"Come and help me find George W.," she called to Eunice and Edna, who were also on the piazza. "He's mewing dreadfully, and I can't find him."

"He's worse than a baby," said Eunice, unwinding herself from the comfortable, twisted-up position in the steamer chair, which she loved.

"Couldn't you let him cry a little while and give him a lesson?"

"I wouldn't mind giving _him_ a lesson, but I'm afraid he'd give me one in patience," returned Cricket, laughing. "I'm sure I don't want to listen to that music long. There, he's stopped again, now."

But five minutes later, George W. renewed his complaints.

"Now I'm going to let him cry!" said Cricket, returning in despair from another search. So down she sat, shutting her ears to outside sounds in her comfortable fashion.

Presently grandma appeared at the hall door.

"Cricket, my dear, George Washington seems to want something. Don't you think you'd better try and find him?"

"Grandma, he's been crying and weeping for an hour at least, and I just can't find him. But I'll look again."

But wherever George W. was, he was certainly securely hidden. He cried now and then at intervals, but it was impossible to locate the sound, since it came first from one side, then from another.

"He's between the floors somewhere," said Will, who had joined the search. "The question is, where?"

"We'll have to decide that question at once," said auntie, "because we can scarcely have all the floors in the house taken up. How could he have gotten in?"

"Perhaps through some small hole in the garret floor. He's probably forgotten the way back. Or, perhaps there's some hole down cellar where he got inside, and ran up after the mice."

"Perhaps the mice have gotten the best of him, and are tearing him limb from limb," suggested Archie, making such a horrible face that Helen retreated behind Aunt Jean in terror.

All the afternoon they followed the sounds at intervals, listening at the floor, and calling over and over. George W. seemed to be exploring the entire interior of the house. Late in the afternoon, the cries came more constantly from the floor of the trunkroom, a small apartment off the garret, and directly over Eunice's room. There was a small knot-hole in the floor, and the light from a window fell directly on it, probably attracting George W. there. Saws and hatchets were brought, and the boys soon had a piece of the floor up, making a hole large enough for several cats the size of George to come up.

"George evidently likes this sort of thing," said Archie, hacking away.

"First the tin can, then the floor. Come out here, old fellow." But he was evidently frightened away by the noise, and could not be induced to come up.

"Bring a saucer of milk, Edna," said Mrs. Somers. "Stand it at one side, and then we will all go away and he will soon come up." So the milk was brought, and as it was supper-time, they all went down and left George W. to his own devices. Cricket was much disposed to stay and make sure that he came up, but she was finally persuaded to come down with the rest.

"Isn't it funny how his voice came from all over?" she said, at the supper-table. "Probably he was right there under the trunkroom floor all the time. He was a regular philanthropist."

"A regular what?" asked grandma and Auntie Jean, together.

"A philanthropist. Don't you know? a man who--who talks where he isn't?"

"A _ventriloquist_!" said Will. "That's what you mean."

"Do I? Auntie, what is a philanthropist, then?"

"A philanthropist is one who loves man, dear, and who--"

"Then when a girl's engaged, is she a philanthropist?" broke in Cricket, with her gla.s.s of milk half raised. The others all laughed.

"She is, very often," said grandma.

"I know the man she is engaged to is called her _finance_, but I never knew she was called a philanthropist," went on Cricket, thoughtfully.

There was another shout.

"_Fiance_, dear," said auntie, as soon as she could speak, "and the girl isn't often _called_ a philanthropist, though she often is one."

"Dear me," sighed Cricket. "Words are very puzzling. They seem to be made to say what you don't think."

"Oftentimes, my little Talleyrand," said grandma.

After supper, Cricket ran up to see if George W. had made his appearance yet. A few moments later, the household, a.s.sembled on the front piazza, was startled by a crash and a scream in Cricket's voice. With one accord, everybody rushed up-stairs. The sounds seemed to come from Eunice's room. As they opened the door, a cloud of dust poured out, from a ma.s.s of plaster that lay on the floor, while from a hole in the ceiling a length of black-stockinged leg kicked wildly. Above, a pair of fists beat a tattoo on the floor, while Cricket called, loudly:

"For goodness' sake, somebody come and pull me up; I'm breaking my other leg off."

Will sprang for the garret stairs, stumbling headlong, at the top, over George W., who took the opportunity to spring over his head, alighting right in the midst of the group of eager children, each of whom was trying to get up-stairs first, and in a moment everybody lay on top of everybody else, at the foot of the staircase.

Will, meantime, found his feet, and went to Cricket's rescue. It was dark in the trunkroom, under the eaves, but there was light enough to see Cricket, with one leg stretched out straight, and the other one so firmly wedged into the hole in the floor that she could not move.

"My leg feels as George W.'s head must have when he was caught in the tomato can," said Cricket, as Will drew up. "It's a pretty tight squeeze. I don't believe there's any skin left on it. I just came up quickly, and I couldn't see very well, and the first thing I knew my foot slipped into a hole, and there was not any floor there, and I slumped through."

"Are you hurt? Is Cricket hurt?" cried everybody, scrambling in, in hot haste.

"Not much," said Cricket, ruefully, feeling her barked knee. "I came down pretty hard on my elbow, and I nearly knocked it up to the top of my head, and my back feels funny, but I'm _not_ hurt, not a bit!"

"What a mercy the child didn't fall all the way through, and go down on the lower floor," said grandma, who had just arrived on the scene.

"Why, I couldn't," said Cricket, surprised. "My other leg stopped me."

CHAPTER X.

THE ECHO CLUB.

Eunice and Edna went sauntering along the beach, with arms around each other's waists. They were bending their steps towards one of their favourite retreats, under some big rocks. It was high tide, and the water lay dimpling and smiling in the sunlight. Down beside the dock, Will and Archie were giving their sailboat, the _Gentle Jane_, a thorough cleaning and overhauling. Cricket was--the girls didn't know exactly where.

"There she is now," said Eunice, as they came around the rocks. Cricket lay in her favourite att.i.tude, full length on the sand, in which her elbows were buried, with a book under her nose. She sat up as the girls came nearer.

"I have an idea," she announced, beamingly.

"_Very_ hot weather for ideas!" said Eunice, fanning herself with her broad-brimmed hat.

"Eunice, you're dreadfully brilliant, aren't you? Anyway, I _have_ an idea, and I just got it from 'Little Women.'"

Edna threw herself on the sand. "Don't let's do it, if we have to _do_ anything," she said, fanning likewise.

"Now, you're brilliant. But you're a lazybones, you know. Tell us your idea, Cricket."