SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO
Uncle Rufus was too old and too stiff to get out of bed and down from
his third-story room in the old Corner House, to be of any assistance
at this midnight incident. But the girls were awakened the moment Tom
Jonah began barking.
“It’s a hen thief!” squealed Tess, leaping out of her own warm nest.
“I hope that dog bites him!” cried Agnes, savagely, from the other
room.
She ran to the window. It was a starlit, but foggy night. She could
see only vaguely the objects out of doors.
Ruth was scrambling into a skirt and dressing sacque; she thrust her
feet into shoes, too, and started downstairs. Mrs. MacCall’s window
went up with a bang, and the girls heard the housekeeper exclaim:
“Shoo! shoo! Get out of there!”
Whoever it was that had roused Tom Jonah, the person was evidently
unable to “get out of there.” The dog’s threatening growls did not
cease, and the man’s voice which had first been heard when the trouble
started, was protesting.
Agnes followed her older sister downstairs. Of course, Aunt Sarah
Maltby, who slept in one of the grand front rooms in the main part of
the house, did not even hear all the disturbance. And there were not
any houses really near the Stower Homestead, which Milton people knew
by the name of “the old Corner House.”
Therefore, the sounds of conflict at the Kenway hennery were not
likely to arouse many people. But when Ruth and Agnes reached
out-of-doors, the younger girl remembered one person who might hear
and be of assistance.
“Let’s call Neale O’Neil!” she cried to Ruth. “He’ll help us.”
“We’d better call a policeman,” said Ruth, running down the brick
path.
“Huh! you wouldn’t find a policeman in Milton at this hour of the
night, if you searched for a week of Sundays,” was the younger girl’s
ambiguous statement. Then she raised her voice and shouted: “Neale!
Neale O’Neil! Help!”
Meantime the dog continued his threatening bayings. The fowls
fluttered and squawked. Billy Bumps began to blat and butt the
partition in his pen. Whoever had ventured into the hennery had gotten
into hot quarters and no mistake!
Ruth stopped suddenly in the path and clutched at Agnes’ arm. Agnes
was as lightly dressed as herself; but it was a warm June night and
there was no danger of their getting cold.
[Illustration: A kicking figure was sprawled on the roof, clinging
with both hands to the ridge of it.]
“Suppose the dog does not remember us?” the older girl gasped in
Agnes’ ear. “Maybe—maybe he’ll tear us to pieces. How savage he
sounds!”
Agnes was frightened; but she had pluck, too. “Come on, Ruth!” she
said. “He is only mad at the thief.”
“If it _is_ a thief,” quavered Ruth. “I—I am afraid to go on, Aggie.”
At that moment the sound of little feet pattering behind them made
both girls turn. There were Dot and Tess, both barefooted, and Dot
with merely a doubled-up comforter snatched from her bed, wrapped over
her night clothes.
“Mercy me, children!” gasped Ruth. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, we mustn’t let Tom Jonah _bite_ that man,” Tess declared, and
kept right on running toward the henhouse.
“If that dog bites——” screamed Ruth, and ran after her smaller
sister.
There was the big dog leaping savagely toward the low eaves of the
hennery. A kicking figure was sprawled on the roof, clinging with both
hands to the ridge of it. The girls obtained a glimpse of a dark face,
with flashing teeth, and big gold rings in the marauder’s ears.
“Tak’ dog away! Tak’ dog away!” the man said, in a strangled voice.
“He’s one of those Gypsies,” whispered Agnes, in an awed voice.
A tribe of the nomads in question had passed through Milton but a day
or two before, and the girls had been frightened by the appearance of
the men of the tribe who had called at the old Corner House.
Now, whether this marauder belonged to the same people or not, Ruth
saw that he looked like a Gypsy. For another reason, too, her mind was
relieved at once; Tom Jonah was only savage toward the man on the
roof.
When Tess ran right up to the leaping dog, he stopped barking, and
wagged his tail, as though satisfied that he had done his duty in
drawing the family to the scene. But he still kept his eyes on the
man, and occasionally uttered a growl deep in his throat.
“What are you doing up there?” Ruth demanded of the man.
“Tak’ away dog!” he whined.
“No. I think I will let the dog hold you till a policeman comes. You
were trying to rob our henroost.”
“Oh, no, Missee! You wrong. No do that,” stammered the man.
“What were you doing here, then?”
Before the fellow could manufacture any plausible tale, a shout came
from beyond the back fence, and somebody was heard to scramble into
the Corner House yard.
“What’s the matter, girls?” demanded Neale O’Neil’s cheerful voice.
“Oh, come here, Neale!” cried Agnes. “Tom Jonah’s caught a Gypsy.”
“Tom _Who_?” demanded the tall, pleasant-faced boy of fifteen, who
immediately approached the henhouse.
“Tom Jonah,” announced Tess. “He’s just the _nicest_ dog!”
The boy saw the group more clearly then. He looked from the savagely
growling animal to the man sprawling on the roof, and burst out
laughing.
“Yes! I guess that fellow up there feels that the dog is very ‘nice.’
Where did you get the dog, and where did _he_ get his name?”
“We’ll tell you all about that later, Neale,” said Ruth, more gravely.
“At least, we’ll tell you all we know about the dear old dog. Isn’t he
a splendid fellow to catch this man at my hens?”
“And the fellow had some in this bag!” exclaimed Neale, finding a bag
of flopping poultry at the corner of the hen-run.
“Tak’ away dog!” begged the man on the roof again.
“That’s all he’s afraid of,” said Agnes. “I bet he has a knife. Isn’t
he a wicked looking fellow?”
“Regular brigand,” agreed Neale. “What we going to do with him?”
“Give him to a policeman,” suggested Agnes.
“Do you suppose the policeman would _want_ him?” chuckled Neale. “To
awaken a Milton officer at this hour of the night would be almost
sacrilege, wouldn’t it?”
“What _shall_ we do?” demanded Agnes.
Ruth had been thinking more sensibly for a few moments. Now she spoke
up decisively:
“The man did not manage to do any harm. Put the poultry back in the
house, Neale. If he ever comes again he will know what to expect. He
thought we had no dog; but he sees we have—and a savage one. Let him
go.”
“Had we better do that, sister?” whispered Agnes. “Oughtn’t he to be
punished?”
“I expect so,” Ruth said, grimly. “But for once I am going to shirk my
duty. We’ll take away the dog and let him go.”
“Who’ll take him away?” demanded Agnes, suddenly.
Neale had taken the sack in which the fowl struggled, to the door of
the henhouse, opened it, and dumped the fowl out. Tom Jonah evidently
recognized him for a friend, for he wagged his tail, but still kept
his eye on the man upon the roof.
“I declare!” said Ruth. “I hadn’t thought. Whom will he mind?”
“Come here, Tom Jonah!” said Neale, snapping his fingers.
Tom Jonah still wagged his tail, but he remained ready to receive the
Gypsy (if such the fellow was) in his jaws, if he descended.
“Come away, Tom!” exclaimed Agnes, confidently. “Come on back to the
house.”
The man on the roof moved and Tom Jonah stiffened. He refused to
budge.
“Guess you’ll have to call a cop after all,” said Neale, doubtfully.
“Here, sir!” commanded Ruth. “Come away. You have done enough——”
But the dog did not think so. He held his place and growled.
“I guess you’re bound to stay up there, till daylight—or a
policeman—doth appear, my friend,” called up Neale to the besieged.
“Tak’ away dog!” begged the frightened fellow.
“Why, Tom Jonah!” exclaimed Tess, walking up to the big dog and
putting a hand on his collar. “You must come away when you are spoken
to. You’ve caught the bad man, and that’s enough.”
Tom Jonah turned and licked her hand. Then he moved a few steps away
with her and looked back.
“Come on with me, Tom Jonah,” commanded the little girl, firmly. “Let
the bad man go.”
“What do you know about _that_?” demanded Neale.
The next minute the fellow had scrambled up the roof, caught the low
hanging limb of a shade tree that stood near the fence, and swinging
himself like a cat into the tree, he got out on another branch that
overhung the sidewalk, dropped, and ran.
Tom Jonah sprang to the fence with a savage bay; but the man only went
the faster. The incident was closed in a minute, and the little party
of half-dressed young folk went back to their beds, while the strange
dog curled up on his mat in the corner of the porch again and slept
the sleep of the just till morning.
And now that the excitement is over, let us find out a little
something about the Corner House girls, their friends, their condition
in life, and certain interesting facts regarding them.
When Mr. Howbridge, the lawyer from Milton and Uncle Peter Stower’s
man of affairs and the administrator of his estate, came to the little
tenement on Essex Street, Bloomingsburg, where the four orphaned
Kenway girls had lived for some years with Aunt Sarah Maltby, he first
met Tess and Dot returning from the drugstore with Aunt Sarah’s weekly
supply of peppermint drops.
Aunt Sarah had been a burden on the Kenways for many years. The girls
had only their father’s pension to get along on. Aunt Sarah claimed
that when Uncle Peter died, his great estate would naturally fall to
her, and then she would return all the benefits she had received from
the Kenway family.
But the lawyer knew that queer old Uncle Peter Stower had made a will
leaving practically all his property to the four girls in trust, and
to Aunt Sarah only a small legacy. But this will had been hidden
somewhere by the old man before his recent death and had not yet been
found.
There seemed to be no other claimants to the Stower Estate, however,
and the court allowed Mr. Howbridge to take the Kenway girls and Aunt
Sarah to Milton and establish them in the Stower Homestead, known far
and wide as the old Corner House.
Here, during the year that had passed, many interesting and exciting
things had happened to Ruth and Agnes and Tess and Dot.
Ruth was the head of the family, and the lawyer greatly admired her
good sense and ability. She was not a strikingly pretty girl, for she
had “stringy” black hair and little color; but her eyes were big and
brown, and those eyes, and her mouth, laughed suddenly at you and gave
expression to her whole face. She was now completing her seventeenth
year.
Agnes was thirteen, a jolly, roly-poly girl, who was fond of jokes, a
bit of a tomboy, up to all sorts of pranks—who laughed easily and
cried stormily—had “lots of molasses colored hair” as she said
herself, and was the possessor of a pair of blue eyes that could stare
a rude boy out of countenance, but who _would_ spoil the effect of
this the next instant by giggling; a girl who had a soulmate among her
girl friends all of the time, but not frequently did one last for long
in the catalog of her “best friends.”
Nobody remembered that Tess had been named Theresa. She was a wise
little ten-year-old who possessed some of Ruth’s dignity and some of
Agnes’ prettiness, and the most tender heart in the world, which made
her naturally tactful. She was quick at her books and very courageous.
Dorothy, or Dot, was the baby and pet of the family. She was a little
brunette fairy; and if she was not very wise as yet, she was faithful
and lovable, and not one of “the Corner House girls,” as the Kenways
were soon called by Milton people, was more beloved than Dot.
The girls’ best boy friend lived with the old cobbler, Mr. Con Murphy,
on the rear street, and in a little house the yard of which adjoined
the larger grounds of the old Corner House. We have seen how quickly
Neale O’Neil came to the assistance of the Kenway girls when they were
in trouble.
Neale had been brought up among circus people, his mother having
traveled all her life with Twomley & Sorber’s Herculean Circus and
Menagerie. The boy’s desire for an education and to win a better place
in the world for himself, had caused him to run away from his uncle,
Mr. Sorber, and support himself in Milton while he attended school.
The Corner House girls had befriended Neale and when his uncle finally
searched him out and found the boy, it was they who influenced the man
against taking Neale away. Neale had proved himself an excellent
scholar and had made friends in Milton; now he was about to graduate
with Agnes from the highest grammar grade to high school.
The particulars of all these happenings have been related in the first
two volumes of the series, entitled respectively, “The Corner House
Girls” and “The Corner House Girls at School.”
When Agnes woke up in the morning following the unsuccessful raid of
the Gypsy man on the hennery, she had something of wonderful
importance to tell Ruth. She had seen her “particular friend,” Trix
Severn, on the street Saturday afternoon and Trix had told her
something.
“You’ve heard the girls talking about Pleasant Cove, Ruthie?” said
Agnes, earnestly. “You know Mr. Terrence Severn owns one of the big
hotels there?”
“Of course. Trix talks enough about it,” said the older Kenway girl.
“Oh! you don’t like Trix——”
“I’m not exceedingly fond of her. And there was a time when you
thought her your very deadliest enemy,” laughed Ruth.
“Well! Trix has changed,” declared the unsuspicious Agnes, “and she’s
proposed the very nicest thing, Ruth. She says her mother and father
will let her bring all four of us to the Cove for the first fortnight
after graduation. The hotel will not be full then, and we will be
Trix’s guests. And we’ll have loads of fun.”
“I—don’t—know——” began Ruth, but Agnes broke in warmly:
“Now, don’t you say ‘No,’ Ruthie Kenway! Don’t you say ‘No!’ I’ve just
made up my mind to go to Pleasant Cove——”
“No need of flying off, Ag,” said Ruth, in the cool tone that usually
brought Agnes “down to earth again.” “We have talked of going there
for a part of the summer. A change to salt air will be beneficial for
us all—so Dr. Forsythe says. I have talked to Mr. Howbridge, and he
says ‘Yes.’”
“Well, then!”
“But I doubt the advisability of accepting Trix Severn’s invitation.”
“Now, isn’t that mean——”
“Hold your horses,” again advised Ruth. “We will go, anyway. If all is
well we will stay at the hotel a while. Pearl Harrod’s uncle owns a
bungalow there, too; _she_ has asked me to come there for a while, and
bring you all.”
“Well! isn’t that nice?” agreed Agnes. “Then we can stay twice as
long.”
“Whether it will be right for us to accept the hospitality offered us
when we have no means of returning it——”
“Oh, dear me, Ruth! don’t be a fuss-cat.”
“There is a big tent colony there—quite removed from the hotel,”
suggested Ruth. “Many of our friends and their folks are going
_there_. Neale O’Neil is going with a party of the boys for at least
two weeks.”
“Say! we’ll have scrumptious times,” cried Agnes, with sparkling eyes.
Her anticipation of every joy in life added immensely to the joy
itself.
“Yes—if we go,” said Ruth, slowly. But it was something for the
others to look forward to with much pleasure.