Part 23 (1/2)

”Well, you see we did just as you said to, and took the ghost out of the window and went out to the woods early this morning so as not to let the paper lady see us.”

”Oh!” cried Miss Frayne, ”am I the paper lady? I begin to see daylight. Are these boys the ghost perpetrators, and were you in on the put-up job?”

”You're a good guesser,” I replied.

”And why wasn't I taken into your confidence?”

”For two reasons. First, because your friend Rob said you'd get better results for copy--more inspirations and thrills, if you weren't behind the scenes on the ghost business,--and then we didn't want to tell you about the presence of the Polydores lest inadvertently you betray the fact to my wife. Now, proceed, Ptolemy.”

”After we were in the woods, I heard an automobile coming down the lane, and I went up near the edge of the woods and peeked out behind a tree, and pretty soon I saw father and mother come over the hill and go in our haunted house, so I came up there and hid under the window and heard mother say: 'What an ideal place to write this is. It looks as if I might really get a chance to write unmo--'

”'--lested,'” I finished for him.

”I guess so,” he allowed. ”Well, she began writing, so I didn't go in, but when father came outside I went up to him and told him you and mudder were at the hotel and that we were all with you. He told me they came up here to write an article for some big magazine about the ghost. He hired an automobile down at Windy Creek to bring them up to the house and the man was going to come back for them tomorrow morning. I didn't let on the ghost was a fake, because I thought he'd be so disappointed to have all his trouble for nothing, and he'd be mad at me for swiping his skull. I told him a paper lady was coming and then I went back to the woods. He went down with me to see the boys, and he said he would come back and have lunch with us. Mother doesn't ever stop to eat at noon when she is writing.

”He went back and talked to the paper lady and pretty soon he came down and ate with us. I told him all about how we couldn't get any girl to do the work for us and so we had been living with you, and how Di got sick and mudder was all worn out taking care of him and came down here to rest, and that you wouldn't cash the check, so I did and was spending it and he said that was all right.” Here Ptolemy flashed me a most triumphant glance.

”He said you must be paid for all your expense and trouble, so he made out a check and gave it to me and told me to make mudder a nice present. He ain't so bad when he ain't thinking about dead stuff. When he felt in his pocket for his check book, he found a letter he had got yesterday and forgotten to open, so he read it then and found it was from some magazine, and the man said he'd pay his and mother's expenses to go to Chili and write up some stuff about--something. So father said they must go at once.”

”Not to Chili!” I exclaimed.

”Yes; we all went up to the house with him and I took mother's pencil and paper away so she would have to listen. She was wild for Chili, and I had to go and hunt up a farmer who had a machine to take them down to Windy Creek. Father signed another blank check for you and said you could board us with it or do anything you thought best.

”Then mother took a lot of papers out of her bag, some stuff she had written and didn't get suited with, and she stuffed them in the stove and set fire to them. Then we all went down to the lane to see father and mother off and when we got back the house was on fire. The chimney burned out.”

”Guess mother must have written some hot stuff,” said Emerald.

”It was burning so fast,” continued Ptolemy, ”that we didn't dast go in to save anything and all our food and clothes and b.a.l.l.s and bats and fis.h.i.+ng tackle are gone, and we didn't know what to do, or what to eat, and so--we came here.”

”You did just right, Ptolemy,” I admitted. ”I shouldn't have called you down--not until I heard your story, anyway.”

I held out my hand, which he shook solemnly, but with an injured air.

”Do you mean to tell me,” asked Miss Frayne, ”that your father and mother went away without seeing the baby?”

Ptolemy flushed a little.

”You see,” he explained apologetically, ”mother gets woolly when she writes and she's forgotten there's Di. She thinks Demetrius is the youngest. She's mad about writing. If she sees a blank paper anywhere, she ain't happy until she has written something on it, and the sight of a pencil makes her fingers itch.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: I held out my hand, which he shook solemnly, but with an injured air]

”Take warning, Miss Frayne,” I said, ”and don't get too literary.”

”Some day,” resumed Ptolemy, ”mother'll get the antiques all out of her system and then she'll remember us.”

I liked the boy's defense of his mother, and I began to see that Rob was right in thinking there were possibilities in the lad, but it was Silvia's influence that had developed them, for in the days when he borrowed soup plates of us, there had been no redeeming trait that I could discern.

And while I was recalling this, I heard Silvia saying to him kindly: ”And in the meantime, I'll be 'mudder' to you.”