Dot Kenway gave a long-drawn-out cry of “Ohoo-oo-oo!” and clasped her
Alice-doll more closely in her arms. Tess looked over her shoulder and
snuggled farther back into the corner. Agnes glanced up from a low chair
where she was polishing her nails, and Ruth uttered sharply:
“Don’t talk nonsense, Sammy!”
“Well,” demanded the boy, ready to defend his opinion, “if they weren’t
burglars, who were they?”
“Stop it, Sammy Pinkney!” demanded Tess. “Don’t you see you’re scaring
Dot?”
“Maybe you’re scared, too,” suggested Sammy.
“I am not!”
“You are so!”
“I am not!”
“Children!” warned Ruth. “Please be quiet. And, Sammy, don’t say such
things.”
“Well, s’posin’ they was the truth?”
“They couldn’t be! Those men weren’t burglars at all.”
“Who were they then?” and Sammy triumphantly waited for the answer.
“Neale says they weren’t from the water department, and I just know they
are burglars and they came in the cellar to look around and see the
easiest way to break in to-night.”
“Cut it out, young man!” ordered Neale. “They were tramps, very likely,
looking for something to eat, and when they couldn’t find it they
quietly went away. They said they were from the water department because
that was the first thing they thought of. Very likely, at the next
house, they’ll say they’re from the fire department.”
“That would be funny!” laughed Tess. “Fire and water.”
And with her laugh the strain they had all been under when Neale gave
the disquieting news, that the strange men were not what they claimed to
be, seemed dispelled.
The feeling did not wholly disappear, however, for Agnes said later that
she thought there might be a good deal of truth in what Sammy said, and
that the men did have some idea they might rob the house.
Dot, too, needed more than a laugh to fully dispel her fears, and this
was evidenced a little later when she was observed to be walking around
the room, as if looking for something.
“What is it, Dot?” inquired Ruth, glancing at the clock to see if it
were time to send Sammy home and put the smaller children to bed, for
Luke and his sister were expected soon.
“I’m looking for a good place to hide my Alice-doll,” answered Dot.
“Why don’t you take her to bed with you as you always do?” Agnes wanted
to know.
“Because those burglars might come in and I don’t want them in my room,”
Dot replied. “And I don’t want them to take my Alice-doll, either.”
“Oh, don’t be silly!” burst out Agnes.
“’Tisn’t silly!” declared Dot. “And Tess is going to hide her doll, too;
aren’t you, Tess?” She appealed to her sister who, though not as
passionately devoted to her dolls as was Dot to Alice, still had some
that she cared something about.
“I was going to hide them,” confessed Tess.
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Ruth. “Go to sleep and forget all about the men.
They were, as Neale says, just tramps. Uncle Rufus will lock up well,
and nothing will disturb you children, or your dolls either. You must go
to bed soon.”
“Well, I’m going to hide my Alice-doll,” declared Dot, and she finally
found a place behind the piano that seemed safe.
“If you want me to,” said Sammy, with an ingratiating voice, “I could
come over and stay all night with you.”
“Thanks, but why should you?” asked Neale, winking one eye at Agnes.
“Well, in case burglars did get in,” answered Sammy, “I could shoot off
the gun.”
“What gun?”
“My father’s got a shotgun,” went on the boy, “and I could go over home
and get it. I could bring Billy Bumps into the house, too! He’d butt the
rob—tramps!”
“Don’t!” cried Ruth, with a laugh. “We’ve had enough of the goat in the
house for one day!”
“Still, a good healthy goat wouldn’t be a bad weapon to turn against a
burglar,” remarked Neale reflectively. “If Billy Bumps would only go at
a midnight visitor in the same manner that he attacked Robbie Foote with
the eggs, there’d be less for the police to do.”
“Do you want me to get the gun and the goat?” asked Sammy, anxiously.
“Thank you—no!” laughed Ruth. “And, Sammy, I don’t want to be impolite,
but your mother said to send you home at eight o’clock, and it’s five
minutes past now.”
“Aw, shucks!” exclaimed Sammy. “That ain’t late!”
“It is for you,” said Ruth kindly. “Run along, Sammy.”
“Then you don’t want me to fight the burglars with your old goat and
pa’s gun?”
“Not to-night, thank you.”
“And don’t bring the alligator over again, either,” added Agnes.
Rather reluctantly Sammy prepared to depart, and after Dot and Tess had
hidden their dolls and some other choice possessions, they were sent
upstairs to bed in care of Mrs. MacCall.
“And don’t tell them any Scotch ghost stories,” cautioned Ruth. “They’re
on edge now, as it is, with what that irrepressible Sammy said about
burglars.”
“Nae, nae! I’ll nae tell them anything excitin’,” promised the motherly
old soul.
“Oh, my!” suddenly exclaimed Agnes, as the door bell rang after Ruth had
returned from seeing Sammy off and Dot and Tess upstairs to bed. “Oh!”
and she sprang up so abruptly that her nail buffer bounced half-way
across the room.
“Well, what’s getting into you?” demanded Neale, with a laugh, as he
picked up the part of the manicure set and restored it to Agnes, making
good an opportunity to hold her hand while Ruth went to see who was at
the door, calling back:
“It’s probably Luke and Cecile!”
And it was. Ruth led them back into the living-room in time to hear
Agnes saying to Neale:
“Stop! Stop it, I say! Aren’t you silly!”
Agnes had rather a red face, but if Luke noticed that Neale’s hair was a
bit tumbled, the young collegian said nothing about it.
“Oh, we’ve had such a fright!” exclaimed Agnes, after greeting the
visitors.
“Fright?” repeated Cecile, questioningly.
“Yes. Two strange men got in the cellar——”
“Oh, they didn’t _get_ in at all, in the way you think Agnes means,”
Ruth was quick to explain. “I saw them go in,” and she told the story,
including what Neale had discovered to the effect that the men had told
false stories about themselves.
“I dare say it doesn’t amount to anything,” suggested Luke easily. “And
it might well be that some assistant in the water department had engaged
two laborers in a hurry and forgot to give them any credentials, or
report their names. I wouldn’t worry.”
“Oh, we aren’t,” declared Ruth. “We have enough other things to think
about. I do hope you two haven’t made up your minds definitely that you
can’t be here for our house party all through its duration. Nally is
coming.
“We want you over as often as either of you can make it, at any rate,
for we will give several small and early affairs to entertain Nally,”
she went on, after Cecile and Luke had assured her that neither of them
would be able to spend the whole time of Nally’s visit with the Corner
House girls.
“Aunt Lorena needs me,” explained Cecile. “But Professor Keeps is not
keeping Luke quite so busy now, and you will have more of him, I think.”
The young people sat about and talked such talk as only young folks
indulge in without any harmful after effects, and then they played a
game, with more regard to fun than to the strict rules the game called
for.
“Well, Neale, I suppose you’re getting ready for the grind soon,”
remarked Luke, after the game and while Ruth gave the word for Linda to
bring in some simple refreshments.
“Meaning high school?”
“That’s it.”
“Yes, I’ll be getting back in a few weeks now.”
“I do hope you won’t be so busy but what you can run our car
occasionally,” suggested Agnes. “I’d feel lost without you at the wheel,
Neale.”
“Oh, I’ll be there,” he promised.
“We shall have to give Nally a good time,” said Ruth, “and I was
planning two or three picnics. You’ll come, won’t you, Cecile?” she
asked, but she looked at Luke.
“Yes, if I can. I don’t know how much time brother can spare from his
work, but——”
“You leave it to brother!” chuckled Luke, with a meaning look at Neale.
“I haven’t been with Professor Keeps all summer for nothing. I learned
more than he thought I did.”
The evening passed pleasantly, and when the time came for Neale, Luke
and Cecile to depart, the two young men insisted on going around the
house to make sure all outer doors were securely fastened.
“Oh, it’s silly to think those men could be anything more than
unfortunate, ignorant tramps,” insisted Ruth.
“Yes, perhaps,” said Luke in a low voice. “But, my dear—” and how
naturally the words came to him—“we mustn’t take any chances.”
And Ruth treasured that “we,” for a long time.
Somewhat to the disappointment of Tess and Dot, and to the expressed
chagrin of Sammy, the Corner House was not robbed that night. Not a
sight or sound of intruders marred the rest of the girls, and even Dot
laughed as she pulled her Alice-doll from behind the piano.
“Well, Agnes,” remarked Ruth, when the household had settled into its
usual calm routine, “shall we go down town and see Miss Ann Titus?”
“About our dresses? Oh, I suppose so. But don’t say a word about those
two men!”
“Oh, of course not! There is no need of its being known all over the
neighborhood, and I know what Ann Titus is as well as you do. Mum is the
word, as Neale would say.”
The girls found Miss Titus, as usual, with a mouth full of pins, as she
draped a dress on one of the forms in her little house. But even the
pins in her mouth did not prevent the village dressmaker from talking:
“So glad you came in. I have some of the loveliest new patterns and
ideas, straight from Paris, my dears! You know they’re wearing fuller
and longer skirts now, and——”
“No extreme styles, if you please, Miss Titus,” said Ruth, firmly.
“Oh, I know, my _dear_. You were always _so_ preservative, and I quite
apprehend what you mean. At the same time if a dress isn’t the least bit
_chick_ nowadays, it is sort of pass, don’t you think?”
The girls could hardly keep their faces straight during this
mispronunciation of French words and misapplication of English ones.
Poor Ann Titus had not formerly been this way, but since a new
dressmaker had started a place in Milton, Miss Titus thought it
necessary to adopt for herself what she considered a French style, and
some of what she thought were their mannerisms, while she had the plate
on her door changed from the word “_Dressmaker_,” to the foreign one
_“Modes_.”
However, she was a good soul, if gossipy, and as long as Ruth and Agnes
knew her failing they were on their guard.
They were in the midst of a discussion over materials and patterns when
Ruth, happening to look from an open window near the street, saw two men
passing.
“There they are now!” she cried, before she thought. She sprang from her
chair to go to the door, but her voice carried more plainly than she had
intended, and the men, hearing it, looked at her and then started off
down the street on the run.
Agnes followed her sister.
“Do you mean those two men who were in our cellar?” she cried.
“Hush! Yes,” whispered Ruth. But Miss Titus had heard.