the whole place upside down. He came over to tell mother and mother sent a telegram to Uncle Jim. He got here last night, and went to his houseboat, but everything was in such an awful mess that he came back with his parrot to our house to sleep.”
“He was raging mad,” said Nancy. “And the parrot was too cross to talk.”
“Sometimes he was mad and sometimes just glumpy,” said Peggy. “He said he wouldn’t have minded if they’d taken everything he had except what they did take. They’ve taken his old cabin trunk, with his typewriter in it and the book he’s been writing all summer, the book he’s been writing so that he couldn’t be one of us like he used to be. He said he supposed they took it because it was heavy. He didn’t know what else they’d taken. But they’d emptied all the lockers out on the floor and pulled everything in the boat to pieces. Worse than a spring cleaning, he said it was. Sometimes he was just miserable and saying nothing at all, and then other times he would start raging away about the lake being covered with boys, and about you. …”