THE FAMILY ALBUM--AND OTHER THINGS
The day before Christmas was the busiest day of all. The dressing of the
tree must be finished and the trimming and festooning of the big dining
room completed. Neale O'Neil came over early to help the Corner House
girls. He was a slim, rosy-cheeked, flaxen-haired boy, as agile as a
monkey, and almost always smiling.
Ruth and Agnes would not hear to his helping trim the tree; but it was
Neale's agility that made it possible for the rope of green to be
festooned from the heavy ceiling cornices. Uncle Rufus was much too
stiff with rheumatism for such work.
"Well! boys are some good, you must admit," Agnes said to Ruth, for the
oldest Corner House girl was inclined to be a carping critic of the
"mere male."
"All right. If he's so awfully useful, just let him clear up all this
mess on the carpet, and then dust the rugs. Mercy, Agnes!" exclaimed
Ruth, "what a lot of this green stuff there is all over the floor."
"Yes, I know," admitted Agnes.
"And there is other rubbish, too. Look at this old book you brought down
from the attic and flung in the corner."
Ruth picked it up. It was heavy, and she carried it over to the broad
window-seat on which she sat to open the "family album," as Agnes had
called it.
The latter and Neale, having brought in basket and broom, began to
gather up the litter. Ruth became very still at the window with the old
volume in her lap. The smaller girls were out of the room.
"What's in the old thing--pictures?" asked Agnes of her elder sister.
"Ye--yes, pictures," Ruth said hesitatingly.
"Must be funny ones," chuckled Neale, "by the look of her face."
Ruth did look serious as she sat there, turning the pages of the big,
old volume. Had the others noticed particularly they would have seen
that the countenance of the oldest Corner House girl had become very
pale.
It was so when Mrs. MacCall looked in and said to her: "Oh, Ruth! I do
wish you'd come out here and see what that Sammy Pinkney's brought. I
dunno whether to laugh, to scream, or to spank him!"
"I'll be there in a moment, Mrs. Mac," Ruth said nervously, jumping up
and closing the book.
Then she glanced at Agnes and Neale, seized the volume in her arms, and
instead of going out through the butler's pantry after Mrs. MacCall, she
crossed the front hall to the sitting room at the rear of the house.
"I like _that_!" cried Agnes. "Why! I found that old album myself; and I
haven't had a chance to look into it yet."
Ruth was only a moment in the sitting room. Then she ran to the kitchen
and out upon the cold porch, where Sammy Pinkney, done up in the folds
of a huge red comforter like a boa-constrictor suffering from scarlet
fever, stood, holding a cage-trap in one mittened hand.
"What do you know about this?" demanded Mrs. MacCall, spectacles on nose
and eyeing the contents of the round trap in alarm and disgust.
Uncle Rufus was chuckling hugely in the background. Sandyface, the
mother cat, was arching her back and purring pleadingly about Sammy's
sturdy legs.
"What are they?" demanded Ruth.
"Mice," grunted Sammy, gruffly. "For Tess' cats. They like 'em, don't
they? But my mother says I've got to bring the trap back."
"What's to be done with a boy like that?" demanded Mrs. MacCall. "Being
kicked to death with grasshoppers would be mild punishment for him,
wouldn't it? What's to be done with eight mice?"
"One kitten will have to go without," said Dot, the literal, as she and
Tess joined the party on the porch.
"Come on, now! You gotter let 'em out. I gotter have the trap," was
Sammy's gruff statement. He saw that his present was not entirely
appreciated by the human members of the Corner House family, whether the
feline members approved or not.
"Oh, I'll call the family!" cried Dot, and raised her voice in a shrill
cry for "Spotty, Almira, Popocatepetl, Bungle, Starboard, Port,
Hard-a-Lee and Mainsheet!" She was breathless when she had finished.
Cats came from all directions. Indeed, they seemed to appear most
mysteriously from the ground. Big cats and little cats, black cats and
gray cats, striped cats and spotted cats.
"If there were any more of them they'd eat us out of house and home,"
declared Mrs. MacCall.
"But Almira isn't here!" wailed Dot. "Oh, Ruthie! don't let him open the
cage till Almira comes. _She_ wants a chance to catch a mouse."
"I believe you children are little cannibals!" exclaimed the
housekeeper. "How _can_ you? Wanting those cats to catch the poor little
mice!"
"D'you want 'em for pets?" demanded Sammy, grinning at the housekeeper.
"Ugh! I hate the pests!" cried Mrs. MacCall.
"Do find Almira, Ruthie," begged Dot.
"I gotter take this cage back," said Sammy. "Can't fool here all day
with a parcel of girls."
"But Almira--"
But Ruth had gone into the woodshed. She peered into the corners and all
around the barrels. Suddenly she heard a cat purring--purring hard, just
like a mill!
"Where are you, Almira?" she asked, softly.
"Purr! purr! purr!" went Almira--oh, _so_ loud, and _so_ proudly!
"What is it, Almira?" asked Ruth. "There! I see you--down in that corner.
Why, you're on Uncle Rufus' old coat! Oh! _What's this?_"
The eight mice had been caught by the other cats and killed. Tess came
to the woodshed door.
"Oh, Ruth," she asked, "has anything happened to Almira?"
"I should say there had!" laughed the oldest Corner House girl.
"Oh! what is it?" cried Dot, running, too, to see.
"Santa Claus came ahead of time--to Almira, anyway," declared Ruth. "Did
you ever see the like? You cunning 'ittle s'ings! Look, children! Four
tiny, little, black kittens."
"Oh-oh-ee!" squealed Tess, falling right down on her knees to worship.
But Dot looked gravely at the undisturbed Sandyface, rubbing around her
feet.
"Goodness me, Sandyface, you're a grandmother!" she said.