CHAPTER IIDONALD HIDES
“Weezy, Weezy, is Donald out there in the garden with you?”
This was Molly calling from the back porch.
“No, he isn’t,” answered Weezy, in a discouraged tone.
“He’s screaming himself hoarse, Weezy, and we can’t find him anywhere in the house.”
“I haven’t seen him.” Weezy walked slowly toward her sister. “Has Captain Bradstreet gone, Molly?”
“Yes, Weezy, and Pauline.”
“Did Captain Bradstreet say”—
“Maybe Donald followed Pauline and herfather home, Molly,” suggested Mrs. Rowe from the doorway.
“No, mamma, I’ve been over to ask. I couldn’t hear Donald on that side of the street, either. He must be in this house.”
“Then, I’d like to know where, Molly,” exclaimed Kirke, springing out upon the porch. “I’ve dived into all the wardrobes and under all the beds.”
His face was crimson, and his hair on end like the spines of a sea-urchin. A cobweb dangled from his coat-sleeve.
“Have you looked in the sideboard, Kirke?”
“No, I haven’t, Molly; and I haven’t looked in the salt-cellars.”
“Oh, you funny boy!” tittered Weezy, who regarded the search as a protracted and rather diverting game of hide-and-go-seek.
Mrs. Rowe, on the contrary, was becoming seriously troubled.
“Where can the darling be, Molly?” shecried, rushing back into the house, and hurrying from room to room. “I can hardly hear his voice now. How faint it has grown!”
“It is loudest here in the hall, mamma,” said Molly, who had run ahead, and halted abruptly at the foot of the front stairway.
“Donny is up chimney, I guess,” cried little Louise, dancing to the fireplace.
“Nonsense, Weezy; do you think he is a bat?” retorted Molly.
Kirke dropped on his knees before the hearth. He had been stuck in a chimney once himself, and the recollection always made his flesh creep.
“If Donald has crawled up this flue, Molly, it’s no laughing matter, let me tell you.”
“Whatareyou talking about, Kirke? Donald couldn’t crawl up that flue; it is altogether too small.”
“I’m not so sure, Molly. Don can squeeze through a knothole.”
“Donald, Donald darling,” called Mrs. Rowe shrilly. “Where are you, Donald? Tell mamma.”
A plaintive, muffled wail floated down the air.
“Tum, mamma, tum.”
“Donaldisin the chimney, mamma! Oh, I’m so afraid heisin here!” groaned Kirke, trying to gaze into the chimney’s blackened throat.
But he only bumped his head against the andirons and twisted his neck for nothing.
“There are bricks in the way, mamma, stacks of them. I can’t see a single thing.”
“Tum, oh, tum!” cried the choked voice again; and this time they were sure it came from above them.
But did it actually proceed from the throat of the chimney? It was Mrs. Rowe who first thought of the unused grate in theupper hall. Might not Donald have wedged his restless little body into that? He was constantly teasing to go up on the roof.
“Here I am, dearest, mamma is here,” she called, mounting the staircase, the children at her heels, and stumbling across the clothing that strewed the floor.
Before the grate stood the large trunk she had been packing. She had left it open, and now it was closed; but she was too agitated to notice the change.
“Quick, Kirke, this trunk is in the way. Help me move it out from the grate.”
Kirke laid hold of the handle nearest.
“What a heavy trunk, mamma! What makes”—
At that moment there was a stifled cry of “Mamma, mamma!”
Kirke jumped as if he had been shot, for the words seemed spoken directly in his ear.
“Donald’s in the trunk,” he roared, lettinggo the handle. “The little monkey is in the trunk!”
“He’s packed himself, Donny’s packed himself!” shouted Weezy, hopping about on one foot. “What an ever-so-queer baby!”
Molly flew to the trunk, but it was fastened.
“Oh, this lock! This hateful, hateful spring-lock. Whereisthe key?”
“I left it in the lock. I know I left it in the lock,” exclaimed Mrs. Rowe, groping hastily about the carpet. “Help me, children, do help me find it!”
“Tum, mamma. Why don’t oo tum?”
The voice was very low, oh, very, very low, little more than a sigh.
“Yes, yes, my baby; mamma will come.”
Mrs. Rowe was yet hunting the key, and hunting to no purpose.
“Bring a hammer, Kirke,” she cried hurriedly. “Bring a screw-driver—no, a chisel. Call Hop Kee.”
It seemed centuries before Kirke returned with the tools; in reality it was only three minutes. Then Hop Kee came flying in as though fired from a sling or swung by his own long pigtail. Behind him appeared Captain Bradstreet and Pauline to learn if Donald had been found; and among them all the trunk was speedily opened.
Little Donald lay upon the pillows gasping for breath, and clasping in his chubby hand the missing key.
“Peepaboo, Donny! Peepaboo!” cried Weezy.
But the released prisoner did not answer. Mrs. Rowe caught the pale, limp little fellow to her breast with a sob of thanksgiving.
“Mamma is here, my baby. Did you think mamma never, never would come?”
The child snuggled close in her arms, too exhausted to utter a word.
“Look up, dearest; mamma has you!Smile, mother’s darling, mamma has found her lost baby.”
“Yes, praise God! You’ve found your boy, Mrs. Rowe, and found him not one minute too soon,” muttered Captain Bradstreet, throwing up the windows. “If he had not made himself heard, he might have shared the fate of Ginevra.”
“Don’t mention it, Captain Bradstreet,” shuddered Mrs. Rowe. “The story of Ginevra flashed into my mind the moment I discovered where Donald was.”
“Who was Ginevra, anyway, Molly?” asked Kirke, a little later.
The Captain and Pauline had gone, Mr. Rowe had come home, and the color was returning to Donald’s cheeks.
“Oh! don’t you know, Kirke? Why, Ginevra was that gay young bride,—Italian, I believe,—who ran off after her wedding, and hid herself in a chest.”
“What did she do that for?”
“Why just for fun, to make the guests hunt for her. They were all playing hide-and-go-seek.”
“Well, what next, Molly?”
“And the chest had a spring-lock.”
“Oh! I see.”
“Yes, the springiest kind of a spring-lock; and the poor little bride was no sooner inside the chest than the lid snapped down on her. There she had to stay; and she wasn’t found for a hundred years?”
“A hundred years!” echoed Weezy, in dismay. “O Molly! didn’t she have anything to eat for a whole hundred years?”
“I guess she didn’t want anything to eat, Weezy,” said Kirke, with a sly wink at Molly. “Not toward the last of it, anyway. I guess she had lost her appetite.”
“O Kirke! you wretched boy,” said Molly.
But Kirke’s shocking sarcasm had beenquite lost on Weezy. She had picked up a box-cover from the floor, and was fanning Donald as he lay across his mother’s lap. “Did you think that was a truly,trulylittle bed, Donald?”
Donald nodded drowsily.
“Babies shouldn’t go to sleep in trunks. Oh, you droll, droll little brother!”
Weezy’s remark had called up a painful memory, and Donald’s lip began to quiver.
“Don’t wike p’itty ’itty bed. All dark. Mamma all gone.”
“We won’t talk about it, darling,” said Mrs. Rowe, kissing the tear-stained face. “Here you are in sister’s arms, and sister shall sing to you. What do you want to hear her sing?”
“Sing Robbitty-bobbitty,” replied Donald, swallowing a sob. And Weezy piped up in a clear, sweet treble:—
“Robinty-bobbinty bent his bowTo shoot apitcherand killed a crow.”
“Robinty-bobbinty bent his bowTo shoot apitcherand killed a crow.”
“Robinty-bobbinty bent his bow
To shoot apitcherand killed a crow.”