"When I grow up," said Bettie, "you shall live with me."

"But what am I to do while I'm waiting for you to grow up?" asked Mrs.

Crane, smiling at Bettie's protecting manner.

"Let us be your eyes," suggested Jean. "Couldn't we thread about a million needles for you? Don't you think a million would last all day?"

"I should think it might," said Mrs. Crane, somewhat comforted. "I haven't quite a million, but if Marjory will get my cushion and a spool of cotton I'll be very glad to have you thread all I have."

The girls worked in silence for fully five minutes. Then Mabel jabbed the solitary needle she had threaded into the sawdust cushion and said:

"Don't you suppose Mr. Downing might let us have the cottage _now_, if we went to him? Nobody else seems to care about it. What do you think, Mrs. Crane?"

"Why, my dear, I suppose it wouldn't do any harm to ask. You'd better see what your own people think about it."

"Let's go ask them now," cried impetuous Mabel, springing to her feet.

Forgetting all about the needles and without waiting to say good-by to Mrs. Crane, the eager girl made a diagonal rush for the corner nearest her own home.

The others remained long enough to thread all the needles. Then they, too, went home with the news about the cottage and about Mrs. Crane.

They were realizing, for the first time, that their good friend might become helpless long before they were ready to use her as a grandmother for their children, but they couldn't see just what was to be done about it. The idea of going to Mr. Downing, however, soon drove every other thought away, for the parents and Aunty Jane, too, advised them to ask.

They even encouraged them.

But when Jean and Bettie, hopefully dressed in their Sunday-best, and Marjory and Mabel, with their abundant locks elaborately curled besides, presented themselves and their request at Mr. Downing's house that evening, they were not at all encouraged by their reception.

Mr. Downing, a man of moods, had just come off second-best in an encounter with Mrs. Milligan, whom he had accidentally met on his way home to dinner, and, at the moment the girls appeared, the cottage was just about the last subject that the badgered man cared to discuss.

Before Jean had fairly stated her errand, the enraged Mr. Downing roared "_No!_" so emphatically that his four alarmed visitors backed hurriedly off the Downing porch and fled as one girl. Mabel, to be sure, measured her length in the canna bed near the gate, but she scrambled up, snorting with fright and indignation, and none of them paused again in their flight until Jean's door, which seemed safest, had closed behind them.

CHAPTER 19

The Response to Mabel's Telegram

The night of their flitting from Dandelion Cottage, the girls had hastily eaten all the radishes in the cottage garden to prevent their falling into the hands of the grasping Milligans. Now, the morning after their visit to Mr. Downing, they were wishing that they hadn't; not because the radishes had disagreed with them, but for quite a different reason. They could not enter the cottage, of course, but it had occurred to them that it might be possible to derive a certain melancholy satisfaction from tending and replenishing the little garden.

That pleasure, at least, had not been forbidden them; but before beginning active operations, they took the precaution of enlarging the hole in the back fence, so that instantaneous flight would be possible in case Mr. Downing should stroll cottageward.

Their motive was good. When Mr. Black returned, if he ever should, Bettie meant that he should find the little yard in perfect order.

"We'll keep to our part of the bargain, anyway," said Bettie, as the four girls were making their first cautious tour of inspection about the cottage yard. "There's lots of work to be done."

"Yes," agreed Jean. "We said we'd keep this yard nice all summer, and it wouldn't be right not to do it."

"I wonder if we ought to ask Mr. Downing?" asked conscientious Bettie, stooping to pull off some gone-to-seed pansies.

"Perhaps you'd like the job!" suggested Marjory, with mild sarcasm.

"My sakes!" said Mabel. "I wouldn't go near that man again if I was going to swallow an automobile the next moment if I didn't. I could hear him roar '_No_' every few minutes all night. I fell out of bed twice, dreaming that I was trying to get off of that old porch of his before he could grab me."

"Well, I guess we'd better not ask," said Jean, "because I'm pretty sure he'd have the same answer ready."

"He certainly ought not to mind having us take care of our own flowers,"

said Marjory.

"That's true," said Bettie, poking the moist earth with a friendly finger. "They're growing splendidly since the rain. See how nice and full of growiness the ground is."

"I can get more pansy plants," offered Marjory, "to fill up these holes the Milligan dog made."

"Mrs. Crane promised to give us some aster plants," said Mabel. "Let's put 'em along by the fence."

"Let's do," said Jean. "You go see if you can have them now."

"I _know_ Mr. Black will be pleased," declared Bettie, "if he finds this place looking nice. I'm so thankful we didn't remember to ask Mr.

Downing about it."

"We didn't have a chance," said Jean, ruefully; "but just the same, I'm willing to keep on forgetting until Mr. Black comes."

It began to look, however, as if Mr. Black were never coming. Bettie had written as she had promised but had had no reply, though the letter had not been mailed for ten minutes before she began to watch for the postman. Even Mabel, having had no response to her telegram and supposing it to have gone astray, had given up hope.

Mabel, ever averse to confessing the failure of any of her enterprises, had decided to postpone saying anything about the telegram until one or another of the girls should remember to ask what had become of the thirty-five cents. So far, none of them had thought of it.

Still, it seemed probable, in spite of Mr. Black's continued absence, that he would get home some time, for he had left so much behind him. In the business portion of the town there was a huge building whose sign read: "PETER BLACK AND COMPANY." Then, in the prettiest part of the residence district, where the lawns were big and the shrubs were planted scientifically by a landscape gardener and where the hillside bristled with roses, there was a large, handsome stone house that, as everybody knew, belonged to Mr. Black. Although there were industrious clerks at work in the one, and a middle-aged housekeeper, with a furnace-tending, grass-cutting husband equally busy in the other, it was reasonable to suppose that Mr. Black, even if he had no family, would have to return some time, if only to enjoy his beloved rose-bushes.

Thanks to Mabel's telegram (Bettie's letter, forwarded from Washington, did not reach him for many days) he did come. He had had to stop in Chicago, after all, and there had been unexpected delays; but just a week from the day the Milligans had left the cottage, Mr. Black returned.

Without even stopping to look in at his own office, the traveler went straight to the rectory to ask for Bettie. Bettie, Mrs. Tucker told him, he would probably find in the cottage yard.

Mr. Black took a short cut through the hole in the back fence, arriving on the cottage lawn just in time to meet a procession of girls entering the front gate. Each girl was carrying a huge, heavy clod of earth, out of the top of which grew a sturdy green plant; for the cottageless cottagers had discovered the only successful way of performing the difficult feat of restocking their garden with half-grown vegetables.

Their neighbors had proved generous when Bettie had explained that if one could only dig deep enough one could transplant _anything_, from a cabbage to pole-beans. Some of the grown-up gardeners, to be sure, had been skeptical, but they were all willing that the girls should make the attempt.

"Oh, Mr. Black!" shrieked the four girls, dropping their burdens to make a simultaneous rush for the senior warden. "Oh! oh! oh! Is it really you? We're so glad--so awfully glad you've come!"

"Well, I declare! So am I," said Mr. Black, with his arms full of girls.

"It seems like getting home again to have a family of nice girls waiting with a welcome, even if it's a pretty sandy one. What are you doing with all the real estate? I thought you'd all been turned out, but you seem to be all here. I declare, if you haven't all been growing!"

"We were--we are--we have," cried the girls, dancing up and down delightedly. "Mr. Downing made us give up the cottage, but he didn't say anything about the garden--and--and--we thought we'd better forget to ask about it."

"Tell me the whole story," said Mr. Black. "Let's sit here on the doorstep. I'm sure I could listen more comfortably if there were not so many excited girls dancing on my best toes."

So Mr. Black, with a girl at each side and two at his feet, heard the story from beginning to end, and he seemed to find it much more amusing than the girls had at any time considered it. He simply roared with laughter when Bettie apologized about Bob and the tin.

"Well," said he, when the recital was ended, and he had shown the girls Mabel's telegram, and the thoroughly delighted Mabel had been praised and enthusiastically hugged by the other three, "I _have_ heard of cottages with more than one key. Suppose you see, Bettie, if anything on this ring will fit that keyhole."

Three of the flat, slender keys did not, but the fourth turned easily in the lock. Bettie opened the door.

"Possession," said Mr. Black, with a twinkle in his eye, "is nine points of the law. You'd better go to work at once and move in and get to cooking; you see, there's a vacancy under my vest that nothing but that promised dinner party can fill. The sooner you get settled, the sooner I get that good square meal. Besides, if you don't work, you won't have an appetite for a great big box of candy that I have in my trunk."

"Oh," sighed Bettie, rubbing her cheek against Mr. Black's sleeve, "it seems too good to be true."