"Don't you suppose Mr. Downing might let us have the cottage now, if we went to him? Nobody else seems to care about it. What do you think, Mrs. Crane?"
"Why, my dear, I suppose it wouldn't do any harm to ask. You'd better see what your own people think about it."
"Let's go ask them now," cried impetuous Mabel, springing to her feet. Forgetting all about the needles and without waiting to say good-by to Mrs. Crane, the eager girl made a diagonal rush for the corner nearest her own home.
The others remained long enough to thread all the needles. Then they, too, went home with the news about the cottage and about Mrs. Crane. They were realizing, for the first time, that their good friend might become helpless long before they were ready to use her as a grandmother for their children, but they couldn't see just what was to be done about it. The idea of going to Mr. Downing, however, soon drove every other thought away, for the parents and Aunty Jane, too, advised them to ask. They even encouraged them.
But when Jean and Bettie, hopefully dressed in their Sunday-best, and Marjory and Mabel, with their abundant locks elaborately curled besides, presented themselves and their request at Mr. Downing's house that evening, they were not at all encouraged by their reception.
Mr. Downing, a man of moods, had just come off second-best in an encounter with Mrs. Milligan, whom he had accidentally met on his way home to dinner, and, at the moment the girls appeared, the cottage was just about the last subject that the badgered man cared to discuss. Before Jean had fairly stated her errand, the enraged Mr. Downing roared "No!" so emphatically that his four alarmed visitors backed hurriedly off the Downing porch and fled as one girl. Mabel, to be sure, measured her length in the canna bed near the gate, but she scrambled up, snorting with fright and indignation, and none of them paused again in their flight until Jean's door, which seemed safest, had closed behind them.
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