MISS PEPPERILL'S DISASTER
The baby came first, after all, for Joe Eldred almost immediately
exclaimed:
"Say, Aggie! isn't that Billy Quirk's wagon right ahead?"
"Oh, yes! Oh, yes, Joe!" Agnes agreed. "He hasn't got so far, after
all."
"Do you believe he's got the kid?" demanded Joe, in doubt. "Look here!
The back of the wagon's full of clothes baskets. Why! if the kid's
there, he's buried!"
"Oh, don't!" cried Agnes. "Don't say such a thing, Joe!"
The boy had slowed down while speaking, and instantly Agnes was out of
the car and had run ahead.
"Mr. Quirk! Oh, Mr. Quirk! Billy!" she shouted. "You've got a baby
there!"
"Heh?" gasped the laundryman, who had been about to clamber into his
seat again. "Got a baby!" he repeated, in a dazed sort of way, and
actually turning pale. "_Not another?_"
"In your wagon, I mean. It's Mrs. Creamer's Bubby. Oh, dear, Mr. Quirk!
do look quick and see if you've smothered him."
"What do you mean, girl? That I've smothered a baby!" groaned Mr. Quirk,
who was a little, nervous man who could not stand much excitement.
"I don't know. Do look," begged Agnes. "Bubby was in the basket--not the
soiled clothes--"
"Which basket?" cried the laundryman.
"The one you took away from the Creamers' porch, Billy," put in Joe
Eldred, who had left the car, too. "Come on and look. Maybe the kid's
all right."
"Oh, dear me! I hope so!" groaned Agnes. "What would Mrs. Creamer do--"
Joe helped the shaking laundryman to lift down the baskets of wash that
were already stacked three tiers deep in the wagon.
"That's it! That's the one!" cried Agnes eagerly, recognizing Mrs.
Creamer's basket.
And there was the baby, under a veil, sleeping as peacefully as could
be. Fortunately the basket placed on top of the baby's temporary cradle
had been the larger of the two, and had completely and safely covered
the lower basket.
They got the baby, basket and all, into the back of the Eldred car
without awakening Bubby, and Agnes sat beside him.
"I'll drive back as if I had a load of eggs," Joe declared, grinning.
"If that kid wakes up and bawls, Aggie, what'll you do?"
"Humph!" said Agnes, with scorn, "isn't that just like a boy? Don't you
suppose I know how to take care of a baby?"
[Illustration: And there was the baby, under a veil, sleeping as
peacefully as could be.]
Bubby did not awake, however, and their return to the Creamer cottage
was like a triumphal entry. The neighborhood had turned out in a body.
Mrs. Creamer ran a block up the street to meet the automobile, and she
could not thank the Corner House girl and Joe Eldred enough.
But it was told of Mabel Creamer that she stood on the porch and scowled
when they brought Bubby back in the basket. She actually did say to Tess
and Dot, over the side fence:
"An' they blame me for it. Said I ought to have been there to watch what
Billy Quirk was goin' to do. If it had been a really, truly Gypsy that
had kidnapped Bubby, I s'pose they'd shut me up in jail!"
In a few days the little girls were back in school again, and Mabel was
not obliged to stay in to mind the baby--hated task!--for she was in Dot's
grade.
Tess' class gathered, too, to welcome Miss Pepperill's return to her
wonted place--all but Sammy Pinkney. Sammy was a very sick boy and they
brought straw and put it knee deep in Willow Street, in front of the
Pinkney house, so as to deaden the sound of wagon wheels. Tess actually
went on tiptoe when she passed the house where her schoolmate lay so
ill.
Billy Bumps, the goat, that had once been Sammy's, looked longingly
through the Corner House fence at the straw thus laid down, as though it
was more tempting fodder than that with which Uncle Rufus supplied him.
"I believe Billy Bumps must know Sammy is awful sick," Tess said, in a
hushed voice to Dot. "See how solemn he looks."
"Seems to me, Tess," Dot replied, "I never saw Billy Bumps look any
other way. Why, he looked solemn when he eat-ed up Mrs. MacCall's
stocking. I believe he must have a melancholic disposition."
"'Melancholic'! Goodness me, Dot!" snapped Tess, "I wish you wouldn't
try to use words that you can't use."
"Why can't I use 'em, if I want to!" demanded Dot, stubbornly.
"But you get them all wrong."
"I guess I can use 'em if I want to--so now, Tess Kenway!" exclaimed Dot,
pouting. "Words don't belong to anybody in particular, and I've as good
a right to 'em as you have."
This revolt against her criticism rather staggered Tess. But she had
much more serious problems to wrestle with at school just then.
In the first place Miss Pepperill was very "trying." Tess would not
admit that the red-haired teacher was cross.
After a vacation of nearly two weeks the pupils had, of course, gotten
quite out of hand. They were not only uneasy and had forgotten the
school rules, but they seemed to Miss Pepperill to be particularly dull.
Every little thing annoyed the teacher. She almost lost her voice trying
to explain to the class the differences in tense--for they took up some
simple grammar lessons in that grade.
One day Miss Pepperill completely lost her temper with Jakey Gerlach,
who, in truth, was not her brightest pupil.
"I declare, Jakey, you never will get anywhere in school. You're always
at the bottom of the class," she told him, sharply.
"Vell, does idt matter, teacher?" propounded Jakey, "whether I am at top
or at bottom of de class? You teach de same at bot' ends."
At the end of each day the teacher was despairing. Tess always waited,
timidly, to walk to the car with her. There was a crosstown car that
made the trip from school to boarding house fairly easy for Miss
Pepperill.
Perhaps, had she remained at the hospital with her sister, where she
would have been more or less under Dr. Forsyth's eye, the final disaster
in Miss Pepperill's case would not have arrived.
She really lost control of her scholars after a few days. In her room,
where had always been the greatest decorum because the children feared
her, there was now at times much confusion.
"Oh, children!" she gasped, holding her head in both hands, "I can't
hear myself think!"
She sat down, unable to bear the hubbub of class recitation, and put her
hands over her ears for a moment. Her eyes closed. The throbbing veins
at her temples seemed about to burst.
It was Sadie Goronofsky who brought about the final catastrophe--and that
quite innocently. Being unable at this juncture to attract attention by
the usual means of waving her hand in the air and snapping her fingers,
Sadie jumped up and went forward to Miss Pepperill's desk.
She had just sent away a class, and their clumsy footsteps had but
ceased thundering on her eardrums when Sadie came on tiptoe to the
platform. Miss Pepperill did not see her, but Sadie, tired of weaving
her arm back and forth without result, clutched the edge of the light
shawl Miss Pepperill wore over her shoulders.
The jerk the child gave the shawl was sufficient to pull Miss
Pepperill's elbow from the edge of the desk where it rested, her hand
upholding her throbbing head.
In her weakness the teacher almost pitched out of her chair to the
floor. She shrieked.
Sadie Goronofsky flew back to her seat in terror. Miss Pepperill opened
her eyes and saw nobody near. It was just as though an invisible hand
had pulled at the shawl and had dislodged her elbow.
She was not of a superstitious nature, but her nerves were unstrung. She
uttered another shriek--then a third.
The children under her care were instantly alarmed. They rose and ran
from her, or cowered, whimpering, in their seats, while the poor
hysterical woman uttered shriek after shriek.
Her cries brought other teachers into the room. They found her with her
hair disarranged, her dress disheveled, beating her heels on the
platform and shrieking at the top of her voice--quite out of her mind for
the time being.
The children were dismissed at once and took to their homes excited and
garbled reports of the occurrence.
Tess did not go home at once. She saw them finally take Miss Pepperill,
now exhausted and moaning, out to a taxi-cab and drive away with her to
the Women's and Children's Hospital, where Mrs. Eland was.
But the damage was done. Poor Miss Pepperill's mind was, for the time,
quite out of her control. The next day she had to be removed to the
state hospital for the insane because she disturbed the other patients
under her sister's care.
That ended, of course, Miss Pepperill's career as a public school
teacher. With a record of having been at the insane hospital, she could
hope never again to preside over a class of children in the public
school. Her occupation and manner of livelihood were taken from her.
"It is a terrible, terrible thing," Ruth said at dinner, the day Miss
Pepperill was taken to the state hospital.
Ruth had been with Tess to call on Mrs. Eland, and the little gray lady
had told them all about it.
"I am awfully sorry for my Mrs. Eland, too," Tess said. "I am sure she
could have cared for Miss Pepperill if they'd let her stay."
"Don't worry, honey," Agnes said quickly. "They'll soon let Miss
Pepperill come back."
"But the harm is done," Ruth rejoined gravely. "Just as Dr. Forsyth
said, she ought to take a long, long rest."
"If they were only rich," sighed Agnes.
"If _we_ were only rich!" Ruth rejoined.
"My goodness! and wouldn't we be rich--just!--if all that stage money I
found was only real, Ruthie?" Agnes whispered to her elder sister.
Ruth grew very red and said, quite tartly for her: "I don't see that it
would do us any good--if it _were_ so. You let it go out of your hands
very easily."
"Oh, pshaw! Neale will bring it back," said Agnes, half laughing, yet
wondering that Ruth should be so earnest. "You speak just as though you
believed it was good money."
"_You_ don't know, one way or another, whether it is so or not."
"Why, Ruth!"
"Well, you don't, do you?" demanded the elder sister.
"How silly you talk. You're as bad as Neale about those old bonds. I
believe he lugged that book off with him just to show somebody the bonds
to see if they were any good."
Ruth turned away, and said nothing more regarding the album; but Agnes
was more and more puzzled about the whole affair. The two girls were not
confiding in each other. Nothing, of course, could have shaken Agnes'
belief in Neale's honesty. While, on the other hand, Ruth feared that
the ex-circus-boy had fallen before temptation.
Believing, as she did, that the banknotes found in the album were all
good, the oldest Corner House girl considered that the bonds might be of
great value, too. Altogether, as Neale had figured up, there was over a
hundred thousand dollars in the album.
This fortune was somewhere--so Ruth believed--in the possession of a
thoughtless, if not really dishonest, boy. A thousand things might
happen to the treasure trove Neale O'Neil had borne away from the old
Corner House.
No matter whether it were Neale himself or another who made wrong use of
the money or the bonds, if they were lost it would be a catastrophe.
Neither the Corner House girls, nor whoever properly owned the book,
would ever be benefitted by the odd find in the garret of the Stower
homestead.
Who the actual owner--or owners--of the treasure was, Ruth could not
imagine. But that she was the proper custodian of the album until Mr.
Howbridge returned, the girl was quite sure.
She dared take nobody into her confidence until their guardian came
home. Least of all could she talk about it to Agnes. And on her part,
Agnes was quite as loath to speak of the matter, in earnest, to Ruth.
What Joe Eldred had said about Neale and his heavy satchel really
alarmed Agnes. A hundred thousand dollars! A fortune, indeed.
"Goodness me!" Agnes thought. "Neale is never silly enough to believe
that the money is real, is he? Impossible! Yet--why did he carry the old
thing off with him?
"It bothers Ruth--I can see that. I don't know what idea she's got in her
head; but surely both of them can't be mad about that money and those
bonds. Goodness! am I the only sensible one in the family?" the flyaway
asked herself, quite seriously.
"For I know very well that stuff in the old album is nothing but 'green
goods.' Maybe somebody, years ago, used it dishonestly--used it to fool
other people. And suppose Neale is fooling himself with it?"
For it never entered the loyal Agnes' mind that her boy chum was other
than the soul of honesty.