THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS WIN PUBLIC APPROVAL
Was it Mr. Howbridge’s wish, or her own desire, that set Ruth the very
next day at the task of searching the garret thoroughly? She allowed
only Agnes to go up with her; Tess and Dot were out of the house, Mrs.
McCall was busy, and the lady from Ypsilanti was engaged in nursing
her little daughter.
These days they were much relieved of Mrs. Treble’s interference in
their affairs. Lillie claimed all her mother’s attention, and although
the child was not very ill, she managed to take up almost every moment
of her mother’s time.
Agnes was frankly scary about the huge lumber-room at the top of the
house. Despite Ruth’s declaration that they would use the garret to
play in on stormy days, they had not often gone there for that—nor
for any other—purpose.
The girls had removed all the ancient garments and aired them. Many
were moth-eaten and past redemption; those went to the ragman. Others
were given to Petunia Blossom to be fixed over for her growing family.
Some of the remainder were hung up again, shrouding one dark corner of
the garret in which Ruth knew there was neither box, nor chest, nor
trunk.
It was the chests of drawers, and boxes, the two girls gave their
attention to on the occasion of this search. Before, Ruth had opened
several of the old-fashioned receptacles and rummaged in the contents.
Now she and Agnes went at the task methodically.
Everything was taken out of the chests, and boxes, and drawers, and
shaken out before being put back again. The girls came upon many
unexpected treasures, and Agnes soon forgot her fear of the supposed
ghostly occupant of the garret.
Ruth, however, would not allow her to stop and try on wonderful
ancient garments, or read yellowed letters, bound with faded tape, or
examine the old-fashioned gift-books, between the leaves of which were
pressed flowers and herbs, all of which, Agnes was sure, were the
souvenirs of sentiment.
Oh, yes! there were papers—reams and reams of them! But they were
either letters of no moment to the quest in hand, or ancient documents
of no possible use save for their historical value. They came upon
some papers belonging to the original Peter Stower—the strong,
hard-working man who had built this great house in his old age and had
founded the family.
He had been an orphan and had been sheltered in the Milton poorhouse.
Here was his “indenture paper,” which bound him to a blacksmith of the
town when he was twelve years old. As Ruth and Agnes read the faded
lines and old-fashioned printing, they realized that the difference
between an apprentice in those days in the north, and a black slave in
the south, was all in favor of the last named.
But this “bound boy” had worked, studied nights so as to get some
education, had married his master’s daughter, and come in time to be
heir to his business. He had taken contracts for furnishing the
ironwork for government warships, and so, little by little, had risen
to be a prosperous, then a very wealthy man.
The old Corner House was the fruit of his labor and his desire to
establish in the town of his miserable beginnings, a monument to his
own pluck and endeavor. Where he may have been scorned for the “bound
boy” that he was, he took pride in leaving behind him when he died the
memory only of a strong, rich, proud man.
The girls found nothing which the last Peter Stower could have
considered—whether he were miser, or not—of sufficient value to hide
away. Certainly no recently dated papers came to light, and no will at
all, or anything that looked like such a document.
They ransacked every drawer, taking them out of the worm-eaten, shaky
pieces of furniture, and rummaging behind them for secret panels and
the like. Actually, the only thing the girls found that mystified them
at all in their search, was half a doughnut lying on a window sill!
“Whoever left that doughnut there?” demanded Agnes. “I don’t believe
the girls have been up here alone. Could that Lillie have been here?”
“Perhaps,” sighed Ruth. “She was going everywhere about the house,
before she was taken down sick.”
“It’s a blessing she’s sick—that’s what _I_ say,” was Agnes’ rather
heartless reply. “But—a doughnut! and all hard and dry.”
“Maybe it was Dot’s goat?” chuckled Ruth, nervously.
“Don’t!” gasped Agnes. “My nerves are all on the jump as it is. Is
there any single place in this whole garret that we haven’t looked?”
Ruth chanced to be staring at the doughnut on the window sill, and did
not at first answer. That was the window at the right of the chimney
where she had seen the ghostly apparition fluttering in the storm. The
space about the window remained cleared, as it was before.
“Wake up!” commanded Agnes. “Where shall we look now?”
Ruth turned with a sigh and went toward the high and ornate
black-walnut “secretary” that stood almost in the middle of the huge
room.
“Goodness to gracious!” ejaculated the younger girl. “We’ve tried that
old thing again and again. I’ve almost knocked the backboards off,
pounding to see if there were secret places in it. It’s as empty as it
is ugly.”
“I suppose so,” sighed Ruth. “It’s strange, though, that Uncle Peter
did not keep papers in it, for that is what it was intended for.
Almost every drawer and cupboard in it locks with a different key.”
She had been given a huge bunch of keys by Mr. Howbridge when they
first came to the Corner House; and she had used these keys freely in
searching the garret furniture.
As they went hopelessly down to the third floor, at last, Ruth noticed
that one of the small chambers on this floor, none of which the family
had used since coming to Milton, had been opened. The door now stood
ajar.
“I suppose that snoopy Mrs. Treble has been up here,” said Agnes,
sharply. “I thought all these doors were locked, Ruth?”
“Not all of them had keys. But they were all shut tightly,” and she
went to this particular room and peered in.
The bed was a walnut four-poster—one of the old-fashioned kind that
was “roped”—and the feather-bed lay upon it, covered with an
old-fashioned quilt.
“Why! it looks just as though somebody had been sleeping here,” gasped
Ruth, after a moment.
“What?” cried Agnes. “Impossible!”
“Doesn’t that look like the imprint of a body on the bed? Not a big
person. Somebody as big as Tess, perhaps?”
“It wasn’t Tess, I am quite sure,” declared Agnes.
“Could it have been Sandy-face?”
“Of course not! No cat would make such a big hollow, lying down in a
bed. I know! it was that Lillie Treble—‘Double Trouble’! Of course,”
concluded Agnes, with assurance.
So Ruth came out and closed the door carefully. Had it not been for
her sister’s assurance at just this moment, Ruth might have made a
surprising discovery, there and then!
She had to report to Mr. Howbridge, by note, that a thorough search of
the garret had revealed nothing which Uncle Peter Stower could have
hidden away.
While Lillie was under the doctor’s care, Mrs. Treble was out of the
way. Affairs at the old Corner House went on in a more tranquil way.
The Creamer girls who had first been ill, were allowed out of doors,
and became very friendly with Tess and Dot—over the fence. The
quarantine bars were not, as yet, altogether down.
Maria Maroni came to see them frequently, and Alfredia Blossom brought
her shining black face to the old Corner House regularly, on Mondays
and Thursdays. Usually she could not stop to play on Monday, when she
and Jackson came for the soiled clothes, but if Petunia got the
ironing done early enough on Thursday, Alfredia visited for a while.
“I don’t believe Alfredia could be any nicer, if she was bleached
white,” Dot said, seriously, on one occasion. “But I know she’d like
to be like us—and other folks, Tess.”
“I expect she would,” agreed Tess. “But we must treat her just as
though her skin was like ours. Ruth says she is sure Alfredia’s heart
is white.”
“Oh!” gasped Dot. “And they showed us in school before we left
Bloomingsburg, pictures of folks’ hearts, and lungs, and livers—don’t
you remember? And the heart was painted _red_.”
“I don’t expect they were photographs,” said Tess, decidedly. “And
there aren’t any pictures exact but photographs—and movies.”
The Pease girls came frequently to play with Tess and Dot, and the
younger Kenways went to _their_ house. None of the Corner House girls
could go out on the street now without being spoken to by the Milton
people. Many of these friendly advances were made by comparative
strangers to the four sisters.
The tangle of Uncle Peter Stower’s affairs had gotten even into the
local newspapers, and one newspaper reporter came to Ruth for what he
called “an interview.” Ruth sent him to Mr. Howbridge and never heard
anything more of it.
The friends Agnes had made among the girls of her own, and Ruth’s, age
began to come to call more frequently. Eva Larry admitted she felt
shivery, whenever she approached the old house, and she could not be
hired to come on a stormy day. Just the same, she was so sorry for the
girls, and liked Agnes so much, that she just _had_ to run in and
cheer them up a bit.
Older people came, too. Ruth’s head might have been turned, had she
been a less sensible girl. The manner in which she handled the
situation which had risen out of Mrs. Treble’s coming east to demand a
share of the property left by Peter Stower, seemed to have become
public knowledge, and the public of Milton approved.
Nobody called on Mrs. Treble. Perhaps that was because she was
quarantined upstairs, with Lillie convalescent from her attack of the
measles. However, the Corner House girls, as they were now generally
called, seemed to be making friends rapidly.
Public approval had set its seal upon their course.