CHAPTER XIIIFRED WILLIAMSON, BANKER
Mrs. Marley, Mrs. Larue and Mrs. Williamson stood in the doorway. It was Mrs. Marley who asked:
“May we come in?”
Fred and Artie brought chairs and Ward scrambled over on the window seat, leaving his place vacant.
“We thought the meeting would be over,” said Mrs. Marley. “And we wanted to see how you looked in your new quarters. But don’t let us interrupt. I don’t believe you’ve adjourned.”
“We have only a couple more riddles to ask,” said Polly. “That won’t take long.”
“The meeting would have been over,” Margy explained, “only it took Fred so long to argue about the dues.”
Mrs. Marley laughed and glanced at the other two mothers.
“My sympathy is with Fred,” Mrs. Larue declared. “I’ve been treasurer, Fred, and I knowwhat it is to have to send bills out three times for one collection. If I had to go and ask verbally for the money—well, I don’t believe there would be much money collected in our organization.”
“Oh, we always pay our dues,” said Ward, easily.
“Yes, you pay ’em—after I’ve made myself hoarse asking you,” Fred exploded.
“Dear me, I think we’d better go on with the meeting,” said Polly, wishing that Margy had never mentioned the subject of dues.
“All right—I’m ready,” announced Jess. “I asked Margy a riddle: ‘What word will, if you take away the first letter, make you sick?’ But Margy used up her first guess—she thought it was mince pie.”
“I didn’t really think it was mince pie,” explained Margy, carefully. “I just said that because I was in a hurry.”
“Then do you want another guess?” asked Polly. “She may have another one, Jess, the knocking at the doordidhurry her.”
Jess was willing, so Margy tried again.
“If I could spell, I wouldn’t mind,” said Margy, after thinking deeply for a moment. “Is the word pill?”
Most of the Riddle Club members thought Margy had guessed it. Polly knew the answer,but the boys were sure Margy had the right word. They were surprised to see Jess shake her head.
“But if you’re ill you’re sick,” Margy argued. “Why isn’t that right, Jess?”
“Because,” said Jess, “the word is music. Take away the first letter, and you have U-sick. Don’t you see?”
“Oh, well, I call that a foolish riddle,” sighed poor Margy. “But I’ll pay a forfeit. What shall it be, Jess?”
“You don’t have to pay much of a forfeit,” Jess assured her. “You almost had the riddle, so I’ll give you an easy one to pay—nothing to redeem. The red beads, please.”
Margy and Polly laughed. The string of red beads Margy was wearing belonged to Jess, and she was merely taking her own property as a forfeit.
“Now I’ll ask Artie,” Polly said, when the beads had changed hands. “Then we can adjourn the meeting.”
“Artie,” she said quickly, “on what side of the pitcher is the handle?”
Artie sat in perfect silence for what seemed a long time. No one moved, so fearful were they of disturbing his train of thought. It must have been three minutes—and a long three minutes it was—before he spoke.
“The outside,” said Artie, sweetly.
He looked around, and his irrepressible grin broke out. In a minute Ward was on top of him, and they were rolling joyously about on the window seat.
“You knew it all the time!” Ward accused his chum. “You sat there like a chump, just pretending.”
Artie did not deny the charge. His twinkling blue eyes spoke for him and he was distinctly pleased with his joke that had kept a roomful of people silent for three minutes or so.
“Sit up and behave,” President Polly commanded sternly. “Is there any other riddle to be asked? No? Some one make the motion to adjourn.”
Fred made the motion, Jess seconded it, and the meeting was over.
Mrs. Williamson looked smilingly at Polly.
“Perhaps I should have spoken of this before your meeting was over,” she said. “But to tell you the truth, I’ve only just now remembered it. Mr. Williamson would like to offer another riddle with a prize for the answer.”
The Riddle Club had had these prize riddles before. It was always fun to try to get the answer, and the prize was always worth while.
“If you’ll write it down, Polly,” suggested Mrs.Williamson, “I’ll give it to you now. The answers are to be read at your next regular meeting and the prize will be five dollars.”
Mrs. Marley whispered to her.
“Oh, yes, I forgot to say that the prize is to go to the Riddle Club bank—not to an individual,” said Mrs. Williamson.
Fred rattled the bank and its contents in delight.
“Gee,” he said, in heart-felt delight, “that’s great!”
To be sure, the prizes the various children had won before this had always gone into the Riddle Club bank, but this was the first time the prize had been offered directly for the bank.
“I don’t see what good that money is going to do us,” said Ward now. “Fred will never let us spend a cent.”
“If we’d spent it every time you wanted to, there wouldn’t be a cent left in there to-day,” declared Fred, with truth on his side.
“Don’t bicker,” Mrs. Marley warned them. “Better take down the riddle, Polly. And whatever you do, don’t argue over the five dollars before it is won; none of you may be able to guess Mr. Williamson’s puzzle.”
Polly took her pencil and paper and Mrs. Williamson pulled a little book from her knitting bag.
“This is the riddle, Polly,” she said. “Stop me, if I read too fast.”
Then slowly and carefully, she read aloud, while Polly wrote it down:
“Why do pianos bear the noblest characters?”
“Go on,” said Polly. “I have that.”
“That’s the entire riddle,” Mrs. Williamson answered. “There is no more.”
The members of the Riddle Club stared. The other prize riddles had been complicated ones, some rhymed, all contained more words. This sounded so simple that it must be a mistake.
“But that’s such an easy riddle!” said Ward, unguardedly. “Most any one can guess that.”
“Go ahead, Ward,” Mrs. Williamson encouraged him. “Guess it and win the five dollars for the club.”
“Pianos bear the noblest characters,” recited Ward, with confidence, “because—because—because—well, of course, I’d have to think about it,” he ended lamely. “But I don’t believe it’s hard.”
Mrs. Williamson laughed.
“I don’t know the answer myself,” she told them, “but I do know Mr. Williamson. And something tells me he hasn’t chosen a very easy riddle for you to guess. However, you may succeed in surprising him.”
Then Mrs. Larue said she had something to tell.
“I’ve been admiring your lovely clubroom ever since I came in,” she said pleasantly, “and I can’t see that you need a single thing more than you have. But before I came away this afternoon, Mr. Larue gave me a silver dollar to spend as his contribution for the club. He thought I would put another dollar with it and buy something nice for your clubroom.”
“And I have two silver dollars I was commissioned to spend in the same way,” added Mrs. Williamson.
Mrs. Marley said she had the same amount in her purse.
“Of course, we wouldn’t dream of buying without first coming to see your clubroom,” she told the children; “and now we’ve seen it, the problem is worse than ever. You really have as much furniture as would be comfortable, and your decorations mean far more than any you could buy.”
“Don’t you think it would be a good plan,” asked Mrs. Larue, gently, “to put the six dollars in the bank, along with the club dues? Then, any time you wished to spend it, it would be waiting for you.”
The Riddle Club accepted this plan with enthusiasm. They were even able to understandsomething of Fred’s pride in the bank as the six shining round silver dollars slipped into the slip at the side and rang merrily against the other coins.
“We’re really getting wealthy,” said Margy, soberly.
Fred was so proud of the bank and the money in it that he was reluctant to leave it long enough to go downstairs at Mrs. Marley’s invitation, where hot chocolate and little sweet cakes were awaiting them as Mrs. Marley’s treat.
“Don’t lock the door, Ward,” Fred said, as they went downstairs. “I’ll come back and get the bank.”
Fred kept the bank in his own room, and usually he buried it under a pile of magazines in his clothes closet.
Margy’s seat in the dining-room was near the window, and, happening to glance out, she saw something that made her forget even the cake with the walnut in the center, which she had coveted when they first sat down.
“It’s snowing!” she cried. “Look—real snow!”
It really was snowing. River Bend had not had the snowstorm which covered Lake Bassing with a white blanket over Thanksgiving Day, and their schoolmates had listened enviously when they heard of the fun the Riddle Club had had incamp. The snow now falling was the first of the winter for the little town.
“Well, I suppose winter has really set in,” sighed Mrs. Marley. “You children will be glad to see the snow, but I don’t care for it as much as I did when I was your age.”
“I hope it will snow all night,” declared Fred. “We haven’t had any coasting in an age.”
But the prospect of coasting to-morrow did not interfere with his enjoyment of a second cup of the chocolate and another cake when Mrs. Marley insisted that he have more.
After the cakes had disappeared, Fred went back to get his bank, and then, as it was too dark—so the mothers said—to go out and play in the snow, which by now covered the pavements and lawns with a thin, white covering, the Larues and the Williamsons went home.
Mr. Williamson was reading before the living-room fire, and Fred went in to tell him about the club meeting and to thank him for the prize riddle offer and the silver dollar he had sent the club fund.
“By the way, Fred,” Mr. Williamson said presently, “wouldn’t you rather open an account in the bank in the name of the Riddle Club? That iron bank of yours must be heavy to carry around, andbesides you have too much money in it now to allow yourself to be careless.”
“Oh, I like to take care of it, Daddy,” was Fred’s answer. “Nothing will happen to it; I’m not careless.”
“Fred, I just found your bank on the hall table,” said his mother, coming into the room. “That isn’t the place to leave it.”
Fred looked a little confused.
“I was on my way upstairs, Mother,” he said, with dignity. “I stopped to speak to Daddy.”