When Ruth started home with Luke and Cecile Shepard several days had
elapsed since Neale O'Neil and Agnes had discovered that Mr. Howbridge
was out of town.
The chief clerk at the lawyer's office had little time to give to the
youthful visitors, for just then he had his hands full with a caller
whom Neale and Agnes had previously found was a person not easily to
be pacified.
"There is a crazy man in here," grumbled the clerk. "I don't know what
he means. He says he 'comes from Kenway,' and there is something about
Queen Alma and her bracelet. What do you know about this, Miss
Kenway?"
"Oh, my prophetic soul!" gasped Neale O'Neil. "Costello, the junkman!"
"Dear, me! We thought we could see Mr. Howbridge before that man
came."
"Tell me what it means," urged the clerk. "Then I will know what to
say to the lunatic."
"I guess he's a nut all right," admitted Neale. He told the lawyer's
clerk swiftly all they knew about the junkman, and all they knew about
the silver bracelet.
"All right. It is something for Mr. Howbridge to attend to himself,"
declared the clerk. "You hang on to that bracelet and don't let
anybody have it. I'll try to shoo off this fellow. Anyway, it may not
belong to his family at all. I'll hold him here till you two get
away."
Neale and Agnes were glad to escape contact with the junkman again. He
was too vehement.
"He'll walk right in and search the house for the thing," grumbled
Neale. "We can't have him frightening the children."
"And I don't want to be frightened myself," added Agnes.
They hurried home, and all that day, every time the bell rang or she
heard a voice at the side door, the girl felt a sudden qualm. "Wish we
had never advertised that bracelet at all," she confessed in secret.
"Dear, me! I wonder what Ruth will say?"
Nevertheless she failed to take her older sister into her confidence
regarding Queen Alma's bracelet when she wrote to her. She felt quite
convinced that Ruth would not approve of what she and Neale had done,
so why talk about it?
This was the attitude Agnes maintained. Perhaps the whole affair would
be straightened out before Ruth came back. And otherwise, she
considered, everything was going well at the Corner House in Milton.
It was Miss Ann Titus who evinced interest next in the "lost and
found" advertisement. Miss Ann Titus was the woman whom Dot called
"such a fluid speaker" and who said so many "and-so's" that
"ain't-so's." In other words, Miss Titus, the dressmaker, was a very
gossipy person, although she was not intentionally unkind.
She came in this afternoon, "stopping by" as she termed it, from
spending a short sewing day with Mrs. Pease, a Willow Street neighbor
of the Corner House girls.
"And I must say that Mrs. Pease, for a woman of her age, has young
idees about dress," Miss Titus confided to Mrs. McCall and Agnes, who
were in the sewing room. Aunt Sarah "couldn't a-bear" Miss Ann Titus,
so they did not invite the seamstress to go upstairs.
"Yes, her idees is some young," repeated Miss Titus. "But then,
nowadays if you foller the styles in the fashion papers nobody can
tell you and your grandmother apart, back to! Skirts are so skimpy--and
_short_!"
Miss Titus fanned herself rapidly, and allowed her emphasis to suggest
her own opinion of modern taste in dress.
"Of course, Mrs. Pease is slim and ain't lost all her good looks; but
it does seem to me if I was a married woman," she simpered here a
little, for Miss Titus had by no means given up all hope of entering
the wedded state, "I should consider my husband's feelings. I would
not go on the street looking below my knees as though I was twelve
year old instead of thirty-two."
"Maybe Mr. Pease likes her to look young," suggested Agnes.
"Hech! Hech!" clucked Mrs. McCall placidly. "Thirty-twa is not so very
auld. Not as we live these days, at any rate."
"But think of the example she sets her children," sniffed Miss Titus,
bridling.
"Tut, tut! How much d'you expect Margie and Holly Pease is influenced
by their mother's style o' dress?" exclaimed the housekeeper. "The twa
bairns scarce know much about that."
"I guess that is so," chimed in Agnes. "And I think she is a pretty
woman and dresses nicely. So there!"
"Ah, you young things cannot be expected to think as I do," smirked
Miss Titus.
"I take that as a compliment, my dear," said the housekeeper
comfortably. "And I never expect tae be vairy old until I die. Still
and all, I am some older than Agnes."
"That reminds me," said Miss Titus, more briskly (though it did not
remind her, for she had come into the Corner House for the special
purpose of broaching the subject that she now announced), "which of
you Kenways is it has found a silver bracelet?"
"Now, _that_ is Agnes' affair," chuckled Mrs. McCall.
"Oh! It is not Ruth that advertised?" queried the curious Miss Titus.
"Na, na! Tell it her, Agnes," said the housekeeper.
But Agnes was not sure she wished to describe to this gossipy
seamstress all the incidents connected with Queen Alma's bracelet. She
only said:
"Of course, you do not know anybody who has lost such a bracelet?"
"How can I tell till I have seen it?" demanded Miss Titus.
"Well, we have about decided that until somebody comes who describes
the bracelet and can explain how and where it was lost that we had
better not display it at all," Agnes said, with more firmness than was
usual with her.
"Oh!" sniffed Miss Titus. "I hope you do not think that _I_ have any
interest--any personal interest--in inquiring about it?"
"If I thought it was yours, Miss Titus, I would let you see it
immediately," Agnes hastened to assure her. "But of course--"
"There was a bracelet lost right on this street," said Miss Titus
earnestly, meaning Willow Street and pointing that way, "that never
was recovered to my knowledge."
"Oh! You don't mean it?" cried the puzzled girl. "Of course, we don't
_know_ that this one belongs to any of those Gypsies--"
"I should say not!" clucked Miss Titus. "The bracelet I mean was worn
by Sarah Turner. She and I went together regular when we were girls.
And going to prayer meeting one night, walking along here by the old
Corner House, Sarah dropped her bracelet."
"But--but!" gasped Agnes, "that must have been some time ago, Miss
Titus."
"It is according to how you compute time," the dressmaker said. "Sarah
and I were about of an age. And she isn't more than forty years old
right now!"
"I don't think this bracelet we have is the one your friend lost,"
Agnes said faintly, but confidently. She wanted to laugh but did not
dare.
"How do you know?" demanded Miss Ann Titus in her snappy way--like the
biting off of a thread when she was at work. "I should know it, even
so long after it was lost, I assure you."
"Why--how?" asked the Corner House girl curiously.
"By the scratches on it," declared Miss Titus. "Sarah's brother John
made them with his pocketknife--on the inside of the bracelet--to see if
it was real silver. Oh! he was a bad boy--as bad as Sammy Pinkney. And
what do you think of _his_ running away again?"
Agnes was glad the seamstress changed the subject right here. It
seemed to her as though she had noticed scratches on the bracelet the
Gypsies had placed in the basket the children bought. Could it be
possible--
"No! That is ridiculous!" Agnes told herself. "It could not be
possible that a bracelet lost forty years ago on Willow Street should
turn up at this late date. And, having found it, why should those
Gypsy women give it to Tess and Dot? There would be no sense in that."
Yet, when the talkative Miss Titus had gone Agnes went to the room the
little folks kept their playthings and doll families in, and picked up
the Alice-doll which chanced that day to be wearing the silver band.
She removed it from the doll and took it to the window where the light
was better.
Yes! It was true as she had thought. There were several crosswise
scratches on the inside of the circlet. They might easily have been
made by a boy's jackknife.
"I declare! Who really knows where this bracelet came from, and who
actually owns it? Maybe it is not Queen Alma's ornament after all.
Dear, me! this Kenway family is forever getting mixed up in
difficulties that positively have nothing to do with _us_.
"The silly old bracelet! Why couldn't those Gypsy women have sold that
basket to Margaret and Holly Pease, or to some other little girls
instead of to our Tess and Dot. Mrs. McCall says that some people seem
to attract trouble, just as lightning-rods attract lightning, and I
guess the Kenways are some of those people!"
Neale did not come over again that day, so she had nobody to discuss
this new slant in the matter with. And if Agnes could not "talk out
loud" about her troubles, she was apt to grow irritable. At least, the
little girls said after supper that she was cross.
"Ruth doesn't talk that way to us," declared Tess, quite hurt, and
gathering up her playthings from the various chairs in the sitting
room where the family usually gathered in the evenings. "I don't think
I should like her to be away all the time."
This was Tess's polite way of criticising Agnes. But Dot was not so
hampered by politeness.
"Crosspatch!" she exclaimed. "That's just what you are, Aggie Kenway."
And she started for bed in quite a huff. Agnes was glad, a few minutes
later, that the two smaller girls had gone upstairs, even if they had
gone away in this unhappy state of mind. Mrs. McCall had come in and
sat down at some mending and the room was very quiet. Suddenly a noise
outside on the porch made Agnes raise her head and look at the nearest
window.
"What is the matter wi' ye, lassie?" asked Mrs. McCall, startled.
"Did you hear that?" whispered the girl, staring at the window.
The shade was not drawn down to the sill, and the curtains were the
very thinnest of scrim. At the space of four inches below the shade
Agnes saw a white splotch against the pane.
"Oh! See! A face!" gasped Agnes in three smothered shrieks.
"Hech, mon! Such a flibbertigibbet as the lass is." Mrs. McCall
adjusted her glasses and stared, first at the frightened girl, then at
the window. But she, too, saw the face. "What can the matter be?" she
demanded, half rising. "Is that Neale O'Neil up tae some o' his
jokes?"
"Oh, no, Mrs. Mac! It's not Neale," half sobbed Agnes. "I know who it
is. It's that awful junkman!"
"A junkman?" repeated Mrs. McCall. "At this time o' night? We've
naethin' tae sellit him. The impudence!"
She rose, quite determined to drive the importunate junkman away.