CHAPTER XVIII—RUTH DOES WHAT SHE THINKS IS RIGHT
Mrs. Treble, as the tall, dark lady called herself, had such an air of assurance and command, that Ruth was at a loss what course to take with her. Finally the oldest Kenway girl found voice to say:
“Won’t you take one of these comfortable rockers, Mrs. Treble? Perhaps we had better first talk the matter over a little.”
“Well, I’m glad to sit down,” admitted Mrs. Treble. “Don’t muss your dress, Lillie. We’ve been traveling some ways, as I tell you. Clean from Ypsilanti. We came on from Cleveland Junction this morning, and it’s a hot day. Don’t rub your shoes together, Lillie.”
“It is very warm,” said Ruth, handing their visitor a fan and sending Agnes for a glass of cold water from the icebox.
“Then we’ve been to that lawyer’s office,” pursued Mrs. Treble. “What do you call him—Howbridge? Don’t rub your hands on your skirt, Lillie.”
“Yes; Mr. Howbridge,” replied Ruth.
“Don’t take off that hat, Lillie. So we’ve been walking in the sun some. That’s nice, cool water. Have some, Lillie? Don’t drip it on your dress.”
“Wouldn’t your little girl like to go with Tess and Dot to the playhouse in the garden?” Ruth suggested. “Then we can talk.”
“Why—yes,” said Mrs. Treble. “Go with the little girls, Lillie. Don’t you get a speck of dirt on you, Lillie.”
Ruth did not see the awful face the much admonished Lillie made, as she left her mother’s side. It amazed Tess and Dot so that they could not speak. Her tongue went into her cheek, and she drew down the corners of her mouth and rolled her eyes, leering so terribly, that for an instant she looked like nothing human. Then she resumed the placidity of her angelic expression, and minced along after the younger Kenway girls, and out of sight around a corner of the house.
Meanwhile, Agnes had drawn Ruth aside, and whispered: “What are you going to do? She’s raving crazy, isn’t she? Had I better run for a doctor—or the police?”
“Sh!” admonished Ruth. “She is by no means crazy. I don’t know what to do!”
“But she says she has a right to live here, too,” gasped Agnes.
“Perhaps she has.”
“Mr. Howbridge said we were Uncle Peter’s only heirs,” said Agnes, doggedly.
“May—maybe he didn’t know about this John Augustus Treble. We must find out about it,” said Ruth, much worried. “Of course, we wouldn’t want to keep anybody out of the property, if they had a better right to it.”
“What?” shrilled Agnes. “Give it up? Not—on—your—life!”
In the meantime, Tess and Dot scarcely knew how to talk to Lillie Treble. She was such a strange girl! They had never seen anybody at all like her before.
Lillie walked around the house, out of her mother’s sight, just as mincingly as a peacock struts. Her look of angelic sweetness would have misled anybody. She just looked as though she had never done a single wrong thing in all her sweet young life!
But Tess and Dot quickly found that Lillie Treble was not at all the perfect creature she appeared to the casual observer. Her angelic sweetness was all a sham. Away from her mother’s sharp eye, Lillie displayed very quickly her true colors.
“Those all your dolls?” she demanded, when she was shown the collection of Tess and Dot in the garden house.
“Yes,” said Tess.
“Well, my mother says we’re going to stay here, and if you want me to play with you,” said this infantile socialist, “we might as well divide them up right now.”
“Oh!” gasped Tess.
“I’ll take a third of them. They can be easily divided. I choose this one to begin with,” said Lillie, diving for the Alice-doll.
With a shriek of alarm, Dot rescued this—her choicest possession—and stood on the defensive, the Alice-doll clasped close to her breast.
“No! you can’t have that,” said Tess, decidedly.
“Why not?” demanded Lillie.
“Why—it’s the doll Dot loves the best.”
“Well,” said Lillie, calmly, “I suppose if I chose one of yours, you’d holler, too. I never did see such selfish girls. Huh! if I can’t have the dolls I want, I won’t choose any. I don’t want to play with the old things, anyway!” and she made a most dreadful face at the Kenway sisters.
“Oh-oh!” whispered Dot. “I don’t like her at all.”
“Well, I suppose we must amuse her,” said Tess, strong for duty.
“But she says she is going to stay here all the time,” pursued the troubled Dot, as Lillie wandered off toward the foot of the garden.
“I don’t believe that can be so,” said Tess, faintly. “But it’s our duty to entertain her, while she is here.”
“I don’t see why we should. She’s not a nice girl at all,” Dot objected.
“Dot! you know very well Ruth wants us to look out for her,” Tess said, with emphasis. “We can’t get out of it.”
So the younger girl, over-ruled by Tess, followed on. At the foot of the garden, Lillie caught sight of Ruth’s flock of hens. Uncle Rufus had repaired the henhouse and run, and Ruth had bought in the market a dozen hens and a rooster of the white Plymouth Rock breed. Mr. Rooster strutted around the enclosure very proudly with his family. They were all very tame, for the children made pets of them.
“Don’t you ever let them out?” asked Lillie, peering through the wire-screen.
“No. Not now, Ruth says. They would get into the garden,” Tess replied.
“Huh! you could shoo them out again. I had a pet hen at Ypsilanti. I’d rather have hens than dolls, anyway. The hens are alive,” and she tried the gate entering upon the hen-run.
“Oh!” exclaimed Tess. “You mustn’t let them out.”
“Who’s letting them out?” demanded Lillie.
“Well, then, you mustn’t go into the yard.”
“Why not?” repeated the visitor.
“Ruth won’t like it.”
“Well, I guess my mother’s got more to say about this place than your sister has. She says she’s going to show a parcel of girls how to run this house, and run it right. That’s what she told Aunt Adeline and Uncle Noah, when we went to live with them in Ypsilanti.”
Thus speaking, Lillie opened the gate and walked into the poultry yard. At once there was great excitement in the flock. Lillie plunged at the nearest hen and missed her. The rooster uttered a startled and admonitory “Cut! cut! ca-dar-cut!” and led the procession of frightened hens about the yard.
“Aren’t hens foolish?” demanded Lillie, calmly. “I am not going to hurt her.”
She made another dive for the hen. The rooster uttered another shriek of warning and went through the watering-pan, flapping his wings like mad. The water was spilled, and the next attempt Lillie made to seize a hen, she was precipitated into the puddle!
Both hands, one knee, and the front of her frock were immediately streaked with mud. Lillie shrieked her anger, and plunged after the frightened hens again. She was a determined girl. Tess and Dot added their screams to the general hullabaloo.
Round and round went the hens, led by the gallant rooster. Finally the inevitable happened. Lillie got both hands upon one of the white hens.
“Now I got you—silly!” shrieked Lillie.
But she spoke too quickly and too confidently. It was only the tail-feathers Lillie grabbed. With a wild squawk, the hen flew straight away, leaving the bulk of her plumage in the naughty girl’s hands!
The girls outside the fence continued to scream, and so did the flock of hens. The rooster, who was a heavy bird, came around the yard again, on another lap, and wildly leaped upon Lillie’s back.
He scrambled over her, his great spurs and claws tearing her frock, and his wings beating her breathlessly to the ground. Just then Uncle Rufus came hobbling along.
“Glo-ree! who dat chile in dat hen-cage?” he demanded. “Dat ol’ rooster’ll put her eyes out for her—dat he will!”
He opened the gate, went in, and grabbed up Lillie Treble from the ground. When he set her on her feet outside the fence, she was a sight to behold!
“Glo-ree!” gasped Uncle Rufus. “What you doin’ in dar, chile?”
“Mind your own business!” exclaimed Lillie. “You’re only a black man. I don’t have to mind you, I hope.”
She was covered with mud and dust, and her frock was in great disarray, but she was self-contained—and as saucy as ever. Tess and Dot were horrified by her language.
“I dunno who yo’ is, gal!” exclaimed Uncle Rufus. “But yo’ let Missie Ruth’s chickens erlone, or I’ll see ter yuh, lak’ yer was one o’ my own gran’chillen.”
Lillie was sullen—and just a little frightened of Uncle Rufus. The disaster made but slight impression upon her mind.
“What—what will your mother say?” gasped Tess, when the three girls were alone again.
“She won’t say anything—till she sees me,” sniffed Lillie. And to put that evil hour off, she began to inquire as to further possibilities for action about the old Corner House.
“What do you girls do?” she asked.
“Why,” said Tess, “we play house; and play go visiting; and—and roll hoop; and sometimes skip rope——”
“Huh! that’s dreadful tame. Don’t you ever do anything——Oh! there’s my mother!” A window had opened in one of the wings of the big house, on the second floor. It was a window of a room that the Kenway family had not before used. Tess and Dot saw Ruth as well as Mrs. Treble at the window.
Ruth was doing what she thought was right. Mrs. Treble had confessed to the oldest of the Corner House girls that she had arrived at Milton with scarcely any money. She could not pay her board even at the very cheapest hotel. Mr. Howbridge was away, Ruth knew, and nothing could be done to straighten out this tangle in affairs until the lawyer came back.
So she had offered Mrs. Treble shelter for the present. Moreover, the lady, with a confidence equaled only by Aunt Sarah’s, demanded in quite a high and mighty way to be housed and fed. Yet she had calmed down, and actually thanked Ruth for her hospitality, when she found that the girl was not to be intimidated, but was acting the part of a Good Samaritan from a sense of duty.
Agnes was too angry for words. She could not understand why Ruth should cater to this “Mrs. Trouble,” as she insisted, in secret, upon calling the woman from Ypsilanti.
Ruth was showing the visitor a nice room on the same floor with those chambers occupied by the girls themselves, and Mrs. Treble was approving, when she chanced to look out of the window and behold her angelic Lillie in the condition related above.
CHAPTER XIX—“DOUBLE TROUBLE”
“What is the meaning of that horrid condition of your clothing, Lillie?” demanded Mrs. Treble from the open window.
“I fell in the mud, Mamma,” said the unabashed Lillie, and glanced aside at Tess and Dot with a sweetly troubled look, as though she feared they were at fault for her disarray, but did not quite like to say so!
“Come up here at once!” commanded her mother, who turned to Ruth to add: “I am afraid your sisters are very rough and rude in their play. Lillie has not been used to such playmates. Of course, left without a mother as they were, nothing better can be expected of them.”
Meanwhile, Lillie had turned one of her frightful grimaces upon Tess and Dot before starting for the house, and the smaller Kenway girls were left frozen in their tracks by the ferocity of this parting glare.
Lillie appeared at luncheon dressed in some of Tess’ garments and some of Dot’s—none of them fitting her very well. She had a sweetly forgiving air, which bolstered up her mother’s opinion that Tess and Dot were guilty of leading her angelic child astray.
Mrs. Treble had two trunks at the railway station and Uncle Rufus was sent to get an expressman to bring them up to the Corner House. Ruth paid the expressman.
“Talk about the Old Man of the Sea that Sinbad had to carry on his shoulders!” scoffed Agnes, in private, to Ruth. “This Mrs. Trouble is going to be a bigger burden for us than he was. And I believe that girl is going to be ‘Double Trouble.’ She looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Uncle Rufus says she got in that messy condition before lunch, chasing the hens out of their seven senses.”
“There are only five senses, Aggie,” said Ruth, patiently.
“Humph! that’s all right for folks, but hens have two more, I reckon,” chuckled the younger girl.
“Well,” said Ruth, “we must treat Mrs. Treble politely.”
“You act as though you really thought they had some right to come here and live on us,” cried Agnes.
“Perhaps they have a right to some of Uncle Peter’s property. We don’t know.”
“I don’t believe it! She’s the sort of a person—that Mrs. Trouble—who assumes rights wherever she goes.”
Ruth had to confess that Mrs. Treble was trying. She criticised Mrs. McCall’s cooking and the quantity of food on the table at luncheon. Lillie did not like dried apple pies, and said so bluntly, with a hostile glare at the dessert in question.
“Well, little girl,” said Mrs. McCall, “you’ll have to learn to like them. I’ve just bought quite a lot of dried apples and they’ve got to be eaten up.”
Lillie made another awful face—but her mother did not see it. Dot was so awe-stricken by these facial gymnastics of the strange girl that she could scarcely eat, and watched Lillie continually.
“That child ought to be cured of staring so,” remarked Mrs. Treble, frowning at Dot. “Or is her eyesight bad?”
Mrs. Treble was busy, after her trunks came, in unpacking them and arranging her room to suit herself—as though she expected to make a long visit. She had suggested appropriating Uncle Peter’s old bedroom in the front of the house, but that suite of rooms was locked, and Ruth refrained from telling her that she had the keys.
Meantime the bigger Corner House girls tried to help the smaller ones entertain Lillie. Lillie was not like any normal girl whom they had ever known. She wanted to do only things in which she could lead, and if she was denied her way in any particular, she “wouldn’t play” and threatened to go up stairs and tell her mother.
“Why,” said Agnes, first to become exasperated. “You want to be the whole show—including the drum-major at the head of the procession, and the little boys following the clown’s donkey-cart at the end!”
Lillie made a face.
“I think,” said Ruth, quietly, “that if I were you, Lillie, and went to visit, I’d try to make my new friends like me.”
“Huh!” said Lillie. “I’m not visiting—don’t you fool yourselves. My mother and I have come here to stay. We’re not going to be put out like we were at Aunt Adeline’s and Uncle Noah’s. Mother says we’ve got more right to this old house than you Kenways have, and she’s going to get her rights.”
That made Dot cry, and Tess looked dreadfully serious. Agnes was too angry to play with the girl any more, and Ruth, even, gave her up as impossible. Lillie wandered off by herself, for her mother would not be bothered with her just then.
When Mrs. McCall went out into the kitchen that afternoon to start dinner, she missed the bag of dried apples that had been left on the table. There had been nearly four pounds of them.
“What under the canopy’s become of that bag?” demanded the good lady. “This is getting too much, I declare. I know I missed the end of the corned beef yesterday, and half a loaf of bread. I couldn’t be sure about the cookies and doughnuts, and the pie.
“But there that bag of dried apples stood, and there it isn’t now! What do you know about such crazy actions?” she demanded of Ruth, who had come at her call.
“Why! it’s a mystery,” gasped the eldest of the Corner House girls. “I can’t understand it, dear Mrs. McCall. Of course none of us girls have taken the dried apples. And if you have missed other things from your pantry of late, I am just as sure we are not at fault. I have warned the girls about raiding the cookie jars between meals.”
“Well,” said Mrs. McCall, with awe, “what can have taken them? And a bag of dried apples! Goodness! It’s enough to give one the shivers and shakes.”
Ruth was deeply mystified, too. She knew very well that Sandy-face, the cat, could not be accused with justice of this loss. Cats certainly do not eat dried apples—and such a quantity!
It began to rain before evening, and Tess and Dot rushed out to rescue their dolls and other playthings, for there was wind with the rain and they were afraid it would blow in upon their treasures.
Here poor Dot received an awful shock. The Alice-doll was gone!
Dot went in crying to Ruth and would not be comforted. She loved the missing doll as though it was a real, live baby—there could be no doubt of that. And why should a thief take that lovely doll only, and leave all the others?
Mysteries were piling upon mysteries! It was a gloomy night out of doors and a gloomy night inside the old Corner House as well. Mrs. Treble’s air and conversation were sufficient alone to make the Kenway girls down-hearted. Dot cried herself to sleep that night, and not even Agnes could comfort her.
The wind howled around the house, and tried every latch and shutter fastening. Ruth lay abed and wondered if the thing she had seen at the window in the garret on that other windy day was now appearing and vanishing in its spectral way?
And what should she do about Mrs. Treble and her little girl? What would Mr. Howbridge say when he came home again?
Had she any right to spend more of the estate’s money in caring for these two strangers who were (according to the lady herself) without any means at all? Ruth Kenway put in two very bad hours that night, before she finally fell asleep.
The sun shone brightly in the morning, however. How much better the world and all that is in it seems on a clean, sunshiny morning! Even Dot was able to control her tears, as she went out upon the back porch with Tess, before breakfast.
The rain had saturated everything. The brown dirt path had been scoured and then gullied by the hard downpour. Right at the corner of the woodshed, where the water ran off in a cataract, when it did rain, was a funny looking mound.
“Why—why! what’s that?” gasped Dot.
“It looks just as though a poor little baby had been buried there,” whispered Tess. “But of course, it isn’t! Maybe there’s some animal trying to crawl out of the ground.”
“O-o-o!” squealed Dot. “What animal?”
“I don’t know. Not a mole. Moles don’t make such a big hump in the ground.”
As the girls wondered, Uncle Rufus came up from the henhouse. He saw the strange looking mound, too.
“Glo-ree!” he gasped. “How come dat?”
“We don’t know, Uncle Rufus,” said Tess eagerly. “We just found it.”
“Somebody been buryin’ a dawg in we-uns back yard? My soul!”
“Oh, it can’t be!” cried Tess.
“And it isn’t Sandy-face,” Dot declared. “For she’s in the kitchen with all her children.”
“Wait er bit—wait er bit,” said the old man, solemnly. “Unc’ Rufus gwine ter look inter dis yere matter. It sho’ is a misery”—meaning “mystery.”
He brought a shovel and dug down beside the mound. Lifting out a huge shovelful of dirt, there were scattered all about the path a great number of swollen and messy brown things that, for a moment, the girls did not identify. Then Uncle Rufus lifted up his voice in a roar:
“Looker yere! Looker yere! Missie Ruth! see wot you-all mak’ out o’ disher monkey-shines. Here’s dem dried apples, buried in de groun’ and swelled fit ter bust demselves.”
“Looker yere! Looker yere! Missie Ruth! There dem dried apples, buried in de groun’”
Mrs. McCall as well as the other girls came running to see. It was Agnes that saw something else under the mound. She darted down the steps, put her hand into the hole and drew out the Alice-doll!
The poor thing’s dress was ruined. Its hair was a mass of plastered apple, and its face as well. Such a disreputable looking thing!
While the others cried out in wonder and disclaimed all knowledge of how the marvel could have happened, Agnes spoke two accusing words.
“Double Trouble!” she cried, pointing her finger at Lillie Treble, who had just appeared, angelic face and all, at the back door.
“Did that young’un do that?” demanded Mrs. McCall, vigorously.
“She most certainly did,” declared Agnes. “She tried to get rid of the dried apples, and the doll Dot wouldn’t let her play with, at one and the same time. Isn’t she the mean thing?”
Instantly Lillie’s face was convulsed into a mask of rage and dislike. “I hate all you girls!” she snarled. “I’ll do worse than that to you!”
Mrs. McCall seized her like an eagle pouncing upon a rabbit. Mrs. McCall was very vigorous. She carried Lillie into the kitchen with one hand, and laid her abruptly, face down, over her knee.
What happened during the next few moments was evidently the surprise of Lillie Treble’s young life. Her mother had never corrected her in that good, old-fashioned way.
CHAPTER XX—MR. HOWBRIDGE IS PERPLEXED
Tess and Dot went out that morning, when the sun had dried the grass, to play with the lonely little Creamer girl, and they did not invite Lillie Treble to go with them.
Nobody could blame them for that breach of politeness. Dot could not overlook the dreadful thing Lillie had done to the Alice-doll. Fortunately, the doll was not wholly ruined—but “no thanks to Lillie,” as Agnes said.
She never would look like the same doll again. “She is so pale now,” said Dot, hugging the doll tightly; “she looks as though she had been through a dreadful illness. Doesn’t she, Tess?”
“And her beautiful dress and cap all ruined,” groaned Tess. “It was awfully mean of Lillie.”
“I don’t care so much about the dress,” murmured Dot. “But the color ran so in her cheeks, and one of her eyes is ever so much lighter blue than the other.”
“We’ll play she has been sick,” said Tess. “She’s had the measles, like Mabel’s sisters.”
“Oh, no!” cried Dot, who believed in the verities of play-life. “Oh, no! it would not be nice to have all the other dolls quarantined, like Mabel is.”
Mabel was not very happy on this morning, it proved. Her face was flushed when she came to the fence, and she spoke to the Kenway girls hoarsely, as though she suffered from a cold.
“Come on over here and play. I’m tired of playing so at arm’s length like we’ve been doing.”
“Oh, we couldn’t,” said Tess, shaking her head vigorously.
“Why not? You haven’t quarantine at your house,” said Mabel, pouting.
“Mrs. McCall says we mustn’t—nor you mustn’t come over here.”
“I don’t care,” began Mabel, but Tess broke in cheerfully, with:
“Oh, let’s keep on using the make-believe telephone. And let’s make believe the river’s in a flood between us, and the bridges are all carried away, and——”
“No! I won’t play that way,” cried Mabel, passionately, and with a stamp of her foot. “I want you to come over here.”
“We can’t,” said Tess, quite as firmly.
“You’re mean things—there now! I never did like you, anyway. I want you to play in my yard——”
“I’ll come over and play with you,” interposed a cool, sweet voice, and there was Lillie Treble, looking just as angelic as she could look.
“Oh, Lillie!” gasped Tess. But Mabel broke in with:
“Come on. There’s a loose picket yonder. You can push it aside. Come on over here, little girl, and we’ll have a good time. I never did like those stuck-up Kenway girls, anyway.”
Lillie turned once to give Tess and Dot the full benefit of one of the worst grimaces she could possibly make. Then she joined the Creamer girl in the other yard. She remained over there all the morning, and for some reason Mabel and Lillie got along very nicely together. Lillie could be real nice, if she wanted to be.
That afternoon Mabel did not appear in her yard and Lillie wandered about alone, having sworn eternal enmity against Tess and Dot. The next morning Mrs. Creamer put her head out of an upstairs window of the cottage and told Mrs. McCall, who chanced to be near the line-fence between the two places, that Mabel had “come down” with the measles, after all the precautions they had taken with her.
“It’s lucky those two little girls over there didn’t come into our yard to play with her,” said Mrs. Creamer. “The other young ones are just beginning to get around, and now Mabel will have to have a spell. She always was an obstinate child; she couldn’t even have measles at a proper and convenient time.”
Mrs. Treble, meantime, was feeling herself more and more at home in the old Corner House. She did not offer to help in the general housework in the least, and did nothing but “rid up” her own room. There could be nothing done, or nothing talked of in the family, that Mrs. Treble was not right there to interfere, or advise, or change, or in some way “put her oar in,” as Agnes disrespectfully said, to the complete vexation of the person most concerned.
In addition, morning, noon and night she was forever dinning the fact into the ears of the girls, or Mrs. McCall, or Aunt Sarah, or Uncle Rufus, that her husband’s mother was Uncle Peter Stower’s own sister. “John Augustus Treble talked a lot about Uncle Peter—always,” she said. “I had a little property, when I married John Augustus. It was cash money left from my father’s life insurance.
“He wasn’t a very good business man, John Augustus. But he meant well,” she continued. “He took my money and started a little store with it. He took a lease of the store for three years. There was a shoe factory right across the street, and a box shop on one hand and a knitting mill on the other. Looked like a variety store ought to pay in such a neighborhood.
“But what happened?” demanded Mrs. Treble, in her most complaining tone. “Why, the shoe factory moved to Chicago. The box shop burned down. The knitting mill was closed up by the sheriff. Then the landlord took all John Augustus’ stock for payment of the rent.
“So he had to go to work in the powder mill, and that finally blew him up. But he always said to me: ‘Now, don’t you fuss, Emily, don’t you fuss. When Uncle Peter Stower dies, there’ll be plenty coming to us, and you’ll live like a lady the rest of your life.’ Poor fellow! If I hadn’t seen him go to work that morning, I’d never have believed it was the same man they put into his coffin.”
When she told this version of the tale to Aunt Sarah, and many more details, Aunt Sarah never said a word, or even looked as though she heard Mrs. Treble. The old lady’s silence and grimness finally riled Mrs. Treble’s temper.
“Say!” she exclaimed. “Why don’t you say something? John Augustus’ mother came from Milton when she was a girl. You must have known her. Why don’t you say something?”
At last Aunt Sarah opened her lips. It was the second time in their lives that the Kenway girls had ever heard the old lady say more than two sentences consecutively.
“You want me to say something? Then I will!” declared Aunt Sarah, grimly, and her eyes flashing. “You say your husband’s mother was Peter Stower’s sister, do ye? Well! old Mr. Stower never had but one child by his first wife, before he married my mother, and that child was Peter. Peter didn’t have any sister but these gals’ mother, and myself. You ain’t got no more right in this house than you would have in the palace of the King of England—and if Ruth Kenway wasn’t foolish, she’d put you out.”
Agnes was delighted at this outbreak. It seemed that Aunt Sarah must speak with authority. Ruth was doubtful; she did not know which lady to believe. Mrs. Treble merely tossed her head, and said it was no more than she had expected. Of course, Aunt Sarah would back up these Kenway girls in their ridiculous claim to the estate.
“Oh, dear me! I do wish Mr. Howbridge would return home,” groaned Ruth.
“I’d put them both out,” declared Agnes, who could scarcely control her dislike for the lady from Ypsilanti and her bothersome little girl.
The neighbors and those acquaintances whom the girls had made before began to take sides in the matter. Of course, Miss Titus had spread the tidings of the coming of Mrs. Treble, and what she had come for. The lady herself was not at all backward in putting her story before any person who might chance to call upon the Corner House girls.
Some of these people evidently thought Mrs. Treble had the better right to Uncle Peter’s property. It was well known by now, that no will had been offered for probate. Others were sure, like Aunt Sarah, that Uncle Peter had had no sister save the girls’ mother.
The minister’s wife came to call—heard both sides of the argument—and told Ruth she was doing just right. “It was a kindly thing to do, Ruth,” she said, kissing the girl, warmly. “I do not believe she has any claim upon the estate. There is a mistake somewhere. But you are a good girl, and Mr. Howbridge will straighten the matter out, when he comes—never fear.”
But before the lawyer came, something occurred which seemed to make it quite impossible for Ruth to ask Mrs. Treble to go, even had she so desired. Lillie came down with the measles!
She had caught the disease that morning she had played with Mabel Creamer, and to Dot’s horror, “quarantine” came into the old Corner House. Ruth was dreadfully afraid that Dot and Tess might catch the disease, too, for neither of them had had it. Although the doctor said that Lillie had the disease in a light form, Ruth kept the younger girls as far away from the Trebles’ apartment as she could, and even insisted upon Mrs. Treble taking her meals up stairs.
Mr. Howbridge came home at last. Ruth had left a note at his office explaining her trouble, and the lawyer came over to the old Corner House the day following his return.
He listened to Ruth’s story without comment. Then he went up stairs and talked with Mrs. Treble. From the sound of Mrs. Treble’s high-pitched voice, that must have been rather a stormy interview. Mr. Howbridge was quite calm when he came down to the girls again.
“Oh, sir!” Agnes cried, unable to restrain herself any longer. “You are not going to let her put us out of this dear old house, are you!”
“I wouldn’t worry about that, my dear. Not yet, at least,” returned Mr. Howbridge, kindly. But to Ruth he said: “It is an utterly unexpected situation. I am not prepared to give an opinion upon the woman’s claim.
“However, I think you are a brave girl, Miss Kenway, and I approve of all you have done. You have made a good impression upon the people here in Milton, I am sure. Yes; you did quite right. Don’t worry about money matters. All the bills shall be paid.
“But, my dear, I wish more than ever that we could find that will. That would settle affairs immediately, and unless she tried to break the will in the courts, she would have no standing at all. Of course, it is for the little girl she claims a part of Mr. Peter Stower’s property. She, personally, has no rights herself, even if her tale is true.”
Ruth knew that he was perplexed, however, so her own heart was but little relieved by the lawyer’s visit.
CHAPTER XXI—THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS WIN PUBLIC APPROVAL
Was it Mr. Howbridge’s wish, or her own desire, that set Ruth the very next day at the task of searching the garret thoroughly? She allowed only Agnes to go up with her; Tess and Dot were out of the house, Mrs. McCall was busy, and the lady from Ypsilanti was engaged in nursing her little daughter.
These days they were much relieved of Mrs. Treble’s interference in their affairs. Lillie claimed all her mother’s attention, and although the child was not very ill, she managed to take up almost every moment of her mother’s time.
Agnes was frankly scary about the huge lumber-room at the top of the house. Despite Ruth’s declaration that they would use the garret to play in on stormy days, they had not often gone there for that—nor for any other—purpose.
The girls had removed all the ancient garments and aired them. Many were moth-eaten and past redemption; those went to the ragman. Others were given to Petunia Blossom to be fixed over for her growing family. Some of the remainder were hung up again, shrouding one dark corner of the garret in which Ruth knew there was neither box, nor chest, nor trunk.
It was the chests of drawers, and boxes, the two girls gave their attention to on the occasion of this search. Before, Ruth had opened several of the old-fashioned receptacles and rummaged in the contents. Now she and Agnes went at the task methodically.
Everything was taken out of the chests, and boxes, and drawers, and shaken out before being put back again. The girls came upon many unexpected treasures, and Agnes soon forgot her fear of the supposed ghostly occupant of the garret.
Ruth, however, would not allow her to stop and try on wonderful ancient garments, or read yellowed letters, bound with faded tape, or examine the old-fashioned gift-books, between the leaves of which were pressed flowers and herbs, all of which, Agnes was sure, were the souvenirs of sentiment.
Oh, yes! there were papers—reams and reams of them! But they were either letters of no moment to the quest in hand, or ancient documents of no possible use save for their historical value. They came upon some papers belonging to the original Peter Stower—the strong, hard-working man who had built this great house in his old age and had founded the family.
He had been an orphan and had been sheltered in the Milton poorhouse. Here was his “indenture paper,” which bound him to a blacksmith of the town when he was twelve years old. As Ruth and Agnes read the faded lines and old-fashioned printing, they realized that the difference between an apprentice in those days in the north, and a black slave in the south, was all in favor of the last named.
But this “bound boy” had worked, studied nights so as to get some education, had married his master’s daughter, and come in time to be heir to his business. He had taken contracts for furnishing the ironwork for government warships, and so, little by little, had risen to be a prosperous, then a very wealthy man.
The old Corner House was the fruit of his labor and his desire to establish in the town of his miserable beginnings, a monument to his own pluck and endeavor. Where he may have been scorned for the “bound boy” that he was, he took pride in leaving behind him when he died the memory only of a strong, rich, proud man.
The girls found nothing which the last Peter Stower could have considered—whether he were miser, or not—of sufficient value to hide away. Certainly no recently dated papers came to light, and no will at all, or anything that looked like such a document.
They ransacked every drawer, taking them out of the worm-eaten, shaky pieces of furniture, and rummaging behind them for secret panels and the like. Actually, the only thing the girls found that mystified them at all in their search, was half a doughnut lying on a window sill!
“Whoever left that doughnut there?” demanded Agnes. “I don’t believe the girls have been up here alone. Could that Lillie have been here?”
“Perhaps,” sighed Ruth. “She was going everywhere about the house, before she was taken down sick.”
“It’s a blessing she’s sick—that’s what I say,” was Agnes’ rather heartless reply. “But—a doughnut! and all hard and dry.”
“Maybe it was Dot’s goat?” chuckled Ruth, nervously.
“Don’t!” gasped Agnes. “My nerves are all on the jump as it is. Is there any single place in this whole garret that we haven’t looked?”
Ruth chanced to be staring at the doughnut on the window sill, and did not at first answer. That was the window at the right of the chimney where she had seen the ghostly apparition fluttering in the storm. The space about the window remained cleared, as it was before.
“Wake up!” commanded Agnes. “Where shall we look now?”
Ruth turned with a sigh and went toward the high and ornate black-walnut “secretary” that stood almost in the middle of the huge room.
“Goodness to gracious!” ejaculated the younger girl. “We’ve tried that old thing again and again. I’ve almost knocked the backboards off, pounding to see if there were secret places in it. It’s as empty as it is ugly.”
“I suppose so,” sighed Ruth. “It’s strange, though, that Uncle Peter did not keep papers in it, for that is what it was intended for. Almost every drawer and cupboard in it locks with a different key.”
She had been given a huge bunch of keys by Mr. Howbridge when they first came to the Corner House; and she had used these keys freely in searching the garret furniture.
As they went hopelessly down to the third floor, at last, Ruth noticed that one of the small chambers on this floor, none of which the family had used since coming to Milton, had been opened. The door now stood ajar.
“I suppose that snoopy Mrs. Treble has been up here,” said Agnes, sharply. “I thought all these doors were locked, Ruth?”
“Not all of them had keys. But they were all shut tightly,” and she went to this particular room and peered in.
The bed was a walnut four-poster—one of the old-fashioned kind that was “roped”—and the feather-bed lay upon it, covered with an old-fashioned quilt.
“Why! it looks just as though somebody had been sleeping here,” gasped Ruth, after a moment.
“What?” cried Agnes. “Impossible!”
“Doesn’t that look like the imprint of a body on the bed? Not a big person. Somebody as big as Tess, perhaps?”
“It wasn’t Tess, I am quite sure,” declared Agnes.
“Could it have been Sandy-face?”
“Of course not! No cat would make such a big hollow, lying down in a bed. I know! it was that Lillie Treble—‘Double Trouble’! Of course,” concluded Agnes, with assurance.
So Ruth came out and closed the door carefully. Had it not been for her sister’s assurance at just this moment, Ruth might have made a surprising discovery, there and then!
She had to report to Mr. Howbridge, by note, that a thorough search of the garret had revealed nothing which Uncle Peter Stower could have hidden away.
While Lillie was under the doctor’s care, Mrs. Treble was out of the way. Affairs at the old Corner House went on in a more tranquil way. The Creamer girls who had first been ill, were allowed out of doors, and became very friendly with Tess and Dot—over the fence. The quarantine bars were not, as yet, altogether down.
Maria Maroni came to see them frequently, and Alfredia Blossom brought her shining black face to the old Corner House regularly, on Mondays and Thursdays. Usually she could not stop to play on Monday, when she and Jackson came for the soiled clothes, but if Petunia got the ironing done early enough on Thursday, Alfredia visited for a while.
“I don’t believe Alfredia could be any nicer, if she was bleached white,” Dot said, seriously, on one occasion. “But I know she’d like to be like us—and other folks, Tess.”
“I expect she would,” agreed Tess. “But we must treat her just as though her skin was like ours. Ruth says she is sure Alfredia’s heart is white.”
“Oh!” gasped Dot. “And they showed us in school before we left Bloomingsburg, pictures of folks’ hearts, and lungs, and livers—don’t you remember? And the heart was painted red.”
“I don’t expect they were photographs,” said Tess, decidedly. “And there aren’t any pictures exact but photographs—and movies.”
The Pease girls came frequently to play with Tess and Dot, and the younger Kenways went to their house. None of the Corner House girls could go out on the street now without being spoken to by the Milton people. Many of these friendly advances were made by comparative strangers to the four sisters.
The tangle of Uncle Peter Stower’s affairs had gotten even into the local newspapers, and one newspaper reporter came to Ruth for what he called “an interview.” Ruth sent him to Mr. Howbridge and never heard anything more of it.
The friends Agnes had made among the girls of her own, and Ruth’s, age began to come to call more frequently. Eva Larry admitted she felt shivery, whenever she approached the old house, and she could not be hired to come on a stormy day. Just the same, she was so sorry for the girls, and liked Agnes so much, that she just had to run in and cheer them up a bit.
Older people came, too. Ruth’s head might have been turned, had she been a less sensible girl. The manner in which she handled the situation which had risen out of Mrs. Treble’s coming east to demand a share of the property left by Peter Stower, seemed to have become public knowledge, and the public of Milton approved.
Nobody called on Mrs. Treble. Perhaps that was because she was quarantined upstairs, with Lillie convalescent from her attack of the measles. However, the Corner House girls, as they were now generally called, seemed to be making friends rapidly.
Public approval had set its seal upon their course.
CHAPTER XXII—CALLERS—AND THE GHOST
“I do wonder!” said Tess, with a sigh.
“What do you wonder?” asked Ruth, mildly.
“Sounds like a game,” Agnes observed, briskly. The Corner House girls were sitting on the porch with their sewing, and it was a very warm August forenoon. “‘Cumjucum—what do you come by? I come by the letter T’—which stands for ‘Tess’ and ‘Trouble,’ which last is the expression on Tess’ face,” concluded Agnes, with a laugh.
Tess’ train of thought was not to be sidetracked so easily. “I wonder whatever became of Tommy Rooney?” she said.
“You don’t really believe that was Tommy you saw the day it rained so hard?” cried Agnes.
“Yes, I do. And we know that Tommy stole cherries from Mr. Pease, and milk from Mrs. Adams. Didn’t he, Dot? And then, we saw Mr. Pinkney and that bulldog chasing him.”
“He ran into our yard to escape the dog,” said Dot, seriously.
“Well,” said Ruth, “if it was Tommy, I wish he had come to the house, so we could have fed him. Mrs. Rooney must be awfully worried about him. It’s been a month since we heard he had run away.”
“And he’d been gone a week, then,” added Agnes.
“Well,” said Tess, “I guess he hasn’t killed any Indians here in Milton, or we would have heard about it.”
“I guess not,” chuckled Agnes.
“I always look for him, when I’m on the street,” said Dot.
“We’ll look for him to-day,” said Tess, “when we go to see Maria.”
Tess and Dot were going over to Meadow Street that afternoon to call on the Maronis and Mrs. Kranz. The condition of the Maronis had greatly improved during these weeks. Not only Joe and Maria, but the whole family had begun to be proud of living “like Americans.”
Mrs. Kranz, out of the kindness of her heart, had helped them a great deal. Maria helped the good German lady each forenoon, and was learning to be a careful little housekeeper.
“She iss a goot mädchen,” declared the large lady. “Aind’t idt vonderful how soon dese foreigners gets to be respectable, ven dey iss learndt yet?”
Tess and Dot went up stairs to make themselves ready for their visit, before luncheon. Upon their departure, Eva Larry and Myra Stetson appeared at the front gate.
“Oh, do come in, girls!” shouted Agnes, dropping her sewing.
“We will, if you’ll tie up your ghost,” said Eva, laughing.
“Hush!” commanded Ruth. “Don’t say such things—not out loud, please.”
“Well,” Eva said, as she and Myra joined them on the porch, “I understand you have ransacked that old garret. Did you chase out Mr. Ghost?”
“What is that?” demanded Mrs. Treble’s shrill voice in the doorway. “What does that girl mean by ‘ghost’?”
“Oh, Mrs. Treble!” cried the teasing Eva. “Haven’t you heard of the famous Garret Ghost of the old Corner House—and you here so long?”
“Oh, don’t!” begged Ruth, sotto voce.
Mrs. Treble was not to be denied. Something evidently had escaped her curiosity, and she felt cheated of a sensation. “Go on and tell me, girl,” she commanded Eva.
Eva, really nothing loath, related the story of the supposed supernatural occupant of the garret. “And it appears on stormy, windy days. At least, that’s when it’s been seen. It comes to the window up there and bows, and flutters its grave clothes—and—and all that.”
“How ridiculous!” murmured Ruth. But her face was troubled and Mrs. Treble studied her accusingly.
“That’s why you forbade my Lillie going up there,” she said. “A ghost, indeed! I guess you have something hidden up there, my girl, that you don’t want other folks to see. You can’t fool me about ghosts. I don’t believe in them,” concluded the lady from Ypsilanti.
“Now you’ve done it, Eva,” said Agnes, in a low voice, when Mrs. Treble had departed. “There isn’t a place in this house that she hasn’t tried to put her nose in but the garret. Now she’ll go up there.”
“Hush,” begged Ruth, again. “Don’t get her angry, Agnes.”
“Oh! here comes Mr. Howbridge!” exclaimed the other Kenway girl, glad to change the subject.
Ruth jumped up to welcome him, and ushered him into the dining-room, while the other girls remained upon the porch. As she closed the door, she did not notice that Mrs. Treble stood in the shadow under the front stairs.
“I have been to see this Mrs. Bean,” said the lawyer, to Ruth, when they were seated. “She is an old lady whose memory of what happened when she was young seems very clear indeed. She does not know this Mrs. Treble and her child personally. Mrs. Treble has not been to see her, since she came to Milton.”
“No. Mrs. Treble has not been out at all,” admitted Ruth.
“Mrs. Bean,” pursued Mr. Howbridge, “declares that she knew Mr. Treble’s mother very well, as a girl. She says that the said mother of John Augustus Treble went west when she was a young woman—before she married. She left behind a brother—Peter Stower. Mrs. Bean has always lived just outside of Milton and has not, I believe, lived a very active life, or been much in touch with the town’s affairs. To her mind, Milton is still a village.
“She claims,” said Mr. Howbridge, “to have heard frequently of this Peter Stower, and when she heard he had died, she wrote to the daughter-in-law of her former friend. That is her entire connection with the matter. She said one very odd thing. That is, she clearly remembers of having hired Peter Stower once to clean up her yard and make her garden. She says he was in the habit of doing such work at one time, and she talked with him about this sister who had gone west.”
“Oh!” gasped Ruth.
“It does not seem reasonable,” said Mr. Howbridge. “There is a mixup of identities somewhere. I am pretty sure that, as much as Mr. Peter Stower loved money, he did not have to earn any of it in such a humble way. It’s a puzzle. But the solving of the problem would be very easy, if we could find that lost will.”
Ruth told him how she and Agnes had thoroughly examined the garret and the contents of the boxes and furniture stowed away there.
“Well,” sighed the lawyer. “We may have to go into chancery to have the matter settled. That would be a costly procedure, and I dislike to take that way.”
Directly after luncheon Tess and Dot started off for Meadow Street with the convalescent Alice-doll pushed before them in Dot’s doll-carriage. Mrs. Treble, who had begun to eat down stairs again, although Lillie was not allowed out of her room as yet, marched straight up stairs, and, after seeing that Lillie was in order, tiptoed along the hall, and proceeded up the other two flights to the garret door.
When she opened this door and peered into the dimly lit garret, she could not repress a shudder.
“It is a spooky place,” she muttered.
But her curiosity had been aroused, and if Mrs. Treble had one phrenological bump well developed, it was that of curiosity! In she stepped, closed the door behind her, and advanced toward the middle of the huge, littered room.
A lost will! Undoubtedly hidden somewhere in these old chests of drawers—or in that tall old desk yonder. Either the Kenway girls have been very stupid, or Ruth has not told that lawyer the truth! These were Mrs. Treble’s unspoken thoughts.
What was that noise? A rat? Mrs. Treble half turned to flee. She was afraid of rats.
There was another scramble. One of the rows of old coats and the like, hanging from nails in the rafters overhead, moved more than a little. A rat could not have done that.
The ghost? Mrs. Treble was not at all afraid of such silly things as ghosts!
“I see you there!” she cried, and strode straight for the corner.
There was another scramble, one of the Revolutionary uniform coats was pulled off the hook on which it had hung, and seemed, of its own volition, to pitch toward her.
Mrs. Treble screamed, but she advanced. The coat seemed to muffle a small figure which tried to dodge her.
“I have you!” cried Mrs. Treble, and clutched at the coat.
She secured the coat itself, but a small, ragged, red haired, and much frightened boy slid out of its smothering folds and plunged toward the door of the garret. In trying to seize this astonishing apparition, Mrs. Treble missed her footing and came down upon her knees.
The boy, with a stifled shout, reached the door. He wrenched it open and dove down the stairway. His bare feet made little sound upon the bare steps, or upon the carpeted halls below. He seemed to know his way about the house very well indeed.
When Mrs. Treble reached the stairs and came down, heavily, shrieking the alarm, nobody in the house saw the mysterious red haired boy. But Uncle Rufus, called from his work in the garden, was amazed to see a small figure squeezing through a cellar window into the side-yard. In a minute the said figure flew across to the street fence, scrambled over it, and disappeared up Willow Street, running almost as fast as a dog.
“Glo-ree!” declared the black man, breathlessly. “If dat boy keeps on runnin’ like he’s done started, he’ll go clean ’round de worl’ an’ be back fo’ supper!”
CHAPTER XXIII—NOT ENTIRELY EXPLAINED
Joe Maroni smiled at Tess and Dot broadly, and the little gold rings in his ears twinkled, when the girls approached his fruit stand.
“De litla ladies mak’ Joe ver’ hap’—come to see-a he’s Maria. Maria, she got da craz’ in da head to wait for to see you.”
“Oh, I hope not, Mr. Maroni,” said Tess, in her most grown-up way. “I guess Maria isn’t crazy, only glad.”
“Glad a—si, si! Here she come.”
Maria, who always was clean and neat of dress now, appeared from the cellar. She was helping her mother draw out the new baby carriage that Joe had bought—a grand piece of furniture, with glistening wheels, varnished body, and a basket top that tipped any way, so as to keep the sun out of the baby’s eyes.
The baby was fat again and very well. He crowed, and put his arms out to Tess and Dot, and the latter was so delighted with him that she almost neglected the Alice-doll in her carriage.
The little Maronis thought that big doll and its carriage were, indeed, very wonderful possessions. Two of the smaller Maronis were going walking with the visitors, and Maria and the baby.
Joe filled the front of the baby carriage with fruit, so that the children would not be hungry while away from the house. Off the procession started, for they had agreed to go several blocks to the narrow little park that skirted the canal.
It was a shady park, and the Kenway girls and the clean, pretty Maroni children had a very nice time. Maria was very kind and patient with her sisters and with the baby, and nothing happened to mar the afternoon’s enjoyment until just as the children were about to wheel the baby—and the doll—back to Meadow Street.
What happened was really no fault of any of this little party in whom we are interested. They had set off along the canal path, when there suddenly darted out of some bushes a breathless, hatless boy, whose tangled hair was fiery red!
Tess shrieked aloud. “Why! Tommy Rooney! Whatever are you doing here?”
The boy whirled and stared at Tess and Dot, with frightened countenance. Their appearance in this place evidently amazed him. He stumbled backward, and appeared to intend running away; but his foot tripped and he went down the canal bank head-first!
Splash he went into the murky water, and disappeared. The girls all screamed then; there were no grown folk near—no men at all in sight.
When Tommy Rooney came to the surface he was choking and coughing, and paddled for only a moment, feebly, before going under again. It was plain that he could not swim.
“Oh, oh!” cried Dot. “He’ll be drowned. Tommy Rooney will be drowned! And what will his mother say to that?”
Tess wrung her hands and screamed for help. But there was no help.
That is, there would have been none for poor Tommy, if it had not been for quick-witted Maria Maroni. Quickly she snatched the baby from the carriage and put him into Tess’ arms. Then she flung out the pillows and wrappings, and ran the carriage to the brow of the canal-bank.
Up came Tommy again, his eyes open, gurgling a cry, and fighting to keep above the surface.