"All right. Let"s make a start. Catch hold of that bureau, and heave it around into place."
They fell to work with a will. Ross, the more lightly built, showed the greater energy of the two, though Peter worked away quite as steadily.
But after an hour of hard labour Peter called a halt.
"Oh, let"s put it through," and Ross bent over a box with undiminished ardour.
His att.i.tude appealed to Peter, spoiling for fun after a long day at the factory, and in a twinkling he had tipped his cousin head first into the nearly empty box. Shouts, laughter and a lively scuffle ensued--so lively a scuffle, indeed, that Mr. Bell, Jane and Nancy, in the dining-room below, energetically sweeping up the litter made by the paperer, smiled at one another in mock dismay as the floor above resounded with the pounding and sc.r.a.ping of boot-heels, and the very walls of the small house trembled with the fray.
"Goodness, I should think it was elephants up there!" cried Nancy, and ran half-way up the stairs to see what was going on.
Mr. Bell opened his mouth to say, "Tell them it"s an old house, Nan, and the ceiling "s cracked"--when the thing happened.
The ceiling was old, the house was not too solidly built, and the battle above had reached its height when, quite without warning, down upon the freshly cleaned floor fell a great ma.s.s of plaster. The powdery lime rose in a suffocating cloud and covered Jane and her father with dust and debris.
It was a minute more before the combatants, wrestling furiously over the bare floors above, could be made to understand by a horrified young person, who shrieked the news at them from the top of the staircase, the havoc they had wrought.
But when they comprehended what had happened they hurried downstairs.
"Well, of all the----" Ross was too shocked to finish.
"I say, but we"ve done it now, have n"t we?" exclaimed Peter, in disgust. "Janey--dad--it did n"t hurt you, did it?"
"Only my pride--and my hair," answered Jane, as she vainly tried to brush her curly locks free from plaster.
"It"s a shame! Why didn"t you stop us? Clumsy louts! Pulling the place down about our ears the very first night!"
"And how we hurried that paper man, to get him through to-night!"
lamented Nancy, brushing off her father with anxious fingers. "We were going to have the dining-room all settled to-morrow----"
"And to-morrow "s a holiday," murmured Jane, from under her hair.
She was bending forward, with her head at her knees, while Mrs. Bell shook out the clinging lumps from the tangle of hair in which they were caught.
"It"s a quarter of ten," announced Rufus, cheerfully. "Do we have to clear this up to-night?"
"I should say so!" Ross caught up a broom.
"It"s the least we can do. Get a box, will you, Rufe, and let"s have the worst over. Pete and I will do the job, and the rest of you can go upstairs and dance a hornpipe over our heads. If you will throw things at us from time to time down the stairs it may relieve your feelings."
"Don"t feel too badly. I had a notion all the time that that ceiling ought to have been pulled down before we papered the room; it looked old and shaky to me. Now we "ll have a new one that will stand pillow-fights as long as we live here," said Mrs. Bell, smiling at the rueful countenance of her nephew.
"Right you are, and I"ll have a man here to put that plaster on in the morning, holiday or no holiday," promised Peter.
In ten minutes the plaster had been swept up, Jane"s hair had received a thorough brushing, Mr. Bell had been relieved of several lumps which had worked their way down his back, and the family went to bed in as good spirits as if nothing had happened.
The next morning Peter started early in quest of a plasterer to restore the ceiling, and finding it by no means easy to discover one who cared to work when he might play, came home after two hours" search baffled but still determined. A pa.s.sing acquaintance gave him a clue, and he was presently hurrying across the street in search of the Townsends"
coachman, whose brother, the acquaintance had said, might be persuaded to do the job.
In the stables, much to his astonishment, he came fairly upon the girl whose propensity for losing things he had described with so much gusto the evening before.
"I beg your pardon," he said, quickly--he seemed to be always begging her pardon--"but I was looking for your coachman. I--he--I hoped he could tell me the name--that is, of course he knows the name--I mean, I wanted his brother"s address."
Peter was no stammerer, and it irritated him very much to be saying all this so awkwardly, but there was something about the cool dark eyes of this girl, as she stood looking at him, which rather disconcerted him.
She had evidently just dismounted from her horse, and now Peter observed two things--first that she was rather oddly pale, and second, that her side-saddle had slipped, and rested at an altogether improper angle upon the horse"s back. As he saw this he came forward.
"What is the matter?" he asked quickly. "You haven"t had a fall? You didn"t ride this way, of course?"
"Yes, I did," she answered, lifting her head rather high, and then suddenly drooping it again.
"How far? When did it slip? Were you alone?" Peter examined the side-saddle.
"It began to slip--back--at--the boulevard," said the girl, rather slowly. "I--I don"t know just how I kept on, but I did. Lewis is n"t here. He ought to be. I can"t put up Blackthorn myself."
"Let me do it for you." Peter took the bridle from her. He soon had the horse in the stall and had put away the saddle and bridle.
"That was a plucky thing to do," declared Peter, coming back to the stable door, where the girl had dropped into the coachman"s chair, "to ride home with a slipping saddle. But you ought not to have done it, you know. It might have slipped a lot more with a jerk, and thrown you.
See here, you "re not feeling just right, are you? Shall I call somebody?"
"No, no!" She started up. "If mother knew the least thing went wrong she would n"t let me ride at all. If you--if you just would n"t mind staying here a little, till I feel like myself again----"
"Why, of course I will"--and Peter stayed.
It was only for a few minutes, and meanwhile Lewis, the coachman, had returned, and the matter of the loose saddle-girth had been fully discussed by all three. Then Peter took his way home.
Jane met him at the door. "Did you find where the plasterer lives?" she asked, eagerly.
Peter stared at her, turned about, and gazed across the street, as if he expected to see a plasterer following in his path, trowel and float in hand. Then he burst into a laugh. He mumbled something which sounded like a very peculiar name, if it was a name, and rapidly retraced his footsteps across the street, to make his inquiry of Lewis, the coachman.
CHAPTER III
PETER SEES A LIGHT
The Bells had been at home for a fortnight in Gay Street.
The little house was in order from cellar to roof, and its occupants had settled down to the routine of their daily living, well content with the new abode. In a way they missed the larger house and freer environments of the remote suburban place they had left, but the early hour at which Mr. Bell and the boys were now able to reach home, and the later one at which they could leave in the morning, amply compensated for the more cramped quarters made necessary by the higher rates of rental in the city.
"It"s not a very friendly neighborhood, though, is it, Janey?" commented Peter one evening, as he and Jane stood on the porch, enjoying the mild mid-April evening. "How many calls have you had? Two?"
"Three," corrected Jane, cheerfully. "The two old ladies on the right, the mother of six the left, and one odd person from Westlake Street.
The rest are still looking us over."
"n.o.body from Worthington Square?" Peter"s tone was quizzical.
"Absolutely n.o.body," Jane laughed. "But we have one acquaintance in Worthington Square, Peter--the little Townsend girl with the sweet, pale face. She wants to know us dreadfully, and she"s such a dear, democratic little person the smiles positively tremble on her mouth when I meet her--which I do almost every day. So does Nancy. It "s the oddest thing! Nan says she almost never stirs out that the Townsend child does n"t appear."