CHAPTER XIITHE VERY HAPPY SIX
“See, she’s tacked on that everlasting bag again, Molly,” whispered Pauline, as the train started. “It always reminds me of a great tag on a little parcel, as if Miss Evans had been done up to be sent by express.”
That night they reached Besançon, an old Roman city just under the wall of the Jura Mountains. The hotel at which they stopped was very curious, with sleeping-rooms tucked away here and there, like swallows’ nests in a bank. Sometimes these rooms were entered from within the house, sometimes from without, by sly, crooked stairways.
Molly and Pauline could see no beds in their apartment, and ran after the porter to ask him where they were to sleep.
He smiled rather patronizingly, and threw open some unsuspected doors in the partition, which had been concealed by the flowery wall-paper. Inside were two single bedsteads, with maroon curtains of damask, and on each bed was the usual little down quilt called aduvet, which had an inconvenient habit of crawling off upon the floor whenever the occupant of the bed turned over.
Altogether the hotel was very quaint, and so completely surrounded by tall buildings that it rarely saw the sun.
“Papa says the house is centuries old,” said Molly, throwing up their narrow window.
“Well, we might have known it,” replied the ready Pauline. “We might have known it was built in the dark ages by the lack of light in it.”
“Papa says Victor Hugo was born in this city,” returned Molly. “We’re all going by and by to see his old house, and we’ll photograph it.”
Next day the party drove in carriages through the lovely valley of the Loire to the bewitching little village of Mouthier, where there are no streets to mention, the houses being scattered around in clusters, “as if,” as Kirke said, they had been “shaken out of a pepper-box.”
Here they visited a cheese-factory, in what had once been a convent, and they declared they should never want any more French cheese; but they forgot this afterward.
To tell of all their travelling experiences would weary you. How they drove through tunnels and around the brink of precipices, to see the Loire rush out from its mountain cave a full-grown river.
How in Switzerland they climbed the Alps on wise-looking little donkeys, took a peep at the yellow stone city of Neuchâtel, once peopled by the Lake-dwellers, and looked down into the bear-pits of Berne.
How in Germany they spent weeks in Baden Baden, and Mr. Rowe was benefited by the mud-baths, which in Weezy’s opinion were not at all clean.
How in approaching Cologne they passed vast grain-fields, where the wheat had been reaped and stacked into piles shaped like little woodsheds.
How in Cologne they spent much time in its cathedral,—the finest Gothic cathedral in the world. Paul and Molly never tired of gazing at its graceful arches, its clustered columns and beautiful pictured windows of stained glass.
Kirke and Pauline, however, were more fascinated by the scene in front of their hotel, the Victoria.
It chanced to be market morning, and the peasant women had flocked into the city before sunrise, pushing before them hand-carts filled with fruit and vegetables. Large dogswere harnessed underneath many of these carts, and trotted contentedly with their burdens to the open square, where they either lay down to rest, or stood howling and barking by fifties, while their mistresses chattered and laughed, and spread out their wares to attract customers.
It was while still in Germany that the Americans took a carriage-drive along the banks of the Rhine to visit a grim, feudal castle covered with ivy and surrounded by a moat. The castle was the residence of an absent count, and was kept open by servants, who, for a small fee, would show the interior to visitors.
“What a lovely, mouldy old place!” exclaimed Pauline, when the horses had stopped before it. And springing to the ground she hastened into the court, across what formerly had been a drawbridge.
Miss Evans followed more slowly, pausingmidway to peep over the rail down into the sluggish water of the moat beneath her. Owing to a vegetable growth upon its surface, this water was as green and velvety as a meadow.
“I should think that pasture-y look would fool near-sighted cows, shouldn’t you, Miss Evans?” said Kirke at her elbow; and he was gratified that she positively laughed at his nonsense. This made the second time she had laughed that day. Entranced by the beauty and antiquity of the spot, she ran about the park with Weezy like a gay young girl; stopped at the ponds to feed from her own luncheon the gold-fish and swans; and on returning to the castle waved her handkerchief from its highest turret.
“She actually looks happy, Polly,” observed Molly, answering the salute from the bridge below.
“So she does. She must have forgottenherself,” responded Pauline with a touch of sarcasm.
Pauline was right. Miss Evanshadforgotten herself, and for this reason something very sad had occurred—something which little Miss Weezy was the first to recognize.
She sat opposite Miss Evans in the carriage, and after they had driven several miles toward Cologne suddenly exclaimed,—
“Why, how funny, Miss Evans! You haven’t brought your reticule!”
The young lady flashed a glance at her belt and threw up both hands with a cry.
“What shall I do? What shall I do? I’ve lost my bag! I had it when we started, and now it is gone!”
“Edward,” exclaimed Mrs. Rowe to her husband, “please ask the coachman to turn the carriage about. We must drive back for the reticule at once. I’ve told you of its valuable contents.”
“Family heirlooms probably,” reflected Captain Bradstreet. “What was the girl thinking of to carry such trinkets about her person?”
“Do you recollect where you last saw the reticule, Miss Evans?” asked Mr. Rowe, when the horses were retracing their steps.
“Oh, I can’t remember, Mr. Rowe!” Miss Evans’s face was ghastly white. “I haven’t the remotest idea. How could I—how could I have forgotten that reticule for one moment?”
“Don’t worry, Miss Evans; we’ll find it for you,” called Kirke from his seat beside the coachman. “Paul and I will find it for you, if we kill ourselves running.”
But though the boys hunted diligently, and the whole party aided in the quest, twilight fell, and the reticule had not been discovered.
They had searched the highway leading to the castle; had searched the castle itself, and questioned the apple-cheeked serving-maid,who had just shown them its interior; had searched the park, and even the ponds within it; and at last had met in despair upon the bridge that spanned the moat.
“I think I must have dropped my reticule into this water when I leaned over the rail here this afternoon,” said Miss Evans, her voice quivering. “In that case, the manuscript would be spoiled before now.”
“Let’s take another look for it in the park; it’s lighter there,” whispered Kirke to Paul; from no expectation of finding the coveted object where it had been so patiently sought, but from a strong desire to get out of the way before Miss Evans began to cry. Like boys in general, he had a great aversion to seeing a woman in tears.
“Have you a copy of the book, Miss Evans?” asked Mrs. Rowe, as the boys were walking away unobserved.
“Not one line, Mrs. Rowe. My father, bymistake, destroyed the rough draft when he was burning up old papers.”
“I pity you with all my heart, dear friend,” said Mrs. Rowe, deeply moved. “But don’t be discouraged. It is too dark to look longer now, but we will come back to-morrow.”
“O Mrs. Rowe, if I had only listened to you, and sent it by express!” wailed Miss Evans. “But I had too much sentiment. That book was my father’s life-work, and I couldn’t bear to trust it out of my sight.”
“I’m very sorry for you, Miss Evans,” observed Captain Bradstreet, adding mentally, “sorry, too, that you should have been so foolish.”
“It is too dreadful!” The young lady could no longer restrain her tears. “O Captain Bradstreet, to think that the precious manuscript should have been lost by me, papa’s own daughter!”
I’ve found it!“I’ve found it!”Page169
“I’ve found it!”Page169
“I’ve found it!”
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“Miss Evans had failed to make satisfactory arrangement for bringing out the book in Paris, Captain Bradstreet,” explained Mrs. Rowe. “Consequently, she was taking it to publishers in London.”
“It’s a sad loss, a sad loss,” returned the captain, as he helped the ladies into the carriage. “But where are the rest of us?” he added. “We can’t leave our boys.”
“They’re coming, they’re running like everything,” cried Weezy, standing upon the wagon-seat to look. “Kirke is holding something up high, and shaking it.”
“It’s a bag!” shouted Molly, clapping her hands. “I do believe it’s Miss Evans’s bag!”
“I’ve found it! Found it just outside the park,” yelled Kirke, when within hearing distance. “It’s all right. The dew hasn’t hurt it!”
It seems that in leaving the park Kirke had seen the glitter of steel under the luxuriantivy at its entrance, and stooping to brush aside the vines, had touched the clasp of the lost reticule.
“I suppose the chain caught upon the fence when you squeezed through that narrow gap, Miss Evans,” said he, in winding up his story.
“Yes, Miss Evans, it must have caught and twitched your bag off so quickly that you didn’t know it,” added Paul, as the carriage rolled on; “and then the bag fell into that tangle of leaves where nobody noticed it but Kirke. His eyes are as sharp as a razor.”
“Fortunately for me, Paul!” Miss Evans was half-laughing, half-crying. “O Kirke, I can’t be grateful enough to you for bringing this back to me!”
Kirke blushed with pleasure, and Paul felt a momentary pang of regret that he had not discovered the valued article himself.
He looked on with interest as Miss Evans drew from the alligator-skin bag a parcel neatly encased in oiled silk. It was her father’s manuscript, written in a fine clear hand, upon very thin commercial paper.
“Untouched, uninjured! This is more than I deserve!” she exclaimed joyfully.
“Good! Three cheers for the finder! Nine cheers for the owner!” cried Paul, swinging his cap.
And The Happy Six joined in a gay hurrah.
We might follow the glad children over Europe and back again to their sunny home on the Pacific; but perhaps it is better to leave them right here, for then we end the book as we began it, with a chorus of children giving three cheers.