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.