“Agnes, did you hear anything?”
“I’m not sure, Ruth, but I did think I heard something in the kitchen,
still——”
“I shouldn’t have left Dot and Tess there alone to finish making their
cakes, I’m afraid,” went on the oldest of the Corner House girls. “But
they begged and teased so to be allowed to bake something by themselves,
that I gave in against my better judgment. I’m always doing that!”
“Don’t reproach yourself,” murmured Agnes. “Oh, I’m afraid I’ve broken
one of my nails,” she exclaimed, looking at her well-manicured hands.
“Yes, it _is_ broken!” she sighed. “And I was going to——”
“Something else besides a fingernail is broken, to judge by the racket
down in the kitchen!” exclaimed Ruth, interrupting her “beauty sister,”
as she sometimes called Agnes.
Ruth had opened the door of the room in which she and her sister, with
the housekeeper, Mrs. MacCall, had been discussing the advisability of
having it repapered in anticipation of the time when Miss Hastings
should come to visit them, the Boston girl having accepted a very
cordial invitation to stay a few weeks at the Corner House.
“Something _has_ happened!” declared Ruth, with conviction.
“Oh, the puir bairns!” exclaimed motherly Mrs. MacCall. “Hech! Hech!
Mayhap the dratted stove hae burned them! Oh, woe is me!”
“They know better than to get burned,” answered Ruth. “But I think we’d
better go down and see what has happened.”
“You _think_!” gasped Agnes, looking at her fractured nail. “I just
_know_ we had!”
Followed by Mrs. MacCall, with her ominous “hech! hech!” the while
mumbling incomprehensible Scotch words, the two sisters hastened down
the stairs. When they caught sight of the kitchen with its mixture of
eggs and alligator, Ruth felt like saying what Sammy had said—with added
adjectives.
“Oh, what _has_ happened?” cried Agnes.
“Sammy was doing a trick, Aggie, and—” began Dot. Then she caught sight
of her Alice-doll on the floor with a slowly moving trail of egg yellow,
like lava from a volcano, working toward her, and with a cry sprang to
save her.
“Trick!” spluttered Robbie Foote, as he arose and wiped some white of
egg from his face. “If you call that a trick——”
“What’s burning?” asked Ruth.
“Oh, my cake! My cake!” shouted Tess.
Mrs. MacCall simply raised her hands in the air. She was beyond speech.
“This,” said Sammy Pinkney again, “is _fierce_!”
But it was not always thus in the Corner House. Usually the house was as
quiet and orderly as is the normal household inhabited by four healthy,
happy girls and their friends and playmates. However, this confusion
will serve one good purpose. It will enable me to acquaint my new
readers more formally with the characters who are to play their parts in
this story.
Bloomingsburg was the former home of the Kenway sisters when you first
met them in the opening volume of this series, called “The Corner House
Girls.” There was a reason for that name, since the quartette came to
live in the Corner House at Milton. A distant relative of the Kenways,
Uncle Peter Stower, had died and left the four orphan girls all his
property. This included the Stower homestead, known far and wide in that
section as the old Corner House.
Mr. Howbridge, who was named the guardian of the girls, managed matters
for them and saw to it that Ruth, Agnes, Dot and Tess were safely
domiciled in the Corner House. With them came Aunt Sarah Maltby, an old
lady who was rather a trial at times, for she was always afraid
something was going to happen. What this “something” was she never could
be sure of, but it was an ever-present fear.
However, the looking after the girls devolved more upon stanch Mrs.
MacCall and Uncle Rufus, the devoted colored servant of the late Peter
Stower, so Aunt Sarah did not need to be relied upon.
Thus Ruth, the oldest, and her three sisters, came to live in the Corner
House, the poverty days in Bloomingsburg being a thing of the past.
“She might have come along and visited us just as we are, and just as
she was,” complained Ruth. “But I suppose she thought she had to run
back to Boston for more dresses.”
“That reminds me,” said Agnes thoughtfully, carefully filing her broken
nail. “I suppose we shall need new gowns for the party. Oh, can’t we
afford it, Ruth?”
“I think so.” And Ruth smiled. “We haven’t been very extravagant, Mr.
Howbridge says.” She referred to their man of affairs. “He says we have
some of our summer allowance left.”
“Good! Then I’m going to have that voile I’ve wanted so long. And it’s
going to be lavender, too.”
“I suppose that’s Neale’s favorite color,” remarked Ruth.
“What if it is? Doesn’t Luke like those pale, neutral tints, and——”
“I like them myself,” interrupted Ruth demurely, “and I saw the
loveliest shade of—Who are those two men coming in?” she broke off to
ask the housekeeper.
“Wha’ twa min, dearie?”
“Those queer-looking ones—like two tramps. I just saw them going around
toward the side entrance. Dot and Tess are on the porch. I don’t want
tramps to frighten them or Linda. I’d better go down and see who they
are. I don’t like their looks.”
“But we haven’t settled about the paper for Nally’s room!” called Agnes.
“You settle it with Mrs. Mac,” returned Ruth. “I must see about those
two queer men.”
Dot and Tess had not long lived in their new home before they made the
acquaintance of Sammy Pinkney, who dwelt catercornered from the Corner
House, and Sammy, Dot and Tess had royal good times together.
Ruth and Agnes, being older—in fact, Ruth now being quite a young
lady—had more mature friends. Among them might especially be mentioned
Luke Shepard. His name was being coupled with Ruth’s in “quite a
matrimonial manner,” Agnes laughingly remarked, at which Ruth retorted:
“You needn’t talk! What about Neale O’Neil?”
Whereat Agnes had the grace to blush.
Luke Shepard was a young collegian who was more or less at the Corner
House—less when at college and more often during vacation times. Luke
lived with his sister Cecile at Grantham, not many miles away. Their
Aunt Lorena kept house for the young folks. They had a very good
neighbor, and this neighbor had aided Luke in going to college. But now
the young man was helping himself, having become an assistant during his
vacations to a certain Professor Keeps. Often Luke came to Milton,
staying with Neale O’Neil when he did so.
As for Neale, there was a romantic history connected with him. After
running away from the circus he had lived with the Milton cobbler, and
there was a mystery about his father who had gone to Alaska in search of
gold. There were dark days for Neale until his father came back, not
fabulously rich, but in much better circumstances than when he went
away.
However, the wanderlust called Mr. O’Neil, and he went away again,
first, however, providing well for his son. Had he wished, Neale might
have had a house of his own, but he continued to live with old but
loving Con Murphy, and he continued, too, to look after many details for
the Kenway girls around their place. That this gave him a chance to see
Agnes more often, may have had something to do with it.
The Kenway girls made the most delightful friends, and what wonderful
adventures they had is told in the volumes of this series succeeding the
first. These happenings included going to school, camping out, giving a
play, making an odd find, touring, and growing up. Once the four were
snowbound and had a most amazing time, and again they spent a summer on
a houseboat, following which they had a rather “hectic time,” as Agnes
called it, among the Gypsies.
Their latest adventures had been on Palm Island, or, as Dot insisted on
calling it, “Plam Island,” whither the quartette went because a change
to a warmer climate was needed for their health, severe colds having
been contracted when Ruth and Agnes attended a party on a stormy wintry
day.
In spite of some very exciting and not altogether happy adventures
related in “The Corner House Girls on Palm Island,” which is the title
of the volume immediately preceding the one you are now reading, the
girls enjoyed their summer vacation. They had been home now about two
weeks, when there occurred the happening set down in the first chapter
of this volume.
Wishing to bring Sammy Pinkney back some souvenir from Palm Island, an
alligator, not too large, had been selected, though Dot said he had
expressed a preference for a “turkle.” However, the turtles, of which
there was an abundance on Palm Island, were far too large to bring north
and the young alligator had been a compromise.
That Sammy was delighted with his new pet goes without saying. He even
gave Snapper more attention than Buster, his bulldog, received. Then
Sammy got the idea of dressing up the alligator and of hitching it to a
toy cart.
“Oh, children! what happened?” cried Ruth, despair in her voice.
“I—didn’t—drop—those eggs!” declared Robbie, speaking in gasps, for some
yellow was now running into his mouth. “The goat—he butted me.”
“The goat!” cried Agnes, looking around.
“He’s gone out now,” said Sammy mildly. “The alligator bit his tail!”
“The alligator—” Ruth stopped for want of words.
“Our cakes are burning! Oh, our cakes are burning!” wailed Dot.
There was a decided odor of too-much-baked cake permeating the kitchen.
“I’ll take ’em out for ye!” offered Mrs. MacCall. “Oh, ye puir bairns!
Sorrow is the day!”
“Tess, tell me about it!” commanded Ruth, when the cakes had been
rescued, and only just in time.
While the mess of eggs was being cleaned from the floor by Linda, the
maid, who had been down in the laundry during the excitement, and when
Sammy had ascertained by close examination that his alligator was
unharmed (though one wheel of the cart was broken), peace and quiet once
more reigned in the Corner House.
“But don’t ever do anything like that again, Sammy!” cautioned Ruth,
shaking a warning finger at the boy. “If you want to show off your
alligator, do it in the garage.”
“Yes’m,” mumbled Sammy.
The three younger children were sent out-of-doors, with some of the
newly baked cakes, and the conference upstairs, as to what kind of paper
should be put on the guest room, was resumed.
“Nally is so—so particular,” murmured Agnes, “though she is a dear girl.
I’d like her to have a nice room.” They all called Nalbro, Nally now.