“You see,” prophesied Amy. “And then, think of their getting hold of the story of Mark’s lost watch. We’ll hear more about that before the thing is over.”
“I mean, if I can,” Jessie repeated firmly, “to find out something regarding that watch to-night.”
Of course Darry and Burd Alling had not been invited to Billy Foley’s birthday party, but they drove the girls down to Dogtown right after dinner and promised to return for them later.
Henrietta and the Foley boys, with all their friends, were gathered on the platform before the door of the Foley cottage, and most of the grown folk of the neighborhood were likewise near by, the men smoking their pipes and the women with their arms rolled in their aprons, and gossiping mildly of neighborhood affairs.
“’Tis proud I am to have ye here on me Billy’s birthday, Miss Jessie and Miss Amy,” declared Mrs. Foley. She rocked in a grand spring rocker, brought out of a neighbor’s parlor, and one might think that it was her birthday that was being celebrated.
Mrs. Foley was a “bulgy” person who almost always had a baby on her lap when she sat down. But on this occasion Henrietta had relieved her of the youngest Foley and had popped him, fast asleep, into a box cradle in the house.
Billy, whose nativity was being celebrated under a fringe of Japanese lanterns on the platform, was cavorting about in an Indian suit, attempting to scalp all his little friends with a wooden tomahawk.
Jessie and Amy brought him presents, too; and they had been wise enough to give him “perfectly useless” playthings—the kind that delight a small boy. Henrietta brought him by the hand to thank the two Roselawn girls.
“I guess they don’t want to kiss you, Billy,” said the freckle-faced girl in her very practical way. “Your face is too dirty. Seems to me it always is dirty. I don’t know how it is, but dirt just sticks to these Foleys. Even Charlie, big as he is, can’t remember to wash behind his ears.”
The visitors had brought hard candies for all the younger children, too. Most of the children played games on the plain before the group of houses. After being introduced to such of the grown folk as they had not previously met, Jessie and Amy joined the boys and girls in some rather boisterous games, for those were the only kind that the Dogtown children knew.