CHAPTER VI
WITCHES AND WARLOCKS
There were whisperings in the “cubby hole” beneath the front stairs. This was a favorite conspiring place for Tess and Dot, and the two small Kenway girls were even now in that retreat, lowering their voices so they would not be heard by Ruth and Agnes.
But there was small danger of this, for the older Corner House girls were preparing to entertain their two Boston guests that evening by inviting in other friends to meet Nally and Hal.
And, be it known, Tess and Dot were preparing to do some “entertaining” on their own account. Hence the whispers and the hiding away in the cubby hole.
“We’d better tell Sammy about it,” suggested Dot. “He’ll know best what things to do to s’prise ’em.”
“Well, maybe,” agreed Tess reluctantly.
“We could borrow Sammy’s alligator to make everybody remember about Plam Island,” went on Dot.
“’Tisn’t Plam—” began Tess, but she stopped, for she, as well as the others, had begun to realize that it was of no use to correct Dot in this respect. To her it was “Plam Island,” and it always would be so.
“Yes, we can get Sammy’s alligator,” agreed Tess, falling in with the scheme of her younger sister. “But all it can do is to walk around the room drawing the little cart. Sammy’s trained it to do that very well. But there isn’t anything very exciting about that.”
Tess, be it known, liked excitement.
“Well, maybe Sammy can think up some other way to have fun,” said Dot. “We’ll go ask him, and if they don’t let us come in to their old party we’ll have one of our own.”
“I guess they’re not going to let us in,” remarked Tess, as they crawled from the dark closet beneath the stairs. “I heard Ruth tell Mrs. Mac to set some places for us up in the playroom. Pooh! It isn’t any fun for us to eat ice cream and cake up there all alone when they’re having loads and loads of fun down here.”
“No, it isn’t,” agreed Dot. “There, Alice-doll, don’t you cry,” she added, as she soothed the pretend child she carried in her arms. “You’re going to come to the party all right.”
“Are you going to take her along over to Sammy’s?” inquired Tess.
“Take my Alice-doll? Of course!” cried Dot, for they were now out on the side porch. “You’d cry, wouldn’t you, Alice-doll, if I left you behind?”
“She’ll only be in the way, and Sammy doesn’t like dolls,” went on Tess. Sometimes the solicitude of Dot for the Alice-doll rather got on Tess’s nerves—or she would so have expressed it had she been a little older.
“Oh, all right,” assented Tess, after a brief pause, “bring her along,” and she assumed the resigned air she had sometimes noticed in Agnes when Ruth insisted on something being done in a certain correct way.
“Did bad sister Tess want me to leave you home, Alice-doll?” crooned Dot, as they walked across the street, catercornered, to Sammy’s house. “Well, I just wouldn’t!”
Tess and Dot found Sammy on his back porch, in the sun, busy feeding bits of meat to the pet alligator.
“Look how big he’s getting!” cried the boy proudly. “I guess maybe by next summer he’ll be big enough to hitch to my regular express wagon and he can draw me around.”
“Oh, that would be scrumptious!” cried Dot, clapping her hands. “Could I ride with you, Sammy?”
“Sure!”
“Hum!” murmured Tess, as she smoothed out her dress. “I think it would look very queer, and maybe you would be arrested.”
“Arrested for what?” scoffed Sammy. “Not for speedin’, that’s sure. Snapper can’t go very fast.”
“Well, maybe you’d be arrested for something,” declared Dot, ready now to agree with Tess. “I don’t know what. But it’s something.”
“Maybe she means cruelty to animals, like that Italian banana peddler who was arrested once,” suggested Tess.
“Aw, a alligator isn’t an animal!” declared Sammy. “Anyhow, I wouldn’t be cruel to him. Why, I keep feedin’ him meat all the while. He has it easy!”
And certainly the alligator from Palm Island did seem to fare very well in Sammy’s care. After he had eaten some of the meat, Snapper was hitched to the little cart and drew it about the porch. Dot was finally persuaded to entrust her Alice-doll to the small wagon, and the girls and Sammy laughed in delight as they saw the alligator pulling her about the porch.
“This is what we came over about,” explained Tess, when Snapper was allowed to eat some meat scraps in peace. “There’s going to be a party over at our Corner House to-night. There’s going to be ice cream and cake and lemonade.”
“Oh, boy!” murmured Sammy, rubbing his stomach. “Am I coming?” he suddenly demanded, realizing that, so far, he had not been invited.
“Of course you are,” declared Tess. “And we want you to make some fun. Can you do something exciting, Sammy, when that girl from Boston is there, and her fellah?”
“I love to hear her scream,” said Dot. “To-day she screamed when she saw a caterpillar on the walk.”
“What can you do exciting, Sammy?” eagerly asked Tess.
“He could make a tic-tac and put it on the window,” suggested Dot.
“That isn’t exciting!” scoffed the boy. “It wouldn’t scare even your Aunt Sarah.”
“It used to scare me,” confessed Dot.
“But we want something new,” stipulated Tess. “Can you think of something like—like a ghost, Sammy?”
“Oh, a ghost!” shrilly whispered Dot.
“Not a real ghost, of course,” went on Tess. “There aren’t any. But a make-believe ghost, Sammy. Could you make one?”
Sammy thought long and deeply—at least for him. Then he clapped his hands and cried:
“I have it! The very thing!”
“What?” demanded the girls.
Then they put their heads together and whispered.
“Where are the children?” asked Ruth of Agnes, a little later, when they were both down in the kitchen, making arrangements with Mrs. MacCall and Linda about the serving of refreshments at the little affair that evening. It was the first of some informal gatherings to entertain Nalbro Hastings and Hal Dent.
“The bairns?” repeated the Scotch housekeeper. “I think they have gang awa’.”
“Where?” asked Ruth.
“Sammy’s hame. Hech! Hech! An’ I’m not so sure but what they’ll be up to mischief foreby.”
“Oh, well, if they’re with Sammy they’re all right,” said Agnes.
“You never can tell,” remarked Ruth.
But when she had taken a look, and made sure that the three youngsters were on Sammy’s porch, she worried no longer, but devoted herself to the business on hand. However, if she could have heard the plotting and planning, Ruth might have not been so easy in her mind.
Neale stopped the Kenway car on the drive and leaped out, carrying several packages.
“There, I think I have everything,” he announced. “Except perhaps rings for the lady-fingers.”
“Did you order the ice cream?” asked Ruth.
“It’ll be here on the dot!” answered Neale. “And I doubt not a portion of it will be inside our Dot,” he added, with a laugh.
“A wretched pun,” scoffed Agnes. “If that’s a sample of what you are going to work off on us this evening——”
“Oh, I’ve some a lot better than that!” boasted Neale. “Has Luke been over?” he inquired.
“No,” answered Ruth. “And that reminds me—we must ask some one for Cecile.”
“Only one person you dare ask for her,” laughed Agnes. “Telephone and tell her loving garage man, Gene Barrows, to come, Neale. Maybe he’ll bring her over in a car.”
“I will,” he promised, for the devotion to Cecile of this red-haired, but most excellent, young man was well known, and they had been engaged for some time.
“Well, I guess everything is all ready then,” remarked Ruth. “But we had better go over some matters again, Agnes, to make sure.”
“Oh, I can’t!” cried the younger sister. “I’m sure it will be all right. I’m going riding a little with Neale.”
She ran down the porch and took her place beside the high-school lad.
“You don’t mind, do you, Ruthie?” she asked pleadingly.
“Oh, no, go ahead. I can manage. Everything is practically done, anyhow. But make sure about the ice cream while you’re down town.”
“We will,” promised Neale.
“Ruth takes everything so seriously,” said Agnes, as the car was rolling down the street.
“Yes, she does,” admitted Neale. “But maybe it’s a good thing. Luke’s the same way.”
“They’re a good match,” assented Agnes, with a mischievous glance at Neale, but when he slid his hand along the seat toward her rosy palm she laughed and, extending a finger, asked:
“Did you see anything of our cow down that way?”
“No. But I see a pretty, saucy girl, and I don’t have to look very far, either,” retorted Neale, a bit put out. Thereupon Agnes kindly patted his hand that was firm on the steering wheel.
Nally and Hal Dent, who had been strolling afield, came home just before supper time.
“Oh, Ruth, you are going to so much trouble on our account!” protested the Boston girl, when she saw how prettily, if simply, the rooms of the Corner House were arranged.
“I love to do it,” Ruth said, and she really did. Giving pleasure to others was her own chief source of happiness.
In the evening the little affair was in full swing. Ruth thought it rather strange that Tess and Dot did not protest more when told that they must have their refreshments served in their playroom upstairs. But they had gained a point in having Sammy invited to the party, and Ruth thought perhaps this accounted for their unnatural submissiveness.
But mischief was brewing.
Linda had been sent up to the room of the children with sufficiently generous portions of ice cream and cake, and downstairs there was merry talk and laughter.
Suddenly, as Mrs. MacCall was coming down the hall and into the living-room with a tray filled with glasses of lemonade, the Scotch housekeeper was heard to scream.
“Oh!” gasped Ruth and to her mental vision was presented the faces of the two ugly men who had entered the cellar.
Into the room burst Mrs. MacCall, her trembling hands barely able to hold the tray on which the glasses were clattering and tinkling.
“What is it?” demanded Ruth.
“Ghosties! Ghosties!” gasped Mrs. MacCall. “There’s witches an’ warlocks an’ lang-nebbied things abroad the nicht! Hech! Hech!”
Luke sprang forward just in time to catch the tray she was about to drop, and then into the room after the housekeeper came a queer, white object, rolling over and over in a most erratic fashion.