At this season of the year everybody in Midwest City was more or less interested in football. Everybody wanted Midwest University to win its games against Coronia and Michigan and Iowa and Wisconsin and the other schools represented in the football conference.
Thousands of cars jammed College Avenue on a Saturday afternoon when there was a game in the stadium; thousands of people with pennants flying and chrysanthemums pinned on their coats hurried by to get seats in the stadium. The roar of the cheering could be heard for many blocks in all directions. Popcorn wagons whistled invitingly on every corner, and the Gimmick boys did a very profitable business parking cars in their driveway and backyard at twenty-five cents a car.
George, and even Susan, wanted very much to park cars in the Ridgeways’ backyard or to sell something to the crowds, but Father would never let them.
“We could certainly use a little money, Daddy,” George said wistfully.
“That’s true,” said Professor Ridgeway, “but we have a certain academic dignity to maintain.”
“If we can’t park cars we could sell popcorn,” George suggested.
“No! No!” said Father. “What would Dean Ambrose say if he knew that the children of one of his professors were hawking and vending on the street?”
“What is hawking and vending?” asked Dumpling with interest.
“Selling things,” said Susan.
“And what is adachemic dignity?” Dumpling wanted to know.
“Academic dignity,” said Mother, “is an imaginary line, like the equator, that separates our house from the Gimmicks’ house.”
“No, no,” said Father. “We’re no better than the Gimmicks, not a bit. But Mr. Gimmick has his own auto repair shop; he doesn’t need to think how it looks to other people if his boys sell things on the streets. On the other hand, we represent a great University; we have to think how all of our public actions will look to other people.”
But even if they couldn’t sell things, the Ridgeway children had their own private Tower for watching the games, and all summer long a football hero had mowed their lawn!
The Strange Behavior of Tommy Tucker
On a Friday afternoon at the beginning of October the Ridgeway children were walking slowly home from school in the pleasant sunshine.
“Game tomorrow,” George said. “Oh, boy! And then on Sunday—on Sunday, you know what?”
“Your birthday,” said Susan, feeling just a little bored. “You’ve only told me fifteen times, George.”
“Well, I’m glad you remember,” he answered hopefully.
“We ought to hurry,” Susan said. “We have to rake the leaves this afternoon.”
“I can’t hurry, my legs ache.”
“We could hurry if there was ice cream,” Dumpling said. They stopped and looked at her, for what she said was quite true.
The Gimmick boys caught up with the Ridgeways. They did not have to rake, so they were in a hurry to get home.
“Hello,” they said.
“Hello,” said the Ridgeways. The Gimmick boys, Tim and Tad, were the same ages as Susan and George.
“We’re going to make some swell new signs for parking cars,” Tim said.
“We’re going to make like a big cut-out hand pointing a thumb at our backyard. You know, like you thumb a ride, kind of,” said Tad.
“And print, ‘Parking twenty-five cents,’” said Tim.
“Swell,” said Susan wistfully, and George said, “Gee!”
The Gimmicks hurried by.
Soon the Terrible Torrences came up behind.
“Susan is our sit-ter! Susan is our sit-ter!” they chanted.
“Ssh! Ssh! Ssh!” said Susan. She did not like to be reminded in public that she was the Torrences’ sitter. It was not that she was ashamed of being a babysitter, for that was an honorable profession, and she adored babies. She was ashamed for the Torrences who, at five and six, should have been old enough to look after themselves without a sitter. But Mrs. Torrence was always afraid that they would burn down the house or kill the cat or ruin the plumbing if she left them in the house alone. So Susan had to look after them when Professor and Mrs. Torrence went out to dinner or the movies.
“We are going to dig a hole in our backyard,” said Alvin, the larger of the two Terrible Torrences.
“A great big hole,” said Rudy, “big enough for all the houses in the neighborhood to fall into.”
“Our house, too?” asked Susan.
“Every house on College Avenue,” said Alvin.
“Listen, Alvin and Rudy,” said George in a sweet and gentle voice, “how would you like to rake leaves? At our house? You wouldn’t have to pay us a thing.”
“Would Tommy Tucker be there?”
The Ridgeways shook their heads regretfully.
“Then we’d rather dig a hole for all the houses to fall into,” said the Terrible Torrences, rushing on.
“That settles it,” Susan said. “We’d better hurry right along and get the raking done as fast as we can. That’s the best way.”
Raking was really a very pleasant thing to do on a beautiful fall day. The yellow leaves rustled and murmured underfoot. They smelled sweet and warm and dry. More yellow leaves floated gently down from time to time. They floated past the Tower where Mother’s typewriter was going clickety-clack, clickety-clack! They settled easily on the long green grass.
At first Susan and George raked the leaves into long rows, and then they discovered that by raking other rows crosswise they could make imaginary rooms with leaf walls. In one they made a bedroom with a big leaf bed, and Dumpling lay down on it with her old rag doll, Irene, and they covered her with leaves. They began to sing as they worked, one of Father’s favorite songs:
“’Twas Friday night when we set sail,
And our ship not far from the land,
When there we espied a pretty mermaid
With a comb and a glass in her hand.”
Soon the Gimmick boys finished their signs and came to sit on the wall and watch the Ridgeways rake. The Terrible Torrences found it more work than it was worth to dig a hole large enough to swallow the neighborhood, so they came, too. They all began to sing:
“’Twas Friday night when we set sail,
And our ship not far from the land—”
They were all singing at the top of their lungs when Tommy Tucker came by. He began to sing, too, and he stood and looked over the wall at the long grass and the ridges and piles of leaves.
The children were perfectly delighted. They stopped singing to cry, “Hi, Tommy! Hello, Tommy! Oh, Tommy, Tommy Tucker!”
“What are you doing?” asked Tommy.
“Raking the lawn.”
“That’s a funny way to do it,” Tommy said.
“Well, we were playing a little as we raked,” explained Susan. “I expect we will get it all cleaned up before suppertime.”
“And look at that grass!” Tommy said gloomily. “I bet it hasn’t been mowed since last summer.”
“Not since you started to go to school and practice football, Tommy,” said George.
Tommy shook his head sadly. “Get busy and clean off those leaves,” he said, “and I’ll mow.”
The Ridgeway children began to rake like mad. The leaf walls crumbled and tumbled together. Dumpling and her doll were hastily raked out of their leaf bed and left high and dry. The Gimmick boys rushed home for extra rakes. Even the Terrible Torrences began clutching up armfuls of leaves and running with them to the burning-basket in the back alley. A lawn was never more quickly or enthusiastically cleaned of its leaves.
While they worked, Tommy went to the old carriage house that the Ridgeways used as a garage and wheeled out the lawn mower. It had developed a loud squeak, and he went back and found the oil can and gave it a good oiling. By the time he was ready to mow, the children had cleared one whole side of the lawn. Dorothy was looking out of the window at them, but she did not come out.
“Look, Tommy, what a good j
ob we did! Look how we cleaned it, Tommy.”
“Uh-huh,” Tommy said. His mind seemed to be on other things today. He did not tousle Dumpling’s hair or make sparring motions at George. He did not make jokes or shout, “Let’s go, gang!” or “Out of my track, kids!” It was the first time that they had ever seen Tommy Tucker when he did not seem happy. Some of his gloom began to settle on the children. They did not sing as they worked, and they looked at him shyly to see what was the matter.
“Didn’t you win the football game last week, Tommy?” asked Rudy Torrence. The Terrible Torrences always asked whatever came into their heads without stopping to think.
“Of course he won!” cried the Ridgeways and the Gimmicks. “What do you think?”
“You always win, don’t you, Tommy?” said George proudly.
Usually if anyone asked him that, Tommy Tucker said, “Sure, you bet!” But today he was quite serious. He said, “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” He went on mowing the lawn, and the long green grass flew up like water in a fountain.
When the children had finished raking the leaves they sat on the wall and watched. The clickety-clack of Mother’s typewriter in the Tower was drowned out completely by the whirr-whizzity-bang of the lawn mower. The children’s eyes followed Tommy Tucker as he raced around the lawn. He was a wonderfully neat mower. He never left a little ridge of standing grass between mowed strips as some mowers do. Every blade of grass fell where it should. Susan could not help thinking of the barber who clipped George’s hair in the summer, when Mother let him wear it quite short.
Tommy was approaching the wall where they sat, and to break the gloom which had settled over them with Tommy’s unusual silence Susan called out, “Tommy, you’d make a good barber.”
Tommy stopped so suddenly that the children almost fell off the wall. He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief.
“You’re right, sister,” he said to Susan in an angry-sounding voice, “I’d make a good barber. I’m a good lawn mower. That’s just about my speed.”
“Well,” said Susan, “you’re the world’s best football player, too. We watch you from our Tower. I don’t know what our team would do without you.”
“I don’t either,” said Tommy frankly, “but they’d better begin to find out. They’d better begin to find out, that’s all I have to say.”
“Oh!” cried all of the children in terrible surprise. Tommy began to mow again, and they couldn’t get another word out of him.
When he had finished the lawn, he wheeled the mower back to the garage.
“I’ll go and call Mother and have her pay you,” said Susan.
“No,” Tommy said, “I don’t want to be paid this time. I was just letting off steam.”
“Letting off steam?” asked the Torrences. “We thought you were mowing the lawn.”
“But Mother would want you to be paid,” insisted Susan.
For the first time that afternoon Tommy Tucker smiled.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said, “if there are any of those good doughnuts your mother makes—”
Dorothy was in the kitchen peeling potatoes for supper when they all went in. She kept right on peeling potatoes as if a football hero were just the same as anybody else.
“Dorothy, look! This is Tommy Tucker,” Susan said.
“Tucker?” said Dorothy as if she had never heard the name before.
“It’s Tokarynski really,” said George. “The football player. Don’t you know?”
“Oh,” said Dorothy.
“This is Dorothy Sturm, Tommy,” said Susan.
“Oh,” said Tommy. They did not seem to be very much interested in meeting each other.
“Let’s take the doughnuts out on the back steps,” Susan said tactfully. The doughnut jar was quite full when it came out. Tommy sat down on the back doorstep with George on one side of him and Dumpling on the other. The rest of the children sat around him in a circle on the freshly clipped lawn. The doughnut jar went around and around the circle. Presently it was nearly empty.
The Terrible Torrences, entirely full of doughnuts, were just beginning to put doughnuts in their pockets when Susan said, “Maybe we better leave one or two in the bottom of the jar for a nest egg, sort of.”
Tommy got up and sighed. They could see that, although he had been sitting so near them, he had not been thinking about them at all. He looked at the nearly empty jar, and he said, “I hope your mother won’t mind. But she sure is a wonderful doughnut maker.”
“She’s good at whatever she does,” said George proudly.
“I wish I was,” said Tommy Tucker. After that he went away down the walk without saying good-bye. Outside the gate he began to whistle. It seemed that Tommy Tucker could never walk along without whistling. But today the tune he whistled was not a happy one. It sounded very much like a funeral march.
’Twas Friday Night
Mother,” Susan said before dinner, “I hope you won’t mind about all the doughnuts being gone. But Tommy Tucker wouldn’t take any other pay for mowing the lawn, and then the Gimmicks and the Terrible Torrences were here, and they had worked, too.”
“Doughnuts are intended to be eaten,” Mother said, “and fortunately I had a few more than I could put in the jar. I have them on a plate in the top of the cupboard, so Father will get his share.”
“M-m-m!” said Professor Ridgeway to the children. “Your mother is a wonderful woman.”
They all sat down to dinner, and while they were eating, Mrs. Ridgeway said, “Now it’s Friday night—”
The children and Professor Ridgeway burst out singing:
“’Twas Friday night when we set sail,
And our ship not far from the land—”
Dorothy looked at them in surprise because she was not used to living with people who sang at the table.
“Hush, hush!” said Mrs. Ridgeway. “This is serious. It’s Friday night, and I think that we had better begin to plan our Saturday. There are quite a lot of things we have to do, and when the football crowd begins to surge by we might as well be living on a desert island in a raging sea. There is no getting in or out of our driveway—”
“So we might as well park cars, Mother,” said George, but Susan said, “Ssh!”
“On Saturday morning Dumpling has to go to the Child Study Clinic and get her annual test,” continued Mother, “and who will go with her?”
“I will, Mother,” said Susan. “But why does it always have to be the Ridgeway children that they practice on? First it was me, and then it was George.”
“Well, we’re so handy here,” said Mother, “it’s nice and easy for them. I guess they keep a record of the family. They have a grocer’s family and an insurance agent’s family and a farmer’s family, and so on. We’re the professor’s family.”
“But why?” asked George.
“They are trying to learn all about children,” said Professor Ridgeway. “It’s a science, like zoology.”
“I see,” said George, “and we’re the guinea pigs.”
“Oh, George,” cried Mother, “did you remember to feed your guinea pigs?”
“Yes, Mother,” said George.
“And the white rats and the rabbits?”
“Oh, yes. They’ve got a real nice supper of fresh grass.”
“And I fed the canary bird,” said Dumpling. Everybody stopped and thought about this, although it was Dumpling’s regular job for which she received ten cents a week.
“Well, bless your little heart!” cried Mother, and the others said, “Oh, good!” Dumpling continued to eat her dinner.
“Well, to get back to Saturday,” said Mother. “So Susan will take Dumpling to the Child Study Clinic at the University, and George will clean the animal crates and go to the barber and get his hair cut, and Dorothy can use the vacuum cleaner while I do the marketing—”
“And how about Sunday?” asked George.
“Sunday?” asked Mother in surprise.
“Oh, my goodne
ss, Mother,” said George, “don’t you remember what day Sunday is?”
“It can’t be Christmas,” said Mrs. Ridgeway with a twinkle in her eye. “It’s too early in the season.”
“For the same reason it can hardly be Thanksgiving,” said Professor Ridgeway.
Susan began to giggle. “Maybe it’s Halloween,” she said.
“Oh, my goodness!” wailed George. “Doesn’t anybody remember what day it is?”
“I know,” said Dumpling. “It’s George’s birthday!”
“No!” cried the others, just as if they had not been reminded by George every day for weeks. “No! It can’t be!”
“Yes, it is,” said Dumpling.
“I didn’t mean to remind you,” said George politely, “only I just thought maybe some of you might be wanting to go downtown on Saturday to do some shopping or something, and it would be too bad if you forgot.”
“That’s true,” said Mother. “How about it, Susan? Do you and Dumpling want to go downtown after you are through at the Child Study Clinic?”
“I think we’d better,” said Susan.
George beamed happily. He had a white, curved mustache of milk on his upper lip. “Oh, boy!” he said.
“But we’ll be back in time for the game,” said Susan.
“Yes, indeed,” said Father. “See that you get here before the crowds begin to arrive. You might be lost or trampled on.”
“Father,” said Susan, “Tommy Tucker was very odd today when he was mowing the lawn. He didn’t look a bit cheerful. And he said something about how the team had better learn to get along without him. What do you think he meant?”
“The poor young man is probably working too hard,” said Mother. “It’s really too bad he has to earn his way through college by doing odd jobs and by being night watchman at the flour mill. Besides that he has football practice and Saturday games, and then his studies and his examinations.”
“There you have it in a nutshell,” said Professor Ridgeway. “You name all the things that Tom Tokarynski has to do to stay in college and on the football team, and the very last things you mention are his studies and his examinations.”