This alarm made the girls jump up and run from their table of goodies in a panic.
The lad who had thrown the water thought the other boy was merely fooling when he peered into the bushes and said he saw a white porcupine and fled.
Now was Zip"s chance. Not waiting for them to get out of sight, he boldly rushed out and helped himself to the biggest piece of chicken he saw and gulped it down in his haste to get another piece and to steal some cake before the children should recover from their fright and return.
As they ran, one little girl turned around to see if the porcupine was chasing them. What she saw was some animal eating up their goodies, and she began to cry, for she was terribly hungry and had been thinking of all the good things they had to eat when lo! it was s.n.a.t.c.hed out of their mouths, one might say, for their fright had come so suddenly.
One of the larger boys stopped running and looked back, and as he had once seen a porcupine, he knew this animal now eating their luncheon had too long legs and his nose was too thin to be a porcupine. Having gotten over his first panic, and being very hungry, his courage began to come back, and he called,
"Here, let"s stop running away and go back and kill that animal, whatever it is! It won"t eat us. It is too small!"
So like frightened sheep, when their leader stopped, the children all halted. "Get long sticks," he commanded, "and we"ll drive him away."
[Ill.u.s.tration]
This was easily done, for there were lots of long, strong sticks about, and each child got one. Armed with these, they came running back as bravely as they had cowardly run away, all howling like Comanche Indians on the warpath.
Seeing this, Zip grabbed a leg of chicken in his mouth and, running to the river, jumped in and swam to the opposite sh.o.r.e, where he soon disappeared in the thick underbrush.
Once in his safe retreat, he lay down and devoured his bone, then got up and looked at himself. He was a sorry sight, for the quick swim across the creek had not washed the dough off, but had merely softened it and now he was a sticky ma.s.s from head to foot.
"Whatever shall I do to get this stuff off?" he said to himself. "I"ll try rolling in the mud," which he did. But alas! it was not successful. It only turned the dough black and made it stick all the tighter.
"I see where I shall have to go stand in some water and let it soak off.
Guess I"ll go home and get Tabby to come and talk to me while I am in the trough, for it is stupid being all alone." So he trotted on home, taking good care not to let anyone see him. And when he reached home, he hid under the big leaves of the rhubarb plants in the garden just the other side of the fence from the watering trough. Here he stayed until the doctor had driven off on his afternoon round of visits to his patients, and everyone else on the place was taking a nap. Then he barked three quick, snappy barks for Tabby, but she did not come. He barked again.
Still she did not appear, and he was standing with drooping ears and tail between his legs in a most dejected manner when he was aroused by Tabby saying,
"Why, Zip Elsworth! Where in the world have you been? You are as dirty as a pig, I do declare, and your hair is all sticking up like a porcupine"s quills."
At the word porcupine, Zip braced up and said, "Never mind about my looks!
If you will sit on the edge of the watering trough while I soak this stuff off, I"ll tell you how I got in this mess."
So Tabby obediently jumped up on a board at one end and fixed herself comfortably to hear of Zip"s adventure.
"But first I want to tell you that the doctor is very much displeased with you," said Tabby. "I heard him tell Martha, the housekeeper, that he did not know what had gotten into you lately, that you were never around to go with him any more, and if you were here, that you disappeared somewhere on the trip and he had to come back without you. He also said that unless you were around more, he was going to take me."
"He didn"t say anything of the kind, I know."
"Indeed he did! Ask Martha!" retorted Tabby.
"You are safe in saying that, for you know I _can"t_ ask Martha."
"Well, he did, whether you believe me or not!"
"I shan"t give him the chance, for from today I shall be on hand to go with him, and, what is more, I will stay with him and come back when he does. I shall cut my visits short until he forgets all about my neglecting him. Well, do you want to hear what I have been up to or not?"
"I certainly do! Go ahead. I"m all ears," so while Zip walked up and down in the trough to get clean, Tabby sat curled up on the board at the end, purring contentedly as she listened to Zip"s account of his morning"s doings.
CHAPTER V
ZIP IS STUCK IN THE STOVEPIPE
The next day at noon, when Zip came home with the doctor from making his morning visits to his patients, he was surprised to see all the furniture moved out into the side yard. At first he thought there must have been a fire, but when he saw Martha with a towel wrapped around her head, and Mrs. Huggins, the scrub-woman of the village, trying to squeeze a wide table through a narrow door, while Noah, their half-witted ch.o.r.e-boy, was beating carpets on the lawn, he knew it was spring house-cleaning.
This the doctor vowed was worse than a fire and as bad as a moving, for Martha never would do one room at a time, but must upset the whole house at once and dump everything outdoors. And from the time the furniture was moved out until it went back, all one could smell or see in the house was soapsuds and bare, wet floors. If one wished to sit down, they had to retire to the yard, and repose on a pile of carpets. If they wished to eat, they had to do so off the kitchen table on the side porch. If they wanted to dress, their clothes were in the yard, under chairs, pictures and bedding, and the task was so trying that finally one did not want to change so much as a collar.
The doctor always groaned when he got the first glimpse of housecleaning, and gave a sigh of relief when it was over. This was one time when he made longer calls on his patients and idled his time away at the drug store.
As for Martha, she went around with a frown on her face, and with a nervous, jerky manner, all the while talking of the terrible amount of hard work there was to do, and grumbling that she had never seen such a dirty house in all her life. But down in her heart she enjoyed it, for she liked nothing better than to scrub and clean. As for the dirty house, a fly would have slipped and broken its neck, the rooms were so clean from cellar to garret, there being only the doctor to keep house for, and no children to clutter up things. But just the same, on the first of May and first of September the house had to be upset from top to bottom and cleaned thoroughly, for Martha was born in New England and lived up to the rules of house-keeping she had learned in her girlhood.
As for Zip, he loved it for it gave him such a chance to nose into everything. And you can rest a.s.sured he did it. There was not a bandbox of any kind that he did not push the lid off with his nose and look into it, or a bag of any kind that he did not smell and smell until he discovered what was in it. He got under everyone"s feet and nearly tripped them when their arms were full of things and they could not see where they were stepping. He was kicked by Noah, hit with the mop by Martha and had the scrubbing brush thrown at him by the scrub-woman. But these things did not disconcert him in the least. They only added to the excitement.
As for Tabby, she hated it as much as the doctor did, and generally took advantage of these times to go to visit her cousin who lived across the fields a mile and a half away.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Zip had just come from the watering trough where he had been trying to get the dirt and cobwebs off his coat which he had gotten on under the eaves in the attic, and was up on a table nosing around when he thought he smelt mice in a bandbox. He c.o.c.ked his head to listen and, sure enough, he heard the mice moving around inside. So he cautiously tried to open the lid. It fitted loosely, so slipped off easily, and Zip peered in. What he saw made him smile at the horror it was going to give Martha when she discovered it. There in the crown of her best winter bonnet was a mouse nest, with three tiny little mice in it, and the father and mother scampering around.
At the sight of Zip, the old mice ran for the hole they had gnawed in the side of the box, and tried to escape, but Zip saw them and gave chase.
They jumped from the table and tried to hide under a sofa. But Zip was on their track and under he crawled after them. Then they dodged in and out of some boxes and at last jumped into a cracker box, thinking to hide safely under the crackers. But Zip soon scratched the layer of crackers off and again they had to run.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
This time they saw a nice big, black hole and into it they scampered, thinking it too small a place for Zip to follow, but they did not know Zip. The hole was black enough inside and out to suit anyone, for it was nothing more or less than a long piece of stovepipe from the kitchen stove which had been put there for Noah to clean out the soot when he was through beating the carpets. It was a pretty tight squeeze for Zip, but he never thought of that until he had himself wedged into it. Neither did he think of his clean white coat. All he thought of was to catch the mice. So in he rushed, but he had to crouch down and literally squeeze himself through. And once or twice he thought he would suffocate from the amount of soot he shook down. He grew so tired creeping with his legs doubled up under him that when he was half way through he gave up and howled for help.
It was a long time before anyone heard him and when they did, they could not for the life of them tell where the sound came from, for the pipe made his howls sound so queer. When at last he heard Martha and Noah talking, he barked and howled most dismally, as when a dog bays at the moon.
They looked everywhere, under boxes and barrels, thinking he might have turned one over on himself, and under piles of carpet and bedding. Still they could not find him.
"The sound seems to come from the earth, right down under my feet," said Martha.
The poor, simple-minded Noah with tears in his eyes, for he was very fond indeed of Zip, replied, "He"s done and gone and buried hisself!"
Just then the doctor drove up the lane, and Martha ran to him to tell him that Zip was fast under something somewhere and that they could not find him. When the doctor reached the side yard, where all the household things were piled, he began to look puzzled and moved the things just as the others had done. Martha declared it was no use as they had already looked under all of that stuff.
"Do listen to him now! His cries are growing fainter! He surely is dying!"
she wailed, and threw her ap.r.o.n over her head and began to cry.
At this moment the doctor stepped back and accidentally struck his foot against the side of the stovepipe, which brought another howl of agony from Zip. The doctor picked up the pipe and quickly disjointed it in the middle and out fell the dirtiest but most delighted little dog you ever saw, for he was free once more. And everyone was as pleased that he was found as he was that he was rescued, and their tears were turned to smiles at the comical picture he made, all covered with soot.
After trying to jump up on the doctor to lick his hands in thanks for his freedom, he started for his usual bath tub, the watering trough.
"Here, where are you going so fast, Zip? Better stay here until I get a bucket of hot soapsuds to wash you off," called his master, but Zip did not stop, and the doctor followed him. Imagine his surprise when he saw him jump in the trough where he always watered his horses!