"I promised not to talk about it," said Jean, "and I won't."

Miss Blossom had been gone only two days when something happened to Mrs.

Crane. It was none of the things that the neighbors had expected to happen, but for a little while it looked almost as serious. Bettie, running across the street right after breakfast one morning, with a bunch of fresh chickweed for the yellow canary and a cracker for cross Polly, found Mrs. Crane, usually the most cheerful person imaginable, sitting in her kitchen with a swollen, crimson foot in a pail of lukewarm water, and groaning dismally.

"Oh, Mrs. Crane!" cried surprised Bettie. "What in the world is the matter? Are--are you coming down with anything?"

"I've already come," moaned Mrs. Crane, grimly. "I was out in my back yard in my thin old slippers early this morning putting hellebore on my currant bushes, and I stepped down hard on the teeth of the rake that I'd dropped on the grass. There's two great holes in my foot. How I'm ever going to do things I don't know, for 'twas all I could do to crawl into the house on my hands and knees."

"Isn't there something I can do for you?" asked Bettie, sympathetically.

"Could you get a stick of wood from the shed and make me a cup of tea?

Maybe I'd feel braver if I wasn't so empty."

"Of course I could," said Bettie, cheerily.

"I tell you what it is," confided Mrs. Crane. "It's real nice and independent living all alone as long as you're strong and well, but just the minute anything happens, there you are like a Robinson Crusoe, cast away on a desert isle. I began to think nobody would _ever_ come."

"Can't I do something more for you?" asked Bettie, poking scraps of paper under the kettle to bring it to a boil. "Don't you want Dr.

Bennett to look at your foot? Hadn't I better get him?"

"Yes, do," said Mrs. Crane, "and then come back. I can't bear to think of staying here alone."

For the next four days there was a deep depression in the middle of Mrs.

Crane's puffy feather bed, for the injured foot was badly swollen and Mrs. Crane was far too heavy to go hopping about on the other one. At first, her usually hopeful countenance wore a strained, anxious expression, quite pathetic to see.

"Now don't you worry one bit," said comforting little Bettie. "We'll take turns staying with you; we'll feed Polly and Dicksy, and I believe every friend you have is going to offer to make broth. Mother's making some this minute."

"But there's the lodgers," groaned Mrs. Crane, "both as particular as a pair of old maids in a glass case. Mr. Barlow wants his bedclothes tucked in all around so tight that a body'd think he was afraid of rolling out of bed nights, and Mr. Bailey won't have his tucked in at all--says he likes 'em 'floating round loose and airy.' Do you suppose you girls can make those two beds and not get those two lodgers mixed up? I declare, I'm so absent-minded myself that I've had to climb those narrow stairs many a day to make sure I'd done it right."

"Don't be afraid," said Jean, who had joined Bettie. "Marjory's Aunty Jane has taught her to make beds beautifully, and I have a good memory.

Between us we'll manage splendidly."

"But there's my garden," mourned the usually busy woman, who found it hard to lie still with folded hands in a world that seemed to be constantly needing her. "Dear me! I don't see how I'm going to spare myself for a whole week just when everything is growing so fast."

"We'll tend to the garden, too," promised Bettie.

"Yes, indeed we will," echoed Mabel. "We'll water everything and weed--"

"No, you won't," said Mrs. Crane, quickly. "You can do all the watering you like, but if I catch any of you weeding, there'll be trouble."

The young cottagers were even better than their promises, for they took excellent care of Mrs. Crane, the lodgers, the parrot, the canary, and the garden, until the injured foot was well again; but while doing all this they learned something that distressed them very much, indeed. Of course they had always known in a general way that their friend was far from being wealthy, but they had not guessed how touchingly poor she really was. But now they saw that her cupboard was very scantily filled, that her clothing was very much patched and mended, her shoes distressingly worn out, and that even her dish-towels were neatly darned.

"But we won't talk about it to people," said fine-minded Jean. "Perhaps she wouldn't like to have everybody know."

Even Jean, however, did not guess what a comfort proud Mrs. Crane had found it to have her warm-hearted little friends stand between her poverty and the sometimes-too-prying eyes of a grown-up world.

Unobservant though they had seemed, the girls did not forget about the Mother-Hubbardlike state of Mrs. Crane's cupboard. After that one of their finest castles in Spain always had Mrs. Crane, who would have made such a delightful mother and who had never had any children, enthroned as its gracious mistress. When they had time to think about it at all, it always grieved them to think of their generous-natured, no-longer-young friend dreading a poverty-stricken, loveless, and perhaps homeless old age; for this, they had discovered, was precisely what Mrs. Crane was doing.

"If she were a little, thin, active old lady, with bobbing white curls like Grandma Pike," said Jean, "lots of people would have a corner for her; but poor Mrs. Crane takes up so much room and is so heavy and slow that she's going to be hard to take care of when she gets old. Oh, _why_ couldn't she have had just one strong, kind son to take care of her?"

"When I'm married," offered Mabel, generously, "I'll take her to live with me. I won't _have_ any husband if he doesn't promise to take Mrs.

Crane, too."

"You shan't have her," declared Jean. "I want her myself."

"She's already promised to me," said Bettie, triumphantly. "We're going to keep house together some place, and I'm going to be an old-maid kindergarten teacher."

"I don't think that's fair, Bettie Tucker," said Marjory, earnestly. "I don't see how my children are to have any grandmother if she doesn't live with _me_. Imagine the poor little things with Aunty Jane for a grandmother!"

CHAPTER 10

The Milligans

To the moment of Grandma Pike's departure, all their neighbors had been so pleasant that the girls were deceived into thinking that neighbors were never anything _but_ pleasant. Although they felt not the slightest misgiving as to their future neighbors, they had hated to lose dear old Grandma Pike, who had always been as good to them as if she had really been their grandmother, and whose parting gifts--sundry odds and ends of dishes, old magazines, and broken parcels of provisions--gave them occupation for many delightful days. In spite of the lasting pleasure of this unexpected donation, however, they could not help feeling that, with Mr. Black away, Miss Blossom gone, Mrs. Pike living in another town, and only disabled Mrs. Crane left, they were losing friends with alarming rapidity. Grief for the departed, however, did not prevent their taking an active interest in the persons who were to occupy the house next door, which Mrs. Pike's departure had left vacant.

"I wonder," said Marjory, pulling the curtain back to get a better view of the empty house, "what the new people will be like. It's exciting, isn't it, to have something happening in this quiet neighborhood? What did Grandma Pike say the name was?"

"Milligan," replied Bettie.

"Kind of nice name, isn't it?" asked Jean.

"Yes," agreed Mabel, brightening suddenly. "I made up a long, long rhyme about it last night before I went to sleep. Want to hear it?"

"Of course."

"This one really rhymes," explained Mabel, importantly. Her verses sometimes lacked that desirable quality, so when they did rhyme Mabel always liked to mention it. "Here it is:

"As soon as a man named Milligan Got well he always fell ill again--ill again--ill--

"Dear me, I can't remember how it went. There was a lot more, but I've forgotten the rest."

"It's a great pity," said Marjory, drily, "that you didn't forget _all_ of it, because if there's really a Mr. Milligan, and I ever see him, I'll think of that rhyme and I won't be able to keep my face straight."

"We must be very polite to the Milligans," said considerate Bettie, "and call on them as soon as they come. Mother always calls on new people; she says it makes folks feel more comfortable to be welcomed into the neighborhood."

"Mrs. Crane does it, too. We're the nearest, perhaps we ought to be the first."

"I think," suggested Jean thoughtfully, "we'd better wait until they're nicely settled; they might not like visitors too soon. You know _we_ didn't."

"They're going to move in today," said Mabel. "Goodness! I wish they'd hurry and come; I'm so excited that I keep dusting the same shelf over and over again. I'm just wild to see them!"

It was sweeping-day at the cottage when the Milligans' furniture began to arrive, but it looked very much as if the sweeping would last for at least _two_ days because the girls were unable to get very far away from the windows that faced west. These were the bedroom windows, and, as there were only two of them, there were usually two heads at each window.

"There comes the first load," announced Marjory, at last. "There's a high-chair on the very top, so there must be a baby."