Our Next-Door Neighbors

“The house burned up and all our clothes and our stuff to eat, and our bats and things, and father and mother went away and I didn’t know what to do, so–I came here. But we’ll go back to our own house. We have learned to cook. Come on, boys.”

“You’ll stay right here with me, son,” and Rob’s hand came down intimately on Ptolemy’s shoulder.

“It isn’t likely we’ll turn them out into the woods, when they haven’t a roof over their heads,” declared Silvia, drawing Emerald to her side.

“I think you are absolutely inhuman, Lucien,” cried Beth. “I don’t see what has changed you so,” and she proceeded to make room for Pythagoras in the porch swing.

“Did the fire scare you?” asked Miss Frayne gently, as she put her arms about Demetrius.

“Et tu, Brute? Well, I plainly see this is no place for an inhuman, childless, married man,” I said with a laugh, walking down the veranda.

In the doorway I met Diogenes, who raised his chubby arms invitingly.

“Up, up, Ocean!” he begged sweetly.

I lifted him to my shoulder, and then turned and walked triumphantly back to the family group.

“Now,” I said, “here is the whole d-dashed family. And I propose that each keep unto his charge the child he has now under his wing.”

Miss Frayne quickly relinquished the dirty Demetrius. Beth shrank away from Pythagoras.

As I seated myself still holding Diogenes, his brothers sprang toward him in greeting, but he spat at one, kicked at another, and pulled the hair of a third, although he patted Ptolemy’s cheek gently.

“Now, we’ll have this affair thrashed out,” I declared in my most authoritative, professional manner, and I then proceeded to explain to Silvia the housing of the Polydores, and our strategies to keep their arrival a secret simply on her account.

“Because you know,” interpolated Beth, with a consideration for the feelings of the young Polydores–a consideration they had never before encountered–“we wanted you to have a nice rest.”

Silvia looked quite penitent and remorseful for her seeming lack of appreciation of our combined efforts. When I had answered all her inquiries satisfactorily, Miss Frayne’s curiosity regarding the progeny of the eminent Polydores had to be fully relieved.

“And do you mean that the scribbling lady I saw at the table is really the mother of these five boys?” she asked, unable to grasp the fact.

“Yes; and the father hereof is the man who explained the ghosts to you so scientifically that you cannot remember what he said. Now, Ptolemy, we’ll hear your story of the fire and the whereabouts of your parents. Take your time and tell it accurately.”

“Well, you see we did just as you said to, and took the ghost out of the window and went out to the woods early this morning so as not to let the paper lady see us.”

“Oh!” cried Miss Frayne, “am I the paper lady? I begin to see daylight. Are these boys the ghost perpetrators, and were you in on the put-up job?”

“You’re a good guesser,” I replied.

“And why wasn’t I taken into your confidence?”

“For two reasons. First, because your friend Rob said you’d get better results for copy–more inspirations and thrills, if you weren’t behind the scenes on the ghost business,–and then we didn’t want to tell you about the presence of the Polydores lest inadvertently you betray the fact to my wife. Now, proceed, Ptolemy.”

“After we were in the woods, I heard an automobile coming down the lane, and I went up near the edge of the woods and peeked out behind a tree, and pretty soon I saw father and mother come over the hill and go in our haunted house, so I came up there and hid under the window and heard mother say: ‘What an ideal place to write this is. It looks as if I might really get a chance to write unmo–’

“‘–lested,’” I finished for him.

“I guess so,” he allowed. “Well, she began writing, so I didn’t go in, but when father came outside I went up to him and told him you and mudder were at the hotel and that we were all with you. He told me they came up here to write an article for some big magazine about the ghost. He hired an automobile down at Windy Creek to bring them up to the house and the man was going to come back for them tomorrow morning. I didn’t let on the ghost was a fake, because I thought he’d be so disappointed to have all his trouble for nothing, and he’d be mad at me for swiping his skull. I told him a paper lady was coming and then I went back to the woods. He went down with me to see the boys, and he said he would come back and have lunch with us. Mother doesn’t ever stop to eat at noon when she is writing.

“He went back and talked to the paper lady and pretty soon he came down and ate with us. I told him all about how we couldn’t get any girl to do the work for us and so we had been living with you, and how Di got sick and mudder was all worn out taking care of him and came down here to rest, and that you wouldn’t cash the check, so I did and was spending it and he said that was all right.” Here Ptolemy flashed me a most triumphant glance.

“He said you must be paid for all your expense and trouble, so he made out a check and gave it to me and told me to make mudder a nice present. He ain’t so bad when he ain’t thinking about dead stuff. When he felt in his pocket for his check book, he found a letter he had got yesterday and forgotten to open, so he read it then and found it was from some magazine, and the man said he’d pay his and mother’s expenses to go to Chili and write up some stuff about–something. So father said they must go at once.”

“Not to Chili!” I exclaimed.

“Yes; we all went up to the house with him and I took mother’s pencil and paper away so she would have to listen. She was wild for Chili, and I had to go and hunt up a farmer who had a machine to take them down to Windy Creek. Father signed another blank check for you and said you could board us with it or do anything you thought best.

“Then mother took a lot of papers out of her bag, some stuff she had written and didn’t get suited with, and she stuffed them in the stove and set fire to them. Then we all went down to the lane to see father and mother off and when we got back the house was on fire. The chimney burned out.”

“Guess mother must have written some hot stuff,” said Emerald.

“It was burning so fast,” continued Ptolemy, “that we didn’t dast go in to save anything and all our food and clothes and balls and bats and fishing tackle are gone, and we didn’t know what to do, or what to eat, and so–we came here.”

“You did just right, Ptolemy,” I admitted. “I shouldn’t have called you down–not until I heard your story, anyway.”

I held out my hand, which he shook solemnly, but with an injured air.

“Do you mean to tell me,” asked Miss Frayne, “that your father and mother went away without seeing the baby?”

Ptolemy flushed a little.

“You see,” he explained apologetically, “mother gets woolly when she writes and she’s forgotten there’s Di. She thinks Demetrius is the youngest. She’s mad about writing. If she sees a blank paper anywhere, she ain’t happy until she has written something on it, and the sight of a pencil makes her fingers itch.”

“Take warning, Miss Frayne,” I said, “and don’t get too literary.”

“Some day,” resumed Ptolemy, “mother’ll get the antiques all out of her system and then she’ll remember us.”

I liked the boy’s defense of his mother, and I began to see that Rob was right in thinking there were possibilities in the lad, but it was Silvia’s influence that had developed them, for in the days when he borrowed soup plates of us, there had been no redeeming trait that I could discern.

And while I was recalling this, I heard Silvia saying to him kindly: “And in the meantime, I’ll be ‘mudder’ to you.”

“So will I,” chimed in Beth.

“I’ll be a big brother,” offered Rob.

“I’ll be next friend, Ptolemy,” I contributed.

Strange to say, my offer seemed to make the most impression on him. He came to me and gazed into my eyes earnestly.

“I’ll do just as you say,” he promised.

“Where do we’uns come in?” asked Pythagoras, with one of his satanic grins.

Miss Frayne saved the day.

“You all come in with me,” she said, “and have lunch. I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and I understand there is warm ginger cake and huckleberry pie. Aren’t you hungry?”

“You bet,” spoke up Pythagoras. “We only had coffee, peanuts, and beans down in the woods, and father ate the beans and drank all the coffee.”

“We’re out of the frying pan into the fire,” said Silvia woefully, when we were alone.

“I wish the Polydore parents had gone up in smoke,” I declared.

“Then your last hope of getting rid of the children would have gone up in smoke, too,” argued Beth.

“No; in case of the demise of their parents, we could have turned them over body and soul to the probate court,” I informed her.

“We will fill out this blank check for any amount, Lucien,” declared Silvia, “that will induce a housekeeper to take charge of their house. I shall keep Diogenes, though, until he is older.”

“I wouldn’t mind Ptolemy, either,” I admitted. “I shall be interested in seeing what I can make of him, and he hasn’t a bad influence over Diogenes, but I’ll be hanged if anything would induce me to have ‘Them Three’ Chessy cats running wild over us. They can live in their house alone, or be put in a reformatory. We won’t have them. We’re under no obligations, pecuniary or moral, to look after them.”

“I think, Lucien, we might as well go home now. We’ve had a good rest and a good time, and I am anxious to be back and see how Huldah is getting on.”

As Huldah had never mastered two of the three R’s, we had not been able to receive any reports from her.

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” proposed Beth. “Rob and I will take all the Polydores save Diogenes, and go home tomorrow and prepare the house and Huldah for the overflow. Then you two can come on with Diogenes the next day.”

“Good idea, Beth!” I approved. “I’d hate to face Huldah, unprepared, with the return of the Polydores en masse.”

“I am glad,” said Silvia, “that Huldah has been having a rest from them for a few days.”

Chapter XVII

All About Uncle Issachar’s Visit

The next morning’s stage carried seven passengers to Windy Creek, as Miss Frayne with a big roll of “copy” also took her departure.

Diogenes had been quite docile and amenable to my rule since the licking I gave him, so we had a pleasant and comfortable return journey on the following day.

“I hope, Lucien,” said Silvia, “you won’t refuse to cash this check for a good amount. The Polydore parents may never show up, and it’s only right we should be reimbursed for their keep.”

“I will cash it,” I assured her, “and use it for a housekeeper or else send the boys off to a school. I should like very much to have it out with Felix Polydore, but, as you suggest, I may never have the opportunity to see him at close range.”

Beth, Rob, and Ptolemy met us at the station.

“Where are ‘Them Three’?” I asked hopefully.

“Huldah is feeding them little pies hot from the kettle–the kind she cooks like doughnuts, you know.”

“Huldah cooking for ‘Them Three’!” I exclaimed. “She must have passed into her second childhood. She grudged them even an apple to piece on.”

“She has pampered them ever since our return,” said Rob.

“Poor Huldah! She must indeed be afflicted with softening of the brain,” I decided.

“She has probably been so lonely, shut in here by herself,” said Silvia, “that even ‘Them Three’ looked good to her.”

In the hallway Huldah met us. She was beaming with pleasure, but except in her bearing toward the children, she was quite normal.

“We’ve all had a real good rest,” she observed, “and you do look so well, Mrs. Wade. My! but this place has been lonesome. I’m glad we’re all together again.”

“Now, Silvia, shut your eyes,” directed Beth, “and come into the library. Ptolemy has bought you a present with the check his father gave him.”

“Beth helped me pick it out,” said Ptolemy.

Beth led the way into the library, and we followed.

“Open your eyes.”

Silvia gave a little cry of pleasure, and looking over her shoulder, I beheld a baby grand piano.

“Oh, Ptolemy!” she cried, giving him a fervent kiss and fond hug, “I can never let you do so much.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, flushing a little under the endearments which were doubtless the first ever bestowed upon him. “Father’s got a whole lot of money grandpa left him and it’s fixed so he can’t draw out only so much each year. He said the board and bother of us was worth more than this and we’ll all enjoy the music. But Thag and Em and Dem ain’t to touch it. I’ll knock tar out of the first one that comes near it.”

I was disconsolate. I didn’t see how we could return it and I didn’t want the Polydore web woven any tighter. To think of Silvia’s receiving from them what it had been my longing to give her! But as I was to learn later, she was to acquire much more than a piano from the eminent family.

After dinner Silvia asked Huldah to come in and hear the music, and when Silvia’s repertoire was exhausted, we gave our faithful servant all the little details of our trip which Beth had not supplied.

“Now tell us, Huldah, how things went along here,” said Silvia.

“Well, you think some wonderful things happened to you all on your trip mebby–ghosts and proposals,” looking at Beth and Rob, “and fires and Polydores, but back here in this quiet house something happened that has your ghosts and things skinned by a mile.”

“Oh, dear!” cried Silvia apprehensively, “what is it?”

“Break it very gently, Huldah,” I cautioned. “You know we’ve borne a good deal.”

“Your uncle Issachar was here for a couple of days.”

She certainly had made a sensation.

“Not Uncle Issachar! Not here?” exclaimed Silvia incredulously.

“Yes, ma’am. He came the next day after Beth and Mr. Rossiter and Polly left. I told him you’d gone away for a little vacation and rest. I didn’t let on that I knew where you had gone, because I didn’t want him straggling up there, too, or sending for you to come back. He said your absence would make no difference to his plans; that he never let nothing do that. He come to pay a visit and he should pay one.”

“Yes,” said Silvia feebly. “That sounds like Uncle Issachar.”

“I told him to make himself perfectly at home; that every one did that to this place, and he said he would. I’d just slicked up the big front room upstairs and I seen to it that he had everything all right. I cooked the best dinner I knew how, and he said it was the first white man’s meal he had eat since his ma died, so I found out what she used to cook and fed him on it. Them three kids and him eat like they was holler. I guess if Polly hadn’t took them away your grocery bill would ’a looked like Barb’ry Allen’s grave.

“Well, as I was saying, your uncle he eat till he got over his grouches, and like enough he’d be here eating yet, if he hadn’t got a telegraph to hit the line for home, some big business deal, he said, and I guess it was a great deal, for he licked his chops and smacked his lips over it, and he give me a ten dollar bill to get a new dress and each of Them Three one dollar fer candy.”

“The old tightwad!” I exclaimed. “It was your cooking, sure, that made him loosen up that way.”

“Tightwad nothing!” she declared indignantly. “You won’t think he was tight-wadded when you read this here letter he left for you. He told me what was in it, and I’ve just been busting to tell it to Beth, but I waited for you to know it first.”

With great excitement Silvia opened the letter, read it, gasped, re-read it, and then in consternation handed it to me.

“Read it aloud, Lucien,” she bade. “Maybe I can believe it then.”

This was the letter.

“My dear Niece:

“I was sorry not to see you, but glad to learn that, as every wise and good woman should do, you are raising a fine family–a family of sons, which is what our country most needs. Your son Pythagoras informed me that you had taken your oldest child, Ptolemy, and your youngest, Diogenes, with you, I am glad you left three such promising samples for me to see.

“As you have five sons, I have, agreeable to my promise, placed in your name in the First National Bank of your city the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars.

“Your affectionate uncle,“Issachar Innes.”

“Huldah,” I asked, “did you tell him the Polydores were our children?”

“Me?” she repeated indignantly. “Me tell a lie like that! No; I didn’t get no chance to tell him anything about them. ‘Them Three’ done the telling. The first thing that one”–pointing to Pythagoras–“said was, ‘Mudder went away and took the baby, Diogenes, with her.’ And then that next one”–indicating Emerald–“said: ‘Yes, and our oldest brother, Ptolemy, went on with Beth to see them.’

“The old gent asked them all their names and ages and he was so pleased and said he thought it was just fine for you to raise five sons, so I didn’t have no heart to tell him no different. ‘Twan’t none of my business anyhow. Then ‘Them Three’ kept talking about stepdaddy, and your Uncle Issachar asks ‘Who the devil is he? Did my niece marry again?’ And I told him as how Mr. Wade was all the husband you ever had, and that stepdaddy was nothing but a sort of pet-name the kids had give Mr. Wade.”

“I told him,” said Demetrius, “that stepdaddy was cross to us sometimes and not as nice as mudder, and he said–”

“You shut up,” commanded Huldah quickly, “and let me talk.”

“No,” I intercepted, “I’d really be interested in hearing what he told Uncle Issachar. What was it, Demetrius, that your great-uncle said to you?”

“He said,” stated the imp, darting his tongue out in triumph at his victory over Huldah, “that he always thought you was a stiff.”

“He didn’t say nothing of the kind!” declared Huldah. “He said you was stiff-necked, and that he presumed you would act more like a stepfather than the real thing. Well, as I was saying, he asked their names, and he liked them fine. Said they were so classy.”

“Didn’t he say classic, Huldah?” inquired Rob.

“Mebby. What’s the difference?” snapped Huldah.

“None,” I assured her quickly, dodging a definition.

“She told him–” began Emerald.

“You shut up,” again adjured Huldah, “or I’ll never bake you one of those small pies no more.”

“Oh, please, Huldah,” I coaxed. “Let us hear everything. I’ve always told you my life’s secrets, and I don’t mind what you or the boys told him.”

“Well, I suppose what he was going to tattle was that I thought the old gent might feel hurt, ’cause none of them was named after him, so I told him Polly’s middle name was Issachar.”

“Why, Huldah,” remonstrated Silvia.

“Well, he’s always wanted a middle name, and he’s never been baptized, so you can stick it in and have him ducked next Sunday and then that will square that. ‘Them Three’ stuck to him like a hive of bees, and I was scairt for fear they’d let the cat out of the bag, and so long as they had put it in, I thought it might just as well stay in, but they were just as slick as grease in all they said. They’ll hang in that rogues’ gallery yet.”

“I suppose they were pretty–strenuous,” said Silvia with a sigh.

“They was more than that. The first afternoon right after dinner when he was sitting on the front porch, sleeping peaceful and snoring, that there one–” pointing to Pythagoras–

“Tattle-tale!” he began, but I administered a cuff and he subsided into surprised silence.

“He,” said Huldah, looking pleased at this little attention to the boy, “went to the front window and dropped a young kitten down on the old gent’s head. It clawed something fierce. We had just got things going smooth again when Emmy got one of his earaches. I roasted an onion and put in his ear, and what did he do but take it out of his ear and slip it down your poor uncle’s back.”

“Why didn’t you beat them?” I asked indignantly.

“Because the old gent did that. He put ’em across his knee, and believe me, it was some licking they caught. They didn’t let out a whimper and that pleased him.”

“Huh!” said Emerald. “Thag don’t know how to cry. He hasn’t got any tears, and old Uncle Iz didn’t hurt me, because, you see, when I heard Thag getting his, I went and stuffed the Declaration of Independence, that book of stepdaddy’s that Demetrius tore the pictures out of, in my pants.”

“Go on!” urged Rob delightedly. “What else did you all do? Uncle must have had some time. It would make a fine scenario. ‘The first visit of the rich uncle.’”

“Well,” resumed Huldah. “One of ’em put red pepper in the old man’s bed, and he like to sneeze his head off, but he said as how sneezing was healthy, and showed you’d got rid of a cold.”

“He never got on to the pepper,” said Demetrius gleefully.

“In the morning, that second one put a toad in his new uncle’s pocket, and Emmy broke his specs. Then Meetie he dropped his watch. They used his razor to cut the lawn with. And then they took him down to the creek to go fishing, and they put the fish in Uncle’s silk hat, and and–”

“Stop!” implored Silvia, who was now in tears. “Uncle Issachar believes them mine! Ours! And that I brought them up! Oh, why did we ever go away?”

“Oh, pshaw,” exclaimed Huldah comfortingly, “he said you had brung them up fine; that they were no mollycoddles or Lizzie boys, and he didn’t suppose you had so much sense as to leave them natural.”

“A left-handed one for mudder,” laughed Beth.

“He must be a very peculiar man–ready for the asylum, I should say,” commented Rob.

“He would have been if he’d stayed any longer, or else I would have been,” declared Huldah.

“Couldn’t you make them behave, someway?” asked Silvia.

“Well, at first I tried to, and every time I pinched one of ’em when the old gent wasn’t looking, or knocked ’em down when I got ’em alone, they would threaten to tell who they was, and then when I seen how your uncle liked the way they acted, I just let ’em go it, head on. And seeing as how they each brung you five thousand, I’ve treated ’em best I know how. They’re worth it, now. They done one thing more that was awful. Could you stand it to hear?” turning to Silvia.

“Please, Silvia,” implored Rob.

“Well,” argued Silvia faintly. “I suppose we might as well know the worst.”

“You see the old gent didn’t always get up to breakfast with the kids and one morning when I brought in the cakes Emmy looked up and grinned. I nearly dropped the plate. He had both sets of the old man’s false teeth in his mouth. I got ’em back in his room without his waking, but I’d have liked a picture of Emmy.”

“Pythagoras,” I demanded, when we had recovered from this recital, “why didn’t you tell him who you were, and how you all came to be here with us?”

“Because she is our mudder, and we are going to stay with her, always. We’ve got a snap. So has father and mother. And Ptolemy told us that if you ever got any kids, you’d get five thousand each for them, and I thought we’d just make that much for you. So we played Uncle Iz for it. Easy money, all right, all right.”

“Talk about fine financiering,” quoth Rob. “‘Them Three’ will surely land on Wall Street.”

But poor Silvia had no heart for humor and was weeping silently.

“Why, look here, my dear,” I said in consolation, “this is a very simple matter to adjust. In the morning when you feel better, just write a full explanation of the affair and inclose your check for twenty-five thousand.”

Silvia quickly wiped away her tears.

“I’ll do it tonight, Lucien. I feel better now. I never thought of writing.”

Huldah and “Them Three” looked most lugubrious.

“The old skinflint won’t miss it as much as I would a penny,” declared our faithful handmaiden. “And I’m sure you’ve earnt that twenty-five thousand if anyone ever did. You’ve had as much care and worry about them brats as you would if they’d been your own.”

“Huldah,” I said severely, “there is a pretty stiff penalty for obtaining money under false pretences.”

“After all the pains we took to make things lively for him, so he wouldn’t get bored and think he was having a poor time!” regretted Pythagoras.

“And us watching every word we spoke so as not to give it away,” wailed Emerald.

“Cake’s all dough,” muttered Demetrius.

Ptolemy regarded the three disapprovingly. He had the old inscrutable look, the look that foreboded mischief, in his eyes.