CHAPTER VTABLES TURNED
Jessand Polly looked over their shoulders as they walked to the garden, which was at one side of the house, but the others marched briskly along. In the summer Mr. Williamson had a flourishing “truck patch,” and even now there were some late vegetables still in the ground. The patch was protected from frost, and Fred sometimes boasted of getting cabbage or parsnips “from the garden” as late as Thanksgiving Day.
“Now, how do we do this stunt, Artie?” asked Fred, when they had reached the row of cabbages. “You pull one and show us.”
Artie pulled a fine large cabbage and exhibited its roots to the interested audience.
“Lots of dirt on it,” he pointed out—indeed, in his zeal, he had loosened perhaps half a peck of earth, most of which clung to the roots—“and that shows I will be very rich some day.”
“Maybe Fred will,” said Polly, mischievously. “That dirt is from his father’s garden.”
“It’s just a sign,” explained Artie, hastily.
Margy stooped and brought up another cabbage, but as she lifted it she shook it carefully and nearly all the dirt fell off.
“There goes your fortune!” cried Jess. “You mustn’t shake it, Margy.”
“It’s too heavy with all that dirt on it,” Margy complained.
“Well, if there’s a bag of gold at the bottom of this one, it’s going to stay right there,” announced Polly, tugging at the nearest cabbage.
A shriek from Margy startled her. She let go the cabbage in time to look up and see a tall white figure land in the patch, apparently from the skies. They all saw it at the same instant, and, cabbages forgotten, they rushed madly for the house. Margy was crying wildly, Polly pulled Jess along by the hand, and poor Ward and Artie fell down, but scrambled up again and managed to get over the ground in spite of their costume, which was never designed for a running suit. They reached the back porch, stumbled pell-mell up the steps and into the kitchen. Margy closed the door with a bang that shook the house.
“Oh-oo!” she wept, her teeth chattering. “What was it? What was it?”
“I think—I think it was a ghost,” quavered Jess.
“It was a million feet high—almost,” said Artie. “Did you see how it was waving its arms?”
“There are no such things as ghosts,” declared Polly, firmly. “It couldn’t have been a ghost, could it——” She had meant to say, “Could it, Fred?” but at that moment she made an alarming discovery.
Fred wasn’t in the kitchen with them!
“Where’s Fred?” asked Polly, anxiously. “Didn’t he come in? Has any one seen him?”
“The ghost has carried him off!” cried Margy, in alarm. “He’s gone! Oh, my, what will Mother say?”
“It wasn’t a ghost,” said Polly again. “I tell you, there are no ghosts. And if it was a ghost, it couldn’t carry Fred off—a ghost can’t carry anything.”
“You just said there aren’t any ghosts,” objected Margy.
“Well, I mean if there were ghosts, they couldn’t carry any one off,” Polly explained.
“Then where is Fred?” asked Artie, quite as though he thought Polly would be able to tell him.
“I don’t know,” Polly admitted. “You don’t suppose he could have fallen down a hole somewhere, do you? I don’t remember having seenhim after I saw the ghost—and that was just before I started to pull up the cabbage.”
No one remembered having seen Fred.
“But then,” added Ward, “I couldn’t see anything, really. The flannel slipped down over my eyes and I couldn’t see where I was going, let alone any one else. I don’t know where Fred went.”
“I read once about a man who fell down a canyon and was never seen again,” contributed Artie, helpfully.
“There isn’t any canyon for Fred to fall down,” declared Jess, with some scorn. “I think we ought to go over and get Mr. Williamson, though; perhaps he could find Fred.”
“But if we go outdoors, that ghost—or whatever it is—will grab us,” said Margy, fearfully.
It was what they were all thinking, and no one wanted to be the first to volunteer to go over to the Larue house and summon aid.
Ward looked at Artie. They did not think of themselves as brave, but it really required the strongest kind of courage for them to make the suggestion that Ward presently offered.
“We’ll go out and look all over the garden, Artie and I,” he said. “There’s no use in scaring Mrs. Williamson; we may find Fred and then everything will be all right.”
“I can come, too, and hold a lantern for you,” offered Polly, bravely. “I’d like to do it.”
“You needn’t come. Girls shouldn’t—shouldn’t—expose themselves to danger,” said Ward, feeling remarkably like a policeman—or as he thought a policeman must feel. “But I’d like a lantern. Where is there one, Margy?”
“Down cellar,” said Margy, rolling her eyes.
“I’m afraid to go down cellar,” announced Jess, flatly. “Goodness only knows what’s down there. It’s as dark as pitch.”
“We’ll all go down,” suggested Polly. “You can turn on the light at the head of the stairs, can’t you, Margy?”
Most of the houses in River Bend were wired for electricity, and there was a switch at the head of the Williamsons’ cellar stairs. Margy pressed the button, but even the flood of light which lit the cellar did not give any of them any great confidence. They went down the steps slowly, and not for anything in the world would they have looked over their shoulders.
Margy found the lantern behind the furnace, and, as they had not brought matches, there was no reason for staying, since to light it they would have to go back to the kitchen. Jess led the way upstairs, and as she gained the top step, she cried out. Fred was just closing the outside door.
“Hello!” he said comfortably. “Where’ve you all been?”
“Where have you been?” Margy countered. “You scared us pretty near into fits. We thought the ghost had caught you.”
“Ward and I were coming out to hunt for you,” Artie said, waving the lantern. “We went down cellar to get this.”
“Huh, that wasn’t a ghost,” replied Fred. “If you’d hung around a little, the way I did, you would have found it out pretty quick.”
Margy switched off the cellar light and shut the door.
“What was it, if it wasn’t a ghost?” she asked.
“Joe Anderson,” was Fred’s surprising reply. “He thought he’d be smart. You haven’t been crying, have you, Margy?”
“Only a little,” said Margy, hastily.
“She thought something had happened to you,” said Polly. “What did you do, Fred? And weren’t you frightened?”
“I was at first,” acknowledged Fred. “That white thing came up on us so quietly, it rather took my breath away. But when you all started to shriek and run, I heard Joe Anderson laugh. I’d know his snicker if I heard it in China. So I hid behind the pear tree. I thought I’d get a chance to punch his nose for him.”
“Did you?” chorused Artie and Ward interestedly.
“Well, no, I didn’t,” said Fred. “He followed you up to the porch steps and then came back, but Albert Holmes came out of the summerhouse—he must have been hiding there with Joe—and they began talking. And they’re going to try to play another trick on us in a few minutes. I heard them planning it. They want to wait till we get quieted down from this scare, and then Joe is going to ring the doorbell. He thinks whoever comes to the door will have a fit when they see a giant ghost.”
“A giant ghost?” repeated Polly.
“Yes, a giant ghost. Albert is going to sit on Joe’s shoulder and that will make the ghost about eight feet high,” said Fred. “I wish I could think of something to do that would make them feel cheap.”
“Let’s go upstairs and pour water out of the window on them when they ring the bell,” suggested Jess, excitedly.
Fred shook his head.
“I wonder——” he said slowly. “Yes, I do believe it will work!”
“What will work?” demanded Margy, eagerly. “What will work, Fred?”
“Well, I’ll step into the first half of the giraffe,”explained Fred, “and Artie can manage the back feet—Ward will get out of breath too quickly to do what I want done. When the bell rings, we’ll go out the back door and amble around to the front of the house and just wrap Mr. Ghost lovingly around with that nice, long, rubber-hose neck. That ought to give our friends a thrill. They won’t know what has them in the dark.”
“Oh, yes,” approved Polly. “I think that’s a fine plan. Hurry, Ward, and let Fred get into your half; the bell may ring any minute.”
Ward would have liked to have guided the giraffe’s neck himself, but he knew as well as Fred that excitement took his breath away as quickly as running. Fred had the longer arms, too, and would be able to give a longer reach to the animal’s long neck.
Fred had hardly slipped into the flannel casing and drawn it tightly about him and Artie was practicing his best giraffe step, when the bell over the door leading into the front hall rang sharply. Every one jumped, though it was a noise they were expecting.
“Stay right where you are,” Fred directed. “If Joe sees you through the curtains or the glass door, he’ll be suspicious. Come on, Artie, we’ll have to hurry.”
He and Artie loped down the back steps andsped around the side of the house. A cautious look showed Fred a towering ghost standing on the front steps, waiting patiently. Tiptoeing, he and Artie stole up to it and before the ghost knew what was happening, a long slim, tight coil was fastened about it.
“Ow! Help! Take it away!” shrieked Joe Anderson’s voice. “Quick, Albert, take it off! Help! Something’s got me!”
Albert was sitting on Joe’s shoulders, and in his terror and excitement he began to kick wildly, hammering the unfortunate Joe on the face and shoulders unmercifully. Fred couldn’t unwind the length of hose—though he tried—because the end was pinioned under one of Albert’s arms, and the more the two boys who formed the ghost struggled, the tighter the coils seemed to grow.
“Help! help!” called Joe, beside himself with fear.
“Ow! Joe! Joe! It’s choking me!” screamed poor Albert, twisting and turning madly, for his pillow case had slipped too far over his head and he felt as though he was smothering.
The other children had rushed to the door when they heard the racket. Across the street in the Larue house lights were blazing through the windows as the shades were run up, for the noise had reached the grown-ups there.
“Take it off, Fred,” called Artie. “Hurry—take it off! I can’t see a thing in here.”
“It—won’t—come—off!” gasped Fred. “Don’t you see me pulling?”
He took a step backward, his foot caught one of Artie’s, and they went down together, dragging the kicking ghost on top of them. When Mr. Williamson and Mr. Larue and Mr. Marley reached the spot a few minutes later, to their astonishment they saw what looked like a brown and white animal with spots thrashing about on the ground and apparently fitted with dozens of legs and arms.