“And Tim will be back to watch by that time, won’t he?” Tad said, wiping his eyes.
“I should think he would,” said Susan. “We’ll try to find him, Tad, and tell him to come back and let you go.”
“I’ll come with you,” Tad said. “No one will bother the place while the bonfire burns, and we’ll find Tim and tell him to come home.”
So the three of them hurried along together, forgetting their worries and troubles as they came nearer to the roaring, sparkling bonfire.
They were just in time to hear Tommy Tucker making his speech.
“Sure I’m going to play in the game tomorrow, folks,” Tommy said, with the big grin everybody loved, and there was a roar of applause from all the listeners. “And there’s something I’ve learned these last few weeks,” Tommy went on when he could make himself heard. “You’ve got to hit the line hard, you’ve got to play for all you are worth; and I don’t mean only in football, I mean in every kind of work you have to do; I mean in life, too!”
“He means in chemistry, too,” said George, while the crowd roared its approval. Because of so many people, Susan and George and Tad could not get near to Dorothy and the younger children, but they could see them standing right beside the platform where Tommy was speaking. Dorothy was looking up at Tommy, and her eyes were very bright.
“Dorothy is proud,” Susan said. “I don’t blame her.”
“And so tomorrow,” Tommy said, “our team is going to do its very best for Midwest, and, folks, I think we’re going to win the game.”
There was another surge of cheering and applause, and then the band began to play. The cheerleaders shouted through their megaphones. The fire crackled and roared. Then the cheerleaders started marching toward the fire, one behind the other with their hands on one another’s shoulders. Other people joined in, one after another with hands on the shoulders of the person in front, so that they made a long wavering line like a very large serpent. Other lines started up, too, and they wove in and out around the bonfire, chanting and cheering.
Susan and George and Tad forgot that they were looking for Tim. They forgot that they might have pushed through the crowd until they reached Dorothy. They attached themselves to the end of one of the long line of marchers and went joyously serpentining all around the field, chanting:
“Tucker! Tucker!
Who’s a good guy?
Tokar-yn-ski!
Hi! Hi! Hi!”
It was long past their usual bedtime, and the bright fire was only a mound of glowing coals with sparks twirling upward in the breeze, when it suddenly occurred to Susan that they had better go home.
“Come on, George,” she said. “Come on, Tad. We’d better go home.”
Other people seemed to have thought of the same thing about the time that Susan did, and now there was a surge of people all going away from the bonfire and toward their homes. The three children went along with them, and now for the first time they began to feel tired and sleepy. The boys yawned and dragged their feet. “I’m glad we don’t live far,” Tad said. And George mumbled sleepily, “Stadium in our laps!” But as they came away from the practice field and around to the north side of College Avenue near the corner of the stadium, the crowd in which they moved was suddenly brought to a standstill. Traffic in the street seemed to be in some kind of a snarl.
“Sompun’s happened,” Tad said sleepily.
“I expect there’s been an accident,” said George with hope. He had already stopped yawning.
“It’s just a car stalled,” Susan said. “We’d better go around the other way and get on home. Mother will worry.”
But the boys were already going under arms and between legs to get at the heart of the matter, and of course Susan had to follow. In the center of the crowded street they saw Officer Cahill and an abandoned jalopy. Officer Cahill had an electric torch in his hand, and he was going over the car for license plates or marks of identification. There were plenty of marks of identification but no license plates. The light of the torch shone on the downhill slope of familiar letters, Leaping Lizard.
“Lizard!” the children cried. And Tad, in stricken accents, wailed, “Oh, gosh!” Some prankster had pushed the Lizard out of the Gimmicks’ yard and left it standing in the middle of the busy street.
“Who owns this car?” shouted Officer Cahill. Nobody seemed to know until the three children arrived. “You know who owns this car?”
“Sure,” the children said. They all began to talk at once. “Someone must have stole it out of our yard—it’s Mr. Gimmick’s—don’t ever touch the brakes—its name is Lizard—”
“We’ve got to get it out of here,” Officer Cahill said. They were surrounded by the honking of impatient car horns and the shouts of pedestrians.
Tad said, “Golly! I was s’posed to watch it!”
“Got to push it to the curb until the crowd gets by,” Officer Cahill said.
“We’ll help you push,” cried George and Tad. Other people helped, too. The old car rolled along easily. Apparently no one had made the mistake of setting the brakes. George began to make “Beep-beep!” and “B-r-r-r-r! Ker-atch!” noises as he hove his shoulder to.
Susan was looking around. Exactly ahead of them was the break in the curbing through which Dean Ambrose’s car always passed to reach the snug berth which it occupied between the corner of the street and the rounded wall of the stadium.
“Steady now,” the officer said to the owners of the many helping hands. “Steady now. Ease her along into this hole. Take her slow.”
“Mr. Cahill!” Susan cried. “That’s the place where Dean Ambrose always parks his car on football days.”
“That there’s the Dean’s small hole,” cried Tad.
“So what?” said Officer Cahill. “We’ll whisk it out bright and early tomorrow morn. Heave away, lads!”
The Leaping Lizard rolled gently and easily into the Dean’s favorite parking place.
“She’s rollin’ backward,” someone called. “You better set them brakes, Officer.”
“Right-o!” said Officer Cahill cheerily.
“Don’t touch the brakes,” shouted George and Susan. And Tad yelped, “No! No! No! Keep yer hands off them brakes. I’m going to get the works anyway without you set the brakes.”
As if he had not heard either of them, and perhaps he hadn’t for everyone was shouting and offering advice, Officer Cahill reached into the jalopy and gave the handle of the emergency brake a mighty pull. There was a kind of grinding and falling sound, not loud but ominous.
“There,” said Officer Cahill. “In the morn we’ll swish it out of here, and tell your daddy not to worry, Tad, my boy. She’ll be as safe as a bank!” He went to the center of the intersection, blew his whistle, and began to sort and disentangle the bleating traffic.
The three children went across the street and down the block toward home.
“He’ll never get it out of there in the morning at all, at all!” cried Tad. “Oh, glory! Will I get the works!”
“They’ll have to get it out before the football game,” George said, “because that’s where the Dean always and forever parks his car. He never bothers to come early to find a parking place, because he knows they keep this little hole especially for him.”
“I ain’t worrying about no Dean,” said Tad. “I’m worrying about me.”
Susan said nothing at all, but her mind was very active.
“What’s the matter, Susie?” George asked. “Are you worried, too?”
“No, I was thinking,” Susan said. “I was thinking, what would Dean Ambrose do if he should roll up late tomorrow to the game and find no place to park?”
“I guess he would go home again,” George said.
“And not use his ticket? And miss the game?” asked Susan.
“He would be awful mad,” George said.
“But if,” said Susan, “he saw that there was one empty driveway left, one real good place to park—”
“The Ridgeways’ turnabout!” yelped George.
“I sure do hope those brakes didn’t lock!” Tad was saying mournfully to himself.
Susan and George looked at Tad and they were sorry for him. But Susan couldn’t help repeating something she had once read in an old copybook, “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good.”
North River Street
It was a beautiful Saturday morning again and the day of the Homecoming game.
“But this morning,” Mother said, “we have something besides football to think of. We must settle once and for all the question of who owns Terence.”
“Oh dear!” Susan said.
“Mother, he was afraid of those boys,” George cried. “He didn’t want to belong to them.”
“Nevertheless,” Mother said, “it must be settled. As soon as your morning chores are done, Daddy will drive you and Terence down to this address on North River Street and find out what the situation really is.”
“Oh, Susan,” George said, “I wish you hadn’t asked for the address.”
“But we have to do what is right,” Susan said sadly.
Terence loved to ride in the car, and he leaped in eagerly without any urging. He almost filled the backseat, and George could barely squeeze in beside him. Susan and Dumpling sat on the front seat with Father. George put his arm around Terence’s neck, and Terence kept turning around to give George enthusiastic kisses with his long wet tongue. His tail went wham! wham! wham!
“He doesn’t know where he’s going,” George said. “He thinks it’s all for fun.”
It was a long way from College Avenue to North River Street, and, when he was not kissing George, Terence hung his head out of the window and sniffed all of the strange and different smells along the way. When they came near 1515½ North River Street the smells were quite different. There was the damp, weedy smell of the river, and the oily smell of a linseed oil factory, and the smoky smell of trains from the railroad bridge that crossed overhead. Terence sniffed again and his tail stopped whamming. He began to tremble and to lean hard against George.
“Oh, Daddy!” George cried. “Please drive on by. He doesn’t want to stop.”
“George,” Father said, “some things are hard to do. But just because a thing is hard we must not turn away from it, if it is right.”
“Chemistry was hard,” Dumpling said, “but Tommy didn’t turn away from it, did he, Daddy?”
Boys were playing ball in the street in front of 1515½ North River Street. They came around the Ridgeways’ car and looked in as the car stopped.
“Geez! It’s the Moose!” they said in wonder. “It’s our dog. They brung him back!”
“Pop’ll give you heck, kid,” one of the boys said. “He don’t never want to see—”
“Is your father at home, boys?” Professor Ridgeway asked. “I’d like to speak to him if he isn’t busy.”
“Busy?” said one of the boys, laughing. “No, he ain’t never busy!”
“Pop!” they yelled. “Get your britches on and come down.”
The house was a very old one, as old as the house the Ridgeways lived in, but it had not had the loving care that had been given to the old house on College Avenue. There was no grass in the beaten dooryard; the shingles were falling off the roof. The house had not been painted for so long that one could no longer imagine what the color had been. The ½ was the upstairs part of the house, and presently down the rickety outside stairway came a red-faced man in a dirty undershirt and stained overalls.
“What’s the matter?” he asked crossly.
“Pop, they’ve brung back Moose. Can we have him, Pop?”
The man came up beside the car. “That ain’t our dog,” he said.
“He is, too, Pop!” cried the boys. “You know he is!”
“Well, then we don’t want him,” said the man. “He eats more’n we do. We can’t afford to feed him.”
“We can’t afford to feed him either,” Father said. The Ridgeway children drew long sighing breaths, and George’s sigh was more like a sob. Father went on, “But, although we really can’t afford to feed him, we do want him. Which one of you boys is the owner of this dog?”
“I am,” said the boy called Butch. “But Pop won’t let me have him up to bed with me. He kicks him down them stairs whenever he comes up.”
“What’s your name?” Father asked.
“It’s Butch,” the boy said.
“Well, Butch,” said Father, “we want to buy this dog from you.”
“Buying, is it?” said the man in surprise. “Well, now he’s my dog, too. He belongs to the whole family of us, and mighty fond of him we was, when we had the stuff to feed him.”
Professor Ridgeway put his hand in his pocket and drew out a bill. He pushed aside the man’s reaching hand and held the money out to Butch.
“Butch,” he said, “will five dollars recompense you for the loss of your dog?”
“Golly, yes!” said Butch. “I can buy me a good warm jacket for school with that there money. I guess he’s happier with you anyway. Hey, Moose?”
He put his hand in the window and touched the dog’s head.
“His name is Torrible Terence,” Dumpling said.
“Hey, Terence, fellow?” Butch said wistfully. Terence licked Butch’s hand and then he turned and rubbed his head against George.
“Is it all right then, Butch?” George asked.
“Ya, you bet,” Butch said. And so the Ridgeways drove back again to College Avenue, and all the way back Terence’s tail went wham! wham! wham! with joy.
“Thank you, Daddy,” George said. “Five dollars is a lot of money. It would buy a lot of dog food.”
“But Butch will have a warm jacket,” Susan said, “and now we really own Terence. We won’t have to worry anymore. He is our own dog.”
“We will just have to worry how to feed him,” Dumpling said.
“If we could only earn money parking cars—” Susan began, but after Father had been so good as to buy Terence for them, she was immediately sorry that she had raised the old question of parking cars. But Father was not angry.
“I am not personally opposed to your parking cars on football days, Susan,” Father said gravely. “It is just that I am sure Dean Ambrose would not approve. We’ll feed Terence and get along somehow, even if we have to do without a few of those delicious doughnuts and cookies Mother makes for us. We’re not badly off, you know. A trip to North River Street once in a while is very good for us, I think. It makes us realize how really fortunate and happy and well off we are.”
Concerning Dean Ambrose
While the Ridgeways were at lunch, the doorbell rang, and one of Tommy Tucker’s friends stood there with an envelope in his hand and a box from the florist shop.
“Here are three tickets to the football game,” he said, “and a corsage for Miss Sturm.”
“For me?” said Dorothy. “For pity’s sake!”
“But I thought that every seat in the stadium was sold out for today,” Father said.
“Well, Tommy could only get three tickets, and he said to tell you that he was sorry, because he wanted to get six so that all of you could go. He said that you could divide the three tickets up any way you cared to, only he thought that Dorothy—that is, Miss Sturm—had really earned one of them.”
“Dorothy, will you go?” the children cried. “You won’t have to study, will you, Dorothy? You’ll go and wear the corsage?”
“No, I’m not going to study today,” Dorothy said. “I’m getting kind of interested in football.”
“Three tickets to the game!” cried Mother. “That’s really splendid! Dorothy must go, of course, and then I think that George and Susan might go, too, don’t you, Daddy?”
“Yes,” Father said, “I think they should, and Dumpling won’t mind watching from the Tower with us, will you, Dumpling?”
“No,” Dumpling said. “Irene and I would rather play house anyway.”
George
and Susan had begun to jump and shout with joy, but then they looked at each other, and several important thoughts chased themselves rapidly through their minds. What if Dean Ambrose comes looking for a parking place! George thought. And Susan thought, Mother and Daddy have lived here right beside the stadium for so many years, and I don’t believe they’ve ever gone to a game since they had us to look after. I’ll bet they’d like to go.
“Oh, Mother!” Susan said, “George and I like watching games from the Tower, don’t we, George?”
“Sure,” George said. “We would stay, and you could go.”
“Oh, no,” Mother said.
“Oh, Mother, yes!” cried Susan.
“What do you think, Daddy?” Mother asked a little wistfully.
“Well,” Father said, “if they don’t really care—it would be quite a lark!”
“Oh, and Daddy,” Susan said, “you must get Mother a corsage, and that would make it really wonderful.”
“A corsage!” Mother said, her cheeks looking pink and her eyes excited. “My goodness, no! What an extravagance!”
“Susan,” Daddy said, “you have extremely good ideas. But really, wouldn’t you and George be disappointed?”
“No, Daddy! No!” they cried. George and Susan looked at each other and smiled. Although they would have enjoyed sitting in regular seats in the big stadium, they were satisfied that it had turned out this way.
“Oh, what fun!” Mother said. “Oh, Dorothy, aren’t you excited? We’re going to the game and wear corsages. Oh, my!”
“We’d better am-scray then,” Dorothy said, pretending to be calm about everything. “We’ve got these lunch dishes to do, and lots of things before we’re ready to go.”
“Oh, goodness yes!” Mother said. “What a lark! Oh, hurry, hurry, hurry!”
“Don’t rush, dear,” Professor Ridgeway said. “At least, living this near the stadium, we can take our time. We won’t have to park a car. We can leave home after the crowds have gone by and arrive just in time for the kickoff.”