But Sidney, aroused as only a slight—whether real or supposed—to a favorite child can arouse the most calmly philosophical mother, might have said a good deal more in support of Doris's smartness and sweet disposition—these and other things were in truth on the very tip of her tongue, when, fortunately for the doctor's wife, a sudden noise drew their attention toward the roof of the house. Uncle Watty had at last succeeded, after much difficulty and several unheard shouts, in getting his head out of the garret window close to the chimney, and, now catching sight of Sidney, he indignantly demanded to know why he could not open his door, and peremptorily ordered her to come at once and let him out. She went flying over nearer to the window and in a low-toned diplomatic parley persuaded him to wait a few minutes, finally even inducing him to take in his head until she could come. It was only a momentary interruption, but it gave Mrs. Alexander time to think, and, when Sidney returned to the fence, still holding herself with cold, resentful dignity, the doctor's wife was ready with a softening proposition inviting Kate and Billy to go home with her to help gather cherries on the shares.
"Very well," said Sidney, shortly. She was not by any means entirely placated, but she never rejected a good bargain merely on account of some private feeling. "There's no need, though, for them to go out through the front gate. They can just as well get through this hole in the fence. It's big enough if they squeeze tight," she added, still on guard.
She gave the children an assistant shove which carried them through the narrow space of the broken board, hushing them to continued silence by making a hissing sound through her teeth.
"There!" she exclaimed, under her breath, when the two trembling, bewildered culprits stood beside the doctor's wife in the big road, casting curious glances from their mother to the house. "Now, Jane, see that they whistle every minute of the time they are in the cherry tree; or I won't have a cherry and you won't have many, and these children will be drawn into double bow-knots. Mind now—don't let 'em stop whistling for a single minute."
Mrs. Alexander nodded understandingly as she took the children by the hand to lead them away; nevertheless, Sidney thought it best to make sure by giving the broom a last threatening flourish. Then she returned to her post on the tub, facing the house, however, during the rest of the hour through which she faithfully fulfilled sentinel duty.
XVI
THE SHOCK AND THE FRIGHT
The children thus flown like birds out of a cage, Sidney managed to get Uncle Watty down the stairs and off to his seat before the store door, all unobserved by the young couple, who were so absorbed in the bleeding-heart, so enchanted under the virgin's-bower, so enthralled by the heartsease. When at last Lynn Gordon himself was gone, Doris found her mother quietly at work in the kitchen, and saw no trace of the heroic measures which she had resorted to. Doris asked timidly why she had not come in while the visitor was there, feeling instinctively that this was what Miss Judy would have done. But Sidney answered quite promptly and conclusively that she was too busy to waste her time thinking of strange young men, so that Doris was more than ever abashed, and turned silently back to her sewing and to her thoughts.
Sidney now directed her own attention to the bumblebees. She went to the front gate and called Tom Watson's black boy, her strong, clear, fearless voice ringing out suddenly on the morning stillness. She had already hired him to come by promising to mend his Sunday jacket; if he would help her get rid of the bumblebees' nest. He accordingly appeared at once in answer to her call, which reached him in his master's stable, and he carried his fishing-rod in his hand, this also being a part of the bargain. He handed Sidney the rod, and taking from her a piece of rope, which she held in readiness, he went up the rough logs at the corner of the house, and ran over the roof as swiftly and as surely as any simian ancestors could have scampered through the green heights of the tropical forests. He let the rope down within Sidney's reach. She, meantime, had fetched a jug of boiling water from the kitchen, and when she had tied this uncorked vessel to the end of the rope, he drew it up again till the jug came close under the eaves and immediately below the dangerous bunch of gray gauze; whereupon he made the rope fast to one of the curling boards of the mossy roof, all according to Sidney's direction. This done, he sped over the roof again on his hands and knees and hastened down the wall for safety, knowing what was to come. Sidney barely gave him time to drop from the corner logs to the ground, and then, grasping the fishing-pole firmly in her strong hands, she gave the edge of the roof a sharp, quick blow. The bumblebees flew out in an angry cloud, but Sidney, the dauntless, stood at her post. She struck the roof another sharp, quick blow—and another, tap-tap-tap, like some gigantic and most industrious flicker. And forthwith the bumblebees began to go zip-zip-zip—straight into the steaming mouth of the crater. It was a short shrift, and, after it, a simple matter to punch down the nest itself with the fishing pole when the last bumblebee was drowned. That ended Sidney's interest in the programme, but the negro boy was still curious, so that he took the jug into the middle of the big road to pour out its contents, and he was much gratified, with the cruelty of his age and sex, to find something like a quart of boiled bumblebees.