The cottage in question was a rather neater-looking place than its neighbors. There was a fence which really was strong enough, and had pickets enough (if some of them were barrel-staves) to keep wandering goats out of the yard. There was a garden at the back, and a bit of grass in front, with a path bordered by half bricks painted with whitewash a dazzling white.
The porch and steps were scrubbed clean, too; it might have been a sign of Mrs. O’Brien’s trade, that porch.
There were ducks, and geese, and poultry, too; but all fenced off with wire from the front and from the garden. And the girls heard the hungry grunting of a pig in its sty.
There was a good deal of noise within the house, too. The girls could hear childish voices in a great hullabaloo, a good-natured, but broadly Irish voice chiming in with them, and likewise a scampering across the floor which must have made the cottage rock again.
“He’d never hear us whistle in the world!” giggled Jennie.
“How funny we’d look standing here on the street and whistling, anyway!” replied Nancy.
“And then, I never could whistle,” confessed Jennie. “Somehow I can’t get my lips to pucker right.”
“Why! neither can I!” cried Nancy. “I didn’t think of that. We couldn’t signal to Scorch by whistling, anyway.”
“Unless we borrowed a policeman’s whistle—or a postman’s,” said Jennie. “What’ll we do?”
“Come on and knock,” said Nancy. “We can make them hear somehow.”