THE QUEER OLD LADY
For a little while it seemed as though something serious had happened in the automobile which was taking the Curlytops to Uncle Toby's house. Mr. Martin had all he could do to slow up the machine, bringing it to a stop beside the road, and under a tree. If a tire had burst or been punctured Daddy Martin wanted to be in the shade to fix it.
Mother Martin, holding tightly to the side of the seat when the banging noise sounded, turned to look behind her to see if the three children were all right. She saw Trouble sitting between Ted and Janet, and William was looking at something in his chubby hand.
"What happened?" asked Mrs. Martin. "Were any of you hurt when the tire burst?"
"The tire didn't burst, Mother," answered Teddy.
"Why, I heard it," said Mr. Martin, as he prepared to get out of the machine, which had now come to a stop. "I must have run over a sharp stone or a broken bottle."
"No, it wasn't the tire," said Janet, and she laughed. "It was Trouble's toy balloon. He blew it up too big and it burst."
"That's what it was! And a piece of the rubber hit me in the eye!" laughed Ted.
"My 'loon all gone!" wailed William.
"So that's what it was—a burst toy balloon," said Daddy Martin. "Well, I'm glad it wasn't one of my tires."
"So am I," said Mother Martin. "It is too hot to have to change a tire to-day. Besides, I'm in a hurry to get to Uncle Toby's and see what it is he wants us to take charge of while he is away. I hope he doesn't go until we get there."
"You never can tell what Uncle Toby is going to do," said Mr. Martin, smiling, now that he knew he had no tire to change. "And so you burst your toy balloon, did you, Trouble? Well, I'll have to get you another, but not while we're on this auto ride. I don't want to be frightened again, and I might be if you blew up another balloon and it burst."
"I didn't know he had one with him," remarked Mrs. Martin, as Trouble looked sadly at what was left of his toy.
"I didn't either," Janet said. "All of a sudden he took it out of his pocket and began to blow it up."
"I was makin' be'eve it were a wed soap bubbles," explained Trouble.
"Well, soap bubbles or not, it burst," said Teddy. "It sure did make a noise! But now we can go on. I want to see if Uncle Toby is going to leave any guns."
"And I want a spinning wheel," Janet murmured. "But you can't take it to play steamboat with," she told her brother.
"I shan't want it if I have a gun!" retorted Ted.
"Now, children, be nice," begged their mother.
Daddy Martin started the automobile again, first getting out to look at the four tires, to make sure none was flat, punctured or burst. They were all round, plump and as fat as big bologna sausages.
"Now we go to Uncle Toby. Maybe I get a kittie cat!" said Trouble, when he decided to smile after feeling so bad about his burst balloon.
"A kittie cat!" exclaimed Janet. "Why, we have a lovely cat, Trouble. Don't you like Turnover?"
"Yep! But I 'ikes a kittie cat, too. Maybe Uncle Toby hab one for me!"
"Probably Uncle Toby is too old a man to bother with pet cats," said Mrs. Martin.
But it only goes to show that you never know what is going to happen in this world—sometimes you don't even know what you are going to have for dinner.
Along rolled the automobile, taking the Curlytops nearer and nearer to the city of Pocono, where Uncle Toby lived with his housekeeper, Mrs. Watson. But it was rather a long ride, and, about half way, the party stopped in a little village for lunch.
"Did we bring any lunch with us, or are we going in a place to eat?" asked Ted.
"Oh, I hope we go in a place to eat!" exclaimed Janet. "I like a restaurant, don't you, Ted?"
"Sure!" answered the Curlytop boy.
"Yes, we are going to a restaurant," his mother told them. "Daddy wants to get some oil and gasoline for the auto, too."
"It's sort of feeding the auto, isn't it, Mother?" asked Janet, as they alighted.
"In a way, yes," admitted Mrs. Martin.
A little later the Curlytops were having a fine meal, and when I say the Curlytops I mean also Daddy and Mother Martin, and Trouble. The hair of Mr. and Mrs. Martin did not curl, though it must have done so when they were younger; or else how would Ted and Janet have had such beautiful ringlets? Nor did Trouble's hair curl, though when he was smaller his mother used to wind little ringlets around her finger, hoping he would have locks as pretty as those of Janet and Ted. But, really, the older boy and girl were the only ones who could, truly, be called Curlytops, though I sometimes speak of the "Curlytop family."
So you know, when I say that the "Curlytops" were eating lunch, that all five of them were enjoying their meal. There were several things that Janet, Teddy and Trouble liked to eat, and toward the end of the meal there was a piece of pie for each of them. And it was toward the end of the meal that something happened, and Trouble, as usual, was the cause of it.
Just before the waiter had brought the pie there had sounded, out in the street, the music of a hand organ. No sooner had he heard this than Trouble slipped from his chair (where he had been sitting on a hassock to make him higher) and ran to the window.
"No monkey!" called out the little fellow, after he had stood for a moment with his nose pressed against the pane of glass, making his "smeller," as he sometimes called it, quite flat. "Hand-organ grinder got no monkey!"
Trouble was disappointed. He had hoped to see a little monkey scrambling around to gather pennies in his cap. But this hand-organ player did not have any. And there was nothing much for Trouble to see. So the little fellow came back to the table, but not before he had stopped at the big water-cooler in one corner of the dining room. Trouble paused to watch a waiter turn the shiny little faucet and draw a glass of water for a customer.
"Come and get your pie, William," his mother called to him. She very seldom mentioned him as "Trouble," before strangers. So this time Mrs. Martin called her little boy by his right name.
"Do you want me to eat your pie?" teased Ted.
"No! I eat my own pie!" Trouble exclaimed, and he climbed up into his chair, being helped by his father, next to whom he sat.
The meal was almost over, and Daddy Martin was wondering what his Uncle Toby could want him to take charge of, when Mrs. Martin gave a sudden start, a sort of shiver, and said:
"Why, my feet are getting wet!"
"Your feet wet!" exclaimed her husband. "Surely it isn't raining in here! It isn't even raining outside!" he laughed, as he looked from a window.
"But my feet are damp," went on Mrs. Martin. Then she raised the cloth, which hung down rather low on each side of the table, and glanced at the floor. "There's a big puddle of water under our table!" she cried.
Then Ted looked over toward the big water-cooler in one corner of the restaurant.
"Somebody left the faucet open!" cried Teddy. "The ice water is all running out! No wonder your feet are wet, Mother!"
Mr. Martin hastily left his chair and turned off the faucet, and, as he did so, he looked at Trouble. Something in the face of that youngster caused Daddy Martin to ask:
"William, did you do that?"
"I—I dess maybe I turned it on a 'ittle bit!" confessed the mischievous one.
"A little bit!" cried Janet, as she looked under the table. "Why, there's almost as much water as there is in our brook at home!"
"Oh, not quite so much," said her mother gently. "Though there is enough to have wet through the soles of my shoes. I was wondering why my feet felt so damp and cold. And did Trouble turn on the water? Oh, Trouble!"
All eyes gazed at the little fellow, and he seemed to think he should explain what he had done.
"I 'ist turned de handle a teeny bit," he said, "to make a 'ittle water come out. An' den I fordot 'bout it!"
That was just what he had done. Seeing the waiter draw a glass of water from the cooler had given Trouble the idea that he soon afterward carried out. When he saw no monkey with the hand organ, the little fellow had gone back to his seat and, on the way, opened the faucet so that the water ran out in a little stream. Soon the drip-pan was full and then the water began trickling over the floor. No one noticed it until it had made a little puddle under the table, just at the point where Mrs. Martin's feet were.
"Oh, Trouble! what will you do next?" sighed the little fellow's mother.
"No harm done at all! None whatever!" said the waiter, coming up to the table smiling. "That little water on the floor I will wipe up so quick you will never see it."
"No, it won't hurt the floor much," Mr. Martin said. "And I suppose your shoes will dry out," he told his wife. "But, all the same, William should not have done it."
"I won't do it any more," said the little fellow. "I be good now! I sorry!"
He generally was when he had done something like that. However, as the waiter had said, little real harm was done, and Mrs. Martin's shoes would dry, for it was a hot, summer day.
The meal was finished and they all took their places in the automobile again to finish the ride to Uncle Toby's place, about twenty miles farther on.
Once again Trouble, Ted and Janet sat in the rear seat, while their father and mother rode in front. And this time Trouble had no red balloon which he could blow up, making it burst with a noise like a punctured tire. The children talked among themselves, wondering over and over again what it could be that Uncle Toby wanted their father to come and take charge of.
"Maybe he's got a little boy or a girl from an orphan asylum, and he wants us to take it to live with us," suggested Janet.
"A boy would be all right," decided Ted, as he thought of this. "I could have fun with another fellow."
"And I'd like a girl," said Janet. "I always wished I had a sister."
"Maybe they're twins—a boy and a girl," Ted went on. "That would be fun!"
"What would be fun?" asked his mother from the front seat, where she had heard the talk of the children. She often asked a question like this, as it sometimes stopped a bit of mischief that, otherwise, might happen. "What fun are you talking about?" asked Mrs. Martin.
"Uncle Toby," answered Janet. "I thought maybe what he wanted daddy to take charge of was a little orphan girl."
"And I thought maybe it was a boy," added Ted.
"And then we both thought maybe it was twins—a boy and a girl, and we'd each have someone to play with," went on Janet.
"My! I don't believe Uncle Toby has adopted any orphan children that he wants us to take," Mrs. Martin said. "I can't imagine what he really has, but we'll soon find out."
On and on they rode in the automobile, until, after a while, they reached the small city of Pocono and, a little later, they pulled up in front of Uncle Toby's house. It was a rambling, old mansion that once had looked very nice, but now it was rather shabby and needed painting.
"Here is where Uncle Toby lives," said Daddy Martin. "Do you children remember it?"
"A little," admitted Ted. Neither he nor Janet had been there in years, and Trouble had never visited Uncle Toby.
"I wonder if he's at home," went on Daddy Martin, as he alighted from the automobile.
"There's someone on the porch," said Mrs. Martin. "Oh, it's Mrs. Watson, the housekeeper," she added. "But something seems to be the matter! I wonder what can have happened?"
As Mother Martin spoke a queer little old lady came down off the porch and along the walk, hurrying out to meet the Curlytops, all of whom were now at the front gate.
"Wait! Don't go in! Don't go in!" cried the queer old lady, holding up her hand like a traffic policeman stopping a fast automobile. "Don't go in! They're having a terrible time! Oh, that Mr. Bardeen ever should have gone away and left me to look after 'em! Oh, the trouble I have had! Such trouble! Don't go in! Listen to 'em!"
As she spoke there came strange sounds from the grim old house where Uncle Toby lived! Very strange sounds!