The family had not gone very far when suddenly Joe stopped the car by the side of the road.
“What’s the matter?” asked Henry.
“Bill’s getting too tired,” answered Joe quietly. “This is all too much of a change for him. I’m going to fix a bed on the back seat so he can lie down.”
Benny looked up at Bill and saw that it was true. The old man was very white, and his hands were shaking.
“Oh, dear,” said Jessie. “We talked to him too much. He isn’t used to it.”
She and Alice helped Joe make a soft bed of blankets on the back seat. Bill did not say a word. Joe and Henry took his arms and helped him out of the front seat and into the back. Bill lay down at once and shut his eyes, as if he were very glad to lie down.
The three girls took the middle seat and Henry got up in front beside Benny.
“He’ll be all right,” said Joe, looking back at Bill. “You can talk all you want to. I think he’ll sleep.”
“Let’s send that telegram to Grandfather at the next village,” said Jessie. “What shall we say?”
“Ten words,” said Benny.
“No, you can send fifteen,” said Henry. “Let’s make up a telegram as we ride. We should certainly begin, ‘Found Bill and the money.’”
“Five words,” said Violet, counting.
“‘All coming home today,’” said Jessie. “That’s four more. Nine so far.”
“Then we can have six more words,” said Benny. “We ought to say, ‘We may be late for supper.’ “
“We certainly will be late for supper,” said Joe.
Then Alice said, “Benny, don’t you think we should say something about Bill, like ‘Weak and tired’? Then Mrs. McGregor won’t expect the big strong man who used to lift the boat.”
Benny counted on his fingers for a few minutes. Then he cried, “We can say it this way. ‘Found Bill and money. Bill very weak. All coming home today late for supper. Hello.’”
“Wonderful, Benny!” said Joe, laughing. “Your grandfather will know you made up that telegram for sure. I always like to say hello at the end of a telegram!”
Henry said, “Now Benny, don’t forget what you said. Keep saying it over and over until we come to a village.”
This gave Benny something to do. When they did stop at a village he could remember every word.
As the girl wrote down the telegram, Jessie cried, “Henry, let’s say it’s from the Boxcar Children!”
The girl stopped writing, and looked up in surprise. “Are you the four children who lived in a boxcar?” she asked.
“Yes, we did,” said Benny. “We had fun.”
“And you found your grandfather at last,” she cried. She looked from one smiling face to another. “I read about you in the paper. But I never expected to see you.”
“This telegram is to our grandfather,” said Benny. “And you can say it’s from the Boxcar Children, and Alice and Joe. He’ll know.”
“Yes, I guess he will,” laughed the girl. “I’ll send it right off. It will get to him in an hour.”
“Fine,” said Henry, paying for the telegram. “Now let’s get on our way.”
Bill was still asleep when they got into the station wagon again. He was still asleep at lunch time. They did not wake him for lunch.
“He needs sleep more than food now,” said Joe.
“I do hope he isn’t sick,” said Alice in a worried voice.
“I don’t think he is,” said Joe. “I think he’s had just too much excitement. It is such a change from not talking at all.”
“It shows us we’ll have to be very careful of Bill,” said Jessie. “But I can hardly wait to ask him the end of that story.”
Bill slept almost all the afternoon. As they came near home, they had to wake him up. When they drove up to the door of their grandfather’s house, Bill was sitting up very straight.
Mr. Alden was sitting on the porch in a big chair. Beside him was Mrs. McGregor. They were waiting.
Bill leaned forward to look. “It’s my Margaret!” he said, almost crying. “She has the same beautiful blue eyes!”
Joe and Henry helped the old man out of the car and up the steps.
“Bill!” cried Margaret. She put both arms around him and led him to her chair. “It’s all right, Bill! It’s all right!” she said, over and over.
Just then there was a very loud noise from upstairs. It seemed to come from Jessie’s room. It was Watch. He came rushing down the stairs and out of the door, barking and barking. He could not believe that his four children had come back to him again. At last he lay down by Jessie’s feet, tired out.
“Now I guess he will eat his meals,” said Mr. Alden. “As for Mrs. McGregor, she hasn’t eaten a good meal since you all went away.”
Benny said, “I think it’s funny. We have so many people that can’t eat. I don’t have any trouble eating my meals.”
“Now that we’re all together again, Benny,” said Grandfather laughing, “everyone will be all right. I think I shall eat better myself. We have things for supper that you like best. There is hamburger for you. Bill always liked fish best and that’s what he’ll have. There’s ham for Joe and apple pie for Jessie.”
“No pie for me?” asked Benny, taking his grandfather’s hand.
“What do you think?” teased his grandfather. “I don’t believe anyone will go hungry tonight.”
It was wonderful to see Bill eat. With his Margaret beside him again, he seemed like a different man.
“I feel better and better,” he said.
After supper the family sat again on the porch.
“Joe,” whispered Benny, “couldn’t we talk to Bill now? He seems all right to me.”
“You can try,” said Joe. “We’ll soon see how he takes it. We can stop if he gets too upset.”
Benny went over then to Bill and Margaret. He put his hand over Bill’s.
“We want to ask you just a few more things, Bill,” he said. “Are you too tired?”
“No, little boy,” said Bill. “I don’t think I shall ever be tired again. Ask me anything you want.”
Benny looked at Joe. Joe smiled back at him.
Then Benny said, “We want to know something more about your brother. How was he going to make the money three times as much?”
“I didn’t know myself at first,” answered Bill. “But later I found out he was going to give it to some friends of his to bet on the horse races.”
“Oh, but he might have lost it all!” cried Henry.
“Yes, I know that now,” said Bill. “His friends were bad people, I’m afraid. Sam would have been all right if his friends had let him alone. But he always did what they said, and I always did what my brother Sam said.”
He looked around sadly. “One night after Sam was killed, these men came up to Maine. They hunted all over my house, but they couldn’t find the money. I didn’t know where the tin box was myself. But they didn’t believe me. They tried to make me tell, and we had a great fight. But at last they went away, and I never saw them again.”
“Were they the ones who told you the barn was burned?” asked Mr. Alden.
“Yes. They didn’t want me to go home and tell all I knew, so they told me Margaret was dead.”
“I suppose that finished you,” said Benny.
Bill smiled at him. “Yes, that finished me. I didn’t want to live any more without Margaret, and I didn’t want to see people. Besides, I couldn’t come home without the money, so I went into the deep woods to live alone forever.”
“Oh, I’m so glad we found you!” said Jessie suddenly. “Supposing we had never asked to go into the little yellow house on Surprise Island! Now you and Mrs. McGregor can live right here in her rooms, can’t they, Grandfather?”
“If her rooms are big enough,” said Mr. Alden.
“Three rooms ought to be big enough for two people,” said Mrs. McGregor, happily.
“I can help with the horses,” said Bill. “Do you still have horses?”
“Yes, we have two,” answered Mr. Alden. “But you will rest a long time before doing any work.”
Darkness began to fall. The birds began to sing their evening songs. The family sat quietly for a minute and listened.
Then Violet said, “Isn’t this a happy house, Alice? You and Joe so happy on the top floor—”
“And Bill and Mrs. McGregor will be in their own little rooms,” cried Benny.
“Don’t forget us,” said Henry, “with our mystery all solved, and getting back to Grandfather.”
“And we’ll all go and live in the little yellow house on Surprise Island every summer,” said Benny.
“Hold on, my boy. Not so fast!” said Mr. Alden. “That’s Bill’s house.”
“Oh, so it is,” said Benny. “Well then, he and Mrs. McGregor can live in it every summer, and we can go over to see them.”
“Well, we’ll see,” said Mr. Alden with a smile.
Violet suddenly put her hand on her grandfather’s knee, and looked up into his kind face. She could not see very well, for it had grown quite dark. But she knew he was smiling at her.
“Grandfather,” she asked, “couldn’t you use some of that money to fix up the little yellow house on Surprise Island? It is so dusty and the chairs are so old.”
“A fine idea!” said Mr. Alden, taking her small hand in his big one. “We could buy a lot of chairs with that money. And by the way, where is the money?”
“Right here!” said Jessie at once. She took it out of her handbag and gave it to Mr. Alden.
“Maybe Bill and I could paper and paint the rooms before school begins,” said Henry.
“Oh, we could all paint!” shouted Benny, jumping around. “Let’s paint the outside, too.”
“That would be fun,” said Alice. “Joe and I could help you every day after work on the cave.”
“Right now you children have something new to think about,” said Joe. “We will take a lunch over every day, and work until we get the house all fixed up.”
Violet sat down beside her grandfather in his great chair. He moved over quickly to make room for her and put his arm around her.
“I’m glad the little yellow house isn’t a sad place to you any more, Grandfather,” she said, leaning her head back against his arm. “It’s going to be a happy place again.”
“We’ll still paint it yellow,” said Benny. “Ho-hum!”
“What does ‘ho-hum’ mean this time, Ben?” asked Henry, laughing at his little brother.
Mrs. McGregor answered, smiling at Bill, “To me it means, ‘Thank you, children.’”
Mr. Alden said, “To me it means I’m very glad you are all at home again.”
“Well,” said Benny, “what I really mean is that I can hardly wait until tomorrow to paint that little yellow house!” |