CHAPTER IIIJESS HAS LUCK
Allof the other members of the Riddle Club stared at Artie in blank wonder.
“Cabbages?” cried Fred.
“What do we pull up a cabbage for?” Margy demanded, curiously.
“To see whether you’ll be rich or poor,” said Artie, as though that settled the matter.
“How will you know whether you’ll be rich and poor?” Ward demanded.
“Not rich and poor,” Artie corrected him. “Who ever heard of any one being rich and poor? Richorpoor, silly.”
“Well, all right,” agreed Ward, amiably. “Rich or poor then. How’ll we know we’re going to be rich or poor by looking at a cabbage?”
Artie perceived that he would have to explain.
“You tell by the dirt,” he said seriously.
“The dirt?” echoed Margy. “What dirt?”
“The dirt on the roots of the cabbage,” said Artie. “If a lot of dirt sticks, that’s a sign you’regoing to be rich; if there isn’t much dirt, you’re going to be poor.”
“Oh!” said Margy.
“I think that will be fun,” said Jess, briskly.
“I call it a fool stunt, but we’ll try it,” Fred decided. “Know any more, Artie?”
Artie thought for a moment.
“I know about making wishes,” he said, and paused.
“Well, don’t stop,” Polly urged. “Go on and tell us.”
Artie was as fond of talking as any of the rest, but he had an odd habit of stopping suddenly, just when his listeners thought he was well started.
“You make a wish,” he began again, “and then you must go upstairs and down twice, outdoors and all around the house and around the barn—Of course, Mr. Williamson hasn’t any barn,” Artie interrupted himself to say; “but the summerhouse will do, I guess. The book said an ‘outdoor building,’ and a summerhouse must be an outdoor building. Say, Fred, isn’t a summerhouse an outdoor building?”
“Oh, of course it is,” the impatient Fred assured him. “Hurry up, Artie, I’m going to sleep.”
“Where was I?” asked Artie, calmly.
“The wishes,” Margy prodded. “We make a wish and walk upstairs and downstairs twice and around the house——”
“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Artie. “Well, you walk around the house and the barn and then you come in again.”
“Then what happens?” asked Ward.
“Your wishes come true,” Artie said.
“Well, I call that too queer for anything,” remarked Jess, and the others were inclined to agree with her.
“I don’t see how walking around like that can make wishes come true,” said Fred.
“It’s the not speaking,” explained Artie. “That does it.”
Polly stared at her brother.
“The—thewhat?” she demanded.
“Not speaking. You know, even if some one calls to you or asks a question, you can’t say a word till you’ve been all around and come back,” said Artie.
“You never said anything about that,” Margy informed him. “Can’t we speak while we’re walking around the house?”
“My, no, not a word,” said Artie, placidly. “After you make the wish, you can’t say another word till you’ve been up- and downstairs and around the house and barn.”
“Let’s do that! It sounds awfully spooky,” declared Margy.
“Be sure you find out about the false-faces to-night, Fred,” said Polly. “If your father hasn’t any, we’ll have to make some.”
Nothing ever daunted Polly. If she could not find what she wanted ready-made, she made it herself.
“And another thing,” said Margy. “Being the Riddle Club, why can’t we ask some riddles? I mean short ones—one apiece.”
“All right,” agreed Jess.
“Maybe we can get some about animals,” suggested Artie.
“Oh, any kind of riddle will do,” declared the president of the club.
The plans for the party made, the six chums made fudge as a grand wind-up to the afternoon. They went home to supper, where the candy apparently made little difference in their hearty appetites.
Hallowe’en was not far away, and if their animal costumes were to be made, it was necessary to start work upon them at once. Fred’s father had almost every kind of false-face manufactured, but he had no animal ones. Perhaps, as Jess proudly said, they were the first to dress up as animals for Hallowe’en. Anyway, Pollywould have to make the faces. That was clear.
There was a great deal of laughing and whispering going on every afternoon after school in each of the three houses on Elm Road. Artie and Ward shared some joke together, and they might be heard shouting and laughing soon after they had turned the key in Ward’s or Artie’s room door, as the case might be.
“I think they’re dancing,” Jess confided to Polly. “They shake the ceiling of the dining-room. Ward’s room is right over the dining-room, you know.”
“Artie hates to dance,” Polly returned. “You couldn’t make him. No, it’s something else. I don’t know what. They shake the house when they’re over here, too.”
For not even Polly was to know what animals were represented. Every one was so determined to keep his or her costume a secret that it had been decided that “any kind of face” was to be worn.
“Of course they won’t match,” said Jess. “But that will be even more fun.”
Jess was having a thrilling time trying to get her costume together. She had set her heart on going as a chicken, and every one knows that if there is one thing a chicken cannot do without, it is feathers.
“I can manage the wings,” she confided toDora, the good-natured maid in her mother’s kitchen, “because I can use those two turkey wings we had left from last Thanksgiving. But where will I get the rest of the feathers?”
Good fortune smiled unexpectedly on Jess. At least, she thought it was good fortune. Passing Mrs. Pepper’s house one morning on her way to the store for her mother—it was Saturday—Jess spied a barrel standing at the edge of the drive. It was filled with soft, fluffy chicken feathers!
“Oh, Mrs. Pepper, are you throwing those feathersaway?” asked Jess, in the tone of one who has found a neighbor tossing out a gold mine.
Mrs. Pepper was raking leaves from her lawn. Carrie usually stayed in bed late Saturday mornings, and she was not up yet.
“Why, yes, Jess, I put that barrel out for the junk man. He comes through town on Saturdays,” answered Mrs. Pepper. “Those feathers aren’t good enough to save for pillows, and I don’t like to burn them.”
“Could—could I have them?” asked Jess, her eyes shining.
“My lands, child! what do you want with them?” exclaimed Mrs. Pepper. “Take them and welcome, of course; but I’ll need the barrel back. Barrels are scarce, and I like to make mine last.”
“I’ll bring the barrel right back,” promised Jess, joyfully. “Thank you ever so much, Mrs. Pepper.”
Mrs. Pepper stared at her as the small girl began to roll the barrel toward her side lawn. The Pepper property joined Mr. Larue’s, and Jess had not far to go. The feathers, of course, weighed almost nothing, and the task was not difficult, but Mrs. Pepper stood racking her brains to think what use Jess could have for the down and bits of feathers she had thrown away. She was still standing there ten minutes later when Carrie came out.
“Jess Larue took those feathers?” Carrie repeated, when her mother told her. “I don’t see what on earth she wants them for! Why didn’t you make her tell you before you gave her the barrel?”
“I believe in minding my own affairs,” said Mrs. Pepper, tartly.
She kept a great many chickens and sold them dressed; that is, killed and with the feathers taken off. Her good feathers she saved for pillows, but the stuff that filled the barrel was down from young chickens and broken feathers that were of no use to her.
Jess rolled her barrel up to the side door ofthe house and reached the hall before Dora spied her.
“Where you going, Jess, with that dirty old barrel?” she asked suspiciously.
“I’m taking it up to my room,” replied Jess.
“What’s in it—let me look,” replied Dora. “Feathers! Jess, for goodness’ sake, roll that barrel outside, quick! If your mother was to catch you scattering those nasty little pin feathers all over the house, she’d tell you a thing or two!”
“I’m not going to scatter them,” Jess argued. “Help me carry the barrel up to my room, will you, Dora? I have to take it back.”
When Dora understood that the barrel was to go back to Mrs. Pepper, she was more determined than ever that Jess should not take it up to her room.
“I know exactly what you’d do, Jess,” Dora said. “You’d dump those feathers out on your bedroom floor and take the empty barrel back; and in less than five minutes, every rug and carpet in this house, to say nothing of the chairs and the sofas, would have pin feathers sticking in them.”
“Well, where can I put them?” asked Jess, realizing that unless Dora was willing to help her she could not hope to get the barrel up the stairs. “I have to have these feathers for Hallowe’en, Dora.”
“Take them out in the barn, to be sure,” said Dora. “Why you and Ward don’t want to play in the barn, beats me. Many a child would be thankful for such a light, clean place to stay in. You can make all the noise you want, too, and do as you please out there. And you’re forever hanging around the house.”
“It’s cold,” said Jess, absently, but her mind was busy with another problem. She had remembered that she needed flour paste.
“If I take the feathers out to the barn, Dora,” she said coaxingly, “how about some flour paste? Let me make some?”
“You’re too hard on the flour barrel,” declared Dora, good-naturedly. “Be off to the barn now and leave your barrel there; then go and get the soap your mother promised me and I’ll have the paste ready for you when you come back.”
Jess was willing, and she rolled the barrel out to the barn. She was glad that Ward was over with Artie Marley, for it gave her an opportunity to make her Hallowe’en costume without an audience. She dumped the feathers on the floor of the barn, not minding in the least that they flew about and lighted, many of them, in her hair and on her blouse and skirt, then rolled the empty barrel back to the Pepper driveway.
Carrie saw her and called to her to wait, butJess shouted that she was going to the store and ran off quickly. It was not part of her plan to have Carrie’s sharp eyes and Carrie’s quick tongue ferret out her secret.
True to her promise, Dora had a generous basin of flour paste ready for Jess when she came back from the store, and the girl took it gratefully and went out to the barn. She made several trips to the house for things she needed, scissors, newspapers, and a paper of pins were among them, but at last she was evidently equipped, for she stayed in the barn.
“Where’s Jess?” asked Polly and Margy, half an hour later, at the Larue back door.
“Out in the barn—at least, she was a little while ago,” answered Dora. “I haven’t heard a word from her since I made her a bowl of flour paste.”
Polly and Margy went out to the barn. The sliding door was pushed half-way open, and there on the barn floor they beheld a remarkable sight. They stared, wondering what it could be.
“Jess!” called Polly, uncertainly. “Jess! is that you?”