“JINGLE! Jingle! JINGLE! Jingle! Jingle! Jing! Jing! Jing!”
Captain Cy bounced in his chair. That was the front-door bell. The FRONT-door bell! Who on earth, or, rather, who in Bayport, would come to the FRONT door?
He hurried through the dim grandeur of the best parlor and entered the little dark front hall. The bell was still swinging at the end of its coil of wire. The dust shaken from it still hung in the air. The captain unbolted and unlocked the big front door.
A girl was standing on the steps between the lines of box hedge—a little girl under a big “grown-up” umbrella. The wet dripped from the umbrella top and from the hem of the little girl's dress.
Captain Cy stared hard at his visitor; he knew most of the children in Bayport, but he didn't know this one. Obviously she was a stranger. Portuguese children from “up Harniss way” sometimes called to peddle huckleberries, but this child was no “Portugee.”
“Hello!” exclaimed the captain wonderingly.
“Did you ring the bell?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the girl.
“Humph! Did, hey? Why?”
“Why? Why, I thought—Isn't it a truly bell? Didn't it ought to ring? Is anybody sick or dead? There isn't any crape.”