To Ned's and Laurie's great disappointment, neither snow nor ice appeared and the weather remained merely briskly cold, with sometimes a day like Indian summer. But I am getting ahead of my story, which really comes to an end on Christmas Day.
More than a week before the closing of school, the four conspirators had finished their preparations for the task that was to provide the Widow Deane with a novel Christmas present. In Bob's cellar were many cans containing blue paint, white paint, linseed oil, and turpentine. There were brushes there, too, and a scraper, and a roll of cotton rags provided by Polly. For, in the end, it had become necessary to acquaint Polly with the project. Against Bob's back fence reposed all the ladders, of varying lengths, that the neighborhood afforded. Wednesday evening Ned and Laurie and George herded the other boys into George's room, and explained the scheme and asked for volunteers. They got five most enthusiastic ones.
Nine o'clock the next morning was set as the time for the beginning of the work, and at that hour nine rather disreputably-attired youths appeared in Mrs. Deane's yard, arriving by way of the back fence, and began their assault. The first the Widow knew of what was happening was when, being then occupied with the task of tidying up the sleeping-room on the second floor, she was startled to see the head and shoulders of a boy appear outside her window. Her exclamation of alarm gave place to murmurs of bewilderment as the supposed burglar contented himself with lifting the two shutters from their hinges and passing them down the ladder to some unseen accomplice. Mrs. Deane looked forth. In the garden was what at first glimpse looked like a convention of tramps. They were armed with ladders and brushes and pots of paint, and they were already very busy. Across two trestles set on the grass plot, the stolen shutters were laid as fast as they were taken down. One boy, flourishing a broad-bladed implement, scraped the rough surfaces. A second plied a big round brush, dusting diligently. Numbers three and four, as soon as the first two operatives retired, attacked with brushes dripping with white paint. In almost no time at all the first shutter was off the trestles and leaning, fresh and spotless, against the fence. Every instant another shutter appeared. Mrs. Deane gazed in fascinated amazement. One after another, she recognized the miscreants: the two Turner boys, George Watson, Mr. Starling's son, Hal Goring, the Stanton boy, and the rest; but, although recognition brought reassurance, bewilderment remained, and she hurried downstairs as fast as ever she could go.