Mr. Downing, who hated to be disturbed before eight, arrived at ten o'clock; and, with an expert carpenter, made a thorough examination of the house, which the rain had certainly not improved.

"It will take three hundred--possibly four hundred dollars," said the carpenter, who had been making a great many figures in a worn little note-book, "to make this place habitable. It needs a new roof, new chimneys, new floors, a new foundation, new plumbing, new plaster--in short, just about _everything_ except the four outside walls. Then there are no lights and no heating plant, which of course would be extra. It's probably one of the oldest houses in town. What's it renting for?"

"Ten dollars a month."

"It isn't worth it. Half that money would be a high price. Even if it were placed in good repair it would be six years at least before you could expect to get the money expended on repairs back in rent. The only thing to do is to tear it down and build a larger and more modern house that will bring a better rent, for there's no money in a ten-dollar house on a lot of this size--the taxes eat all the profits."

"Well," said Mr. Downing, "this house certainly looked far more comfortable when I saw it the other day than it does now. Those children must have had the defects very well concealed. They deceived me completely."

"They deceived us all," said Mrs. Milligan, resentfully. "Half of our furniture is ruined. Look at that sofa!"

Mr. Downing looked. The drenched old-gold plush sofa certainly looked very much like a half-drowned Jersey calf.

"Of course," continued Mrs. Milligan, sharply, "we expect to have our losses made good. Then we've had all our trouble for nothing, too. Of course we can't stay here--the place isn't fit for pigs. I suppose the best thing _we_ can do is to move right back into our own house."

"Ye-es," said Mr. Milligan, overlooking the fact that Mrs. Milligan had inadvertently called her family pigs, "it certainly looks like the best thing to do. I'll go and tell the Knapps that they'll have to move out at once--we can't spend another night under this roof."

The Knapps, however, proved disobliging and flatly declined to move a second time. The Milligans had begged them to take the house off their hands, and they had signed a contract. Moreover, it was just the kind of house the Knapps had long been looking for, and now that they were moved, more than half settled, and altogether satisfied with their part of the bargain, they politely but firmly announced their intention of staying where they were until the lease should expire.

There was nothing the former tenants could do about it. They were homeless and quite as helpless as the four little girls had been in similar circumstances; and they made a far greater fuss about it. By this they gained, however, nothing but the disapproval of everybody concerned; so, finally, the Milligans, disgusted with Dandelion Cottage, with Mr. Downing, and for once even a little bit with themselves, dejectedly hunted up a new home in a far less pleasant neighborhood, and moved hurriedly out of Dandelion Cottage--and, except for the memories they left behind them, out of the story.

CHAPTER 18

A Hurried Retreat

The girls, of course, had been barred out while all these exciting latest events were taking place in their dear cottage; but Marjory, who lived next door to it, had seen something of the Milligans' hasty exit and had guessed at part of the truth. Mrs. Knapp, who seemed a pleasant, likable little woman, in spite of her unwillingness to accommodate her new landlord, unknowingly confirmed their suspicions when she told her friend Mrs. Crane about it; for Mrs. Crane, in her turn, told the news to the four little housekeepers the next morning as they sat homeless and forlorn on her doorstep. It was always Mrs. Crane to whom the Dandelion Cottagers turned whenever they were in need of consolation and, as in this case, consolation was usually forthcoming.

The girls, in their excitement at hearing the news about their late possession, did not notice that sympathetic Mrs. Crane looked tired and worried as she sat, in the big red rocking chair on her porch, peeling potatoes.

"Oh!" squealed Mabel, from the broad arm of Mrs. Crane's chair, "I'm glad! I'm glad! I'm glad!"

"I can't help being a little bit glad, too," said fair-minded Jean. "I suppose it wasn't very pleasant for the Milligans, but I guess they deserved all they got."

"They deserved a great deal more," said Marjory, resentfully. "Think of these last awful days!"

"If they'd had _much_ more," said Mrs. Crane, "they'd have been drowned.

Why, children! the place was just flooded."

"I'm ashamed to tell of it," said Bettie, "but I'm awfully afraid that our boys took off part of the pieces of tin that they nailed on the roof last spring. I heard them doing _something_ up there the night we moved; but Bob only grinned when I asked him about it."

"Good for the boys!" cried Marjory, gleefully. "I wouldn't be unladylike enough to set traps for the Milligans myself, but I can't help feeling glad that somebody else did."

"It was Bob's own tin," giggled delighted Mabel, almost tumbling into Mrs. Crane's potato pan in her joy. "I guess he had a right to take it home if he wanted to."

"Anyway," said Jean, from her perch on the porch railing, "I'm glad they're gone."

"But it doesn't do _us_ any good," sighed Bettie. "And the summer's just flying."

"Yes, it does," insisted Jean. "We _can_ stand having the cottage empty--we can pretend, you know, that it's an enchanted castle that can be opened only by a certain magic key that--"

"Somebody's baby has swallowed," shrieked Mabel, the matter-of-fact.

"Mercy no, goosie," said Marjory. "She means a magic word that nobody can remember."

"That's it," said Jean. "Of course we couldn't do even that with the cottage full of Milligans."

"No," assented Marjory, "the most active imagination would refuse to activate--"

"To _what_?" gasped Mabel.

"To work," explained Marjory.

"I should say so," agreed Mabel, again threatening the potatoes. "It was just as much as I could do to come over here this morning to breathe the same air with that cottage with those folks in it staring me in the face, but now--"

"After all," sighed Bettie, sorrowfully, from the other arm of Mrs.

Crane's big chair, "having the Milligans out of the cottage doesn't make _much_ difference, as long as we're out, too. Oh, I _did_ love that little house so. I just hated to think of cold weather coming to drive us out; but I never dreamed of anything so dreadful as having to leave it right in this lovely warm weather."

"If Mr. Black had stayed in town," said Mabel, feelingly, "we'd be dusting that darling cottage this very minute."

Mrs. Crane sniffed in the odd way she always did whenever Mr. Black's name was mentioned. This scornful sniff, accompanying Mrs. Crane's evident disapproval of their dearest friend, was the only thing that the girls disliked about Mrs. Crane.

"I _know_ you'd like Mr. Black if you only knew him," said Bettie, earnestly. "In some ways you're a good deal like him. You're both the same color, your eyebrows turn up the same way at the outside corners, and you both like us. Mr. Black has a beautiful soul."

"Indeed," said Mrs. Crane. "And haven't I a beautiful soul too?"

"Why, of course," said Bettie, leaning down to rub her cheek against Mrs. Crane's. "I meant _both_ of you. We like you both just the same."

"Only it's different," explained Jean. "Mr. Black doesn't need us, and sometimes you do. We _like_ to do things for you."

"I'm glad of that," said Mrs. Crane, "for I need you this very minute.

But don't you be too sure about his not needing you as well. He must lead a pretty lonely life, because it's years since his wife died. I never heard of anybody else liking her, but I guess _he_ did. He's one of the faithful kind, maybe, for he's lived all alone in that great big house ever since. I guess it does him good to have you little girls for friends."

"What was his wife like?" asked Mabel, eagerly. "Did you use to know her?"

"No, indeed," said Mrs. Crane, again giving the objectionable sniff.

"That is, not so very well--a little light-headed, useless thing, no more fit to keep house--but there! there. It doesn't make any difference _now_, and I've learned that it isn't the best housekeepers that get married easiest. If it was, I wouldn't be so worried _now_."

"Is anything the matter?" asked Jean, quick to note the distress in Mrs.

Crane's voice.

"Yes," returned the good woman, "there are two things the matter."

"Your poor foot?" queried Bettie, instantly all sympathy.

"No, the foot's all right. It's Mr. Barlow and my eyes. Mr. Barlow is going to be married to a young lady he's been writing to for a long time, and I'm going to lose him because he wants to keep house. It won't be easy to find another lodger for that little, shabby, old-fashioned room. I'm trying to make a new rag carpet for it, but I'm all at a standstill because I can't see to thread my needle. I declare, I don't know what is going to become of me."