Tabithas Vacation | Page 4

of one of the owners,
and as Mr. McKittrick was working there when Rosslyn was born, the
miners made him their mascot, and Mr. Carson used to tease him by
calling him 'Must get rich quick.' I couldn't write 'McKittrick' in the
telegram without Goodwin suspecting what I am up to; so I did the next
best thing I could think of."
"But--" It all still seemed so ridiculous to the red-haired girl.
"You think he will wonder if I 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