Then Tim grinned. “Okay, that’s settled. Now, how about we go over to my house and get those boards?”
“Wait a minute,” Andi broke in cautiously. “Before you can be part of the hotel staff, you’ve got to promise on your honor that you won’t tell anybody. Not just about Red, but about Friday, too. And Tom and Dick and Hairy.”
“Tom, Dick, and Hairy?” Tim looked bewildered. “Who are they? Who’s Friday?”
“They’re the rest of the dogs,” Andi explained. “They have the pink bedroom. I think we should give Red the family room. That way he’ll have more space to move around in when he starts feeling better.”
“You mean you’ve got four dogs in there already!” Tim exclaimed incredulously.
“You have to promise,” Andi persisted.
“Of course he promises,” Bruce said. “Now, you stay here and keep an eye on Red, while Tim and I get the stuff for the ramp.”
Tim’s house turned out to be the gray one with the yard full of swings and bicycles across the street from Aunt Alice’s. The lumber he had spoken about was stacked along the side of the house.
As they selected the boards they would need, Bruce noticed several round, freckled faces, much like Tim’s, gazing down at them from an upstairs window.
“Those are my sisters,” Tim said. “I told you how nothing over here is ever private. They’ll think we’re taking the boards over to Jerry’s. He’s been talking about wanting to use them to build a clubhouse.”
“Well, Jerry will know that’s not where we’re taking them,” Bruce said, glancing worriedly in the direction of the Gordons’ house. There was no way to get the boards across the street except to carry them openly. Although no one was in evidence, he could not help the uncomfortable feeling that Jerry was somewhere peering at them. “Which is his window?”
“It’s the ground-level window on the side facing your aunt’s house,” Tim told him. “That’s where he has his bedroom. Actually he’s got the entire basement all to himself. He’s got a pool table and a big-screen TV and a kind of gym setup for working out. All he has to do is ask for something and his parents get it for him.”
“Let’s carry the boards down the driveway into our backyard,” Bruce suggested. “That way, if Jerry’s watching, he’ll think we’re going to build something back there. Then we can cut over through the yard next door and across the lot to the hotel.”
As they were crossing the yard, Mrs. Walker opened the back door and called out to them.
“Bruce, did you find your sister?”
“She’s — well, she’s right around here,” Bruce said awkwardly. “I just saw her a minute ago.”
“I want you to tell her to come home immediately,” his mother said in an exasperated voice. “She said she would do the kitchen, and she hasn’t even rinsed off the plates. Aunt Alice gets terribly upset when things are left a mess.”
Andi was sitting in the grass in the yard behind the hotel. She had Red Rover’s head in her lap and was gently stroking his ears.
“You don’t have to tell me — I heard her,” she said, when Bruce and Tim came up to her. “She sure was yelling loud. Mom never used to yell that way.”
“You’d better get over there,” Bruce said. “You did say you’d do the cleanup.”
“I didn’t say when I’d do it,” Andi said. “At home Mom never minded if we let the dishes sit for a while before we loaded the dishwasher. Why should it matter so much here?”
“Because it does, that’s all.” Bruce lowered his end of the boards to the ground. “How do you want to do this, Tim?”
“Simple.” Tim lifted the ends he was holding and leaned them against the window ledge. Side by side, they became a slanted bridge between the window and the ground. “Now comes the tough part — getting Red to walk up it.”
“I’ll go inside and call him,” Bruce said.
“That won’t work. He doesn’t come when he’s called. I’ve seen Jerry call him lots of times, and he just cowers and pretends he doesn’t hear.”
“He’ll come to me,” Bruce said with certainty.
Walking to the top of the ramp, he turned to face the dog. “Here, Red!” he called softly. “Come up here with me!”
Without an instant’s hesitation, Red Rover lifted his head from Andi’s lap and got stiffly to his feet. Crossing to the ramp, he staggered up it until he reached Bruce.
“See!” Bruce’s voice was triumphant as he gently eased the big dog through the window. A moment later both were inside the house.
“He’s picked you for his master, that’s for sure,” Tim said, when he and Andi had joined Bruce inside. He glanced about with interest. “Where are the rest of your boarders?”
“In the front bedroom.” Andi darted ahead to lead the way down the hall. “Friday just loves it. It’s so sunny and pretty. Of course, Red is a man’s dog — he’ll like the family room. It’s all wood paneled.”
Friday’s room, when the door was thrown open, was as much of a surprise to Bruce as it was to Tim. He had not been in it himself since they had settled the dogs in, and though he knew that Andi had been spending all of her free time here, he had not guessed the extent of her activities.
The room shone! Gone were the dust and the cobwebs that had collected during the long period when the house had stood empty. For a girl who did not like housework, Andi had swept and scrubbed until the floor and woodwork gleamed. The glass of the windows had been cleaned so that the sunlight flooded through, bringing the pink-papered walls to vibrant life.
But this was not all. A pink throw rug lay across the bare boards of the floor. Pink rosebud curtains hung at the side window. A bed, fashioned from a clothes basket, sat in the corner of the room, and, inside it, a fluffy white dog and three puppies lay, curled in luxurious comfort, on a pillow that said “Bone Sweet Bone.”
“That’s not Friday!” Bruce exclaimed. “Friday’s brown!”
“The brown came off,” Andi said. “That was just dirt. I washed her with Snow White Shampoo for Senior Citizens, and now her hair’s the exact same color as Aunt Alice’s.”
“But this room!” Bruce gestured in amazement at the transformation. “Where did you get all the stuff to make it look like this?”
“Different places.” Andi looked smug. “I found the rug up in Aunt Alice’s attic. It was just lying there, all rolled up in a corner. The basket was down in the basement. It had old magazines in it.”
“How about the curtains?” Bruce stepped closer to examine them more critically. “This isn’t old cast-off stuff. This is brand-new material. It hasn’t even been hemmed. And that pillow is just like the one Bebe had at home.”
“Nobody was using the material.” Andi began to look uncomfortable. “It was in the sewing closet. And it is Bebe’s pillow. I brought it with me to remember her by. I didn’t think she’d mind my lending it to Friday.”
“She probably wouldn’t,” Bruce said. “But that material is not yours. Aunt Alice must have bought it for some reason. That’s stealing, Andi! You can’t take material that somebody paid good money for and cut it up for fun.”
“It wasn’t for fun,” Andi said. “It was for Friday. She’s a new mother. She needs to have pretty things around her. Besides, Aunt Alice was never going to make anything out of that. I’m sure she wasn’t. She hasn’t sewed a single thing since we’ve been living with her.”
“How could she when you’re sleeping in the sewing room?” Bruce reminded her. “It can’t be the greatest thing for the old lady, having a family land on top of her like this. I bet she’s counting the days until she can have her house to herself again and sew like crazy.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Andi said decidedly. “I bet she got that material on sale without having any use for it. She’s probably been looking at it ever since, just wishing it wasn’t there.”
“Why did you use it on just one window?” Tim asked her.
“Because that window’s on the side of the h
ouse where the bushes are. If I’d done the front one, people could have seen the curtains from the street.” Andi turned pleadingly to her brother. “You do think they look nice, don’t you, Bruce?”
“It’s not a question of whether they look nice,” Bruce said. “The thing is, you’ve cut up something that doesn’t belong to you. You’re going to have to replace that material, Andi. You can’t just take things, even for Friday.”
“You took Red,” Andi muttered. “That’s stealing too, isn’t it? I bet a dog like Red Rover costs a lot more than some old cloth.”
“That’s different,” Bruce said defensively. “I took Red for his own sake.”
He paused as the logical part of his mind fought with his feelings. Red Rover was a valuable dog, of that there was no question. Mr. Gordon undoubtedly had paid a good price for him when he bought him for Jerry.
“I’ll pay them,” he said now, after a moment of consideration. “I’ll find out how much a good Irish setter costs, and I’ll save up the money and pay it. I’ll leave it in an envelope in the Gordons’ mailbox.”
“It looks like this hotel is getting to be an expensive operation,” Tim remarked. “What about food? How are you paying for that?”
“I’ve been taking table scraps,” Andi said. “Bruce thinks that won’t work much longer.”
“It sure won’t after today,” Bruce said. “Not after the way you copped out on cleaning the kitchen. From now on you’re going to have Mom or Aunt Alice standing over you every time you pick up a dish towel.”
“I’ve seen how Red Rover eats,” Tim said. “You’ll never take care of him with table scraps. It’s going to have to be dog food, and plenty of it. I guess we’ll just have to go to work and start earning.”
“We?” Bruce said. “This isn’t your responsibility. It’s Andi and I who got ourselves into the hotel business.”
“Well, I’d like to be a partner,” Tim said. “That is, if you want me. I’ve never had a dog of my own. This way I can be part owner of five of them.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Having Tim Kelly as part of the hotel staff was nice for Bruce, but it took Andi only a short time to discover that she did not like it at all.
“I wish he had never stuck his nose in,” she grumbled.
“You’re nuts,” Bruce told her. “Tim’s cool. Look how much he’s helping us! We never could have managed to keep Red in dog food if Tim hadn’t found him and me after-school jobs.”
“Friday doesn’t like him,” Andi said. “She knows he isn’t used to dogs. It upsets her to have him tramping in to look at her puppies.”
This was completely untrue, and both of them knew it. Friday was a proud mother and delighted to show off her puppies to anyone, including Red Rover. The thing Andi really resented was the fact that she no longer was able to run things exactly as she wanted. Until now, she and Bruce had been equal partners, with Andi actually holding the position of manager. Now suddenly everything seemed to have gone out of her control.
“Tim and I are earning the money to run this place,” Bruce said. “It’s up to us to decide what we’re going to do with it.”
The two boys were working every afternoon and on Saturdays, raking yards around the neighborhood. Out of their earnings they had purchased a whole case of dog food and a brush and comb for Red and some salve for the injured area around his neck. They were setting the rest of the money aside in a special fund to be used to purchase Red Rover.
“You might spend some of it on Friday,” Andi said irritably. “There are so many things she needs — her own brush, for instance, and a collar and rubber bones and things for the puppies.”
“Friday ought to feel lucky just to be getting some of Red’s food,” Bruce said. “Remember, you’ve still got to pay Aunt Alice for the material you took. You haven’t put aside any money for that, not even your allowance.”
“I couldn’t,” Andi said, bristling. “I borrowed against it last month to buy postage stamps, and then there was a movie — no, two movies — that I had to see. And Mom caught me when I was returning Aunt Alice’s shampoo, and the tube was almost empty, so she made me replace it —”
“That’s okay,” Tim said soothingly. “Girls don’t know anything about earning money. My sisters never earned a dime in their lives.”
The superior tone of his voice infuriated Andi even more than Bruce’s statements, and the worst of it was that she couldn’t think of a way to respond. It was true that she had never earned money, and with her mother irritated at her and Aunt Alice no longer so certain that she was a “dear, helpful little girl,” it didn’t look as though she was going to be offered many opportunities to do so.
“I’m reaching the end of my patience,” Mrs. Walker had told her in the firmest voice Andi had ever heard her mother use. “Back in Albuquerque we lived in a very casual way, but here we are living in somebody else’s home. It’s hard when there are so many people in a small house, and you have to do your share.”
“Aunt Alice is a picky old maid,” Andi said irritably. “All she thinks about is dust, dust, dust. She’s boring and gushy, and I wish we were living in a tent.”
“She is not an old maid,” Mrs. Walker said. “She was married many happy years to your father’s uncle Peter. If she seems ‘gushy’ to you, it’s because she isn’t used to children. She never had any of her own, and she doesn’t know how to talk to them.”
“What’s so hard about talking to children?” Andi demanded. “Children are human beings.”
“So are grown-ups,” her mother said quietly. “If you were to open that stubborn mind of yours a little, you might let yourself discover it. Very few people are boring when you really get to know them.”
Andi started to fire back an answer and then, seeing the stressed-out expression on her mother’s face, decided against it. Mrs. Walker was no longer nearing the end of her patience — she had already reached it.
Aside from the fact that she was at odds with almost everyone in her family, Andi had another reason for being cross and irritable. Her poem had come back from Ladies’ Home Journal. She had been very hopeful about that poem. It had been called “Death Owns a Ship” and was the most dramatic thing she had ever written, and the magazine had kept it for three whole weeks.
Toward the end of that time she had become quite certain that they had decided to buy it and were trying to make up their minds about how much to pay her. Every day she had rushed home from school to see if her check had arrived. At night, when she lay in bed at the edge of sleep, she had visualized herself strolling along the sidewalk past the yards where Bruce and Tim were slaving away with their rakes, with Friday and the puppies marching proudly ahead of her, each with a diamond-studded leash attached to an emerald-studded collar.
It had been a terrible disappointment to walk into the house one day and find an envelope waiting for her on the hall table with her poem and a form rejection slip inside. At the bottom of the form there was a handwritten note: We’re sorry we can’t use this in an upcoming issue, but your writing shows promise. Do try us again when you are older.
Older! Andi thought. She would be eleven the first of December. That was less than two months away.
“What’s the matter, Andi?” her father had asked her at dinner that night. “You’re so quiet. You must be off in space somewhere, composing a new poem.”
Andi drew a long breath and made her announcement.
“No,” she said. “I’m not. I’ve decided not to be a famous writer. In fact, I’m never going to write a poem again.”
There was a moment of total silence. Everyone at the table turned to stare at her. Even Aunt Alice stopped talking.
“Why, Andi,” Mrs. Walker said finally, “you’ve always loved writing! How can you simply decide to stop?”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Andi said. She did not want to talk about it any further because she was afraid she might cry. She had been so sure that she would become famous within the time li
mit that she had set for herself. “I’m going to be something more interesting like a — a — helicopter pilot or maybe a ballet dancer.”
“You’re not graceful enough to be a dancer,” Bruce said. “You can’t be a pilot either because you can’t stand heights. You wouldn’t even look at the pictures I took of the Grand Canyon because you said they made you dizzy.”
“Then I’ll be a teacher like Mom,” snapped Andi, blinking back tears. “Or like Mom used to be, before she had to quit work.”
The thought of prickly Andi patiently teaching school was so inconceivable that no one could think of a single comment, and the rest of the meal took place at a very quiet table.
The next day at school the subject came up all over again. This time it came from Miss Crosno, Andi’s teacher.
“Who was it,” she asked, “who turned in a poem along with the English compositions this week? There isn’t a name on it, and I don’t recognize the handwriting.” When no one in the class raised a hand, she continued, “It’s called ‘Bebe.’ It’s about a child who loses her dog.”
“Oh!” Andi was so startled that she spoke before she could stop herself. “That’s mine, but I didn’t mean to turn it in. I guess I just got an extra paper mixed in with the composition sheets in the notebook.”
“I’m glad I got to see it,” Miss Crosno said. “It’s a very nice poem with a great deal of feeling. Would you like to come up front, Andi, and read it to the class?”
“No, thank you,” Andi said.
Then, because this sounded rude even to her own ears and, after all, Miss Crosno would be the one who would be making out report cards, she added, “I never read my poems to anybody but my family. If they’re not good enough to be published, they’re not good enough for people to have to listen to.”
“Do you submit your poems to magazines?” Miss Crosno asked. “Which ones do you send them to?”
“The ones on Mom’s coffee table,” Andi said. “But I don’t any longer. I’ve done it for two years now and used up about a million envelopes and stamps, and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere, and I think that’s enough.”