Part 3 (1/2)

”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, brus.h.i.+ng 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 brus.h.i.+ng, 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.