Tabithas Vacation | Page 4

am crazy?" Tabitha had read the look of doubt in her companion's face, and correctly surmised what she was thinking. "Perhaps he will, but I don't believe so. He is quick to understand things. Now we will skip back to the post-office and I'll scratch him a letter of explanation, so it will go out with to-day's mail. Then if he shouldn't translate the telegram correctly--well, the letter will get there as soon as possible afterward."
As she spoke, she delivered the written message to the waiting operator, smiled with satisfaction at his look of baffled curiosity and bewilderment, and assuring him that it was worded exactly as she wanted it sent, she left the dingy office confident that the queer cipher would bring the desired results. Nor was she mistaken.
Early the next morning Mercedes came flying excitedly down the path to the Catt cottage, and, without the formality of knocking, burst into the kitchen where the two girls were busy washing up the breakfast dishes.
"Oh, Kitty! Gloriana!" she cried, half laughing, half sobbing with sheer delight. "Guess what's happened! Mr. Carson has sent mamma some money to take papa to Los Angeles. Now he can get well. That is what has been worrying her so much. The doctor said he would die unless he was operated on and mamma hadn't the money to get it done. They are to start to-morrow. Mamma's going, too. Doctor says every minute counts, and he has telegraphed to the hospital to make arrangements already."
She paused, all out of breath, to mop her steaming forehead; and Tabitha, studying the flushed, shining face, wondered that she had ever thought Mercedes McKittrick dull and homely.
"Isn't that fine?" she heard Gloriana saying, as heartily as if she had not known anything about the telegram before. "What are the rest of you going to do while your mother is away? You children, I mean."
"That's how I happened to come here," Mercedes replied, her eyes losing some of their glow as she recalled her errand in that part of the town. "Mamma sent me down to Miss Davis' house with a note, but she isn't there; and the woman next door says she has gone to Riverside for two weeks. I s'pose we'll have to find someone else instead. But I was so near I couldn't help running on down to tell the news. I must be going now. There is lots to be done before train time to-morrow, and mamma'll need me."
"We will come up and help her pack as soon as we get the house righted," Tabitha found tongue to say. "She mustn't get too tired before she starts."
So Mercedes raced away again, and a few moments later the two busy little housekeepers in the hollow locked up their orderly cottage and followed more slowly up to the Eagles' Nest on the bluff.
"Where can the children be?" Tabitha's expectant eyes searched in vain for a glimpse of the noisy, lively brood of 'eaglets,' who usually saw her coming a long way off, and met her half-way down the mountainside with a boisterous shout of welcome. To-day, however, not one of the sextette was in sight about the queer little brown house, and the whole place wore a deserted air.
"Maybe they have gone visiting so Mrs. McKittrick can look after her packing unmolested," suggested Gloriana, letting her keen gray eyes sweep the steep, rocky incline for some sign of the youthful McKittricks, but with no better result.
"That must be it," concluded Tabitha, "though I should have thought--why, Mercedes, Susie! What is the matter?"
Coming suddenly around the corner of a huge boulder where the children often played house, the two girls almost tumbled over a row of the most woe-begone, utterly miserable looking figures they had ever seen,--Mercedes, Susie, Inez, Irene, Rosslyn and Janie, all seated on a broad, flat rock as stiff as marble statues, and with faces almost as stony and staring.
"Why, children!" echoed Gloriana, equally amazed. "What are you doing here? What has happened?"
"Mamma is crying again," whispered Mercedes, dabbing savagely at a tear which suddenly brimmed over and splashed down the end of her nose.
"She says she won't go and leave us alone with Mercy," gulped Susanne, striving hard to keep the telltale quiver out of her voice.
"And there ain't money enough to go and take us all," supplemented Inez, who had earned the title of "Susie's shadow," because she preferred the society of her older sister to that of her quiet twin.
"Miss Davis has gone away and won't be back until it's too late," mourned gentle Irene, gazing sorrowfully down toward the low station house on the flats below.
"Mrs. Goodale's gone, too, and there ain't nobody else to housekeep for us," Rosslyn added plaintively, "'cept Mercy."
"But we'd be ist as dood as anjils wiv Mercy,"