THE OLD CORNER HOUSE
“Now,” said Tess, with her most serious air, “shall we take everything
in our playhouse, Dot, or shall we take only the best things?”
“Oh-oo-ee!” sighed Dot. “It’s so hard to ’cide, Tess, just what _is_
the best. ’Course, I’m going to take my Alice-doll and all her
things.”
Tess pursed her lips. “That old cradle she used to sleep in when she
was little, is dreadfully shabby. And one of the rockers is loose.”
“Oh, but Tess!” cried the younger girl. “It was _hers_. You know, when
she gets really growed up, she’ll maybe want it for a keepsake. Maybe
she’ll want dollies of her own to rock in it.”
Dot did not lack imagination. The Alice-doll was a very real
personality to the smallest Kenway girl.
Dot lived in two worlds—the regular, work-a-day world in which she
went to school and did her small tasks about the flat; and a much
larger, more beautiful world, in which the Alice-doll and kindred toys
had an actual existence.
“And all the clothes she’s outgrown—and shoes—and everything?”
demanded Tess. Then, with a sigh: “Well, it will be an awful litter,
and Ruth says the trunks are just squeezed full right now!”
The Kenways were packing up for removal to Milton. Mr. Howbridge had
arranged everything with Ruth, as soon as he had explained the change
of fortune that had come to the four sisters.
None of them really understood what the change meant—not even Ruth.
They had always been used—ever since they could remember—to what
Aggie called “tight squeezing.” Mr. Howbridge had placed fifty dollars
in Ruth’s hand before he went away, and had taken a receipt for it.
None of the Kenways had ever before even _seen_ so much money at one
time.
They were to abandon most of their poor possessions right here in the
flat, for their great uncle’s old house was crowded with furniture
which, although not modern, was much better than any of theirs. Aunt
Sarah was going to take her special rocker. She insisted upon that.
“I won’t be beholden to Peter for even a chair to sit in!” she had
said, grimly, and that was all the further comment she made upon the
astounding statement of the lawyer, that the eccentric old bachelor
had not seen fit to will all his property to her!
There was a bit of uncertainty and mystery about the will of Uncle
Peter, and about their right to take over his possessions. Mr.
Howbridge had explained that fully to Ruth.
There was no doubt in his mind but that the will he had drawn for
Uncle Peter was still in existence, and that the old gentleman had
made no subsequent disposal of his property to contradict the terms of
the will the lawyer remembered.
There were no other known heirs but the four Kenway sisters. Therefore
the Probate Court had agreed that the lawyer should enter into
possession of the property on behalf of Ruth and her sisters.
As long as the will was not found, and admitted to probate, and its
terms clearly established in law, there was doubt and uncertainty
connected with the girls’ wonderful fortune. Some unexpected claimant
might appear to demand a share of the property. It was, in fact, now
allowed by the Court, that Mr. Howbridge and the heirs-at-law should
occupy the deceased’s home and administer the estate, being answerable
to the probate judge for all that was done.
To the minds of Tess and Dot, all this meant little. Indeed, even the
two older girls did not much understand the complications. What Aunt
Sarah understood she managed, as usual, to successfully hide within
herself.
There was to be a wonderful change in their affairs—that was the main
thing that impressed the minds of the four sisters. Dot had been the
first to express it concretely, when she suggested they might treat
themselves on Saturdays to something beside the usual five cents’
worth of peppermint drops.
“I expect,” said Tess, “that we won’t really know how to live, Dot, in
so big a house. Just think! there’s three stories and an attic!”
“Just as if we were living in this very tenement all, all alone!”
breathed Dot, with awe.
“Only much better—and bigger—and nicer,” said Tess, eagerly. “Ruth
remembers going there once with mother. Uncle Peter was sick. She
didn’t go up stairs, but stayed down with a big colored man—Uncle
Rufus. She ’members all about it. The room she stayed in was as big as
all these in our flat, put together.”
This was too wonderful for Dot to really understand. But if Ruth said
it, it must be so. She finally sighed again, and said:
“I—I guess I’ll be ’fraid in such rooms. And we’ll get lost in the
house, if it’s so big.”
“No. Of course, we won’t live all over the house. Maybe we’ll live
days on the first floor, and sleep in bedrooms on the second floor,
and never go up stairs on the other floors at all.”
“Oh, well!” said Dot, gaining sudden courage—and curiosity. “I guess
I’d want to see what’s on them, just the same.”
There were people in the big tenement house quite as poor as the
Kenways themselves. Among these poor families Ruth distributed the
girls’ possessions that they did not wish to take to Milton. Tommy
Rooney’s mother was thankful for a bed and some dishes, and the
kitchen table. She gave Tommy a decisive thrashing, when she caught
him jumping out of the dark at Dot on the very last day but one,
before the Kenways left Essex Street for their new home.
Master Tommy was sore in spirit and in body when he met Tess and Dot
on the sidewalk, later. There were tear-smears on his cheeks, but his
eyes began to snap as usual, when he saw the girls.
“I don’t care,” he said. “I’m goin’ to run away from here, anyway,
before long. Just as soon as I get enough food saved up, and can swap
my alleys and chaneys with Billy Drake for his air-rifle.”
“Why, Tommy Rooney!” exclaimed Tess. “Where are you going to run to?”
“I—I——Well, that don’t matter! I’ll find some place. What sort of a
place is this you girls are going to? Is it ’way out west? If it is,
and there’s plenty of Injuns to fight with, and scalp, mebbe I’ll come
there with you.”
Tess was against this instantly. “I don’t know about the Indians,” she
said; “but I thought you wanted to be an Indian yourself? You have an
Indian suit.”
“Aw, I know,” said Master Tommy. “That’s Mom’s fault. I told her I
wanted to be a cowboy, but she saw them Injun outfits at a bargain and
she got one instead. I never did want to be an Injun, for when you
play with the other fellers, the cowboys always have to win the
battles. Best we Injuns can do is to burn a cowboy at the stake, once
in a while—like they do in the movin’ pitchers.”
“Well, I’m sure there are not any Indians at Milton,” said Tess. “You
can’t come there, Tommy. And, anyway, your mother would only bring you
back and whip you again.”
“She’d have to catch me first!” crowed the imp of mischief, who forgot
very quickly the smarts of punishment. “Once I get armed and
provisioned (I got more’n a loaf of bread and a whole tin of sardines
hid away in a place I won’t tell you where!), I’ll start off and Mom
won’t never find me—no, sir-ree, sir!”
“You see what a bad, bad boy he is, Dot,” sighed Tess. “I’m so glad we
haven’t any brother.”
“Oh, but if we did have,” said Dot, with assurance, “he’d be a cowboy
and not an Indian, from the very start!”
This answer was too much for Tess! She decided to say no more about
boys, for it seemed as impossible to convince Dot on the subject as it
was Aggie.
Aggie, meanwhile, was the busiest of the four sisters. There were so
many girls she had to say good-by to, and weep with, and promise
undying affection for, and agree to write letters to—at least three a
week!—and invite to come to Milton to visit them at the old Corner
House, when they once got settled there.
“If all these girls come at once, Aggie,” said Ruth, mildly
admonitory, “I am afraid even Uncle Peter’s big house won’t hold
them.”
“Then we’ll have an overflow meeting on the lawn,” retorted Aggie,
grinning. Then she clouded up the very next minute and the tears
flowed: “Oh, dear! I know I’ll never see any of them again, we’re
going away so far.”
“Well! I wouldn’t boo-hoo over it,” Ruth said. “There will be girls in
Milton, too. And by next September when you go to school again, you
will have dozens of spoons.”
“But not girls like these,” said Aggie, sorrowfully. And, actually,
she believed it!
This is not much yet about the old Corner House that had stood since
the earliest remembrance of the oldest inhabitant of Milton, on the
corner of Main and Willow Streets.
Milton was a county seat. Across the great, shaded parade ground from
the Stower mansion, was the red brick courthouse itself. On this side
of the parade there were nothing but residences, and none of them had
been so big and fine in their prime as the Corner House.
In the first place there were three-quarters’ of an acre of ground
about the big, colonial mansion. It fronted Main Street, but set so
far back from that thoroughfare, that it seemed very retired. There
was a large, shady lawn in front, and old-fashioned flower beds, and
flowering shrubs. For some time past, the grounds had been neglected
and some of the flowers just grew wild.
The house stood close to the side street, and its upper windows were
very blank looking. Mr. Peter Stower had lived on the two lower floors
only. “And that is all you will probably care to take charge of, Miss
Kenway,” said Mr. Howbridge, with a smile, when he first introduced
Ruth to the Corner House.
Ruth had only a dim memory of the place from that one visit to it when
Uncle Peter chanced to be sick. She knew that he had lived here with
his single negro servant, and that the place had—even to her
infantile mind—seemed bare and lonely.
Now, however, Ruth knew that she and her sisters would soon liven the
old house up. It was a delightful change from the city tenement. She
could not imagine anybody being lonely, or homesick, in the big old
house.
Six great pillars supported the porch roof, which jutted out above the
second story windows. The big oak door, studded with strange little
carvings, was as heavy as that of a jail, or fortress!
Some of the windows had wide sills, and others came right down to the
floor and opened onto the porch like two-leaved doors.
There was a great main hall in the middle of the house. Out of this a
wide stairway led upward, branching at the first landing, one flight
going to the east and the other to the west chambers. There was a
gallery all around this hall on the second floor.
The back of the Corner House was much less important in appearance
than the main building. Two wings had been built on, and the floors
were not on a level with the floors in the front of the house, so that
one had to go up and down funny, little brief flights of stairs to get
to the sleeping chambers. There were unexpected windows, with deep
seats under them, in dark corners, and important looking doors which
merely opened into narrow linen closets, while smaller doors gave
entrance upon long and heavily furnished rooms, which one would not
have really believed were in the house, to look at them from the
outside.
“Oh-oo-ee!” cried Dot, when she first entered the big front door of
the Corner House, clutching Tess tightly by the hand. “We _could_ get
lost in this house.”
Mr. Howbridge laughed. “If you stick close to this wise, big sister of
yours, little one,” said the lawyer, looking at Ruth, “you will not
get lost. And I guarantee no other harm will come to you.”
The lawyer had learned to have great respect for the youthful head of
the Kenway household. Ruth was as excited as she could be about the
old house, and their new fortune, and all. She had a little color in
her cheeks, and her beautiful great brown eyes shone, and her lips
were parted. She was actually pretty!
“What a great, great fortune it is for us,” she said. “I—I hope we’ll
all know how to enjoy it to the best advantage. I hope no harm will
come of it. I hope Aunt Sarah won’t be really offended, because Uncle
Peter did not leave it to her.”
Aunt Sarah stalked up the main stairway without a word. She knew her
way about the Corner House.
She took possession of one of the biggest and finest rooms in the
front part, on the second floor. When she had lived here as a young
woman, she had been obliged to sleep in one of the rear rooms which
was really meant for the occupancy of servants.
Now she established herself in the room of her choice, had the
expressman bring her rocking-chair up to it, and settled with her
crocheting in the pleasantest window overlooking Main Street. There
might be, as Aggie said rather tartly, “bushels of work” to do to
straighten out the old house and make it homey; Aunt Sarah did not
propose to lift her hand to such domestic tasks.
Occasionally she was in the habit of interfering in the very things
the girls did not need, or desire, help in, but in no other way did
Aunt Sarah show her interest in the family life of the Kenways.
“And we’re all going to have our hands full, Ruth,” said Aggie, in
some disturbance of mind, “to keep this big place in trim. It isn’t
like a flat.”
“I know,” admitted Ruth. “There’s a lot to do.”
Even the older sister did not realize as yet what their change of
fortune meant to them. It seemed to them as though the fifty dollars
Mr. Howbridge had advanced should be made to last for a long, long
time.
A hundred thousand dollars’ worth of property was only a series of
figures as yet in the understanding of Ruth, and Agnes, and Tess, and
Dot. Besides, there was the uncertainty about Uncle Peter’s will.
The fortune, after all, might disappear from their grasp as suddenly
as it had been thrust into it.