"It's not only not dumb, Happie, but it's not even a waiter," said Bob turning away with a disgusted expression. "You see it's coming up without waiting to find out where it's going. There isn't any one in the house named Gordon."
The waiter stopped with a rattle of its ropes, and the voice below called up: "Take 'em off; they're fer you."
"Look here, you chump," called Bob. "They're not mine. There isn't a Gordon in this whole house." But as he spoke the door across from the Scollards opened, and a boy appeared, grinning cheerfully at his neighbor.
"You're not quite right there, old man," he said. "There is a Gordon in the house, and I'm he. I'm one of him, at least—there's another, and their mother. All right; I've got the stuff. Go ahead. Farewell, vale, ta ta. Blow the left hand whistle next time."
The new boy straightened himself from delivering these last remarks down the waiter-shaft and smiled anew at Bob. "We've just moved in. The last of our household effects are even now bumping the paper off the front hall—the van men find them bulky. Hope we'll meet again." He cast his eye beyond Bob into the sunny kitchen where pretty Margery and Happie were working like stingless bees.
"All right. Hope so, too," said Bob. And the doors shut simultaneously on both sides of the dumb waiter.
"He looks the right sort," observed Bob.
"I'm sorry the flat across is let, though. It has been such a rest not having the men blow our whistle for the one over there," sighed Margery.
Happie had beaten up a cake to be eaten with her blanc mange of the morning's making. She was pouring the mixture into her sheet of cup-shaped tins, and was not interested in the subject of new neighbors. She paused with her bowl held sidewise in the air, and with her spoon resting on its side as she guided the yellow mixture into its destination. "I've got it!" she exclaimed jubilantly.
"Eureka, Keren-happuch, my dear," corrected Bob. "What have you got?"