During her various investigations, she had found a huge bunch of keys beneath a pile of rubbish on the floor of a closet in an unoccupied room. It was altogether possible, as she told herself, that one of these keys should fit the somnambulist’s door.
While Uncle Israel was brewing a fresh supply of medicine on the kitchen stove, she found, as she had suspected that one of them did fit, and thereafter, every night, when Uncle Israel had retired, she locked him in, letting him out shortly after seven each morning. When he remonstrated with her, she replied, triumphantly, that it was necessary—otherwise he would never have known that the door was locked.
On her first visit to “town” she made it her business to call upon Lawyer Bradford and inquire as to Mr. Judson’s last will and testament. She learned that it did not concern her at all, and was to be probated, in accordance with the dead man’s instructions, at the Fall term of court.
“Then, as yet,” she said, with a gleam of satisfaction in her small, beady eyes, “they ain’t holdin’ the house legal. Any of us has the same right to stay as them Carrs.”
“That’s as you look at it,” returned Mr. Bradford, squirming uneasily in his chair.
Try as she might, she could extract no further information, but she at least had a bit of knowledge to work on. She went back, earnestly desiring quiet, that she might study the problem without hindrance, but, unfortunately for her purpose, the interior of the Jack-o’-Lantern resembled pandemonium let loose.
Willie was sliding down the railing part of the time, and at frequent intervals coasting downstairs on Mrs. Smithers’s tea tray, vocally expressing his pleasure with each trip. The twins, seated in front of the library door, were pounding furiously on a milk-pan, which had not been empty when they dragged it into the hall, but was now. Mrs. Smithers was singing: “We have our trials here below, Oh, Glory, Hallelujah,” and a sickening odour from a fresh concoction of Uncle Israel’s permeated the premises. Having irreverently detached the false front from the keys of the melodeon, Mr. Perkins was playing a sad, funereal composition of his own, with all the power of the instrument turned loose on it. Upstairs, Dick was whistling, with shrill and maddening persistence, and Dorothy, quite helpless, sat miserably on the porch with her fingers in her ears.
Harlan burst out of the library, just as Mrs. Dodd came up the walk, his temper not improved by stumbling over the twins and the milk-pan, and above their united wails loudly censured Dorothy for the noise and confusion. “How in the devil do you expect me to work?” he demanded, irritably. “If you can’t keep the house quiet, I’ll go back to New York!”
Too crushed in spirit to reply, Dorothy said nothing, and Harlan whisked back into the library again, barely escaping Mrs. Dodd.
“Poor child,” she said to Dorothy; “you look plum beat out.”