The Golden Rule Dollivers (collection)/The Dollivers Caught 'Napping
III
THE DOLLIVERS CAUGHT 'NAPPING
THE affair of the purse, painful though it had been for Marjorie, helped restore Dolliver's perspective to a certain extent, so that when he took luncheon with Holden, one day during the following week, he was able to tell him—a little ruefully, to be sure, but nevertheless with some perception of its humorous aspects—the story of their first experience in playing the automobile game and his resultant loss of a large order.
"By Jove, that was tough!" Holden's tone was sympathetic, in spite of his irrepressible laughter. "And just like Corbin, from all I hear of him. I don't know him personally, but a classmate of mine was his secretary for a while, and he says the old man's not so bad when you get used to him, but he's certainly 'from Missouri'!"
"I told him," Dolliver said, in repeating this to Marjorie the next day, "that Corbin must have left Missouri a long time ago, for he wouldn't even let me 'show' him! Instead, he 'showed' me—the door, confound him!"
"Old curmudgeon!" she returned, with satisfying vigor. "I hope the people he gave that order to cheated him!"
"H'mph! They didn't!" Page laughed shortly. "Corbin may or may not be 'from Missouri,' but nobody cheats him much."
"Well, he cheats himself out of a lot, anyway," remarked his wife. "There's some comfort in that! And let's not let him spoil anything more for us. What's the use? We're almost at the end of this adorable road, and it's far too lovely to be sprinkled with Curmudgeon."
"That's right!" Page turned to her with a smile. "Let's forget it." And then he sighed.
They had been droning peacefully through a leafy byway, stopping now and then for the full enjoyment of a view or to listen to a bird's song, and they approached with reluctance the oiled and crowded turnpike, along which in either direction whirled countless other automobiles filled with veiled, goggled, dun-colored figures.
"I wonder just what a lot of these people get out of a day in the country?" Marjorie queried, contemplatively, desiring to change the current of her husband's thought.
"Chiefly speed, and an opportunity to show off, in some cases," he returned. "In others—well, you know what it means to us. What one gets out of the country depends largely upon what one brings to it, I fancy—which, by the way, was more briefly and comprehensively said by a person named Emerson, several years ago."
"Well, I hope most of them bring more than they seem to," she rejoined. "Apparently, they look at nothing but the road ahead. See, nobody even so much as notices those kiddies, though they're working so hard to attract attention. Stop a minute, dear. Let's see what they want."
Just beyond the point where the byway ended in the highway two children stood in the grass beside the road, holding up a shabby basket and turning eager faces toward the occupants of each passing car. Now, as the Dollivers swung out to the edge of the thoroughfare and paused, the little ones ran toward them, calling:
"Butter 'n' eggs! Butter 'n' eggs! Don't you want to buy some butter 'n' eggs?"
The girl, who was perhaps eight years old, was dark and slender, her clear, bright brown eyes framed in an alert, expressive face, while the boy, a year or two her junior, had yellow hair, plump red cheeks, and large, round, placid eyes of the most cerulean blue. Their clothing, although reasonably clean, was worn and faded and much patched, as well as somewhat outgrown, and both wore torn straw hats.
"Where do you get your butter?" asked Dolliver, regarding them quizzically. "Do you keep a dairy-farm, you two?"
"It's mother's. She makes it," replied the little girl. "It's nice, fresh country butter. Oh, please buy some! And eggs—"
"Nice, fresh country eggs. Please buy some," echoed the boy.
"Butter and eggs, eh? Let's see 'em." As Page reached out to take the basket Marjorie leaned forward, with an infectious smile to which both children instantly responded.
"My name is Mrs. Dolliver. I wonder what yours is?"
"Mine's Katie McManus, and his is Jimmie. He's my little brother."
"'N' she's my sister," proclaimed the boy.
"Look here," exclaimed Dolliver, who had lifted a corner of the white cloth covering the basket and was peering inside. "What's this you're trying to unload on us? A gold brick?"
"It's butter," said both children, in a breath.
"Is it, indeed?" Dolliver feigned great astonishment. "How different butter does look in the country, to be sure!" He lifted the cloth a little more, disclosing to Marjorie a bed of wilted green leaves, in the center of which, surrounded by eight or ten eggs, was a bowl containing a soft, messy, oleaginous, yellow substance, with which the long hours of a hot afternoon had evidently had their way. "Nice, fresh country butter—for nice, fresh city people, I suppose?"
"Oh, poor babies!" murmured Marjorie, laughing. "How could they tell?"
"I guess you never tried to sell butter for mother before, did you?" asked Dolliver. "Does she know you're out with it?"
"Oh yes," said the little girl. "We always sell it."
"Do you, really? Where do you live?"
"Oh—over there." She waved an indeterminate hand. "Ever so far away."
"I see," said Dolliver. "And do you always bring your butter away over here to the road to sell?"
"Oh—now—" For the first time the child seemed disconcerted, and fixed an embarrassed glance upon the toe with which she tried to dig a hole in the grass. "Now—you see—now—"
"Where do you usually sell your butter, dear?" asked Marjorie, gently.
"To the summer people," instantly replied the child, looking at her again. "They live in the big houses, and have lots of money."
"Then why didn't you take it to them to-day?" pursued Mrs. Dolliver, persuasively.
"Because—because—now—you see, we wanted to make more money for—for mother—and we walked and walked and walked—"
"It was awful far," contributed Jimmie, "'n' hot."
"—But nobody 'd buy it," his sister continued.
"Poor innocents!" breathed Marjorie.
"But you will, won't you?" urged Katie. "You'll buy it?"
"Well, I don't know about that," judicially demurred Dolliver.
"Don't tease them, dear," Marjorie whispered. "They're so little and so tired. Of course we'll take it."
"Anon, anon," he returned. Then, to the children: "You see, it's pretty nearly all melted, and melted butter isn't of much use to anybody, is it?"
"But you will buy it, won't you?" repeated the little girl, her tone sharpening and her face sobering with anxiety. "Because we've just got to have the money."
"Just got to have it, have you? Well, then I suppose we've just got to buy this butter, melted or not," responded the young man, relenting at once at this evident distress, and thrusting his hand into his pocket, whereat he was rewarded by a radiant sparkle from the brown eyes.
"But why have you 'just got to have the money'?" softly asked Marjorie.
"For mother," Katie began.
"To give to father, so he won't beat her," eagerly concluded her brother.
"What?" demanded the Dollivers, together.
"She's just got to have some money to give him to-night," the elder child explained.
"Father drinks," calmly supplied the other.
"Oh!" gasped Marjorie. "Oh, Page!"
"Mother takes in washing, and keeps cows and chickens. She works awful hard," circumstantially continued Katie, "and sometimes when she doesn't have money to give to father Saturday nights he beats her, and she cries."
"I don't want him to beat mother!" wailed the boy, his face puckering up and tears forming in the big blue eyes. "I don't want him to!"
"He won't, now. Hush up, Jimmie!" The little girl put her arms around him. "He won't beat her, now. We're going to take her the money, don't you see? Stop crying, you silly!"
By this time Marjorie had jumped out of the car and had gathered both children into her embrace, her sweet gray eyes full of tears.
"You poor, blessed little mites!" she cried. "You shall have the money. Give it to them, Page, so they can hold it in their hands and see it. Yes, dearie, you shall have it. Nobody shall hurt mother."
"Here you are, old man," said Dolliver, leaning over the wheel and holding out a dollar bill to the boy, who stumbled over the grass, still sobbing, to take it. "Now, buck up! Buck up! Big men don't cry! Men never cry after they're big enough to earn money for mother. That's right! Now let's take it to her, shall we? How would you like to go with us in the automobile?"
"Oh yes, let's take them home!" joyfully acquiesced Marjorie. "You'd like that, wouldn't you, tots? A nice long ride in an automobile?"
The tots indicated with enthusiasm that they would, and presently they were all in the little car, humming back through the leafy byway again, Katie having indicated, somewhat vaguely, that they lived "over that way, ever so far."
"Now you must tell us where to turn, because we don't know the way to your house, you see," Marjorie reminded them. "Did you ever ride in an automobile before?"
"Ho!" boasted the boy, from his seat beside Dolliver. "I ride in one every day. My father's got a big one, ever so much bigger'n yours."
"What's that?" questioned Dolliver, eying the child. "Your father owns an automobile?"
"Why, Jimmie McManus, you big story!" cried the little girl, who was in the tonneau with Marjorie. "He's just playing that he's Bobbie Cole," she explained to the Dollivers; "but he isn't, you know. He's only Jimmie McManus." Now that the cloud of immediate anxiety concerning the day's funds was apparently lifted from her mind, she gave herself over to the enjoyment of the moment, and in her keen little brown face and dancing brown eyes there was a shrewd and elfin beauty.
"'N' she's my sister," affirmed the younger child.
"Who's Bobbie Cole?" asked Marjorie.
"He's a boy that lives in the big white house, and sometimes they buy our butter, and his father has an automobile—"
"Ever so much bigger'n yours," persisted the boy. "It's a six-forty-eight—"
"Oh, hush up, Jimmie!" impatiently interrupted the other child, continuing, to the Dollivers, "Sometimes they take us for a ride, and then Jimmie always plays that he's Bobbie, and that it's his car, don't you, Jim?"
"Yep," was the cheerful response.
"But it isn't, you know. He just pretends. He's so little, he's always pretending things."
"Oh, I see," said Dolliver. "And has Bobbie a sister, too?"
"No, nor any brothers, neither," said the boy. "I wisht he had just one brother, anyhow."
"Have you any brothers?" Marjorie asked the boy.
"Oh, lots," the girl replied for him. "Mother's got seven kids—four girls and three boys."
"'N' father drinks something fierce," placidly added Jimmie.
"Poor soul!" murmured Marjorie, tucking an arm around Katie.
"Which way do we go now?" asked Page, as they approached a cross-road, and a moment later, in response to the little girl's gesture, he turned to the left, into another quiet, winding, unfrequented thoroughfare, where, as they rounded the first curve, they met a whirring automobile, in the tonneau of which, between two veiled women, sat a small boy.
"Hi! Hi! Hi!" shrieked Jimmie, waving his tattered hat and nearly plunging over the side as the other car shot past.
"Eeee! Ee-oo-ee-oo-ee-oo!" His sister scrambled to her feet on the back seat, bouncing and shrilling like a little wave-tossed tugboat. Even as the Dollivers each seized a child, dragging them back to safety, the other car whirled around the curve and out of sight.
"Did you see Petie?" the boy shouted. "That was Petie! Did you see him?"
"'Course I saw him!" gleefully retorted Katie. "I guess he was surprised to see us here, Jimmie McManus. And he'll go and tell everybody! Ho-ho! Ho-ho! He'll tell them all that he saw us!"
"Sit still, dearie; you'll tumble out!" Marjorie slipped a restraining arm around the excited, wriggling little body. "Who's Petie?",
"Petie Toland. He lives next door to Bobbie, and he can't ever have any fun, either," Katie explained.
"No fun?" questioned Dolliver. "What's the matter with him?"
"Oh, they're all so awfully afraid of 'nappers!" scornfully returned the little maid. "They won't let anybody out of sight!"
"'Nappers? What are 'nappers?"
"Kidnappers," expounded Jimmie. "They call em that 'cause they go round the country 'napping kids. Didn't you know they got Harry Alcott? But his folks got him back all right. He's home again now." The disappearance of the Alcott child had occupied the police of several states and inflamed the sympathies of the whole country for six weeks past, and only within a few days had the abductors at last been captured and the boy restored to his parents. "But everybody's awful scared yet."
"Petie's mother won't let him go out of sight of the house," Katie took up the lamentation, "and Bobbie always has a governess tagging around and saying: 'Don't soil your clothes. Don't go in the sun. Don't get your feet wet. Don't make so much noise.' They just don't let anybody have any fun!"
"Well, nobody seems to be interfering very much with your liberty," suggested Dolliver, smiling at them. "Isn't your mother afraid the 'nappers will get you?"
Jimmie looked up at him with a quick accession of interest, but the girl shook her head.
"We're only poor children," she explained. "Nobody wants us. They never 'nap you unless you're rich."
"Say," said Jimmie, looking from one to the other of the Dollivers, "you ain't 'nappers—are you?" His tone indicated that his own conviction in the matter was far from immutable.
"No, dearie, we're not 'nappers," said Marjorie, laughing gently.
"Oh, let's play you are!" Katie clapped her hands and sparkled. "Let's play you're 'nappers; and you're 'napping us, and all the policemen and detectives and sheriffs and things are chasing us, and whenever we meet anybody you hide us, and—and everything like that! Oh, come on, let's play that!"
The small boy failed to appreciate the possibilities of the game, however, and his lips began to quiver into a piteous curve, while the cloud in his round, blue eyes darkened.
"I don't want to be 'napped," he announced. "I want to go home."
"Jimmie dear," said Marjorie, leaning forward and smiling at him, "you're not being 'napped. We're your friends, and we're taking you home just as fast as ever we can, so you can give the money to mother, don't you remember?"
"And here we come to another fork in the road," Dolliver warned them. "Now which way do we go? Toward the village? Or off toward the hill?"
"To the village," directed the little girl, whereupon the boy loudly protested:
"I don't want to go that way! I want to go home!"
"But we're taking you home, son," Dolliver reminded him.
"No, you're not! We don't live this way. We live away back there"—he pointed to the road they has just traversed—"ever so far, 'n' I want to go home!"
"Oh, don't be such a silly!" exclaimed the elder child, in exasperation. "It's been such fun, and now you're spoiling it all!"
"See here, young lady, what about this?" demanded Page, stopping the car and turning to look at her over his shoulder. "Is he right? Do you live away back there somewhere?"
"Y-yes, but—now—" For a moment she was embarrassed, and again her glance sought a wriggling foot. Then she recovered herself, and looked up at him with a smile, half mischievous, half shy, and wholly engaging. "But you said you'd take us for a nice long ride, and—and I thought maybe you'd like to go to the village." She hesitated an instant before tactfully adding, "You can get ice-cream in the village."
"Oh, you can, can you?" said Dolliver, and then both he and Marjorie gave way to mirth. "All right. On to the village! You'd like to have some ice-cream, wouldn't you, James?"
"Y-yes," admitted the boy, with a dawning smile. "Can I have it pink? A big dish of pink? And cakes?"
"You may have every kind there is if you want it," returned Page, still laughing.
"And then we'll take you straight home to mother, Jimmie," promised Marjorie.
"All right," agreed the youngster, every doubt dispelled in this joyous prospect. "Hurry up. I'm awful hungry."
Dolliver accordingly put on speed, and they hummed toward the village.
"Oh, hide us! Hide us!" cried Katie, as they approached it, dancing lights in her dark eyes. "Let's play we're being 'napped! Here"—thrusting a dust-rug over the back of the seat to Page—"we'll lie down on the floor, and you cover us all up, so nobody'll know we're there—now you'll have to keep awfully still, Jimmie!—and then, when we get to the drug-store, we'll hop up, all at once, and surprise everybody!"
So the Dollivers, laughing, covered up the small conspirators, huddled on the floor of the car, and a moment later Page turned into the tree-lined main street of the village. Then they saw that a small group of people had gathered in front of the drug-store, and toward it three or four other persons were hastening in evident excitement. There was also some shouting. Two men detached themselves from the cluster and ran across the street to an automobile, which one of them cranked vigorously, while the other sprang into the seat behind the wheel, and an instant later they shot off around the first corner.
"Hullo!" exclaimed Page. "I wonder what's happened? Our friends yonder seem somewhat agitated."
At that moment a man noticed the Dollivers' approach, and shouted, waving his arm toward them. Immediately a chorus of similar shouts arose, accompanied by similar gestures, and the eddy of people on the sidewalk dissolved, flowed out into the street, and formed again directly in the path of the advancing car, while two or three men stepped toward it, holding up their hands and crying: "Hey! Hey, there!"
"What's the matter?" called Page, slowing up. A confusion of voices replied, through which the words "lost children—Cole boy—telephone—automobile—" were distinguishable.
"One at a time, please," suggested Dolliver. "What has happened?"
Scarcely waiting for the car to stop, the little crowd closed in upon it, with keen, prying eyes, and even as one man asked, "Have you seen any stray children?" Another, noticing a slight movement of the linen-covered pile at Dolliver's feet, poked at it, demanding:
"What's this?"
"O-ow! Stop!" indignantly wailed the pile.
Instantly the rug was snatched off, and the boy huddled beneath it was swung up over the head of the man who lifted him, his yellow hair damp and tousled, and an expression of startled alarm in his flushed face and round, blue eyes.
"That's him! That's the Cole boy!" cried a dozen voices. "Where's the girl?"
Something in the hostile faces and in the sudden inward surge of the little crowd brought Marjorie to her feet, where she stood behind her husband, with her hands on his shoulders.
"Oh, what is it?" she cried. "What's the matter?"
Meanwhile other hands were stripping the concealing rug from the figure of the girl lying on the floor of the tonneau, and she, too, was lifted out, though not without shrill protests against this informal handling, and held up to the full view of the crowd.
"Both of 'em—hidden!" roared the man who had discovered the boy, and again there was a threatening movement of the people, accompanied by a sort of snarl, through which were heard cries of "Kidnappers!" "Jail 'em!" "Thrash him!" and the like.
"Stop!" called Dolliver, in a ringing voice, throwing up his hand, palm outward. "Stop, I say!" So commanding was his gesture and so steady his eyes that they obeyed him and paused. "There seems to be some curious misunderstanding here," he said then, quietly, "and you're frightening my wife and these children. Now, tell me, somebody—you," indicating the man who still held the terrified and weeping Jimmie, "what's all this about? Stop!" as the confusion broke out again. "I can listen only to one at a time. What has happened?"
"What's happened is that Franklin Cole's boy has been kidnapped, with a little girl visiting there, and here they are. We've caught you with the goods!" replied the man he had addressed, whereupon there were more cries and threats, and one hothead even advocated lynching.
Dolliver, who had not stirred from his seat behind the wheel, smiled and shook his head, and laid a warm, reassuring hand over one of Marjorie's, which had tightened their grip on his shoulders and were trembling.
"No, you haven't," he said. "We haven't tried to kidnap anybody, and this is not the Cole boy. His name is Jimmie McManus." This brought a derisive howl from the crowd. "Very well," said Page. "Ask him. Stop crying, son, and tell the man what your name is," he added, persuasively, leaning toward the child.
"None o' that!" warned a voice, "We know him. It's the Cole boy, all right."
"Ask him," repeated Dolliver.
"What is your name? Tell us what your name is," urged the man who held the boy.
"Name's Bobbie Co-o-ole," he wailed, "'n' I want to go ho-o-ome!"
"A-a-ah!" snarled the crowd, with another movement toward Dolliver, so threatening that Marjorie clasped her arms around his neck, crying sharply:
"Go away! Get back! He said his name was Jimmie McManus."
"Ye-ah, we heard him say it!" jeered another voice.
"But he did say it," reiterated Dolliver. "That's what he told us, and if he really is Bobbie Cole, we didn't know it. As for their being with us—"
"I s'pose you didn't know, either, that you met a machine back there a ways, with a kid in it that knew these two?" scoffed a muscular young man with a heavy fist and an ugly, leering smile.
"Yes, we did," promptly replied Dolliver. "What of it?"
"Well, when they got a little farther along they met a search-party, out looking for these kids, see? And they 'phoned to us that you had 'em, and for us to get you when you came this way. So we knew you had 'em before you got here, see? You didn't hide 'em quite soon enough. We was layin' for you, and, now we've got you, we're goin' to—"
"Now, see here, people, let's get this straight," interrupted Dolliver, earnestly, leaning forward a little, but still holding his wife's hand.
"Oh, we've got it straight enough," savagely retorted another voice. "What's the use o' talkin'? Get out o' that car before we pull you out!"
"Hold on, there!" shouted a man, as the crowd closed in with an ominous growl. "Give the feller a chance. Let him talk if he wants to. We've got the kids and we've got him. Let's hear what he has to say." He was evidently a person of some importance in the community, for the people paused, listening.
"Thank you," said Dolliver. "Now this is what happened. We found these children over on the turnpike, selling butter and eggs, which we bought—"
"Franklin Cole's boy sellin' butter 'n' eggs—in them clo'es! That's a likely story, ain't it?" interrupted a voice.
"Here they are," retorted Marjorie, holding out the shabby basket, which was taken from her hand and passed out among the crowd. Some one suggested that it be retained as "evidence."
"They said their name was McManus, and that they were brother and sister," steadily continued Dolliver. "They told a pitiful tale of a drunken father and a hard-working mother, and we offered to take them home. We followed their directions, and when we got near here they intimated that they would like some ice-cream, and we were coming into the village to get it when you stopped us—"
"With both kids takin' the air on the floor under your lap-robes, half smothered? You think we're easy, don't you?" bawled a rough voice from the edge of the crowd, and again there arose that vengeful sound, which Marjorie stilled with outstretched hands.
"Oh, please! Please!" she begged. "Can't you see we're not that sort? My husband has told you the truth. Ask the little girl. She'll tell you the same story."
"Yes, she will!" exclaimed a woman into whose hands the whilom "Katie" had been given, and who had been plying the child with questions. "You just ought to hear what she says! I'll bet they belong to the same gang that stole that Harry Alcott!"
"What does she say?" asked Dolliver.
She says her name's Miriam Dorrance, and that she and her mother came to visit the Coles yesterday. This afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Cole and her mother went off in the machine, and the governess went to sleep under a tree, and of course, with nobody watching them, these young ones skipped out, as hard as they could go. She says they walked a long way, and it was terribly hot, and then these two came along and asked them if they didn't want a ride in the machine. The children said no at first, because they were afraid of kidnappers—"
"Why, they did nothing of the sort!" broke indignantly from Marjorie. "The little—"
"Steady, dear," cautioned Dolliver. "It isn't going to help matters to get excited, you know." Then, to the villagers: "I'd like to hear the little girl herself tell that story—without interruptions or suggestions from any one," he added, significantly.
"Oh, my word isn't good enough for you, isn't it?" jeered the woman. "All right, Honey, you just tell them yourself. Tell them just what you told me—and don't let them scare you."
"Lift her up, so's we can all hear," some one suggested, and there were cries of, "Yes, yes, tell all of us!" So the man who had taken the little girl out of the car hoisted her to his shoulder, where she sat, flushed and excited, but apparently not much frightened.
"Now, Honey, you tell them what you told me," directed the woman.
"Wait a moment," Dolliver interposed. "You're going to tell just exactly what happened, now, aren't you, girlie?"
The child nodded, with a half-shy little smile. "You know this is very important," he continued, gravely and gently. "It isn't a game any more. You understand that, don't you? You know we're not playing now, and you must tell exactly what happened?"
"Y-yes," she replied, uncertainly, her glance wavering over the faces pressing close about her and down to that of the woman beside her.
"Never you mind him, Honey," said this person, reassuringly stroking the little hand she held, "and don't let him scare you. You just go ahead and tell everybody what you told me. What happened after you said you wouldn't go with them?"
"'NOW, HONEY, YOU TELL THEM WHAT YOU TOLD ME'"
"They coaxed us a lot," alleged Miriam, rather shyly, "and they said—they said they'd give us candy and ice-cream and cakes and—new roller-skates and—oh, lots of things! And they said they knew Bobbie's mother, and would take us for a nice long ride and then take us home, and—so we went with them."
Dolliver checked another exclamation from Marjorie, and whispered to her not to lose her self-control.
"What happened next?" prompted the woman.
"Then we saw some little poor children going along the road with a basket," Miriam continued, with increasing confidence, "and the gentleman stopped the car and asked them what they had in the basket, and they said butter 'n' eggs that they were taking to Mrs. Toland, and he asked them if they wouldn't like some nice new clothes, and they said they would. Then they took us all off behind some bushes, so if anybody came along they couldn't see us, and took off our clothes and gave them to the poor children, and put theirs on us, and gave us their basket, with the butter 'n' eggs in it." She was now in the full swing of her narrative, and rattled it off glibly, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. Dolliver watched her in frowning amazement, and Marjorie with increasing indignation.
"What did you do when they took away your nice clothes?" called a woman. "Didn't you cry?"
"No; they said it was a game," readily testified the child, "and we thought it was just fun. And they gave the little poor children some money for their butter 'n' eggs, and they gave us some, too. Bobbie's got his yet in his pocket, but I gave mine"—this with a demurely virtuous air—"to the little poor children."
"Now tell how you came to be under the lap-robes," suggested the woman beside Miriam, with a triumphant, accusing glance at the couple in the automobile.
"They said to play that they were 'nappers and that we_were being 'napped, and for us to be perfectly still, so nobody'd know we were there. So we did."
"Why, you wicked little imp! That was your own suggestion, you know it was!" cried Marjorie, unable longer to control the swelling tide of her wrath, to which for the moment her alarm was subordinate. "She wanted to play they were being kidnapped," she declared to the angry, incredulous crowd, "and they were to jump up when we got to the drug-store and surprise everybody. It was her own plan! And we did not take their clothes away from them! They were dressed like this when we found them!"
"You can ask Bobbie," insisted Miriam, excitedly. "They did take our clothes away from us, didn't they, Bobbie?"
"Yes, they did! I want my own clothes! I don't want to be 'napped! I want to go home!" Bobbie, who had been whimpering throughout the interview, now began to sob loudly.
"Miriam, look at me," commanded Marjorie; and after a moment's hesitation the child met the young woman's indignant gaze, and then uneasily shifted her glance to Dolliver's face, which had grown very stern. "No—look right into my eyes," persisted Marjorie, imperatively. "You know you've not been telling the truth. You know you told me your name was Katie McManus, and that Jimmie was your brother; now, didn't you?"
For a moment Miriam sustained the accusing gaze, fear intensifying in her own eyes, and then she broke into shrieks of terror.
"You told me to!" she screamed. "You made me! Oh, I'm afraid! I'm afraid! They are 'nappers! They are! Don't let them get me!"
"I guess that's all we want," roughly commented the muscular young man, shoving toward the car, and others took up the cry.
"Well, it isn't all I want!" retorted Dolliver, ringingly, standing up in the car. "Is there an officer in this crowd?"
"We'll give you all that's coming to you!" savagely promised another voice, and as the crowd again snarled and surged toward them Marjorie clasped her husband's arm and gave a terrified little cry. "Will you come down and take it? Or do we drag you out—the two of you? Get those kids out of the way!"
So intense was the excitement that no one had noticed the honking of an automobile, approaching at terrific speed, but now that it was almost upon them Page heard it and turned toward it, and the attention of the crowd followed his.
"That's Cole! Here comes Cole now!" they shouted. "We've got him. Cole! They're all right!"
A grim, white-faced young man sat beside the chauffeur, and in the tonneau were two pallid, distracted women, who stood up as the car slackened speed, calling and holding out their arms to their children. The crowd made way, and before the car stopped, abreast of the other, the children, with terrified shrieks of, "Oh, mother! The 'nappers! The nappers got us!" were handed over the side and clasped to the breasts of their respective parents, where their cries presently subsided.
The boy's father waited only long enough to assure himself that no physical harm had come to them, and then swung out of the automobile to confront Dolliver, who meanwhile had left his own car and advanced toward the other, Marjorie still clinging to his arm. They met in the middle of the road, and the crowd instantly formed a dense ring around them.
"I can't tell you how sorry I am about this, Mr. Cole," exclaimed Page. "It's all a mistake—a grotesque misunderstanding."
"I'll hear your explanation—if you have any," curtly returned the young father, whose gray eyes were ablaze and whose hands were clenched.
"My name is Dolliver—Page Dolliver"—he proffered a card, which the other took and crushed in his hand without looking at it—"and this is my wife. We saw these two children, over on the turn-pike, offering butter and eggs for sale, which we bought of them. They told us they were brother and sister, that their mother took in washing and kept cows and chickens, and that their father was a drunkard."
"Indeed! Which of them told this interesting tale?"
"Both of them," interposed Marjorie.
"Impossible!" sobbed Mrs. Cole, from her seat in the tonneau. "Frank, you know Bobbie never could tell a story like that! He never lies—and he never ran away in his life."
"But he did tell it!" persisted Marjorie, turning a pale, indignant face toward those other pale-faced women in the car, one of whom, however, was sitting erect, with startled eyes, listening.
"It was he who said that his father drank, and he cried because he was afraid the man would beat his mother. And he said the little girl was his sister—"
"And Miriam?" demanded Mrs. Dorrance. "What did Miriam say?"
"She told most of the story," Marjorie returned. "She said her name was Katie McManus, and that his was Jimmie—"
"And that mother took in washing, and father drank, and—oh, Miriam! Miriam! You naughty—funny—darling!" Mrs. Dorrance was overcome by sobbing, choking, tearful laughter, through which she managed to gasp: "It's just—just a new variation of—of an old game! She loves to play she's a—a pauper! Oh, Miriam, how could you!" She gave the still weeping child an impatient little shake and then clasped her closer.
At this juncture a third automobile appeared, with much honking, and drew up between the other two. In it were two men, who proved to be those the Dollivers had seen depart as they entered the village, and with them a couple of red-haired, gray-eyed, freckled children, a girl and a boy, of unmistakably Hibernian lineage, clad in linen garments somewhat too large for them, and eloquent, to the initiated, of shops in Fifth Avenue. No sooner did these two espy Miriam and Bobbie than they began to clamor:
"Where's our butter 'n' eggs? You give us our money! You give us back our clo'es! Where's our basket? You give it back!"
"This your basket?" called a man in the crowd, holding up the one the children had given Dolliver.
"Yes, it is! You give it back!" shrilled the little girl.
"All right," agreed the man, "but first you tell us how they got it," nodding toward the other children.
"We was takin' Mis' Toland's butter 'n' eggs to her, me 'n' Johnnie here, 'n' we met them two in the road, 'n' she asked us where we was goin', 'n' I told her. She said they'd run away from the governess, 'n' wouldn't it be fun for them to play they was us, 'n' sell butter 'n' eggs, and us to play we was them, 'n' wear nice clo'es 'n' ride in automobiles, 'n' we said it would. So we went behind some bushes they was there 'n' swapped clo'es. Then she said they was goin' over to the turnpike to sell the butter 'n' eggs, 'n' I knowed mother'd never stand for that, 'cause she'd promised 'em to Mis' Toland; but that new kid there," nodding toward Miriam, whose face was hidden against her mother's veil, "she's bigger'n I am, 'n' she pushed me over, 'n' they run away."
It was here that Cole turned to Dolliver in silence, but with frankly apologetic mien, and held out his hand, which the other took warmly. Both men laughed a little unsteadily, and each drew a long breath.
"We was afraid to go home," continued the child, "without the butter-money, 'n' in these clo'es, 'cause we knew mother'd lick the hide off'n us, so we hid 'n' waited for them to come back, 'n' bimeby they come ridin' by in a machine. We yelled at 'em, but they wouldn't look, 'n' then we follered 'em, 'cause we had to get the basket 'n' the money 'n' our clo'es back. Now you give 'em to us!" she concluded, threateningly, to the children in the other car.
After she had been assured that everything belonging to her would be returned, the men explained that they had picked up these children on the road, at first believing them to be the two who were lost, and that when they heard the story they had telephoned at once to the Coles' house. Upon learning there that the lost children had been seen going toward the village, and that the family was in pursuit, they had tried in vain to get into telephone connection with one or another of the "stores."
"But I guess, from the looks, nobody here was 'tending very strictly to his own business," said one of them, with a sly smile. "Seems as if it took the whole population to arrest two kidnappers that weren't kidnappers, after all, doesn't it?"
There was some shamefaced laughter in the crowd, and some audible and caustic comment on certain "little liars."
"Oh, please don't say that!" exclaimed Mrs. Dorrance, a pretty woman, with pleasant eyes and a charming smile. "You know all children like best the games they make up themselves, and sometimes, when the play is very engrossing, they lose sight of the fact that it is only a new game, and really believe it themselves. That's the way it was, isn't it, sweetheart?" she asked. "It was just play at first, and then you forgot and thought it was true?"
The little dark head was nodding emphatically, but Miriam still hid her shamed face in the folds of her mother's veil.
"Well, if that's the way that girl's been brought up, it's small wonder she lies!" remarked the woman who had insisted upon Miriam's telling her story to the crowd. "Everybody knows all young ones are born liars, and it has to be spanked out of 'em, and it's enough to be the eternal ruination of a child to be encouraged in it that way!"
"Oh, don't you think there's a difference between deliberately trying to deceive people and imagining things so vividly that you deceive yourself?" Miriam's mother returned, with gentle dignity. "I should punish my little daughter if I thought she had intended to terrify us this way, but I know that she hasn't learned yet just how to distinguish between the things that are real and the things that seem real to her. You see, she's only eight, and Bobbie's not quite seven, and imagination runs away with one, sometimes, at that age. But we're very sorry we forgot, and made so much trouble for everybody, aren't we, kiddies? And we hope they'll all excuse us and remember that we're just two very little folks, who got badly frightened by our own game," she concluded, with a wavering, half-tearful little smile at the villagers, who smiled back or averted their glances, according to their dispositions, and slipped unostentatiously and somewhat sheepishly away, Miriam's former champion still vigorously reiterating her conviction that "spanking's the only thing that 'll save a young one like that!"
"Well, that was a pretty stiff scare, but thank God it was no worse!" exclaimed Cole. "I'm afraid my neighbors here gave you a bad quarter of an hour, though," he added, smiling at the Dollivers.
"Well, yes, they did, rather," assented Page; "but—that's over, too. Now I think we'll be getting on our way again."
"Not a bit of it!" protested the other. "You're going back to the house with us—oh, I insist! We've all been rather badly shaken up, and I seem to remember some bottles on the sideboard which contain certain comforting and sustaining liquids, for a draught of which I think we should all be the better. I hope you'll indulge me in this matter, Mrs.—I beg your pardon. I don't think I know your name."
"Dolliver," said Page. "I gave you my card, but you're entirely excusable for not having looked at it."
"Dolliver?" repeated Cole, straightening out the crumpled pasteboard which he still held. "Dolliver! You're not—by Jupiter, you must be 'Golden Rule Dolliver'!"
"Well, I have been called that," admitted the other, with a wry little smile, "but I don't, as a rule, encourage the use of the title."
"Well, by the Lord Harry!" ejaculated the other. "You do get it rubbed into you, don't you? You had a little adventure, a week or two ago, with some old ladies you picked up over Westchester way somewhere, and a lost purse?"
"We did," said Dolliver, dryly. "What do you know about it?"
"I heard Dick Holden telling the story at the club the other day. Man, this calls for more than drinks all 'round! You've got to stay to dinner! I want to hear the story of your life."