CHAPTER VIITHE MAGIC FOUNTAIN
FATHER BLOSSOM did not seem to be afraid of Mr. Bennett, though the carpenter’s red face and angry eyes and the way he pounded the desk scared Bobby speechless. Father Blossom continued to sit quietly in his chair and when Mr. Bennett started toward the door, repeating that he was going uptown and “get warrants,” Father Blossom merely said again, “I don’t think you will do that, Mr. Bennett.”
“Why not?” blustered the carpenter, stopping half-way in the hall. “Why not? What’s to stop me, I’d like to know?”
“Well, in the first place,” said Father Blossom evenly, “the recorder isn’t likely to take a complaint against boys seriously; and if he did, he would require more evidence than you seem to have. For instance, are you sure yourcat didn’t upset this varnish and oil you speak of?”
“The cat!” sputtered Mr. Bennett. “It’s likely a cat would do that, isn’t it? I never heard such nonsense.”
“You didn’t see the cat do it, of course,” admitted Father Blossom. “But neither did you see the boys. You only surmise. And a police complaint needs evidence to back it, Mr. Bennett.”
The carpenter scolded and raged another ten minutes, but in the end he went away muttering that he guessed he’d wait a few days before having the boys arrested. When the front door banged behind him, Bobby breathed a sigh of relief.
“Now I want to know all about this affair,” said Father Blossom gravely, and Bobby told him.
“We didn’t set the shop on fire, honestly we didn’t, Daddy,” he concluded. “We didn’t knock over anything. And I only touched the cat.”
“No, I don’t believe you set the place on fire,either,” said Father Blossom. “But remember after this, Bobby, that it is never right to go into a room or a shop or building that belongs to someone else when it is locked expressly to keep people out. You should have left the ball there and asked for it back when you could find Mr. Bennett. But then, boys don’t think of that when they are playing and I won’t blame you too severely for crawling through the window. But you made another mistake and one I think you must have known when you made it.”
Bobby looked at the floor. “I—I didn’t say anything ’bout the fire,” he faltered.
“You didn’t come straight to me when you heard Mr. Bennett was angry and accused you,” said Father Blossom. “It makes me feel bad to learn that my boy was afraid to tell me he was in trouble.”
This was too much for Bobby and he flung himself into his father’s lap and cried a little, even if he was seven and a half years old.
“I wanted to tell you, Daddy,” he insisted. “Honestly I did. But—but—the fellows——”
“Someone didn’t want to tell, I suppose,” saidFather Blossom. “Well, we don’t like to go against our friends’ wishes and sometimes they say we will get them into trouble if we do. But I think it is always best for a boy to tell his daddy, at least of his own share in anything like this. Next time you’ll know better what to do.”
Bobby was silent for a little while and then he asked timidly if the carpenter could have them arrested.
“I don’t know, Son, but I doubt it,” replied Father Blossom, who never pretended to know when he was not sure. “You want to say as little about this as possible and don’t talk unkindly of Mr. Bennett with the other boys. You were not wholly in the right, you know, and he has lost a valuable collection of tools and much fine work. It is natural that he should feel bitter. If you are patient, some day he will find out that he has been mistaken and I know he is man enough to admit it when he discovers he is wrong.”
Bobby was very quiet through dinner that night and he stayed closely to the house over Sunday. He did not tell even Meg about Mr. Bennett, though usually he told her everythingthat happened to him. Mother Blossom knew, of course, but she did not speak of it. It was not till Meg went to school Monday morning that she heard of the mischief the five boys were supposed to have done.
“Oh, Bobby!” she gasped when she met him at the school gate at noon. “Bobby, do you know what that awful Charlie Black is saying about you? He says you and Fred Baldwin and Palmer Davis and Bertrand Ashe and that Lambert boy who was visiting Bertrand over Thanksgiving, set fire to Mr. Bennett’s carpenter shop!”
“Charlie Black is a fibber!” said Bobby hotly. “We didn’t set fire to the shop.” And then, because there was no hope of satisfying Meg with anything less, he told her the whole story.
She was as indignant as any small sister would be and she assured Bobby that she knew he had not burned down the shop. But not everyone had so much faith, and as the news travelled through the school—as such news will—Bobby and the three other boys (Elmer Lambert had gone home Saturday afternoon and was safelyout of trouble) had to submit to much teasing and questioning. Charlie Black and Tim Roon taunted Bobby openly with having set fire to the carpenter shop, and one recess a pitched battle started between Bobby and his friends and Charlie Black and Tim Roon and their chums.
Fighting was strictly forbidden in the school yard and the culprits were marched in disgrace to the principal’s office by one of the teachers who said that it was “a mercy Mr. Carter is here today and can punish you as you deserve.”
Mr. Carter asked a few questions, scolded them all for breaking the rule against fighting and then sent Tim and Charlie and their three followers down to the gymnasium to wash off the dirt, first warning them that they were not to molest Bobby or his chums or make any reference whatever to the carpenter shop fire again.
Then the principal kept Bobby and Fred Palmer and Bertrand a few minutes longer while he told them that he did not believe they were responsible for the fire and that he thought very few people would ever believe it. But, he said, it was foolish to pay any attention totaunts or teasing, and that when people were wrongly accused, if they were brave, it didn’t matter to them what unkind things were said about them.
“And now you may go,” said Mr. Carter smiling. “But there must be no more fighting. Another time I shall have to be more severe.”
“I didn’t even know he’d heard about the fire,” said Bobby, walking home that noon with Meg. “I guess everybody in Oak Hill knows about it; and Mr. Bennett probably goes around telling everyone we set fire to his shop. Oh, dear, I wish I’d never played football!”
But Bobby forgot his troubles when he and Meg reached home and found that Dot and Twaddles were planning to give a play that afternoon.
“You must hurry right home from school,” announced Dot importantly. “Mother is coming and so is Norah. The curtain raises at three.”
“You talk as if the curtain were Norah’s bread,” giggled Meg. “You should say the curtain ‘rises’ at three, Dot.”
“Huh, it doesn’t rise, either,” remarked Twaddles, who had come to the lunch table with his face streaked with dust. “It pulls apart!”
“How dirty your face is,” observed Bobby, big-brother fashion. “Where are you going to give this play, Twaddles?”
“Up garret,” answered Twaddles. “You pay six pins and you can come. And we have seats and everything.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” laughed Mother Blossom when Bobby asked her what kind of a play the young ones were planning. “Dot and Twaddles have done it all themselves; they have been working all morning and aside from considerable racket, I wouldn’t know there was to be a play. You and Meg will have to wait and see. And, Twaddles, my dear little son, how could you come to the table with such a dirty face?”
“That’s shadows,” said Twaddles comfortably. “Will you hurry, Meg?”
Meg and Bobby promised to hurry home from school that afternoon and they werehome twenty minutes after the dismissal bell had sounded. They paid their six pins to Twaddles, who stood at the door of the garret, and went in. Mother Blossom and Norah were already there, seated on a board placed on two small footstools.
“’Tisn’t a very high seat,” whispered Norah to Meg, who sat down beside her, “but then you haven’t far to fall.”
Meg and Bobby stared in surprise at the corner of the attic which the twins had curtained off for the stage. They would not let anybody help, so they had not been able to hang their curtains very high. A string had been stretched from one side of the wall to the other, where the garret roof began to slope, and two old lace curtains were flung over this. The audience could see through the lace without the slightest trouble but, as Dot said, they were supposed to pretend they couldn’t.
“The play will begin in a minute,” announced Twaddles, stepping out from behind the curtain. “It is called ‘The Magic Fountain’ and I invented some of it and Dot did, too.”
The audience politely clapped, and Twaddles reached up to pull the curtains apart. Something went wrong, the string broke and curtains and cord came down upon the unfortunate stage manager. Bobby untangled him and Twaddles said he thought they could get along without curtains.
“Hurry up, Dot,” he called in a loud whisper. “Come on, and begin. What are you waiting for?”
“I got it!” cried Dot, climbing out of a trunk that stood open on the “stage.” She wore a blue silk dress that had been her grandmother’s and was the pride of her heart because it had a long train.
“This is the fountain,” declared Twaddles, pointing to the open trunk. “I am a witch-man and I point my wand at it and a beautiful princess comes out. You watch.”
The summer before, Twaddles and Dot had seen an electric fountain and had watched fascinated while pretty girls and beautiful scenery and once what Dot called a “whole house” hadrisen apparently out of the water. This had given them the idea for their play.
“You have to wait a minute while I put on my hair,” said Dot so seriously that the audience did not dare laugh.
The desire of Dot for long golden curls was something no one could understand. All her dolls had to have yellow hair and she was always sighing for long, springy curls instead of the short, thick dark hair that covered her head. Now she carefully put on a circlet of pasteboard to which she had pinned long streamers of yellow crepe paper twisted to look something like curls.
“You look crazy,” said Bobby frankly, but Twaddles withered him with a look.
“A heap you know about a princess,” he said scornfully. “They always have long hair. Go on, Dot.”
Dot curled herself into the trunk and Twaddles stood by it. He rapped with his wand three times and up rose the princess, slowly and gracefully, her yellow curls dangling half-way to her waist.
“Now go back!” commanded the witch-man, striking the trunk with his wand again to make the princess disappear.
She disappeared, but more quickly than she had intended. Twaddles’ stick had jarred the heavy lid of the trunk and it crashed down, hiding the princess from view, but not shutting out her shrieks of fright.
“Mother!” screamed poor Dot. “Mother! Ow! Open it, Twaddles!”
“You’re a fine witch-man,” scolded Bobby, rushing for the trunk; but Mother Blossom and Norah reached it first.