AUNT SARAH SPEAKS OUT
Tommy Rooney’s capture explained some of the mysterious happenings
about the old Corner House, but he could not satisfy Ruth regarding
the figure she had seen appear at the garret window. For _that_
happened before Tommy had ever been in the house.
They were all kind to Tommy, however—all but Mrs. Treble—after Tess
had pleaded for him. Mrs. McCall washed his face and hands, and even
kissed him—on the sly—and then set him down to a very satisfying
meal. For as often as he had raided Mrs. McCall’s pantry at night
since taking up his abode in the garret of the old Corner House, he
had not had a real “_square_” meal for a month.
The house was so big that, by keeping to the two upper floors of the
main part during the daytime, and venturing out-of-doors by way of the
cellar window only at night, Master Tommy had been able to avoid the
family for weeks.
He had entered the house first on that evening when he was chased by
Mr. Pinkney and the bulldog. Finding the back door open, he had run up
the back stairs, and so climbed higher, and higher, until he reached
the garret.
Nobody said anything to Master Tommy about the ghost, although Agnes
wanted to. Ruth forbade her to broach the subject to the runaway.
Tommy had made a nest behind the old clothes, but some nights he had
slept in a bed on the third floor. The day Ruth and Agnes ransacked
the garret for Uncle Peter’s will, he had been down in that third
floor room. When Ruth discovered the print of his body on the
feather-bed, he was on the floor, under that bed, hidden by the
comforter which hung down all around it.
He was pretty tired of the life he had been leading. He admitted to
the Corner House girls that he had not seen a single Indian in all his
wanderings. He was ready to go home—even if his mother thrashed him.
So Ruth telegraphed Mrs. Rooney. She took Tommy to a nearby store and
dressed him neatly, if cheaply, and then bought his ticket and put him
in the care of the conductor of the Bloomingsburg train. Tommy, much
wiser than he had been, and quite contrite, went home.
“I s’pose he’s a dreadful bad boy,” sighed Dot. “But my! no girl would
ever have such things happen to her—would she?”
“Would you want to be chased by bulldogs, and live in garrets, and
steal just enough to keep alive—and—and never have on anything
clean, Dot Kenway?” demanded Tess, in horror.
“No, I don’t s’pose I would,” confessed Dot. Then she sighed, and
added: “It’s _awful_ commonplace, just the same, bein’ a girl, isn’t
it?”
“I agree with you, Dot-ums,” cried Agnes, who heard her. “Nothing ever
happens to us.”
Almost on the heels of that statement, however, something happened to
them that satisfied even Agnes’ longing for romance, for some time
thereafter.
It was on Saturday that Tommy Rooney went home to his anxious mother.
The weather had been of a threatening character for several days. That
night the wind shrieked and moaned again around the old Corner House
and the rain beat with impotent hands against the panes.
A rainy Sunday is not often a cheerful day. Ruth Kenway always tried
to interest her sisters on such occasions in books and papers; or they
had quiet talks about “when mother was with us,” or those more ancient
times “before father went away.”
If they could possibly get to Sabbath School on such stormy days, they
did so. This particular mid-August Sunday was no exception.
The rain ceased for a while about noon and the four set forth, under
two umbrellas, and reached the church in season. They were glad they
had come, so few scholars were there, and they helped swell the
attendance.
Coming home, it rained a little, and their umbrellas were welcome.
Tess and Dot were under the smaller umbrella and the older girls had
the larger one. Coming across the parade ground, the path they
followed approached the old Corner House from the side.
“Oh, see there!” cried Tess, suddenly. “Somebody’s waving to us from
the window.”
“What window?” demanded Agnes, with sudden nervousness, trying to tip
up the big umbrella, so that she could see, too.
“Why!” cried Tess. “It’s in the garret.”
“Oh, I see it!” agreed Dot.
“Oh! mercy me!” groaned Agnes.
“Stop that!” gasped Ruth, shaking her by the arm. “You want to scare
those children?”
“It’s—it’s the ghost,” whispered Agnes, too afraid to look again.
Tess and Dot were merely curious. Ruth had seen the waving figure.
Immediately it seemed to leap upward and disappear.
“Do you suppose it was Lillie?” asked Tess.
“We’ll find out when we go in,” said Ruth, in a shaken voice.
Agnes was almost in tears. She clung to Ruth’s arm and moaned in a
faint voice:
“I don’t want to go in! I never want to go into that horrid old house
again.”
“What nonsense you do talk, Ag,” said Ruth, as the little girls ran
ahead. “We have been all over that garret. We know there is really
nothing there——”
“That’s just it,” groaned Agnes. “It _must_ be a ghost.”
Ruth, unhappy as she felt, determined to discover the meaning of that
spectral figure. “Let’s go right up there and find out about it,” she
said.
“Oh, Ruth!”
“I mean it. Come on,” said the older sister, as they entered the big
hall.
Tess and Dot heard her, and clamored to go, too, but Ruth sent the
smaller girls back. At the head of the front stairs, they met Mrs.
Treble.
“Have you, or Lillie, been up in the attic?” asked Ruth, sharply.
“There was something at the window up there——”
“What are you trying to do, girl?” demanded the lady from Ypsilanti,
scornfully. “Trying to scare me with a ridiculous ghost story?”
“I don’t know what it is,” said Ruth. “I mean to find out. Were you up
there?”
“I should have gone to the garret had I wished,” Mrs. Treble said,
scornfully. “You must have something hidden away there, that you don’t
want me to see. I wonder what it is?”
“Oh, Mrs. Treble!” began Ruth, and just then she saw that Aunt Sarah’s
door was open. Aunt Sarah stood at the opening.
“Niece Ruth!” exclaimed the old lady, harshly, “why don’t you send
that woman away? She’s got no business here.”
“I’ve more right here than _you_ have, I should hope,” cried Mrs.
Treble, loudly. “And more right than these girls. You’ll all find out
when the courts take the matter up.”
“Oh, Mrs. Treble! We none of us know——”
“Yes we do, too,” declared the lady from Ypsilanti, interrupting Ruth.
“My husband’s mother was Peter Stower’s sister. Perhaps my Lillie
shall have _all_ the property—and this ugly old house, too. I tell
you what I’ll do first thing, when it comes into my hands as guardian
of my child.”
Ruth and Agnes were speechless. Mrs. Treble was more passionate than
she had ever been before.
“I shall tear this ugly old house down—that’s what I’ll do,” Mrs.
Treble declared. “I’ll raze it to the ground——”
Aunt Sarah suddenly advanced into the hall. Her black eyes flashed as
though there were sparks in them.
“You will do _what_?” she asked, in a low, hoarse voice.
“I’ll tear down the house. It is no good.”
“This beautiful old house!” groaned Agnes, forgetting about the ghost
at that moment.
Aunt Sarah’s wrath was rising. It broke the bonds she had put upon her
tongue so many years before.
“You will tear this house down?” she repeated. “Niece Ruth! is there
any chance of this woman getting control of Peter’s property?”
“We don’t know,” said Ruth desperately. “If we can’t find Uncle
Peter’s will that Mr. Howbridge made, and which leaves the estate to
you and us girls, Aunt Sarah—”
“There never was such a will,” put in Mrs. Treble.
“Mr. Howbridge says there was. He thinks Mr. Stower must have hidden
it away with other papers, somewhere in the house——”
“And I know where,” said Aunt Sarah, speaking out at last. “Peter
never thought I knew where he hid things. But I did. You gals come
with me.”
She stalked toward the stairs that led upward. Ruth and Agnes, half
awed by her manner and speech, followed her. So did Mrs. Treble.
Aunt Sarah went directly to the garret. Agnes forgot to be scared of
the ghost they had seen from outside, in her interest in this affair.
Aunt Sarah went to the old secretary, or desk, standing in the middle
of the garret floor.
“Oh, we’ve looked all through _that_,” whispered Agnes.
“You did not look in the right place,” said Aunt Sarah.
Quite calmly she tapped with her fingers upon a panel in one end of
the old desk. In a moment the panel dropped down, leaving in view a
very narrow depository for papers. It was crammed with documents of
several different kinds.
Mrs. Treble sprang forward, with a cry. But Aunt Sarah got in front of
her. She seized her skirts with both hands and advanced upon the lady
from Ypsilanti with belligerence.
“Shoo!” said Aunt Sarah. “Shoo!”
As Mrs. Treble retreated, Aunt Sarah advanced, and, as though she were
“shooing” a refractory chicken, she drove the lady from Ypsilanti out
of the garret and closed the door firmly in her face.