Mandie Collection, The: 4 (47 page)
Read Mandie Collection, The: 4 Online
Authors: Lois Gladys Leppard
As soon as the four young people had eaten all they could, Mandie fed Snowball the scraps. Then she put his harness and leash on him and they all went outside.
Mandie led the way to the low wall where they sat whenever they watched the tree. It was near the driveway, and just as they started to sit down, a large extravagant carriage came speeding down the driveway toward the road. Mandie caught a glimpse of Elsa and her aunt inside as it passed.
“That was Elsa and her aunt!” Mandie exclaimed. The others nodded. “So they’re leaving. I wonder why? I thought they were going to stay a few days. They just arrived night before last,” she remarked.
“Look!” Jonathan said, pointing to two riders in the distance. “That may be the reason why.”
“It’s Rupert and Lady Catherine!” Mandie exclaimed.
“Looks like his engagement has been broken,” Celia said.
“And all for the good,” Dorothy added. “I’m not really fond of Elsa, but she deserves a better husband than Rupert would be.”
“I wonder what happened?” Mandie asked.
“My father told me part of what happened,” Dorothy offered. “Elsa’s aunt was upset by the appearance of Lady Catherine last night, because everyone knows the lady has been after Rupert. And most people knew Rupert didn’t want to marry Elsa. So when the baroness
was polite to Catherine, rather than asking her to leave as everyone expected her to do, the aunt became furious.”
“Well, at least one wrong has been righted,” Mandie said. “And we have solved some of the mysteries surrounding this place, but this tree is determined not to allow us to see it jump.”
“The rain is not going to allow it either,” Jonathan quickly added as a sudden downpour sent them all running to the castle for protection. They stood inside the front hallway, waiting to see if the rain would stop, but from there they couldn’t see the juniper tree.
The rain lasted so long, they began to wander around inside the castle. But no one else seemed to be up and about except the servants. Finally the heavy deluge stopped.
“It has stopped raining,” Mandie observed, looking out a window in the library where they had gone. “Shall we go back outside?”
The others agreed, and they found their way to the front door and around to the end where the tree stood. Just as they rounded the corner, all four of them stopped and gasped in wonder. The juniper tree was actually jumping up and down! They could see the tree actually making jerky little jumps.
In all the excitement, Mandie set Snowball down, forgetting to fasten on his leash, which she had removed while they were in the house. The white kitten headed toward the tree, and Mandie tried to catch him, while her friends stood frozen in excitement.
Snowball led Mandie on a chase, and stopped at the opening of a huge drainpipe that seemed in some way connected to the moat. Though the rain had stopped, an intermittent flow of water still came out of the pipe, and Snowball pawed at the debris floating along.
When Mandie reached down to pick him up, he looked at her playfully and darted inside the enormous pipe. Mandie sighed in exasperation when she couldn’t reach him. Her friends were out of sight around the corner of the castle.
“Snowball, you come here!” she called to the kitten.
Snowball meowed from inside the pipe and refused to come out. Mandie tucked the end of her long skirt up into the waistband and stooped way down to crawl into the pipe. She could feel the flowing water, moving in waves as if it were being pumped out of the pipe. Her shoes plowed mud as she moved inward, and Snowball ran still deeper into the tunnel when Mandie approached him.
“Snowball, Snowball! Kitty, kitty, come here!” she called, but he wouldn’t come near enough for her to grab him.
Mandie was far enough inside that she could see only inches in front of her face. Suddenly she bumped into something rough and tangled; the culvert was blocked by something she couldn’t identify.
Whatever it was, it was moving and felt scary, even dangerous. Her heart began to pound.
She couldn’t see for sure, but she was afraid Snowball had somehow been trapped by this thing, for she heard Snowball’s meow close by, but could not see the kitty.
As much as she cared for her kitten, Mandie was scared. She turned to go back, but the pipe was too small to allow her to turn. She could only move backward—and that she did as quickly as she was able, bent to the floor of the pipe.
Snowball still crouched deep inside watching her.
Mandie backed out the opening where she had gone in, and straightened up. She was dirty and wet. Her grandmother would have a fit if she saw her in such condition. She thought she’d better slip up to her room and change clothes.
Mandie reached the corner where she’d left her friends, and found them still watching in awe as the juniper tree jumped up and down.
“I’ve got to go change clothes,” she called to them. “And I want Uncle Ned to see the tree moving.”
“Here comes Uncle Ned now,” Jonathan answered, pointing toward the pathway from around the castle.
Mandie ran to meet him. Uncle Ned looked surprised at her appearance, but before he could speak she took him by the hand and practically dragged him to see the jumping tree. The old Cherokee stood before it in disbelief.
Suddenly the tree stopped moving. Everyone looked at one another. “What made it do that?” Mandie asked.
“Do not know, Papoose. Never see this happen before,” Uncle Ned told her.
“If you all will wait for me, I’ve got to change my clothes before Grandmother sees me,” Mandie said. “Snowball is inside that huge pipe around the corner. That’s where I got so wet and dirty. He won’t come out. And, Uncle Ned, there is something strange and scary inside
the pipe, something moving. I was terrified—it felt almost like some snakes or something awful like that.”
“Where, Papoose?” Uncle Ned asked.
“Here, I’ll show you.” Mandie led the way and the others followed. She stooped down and pointed inside. “Snowball’s in there.”
Uncle Ned stooped to explore the pipe. The water had stopped flowing, so Snowball began to make his way out.
“I see Papoose’s white kitten. I see, too, something dark in pipe,” he said. He skillfully worked his way into the pipe, and in a few moments he backed out, bringing the wet, dirty kitten with him. With him came a fresh flow of water from the culvert.
When he straightened up, he explained what he’d found in the pipe. “Those not snakes, Papoose. They are roots of juniper tree. When rain swells from underneath, water pushes roots, make big tree jump.”
All three young people stared at Uncle Ned in amazement.
“And all the time people here have been thinking there was something mysterious about the tree,” Mandie said. “Wait till they hear we’ve solved the mystery!” She took her kitten from Uncle Ned.
“They are really going to be surprised,” Celia remarked.
“Papoose, change clothes,” Uncle Ned told her. “Then we talk about tree.”
“Yes, I’ve got to clean up,” she told her friends. “I’ll be right back.” She turned and hurried toward the castle with the kitten in her arms.
“It’s all your fault, Snowball,” she said. He meowed in response. “But then, I guess if you hadn’t entered the drainpipe we wouldn’t have discovered how the juniper jumped.”
Mandie entered the hallway and crept along quietly, looking around in hopes no one would see her. There didn’t seem to be anyone anywhere, not even the servants.
In her room she quickly cleaned up, and changed her dress and shoes. She washed Snowball too, and tried to rub him dry.
“Oh, Snowball, I can’t get you dry. You’re going to have to go back outside and dry. I can’t leave you on our bed all wet like this,” she told him.
Letting Snowball walk on his leash, Mandie hurried back down the stairs and outside to look for her friends. When she rounded the corner toward the juniper tree, no one was in sight. She ran to look at
the stream that went through the pipeline and saw that it was very low now. The force of the water was gone.
“Well, where did everybody go?” she said to herself as she walked around. She didn’t see a single soul anywhere.
“Maybe they went down the pathway for a walk,” she told herself. She quickly followed the pathway and let Snowball walk on his leash. He kept cutting flips and playing along the way.
As she came to an intersection in the pathway she stopped to listen. Was that the sound of a horse nearby? She jumped behind a huge tree just as Rupert raced by on his horse. He didn’t see her, but Snowball had managed to pull loose from his leash and the horse had scared him away.
Mandie ran after him down the pathway. She kept calling to him, but he wouldn’t even stop and look back at her. Finally she came into a clearing and she knew the lake would be just ahead in the stand of trees.
“Snowball! Come here!” she called to the white kitten.
Every time she called him he seemed to run that much faster. She tried to run faster herself, and when she got near the lake, which was just beyond a steep incline, she lost her footing and started to slide.
“Oh, goodness!” she gasped as she slipped on the loose pebbles and suddenly went over the edge and into the water.
“Help!” she cried. “I can’t swim!”
She fought to stay on top of the water and tried to push herself back toward the shore, but the water seemed to have a mind of its own, and she knew she would drown if something or someone didn’t save her.
Lifting her head as far as she could out of the swirling water, she cried out, “What time I am afraid I will put my trust in Thee. Dear Lord, please save me.”
Snowball was wildly meowing in the distance as she sank into the dark depths of the water. Sudden sharp pains in her chest cut off her breath. Her long skirts, heavy with water, pulled her toward the bottom of the lake.
I am dying. What will my mother ever do?
was her last thought.
Suddenly something was pulling at her hair. Oh, it hurt! Then whatever it was attached itself to the wet folds of her skirt and pulled. A hand rubbed across her face and she was violently thrown about. This was too much to fight. She gave up.
“Papoose, Papoose,” Uncle Ned was calling her.
Able to finally force her eyelids open, she looked up into the worried face of her old Cherokee friend while he cradled her in his arms on the shore of the lake.
She couldn’t speak as she felt herself being lifted and placed on a hard flat surface. She realized she was in the pony cart as she and Uncle Ned began moving.
The Lord had answered her plea.
Thank you, dear, Lord
, she thought.
After frenzied care at the castle, Mandie was finally able to be propped up on pillows. Uncle Ned sat by her side. She noticed Rupert standing in the background.
“Thank you, Uncle Ned,” she managed to say between violent coughs. “You always come to my rescue.”
“No, no, Papoose,” Uncle Ned told her as he held her hand. “Not Ned. Rupert got Papoose out of lake. Ned come later.”
“Rupert!” Mandie weakly repeated as she turned her head to look at the baroness’s grandson. Rupert quickly avoided her look and hurried out through the doorway.
“I’ll thank him later,” Mandie said.
To Ingerlisa Wubbels With Love
CONTENTS
MANDIE AND THE MYSTERIOUS FISHERMAN
Chapter 1 The Mystery in Antwerp
Chapter 5 Chased Away From the Boat
Chapter 9 The Same Mistake Twice
Chapter 12 Unexpected Happenings
“Judge not, and ye shall not be judged;
condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned;
forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.”
(Luke 6:37)
CHAPTER ONE
THE MYSTERY IN ANTWERP
“You know, it was worth almost drowning in Germany to get Rupert to reform,” Mandie said to Celia and Jonathan as they strolled along the wharf in Antwerp, Belgium. Snowball, her white kitten, walked at the end of the red leash Mandie held.
Her two friends quickly stopped to stare at Mandie.
“You don’t really mean that!” Celia Hamilton exclaimed.
“Rupert was not worth it. You could have drowned,” Jonathan said.
“But I didn’t fall into the lake on purpose, remember?” Mandie said. She glanced back up the walkway to be sure they were staying within sight of her grandmother, Mrs. Taft, and her friend, Senator Morton. The adults were too far away to overhear the young people’s conversation.
“I know. It was an accident,” Celia said as the three walked on.
“Right,” Mandie said. “It was an accident, but it was also the cause of Rupert finally coming to his senses and straightening up and—”
“Yes,” Jonathan broke in, “just long enough to fish you out of the lake. He’s probably back to his old sneaky tricks by now.”
“But he apologized to us for all the mean things he had been doing,” Mandie protested. “And I know he talked to his grandmother about
everything, because I happened to pass the library and heard them discussing it.”