Snuffy's bright eyes caught sight of his familiars, s...o...b..ll and Flip, seated in lonely state upon the schoolhouse steps. The little basket, which, in days gone by, had often held goodies, as he well knew, excited his curiosity. Up the steps tripped Master Snuff to sniff delicately at the refreshments, and then, to the joy of the prisoners, he saw their faces and heard their knocks and calls.

He barked furiously, and leaped up at the window. He ran to the door, scratching and whining to be let in, then back to the window where he echoed their cries for help by barkings so frantic that Grandfather, trudging leisurely along with his string of fish, wondered what Snuff had cornered on the old school porch.

Snuff was wise enough to know that something was wrong, and that Grandfather was needed to set it right.

Susan held her breath for fear he was leaving them to their fate as he galloped down the walk, but it was only to circle round Grandfather and back again to the steps, where he halted, waiting for his master to join him.

"You rascal," called Grandfather. "I suppose you think I ought to carry those dolls up to the house for Susan. Come along with me, sir."

But when Snuff recommenced barking and leaping at the window, Grandfather Whiting followed him up the walk, and a second later the treacherous door was flung open and Susan was in his arms.

"My own Susan, what is it? What are you doing in here?" asked Grandfather tenderly, as a very dirty little girl clasped him tight, and sent a hot shower of tears down the back of his neck.

"The door wouldn't open, and I didn't wake her up, and I was afraid of bears and Indians," sobbed Susan. "But I knew you'd come, I knew you'd come! And Snuff shall have all the lunch, every bit, because he saved us."

And breathing hard, and winking fast, and holding tight to Grandfather's hand, Susan gladly rewarded Snuff, who devoured his treat in two bites, and then, waving his tail jauntily, ran on ahead to prepare Grandmother for their coming.

Halfway up the lane, the party met Miss Liza, homeward bound.

"Let me take Gentilla," said she, when she had heard the story. "I'll leave her at the camp. She is too little to understand, but Susan has had quite a fright. They weren't gone from home an hour, though," she added, "but I suppose it seemed long to them."

Of course it did. Susan could never be made to believe that she and Gentilla had not been imprisoned in the schoolhouse for hours and hours, perhaps half a day.

When she reached home, she enjoyed telling the story over and over.

Grandmother was sympathetic, and gave Susan a lecture upon going into strange places and shutting the door behind her. Grandfather was concerned with the fact that the door was open at all, and wanted to know who had been tampering with town property.

Phil was the most satisfactory audience of all, for he bitterly regretted having missed the adventure, and listened again and again to Susan's account of it with undiminished interest. She was able to brag and boast to him as she could to no one else, and before they separated for the night neither one was quite sure whether or not real bears and Indians had come out of the woods and been driven away by Susan single-handed.

"We'll play about it," said Phil, rising slowly from the steps as he heard his mother for the third time call him to come home. "We'll take turns being bears and Indians. We can play in my woodshed and we'll play it the first thing-"

"Phil!" came his father's voice.

Phil skipped down the path toward home with the speed of a gra.s.shopper.

"To-morrow!" he called back as he hopped over the stone wall.

Something so exciting was to happen "to-morrow" that, for the time being, this adventure was to be cast in the shade. But Susan went to bed that night feeling quite a heroine, and knowing there was no one in the world Phil envied so much as herself.

CHAPTER VIII-SUSAN'S PRESENT

The next morning early, before breakfast, Susan ran out on the front porch to view the new day. Grandfather had suggested that she go look for "fairy tablecloths" in the gra.s.s, but Susan more than half suspected that he wanted her out of the way while he finished shaving. She couldn't help whisking about the room and it did make his hand shake.

Susan watched two rosy little clouds grow fainter and fainter in the pale blue morning sky, and then disappear. She leaned over the porch railing and stared down into the bed of gay portulaca that Grandmother tended with such care both night and morning.

"Grandmother's flowers," thought she, smiling at the bright little cups, all wet with dew. "They are awake and I am awake. I guess everybody is awake now. But where is Snuff? He's always the first one up."

Susan turned to go in search of her playmate when a flutter of white caught her eye. On one of the porch posts a slip of paper had been fastened with a common white pin. In a twinkling Susan was on the rail and down again, paper in hand.

"Grandfather, Grandfather, here's a letter," she called, and, running through the house, she gave the paper to Grandfather, just settling himself at the breakfast table.

"Hum," said Mr. Whiting, when he had read the slip and studied it backward and forward. "This is a strange thing. It's for you, Susan.

Look at this, Grandmother."

On a jagged slip of wrapping-paper, printed in uneven letters that slanted downhill, were the words:

"A pressent for the little miss on the school-house steps."

"A present for me?" said Susan, delighted, as Grandfather read it aloud.

"I'll go straight down and get it. Shall I?"

"No, no. Eat your breakfast first," answered Grandfather, who was not nearly so pleased at the idea of a present as Susan thought he ought to be.

In fact, over Susan's head, he and Grandmother exchanged glances which seemed to say they did not altogether understand what had happened.

But Susan saw nothing of this, and, breakfast over, she and Grandfather started at once down the lane to see what her mysterious present might be.

"Grandfather, where is Snuff?" asked Susan. "I haven't seen him this morning."

"No more have I," answered Grandfather.

He whistled again and again, and Susan called, but no Snuff appeared in answer to these familiar signals.

On the school porch lay a dark bundle. It was a large bundle, and it moved slightly from side to side. As they drew nearer they heard a wail, and Susan immediately recognized the cry.

"It's Gentilla," she called out. "It's Gentilla crying."

Yes, it was Gentilla, so securely wrapped in a big gray shawl that had been wound tightly about her and pinned in place that she could move neither hands nor feet, and could only rock herself from side to side as she lay on the hard boards of the porch floor.

Grandfather and Susan helped her out of the blanket, and Gentilla tried to tell her story, but all she could say was:

"All gone away,-riding."

She rolled her big gray eyes and waved her tiny hand, and that was the best that she could do to explain her presence there so early in the morning.

There was a strange look on Grandfather's face, and he thrust his hands in his pockets and pursed up his mouth as if to whistle as he stared at the little schoolhouse. For from every window the panes of gla.s.s had been neatly removed, and a glance within showed that the old stove had disappeared also.

"You take Gentilla up to the house, Susan," said he. "I'm going down the road a ways."

"Yes, I will," said Susan. "But, Grandfather, where is my present?"

"Perhaps Gentilla is the present," called back Mr. Whiting, already striding down the hill.

And half an hour later when he returned to the house, Grandfather sank into a chair, put the tips of his fingers together, and began to laugh.

"Do tell me what it is all about," said Grandmother, coming out on the porch, duster in hand. "The children are over at Mrs. Vane's, and they came up here with such a story that I don't know what to think:-Gentilla wrapped in a shawl, and panes of gla.s.s gone, and I don't know what all."