RUTH DOES WHAT SHE THINKS IS RIGHT
Mrs. Treble, as the tall, dark lady called herself, had such an air of
assurance and command, that Ruth was at a loss what course to take
with her. Finally the oldest Kenway girl found voice to say:
“Won’t you take one of these comfortable rockers, Mrs. Treble? Perhaps
we had better first talk the matter over a little.”
“Well, I’m glad to sit down,” admitted Mrs. Treble. “Don’t muss your
dress, Lillie. We’ve been traveling some ways, as I tell you. Clean
from Ypsilanti. We came on from Cleveland Junction this morning, and
it’s a hot day. _Don’t_ rub your shoes together, Lillie.”
“It _is_ very warm,” said Ruth, handing their visitor a fan and
sending Agnes for a glass of cold water from the icebox.
“Then we’ve been to that lawyer’s office,” pursued Mrs. Treble. “What
do you call him—Howbridge? Don’t rub your hands on your skirt,
Lillie.”
“Yes; Mr. Howbridge,” replied Ruth.
“_Don’t_ take off that hat, Lillie. So we’ve been walking in the sun
some. That’s nice, cool water. Have some, Lillie? Don’t drip it on
your dress.”
“Wouldn’t your little girl like to go with Tess and Dot to the
playhouse in the garden?” Ruth suggested. “Then we can talk.”
“Why—yes,” said Mrs. Treble. “Go with the little girls, Lillie. Don’t
you get a speck of dirt on you, Lillie.”
Ruth did not see the awful face the much admonished Lillie made, as
she left her mother’s side. It amazed Tess and Dot so that they could
not speak. Her tongue went into her cheek, and she drew down the
corners of her mouth and rolled her eyes, leering so terribly, that
for an instant she looked like nothing human. Then she resumed the
placidity of her angelic expression, and minced along after the
younger Kenway girls, and out of sight around a corner of the house.
Meanwhile, Agnes had drawn Ruth aside, and whispered: “What are you
going to do? She’s raving crazy, isn’t she? Had I better run for a
doctor—or the police?”
“Sh!” admonished Ruth. “She is by no means crazy. I don’t know _what_
to do!”
“But she says she has a right to live here, too,” gasped Agnes.
“Perhaps she has.”
“Mr. Howbridge said we were Uncle Peter’s only heirs,” said Agnes,
doggedly.
“May—maybe he didn’t know about this John Augustus Treble. We must
find out about it,” said Ruth, much worried. “Of course, we wouldn’t
want to keep anybody out of the property, if they had a better right
to it.”
“_What?_” shrilled Agnes. “Give it up? Not—on—your—life!”
In the meantime, Tess and Dot scarcely knew how to talk to Lillie
Treble. She was such a strange girl! They had never seen anybody at
all like her before.
Lillie walked around the house, out of her mother’s sight, just as
mincingly as a peacock struts. Her look of angelic sweetness would
have misled anybody. She just looked as though she had never done a
single wrong thing in all her sweet young life!
But Tess and Dot quickly found that Lillie Treble was not at all the
perfect creature she appeared to the casual observer. Her angelic
sweetness was all a sham. Away from her mother’s sharp eye, Lillie
displayed very quickly her true colors.
“Those all your dolls?” she demanded, when she was shown the
collection of Tess and Dot in the garden house.
“Yes,” said Tess.
“Well, my mother says we’re going to stay here, and if you want me to
play with you,” said this infantile socialist, “we might as well
divide them up right now.”
“Oh!” gasped Tess.
“I’ll take a third of them. They can be easily divided. I choose
_this_ one to begin with,” said Lillie, diving for the Alice-doll.
With a shriek of alarm, Dot rescued this—her choicest possession—and
stood on the defensive, the Alice-doll clasped close to her breast.
“No! you can’t have that,” said Tess, decidedly.
“Why not?” demanded Lillie.
“Why—it’s the doll Dot loves the best.”
“Well,” said Lillie, calmly, “I suppose if I chose one of _yours_,
you’d holler, too. I never did see such selfish girls. Huh! if I can’t
have the dolls I want, I won’t choose any. I don’t want to play with
the old things, anyway!” and she made a most dreadful face at the
Kenway sisters.
“Oh-oh!” whispered Dot. “I don’t like her at all.”
“Well, I suppose we must amuse her,” said Tess, strong for duty.
“But she says she is going to stay here all the time,” pursued the
troubled Dot, as Lillie wandered off toward the foot of the garden.
“I don’t believe that can be so,” said Tess, faintly. “But it’s our
duty to entertain her, while she _is_ here.”
“I don’t see why we should. She’s not a nice girl at all,” Dot
objected.
“Dot! you know very well Ruth wants us to look out for her,” Tess
said, with emphasis. “We can’t get out of it.”
So the younger girl, over-ruled by Tess, followed on. At the foot of
the garden, Lillie caught sight of Ruth’s flock of hens. Uncle Rufus
had repaired the henhouse and run, and Ruth had bought in the market a
dozen hens and a rooster of the white Plymouth Rock breed. Mr. Rooster
strutted around the enclosure very proudly with his family. They were
all very tame, for the children made pets of them.
“Don’t you ever let them out?” asked Lillie, peering through the
wire-screen.
“No. Not now, Ruth says. They would get into the garden,” Tess
replied.
“Huh! you could shoo them out again. I had a pet hen at Ypsilanti. I’d
rather have hens than dolls, anyway. The hens are alive,” and she
tried the gate entering upon the hen-run.
“Oh!” exclaimed Tess. “You mustn’t let them out.”
“Who’s letting them out?” demanded Lillie.
“Well, then, you mustn’t go into the yard.”
“Why not?” repeated the visitor.
“Ruth won’t like it.”
“Well, I guess my mother’s got more to say about this place than your
sister has. She says she’s going to show a parcel of girls how to run
this house, and run it right. That’s what she told Aunt Adeline and
Uncle Noah, when we went to live with them in Ypsilanti.”
Thus speaking, Lillie opened the gate and walked into the poultry
yard. At once there was great excitement in the flock. Lillie plunged
at the nearest hen and missed her. The rooster uttered a startled and
admonitory “Cut! cut! ca-dar-cut!” and led the procession of
frightened hens about the yard.
“Aren’t hens foolish?” demanded Lillie, calmly. “I am not going to
hurt her.”
She made another dive for the hen. The rooster uttered another shriek
of warning and went through the watering-pan, flapping his wings like
mad. The water was spilled, and the next attempt Lillie made to seize
a hen, she was precipitated into the puddle!
Both hands, one knee, and the front of her frock were immediately
streaked with mud. Lillie shrieked her anger, and plunged after the
frightened hens again. She was a determined girl. Tess and Dot added
their screams to the general hullabaloo.
Round and round went the hens, led by the gallant rooster. Finally the
inevitable happened. Lillie got both hands upon one of the white hens.
“Now I got you—silly!” shrieked Lillie.
But she spoke too quickly and too confidently. It was only the
tail-feathers Lillie grabbed. With a wild squawk, the hen flew
straight away, leaving the bulk of her plumage in the naughty girl’s
hands!
The girls outside the fence continued to scream, and so did the flock
of hens. The rooster, who was a heavy bird, came around the yard
again, on another lap, and wildly leaped upon Lillie’s back.
He scrambled over her, his great spurs and claws tearing her frock,
and his wings beating her breathlessly to the ground. Just then Uncle
Rufus came hobbling along.
“Glo-ree! who dat chile in dat hen-cage?” he demanded. “Dat ol’
rooster’ll put her eyes out for her—dat he will!”
He opened the gate, went in, and grabbed up Lillie Treble from the
ground. When he set her on her feet outside the fence, she was a sight
to behold!
“Glo-ree!” gasped Uncle Rufus. “What you doin’ in dar, chile?”
“Mind your own business!” exclaimed Lillie. “You’re only a black man.
I don’t have to mind _you_, I hope.”
She was covered with mud and dust, and her frock was in great
disarray, but she was self-contained—and as saucy as ever. Tess and
Dot were horrified by her language.
“I dunno who yo’ is, gal!” exclaimed Uncle Rufus. “But yo’ let Missie
Ruth’s chickens erlone, or I’ll see ter yuh, lak’ yer was one o’ my
own gran’chillen.”
Lillie was sullen—and just a little frightened of Uncle Rufus. The
disaster made but slight impression upon her mind.
“What—what will your mother say?” gasped Tess, when the three girls
were alone again.
“She won’t say anything—till she sees me,” sniffed Lillie. And to put
that evil hour off, she began to inquire as to further possibilities
for action about the old Corner House.
“What do you girls do?” she asked.
“Why,” said Tess, “we play house; and play go visiting; and—and roll
hoop; and sometimes skip rope——”
“Huh! that’s dreadful tame. Don’t you ever _do_ anything——Oh!
there’s my mother!” A window had opened in one of the wings of the big
house, on the second floor. It was a window of a room that the Kenway
family had not before used. Tess and Dot saw Ruth as well as Mrs.
Treble at the window.
Ruth was doing what she thought was right. Mrs. Treble had confessed
to the oldest of the Corner House girls that she had arrived at Milton
with scarcely any money. She could not pay her board even at the very
cheapest hotel. Mr. Howbridge was away, Ruth knew, and nothing could
be done to straighten out this tangle in affairs until the lawyer came
back.
So she had offered Mrs. Treble shelter for the present. Moreover, the
lady, with a confidence equaled only by Aunt Sarah’s, demanded in
quite a high and mighty way to be housed and fed. Yet she had calmed
down, and actually thanked Ruth for her hospitality, when she found
that the girl was not to be intimidated, but was acting the part of a
Good Samaritan from a sense of duty.
Agnes was too angry for words. She could not understand why Ruth
should cater to this “Mrs. Trouble,” as she insisted, in secret, upon
calling the woman from Ypsilanti.
Ruth was showing the visitor a nice room on the same floor with those
chambers occupied by the girls themselves, and Mrs. Treble was
approving, when she chanced to look out of the window and behold her
angelic Lillie in the condition related above.