sweet of her to think of keeping us interested so we shouldn't be quite so lonesome?"
"Yes," said Bettie, "it was even nicer than our lovely presents, but it was just like her."
"Oh, dear," said Mabel, again on the verge of tears, "I wish she might have stayed forever. What's the use of getting lovely new friends if you have to go and lose them the very next minute? She was just the nicest grown-up little girl there ever was, and I'll never see—see her any—"
"Look out, Mabel," warned Marjory, "if you cry on that handkerchief you'll spoil that monogram. Miss Blossom didn't intend these for crying-handkerchiefs—one good-sized tear would soak them."
Miss Blossom was not the only friend the girls were fated to lose that week. Grandma Pike, as everybody called the pleasant little old lady, was their next-door neighbor on the west side, and the cottagers were very fond of her. No one dreamed that Mrs. Pike would ever think of going to another town to live; but about ten days before Miss Blossom departed, the cheery old lady had quite taken everybody's breath away by announcing that she was going west, just assoon as she could get her things packed, to live with her married daughter.
When the girls heard that Grandma Pike was going away they were very much surprised and not at all pleased at the idea of losing one of their most delightful neighbors. At Miss Blossom's suggestion, they had spent several evenings working on a parting gift for their elderly friend. The gift, a wonderful linen traveling case with places in it to carry everything a traveler would be likely to need, was finished at last—with so many persons working on it, it was hard to keep all the pieces together—and the girls carried it to Grandma Pike, who seemed very much pleased.
"Well, well," said the delighted old lady, unrolling the parcel, "if you haven't gone and made me a grand slipper-bag! I'll think of you, now, every time I put on my slippers."
"No, no," protested Jean. "It's a traveling case with places in it for 'most everythingbutslippers."
"We all sewed on it," explained Mabel. "Those little bits of stitches that you can't see at all are Bettie's. Jean did all this feather-stitching, and Marjory hemmed all the binding. Miss Blossom basted it together so it wouldn't be crooked."
"What didyoudo, Mabel?" asked Grandma Pike, smiling over her spectacles.
"I took out the basting threads and embroidered these letters on the pockets."
"What does this 'P' stand for?"
"Pins," said Mabel. "You see it was sort of an accident. I started to embroider the word soap on this little pocket, but when I got the S O A done, there wasn't any room left for the P, so I just put it on thenextpocket. I knew that if I explained that it was the end of 'Soap' and the beginning of 'Pins' you'd remember not to get your pins and soap mixed up."
During the lonely days immediately following Miss Blossom's departure, Mrs. Bartholomew Crane proved a great solace. The girls had somewhat neglected her during the preceding busy weeks; but with Miss Blossom gone, the cottagers became conscious of an aching void that new wall paper and lace handkerchiefs and a bank account could not quite fill; so presently they resumed their former habit of trotting across the street many times a day to visit good-natured Mrs. Crane.
Mrs. Crane's house was very small and looked rather gloomy from the outside because the paint had long ago peeled off and the weatherbeaten boards had grown black with age; but inside it was cheerfulness personified. First, there was Mrs. Crane herself, fairly radiating comfort. Then there was a bright rag carpet on the floor, a glowing red cloth on the little table,a lively yellow canary named Dicksy in one window, and a gorgeous red-and-crimson but very bad-tempered parrot in the other. There were only three rooms downstairs and two bed-chambers upstairs. Mrs. Crane's own room opened off the little parlor, and visitors could see the high feather bed always as smooth and rounded on top as one of Mrs. Crane's big loaves of light bread. The privileged girls were never tired of examining the good woman's patchwork quilts, made many years ago of minute, quaint, old-fashioned scraps of calico.
Even the garden seemed to differ from other gardens, for every inch of it except the patch of green grass under the solitary cherry tree was given over to flowers, many of them as quaint and old-fashioned as the bits of calico in the quilts, and to vegetables that ripened a week earlier for Mrs. Crane than similar varieties did for anyone else. Yet the garden was so little, and the variety so great, that Mrs. Crane never had enough of any one thing to sell. She owned her little home, but very little else. The two upstairs rooms were rented to lodgers, and she knitted stockings and mittens to sell because she could knit without using her eyes, which, like so many soft, bright, black eyes, were far from strong; but the little income so gained was barely enough to keep stout, warm-hearted, overgenerous Mrs. Crane supplied with foodand fuel. The neighbors often wondered what would become of the good, lonely woman if she lost her lodgers, if her eyes failed completely, or if she should fall ill. Everybody agreed that Mrs. Crane should have been a wealthy woman instead of a poor one, because she would undoubtedly have done so much good with her money. Mabel had heard her father say that there was a good-sized mortgage on the place, and Dr. Bennett had instantly added: "Now, don't you say anything about that, Mabel." But ever after that, Mabel had kept her eyes open during her visits to Mrs. Crane, hoping to get a glimpse of the dreadful large-sized thing that was not to be mentioned.
On one occasion she thought she saw light. Mrs. Crane had expressed a fear that a wandering polecat had made a home under her woodshed.
"Is mortgage another name for polecat?" Mabel had asked a little later.
"No," imaginative Jean had replied. "A mortgage is more like a great, lean, hungry, gray wolf waiting just around the corner to eat you up. Don't ever use the word before Mrs. Crane; she has one."
"Where does she keep it?" demanded Mabel, agog with interest.
"I promised not to talk about it," said Jean, "and I won't."
Miss Blossom had been gone only two days when something happened to Mrs. Crane. It was none of the things that the neighbors had expected to happen, but for a little while it looked almost as serious. Bettie, running across the street right after breakfast one morning, with a bunch of fresh chickweed for the yellow canary and a cracker for cross Polly, found Mrs. Crane, usually the most cheerful person imaginable, sitting in her kitchen with a swollen, crimson foot in a pail of lukewarm water, and groaning dismally.
"Oh, Mrs. Crane!" cried surprised Bettie. "What in the world is the matter? Are—are you coming down with anything?"
"I've already come," moaned Mrs. Crane, grimly. "I was out in my back yard in my thin old slippers early this morning putting hellebore on my currant bushes, and I stepped down hard on the teeth of the rake that I'd dropped on the grass. There's two great holes in my foot. How I'm ever going to do things I don't know, for 'twas all I could do to crawl into the house on my hands and knees."
"Isn't there something I can do for you?" asked Bettie, sympathetically.
"Could you get a stick of wood from the shed and make me a cup of tea? Maybe I'd feel braver if I wasn't so empty."
"Of course I could," said Bettie, cheerily.
"I tell you what it is," confided Mrs. Crane. "It's real nice and independent living all alone as long as you're strong and well, but just the minute anything happens, there you are like a Robinson Crusoe, cast away on a desert isle. I began to think nobody wouldevercome."
"Can't I do something more for you?" asked Bettie, poking scraps of paper under the kettle to bring it to a boil. "Don't you want Dr. Bennett to look at your foot? Hadn't I better get him?"
"Yes, do," said Mrs. Crane, "and then come back. I can't bear to think of staying here alone."
For the next four days there was a deep depression in the middle of Mrs. Crane's puffy feather bed, for the injured foot was badly swollen and Mrs. Crane was far too heavy to go hopping about on the other one. At first, her usually hopeful countenance wore a strained, anxious expression, quite pathetic to see.
"Now don't you worry one bit," said comforting little Bettie. "We'll take turns staying with you; we'll feed Polly and Dicksy, and I believe every friend you have is going to offer to make broth. Mother's making some this minute."
"But there's the lodgers," groaned Mrs. Crane, "both as particular as a pair of old maids in a glass case. Mr. Barlow wants his bedclothes tucked in allaround so tight that a body'd think he was afraid of rolling out of bed nights, and Mr. Bailey won't have his tucked in at all—says he likes 'em 'floating round loose and airy.' Do you suppose you girls can make those two beds and not get those two lodgers mixed up? I declare, I'm so absent-minded myself that I've had to climb those narrow stairs many a day to make sure I'd done it right."
"Don't be afraid," said Jean, who had joined Bettie. "Marjory's Aunty Jane has taught her to make beds beautifully, and I have a good memory. Between us we'll manage splendidly."
"But there's my garden," mourned the usually busy woman, who found it hard to lie still with folded hands in a world that seemed to be constantly needing her. "Dear me! I don't see how I'm going to spare myself for a whole week just when everything is growing so fast."
"We'll tend to the garden, too," promised Bettie.
"Yes, indeed we will," echoed Mabel. "We'll water everything and weed—"
"No, you won't," said Mrs. Crane, quickly. "You can do all the watering you like, but if I catch any of you weeding, there'll be trouble."
The young cottagers were even better than their promises, for they took excellent care of Mrs. Crane, the lodgers, the parrot, the canary, and the garden,until the injured foot was well again; but while doing all this they learned something that distressed them very much, indeed. Of course they had always known in a general way that their friend was far from being wealthy, but they had not guessed how touchingly poor she really was. But now they saw that her cupboard was very scantily filled, that her clothing was very much patched and mended, her shoes distressingly worn out, and that even her dish-towels were neatly darned.
"But we won't talk about it to people," said fine-minded Jean. "Perhaps she wouldn't like to have everybody know."
Even Jean, however, did not guess what a comfort proud Mrs. Crane had found it to have her warm-hearted little friends stand between her poverty and the sometimes-too-prying eyes of a grown-up world.
Unobservant though they had seemed, the girls did not forget about the Mother-Hubbardlike state of Mrs. Crane's cupboard. After that one of their finest castles in Spain always had Mrs. Crane, who would have made such a delightful mother and who had never had any children, enthroned as its gracious mistress. When they had time to think about it at all, it always grieved them to think of their generous-natured, no-longer-young friend dreading a poverty-stricken, loveless, and perhaps homeless old age; forthis, they had discovered, was precisely what Mrs. Crane was doing.
"If she were a little, thin, active old lady, with bobbing white curls like Grandma Pike," said Jean, "lots of people would have a corner for her; but poor Mrs. Crane takes up so much room and is so heavy and slow that she's going to be hard to take care of when she gets old. Oh,whycouldn't she have had just one strong, kind son to take care of her?"
"When I'm married," offered Mabel, generously, "I'll take her to live with me. I won'thaveany husband if he doesn't promise to take Mrs. Crane, too."
"You shan't have her," declared Jean. "I want her myself."
"She's already promised to me," said Bettie, triumphantly. "We're going to keep house together some place, and I'm going to be an old-maid kindergarten teacher."
"I don't think that's fair, Bettie Tucker," said Marjory, earnestly. "I don't see how my children are to have any grandmother if she doesn't live withme. Imagine the poor little things with Aunty Jane for a grandmother!"
>
The Milligans
To the moment of Grandma Pike's departure, all their neighbors had been so pleasant that the girls were deceived into thinking that neighbors were never anythingbutpleasant. Although they felt not the slightest misgiving as to their future neighbors, they had hated to lose dear old Grandma Pike, who had always been as good to them as if she had really beentheir grandmother, and whose parting gifts—sundry odds and ends of dishes, old magazines, and broken parcels of provisions—gave them occupation for many delightful days. In spite of the lasting pleasure of this unexpected donation, however, they could not help feeling that, with Mr. Black away, Miss Blossom gone, Mrs. Pike living in another town, and only disabled Mrs. Crane left, they were losing friends with alarming rapidity. Grief for the departed, however, did not prevent their taking an active interest in the persons who were to occupy the house next door, which Mrs. Pike's departure had left vacant.
"I wonder," said Marjory, pulling the curtain back to get a better view of the empty house, "what the new people will be like. It's exciting, isn't it, to have something happening in this quiet neighborhood? What did Grandma Pike say the name was?"
"Milligan," replied Bettie.
"Kind of nice name, isn't it?" asked Jean.
"Yes," agreed Mabel, brightening suddenly. "I made up a long, long rhyme about it last night before I went to sleep. Want to hear it?"
"Of course."
"This one really rhymes," explained Mabel, importantly. Her verses sometimes lacked that desirable quality, so when they did rhyme Mabel always liked to mention it. "Here it is:
"As soon as a man named MilliganGot well he always fell ill again—ill again—ill—
"As soon as a man named MilliganGot well he always fell ill again—ill again—ill—
"Dear me, I can't remember how it went. There was a lot more, but I've forgotten the rest."
"It's a great pity," said Marjory, drily, "that you didn't forgetallof it, because if there's really a Mr. Milligan, and I ever see him, I'll think of that rhyme and I won't be able to keep my face straight."
"We must be very polite to the Milligans," said considerate Bettie, "and call on them as soon as they come. Mother always calls on new people; she says it makes folks feel more comfortable to be welcomed into the neighborhood."
"Mrs. Crane does it, too. We're the nearest, perhaps we ought to be the first."
"I think," suggested Jean thoughtfully, "we'd better wait until they're nicely settled; they might not like visitors too soon. You knowwedidn't."
"They're going to move in today," said Mabel. "Goodness! I wish they'd hurry and come; I'm so excited that I keep dusting the same shelf over and over again. I'm just wild to see them!"
It was sweeping-day at the cottage when the Milligans' furniture began to arrive, but it looked very much as if the sweeping would last for at leasttwodays because the girls were unable to get very far away from the windows that faced west. These werethe bedroom windows, and, as there were only two of them, there were usually two heads at each window.
"There comes the first load," announced Marjory, at last. "There's a high-chair on the very top, so there must be a baby."
"I'm so glad," said Bettie. "I just love a baby."
Two men unpacked the Milligans' furniture in the Milligans' front yard, and each load seemed more interesting than the one before it. It was such fun to guess what the big, clumsy parcels contained, particularly when the contents proved to be quite different from what the girls expected.
"Somehow, I don't think they're going to be very nice people," said Mabel. "I b'lieve we're going to be disappointed in 'em."
"Why, Mabel," objected Jean, "we don't know a thing about them yet."
"Yes, I do too. Their things—look—they don't lookladylike."
"Oh, Mabel," laughed Marjory, "you're so funny."
"Perhaps," offered Jean, "the Milligans are poor and the children have spoiled things."
"No," insisted Mabel. "They've got some of the newest and shiningest furniture I ever saw, but I b'lieve it's imitation."
"Oh, Mabel," laughed Jean, "I hope you won't watch the loads whenImove. For a girl that's sleptfor three weeks on an imitation pillow, you're pretty critical."
Presently the Milligans themselves arrived. Mabel happened to be counting the buds on the poppy plants when they came.
"Girls!" she cried, rushing into the cottage with the news. "They've come. I saw them all. There's a Mr. Milligan, a Mrs. Milligan, a girl, a boy, a baby, and a dog. The girl's the oldest. She's just about my size—I mean height—and she has straight, light hair. The baby walks, and none of them are so very good-looking."
It did not take the newcomers long to discover that their next-door neighbors were four little girls. Mrs. Milligan found it out that very afternoon when she went to the back door to borrow tea. Bettie explained, very politely, that Dandelion Cottage was only a playhouse, and that their tea-caddy contained nothing but glass beads. When Mrs. Milligan returned to her own house, she told her own family about it.
"You might as well run over and play with them, Laura," she said. "Take the baby with you, too. He's a dreadful nuisance under my feet. That'll be a real nice place for you both to play all summer."
The girls received their visitors pleasantly; almost, indeed, with enthusiasm; but after a very few moments, they began to eye the baby with apprehension.He refused to make friends with them but wandered about rather lawlessly and handled their treasures roughly. Laura paid no attention to him but talked to the girls. She seemed a bright girl and not at all bashful, and she used a great many slang phrases that sounded new and, it must be confessed, rather attractive to the girls.
"Oh, land, yes," she said, "we came here from Chicago where we had all kinds of money, and clothes to burn—we lived in a beautiful flat. Pa just came here to oblige Mr. Williams—he's going to clerk in Williams's store. Come over and see me—we'll be real friendly and have lots of good times together—I can put you up to lots of dodges. Say, this is a dandy place to play in—I'm coming over often."
Jean looked in silence at Bettie, Bettie at Mabel, and Mabel at Marjory. Surely such an outburst of cordiality deserved a fitting response, but no one seemed to be able to make it.
"Do," said Jean, finally, but rather feebly, "we'd be pleased to have you."
Except for a few lively but good-natured squabbles between Marjory, who was something of a tease, and Mabel, who was Marjory's favorite victim, the little mistresses of Dandelion Cottage had always played together in perfect harmony; but with the coming of the Milligans everything was changed.
To start with, between the Milligan baby and the Milligan dog, the girls knew no peace. Mrs. Milligan was right when she said that the baby was a nuisance, for it would have been hard to find a more troublesome three-year-old. He pulled down everything he could reach, broke the girls' best dishes, wiped their precious petunia and the geraniums completely out of existence, and roared with a deep bass voice if anyone attempted to interfere with him. The dog carried mud into the neat little cottage, scratched up the garden, and growled if the girls tried to drive him out.
"Well," said Mabel, disconsolately, in one of the rare moments when the girls were alone, "Icouldstand the baby and the dog. But Ican'tstand Laura!"
"Laura certainly likes to boss," said Bettie, who looked pale and worried. "I don't just see what we're going to do about it. I try to be nice to her, but Ican'tlike her. Mother says we must be polite to her, but I don't believe Mother knows just what a queer girl she is—you see she's always as quiet as can be when there are grown people around."
"Yes," agreed Mabel, "her company manners are so much properer than mine that Mother says she wishes I were more like her."
"Well," said Marjory, uncompromisingly, "I'm mighty glad you're not. Your manners aren't particularly good, but you haven't two sets. I thinkLaura's the most disagreeable girl I ever knew. Just as she fools you into almost liking her, she turns around and scratches you."
"Perhaps," said Jean, "if her people were nicer—By the way, Mother says that after this we must keep the windows shut while Mr. Milligan is splitting wood in his back yard so we can't hear the awful things he says, and that if we hear Mr. and Mrs. Milligan quarreling again we mustn't listen."
"Listen!" exclaimed Mabel. "We don'tneedto listen. Their voices keep getting louder and louder until it seems as if they were right in this house."
"Of course," said Marjory, "it can't be pleasant for Laura at home, but, dear me, it isn't pleasant foruswith her over here."
Badly-brought-up Laura was certainly not a pleasant playmate. She wanted to lead in everything and was amiable only when she was having her own way. She was not satisfied with the way the cottage was arranged but rearranged it to suit herself. She told the girls that their garments were countrified, and laughed scornfully at Bettie's boyish frocks and heavy shoes. She ridiculed rotund Mabel for being fat, and said that Marjory's nose turned up and that Jean's rather large mouth was a good opening for a young dentist. Before the first week was fairly over, the four girls—who had lived so happily before her arrival—weregrieved, indignant, or downright angry three-fourths of the time.
Laura had one habit that annoyed the girls excessively, although at first they had found it rather amusing. Later, however, owing perhaps to a certain rasping quality in Laura's voice, it grew very tiresome. She transposed the initials of their names. For instance, Bettie Tucker became Tettie Bucker, Jeanie Mapes became Meanie Japes, while Mabel became Babel Mennett. It was particularly distressing to have Laura speak familiarly in her sharp, half-scornful tones, of their dear, departed Miss Blossom, whose name was Gertrude, as Bertie Glossom. Mr. Peter Black, of course, became Beter Plack, and Mrs. Bartholomew Crane was Mrs. Cartholomew Brane, to lawless young Laura.
"I don't think it's exactly respectful to do that to grown-up people's names," protested Bettie, one day.
"Pooh!" said Laura. "Mrs. Cartholomew Brane looks just like an old washtub, she's so fat—who'd be respectful to a washtub? There goes Toctor Ducker, Tettie Bucker. Huh! I'd hate to be a parson's daughter—they're always as poor as church mice. What did you say your mother's first name is?"
"I didn't say and I'm not going to," returned Bettie.
"Well, anyhow, her bonnet went out of style fouryears ago. I should think the parish'd take up a subscription and get her a new one."
"I wish, Laura," said exasperated Jean, another day, "that you wouldn't meddle with our things. This bedroom is mine and Bettie's, and the other one is Mabel's and Marjory's. We wouldn'tthinkof looking into each other's private treasure boxes. I've seen you open mine half a dozen times this week. The things are all keepsakes and I'd rather not have them handled."
"Huh! I guess I'll handle 'em if I want to. My mother can't keep me out of her bureau drawers, and I don't think you're so very much smarter."
A day or two later, the girls of Dandelion Cottage were invited to a party in another portion of the town. The invitations were left at their own cottage door and the delighted girls began at once to make plans for the party.
"Let's carry our new handkerchiefs," suggested Jean, going to her treasure box. "I believe I'll take mine home with me—I dreamed last night that the cottage was on fire and that mine got burned. Besides, I'll have to get dressed at home for the party and it would be handier to have it there."
"Guess I will, too," said Bettie.
"Great idea," said Marjory, taking her own box from its shelf. "I never should have thought of anythingso bright. Let's all write to Miss Blossom and tell her that we carried our—Why! mine isn't in my box!"
"Neither is mine," cried Mabel, who had turned quite pale at the discovery. "It was there this morning. Girls, did any of you touch our handkerchiefs?"
"Of course we didn't," said Jean. "See, here's mine with 'J' on it, and there are no others in my box."
"Of course not," echoed Laura.
"Mine's here, all right," said Bettie, who had been struggling with her box, which opened hard. "Are you sure you left them in your boxes?"
"Certain sure," replied Mabel. "I saw it this morning."
"So did I see mine," asserted Marjory. "After I'd shown it to Aunty Jane I brought it back to put in my treasure box."
"Laura," asked Jean, "was Marjory's handkerchief in her box when you looked in it this morning? I heard the cover make that funny little clicking noise that it always makes, and just a minute afterward you came out of her room."
"I—I don't know," stammered Laura. "I didn't see it—I never touched her old box. If you say I did, I'll go right home and tell my mother you called me a thief. I'm going now, anyway."
The girls were in the dining-room just outside ofthe back bedroom door. As Laura was brushing past Jean, the opening of the new girl's blouse caught in such a fashion on the corner of the sideboard that the garment, which fastened in front, came unbuttoned from top to bottom. From its bulging front dropped Bettie's bead chain, various articles of doll's clothing, and the two missing handkerchiefs.
"They're mine!" cried Laura, making a dive for the things.
"They're not any such thing!" cried indignant Jean. "I made that doll's dress myself, and I know the lace on those handkerchiefs."
"They're my mother's," protested Laura. "I took 'em out of her drawer."
"They're not," contradicted Mabel, prying Laura's fingers apart and forcing her to drop one of the crumpled handkerchiefs. "Look at that monogram—'M B' for Mabel Bennett."
"It's no such thing," lied Laura, stoutly. "It stands for Bertha Milligan and that's my mother's name."
"Give me that other handkerchief this instant," demanded Jean, giving Laura a slight shake. "If you don't, we'll take it away from you."
"Take the old rag," said Laura. "My mother gives away better handkerchiefs than these to beggars. I just took 'em anyway to scare Varjory Male and Babel Mennett, the silly babies."
After this enlightening experience, the girls never for a moment left their unwelcome visitor alone in any of the rooms of Dandelion Cottage. They stood her for almost a week longer, principally because there seemed to be no way of getting rid of her. Mabel, indeed, had several lively quarrels with her during that time, because quick-tempered Mabel, always strictly truthful herself, could not tolerate deceit in anyone else, and she had, of course, lost all faith in Laura.
The end came suddenly one Friday afternoon. Miss Blossom had sent to the girls, by mail, a photograph of her own charming self, and nothing that the cottage contained was more precious. After one of the usual tiffs with Mabel, high-handed Laura spitefully scratched a disfiguring mustache right across the beautiful face, ruining the priceless treasure beyond repair.
Even Laura looked slightly dismayed at the result of her spiteful work. The others for a moment were too horror-stricken for words. Then Mabel, with blazing eyes, sprang to her feet and flung the cottage door wide open.
"You go home, Laura Milligan!" she cried. "Don't you ever dare to come inside this house again!"
"Yes, go," cried mild Bettie, for once thoroughly roused. "We've tried to be nice to you and therehasn't been a single day that you haven't been rude and horrid. Go home this minute. We're done with you."
"I won't go until I'm good and ready," retorted Laura, tearing the disfigured photograph in two and scornfully tossing the pieces into a corner. "Such a fuss about a skinny old maid's picture."
"You shan't stay one instant longer!" cried indignant Jean, stepping determinedly behind Laura, placing her hands on the girl's shoulders, and making a sudden run for the door. "There! You're out. Don't you ever attempt to come in again."
Bettie, grasping the situation and the Milligan baby at the same time, promptly set the boy outside. She had handled him with the utmost gentleness, but he always roared if anyone touched him, and he roared now.
"Yah!" yelled Laura, "I'll tell my mother you pinched him—slapped him, too."
"Sapped him, too," wailed the baby.
"Well," said Jean, turning the key in the lock, "we'll have to keep the door locked after this. Mercy! I never behaved so dreadfully to anybody before and I hope I'll never have to again."