well.
“Now the man in the well can see stars in the sky,” said Harry to the other boys.
“But there are no stars in the sky,” Bert contradicted, looking up at the clear blue sky of the fine summer day.
“Oh! yes there are,” laughed the man at the well, “lots of them too, but you can only see them in the dark, and it’s good and dark down in that deep well.”
This seemed very strange, but of course it was true; and the well cleaner told them if they didn’t believe it, just to look up a chimney some day, and they would see the same strange thing.
At a signal from the man in the well the other raised the first bucket of stuff and dumped it on the ground.
“Hurrah! Our football!” exclaimed Harry, yanking out from the muddy things the big black rubber ball lost the year before.
“And our baseball,” called Tom Mason, as another ball was extracted from the pile.
“Peter Burns’ dinner pail,” laughed Harry, rescuing that article from the heap.
“And somebody’s old shoe!” put in Bert, but he didn’t bother pulling that out of the mud.
“Oh, there’s Nellie Prentice’s rubber doll!” exclaimed Harry. “August and Ned were playing ball with it and let it fly in the well.”
Harry wiped the mud off the doll and brought it over to Nan.
“I’m sure Nellie will be glad to get this back,” said Nan, “for it’s a good doll, and she probably never had one since she lost it.”
The doll was not injured by its long imprisonment in the well and when washed up was as good as ever. Nan took charge of it, and promised to give it to Nellie just as soon as she could go over to see her.
Another bucket of stuff had been brought up by that time, and the first thing pulled out was a big long pipe, the kind Germans generally use.
“That’s old Hans Bruen’s,” declared Tom “I remember the night he dropped it.”
“Foolish Hans—to try to drink with a pipe like that in his mouth!” laughed the well cleaner.
As the pipe had a wooden bowl and a hard porcelain stem it was not broken, so Tom took care of it, knowing how glad Hans would be to get his old friend “Johnnie Smoker” back again.
Besides all kinds of tin cups, pails, and saucepans, the well was found to contain a good number of boys’ caps and some girls’ too, that had slipped off in attempts made to get a good cool drink out of the bucket.
Finally the man gave a signal that he was ready to come up, and soon the windlass was adjusted again and the man in very muddy boots came to the top.
“Look at this!” he said to the boys’ holding a beautiful gold watch. “Ever hear of anyone losing a watch in the well?”
No one had heard of such a loss, and as there was no name anywhere on the watch that might lead to its identification, the well cleaner put it away in his vest pocket under the rubber coat.
“And what do you think of this?” the man continued, and drew from his pocket a beautiful string of pearl beads set in gold.
“My beads! My lost beads!” screamed Nan. “Oh, how glad I am that you found them!”
She took the beads and looked at them carefully. They were a bit dirty, but otherwise as good as ever.
“I thought I should never see these again,” said Nan. “I must tell mamma of this!” And she started for the house with flying feet. Mrs. Bobbsey was glad indeed to learn that the strings of pearls had been found, and everybody declared that Nan was certainly lucky.
“I am going to fasten them on good and tight after this,” said Nan, and she did.
Down by the well the man was not yet through handing over the things he had found.
“And there’s a wedding ring!” he said next, while he turned out in his hand a thin gold band.
“Oh, Mrs. Burns lost that!” chorused a number of the boys. “She felt dreadful over it too. She’ll be tickled to get that back all right.”
“Well, here,” said the man, turning to Harry. “I guess you’re the biggest boy; I’ll let you take that back to Mrs. Burns with my best wishes,” and he handed Harry the long-lost wedding ring.
It was only a short distance to Mrs. Burns’ house, and Harry lost no time in getting there.
“She was just delighted,” Harry told the man, upon returning to the well. “She says Peter will send you over something for finding it.”
“No need,” replied the other; “they’re welcome to their own.”
The last part of the well-cleaning was the actual scrubbing of the big stone in the bottom.
This stone had a hole in the middle through which the water sprang up, and when the flag had been scrubbed the well was clean indeed.
“Now you people will have good water,” declared the men, as they gathered all their tools, having first put the top on the well and tried a bucketful of water before starting off.
“And are there really stars in the bottom of the well?” questioned Freddie.
“Not exactly,” said the man, “but there are lots of other things in the bottoms of wells. You must get your daddy to show you the sky through a fireplace, and you will then know how the stars look in daylight,” he finished, saying good-bye to all and starting off for the big deep well-pump over in the picnic grove, that had not been cleaned since it had been dug there three years before.
CHAPTER XXII
Little Jack Horner,—Good-Bye
“I’ve got a special delivery letter for you,” called the boy from the postoffice to Harry.
Now when Jim Dexter rode his wheel with the special delivery mail everybody about Meadow Brook knew the rush letter bore important news.
Jim jumped off his wheel and, opening the little bag, pulled out a letter for Mrs. Richard Bobbsey from Mrs. William Minturn of Ocean Cliff.
“I’ll take it upstairs and have your book signed,” Harry offered, while Jim sat on the porch to rest.
“That’s from Aunt Emily,” Bert told Harry when the messenger boy rode off again. “I guess we’re going down to Ocean Cliff to visit there.”
“I hope you won’t go very soon,” replied Harry. “We’ve arranged a lot of ball matches next month. We’re going to play the school nine first, then we’re to play the boys at Cedarhurst and a picked nine from South Meadow Brook.”
“I’d like first-rate to be here for the games,” said Bert. “I’m a good batter.”
“You’re the player we need then, for Jim Smith is a first-rate pitcher and we’ve got really a fine catcher in Tom Mason, but it’s hard to get a fellow to hit the ball far enough to give us runs.”
“Oh, Bert!” called Nan, running out of the house. “That was an invitation for us to go to Aunt Emily’s at the seashore. And Cousin Dorothy says we will have such a lovely time! But I’m sure we could never have a better time than we had here, Harry,” she added to her cousin.
“I’ll be awfully sorry to have you go, Nan,” replied Harry. “We have had so much fun all month. I’ll just be dead lonesome, I’m sure,” and Harry sat down in dejection, just as if his loved cousins had gone already.
“There’s no boy at Uncle William’s;” said Bert. “Of course Nan will have Dorothy, but I’ll have to look around for a chum, I suppose.”
“Oh, you’ll find lots of boys at the beach,” said Harry. “And to think of the fun at the ocean! Mother says