“How old are the kiddies?” asked Laura, feeling that the silence was becoming awkward. “They look almost the same age.”
“There isn’t more than a year’s difference between Mary and Peter here,” indicating the taller of the two little girls and the boy. “And Isabel is thirteen months younger than Peter. Mary is nine years old,” she added as a sort of afterthought.
“Nine years old!” cried Vi, in surprise. “Why, that would make Peter eight and the little girl seven. I thought they were much younger than that.”
“Yes,” added Laura, thoughtlessly, “they are very tiny for their age.”
As though the innocent words had been a deadly insult, the woman rose from her knees and shot the girls so black a glance from her dark eyes that they were frightened.
“My children are tiny – yes,” she said in a hard voice, repeating what Laura had said. “And no wonder they are small, when for years they have been half starved.”
Then she turned quickly and herded the three frightened little ones out of the room.
“You go to bed,” she said to them as they disappeared through the door.
Left to themselves, the girls looked blankly at one another.
“Billie, did you hear what I heard?” asked Laura, anxiously. “Did she really mean that the kiddies are so little because they don’t get enough to eat?”
“Sounds that way,” said Billie pityingly. “Poor little things!”
“We must find some way to help them,” Vi was beginning when Mrs. Haddon herself came into the room.
She seemed to be sorry for what she had said, and she told them so. She drew up the only chair that was left in the bare little room and sat down, facing the chums.
“You must have thought it very strange for me to speak as I did,” she began, and went on hurriedly as the girls seemed about to protest. “But I have had so much trouble for years that sometimes I don’t know just what I’m doing.”
“Have you lived alone here for very long?” asked Billie, gently.
“Ever since my husband died,” answered Polly Haddon, leaning back in her chair as though she were tired and smoothing her heavy hair back from her forehead. “He was an inventor,” she went on, encouraged by the girls’ friendly interest, to tell of her troubles. “For years he made hardly enough to keep us alive, and after the children came we had a harder pull of it than ever. Then suddenly,” she straightened up in her chair and into her black eyes came a strange gleam, “suddenly, my husband found the one little thing that was wrong with the invention he had been working on for so long – just some little thing it was, that a child could almost see, yet that he had overlooked – and we were fairly crazy with happiness. We thought we had at last realized our dream of a fortune.”
She paused a moment, evidently living over that time in her mind, and the girls, fired by her excitement, waited impatiently for her to go on.
“What happened then?” asked Vi.
“Then,” said the woman, the light dying out of her eyes, leaving them tired and listless again, “the invention was stolen.”
“Stolen!” they echoed, breathlessly.
The woman nodded wearily. She had evidently lost all interest in her story.
“My husband suspected a Philadelphia knitting company, whom he had told of his invention and who were very enthusiastic over it, of having some hand in the robbery. But when he accused them of it they denied it and offered a reward of twenty thousand dollars for the recovery of the models of the machinery.”
“Twenty thousand dollars!” repeated Billie in an awed tone. “I guess they must have liked your husband’s invention pretty well to offer all that money for it.”
The woman nodded, drearily, while two big tears rolled slowly down her face.
“Yes, I think they would have accepted it and paid my husband almost anything he would have asked for it,” she answered.
“But haven’t you ever found out who stole it?” asked Vi, eagerly. “I should think that the thief, whoever he is, would have brought the invention back because of the twenty thousand dollars.”
The woman nodded again.
“Yes, that was the queer thing about it,” she said. “When the knitting company first told us of the reward we were jubilant, my husband and I. We thought surely we would recover the precious invention then. But as the weeks went by and we heard nothing, the strain was too much. Poor Frank, after all those years of struggle, with victory snatched away at the last minute, when he had every right to think it in his grasp – my poor husband could fight no longer. He died.”
With these words the poor woman bowed her head upon her hands and sobbed brokenly. The girls, feeling heartily sorry for her trouble but helpless to comfort her, rose awkwardly to their feet and picked up their skates from the floor where they had thrown them.
Billie went over to the sobbing woman and patted her shyly on the shoulder.
“I – I wish I could help you,” she ventured. “I – we are dreadfully sorry for you.”
Then as the woman neither moved nor made an answer, Billie motioned to Laura and Vi and they stepped quietly from the room into the chill of the open, closing the door softly behind them.
CHAPTER IV – GENEROUS PLANS
The girls talked a great deal of Mrs. Haddon and her trouble as they put on their skates and slowly skated back to the Hall.
“It must be dreadful,” Laura was saying thoughtfully just as the three towers of the school loomed up before them, “not to have enough to eat. Just think of it, girls, to be hungry – and not have enough to eat!”
No wonder this condition of affairs seemed unusually horrible, in fact almost impossible to luxury-loving Laura, whose father was one of the richest and most influential men in rich and influential North Bend. To Laura it seemed incredible that every one should not have enough and to spare of the good things that, rightly used, go to make happiness in this strange old world. She had never known what it was to have a wish that was not gratified almost on the instant.
“Yes, it must be awful,” Billie answered soberly, in response to Laura’s exclamation. “And I’m sure,” she added decidedly, “that I won’t be able to enjoy another good meal until I know that those three poor little kiddies and Mrs. Haddon have had all they could possibly eat – for once, at least.”
“What do you mean?” they asked, wonderingly.
“We’ll pack a basket,” planned Billie, growing excited over the great idea which had just that minute occurred to her. “We’ll put everything in it that we can possibly think of, chicken sandwiches and a bottle of current jelly, a thermos bottle of hot coffee and another of milk for the children – ”
“Say wake up, wake up,” begged Laura, irreverently. “Where do you suppose we are going to get all this stuff anyway? It’s too late to go to town – ”
“Who said anything about going to town?” Billie interrupted impatiently. “I’m going straight to Miss Walters and tell her all about the Haddon family and ask her to let us raid the kitchen and make up the basket ourselves. We can pay for the things,” she added, as an afterthought.
“It’s a bright idea – but it takes nerve,” said Laura slangily. “Miss Walters may not like the idea of feeding the countryside.”
“I’m not asking her to feed the countryside,” Billie retorted, adding comfortably as a picture of Miss Walters, white-haired, blue-eyed and sweet, rose before her: “I’m sure she will let us do it just this once.”
For Miss Walters, strict though she was at maintaining discipline in the school, was nevertheless generosity and kindness