CHAPTER X

PARTINGS

Oriole might have become as panic-stricken as the fleshy Lyddy Ann, only at this moment a rasping voice hailed them from the street, and a tall and lank figure strode into the yard.

"Is that Oriole Putnam I see there? Say, gal, what do you know about my boy's pet sheep? He says you stole it on him and wouldn't give it back. I want to know what sort of actions that is?"

"Oh, I never!" cried Oriole, instantly indignant and so quite forgetting her fright. "I wouldn't touch that old Jingo."

"You _did_ touch it, didn't you?" demanded the man shrewdly. It was Mr. Enos Crabbe and it was quite plain that he was angered. "Shaddy says you tied Jingo with a rope and then when he went back into Payne's yard for it, you had led it away."

"Oh, I never!" cried Oriole again. "Anyway, I never led it away. I wouldn't dare."

For the moment Lyddy Ann's attention was attracted from the "ghost." She turned a scornful look on Enos Crabbe.

"Ought to have led it to the pound--that's what she ought to have done. What are you Crabbes trying to do to Oriole _now_?"

Mr. Crabbe ignored the fleshy housemaid. He still stared accusingly at Oriole.

"You have a bad name in this town, gal," he declared, bitterly. "I wouldn't put stealing sheep past you--no, sir!"

"Oh!" gasped the girl, hurt to the quick.

"Now you stop that, Enos Crabbe!" shouted Lyddy Ann. "Somebody ought to hit you _hard_ for talking so."

Mr. Crabbe had advanced upon the fleshy woman and Oriole, with the lantern in her hand, who stood at the end of the clothes-drying yard. Their backs were now turned to the gyrating sheet at the far end of the line. But Mr. Crabbe suddenly beheld the strangely behaving sheet charging up the yard.

"Wha--what's that?" he cried out, shrinking in apparent size and courage. "Keep off! Help! He-e-lp!"

With this wail he turned and ran for the gate. The motive power of the charging sheet took his flight as a challenge. It started after Mr. Crabbe, and although Lyddy Ann, moaning and weeping, backed to the steps and sat down with a thud, the "ghost" gave her no attention.

The streaming sheet passed Oriole too, and made for the gate after Mr. Crabbe. Oriole fortunately guessed what the thing was. When it passed through the gateway all possible misunderstanding was removed.

The sheet caught on either post and was torn from the sheep's horns. Jingo, in wandering around the neighborhood, had come in contact with Lyddy Ann's wash. But the sheet did not blind him to Enos Crabbe's retreat.

Jingo burst from the enfolding sheet and shot out into State Street. The driveway was empty but for the fleeing storekeeper and councilman. There was little dignity in the method of Mr. Crabbe's attempted escape. There was less when Jingo managed to catch up with him.

The head of the angry ram landed just in the bend of the long-legged man's knees. The shock threw Mr. Crabbe to the hard roadway and he uttered a terrified shriek, while Jingo ran right over him, never stopping to see whether his victim recovered or not.

But the victim did recover! Lyddy Ann likewise had recovered her feet when she was convinced by her own eyesight that it was not a ghost running through the yard. She stared in evident satisfaction at Mr. Crabbe when he scrambled up again and turned to run away from the disappearing sheep.

"For the good land's sake!" she gasped, "I never expected to live to see such a sight as Enos Crabbe beaten up by that nuisance. It--it's a pleasure!"

"Oh, Lyddy Ann!" Oriole murmured.

"Don't waste your sympathy on the likes of him," said the housemaid energetically. "And 'twasn't a ghost after all! Well! But look at that sheet! I don't know what Becky Joy will say."

"I--I wonder what will happen to Shedder?" said Oriole. "His father is going to be awfully angry with him about that old Jingo."

This query was quite sufficiently answered by the forlorn appearance of the redoubtable Shedder the next day at school. He stirred uneasily on his seat in the schoolroom, too, sitting down and getting up gingerly as though he bore physical reminders of his father's indignation. It was noised about, too, before the week was out, that Shedder's pet ram was made into mutton.

"And the town folks will buy it out of that Enos Crabbe's store and eat it!" exclaimed Lyddy Ann. "Ain't that a shame? You can't beat that Crabbe family. If they were Feejees they'd invite the whole tribe to a dollar-a-plate banquet if their great-grandfather died."

"Oh, Lyddy Ann! that is awful," murmured Oriole, who heard this.

She was by this time, however, so much interested in the plans for her great change that she could not worry much about the Crabbes' affairs or Lyddy Ann's comments thereon. It had been fully decided that she should go West with Harvey Langdon and the twins, Sadie Brown, the nurse, being a member of the party. And the start would soon be made.

News of her departure for the West spread among the young people of the town like wildfire. Naturally she was an object of envy to most of the boys and not a few of the girls; for the Western movies are the delight of the younger element irrespective of sex. There is an attraction in out-of-door life for all young folks. The open plains, the mountains, the broad rivers, the forest and the canyons and gorges of the Rockies in contemplation make local matters seem tame indeed to the Eastern youth.

These young people, used only to the shore and the sea that lapped it, thought of the land to which Oriole was going as a much freer and wilder locality. When they could they gathered around Mr. Harvey Langdon and begged him to tell them of his ranch ("farm" some of them called it) and the wonders of Montana. But the ranchman was wont to smile broadly when he saw their interest and repeat for them some doggerel verses which he called "The Western Boy's Lament" and which began:

"I wish't I lived away Down East Where codfish salt the sea, And where the folks have punkin pie And apple-sass for tea."

"All the boys out my way," he said, "hanker to come East just the same as you folks want to go West."

Oriole Putnam had many good-byes to say. First of all she must separate from her school friends, and she found that this was something of a wrench, although she had only attended school in Littleport three or four months. In spite of May Rabey and her clique, Oriole had plenty of friends at school, including all the teachers with whom she had come in contact.

Flossy and Minnie Payne and some of the Busy Bees determined to show their liking for Oriole in an unmistakable way. They arranged with Mrs. Joy and Lyddy Ann to give Oriole a surprise party in the great Dexter Mansion on State Street on the following Saturday.

Meanwhile Oriole had gone to the island where Nat Jardin and Ma Stafford lived (the ice still held) and had spent half the week with the old people. It might seem that there would be few interests in common between the lightkeeper and his housekeeper and Oriole Putnam. But the girl had lived very close to the old couple during the first months after her arrival from South America. She bore all their sorrows and interests in her heart. No matter where she might go in the future, she could never forget the lightkeeper and Ma Stafford.

And could they forget Oriole? Not likely!

"Just you remember, child, that we air thinking of you and praying for you all the time," said Ma before Oriole came away from Harbor Island. "I'm only a-hoping none of them cattle of Mr. Langdon's trample on you--or them cowboys do you any harm. They are rough men, and it's a wild country."

"I cal'late," said Nat Jardin in his drawling way, "that 'twon't be many years before them cowboys might be in danger from Oriole, 'stead of t'other way 'round. She's getting to be a big gal now, for a fact!"

But this speech was enigmatic to Oriole. She had not visualized herself yet as grown-up. No, indeed! She was just a healthy, moderately happy girl; and the chance of change after all delighted her.

Nothing more had been heard of Teddy Ford. He had not appeared at the island again and one of the men from the life saving station told Oriole that the boy had gone away as he said he would, and had not returned with the coasting vessel on which he had sailed.

"I do hope he has started back for Montana!" Oriole told herself. "And if he goes there, won't he be surprised to find me at Mr. Langdon's ranch?"

The parting came from the old folks on the island, and from Payton Orr and his wife and the baby. Oriole could scarcely see for tears when she started on her new skates for the port late that Saturday afternoon. But she was quite cheerful again by the time she climbed off the ice at Griffith's dock.

As she went up past the hotel she saw the twins playing in the yard connected therewith. Abel Hubbard, who was general factotum about the Brick hotel, as well as liveryman, was renewing the tar-paper strips on the trunks of the trees in the yard, and Myron and Marian were very much interested and had asked all about the operation and the reason for it.

"You see, Oriole," explained Myron earnestly, "when spwing comes and the fwost isn't in the gwound any more, bugs an' other insects cwawl up out of the gwound and eat the twee-leaves and buds. But Mr. Abel stops 'em fwom cwawlin' up by tying _that_ awound the twees. Ain't it wunnerful?"

"I don't like bugs and things," shuddered Marian, as she and her brother ran out to join Oriole on the street. "If they cwawl on _me_--ugh!"

"Never mind. They don't begin to cwawl this time o' year, Mawyann," Myron said soothingly. "They are all fwoze up now."

"I wish they'd stay fwozed," declared the little girl. "Oh! See there, Oriole. Look at that man."

A stranger in the town--evidently a traveling man--was coming out of Enos Crabbe's store and to him the little girl pointed.

"Just see his arm, Oriole," exclaimed the excited Marian. "He's got one, too."

"He's got what?" demanded Myron, staring.

Oriole saw immediately what the little girl meant. The stranger wore a band of crepe about his left arm signifying that somebody near and dear to him had recently died.

"Oh!" gasped Myron.

"See?" questioned Marian of Oriole quite innocently. "What's to keep them from cwawling up his other arm?"

This story, told at the surprise party that evening, added much to the gayety of the occasion. The twins were at the party, too, although Mr. Langdon took them back to the hotel at an early hour.

Mrs. Joy had seen to it that the plans of the Busy Bees were developed in such a way that no party for young folk in Littleport that winter would be longer remembered than this given in Oriole Putnam's honor. And there was not a person in the house that Oriole did not love!

May Rabey and her crowd had been ignored. Left to choose for herself, Oriole would undoubtedly have invited all her schoolmates and "played no favorites." But the Busy Bees were abetted in their desire to make the affair one exclusively by Oriole's real friends, for Mrs. Joy too did not admire "Maria Rabey's girl" and her set.

Therefore the party was bound to be a happy time for all who attended. Lyddy Ann, forewarned in time, had baked for two days and added her delectable cakes and cookies to the ice-cream and sherbets sent down from Salem by the caterer. They played games; they danced in the big "museum room" which was cleared for the occasion of all but the curio cases. For the last time Oriole led in a "dress-up" pageant, finding the ancient garments in the mansion garret a treasure-store for masquerade.

It was, altogether, the nicest party Oriole ever remembered--even better than the New Year's affair Mr. Langdon had given her. But there was bitter with the sweet of it too.

When she kissed each girl and shook hands with every boy as they filed out of the house at eleven o'clock, Oriole knew that this might be the last opportunity she would have of speaking to them for many months--perhaps for ever.

For on Monday forenoon Oriole Putnam, with Mr. Langdon and the twins, who had returned from their short trip to Maine, left Littleport on the train to meet Sadie Brown at the Junction, and from thence to travel westward.