"And my racket is over there, and your grandma's fur rug, Ikey Ford!"
wailed Louise, shaking her finger at the bringer of evil tidings. He
assented meekly, adding, "and Sallie's clothes-pins."
A stranger might have been puzzled to guess what sort of calamity had
befallen the little group in the doorway of the pleasant,
hospitable-looking house among the maple trees, that warm August
morning. Something serious certainly, for Louise's dimples had
disappeared, Bess was almost tearful, and the boys, though they
affected to take it more lightly, wore plainly depressed.
"Let's go over to Ikey's and look through the fence," suggested Carl,
and, as there seemed nothing else to do, the others agreed.
They filed solemnly down the walk and across the street,--Bess with a
roll of green cambric under her arm,--and nobody uttered a word till a
secluded spot behind Mrs. Ford's syringa bushes was reached, where,
through an opening in the division fence, they could look out
unobserved upon the adjoining house.
"The side windows are open!" Louise announced in a tragic whisper.
"Didn't I tell you so?" replied Ikey with mournful triumph.
It was a small house with a pointed roof, and it stood in the midst of
an old-fashioned garden, where for years and years lilacs and
snowballs, peonies and roses, pinks and sweet-william, and dozens of
other flowers, had bloomed happily in their season, without any
trouble to anybody.
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