"Because I'm going to Washington tonight by the six o'clock train and I shall be gone a whole month--perhaps longer."

"Oh, dear," cried Bettie, "we just _couldn't_ have you tonight. We're papering the dining-room, and besides we haven't a single thing to eat but some stale cake that Mrs. Pike gave us."

"I strongly suspect," said Mr. Black, smiling over Bettie's head at Mr.

Blossom, "that you don't really _want_ me to dinner."

"Oh, we do, we do," assured Bettie, earnestly, "but we just _can't_ have company tonight. If you'll just let us know exactly when you're coming home, you'll find a beautiful dinner ready for you."

"All right," said Mr. Black, "I'll telegraph. I'll say: 'My dear Miss Bettykins, of Dandelion Cottage: It will give me great pleasure to dine with you tomorrow--or would you rather have me say the day after tomorrow?--evening. Yours most devotedly and-so-forth.'"

"Yes, yes," cried Bettie, "that will be all right, but you must give us three days to get ready in."

After all, however, it was Mabel that sent the telegram, and it was a very different one.

CHAPTER 9

Changes and Plans

When the little dining-room was finished it was quite the prettiest room in the house, for the friendly Blossoms had painted the battered woodwork a delicate green to match the leaves in the paper; and by mixing what was left of the green paint with the remaining color left from the sideboard, clever Miss Blossom obtained a shade that was exactly right for as much of the floor as the rug did not cover. Of course all the neighbors and all the girls' relatives had to come in afterwards to see what Bettie called "the very dandelioniest room in Dandelion Cottage."

It seemed to the girls that the time fairly galloped from Monday to Thursday. They were heartily sorry when the moment came for them to lose their pleasant lodger. They went to the train to see the last of her and to assure her for the thousandth time that they should never forget her.

Mabel sobbed audibly at the moment of parting, and large tears were rolling down silent Bettie's cheeks. Even the seven dollars and fifty cents that the girls had handled with such delight that morning paled into insignificance beside the fact that the train was actually whisking their beloved Miss Blossom away from them. When she had paid for her lodging she advised her four landladies to deposit the money in the bank until time for the dinner party, and the girls did so, but even the importance of owning a bank account failed to console them for their loss. The train out of sight, the sober little procession wended its way to Dandelion Cottage but the cozy little house seemed strangely silent and deserted when Bettie unlocked the door. Mabel, who had wept stormily all the way home, sat down heavily on the doorstep and wept afresh.

Pinned to a pillow on the parlor couch, Jean discovered a little folded square of paper addressed to Bettie, who was drumming a sad little tune on the window pane.

"Why, Bettie," cried Jean, "this looks like a note for you from Miss Blossom! Do read it and tell us what she says."

"It says," read Bettie: "'My dearest of Betties: Thank you for being so nice to me. There's a telephone message for you.'"

"I wonder what it means," said Marjory.

Bettie ran to the talkless telephone, slipped her hand inside the little door at the top, and found a small square parcel wrapped in tissue paper, tied with a pink ribbon, and addressed to Miss Bettie Tucker, Dandelion Cottage. Bettie hastily undid the wrappings and squealed with delight when she saw the lovely little handkerchief, bordered delicately with lace, that Miss Blossom herself had made for her. There was a daintily embroidered "B" in the corner to make it Bettie's very own.

Marjory happened upon Jean's note peeping out from under a book on the parlor table. It said: "Dear Jean: Don't you think it's time for you to look at the kitchen clock?"

Of course everybody rushed to the kitchen to see Jean take from inside the case of the tickless clock a lovely handkerchief just like Bettie's except that it was marked with "J."

Marjory's note, which she presently found growing on the crimson petunia, sent her flying to the grindless coffee-mill, where she too found a similar gift.

"Well," said Mabel, who was now fairly cheerful, "I wonder if she forgot all about _me_."

For several anxious moments the girls searched eagerly in Mabel's behalf but no note was visible.

"I can't think where it could be," said housewifely Jean, stooping to pick up a bit of string from the dining-room rug, and winding it into a little ball. "I've looked in every room and--Why! what a long string! I wonder where it's all coming from."

"Under the rug," said Marjory, making a dive for the bit of paper that dangled from the end of the string. "Here's your note, Mabel."

"I think," Miss Blossom had written, "that there must be a mouse in the pantry mousetrap by this time."

"Yes!" shouted Mabel, a moment later. "A lovely lace-edged mouse with an 'M' on it--no, it's 'M B'--a really truly monogram, the very first monogram I ever had."

"Why, so it is," said Marjory. "I suppose she did that so we could tell them apart, because if she'd put M on both of them we wouldn't have known which was which."

"Why," cried Jean, "it's nearly an hour since the train left. Wasn't it sweet of her to think of keeping us interested so we shouldn't be quite so lonesome?"

"Yes," said Bettie, "it was even nicer than our lovely presents, but it was just like her."

"Oh, dear," said Mabel, again on the verge of tears, "I wish she might have stayed forever. What's the use of getting lovely new friends if you have to go and lose them the very next minute? She was just the nicest grown-up little girl there ever was, and I'll never see--see her any--"

"Look out, Mabel," warned Marjory, "if you cry on that handkerchief you'll spoil that monogram. Miss Blossom didn't intend these for crying-handkerchiefs--one good-sized tear would soak them."

Miss Blossom was not the only friend the girls were fated to lose that week. Grandma Pike, as everybody called the pleasant little old lady, was their next-door neighbor on the west side, and the cottagers were very fond of her. No one dreamed that Mrs. Pike would ever think of going to another town to live; but about ten days before Miss Blossom departed, the cheery old lady had quite taken everybody's breath away by announcing that she was going west, just as soon as she could get her things packed, to live with her married daughter.

When the girls heard that Grandma Pike was going away they were very much surprised and not at all pleased at the idea of losing one of their most delightful neighbors. At Miss Blossom's suggestion, they had spent several evenings working on a parting gift for their elderly friend. The gift, a wonderful linen traveling case with places in it to carry everything a traveler would be likely to need, was finished at last--with so many persons working on it, it was hard to keep all the pieces together--and the girls carried it to Grandma Pike, who seemed very much pleased.

"Well, well," said the delighted old lady, unrolling the parcel, "if you haven't gone and made me a grand slipper-bag! I'll think of you, now, every time I put on my slippers."

"No, no," protested Jean. "It's a traveling case with places in it for 'most everything _but_ slippers."

"We all sewed on it," explained Mabel. "Those little bits of stitches that you can't see at all are Bettie's. Jean did all this feather-stitching, and Marjory hemmed all the binding. Miss Blossom basted it together so it wouldn't be crooked."

"What did _you_ do, Mabel?" asked Grandma Pike, smiling over her spectacles.

"I took out the basting threads and embroidered these letters on the pockets."

"What does this 'P' stand for?"

"Pins," said Mabel. "You see it was sort of an accident. I started to embroider the word soap on this little pocket, but when I got the S O A done, there wasn't any room left for the P, so I just put it on the _next_ pocket. I knew that if I explained that it was the end of 'Soap'

and the beginning of 'Pins' you'd remember not to get your pins and soap mixed up."

During the lonely days immediately following Miss Blossom's departure, Mrs. Bartholomew Crane proved a great solace. The girls had somewhat neglected her during the preceding busy weeks; but with Miss Blossom gone, the cottagers became conscious of an aching void that new wall paper and lace handkerchiefs and a bank account could not quite fill; so presently they resumed their former habit of trotting across the street many times a day to visit good-natured Mrs. Crane.

Mrs. Crane's house was very small and looked rather gloomy from the outside because the paint had long ago peeled off and the weatherbeaten boards had grown black with age; but inside it was cheerfulness personified. First, there was Mrs. Crane herself, fairly radiating comfort. Then there was a bright rag carpet on the floor, a glowing red cloth on the little table, a lively yellow canary named Dicksy in one window, and a gorgeous red-and-crimson but very bad-tempered parrot in the other. There were only three rooms downstairs and two bed-chambers upstairs. Mrs. Crane's own room opened off the little parlor, and visitors could see the high feather bed always as smooth and rounded on top as one of Mrs. Crane's big loaves of light bread. The privileged girls were never tired of examining the good woman's patchwork quilts, made many years ago of minute, quaint, old-fashioned scraps of calico.

Even the garden seemed to differ from other gardens, for every inch of it except the patch of green grass under the solitary cherry tree was given over to flowers, many of them as quaint and old-fashioned as the bits of calico in the quilts, and to vegetables that ripened a week earlier for Mrs. Crane than similar varieties did for anyone else. Yet the garden was so little, and the variety so great, that Mrs. Crane never had enough of any one thing to sell. She owned her little home, but very little else. The two upstairs rooms were rented to lodgers, and she knitted stockings and mittens to sell because she could knit without using her eyes, which, like so many soft, bright, black eyes, were far from strong; but the little income so gained was barely enough to keep stout, warm-hearted, overgenerous Mrs. Crane supplied with food and fuel. The neighbors often wondered what would become of the good, lonely woman if she lost her lodgers, if her eyes failed completely, or if she should fall ill. Everybody agreed that Mrs. Crane should have been a wealthy woman instead of a poor one, because she would undoubtedly have done so much good with her money. Mabel had heard her father say that there was a good-sized mortgage on the place, and Dr. Bennett had instantly added: "Now, don't you say anything about that, Mabel." But ever after that, Mabel had kept her eyes open during her visits to Mrs.

Crane, hoping to get a glimpse of the dreadful large-sized thing that was not to be mentioned.

On one occasion she thought she saw light. Mrs. Crane had expressed a fear that a wandering polecat had made a home under her woodshed.

"Is mortgage another name for polecat?" Mabel had asked a little later.

"No," imaginative Jean had replied. "A mortgage is more like a great, lean, hungry, gray wolf waiting just around the corner to eat you up.

Don't ever use the word before Mrs. Crane; she has one."

"Where does she keep it?" demanded Mabel, agog with interest.