GETTING SETTLED
It was the time of the June fruit fall when the Kenway girls came to
the Old Corner House in Milton. A roistering wind shook the peach
trees in the side yard and at the back that first night, and at once
the trees pelted the grass and the flowers beneath their overladen
branches with the little, hard green pellets that would never now be
luscious fruit.
“Don’t you s’pose they’re sorry as we are, because they won’t ever be
good for nothing?” queried Dot, standing on the back porch to view the
scattered measure of green fruit upon the ground.
“Don’t worry about it, Dot. Those that are left on the trees will be
all the bigger and sweeter, Ruth says,” advised Tess. “You see, those
little green things would only have been in the way of the fruit up
above, growing. The trees had too many children to take care of,
anyway, and had to shake some off. Like the Old Woman Who Lived in a
Shoe.”
“But I never _did_ feel that she was a real mother,” said Dot, not
altogether satisfied. “And it seems too bad that all those pretty,
little, velvety things couldn’t turn into peaches.”
“Well, for my part,” said Tess, more briskly, “I don’t see how so many
of them managed to cling on, that old wind blew so! Didn’t you hear it
tearing at the shutters and squealing because it couldn’t get in, and
hooting down the chimney?”
“I didn’t want to hear it,” confessed Dot. “It—it sounded worse than
Tommy Rooney hollering at you on the dark stairs.”
The girls had slept very contentedly in the two great rooms which Ruth
chose at the back of the house for their bedrooms, and which opened
into each other and into one of the bathrooms. Aunt Sarah did not mind
being alone at the front.
“I always intended havin’ this room when I got back into this house,”
she said, in one of her infrequent confidences to Ruth. “I wanted it
when I was a gal. It was a guest room. Peter said I shouldn’t have it.
But I’m back in it now, in spite of him—ain’t I?”
Following Uncle Peter’s death, Mr. Howbridge had hired a woman to
clean and fix up the rooms in the Corner House, which had been
occupied in the old man’s lifetime. But there was plenty for Ruth and
Agnes to do during the first few days.
Although they had no intention of using the parlors, there was quite
enough for the Kenway girls to do in caring for the big kitchen (in
which they ate, too), the dining-room, which they used as a general
sitting-room, the halls and stairs, and the three bedrooms.
The doors of the other rooms on the two floors (and they seemed
innumerable) Ruth kept closed with the blinds at the windows drawn.
“I don’t like so many shut doors,” Dot confided to Tess, as they were
dusting the carved balustrade in the big hall, and the big, hair-cloth
covered pieces of furniture which were set about the lower floor of
it. “You don’t know what is behind them—ready to pop out!”
“Isn’t anything behind them,” said the practical Tess. “Don’t you be a
little ‘’fraid-cat,’ Dot.”
Then a door rattled, and a latch clicked, and both girls drew suddenly
together, while their hearts throbbed tumultuously.
“Of course, that was only the old wind,” whispered Tess, at last.
“Ye-es. But the wind wasn’t ever like that at home in Bloomingsburg,”
stammered Dot. “I—I don’t believe I am going to like this big house,
Tess. I—I wish we were home in Essex Street.”
She actually burst out crying and ran to Ruth, who chanced to open the
dining-room door. Agnes was with her, and the twelve year old demanded
of Tess:
“What’s the matter with that child? What have you been doing to her?”
“Why, Aggie! You know I wouldn’t do anything to her,” declared Tess, a
little hurt by the implied accusation.
“Of course you haven’t, dear,” said Ruth, soothing the sobbing Dot.
“Tell us about it.”
“Dot’s afraid—the house is so big—and the doors rattle,” said Tess.
“Ugh! it _is_ kind of spooky,” muttered Aggie.
“O-o-o!” gasped Tess.
“Hush!” commanded Ruth, quickly.
“What’s ‘spooky’?” demanded Dot, hearing a new word, and feeling that
its significance was important.
“Never you mind, Baby,” said Aggie, kissing her. “It isn’t anything
that’s going to bite _you_.”
“I tell you,” said Ruth, with decision, “you take her out into the
yard to play, Tess. Aggie and I will finish here. We mustn’t let her
get a dislike for this lovely old house. We’re the Corner House girls,
you know, and we mustn’t be afraid of our own home,” and she kissed
Dot again.
“I—I guess I’ll like it by and by,” sobbed Dot, trying hard to
recover her composure. “But—but it’s so b-b-big and scary.”
“Nothing at all to scare you here, dear,” said Ruth, briskly. “Now,
run along.”
When the smaller girls had gone for their hats, Ruth said to Aggie:
“You know, mother always said Dot had too much imagination. She just
pictures things as so much worse, or so much better, than they really
are. Now, if she should really ever be frightened here, maybe she’d
never like the old house to live in at all.”
“Oh, my!” said Aggie. “I hope that won’t happen. For I think this is
just the very finest house I ever saw. There is none as big in sight
on this side of the parade ground. We must be awfully rich, Ruth.”
“Why—why I never thought of that,” said the elder sister, slowly. “I
don’t know whether we are actually rich, or not. Mr. Howbridge said
something about there being a lot of tenements and money, but, you
see, as long as Uncle Peter’s will can’t be found, maybe we can’t use
much of the money.”
“We’ll have to work hard to keep this place clean,” sighed Aggie.
“We haven’t anything else to do this summer, anyway,” said Ruth,
quickly. “And maybe things will be different by fall.”
“Maybe we can find the will!” exclaimed Aggie, voicing a sudden
thought.
“Oh!”
“Wouldn’t that be great?”
“I’ll ask Mr. Howbridge if we may look. I expect _he_ has looked in
all the likely places,” Ruth said, after a moment’s reflection.
“Then we’ll look in the unlikely ones,” chuckled Aggie. “You know, you
read in story books about girls finding money in old stockings, and in
cracked teapots, and behind pictures in the parlor, and inside the
stuffing of old chairs, and——”
“Goodness me!” exclaimed Ruth. “You are as imaginative as Dot
herself.”
Meanwhile Tess and Dot had run out into the yard. They had already
made a tour of discovery about the neglected garden and the front
lawn, where the grass was crying-out for the mower.
Ruth said she was going to have some late vegetables, and there was a
pretty good chicken house and wired run. If they could get a few hens,
the eggs would help out on the meat-bill. _That_ was the way Ruth
Kenway still looked at things!
The picket fence about the front of the old Corner House property was
higher than the heads of the two younger girls. As they went slowly
along by the front fence, looking out upon Main Street, they saw many
people look curiously in at them. It doubtless seemed strange in the
eyes of Milton people to see children running about the yard of the
old Corner House, which for a generation had been practically shut up.
There were other children, too, who looked in between the pickets, too
shy to speak, but likewise curious. One boy, rather bigger than Tess,
stuck a long pole between two of the pickets, and when Dot was not
looking, he turned the pole suddenly and confined her between it and
the fence.
Dot squealed—although it did not hurt much, only startled her. Tess
flew to the rescue.
“Don’t you do that!” she cried. “She’s my sister! I’ll just give it to
you——”
But there came a much more vigorous rescuer from outside the fence. A
long legged, hatless colored girl, maybe a year or two older than
Tess, darted across Main Street from the other side.
“Let go o’ dat! Let go o’ dat, you Sam Pinkney! You’s jes’ de baddes’
boy in Milton! I done tell your mudder so on’y dis berry
mawnin’——Yes-sah!”
She fell upon the mischievous Sam and boxed both of his ears soundly,
dragging the pole out from between the pickets as well, all in a
flash. She was as quick as could be.
“Don’ you be ’fraid, you lil’ w’ite gals!” said this champion, putting
her brown, grinning face to an aperture between the pickets, her white
teeth and the whites of her eyes shining.
“Dat no-’count Sam Pinkney is sho’ a nuisance in dis town—ya-as’m! My
mudder say so. ’F I see him a-tantalizin’ you-uns again, he’n’ me’ll
have de gre’tes’ bustification we ever _did_ hab—now, I tell yo’,
honeys.”
She then burst into a wide-mouthed laugh that made Tess and Dot smile,
too. The brown girl added:
“You-uns gwine to lib in dat ol’ Co’ner House?”
“Yes,” said Tess. “Our Uncle Peter lived here.”
“Sho’! I know erbout him. My gran’pappy lived yere, too,” said the
colored girl. “Ma name’s Alfredia Blossom. Ma mammy’s Petunia Blossom,
an’ she done washin’ for de w’ite folks yere abouts.”
“We’re much obliged to you for chasing that bad boy away,” said Tess,
politely. “Won’t you come in?”
“I gotter run back home, or mammy’ll wax me good,” grinned Alfredia.
“But I’s jes’ as much obleeged to yo’. On’y I wouldn’t go inter dat
old Co’ner House for no money—no, _Ma’am_!”
“Why not?” asked Tess, as the colored girl prepared to depart.
“It’s spooky—dat’s what,” declared Alfredia, and the next moment she
ran around the corner and disappeared up Willow Street toward one of
the poorer quarters of the town.
“There!” gasped Dot, grabbing Tess by the hand. “What does _that_
mean? She says this old Corner House is ‘spooky,’ too. What does
‘spooky’ mean, Tess?”