CHAPTER III
A TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT

It was almost dark and still the twins had not returned. The maid came in and turned on the electric light and brought me the menu from the café. I ordered a substantial dinner for the three of us and with the assistance of the good-natured girl got myself into another dress and smoothed myself up a bit.

A quick step sounded in the hall just as I settled in my chair and the maid went down to order dinner. Tweedles at last – one of them, anyhow! It turned out to be Mr. Tucker, and I was covered with confusion! What on earth was I to say to him? What business did he have coming home before he was expected?

"Hello, little friend! Where are those girls? You don't mean that both of them have had the heartlessness to go out at one time and leave you all by yourself? I wouldn't have thought it of them!"

"Oh, they – they – I reckon they'll be in soon. I haven't been lonesome at all. Brindle and I have been looking out of the window at the jitneys – " dangerous ground! If the girls wanted to tell their father of their escapades they were to be allowed to do so, but it was not my business. Why didn't they come on in? I knew they would sooner or later divulge to their beloved Zebedee, but they had certainly meant to get all over with their schemes while he was away.

"We weren't looking for you until day after tomorrow," I stammered.

"Well, is that any reason why you shouldn't be glad to see me now?"

"Oh, no! We are glad to see you – that is, I am."

"That is to say, Tweedles will not be?" he questioned.

"Of course they will be." Why, oh, why didn't they come on?

Weary footsteps dragging along the hall and Dum appeared. Her hat was on one side, not at a jaunty angle but just at that hopelessly out-of-plumb slant. Her face was dirty enough to suit Dee's idea of a jitney driver. Her hair was dishevelled and her shoes very dusty.

"Oh, Page, only fifteen orders in all the afternoon and I am nearly dead! I'll never be able to make a living peddling household no – What, – you!" and her mouth formed itself into a round O as she spied her wonderful parent.

"Yes, I!"

"You!"

"Yes, me! If you understand that better."

"Oh!"

"Is that all you can say when I chased back from the meeting in Norfolk expecting to find three lone ladies so glad to see me? Page greets me with an icy mitt, and now all you can say is 'You!' and 'Oh!' Where is Dee? Maybe she will at least ask me how I am."

More tired footsteps dragging along the hall, and in came Dee.

"I am rolling in wealth but I am so tired that nobody had better say 'boo' to me or I'll weep."

"'Boo!'" said Zebedee.

"Oh, you?" and Dee proceeded to burst into tears which certainly did not improve her begrimed countenance.

"Great heavens! What is the matter?" he cried, turning fiercely on Dum.

Dum did the most natural thing in the world for a poor little half-orphan who had been trying to pay her debts by honest toil, selling household novelties at back doors and tramping up and down cobble-stoned alleys until she had worn a blister on her heel – she just burst out crying, too.

Zebedee looked hopelessly at me, evidently expecting me to be dissolved in tears, too, but the ludicrous side of things had struck my risibles and, willy-nilly, I succumbed to laughter. Brindle, however, was sympathetic with his beloved mistress, and set up such a howling as never was heard before.

"By the great Jumping Jingo! What is the matter? Have I done something? Is anybody dead? What do you mean, Dee, by having on my coat and cap? What do you mean, Dum, by fifteen orders? Page, you can speak; tell me what's up."

"I – I – "

"Go on and tell him, Page!" tweedled the twins, trying to control their emotions.

"Well, Tweedles got a little behind with their finances and the fire came along at Gresham at a rather inopportune moment as they were expecting to save up on allowances – "

"And the old clothes! Don't forget the old clothes!" from a very crumpled-up Dee.

"They also were negotiating some sales with the laundress, of cast-off clothing." Zebedee was looking me through and through with his ice-blue eyes. I had never had the least fear of him from the moment I had met him, but now I felt, to say the least, quite confused. He looked stern, and his eyes, which had been only the color of blue, blue ice, but always seemed warm, were now as cold as ice, too.

"Well, go on!"

"The fire broke out and now the old laundress has the clothes and the money, too. So Tweedles were all broken up over owing so much money and I suggested that they turn in and earn some."

"You suggested it?" still very coldly.

"Yes, I suggested it, and I would do the same thing again. I think it is a great deal better for people to get to work and pay off their debts at any honest labor than to keep on owing them – "

I gulped and got red. I was tired of having Mr. Tucker look at me with his cold expression of a criminal judge. I had done nothing wrong, and neither had the girls, for that matter. I felt a great wave of anger rising in me, and I stood up on my bad ankle, forgetting all about having one, and faced my host, ready for battle. He looked rather startled, and the twins stopped sobbing and began to dry their eyes on two very grimy handkerchiefs. I do not often get very angry, but there was something about being looked at as Zebedee looked at me, that made me lose all control of myself. He made me feel that I was a bad little girl while he considered himself a superior old gentleman. Now up to this time the father of my two best friends had always treated me like a grown-up young lady, and had never made me feel that there was any difference to speak of between his age and mine, and he had no right with one wave of his hand to put me back in the kindergarten class.

"Why, Page – "

"Don't 'Why, Page' me! You came back before we expected you and startled us somewhat, as Tweedles hoped to get the money earned before you returned. The girls are dead tired and need their dinner and kind sympathy instead of being bullyragged – "

"Page! Please! I only wanted to know how Tweedles went to work to make all the money you say they owe. I am not a bit angry, not the least little bit. I think you are very unkind to me."

"Well, you looked at me so coldly and sneered so."

"No! You are mistaken!"

"Yes, you did, when I said I suggested it."

"I am awfully sorry, little friend," and now his ice-blue eyes melted, literally melted, as he, too, began to leak, as the Tuckers call their free giving way to tears. You remember, it was a trait of the family. They thought no more of weeping than of laughing or sneezing. They wept when they felt weepy just as they laughed when anything amused them or sneezed when they felt sneezy.

"I tell you what you do, girls: you go on and wash up and change your dresses, and then we'll have dinner, and after dinner we'll talk it all over like sensible people without getting angry or huffy or anything that we might get." Zebedee wiped his eyes and gave his girls a hug and kiss in spite of their grimy, soiled countenances, and then he turned to me as they flew to the bathroom to do his bidding. I had become conscious of my ankle as I stood there disobeying the doctor's commands, and now that it was all over I flopped back in my chair, feeling very grateful for its support.

"Now you have gone and put your weight on your foot and it is all my fault."

"Oh, no! Not at all!"

"It is just as much my fault as that Tweedles came in worn out with making a living and had dirty faces and were hungry – "

"Nobody said that was your fault!"

"Well, what was my fault, then?"

"It was your fault for looking at me so disapprovingly. You were what Tweedles call Mr. Tuckerish. You were so cold and grown-up and made me feel so young and naughty, and as I had not done a thing on earth but just suggest to the girls that they try to earn some money, not specifying how they should go about it, it did seem hard that you should be so hard on me. It hurt my feelings."

"Well, on the other hand, little girl, how about my feelings? Here I had come tearing home from Norfolk expecting to find three charming girls, all of them overjoyed to see me, and what do I find? Nothing but 'What, yous!' from first one and then the other – stammered greetings, and then tears and flashing eyes and false accusations."

At that I burst out laughing, and Zebedee did the same. It was such a tempest in a teapot! I was ahead of him, however, and by my sudden anger over nothing or almost nothing I had unwittingly turned his attention from Tweedles and their misdemeanors, and now I was sure he would be only amused over their escapade.

"We are all of us mighty glad to have you back. I don't see what made you think we weren't."

"Foolish of me, wasn't it? I realize now that it was excess of emotion and delight that made all of you behave as you did."

CHAPTER IV
WHAT ZEBEDEE SAID

We ate dinner very quietly. The twins began to perk up a bit in the salad course, and by the time we got to Brown Betty and the Roman punch they were quite themselves, except for a langour that might have come from overeating as much as from overexertion.

Zebedee avoided the subject of money-making with great tact. He had much to tell us of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Gordon and their little home in Norfolk and their happiness and hospitality. Mrs. Gordon was or had been our beloved Miss Cox, a teacher at Gresham. She had married Mr. Gordon at Willoughby Beach the summer before while she was chaperoning us, and all of us felt that we had been instrumental in making the match and were in a measure responsible for the great happiness of the couple.

The maid had removed all traces of dinner and we were seated snugly around the drop light on the library table, a table that had been converted into a dinner table when the Tuckers decided to dine in their apartment, which boasted no housekeeping arrangements. There was a deep silence broken only by a smothered yawn from Dee. Running a jitney for almost eleven hours is some sleep-provoker.

"Well, girls, aren't you going to take your poor old father in out of the cold?" and Zebedee looked appealingly at his daughters.

"Well, it was this way – " they started in the same breath.

"One at a time, please! Dum, you begin."

"Well, you see I owe seven dollars and twenty-three cents to different girls at Gresham and I didn't have a red cent and no telling how long before allowances are due, so I just thought I'd try to earn something. I found an ad for twenty young women to sell household novelties and so I applied for the job."

"That was rather ambitious as a starter. Were you going to be all twenty right from the first?"

"Silly and flippant! I got the job, at least one twentieth of it, and started out this morning at eight o'clock. I am to get five cents on every sale. I went up and down Franklin and Grace streets all morning, going in the front doors, but this afternoon I tried the back doors because naturally the servants are more interested in these labor-saving devices than the mistresses; besides, I saw so many people we know when I went in the front way that I was afraid if they bought from me they would do it from pity or something, and I wanted to be very businesslike and create a burning desire for the really excellent articles I am selling. I didn't want to hold up anyone."

"That's right!" I was trembling for what Zebedee would say about Dum's meeting all the friends on her canvassing jaunt, but I realized that I did not really know that gentleman as well as I thought I did. He did not seem to mind in the least if perhaps everyone in Richmond knew that one of his girls had been out going from house to house in the most fashionable residential districts selling batty-cake flappers and spot-knockers.