Billie Bradley and Her Classmates; Or The Secret of the Locked Tower Read online

  CHAPTER III--POLLY HADDON

  "Where do you live?" asked Billie, turning to the oldest of the threechildren. "Tell us quick, so we can get you there."

  "We live wiv our muvver, Polly Haddon," said the little one quaintly,pointing with a shivering finger out across the lake. "We runned awaydis mornin'."

  "So we see," said Laura, adding, as she turned to Billie: "I think Iknow where they live. Teddy pointed the house out to me one day when wewere taking a hike through the woods. Said he and the boys had stoppedthere one day and had bought some waffles and real maple syrup from Mrs.Haddon. Of course, I don't know whether it is the same one or not----"

  "Well, come on--we'll find out," said Billie, lifting the largest of thethree children in her strong arms. "You and Vi can manage the other twokiddies, I guess. You lead the way, Laura, if you know where the houseis."

  "But hadn't we better take our skates off and walk around?" suggestedVi.

  "We can make it quicker on skates," said Billie impatiently, "because wecan cut across the lake----"

  "But the ice!" Laura objected. "It may not be solid----"

  "We'll have to take a chance on that," Billie returned, adding with anexasperated stamp of her foot, "if you don't hurry and show us the way,Laura, I'll do it myself."

  So Laura, knowing that nothing could change Billie's mind when it wasonce made up, caught the little boy in her arms and started off acrossthe lake, Billie and Vi following close behind her.

  Luckily the children were not heavy, being thin almost to emaciation, orthe girls could never have made their goal. As it was, they had to stopseveral times and set the children down on the ice to rest.

  And more than once the treacherous ice cracked under their feet,frightening them horribly. They made it at last, however, and with asigh of relief set the children on the ground while they fumbled withnumbed fingers at their skate straps.

  "Is this where you live?" asked Billie of the elder of the two littlegirls. Billie had undone the last strap buckle and was peering offthrough the woods in search of some sort of habitation.

  "Yes," answered the little girl through chattering teeth. "Our house isjust a little way off, along that path."

  She pointed to a narrow foot path, or rather, to the place where a footpath had once been. For now it was obliterated by snow and was indicatedonly very faintly by footprints recently made.

  Billie, seeing that the other girls were ready, caught up the littlegirl again, holding her close for warmth and started down thesnow-covered path, Laura and Vi following.

  The snow was hard, which made the going a little easier, and in a minuteor two they came in sight of a shabby cabin set in the heart of a smallclearing.

  If the place had been a mansion, the girls could not have greeted thesight of it any more joyfully. They stumbled forward recklessly at theimminent risk of dropping the poor little children in the snow.

  Before they could reach the cottage the door of it opened and a womanstood on the threshold, hatless and coatless and staring at themanxiously.

  When she recognized the children she gave a gesture of relief and backedinto the house, motioning to the girls to follow her.

  This the girls were not in the least reluctant to do, for they werechilled through, and the warmth of Mrs. Haddon's kitchen was wonderfullycomforting.

  They set the children on the floor, and the little ones ran straight totheir mother. Polly Haddon dropped to her knees and put her arms aroundthe three of them, cuddling them hungrily.

  "My precious little lambs, you frightened mother so!" she said. "Shethought you were lost--but you are wet--or you have been!" She rose toher feet and faced the girls while the children clung to her skirts.

  "Where did you find my little ones?" she asked abruptly, lookinganxiously from one to the other of them.

  "We found them up to their waists in icy water," Billie explained,knowing that no time was to be lost if the children were to be savedfrom a bad cold. "They fell through the ice on the lake."

  "Fell through the ice!" the woman repeated dumbly, then, seemingsuddenly to realize the full seriousness of the situation, she rousedherself to action.

  With a quick motion she swept the children nearer to the warmth of thecoal stove, then started for a door at the opposite end of the room.Then as if she realized that something was due the girls, she paused andlooked back at them.

  "Draw up chairs close to the fire and warm yourselves," she directed."You must be nearly frozen."

  The girls managed to find three rather rickety old chairs, and thesethey drew as close to the stove as they could without scorching theirclothes. They tried to draw the children into their laps, but thechildren were either too miserable to want to be touched by strangers orthey had become a little shy. At any rate, they drew away so sharplythat one of them nearly fell on the stove. This frightened them all andthey began to cry dismally.

  The girls were glad when Mrs. Haddon returned with three shabby but warmlittle bath robes which she hung close to the stove. Then she undressedthe children quickly, rubbed their little bodies till they were in aglow, then slipped them into the snug robes.

  And all the time she was doing it she kept up a running fire ofconversation with the girls.

  "Thank goodness," she said, "I only missed the children a little whileago. They have always been so good to play close to the house, and I wasso busy I didn't look out as usual. And to think that they ran away andfell into the lake! Well, it's only one more trouble, that's all. It'sfunny how a person can become used to trouble after a while."

  "But it would have been so much worse," Billie suggested, gently, "ifthe kiddies had fallen through into deeper water."

  "Eh?" said Mrs. Haddon, looking up at Billie quickly, then down again."Yes, I suppose that would have been worse." Then she added, with abitterness the girls did not understand: "It isn't often that the worstdoesn't happen to me."

  Puzzled, the girls looked at each other, then around the bare,specklessly clean little kitchen.

  That Mrs. Haddon was very poor, there could be no doubt. The shabbinessof the place, her dress, and the children's clothes all showed that. Butcould poverty alone account for the sadness in her voice?

  Mrs. Haddon had once been a very pretty woman, and she was sweet lookingyet, in spite of the lines of worry about her mouth. She had lovelyhair, black as night and thick, but she had arranged it carelessly, andlong strands of it had pulled loose from the pins and straggled downover her forehead. At this moment, as though she felt the eyes of thegirls upon her, she flung the untidy hair back with an impatientmovement.

  "How old are the kiddies?" asked Laura, feeling that the silence wasbecoming awkward. "They look almost the same age."

  "There isn't more than a year's difference between Mary and Peter here,"indicating the taller of the two little girls and the boy. "And Isabelis thirteen months younger than Peter. Mary is nine years old," sheadded as a sort of afterthought.

  "Nine years old!" cried Vi, in surprise. "Why, that would make Petereight and the little girl seven. I thought they were much younger thanthat."

  "Yes," added Laura, thoughtlessly, "they are very tiny for their age."

  As though the innocent words had been a deadly insult, the woman rosefrom her knees and shot the girls so black a glance from her dark eyesthat they were frightened.

  "My children are tiny--yes," she said in a hard voice, repeating whatLaura had said. "And no wonder they are small, when for years they havebeen half starved."

  Then she turned quickly and herded the three frightened little ones outof the room.

  "You go to bed," she said to them as they disappeared through the door.

  Left to themselves, the girls looked blankly at one another.

  "Billie, did you hear what I heard?" asked Laura, anxiously. "Did shereally mean that the kiddies are so little because they don't get enoughto eat?"

  "Sounds that way," said Billie pityingly. "Poor little things!"

  "We must find some
way to help them," Vi was beginning when Mrs. Haddonherself came into the room.

  She seemed to be sorry for what she had said, and she told them so. Shedrew up the only chair that was left in the bare little room and satdown, facing the chums.

  "You must have thought it very strange for me to speak as I did," shebegan, and went on hurriedly as the girls seemed about to protest. "ButI have had so much trouble for years that sometimes I don't know justwhat I'm doing."

  "Have you lived alone here for very long?" asked Billie, gently.

  "Ever since my husband died," answered Polly Haddon, leaning back in herchair as though she were tired and smoothing her heavy hair back fromher forehead. "He was an inventor," she went on, encouraged by thegirls' friendly interest, to tell of her troubles. "For years he madehardly enough to keep us alive, and after the children came we had aharder pull of it than ever. Then suddenly," she straightened up in herchair and into her black eyes came a strange gleam, "suddenly, myhusband found the one little thing that was wrong with the invention hehad been working on for so long--just some little thing it was, that achild could almost see, yet that he had overlooked--and we were fairlycrazy with happiness. We thought we had at last realized our dream of afortune."

  She paused a moment, evidently living over that time in her mind, andthe girls, fired by her excitement, waited impatiently for her to go on.

  "What happened then?" asked Vi.

  "Then," said the woman, the light dying out of her eyes, leaving themtired and listless again, "the invention was stolen."

  "Stolen!" they echoed, breathlessly.

  The woman nodded wearily. She had evidently lost all interest in herstory.

  "My husband suspected a Philadelphia knitting company, whom he had toldof his invention and who were very enthusiastic over it, of having somehand in the robbery. But when he accused them of it they denied it andoffered a reward of twenty thousand dollars for the recovery of themodels of the machinery."

  "Twenty thousand dollars!" repeated Billie in an awed tone. "I guessthey must have liked your husband's invention pretty well to offer allthat money for it."

  The woman nodded, drearily, while two big tears rolled slowly down herface.

  "Yes, I think they would have accepted it and paid my husband almostanything he would have asked for it," she answered.

  "But haven't you ever found out who stole it?" asked Vi, eagerly. "Ishould think that the thief, whoever he is, would have brought theinvention back because of the twenty thousand dollars."

  The woman nodded again.

  "Yes, that was the queer thing about it," she said. "When the knittingcompany first told us of the reward we were jubilant, my husband and I.We thought surely we would recover the precious invention then. But asthe weeks went by and we heard nothing, the strain was too much. PoorFrank, after all those years of struggle, with victory snatched away atthe last minute, when he had every right to think it in his grasp--mypoor husband could fight no longer. He died."

  With these words the poor woman bowed her head upon her hands and sobbedbrokenly. The girls, feeling heartily sorry for her trouble but helplessto comfort her, rose awkwardly to their feet and picked up their skatesfrom the floor where they had thrown them.

  Billie went over to the sobbing woman and patted her shyly on theshoulder.

  "I--I wish I could help you," she ventured. "I--we are dreadfully sorryfor you."

  Then as the woman neither moved nor made an answer, Billie motioned toLaura and Vi and they stepped quietly from the room into the chill ofthe open, closing the door softly behind them.