“Did she? Where is she?”
“I’ll show you,” and Charlie’s obliging drumsticks followed the man down stairs. Then he went into the kitchen and made an appeal for the stranger.
“Well, I’ll give him the job,” replied Aunt Stanshy.
In a minute more the man was at the wood-pile driving Aunt Stanshy’s saw rapidly through a stick of pine.
The club had been looking out of the window while Charlie interceded for the man. When he joined his clubmates some one exclaimed, “What’s that?”
It was a noise from the closet into which Wort had plunged, or, rather, a noise that started there, for it was continued down into the story below, even as the noise of a rushing snow-slide along a roof begins at the ridgepole, but ends on the ground beneath the eaves.
“It’s Wort!” said Charlie, excitedly. “O dear! he’s gone.”
“Gone where?” inquired Sid. “Into the bowels of the earth?”
Charlie’s answer was to rush down stairs, followed by the club in a very hasty and undignified way. There, at the end of a long spout that terminated eight inches from the floor, was a couple of good-sized legs squirming to get out. Then Wort’s voice was heard, coming from the interior of the box, “Let me out! Let me out!”
“Can’t you get out?” asked the governor.