III
THE LOST KEY
Mrs. Polby is the sort of person who stands on her front steps, with arms akimbo, every minute when she isn’t working, and talks with every one who passes by. That is why she knows all that is going on; and she knows, too, every single hen in the town and every single dog and every single person.
One time she blamed me for something which I hadn’t done at all; and from that very time we became good friends!
Now you shall hear about it from beginning to end.
Mrs. Polby has a son named Karl Johan,—a pale, namby-pamby boy who is offended if you only look at him. In this, he is like his mother, who is easily offended, too, but otherwise they are very different. She is a regular roly-poly, with round eyes and round, rosy cheeks, works hard in her vegetable garden, and talks a great deal, as I have told you.
It is rather unfortunate that Karl Johan is so namby-pamby when he has such a kingly name. That’s why we tease him, calling him Karl Johan Gustavus Adolphus Kristian Fredrik Julius Cæsar Polby or other grand names; and he gets so furious that he runs home and tattles to his mother. Then Mrs. Polby stands on her steps and holds a Judgment Day for us, blaming me especially; so you can understand that she and I have never been very good friends.
Back of her house, Mrs. Polby has a big garden where she grows a quantity of cabbages which she sells in the autumn.
In the farthest end of the garden there is an old tumble-down building where she stores the cabbages until they are sold.
Although Mrs. Polby doesn’t know it, we often play hide-and-seek in that building, for there are so many closets and bins and little rooms in it where we can hide. The house is so old and rickety that there are big cracks everywhere in the floor and the walls.
One day Mother said to me, “Run down and buy two heads of cabbage from Mrs. Polby.” Off I ran like the wind, as I always do. Mrs. Polby, for a wonder, was not on her steps, but Karl Johan sat in the kitchen drinking coffee out of a big bowl.
“Well, Karl Johan Victor Emmanuel Clodevig,” said I, “have you any cabbages to sell?”
He began to scold at a great rate, his face in the bowl the whole time, but he didn’t answer my question about cabbages; so I thought it was best to find Mrs. Polby herself, and I ran out to the vegetable field.
The door of the shanty stood open, and one cabbage-head after another came dancing out. She is in there, I thought, and probably not in good humor, for the cabbages were being thrown with a certain wrathful haste. I couldn’t see Mrs. Polby herself, for she was farther inside the house.
True enough, there she was, hard at work in the midst of her cabbages, and very red in the face; she was throwing out the rotten ones, and, as I had thought, was not in a very gentle mood.
“I should like two heads of cabbage, Mrs. Polby,” I said. “But I must tell you that your son has been talking horridly to me.”
“Is that so? Well, who is it he learns such talk from, sauce-box?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said I. “But I should like the cabbages right away.”
No, she hadn’t any cabbages, she said; they all rotted and she was sick and tired of the whole business, and, anyway, she sold no cabbages to persons who called her Karl Johan nicknames.
“Do you call Julius Cæsar, and Gustavus Adolphus and Clodevig nicknames, Mrs. Polby?” I asked.
“Heathen names and dog names we have no use for in this country,” she said, “and you can go your way for you’ll get no cabbages from me. Tell your mother so, with my compliments.”
With that she went into a little closet at the back of the shanty, and slammed the door after her. Probably she slammed it a little harder than she really meant to, (for she was in a temper, you know,) and the lock caught. At the same moment the key tumbled out of the keyhole, and fell down through a crack in the floor, vanishing in the depth below.
“The key fell through a crack, Mrs. Polby,” I called.
Mrs. Polby fumbled at the door, took hold of it and pulled and pushed till the whole house shook.
“Will you unlock this door and do it at once?” she shouted.
“I can’t unlock it. The key fell through a crack and under the floor,” I shouted back.
Just think! she didn’t believe me!
“Don’t tell me such a thing as that. You unlock this door this minute!” she screamed.
Nothing I could say would make her believe that I had not the key. She kept on beating and pounding at the door and berating me for not letting her out.
“Oh, I shall suffocate in here. I certainly shall,—with my asthma!—Oh! Oh!”
It was a very small closet she was in, scarcely bigger than a wardrobe.
“Put your mouth up to that little hole in the door and I’ll run after the locksmith,” I said.
“Oh, no! Don’t go!” shrieked Mrs. Polby. “I don’t dare to stay here alone.”
What in the world should I do? There stood Mrs. Polby with her mouth close to the hole which was about as big as the bunghole in a barrel.
Sometimes her mouth disappeared while she cried, “Oh, my asthma! my asthma!”
“Karl Johan,” I shouted from the door. “Hurry! Come as fast as you can! Your mother is locked in the closet.”
He came dragging himself slowly along as if there were no need of haste.
“Hurry! Hurry!” I shouted anxiously. “She can’t breathe, she says, locked in that little place.”
“Well, let her out then,” said Karl Johan, crossly.
O dear! Like his mother, he thought it was all my doing.
“But I can’t let her out. I can’t! The key is under the floor,” I cried, stamping my foot at him. “But you can get it. You are so thin and small you can creep under the building easily. The key is right below the closet. Do go, Karl Johan.”
“Oh, do, my jewel!” cried his mother from the hole in the door. “Oh, oh, do go!”
But just imagine! He would not go, even when his mother begged him to.
“It’s full of rats under the floor,” said Karl Johan. “I don’t want to go there.”
“Then run for the locksmith,” I said. “Only do hurry.”
Well, Karl Johan went, though he took his own time about it; but I felt so sorry for poor Mrs. Polby, who was wailing piteously, that I couldn’t bear to wait for the locksmith.
“I’ll creep under the house, Mrs. Polby,” I said. “Just keep calm.”
“Oh, will you? God bless you! This is the worst thing that ever happened to me,” she moaned.
So I crept under the house. It was all I could do to get along, for the ground was wet and slimy and disgustingly filthy, with old straw, broken bottles, and every kind of trash. And Karl Johan was right—rats. Ugh! But I crept and crept. Mrs. Polby stamped on the floor and called all the time so that I should know about where the key would lie.
I fumbled and fumbled in the dark. No, I could not find it. A rat ran right over my hand and I only just managed to keep myself from screaming.
“Can’t you find it?” called Mrs. Polby.
There! my hand touched it! I was so glad that I shouted loudly, “I’ve got it! I’m coming, I’m coming!” as I started to creep out. But you may well believe that it was difficult to turn one’s self around under that floor; it was about the hardest of all.
Ah-h! Now I was out in the air again! My, but it was good! Into the house I bounded, put the key in the lock and flung the door wide open.
Mrs. Polby was sitting on the floor, chalk-white in the face and without power to speak at first. In a moment, though, she threw her arms about my neck with such force that I nearly fell over backward, for she is pretty heavy, I can tell you; then she began to cry.
“I really didn’t throw the key away,” I said.
“Oh, no! The keyhole has been bad this long time—and you have saved my life——Oh! Oh!”
She kept on coughing and crying and at last said I should have five cabbages as a present; and then she cried again.
“Why do you cry now?” I asked. “Here comes Karl Johan with the locksmith.” True enough—they were coming at full speed with a very long pair of tongs.
“So you’ve been sitting under lock and key, have you?” said the locksmith.
Just imagine! I really did get five heads of cabbage as a present.
“Don’t talk to me, for I haven’t any breath,” said Mrs. Polby; but at the same minute she gave a scolding lecture to Karl Johan because he would not creep under the floor after the key.
Just imagine! I really did get five heads of cabbage as a present—and had my money besides!
So nowadays whenever I see Mrs. Polby standing on her front steps, I stop and we have a little chat; for we are the very best of friends.