POPPY OTT
AND THE GALLOPING SNAIL

HE REACHED DOWN AND PINCHED MY BARE TOES.
Poppy Ott and the Galloping Snail. Frontispiece (Page [153])

POPPY OTT
AND THE
GALLOPING SNAIL

BY
LEO EDWARDS
Author of
THE POPPY OTT BOOKS
THE JERRY TODD BOOKS

ILLUSTRATED BY
BERT SALG

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America

Copyright 1927, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP

TO
MY WIFE

CONTENTS

POPPY OTT
AND THE
GALLOPING SNAIL

CHAPTER I
THE GALLOPING SNAIL

All fagged out, I dragged myself wearily from the sun-baked concrete highway to the skinny shade of a thin-limbed, thirsty-looking bush.

“Under the spreading blacksmith tree the village chestnut sits,” I crazily recited, kicking off my shoes to cool my blistered feet. Then I looked at my chum with begging eyes. “Get me some ice cream, Poppy. Quick, before I faint.”

Boy, was I ever hot! I felt like a fried egg. But scorched as I was, inside and out, I could still sing a song.

To better introduce myself, I’ll explain that my name is Jerry Todd. I live in Tutter, Illinois, which is the peachiest small town in the state. And the kids I run around with are the peachiest boy pals in the state, too, particularly Poppy Ott, the hero of this crazy story.

Poppy is a real guy, let me whisper to you. I never expect to have a chum whom I like any better than I like him. He’s full of fun, just like his funny name, which he got from peddling pop corn. And brains? Say, when they were dishing out gray matter old Poppy got served at both ends of the line. I’ll tell the world. If you want to know how smart he is, just read POPPY OTT’S SEVEN-LEAGUE STILTS. Starting with nothing except an idea, we ended up, under his clever leadership, with a factory full of stilt-manufacturing machinery and money in the bank. That’s Poppy for you. Every time. A lot of his ideas are pretty big for a boy, but he makes them work. Of course, as he warmly admits, I was a big help to him in putting the new stilt business on its feet and teaching it to stand alone. But his loyal praise doesn’t puff me up. For I know who did the most of the headwork.

With Poppy’s pa doing the general-manager stuff in the new factory, my chum and I had merrily set forth on a hitch-hike as a sort of vacation. This, too, was Poppy’s idea. A hitch-hike, as every kid knows, is a sort of free automobile tour. You start walking down the concrete in the direction you want to go, and when a motor car to your liking comes alone you wigwag the driver to stop and give you a lift. Sometimes you get it and sometimes you don’t. But if you limp a little bit, and act tired, that helps.

Poppy, of course, was all hip-hip-hurray over his hitch-hike idea. That’s his way. Our most violent exercise, he spread around, seeing nothing but joy and sugar buns ahead, would be lifting our travel-weary frames into soft-cushioned Cadillacs and Packards. Once comfortably seated, we would glide along swiftly and inexpensively. No gasoline bills to pay. No new tires to buy. Everything free, including the scenery. Some automobiles would carry us ten miles, others would carry us a hundred miles. “We might even average around three hundred miles a day,” was some more of his line, “and still have time each night to stop at a farmhouse and do chores for our supper and breakfast.” If we slept in the farmer’s barn, that would be free, too. Our trip would cost us scarcely anything, though it would be wise, the leader tacked on at the tail end, to carry twenty dollars in small bills for emergencies.

I fell for the scheme, of course. For Poppy never has any trouble getting me to do what he wants me to do. Not that I haven’t a mind of my own. But I’ve found out that in going along with him I usually learn something worth while, and have a whale of a lot of fun doing it, too.

Having won our parents’ consent to the trip, we had set forth that morning in high feather. But in poor luck we now were held up on a closed road, though why the road had been suddenly shut off was a mystery to us.

With a final look up and down the long stretch of concrete, Poppy came over to where I was and dropped down beside me in the hot sand.

“Still not a sign of a car,” says he.

“Not even a flivver, huh?” I suffered with him.

“I can’t understand it,” says he, puzzled. “We saw a few cars after we left Pardyville. But the road’s completely empty now, and has been for hours.”

I saw a chance to have some fun with him.

“‘And our most violent exercise,’” I quoted glibly, “‘will be lifting our travel-weary frames into soft-cushioned cattle racks and pant hards.’ Say, Poppy,” I grinned, “was that last cattle rack we rode in a four-legged wheelbarrow or another gnash?”

“You won’t feel so funny,” came the laugh, “if you have to go to bed to-night without your supper.”

“Bed?” says I, looking around at the sun-baked scenery. It was a beautiful country, all right—for sand burs and grasshoppers! “Where’s the bed?” I yawned. “Lead me to it.”

“This sand knoll may be the only bed you’ll get. For there isn’t a farmhouse in sight.”

I got my eyes on something.

“The Hotel Emporia for me, kid,” I laughed, pointing to a billboard beside the highway. “‘One hundred comfortable rooms,’” I read, “‘each with bath and running ice water. Delectable chicken dinners. Sun-room cafeteria. Inexpensive garage in connection.’ Who could ask for more?” I wound up.

“Jerry, don’t you ever run down?”

“Hey!” I yipped, straightening. “What do you think I am?—a clock?”

“Yah,” came the quick grin, “a cuckoo clock.”

“It took real brains to think up that one, kid. You win.”

“It’s a cinch,” the leader then went on, “that they aren’t letting any cars into this road. For we haven’t seen an automobile since three o’clock. And it’s after six now.”

“Supper time, huh?”

“Yes, supper time, but no supper. Shall we walk back to Pardyville, Jerry?”

“How would that help us?”

“The automobiles must detour from there.”

“First let us sleuth the road map,” I suggested, “and find out where we are.”

“Here’s Pardyville,” Poppy presently pointed out.

“We must be near New Zion,” says I, squinting at the map. “See? Here’s a river running east and west, with a concrete road on each side—C. H. O. and C. H. P.”

“County Highway ‘O’ and County Highway ‘P,’” Poppy explained.

“We must be on C. H. O.”

“That’s what the map says.”

“Come Here Often,” I made up of the three capital letters, looking around at the Sahara sandscape. “Yes, I will—not!”

“I should imagine,” came thoughtfully, as the leader studied the map, “that a better scheme than going back will be to cross the river at New Zion and pick up the other road. For both roads lead into Sandy Ridge. And that’s our next regular town.”

“How far have we come?” I inquired.

The leader got out his “log” book.

“About sixty-two miles.”

“What!” I squeaked. “Has it taken us all day to cover sixty-two miles?”

“Here’s the dope: The first automobile carried us twelve miles. The next one kissed a telephone pole before it had gone a mile. The third one got on the wrong road and we lost seven miles. The fourth one—”

I let out a yip.

“The end of a perfectless day!” I sang noisily. “And you were the bird,” I threw at him, “who said that some automobiles would carry us a hundred miles at a jump. Poppy! Poppy! I believed in you, and now my sugar is salt.”

“I guess I put it pretty strong,” says he, with a sheepish look.

“I guess you did. Sixty-two miles! Hold my head, I’m dizzy.”

“Anyway,” he added, “you can’t blame me because they suddenly closed this road.”

“I suppose not,” I let up on him. “But just the same I feel like a victim of circumstances, as the tomcat said when it sat down on the fly paper.”

We got up then. And taking to the concrete again, we kept our ears sharpened for the sound of an automobile, for it didn’t seem possible to us that the fine highway could much longer remain closed. But all we heard in the desolate strip of country was the rasping applause of happy-go-lucky crickets and the occasional bagpipe notes of a long-winded, hard-working locust. The waste land was an irregular checkerboard of sand ridges and clumps of unhappy-looking scrub trees. Men who jerked plows around for a living certainly had saved themselves a lot of grief and hardship by not stopping here. There wasn’t a sign of a fence, which showed in itself that the land wasn’t any good. Still, I concluded, it must belong to some one.

Weary from watching us all day, and messing up our faces with sweat, the sun, on its way to bed, was fast sliding out of the sky in the west. From a sizzling white moth ball it had changed itself into a big orange. The air was cooler now, but the concrete under our dragging feet seemed hotter than ever. It was like walking on hot stove lids.

It was Poppy’s idea that the small town of New Zion, where we were going to cross the river, was just ahead of us, to the left, on a side road running north and south, between C. H. O. (where we were) and C. H. P. (where we wanted to be). But as we trudged along the hard roadway no sign of church steeples or shapely water towers came into sight. I was about to let go in weak-kneed despair, when suddenly the sound of an automobile cut the road silence behind us.

“Hot dog!” I cried, with new pep. “The road’s open! We won’t have to walk now.”

But instead of a string of cars coming toward us from the direction of Pardyville, we could make out just one moving shape. It was far down the sloping road. Nor was the solitary car speeding toward us, though from the noise it was making, and the smoke, you could have imagined that it was scorching along at double the law’s limit.

After an hour or two, more or less, the slow-moving, smoking car got close enough for us to see that it was a roadster without a top. Maybe at one time it had been a fairly good-looking car. But that was years and years ago. In its old age it had gotten a broken back, which left the front and rear ends tipped up like the head and tail of a canoe. The sides were open—there were no doors—which in itself stamped the car as a relic. The windshield had long ago shimmied itself to pieces, though the brass frame that once had held the glass was still there. All four wheels toed out, like the wheels of Dad’s brickyard dump cart, and one front fender was gone.

There was an old man in the car—a queer-looking old man, sort of stooped and thin-faced. He was hanging to the steering wheel for dear life. I waved to him to stop, but he didn’t seem to see us at all, so deep was he in his driving job.

The crazy car having passed us, the noisiest piece of junk that I ever had seen on the road, I untangled myself from its smoky tail to find Poppy laughing his head off.

“The Galloping Snail!” he yipped, having read the name that was printed on the back of the car.

“It sure is a ‘Galloping Snail,’ all right. Why didn’t you jump in, Jerry?—you’ve been yelling for a ride.”

“I didn’t want to cheat the goose out of its seat,” I laughed.

“Goose?” says the other, looking at me.

“Didn’t you see the goose on the seat?”

“Who do you mean?—the old man?”

“No, a real goose.”

“I guess it was a pair of geese,” laughed Poppy, thinking of the queer driver.

Sometimes a fellow gets a hunch about things that he’s heading into. But we had no hunch that we’d ever see that old car again, much less get mixed up in a crazy, shivery adventure with its queer driver and his equally queer gander—for it was a gander that I had seen, as we learned later on, and not a goose.

A spotted gander! Did you ever hear of one? No? Well, you’re going to hear about one pretty soon.

CHAPTER II
A HOUSE OF MYSTERY

As though to completely take the joy out of life for us, no other cars came along, as we had expected they would. The sway-backed roadster with the crazy name and queer-looking driver seemed to have the whole highway to itself. And that was strange, we thought, puzzled.

Why had the road been closed to all the cars except this one? Or, to put it another way, if the road had been closed to the general traffic, for certain reasons, how had the one car gotten permission to come through?

It was dusk now. And as though cheered up by the cooler air of early nightfall, the crickets and locusts were tuning it up to beat the cars. Or maybe, was my crazy thought, they were hooting at us in derision as we passed. I could imagine, as we trudged along, hungry and fagged out, that we looked not unlike some rare piece of junk that the cat had dragged in. I know I felt that way.

Once or twice we caught sight of a scuttling rabbit. And now that the bushes beside the hard road were lost in creeping shadows, I began to pick out moving eyes. Hunks of green glass set close together.

Poppy had joked with me about putting in the night here, though at the time neither of us had thought that we might in all fact have to do that very thing. But now the outlook was against us. We seemed to be a million miles from nowhere. Did snakes and sand lizards, I wondered, have green eyes? Br-r-r-r! If it came about, to our further grief, that we had no other choice than to stick it out all night in the open, it was my clever little decision to roost in a tree—that and nothing else but. I wasn’t so well supplied with spare legs and arms that I cared to run the chance of having one chawed off and hurriedly digested by some green-eyed monster while I snoozed on a bed of sand burs. I guess not.

Certainly, I checked up on the day’s adventures, so different from our dreams, a fellow’s fortunes were easily turned upsidedown. Only that morning we had set forth on our trip with lilting hearts, as the saying is. Everything was sunshine and chocolate drops. But were we lilting now? Not so you could notice it. I had the beaten feeling, as I dragged myself along, that I had lilted my last lilt.

“Poppy,” I suffered, feeling that it was time for some more nonsense, “if the worst comes to the worst, and I go down first, you can have my jigsaw and football shoes—only the jigsaw needs a new leather belt.”

“Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along,” the other sang, to cheer me up.

“Say, Poppy,” I breathed, clinging to his arm, my eyes far away, “what is heaven like?”

“Be yourself, kid,” he shoved at me. “You aren’t Little Eva.”

“I wish now that I had taken lessons on a harp,” I tremoloed, “instead of a shoehorn. If only we could look ahead and know what the Fates have in store for us. Eh, kid?”

“Jerry,” came warmly, as the leader slipped an arm around me, “you’re a regular little sunbeam. For no matter how hard we get bumped, your stock of silly gab never dries up. I don’t know how I ever could get along without you. Certainly, it wouldn’t be the same old world.”

Well, that was pretty nice of him, I thought. I appreciated the hug, too!

“If you want to,” I puckered up, looking at him with my soul in my eyes, “you can kiss your little sunbeam ... once.”

“Go on!” he shoved.

I was about to unhinge some more of my crazy gab, when all of a sudden the leader gave a whoop and scooted down the road.

“Here’s a signboard, Jerry. ‘New Zion ten miles,’” he read.

“Ten miles!” I groaned.

“We can make it.”

“But look at the road!” I wailed. “It’s nothing but sand. We’ll slip back faster than we can go ahead.”

“Then we’ll walk backwards,” came the quick grin.

“Ten miles!” I suffered anew. “It’s no use, Poppy,” I waggled weakly, as a sort of climax to my little act. “I’m done for. Remember, kid, the jigsaw’s yours. And you’ll find my book of patterns and seven new blades under the dog house. Good-by, Poppy. You meant well in bringing me here. But you didn’t know, old pal. So I forgive you. And if you can’t make the jigsaw saw ask Dad to help you, for he’s almost as clever at sawing hunks out of his finger tips as I am.”

“I’ll ‘jigsaw’ you in the seat of the pants if you don’t come on and shut up,” he told me.

Seesawing together, the moon had been lifted into sight by the sinking sun. And now we could trace the winding course of the sandy road leading to New Zion. As I have hinted in an earlier paragraph, it was some road. Sand to the right of us, sand to the left of us and sand in front of us, as Lord Tennyson would have written it in poetry. But as I trudged along beside the leader I tried to grin and bear it.

“A light, Jerry!” he suddenly yipped. “There’s a farmhouse up ahead of us. We’re saved now, old kid.”

There was indeed a house up ahead of us, on the right-hand side of the road. We could see it in the moonlight. But as we hurried toward it, in livelier spirits, I couldn’t make myself believe that it was a farmhouse. Certainly, it was no ordinary farmhouse. For it was much too showy. I could count three stories and an attic. It was a stone house, too. And even if it had been built years and years ago, when labor and plaster were peddled around at bargain rates, I could not doubt that it had cost a fortune.

Who had been crazy enough, I wondered, curious over the unusual place, to build a house like this at the very end of the world? It didn’t fit into the waste landscape at all. Still, was my contented thought, the better the house the better the meal. It ought to work out that way. So we really were in luck to strike a place like this instead of a shack, which would have better matched the country.

Not only was the house itself built of stone, but it was inclosed by a stone wall at least three feet high. Where the private road turned in, smoothly graveled, the wall was lifted into a huge arched gateway. Looking in, I thought curious-like of the magic palace that the genii had built for Aladdin.

“Is it real?” I asked Poppy’s opinion, wondering if it would be safe for us to go in. “Or is it a mirage, as you read about in stories of people crossing the desert?”

“Tell me what you see,” laughed the other, as puzzled over the unusual place as I was, “and I’ll tell you what I see.”

“A beautiful three-story stone house,” I checked off, “with fancy jiggers all over it, to make it showy, and a stone wall in front, with a big gateway, like a cemetery.”

“That’s exactly what I see, too. So I guess it’s real enough. But it beats me,” the puzzled leader concluded, matching my thoughts, “to find a place like this in a country where there aren’t even farmhouses.”

Leg weary and hollow under our belts, it had been our intention to buy a meal here, late as it was, and if possible rent a bed for the night. Certainly, done up as we were from our first unsatisfactory day on the road, it was all right for us to draw on our emergency fund. The next night, when we were on the other road where the automobiles were, and playing in luck again, we would try working for our supper and breakfast, as we had planned on doing. But not to-night.

It struck me, though, as I stood there looking at the peculiar house, that this was no place to buy a meal. If we were admitted into the house at all it would be without pay. For only a very wealthy man could have built a place like this. And what would a dollar or two of our money mean to him?

Still, unless we wanted the people to think that we were tramps, it would be better for us to offer to pay for our supper, I told Poppy, than to ask for it. So of this determination we turned in through the big gate and mounted the front steps.

The door that we came to was set in a framework of glass, in the old colonial way, and taking a squint inside, I saw a long, wide, dimly-lit hall, the walls and ceiling of which were fixed up with fancy dark wood panels. It was a swell house, all right, as swell on the inside, with its beautiful walls and old furniture, as it was on the outside. And more than ever I wondered at its being here. It must have a queer history, I told myself.

“Clang!” went the old-fashioned knocker. And I stepped back now, out of sight, for a small, quick-footed woman of considerable age had come briskly into sight, carrying a hand lamp. I saw her set the lamp on a small table close to the door. In her blue and white kitchen apron, she didn’t look very high-toned, like the big house, yet, to that point, I liked her best the way she was. She had a sort of motherly look. Her gray hair was combed tight to her head, which she carried very straight on her shoulders, and even before I got a close look at her I knew that her eyes were gray, too. I was to learn soon that they were very bright eyes, sparkling as she talked—and could she talk! Oh, boy!

The door was opened without hesitation. Yet at sight of us the woman seemed to be startled, even disappointed. She was looking for some one else, I figured.

“It’s just two boys,” Poppy spoke up quickly, noticing that the older one was trying to look over our shoulders. “We haven’t had any supper. And seeing your light, as we were hoofing it for New Zion, we wondered if you wouldn’t be kind enough to sell us something to eat.”

“Laws-a-me!” cried the little old woman, with a nervous, excited gesture. “If you’ve got money, keep it. You don’t have to pay for a meal in this house, not while I’m here, though how long I’ll be here I can’t say.”

“That’s fine,” says Poppy in good manners. “But we don’t want to be cheap about it.”

“Samantha Ann Danver Doane is my name,” the woman ran on, “Danver being my maiden name, and a name I’m justly proud of, I want you to know. While it probably isn’t anything to boast of, and certainly nothing to be ashamed of, I’ll confess to you, as I have to other people, it being my nature to be frank and open, that I’m only a poor relation of the man who built this house and lived in it until his sudden death, the ninth of last August. So now you know who I am, and you understand what I mean when I say I don’t know how long I’ll be here.... Who did you say you were?”

Poppy gave our names and explained about the closed highway. All the time he was talking the woman talked, too. It was kind of funny. But I kept a straight face. For even if old people are queer, you can’t laugh at them to their face. I guess not. Mother and Dad would jerk me out of my skin if I ever did a trick like that.

“When you first knocked,” the woman ran on, and I was getting wise to her lively eyes now, “I thought it was Miss Ruth. ‘There,’ says I to myself, as I dropped my work in the kitchen, ‘it would be just like that dear jolly girl to call me to the door and then jump into my arms.’ While I am a poor relation of the Danvers, as I say, I want you to know that I’m very proud of my stock, and consequently Miss Ruth is very dear to me, though I don’t like her mother, and never did. The proud piece! But, laws-a-me, Miss Ruth is the dearest girl, just about the age of you boys, and just like her pa and her grandpa, too.”

Talk like that takes a lot of air. But in stopping to get her wind, the little old lady didn’t waste any time.

“He was the commonest and kindest man I ever knew in all my life, with all of his great wealth—meaning Mr. Corbin Danver, who built this mammoth house and died here—and how his son, Harold, could have quarreled with him, and let the quarrel stand to the separation of the two branches of the family, is more than I can figure out. But a lot of queer things happen in this world—and in the best of families, our own unexcepted.”

“Yes, indeed,” says Poppy, feeling, I guess, that to be polite he ought to say something.

The woman then switched her thoughts to us and smiled as though she had seen worse-looking guys.

“As I say, I didn’t expect to find two boys when I opened the door, but you are none the less welcome, if that is in good form as coming from a poor relation. And you’re hungry, you say! Well, just come with me to the kitchen and I’ll see what I can find for you. I haven’t had supper myself, figuring I’d wait until Pa and Miss Ruth got here, so I may take a bite with you for company’s sake, for Pa may not get here for another hour. Such an old car as we have! But it’s all we can afford. You never know what is liable to happen to it when you start out. A wheel ran off the day we came here, which was a week ago yesterday. Oh, dear! It’s awful to be poor. I sometimes wonder how it would seem to be a rich relation for once instead of a poor relation.... Do you like cold meat sandwiches? Or shall I fry some potatoes?”

“Don’t go to any bother,” Poppy told her quickly. “For anything in the way of grub is good enough for us.”

Having followed the woman to the kitchen, we now watched her, grinning at each other, while she worked and talked. Her hands and tongue moved together, though for the most part what she said passed over our heads. She kept referring to “Miss Ruth” and “Pa.” “Miss Ruth’s ma,” we learned, had been a Hardy before her marriage into the Danver family. And considering her stock she was acting much too big for her shoes—whatever that was. But “Miss Ruth’s pa” was a gentleman of real stock—a Danver, if you please! And “Miss Ruth” herself was just like her pa and her grandpa.

What interested us more than the woman’s chatter was the fine supper that she set out for us. Boy, did food ever taste so good to us! I’d be ashamed to tell you how many sandwiches we ate. But however much we stuffed ourselves, we didn’t eat half enough to suit the little old lady, who, having talked all the time she was getting the “eats” ready, was still talking. Her one great ambition, it seemed to me, was to tell all she knew!

Once she left us, to see if “Pa and Miss Ruth” were coming. We heard her open the front door and go outside.

“She sure has a limber tongue,” grinned Poppy, murdering his tenth sandwich. “But she’s all right,” he tacked on hastily, not wanting me to get a wrong idea of what he meant.

“What do you make out of her talk?” says I, looking around the big kitchen, which was as fine a kitchen as I ever had been in.

“As I understand it, she and ‘Pa,’ her husband, came here a week ago to open up this house, which had been closed since the funeral—whoever it was that died here.”

“I got that part—it was Miss Ruth’s grandfather, Mr. Corbin Danver. He was the man who built this place.”

“But who is Miss Ruth?”

“Some girl who’s coming here on a visit, I guess.”

“‘Pa’ went to the train to meet her, huh?”

“That’s the way I understand it.”

Poppy laughed.

“Say, Jerry, I wonder if that wasn’t ‘Pa’ in the old car.”

“He was headed this way, all right.”

“Still,” the leader turned the thought around in his mind, “it couldn’t have been him. For the man who passed us in the Galloping Snail could easily have gotten here ahead of us. Besides, he was alone.”

“Don’t forget about the goose,” I grinned.

“A goose isn’t a girl.”

“A lady goose is,” I joked, “when she’s young.”

“You’re a goose yourself!”

The woman was nervous when she came back to the kitchen.

“Dear me!” she cried. “I’m beginning to worry about Pa. For it’s almost ten o’clock. Do you suppose he’s lost?”

“Doesn’t he know the roads around here?” I inquired.

“Him? Pa is dumb, if I must admit it, as one who has lived with him for more than forty years. He isn’t a Danver,” came proudly, “it’s me who is. He’s a Doane, and the Doanes, from Cyril Doane down, are a thick-headed lot, though I hoped well for Pa when I married him. But it’s a fact, he wouldn’t know how to put on his shirt if I didn’t yank him into it. However, he’s a good husband in some ways. For one thing, he never talks back to me. But it’s me who has to do all the planning. His head might just as well be made of wood for all the use he makes of it. I never can depend on him. The other day I sent him to Neponset Corners for some baking powder and he ended up in Sandy Ridge where he bought bug powder. Powder! That was all he could keep in his mind at one time—he knew I had said powder—but could he think of baking powder?—no, bug powder! That’s Pa for you. No wonder I worry about him when he’s out of my sight. And I wish now that I hadn’t trusted him to go to Pardyville alone.”

“We came through Pardyville this afternoon,” says Poppy, by way of conversation.

“Like as not,” came the further worry, “he’ll go to the wrong depot. Oh, dear! What wouldn’t I give to hear one of his old tires blow up out in front—just to know that he was home safe and sound. Suppose something should happen to Miss Ruth!—and her coming here secretly. What would her ma say? I sometimes think she shouldn’t have planned to come here without telling her ma. And to that point, why she wants to come here, so secret-like, is a mystery to me. But when I got her letter, asking me to come over with Pa to open the house, I didn’t say ‘no.’ That was little enough for a body to do for one’s rich relation, I thought—and you always get something for it. As I said to Pa last night, ‘Pa, why is Miss Ruth so anxious to come here all of a sudden? What is her object? Kept away from her grandpa’s funeral by her ma, who never got over the quarrel, is she anxious now to come here, on her way to boarding school, out of respect for the dead?’ But you might as well talk to a hitching post as to talk to Pa. All he ever says is ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ and half the time he doesn’t know enough to say that if I don’t tell him to.”

I was thinking to myself, sort of grinning-like, that maybe all “Pa” ever had a chance to say was “yes” and “no.” But, of course, I kept shut on my thoughts. For I know my manners.

As we finished our supper, the droning voice of a clock came down the stairs. I began to count the slow strokes.

“Listen!” the woman breathed, and I saw that a quick change had come over her. She looked frightened—as though she expected something to rush in and grab her. “... seven ... eight ... nine ... ten,” she counted. There was a short deep silence. Then something slammed upstairs. “What is it?” she cried, looking back and forth at us.

“Sounded like a door,” says Poppy.

“I know it’s a door. And I suspect that it’s the door of the chamber where Miss Ruth’s grandpa died. But what makes it slam? And always when the clock strikes ten! It does that every night. As I told Pa the second time it happened, there’s something queer going on in this house—something that neither he nor I can understand. Miss Ruth isn’t coming here in a mere whim. She has a reason. Has she learned why her grandpa left her the keys of this house? Does she know what is in the will, which is to be read here Wednesday night? Certainly, when she gets here, and I expect her any minute now, I hope that she tells me the truth. For if there’s anything I hate it’s to be around people who have secrets. Me?—I never had a secret in all my life. I don’t believe in secrets. And that is one reason why I set my foot down when Pa wanted to join the Masons. I wasn’t going to have him know things that I didn’t know.”

Poppy was sitting beside the telephone. And when it suddenly jingled he jumped as though he had been shot.

“Laws-a-me!” cried the woman nervously. “I wonder what now?”

CHAPTER III
THE SPOTTED GANDER

The ghost theory is bunk. Every big kid knows that. Ghosts? Pooh! Who could be crazy enough to believe in ghosts? That is what we say back and forth, the big kids I mean, when the sun is doing its dinner-time stuff, high in the sky, and the nearest cemetery is six miles away.

But what happens when a white cow makes goo-goo eyes at us over a moonlit cemetery fence? Oh, boy! How we can cut the dust then. The only kid who ever beat me in a race like that was Spider Whickleberry, and his legs are so long that he modestly uses his pa’s white duck trousers for basketball pants. And even then the pants aren’t any too long for him!

Me believe in ghosts? Well, I should sa-ay not! But, to own up, what was the big thought in my mind right now? Ghosts, and nothing else but. Yes, sir, as crazy as it may seem to you, I actually believed in my excitement that there was a ghost in the upper part of the house. And what more likely than the ghost of the man who had died here?

At first sight the lonely house had struck me as being queer. Not only in its unusual size, as it had towered in the moonlight, but in its desolate location, as well. Truly, had been my thought, no one but a queer-minded man could have wanted such a place.

Now I wondered if the dead man’s secrets were living after him. It would seem so. Br-r-r-r! Certainly, I told myself, the elderly spook had a nice gentle way of letting us know that it was on the job! I wondered further if the door slamming, so sharp and businesslike, wasn’t a gentle little hint for us to evaporate.

But the leader just laughed at me when I told him my thoughts. There was no such thing as ghosts, he argued. When people were dead they were dead—and once buried in the regular way that was the end of them so far as their earthly stunts were concerned.

“I’d sooner think,” says he, “that it’s tramps.”

“Tramps?” says I.

“Sure thing. They’ve had the house to themselves since it was closed. See? And the door slamming is a trick of theirs to scare the old people away.”

Mrs. Doane came away from the telephone with flashing eyes. It was Lawyer Chew of Neponset Corners, she told us, and we remembered then that Neponset Corners was the small town across the river from New Zion, on the other hard road where the automobiles were.

“He practically ordered me to leave here,” the indignant talker galloped along, “but until Miss Ruth herself tells me to get out I’m going to stay right ... where ... I ... am. The idea of him, whose grandfather was jailed for horse stealing, and, worse, almost lynched, ordering a Danver around! My blood boils. Oh, the burden and humiliation of being a poor relation! But let him try to order Miss Ruth out of here and very probably she’ll tell him what I hardly dared to tell him. For this is her house, though, of course, to a legal fine-point, she hasn’t a deed to it yet. But everybody in the family knows that her grandpa left her the keys, and certainly, as I tell Pa, when we speculate on what we are likely to get, the old gentleman wouldn’t have ordered the keys turned over to her when he was dead and gone if he didn’t consider the place hers. Yet, even if she does inherit it—and we’ll know the truth in a day or two, when the will is read—what good will she get out of it? For who besides a recluse like Corbin Danver would want to live in a place like this?”

“It certainly is lonely enough,” says Poppy.

“Still,” the woman added quickly, “I would gladly take it if it were given to me. Yes, indeed. But I’m not Miss Ruth. While I could live here if necessary, it would bore her to death, for she loves gayety and excitement. And what is there gay and exciting around here? Even the nearest town is a community of religious fanatics, who won’t look at a talking machine or an automobile. Anything that isn’t plain bread and butter and hard work is a worldly sin in their eyes.”

“She means New Zion,” Poppy nudged me.

“Of course, as I tell Pa, I haven’t any hopes of getting this place, being no closer kin than a cousin. In fact, to that point, I haven’t the slightest idea what I will get. I tried to pump Lawyer Chew the day of the funeral, for, of course, he knows what is in the will, being the family lawyer. But could I get anything out of him? No, indeed! Nor did any of the other relations, I venture to say. The seal of the will, he explained importantly—and if there’s anything I hate next to secrecy it’s over-importance!—was not to be broken for a year. I remember my feelings that day. In his lifetime Corbin Danver had been a deep man. Always thinking and scheming. I could tell you some very unusual stories about him. And knowing him so well, I realized that he had acted to a hidden purpose, both in giving his granddaughter the keys of his house and letting his will stand unread for a year. Yet, puzzle my brain as I would, I could think of no answer to the riddle. Nor did I, as I say, get any help from Mr. Tight-mouth Chew! I was to have patience, he told me dryly. In due time I would learn if my name were mentioned in the will.”

We were grinning now.

“Humph! I only hope, if Miss Ruth does inherit the bulk of the estate, as she has a right to do, that she gives that impudent-acting lawyer his walking papers. It rather surprised him, I think,” and by a warmer look in her eyes, and a wag of her head, the talker showed satisfaction now, “to learn that the granddaughter had sent me here to open up the house for her. He hadn’t much to say after I told him that. Maybe, though, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. For Miss Ruth said I was to come here quietly. Yet how was I going to explain my presence here except by telling him the truth?”

“Say, Mrs. Doane,” Poppy jumped in, when the long-distance talker put on the air brakes and stopped. “Jerry and I think we know what made that door slam.”

The woman’s jaw dropped, showing her false teeth, and for an instant she looked blank.

“The door!” she cried. Then she was herself again. “Laws-a-me!” and she started off at her usual snappy pace. “With Lawyer Chew trying to chase me out of here, I had forgotten all about the door.”

“Had you thought of tramps, Mrs. Doane?”

“Tramps? I’d sooner think it was spooks,” came bluntly.

“Atta-boy!” I yipped. “That’s exactly what I thought, too.”

“But, Mrs. Doane,” argued old material mind, “there is no such thing as a real spook.”

“No?” came quietly, and the peculiar dry smile that jumped into the woman’s face, and out again, showed that she was holding something back. “Maybe,” she added, unable, I guess, to longer keep her secret, “if you knew everything that has happened in this house since Pa and I came here you’d change your mind about spooks. I know I have. Doors slamming, footfalls in the dead of night, windows creaking in their slides, and every night that queer smell in the upper hall.”

Poppy was staring now.

“Queer smell?” he used her words. “What do you mean?”

“When we first came here,” the housekeeper ran on, only too glad of the chance, I guess, to tell her unusual story, “I thought I detected a peculiar smell in the house. Like drugs. But it seemed to go away when we let in fresh air. Then that night the door slammed. Pa and I had gone to bed. We got up, thinking that a window was open. But we could find no open windows. And in the hall I noticed that peculiar smell again, only stronger. I asked Pa if he noticed it. ‘A dead rat,’ says he. ‘No,’ says I sharply, ‘it isn’t a dead rat—it’s some kind of a drug.’ Well, we went back to bed again, finding everything all right, as I say. Then the next night the door slammed again. And there in the hall was that same peculiar smell. The third night Pa and I watched. But first we went around and locked all the doors. Yet at ten o’clock we heard the sound again. And trying the doors, we found that the one leading into the master’s chamber was unlocked.”

“And you’re sure you locked it?”

“I had told Pa to lock it, but, as I say, you’re never sure of anything he does. The fourth night, though, I locked the door myself.”

“And what happened?”

“We later found it wide open. And again that peculiar smell hung in the hall. Since then Pa and I have been locking ourselves in our room. Yet I never get to sleep until after ten o’clock. And always at the same hour, when the clock has struck ten, I hear the door slam. The last two nights we’ve heard other things, too—the creaking of windows, as I say, and even footfalls.”

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” cried Poppy; then he got my eyes to see if I were as struck with excitement as he was.

“Pa always did believe in ghosts and the like,” the little old woman ran on, determined to tell all she knew. “But me—it was a parcel of nonsense, I said. But now what can I say? I don’t know how much of the situation you’ve grasped from my talk—and I guess, if the truth is told, I do talk an awful lot—still, I’m not ashamed of that trait, for it’s characteristic of the women on our side of the house. There was my Aunt Samantha, for whom I was named. She was a real talker, to my notion. Laws-a-me! How I enjoyed my visits with her before she got paralysis of the jaw. As I say, I don’t know how much of my talk you remember, rambling as it is, but I have tried to make you understand that something queer is going on in this house. You say it’s tramps. I don’t believe it. For listen to this,” and the voice was mysteriously lowered. “When Corbin Danver died,” came slowly, “I was the first blood relative to get here. I wanted to have a final look at him, before the others came, to see if the undertaker had removed the two ugly warts on his nose, as was proper, I thought, but Dr. Madden, who since has been in Europe, said ‘no.’ He had reasons, he declared, more important than warts, for keeping the casket closed. This, coming on top of the old gentleman’s unusually sudden death, aroused my suspicions. And being of a determined nature—another Danver trait—I decided to see for myself. Nor did I even take Pa into my confidence. That night at twelve o’clock, with everybody else asleep, I crept downstairs.... I was sickened for a moment by a strangling odor.... You can see what I’m leading up to—every night since we have been here, at ten o’clock, the hour my relative died, that same smell seeps through the upper hall. A peculiar drug. I can’t name it. And however much I have scolded Pa in the past about his silly belief in spirits, I now find myself wondering if the body of Corbin Danver, saturated with that drug, is indeed coming back in spirit form. And to what purpose? Has he some message for me?—some instructions? If so, why doesn’t he come to me directly instead of slamming the door of his bedchamber night after night? And there is Miss Ruth. Why is she coming here secretly? Some one must have sent for her. But who? And now, in final, I have Lawyer Chew’s ultimatum to get out of here promptly before the law puts me out. Oh,” and the woman threw up her thin hands, a hopeless look taking hold of her tired face, “it seems to me that a hundred things have happened since I came here to unnerve and bewilder me. And how glad I am to have you boys to talk to, you can’t imagine. I think I would go crazy if I had to be here alone very many hours.”

Poppy got around so he could whisper to me.

“Do you believe her story, Jerry?”

“Sure thing. Don’t you?”

“She may be cuckoo.”

“You’re cuckoo!”

His eyes began to dance.

“Oh, boy, if only we could sleep in the room where the old man died! The ‘ghost’ would get the surprise of his life, huh, when we yanked his sheet off?”

“I don’t like it,” I told him. But I wasn’t scared. No. Ready to stand by him, as a loyal chum should, what worried me, I guess, was the thought that I might not be gritty enough to do my part in some of the crazy situations that were sure to bob up if we started any of the “ghost-catching” business. For “ghost-catching,” let me tell you, even when the “ghost” is a man and not a real spook, is a mighty risky game, and nothing else but.

I’ll never forget our first trip into the upper rooms of the big house. At every step I expected something to grab me. We went up the big front staircase, through all the rooms, one after another, where we looked under the beds and in the closets, then down the smaller back stairs. We went through the attic, too, finding all kinds of trash there.

Poppy’s “tramp” theory exploded into thin air, we landed back in the kitchen at ten-thirty, having used the small back staircase in coming down, as I say. Suddenly a fearful clatter came from the road.

“Listen!” cried the leader. Then he laughed. “Does it sound familiar to you, Jerry?”

“The Galloping Snail!” I yipped, scooting for the front door. Nor was I surprised to learn, after all, that the man we had seen on the road was the one this woman was watching for. Her talk about their “poor automobile” had put me wise, though it was a puzzle to me where the man had been all this time.

“It’s Pa and Miss Ruth!” the woman cried, taking after us. “They’ve come at last.”

Suddenly all sounds of the car ceased. And that was queer, we thought. Running down the moonlit graveled drive, we found the car on its side just outside the stone arch, where the driver, in poor work, had tried to swing out of the sandy ruts.

Thrown from the car, and getting his head cut, the old man was sort of staggering around like a groggy sailor. Then, before we could get to him, he keeled over in a dead faint.

“He’s hurt!” the woman cried, and though, with her white face, she looked as though she were going to keel over herself, she kept up. “Help me, and we’ll carry him into the house.”

Poppy wiped away the blood.

“It isn’t a deep cut, Mrs. Doane. He’ll be all right in a minute or two.”

It was then, I think, that the woman discovered that the car had brought only one passenger.

“Why!...” she cried in new alarm. “Where is Miss Ruth?”

The injured man began to mumble like one in a dream.

“Ma! Is that you, Ma?” and a fumbling hand felt around in the air.

“Pa, what have you done with Miss Ruth? Where is she?”

“Miss Ruth?” came vaguely.

“You went to the train to meet her. Where is she?”

“Miss Ruth?” the voice faltered, as its groggy owner, now sitting up, tried to explore his clogged mind for the truth. “Did—did I—I see Miss Ruth, Ma? I’ve plum furgot. It seems to me I did; an’ then it seems to me I didn’t. Now, Ma,” came whiningly, like a little kid begging off, “please don’t scold. You always scold. I guess I’ve furgot somethin’ ag’in. I’m always furgittin’ somethin’ or other. But I’ll go back an’ git it, if you’ll jest tell me what ’twas.”

The woman’s anger got the best of her sympathy.

“Ivor Doane! If you aren’t the dumbest numskull I ever heard tell of.” Then she seemed to go to pieces. “Oh, dear!” she wailed, turning to us for help. “Do you suppose he has lost Miss Ruth somewhere along the road? What shall I do? What shall I do?”

Suddenly I felt something nip the calf of my leg. Boy, did I ever jump. And when I looked down, there was the injured man’s goose. It was wanting attention, I guess!

“The goose! The goose!” I yipped like a dumb-bell.

But Poppy had better eyes than me.

“It isn’t a goose, Jerry,” he told me quickly. “It’s a spotted gander.”

CHAPTER IV
ADMIRAL PEPPER

The mystery that hung over the big stone house, like a bat’s shadow, was a strange tangle. We could see that, all right. And now, to help things along to even greater mystery, had come the disappearance of the granddaughter.

Was there, we wondered, some hidden tie-up between the girl’s disappearance and the unusual gander? We looked to the old man for an answer to that, but he could tell us nothing. The more we questioned him, when we got him in the house, the dumber he acted. Had he seen the granddaughter in Pardyville? He didn’t know—he guessed he had one minute, and the next minute he guessed he hadn’t. Nor could he tell us where he had gotten the gander, which we had left on the front porch.

Another thing—the old man had passed us in his rickety car at six-thirty, headed for home. Yet we had beat him here by at least three hours. Where had he been in that three hours? When we asked him, he just stared at us. Where had he been? Why, he had been on the road headed for home, of course. But we knew better. He had been some place else ... to more mystery! Instead of turning to the left at the sandy crossroad, where we had turned, he had kept on down the concrete. But why? What had taken him past the turn? Where had he been? Finding it did no good to question him, we gave up, hopeful that his head would clear up over night.

After the long day, with its ups and downs, Mrs. Doane was done up, as her face showed. But it would do her no good to go to bed, she told us, nodding wearily. For how could she sleep with the awful picture in her mind of the missing granddaughter lying unconscious beside the deserted concrete highway?

“She could have jounced out of the car and Pa never would have missed her. That’s him. Oh, at times I feel as though I could take him and shake his pants off. He isn’t foolish—don’t deceive yourself on that point. He’s just naturally dumb.”

“Now, Ma—” came whiningly, as the blank-eyed old man pottered around the kitchen, feeling of his head as though it was some connected part of him that he had just discovered.

“Keep still!” came the impatient command. “I’m disgusted with you.”

“Please, Ma—”

“And quit rattling your teeth,” was the further command. “For that’s the way you chipped them last Christmas. And goodness knows we haven’t any money to fool away on unnecessary dentist bills.”

Poppy and I were grinning. Maybe it wasn’t the best of manners, but we couldn’t hold in.

“Oh, dear!” the woman went on in misery, sort of wringing her hands. “What wouldn’t I give to know at this minute where Miss Ruth is. I’ll forever feel guilty if any harm has befallen her through Pa’s stupidity.”

“Maybe,” Poppy spoke up, “he missed her in Pardyville.”

“But where did he get that gander? And why hasn’t she followed him in a rented car?”

“The road’s closed.”

“But he got through. And there’s the telephone. If Miss Ruth is in Pardyville, and can’t get here except on the south road through Neponset Corners and New Zion, why doesn’t she telephone? She might know I would worry until I did hear from her.”

“Hot dog!” cried Poppy. “That’s an idea. Why don’t you telephone, Mrs. Doane? You can call up the Pardyville depot. See? And the garages, too. You ought to get track of the girl in that way.”

The woman was too much worked up to use the telephone herself, so we did the job for her. But to no success. The night operator hadn’t been at the depot when the Chicago train came in—we’d have to talk with the day operator, he said. There was no one registered at either of the two hotels by the name of Miss Ruth Danver. Nor had any of the garages, or the taxicab company, been approached by a girl of that name, or for that matter any girl of any name, wanting to go into the country.

Our failure to get good news over the telephone completely upset the woman.

“What will Miss Ruth’s ma say?” she cried. “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”

Poppy remembered that the granddaughter had planned to come here on the sly.

“If I were you,” he advised, “I’d wait a day or two before I telephoned to the mother. For you don’t know as yet that anything really has happened to the girl. She may have hired a private car to drive her here.”

“Sure thing,” I put in, wanting to make the woman feel better. “We may hear her drive in any minute.”

The old man was still pottering around the room.

“Ma, did I have my supper? I—I jest kain’t remember. One minute it seems to me I did. An’ the next minute it seems to me I didn’t.”

“Laws-a-me!” came kindly, showing that the woman didn’t make a habit of jumping on the dumb old man all the time. “Of course you haven’t had supper, Pa. And you must be pretty nearly starved, too. So come over here to the table right away. The boys ate all the sandwiches, but I guess I can make some more for you.”

Poppy and I were sort of silent during the sandwich making, each doing stuff in his own mind. Nor did the woman talk as much as usual. Maybe her tongue was tired. I wondered if it wasn’t!

“Jerry,” the leader said at length, “do you know what we ought to do?”

“What?” says I, hoping that he would stick to schemes that weren’t too blamed risky. Ghost-catching was my limit. Absolutely. Anything beyond that I’d balk at.

“If the girl isn’t here by morning I think we ought to go to Pardyville and look her up. We’ve got time. And to tell the truth I’d like to talk with her and get at the bottom of this mystery.”

“I’ll let you be the hero and rescue the fair damsel in distress,” I grinned, feeling kind of silly. “For you’re the best lady killer of the two.”

“I’m serious.”

“A fellow should be serious,” was my further nonsense, “when he gets ready to fall in love.”

“You poor fish!”

I sort of brushed myself off.

“I wish now I’d worn my red necktie,” I primped. “I might have stood a better chance.”

“What you need is a green necktie,” he fired at me.

“Jealousy!”

“Are you with me, Jerry?”

“Sure thing I’ll stand up with you,” I purposely tangled up his meaning. “What do you call it?—the best man, huh?”

“I mean, will you go back to Pardyville if I do?”

“Kid, I’d go to the North Pole, if you led the way—but that’s a blamed co-old place, I think, for a honeymoon.”

“Oh, you dumb-dora!” he gave up in despair.

“Say, Poppy,” I snickered, “look at old Ivory Dome. He’s scratching his sandwich and sprinkling pepper on his bald head.”

“Ivory Dome!” the other laughed, thinking, I guess, that I was pretty clever. “Ivor Doane—Ivory Dome! That’s a good one. He’s an ‘Ivory Dome,’ all right.”

Suddenly there was a wild volcanic eruption at the table. Over went the pitcher of water and the spoon holder. There was water and spoons all over the kitchen floor.

“For land’s sake!” cried the housekeeper, grabbing a sandwich out of the air. “Pa, I ought to take a stick to you. Just look at my clean floor!”

“Ker-r-choo!” exploded the volcano anew. “Ker-r-CHOO!”

“Stop it!” as the table rocked more madly than ever. Then by quick work the housekeeper saved the sugar bowl.

“I—I—ker-r-choo! I kain’t stop it—KER-R-CHOO-O-O!”

“He sprinkled pepper on his head instead of the sandwich,” grinned Poppy.

“Laws-a-me! That isn’t anything surprising for him. One time he put a bunion plaster on his jaw and cleaned his toes with the tooth brush.”

Having lived through the eruption, the old man was staring now, as though the sneezing and its cause had jarred loose some corner of his memory.

“Pepper,” came in a mumbling, unsteady voice. “Pepper. Admiral Pepper. That’s it.”

Admiral Pepper! What crazy thing was he talking about? It was our turn to stare now.

Suddenly there was a faint tap! ... tap! ... tap! ... on the outside kitchen door. And scared out of her wits, Mrs. Doane ran screaming into another room.

“Who is it?” says the leader, tiptoeing to the door, his right ear shoved out ahead to catch every possible sound.

Tap! ... tap! ... tap!... That was the only answer.

Well, I don’t mind telling you that this was another moment in my life when I didn’t have to overwork my imagination to believe in ghosts. I guess not. The thing that was doing the tapping, I told myself, was a ghost, probably a long, lean, hungry-looking ghost with two or three hideous heads, and nothing else but.

Then, as though unlatched by some unseen hand, the door swung open. A gust of wind swept in. And in walked—not a three-headed ghost—but that blamed spotted gander!

“Why—why,” fumbled the old man, acting sort of tickled as he got his eyes on the gander. “It’s jest Mr. Pepper. I mean Mr. Salt an’ Pepper. No, I mean—I mean—Now,” came blankly, as the feeble brain got completely tangled up, “what do I mean, anyway?”

“I guess,” supplied Poppy, staring at the flat-footed newcomer, “you mean Admiral Pepper.”

“Admiral Pepper!” the wrinkled face cleared up. “That’s it. That’s it.”

CHAPTER V
THE MAN IN THE STORM

Admiral Pepper! That was some fancy handle, I thought, for a gander. But I saw right off that it was no ordinary gander. So the name was all right.

White, like most ganders, though peculiarly marked with small purple spots, it was the biggest fowl of its kind that I ever had seen. Standing on its webbed feet, which reminded me of a pair of palm-leaf fans, its tonneau, as we used to call the rear end of an automobile, sort of dragged behind like an overloaded dump cart. Of course, like all big geese, it waddled when it walked. Yet it had dignity in its waddle. A fat king, you know, would waddle much more becomingly than a fat junk peddler! There was further dignity in the way it held its big head—carriage, I guess you’d call it. It seemed to have no fear of us. To the contrary, in its lordly possession of the house, it sort of acted as though we ought to consider ourselves lucky that we weren’t boosted outside along with the other unimportant rubbish!

I’ve seen people act like that. Stuck-ups. They sort of strut around as though they’re the whole cheese, smell and all. The other human beings in the landscape aren’t even presentable scenery. So my conclusion was that Admiral Pepper, as the saying is, belonged to the aristocracy—the gander-land aristocracy, if you please!

Unlike the ordinary barnyard variety of geese, this one didn’t honk its horn at us, nor did it do any long-necked hissing stuff. Its dignity was too strong. And to that point, having already mentioned a king, can you imagine a ruler, on his grand entrance into the official throne room, yipping to his subjects to stand back and not get any shoe blacking on his long velvet train! Hardly! You see what I mean, I guess.

One time we had a rather strange adventure with a performing hen. I told about that in detail in another book, JERRY TODD AND THE WALTZING HEN. Now I wondered if the gander, like Isadora, the waltzing hen, hadn’t been brought up for the most part, and to a purpose, in a circus. Plainly, it was a pet. It showed in its actions that it was used to living with people instead of birds of its kind. Moreover, it expected special attention, which further went to prove that whoever had owned it had been in the habit of making a big fuss over it. Could it do circus tricks? I wondered.