THE SHADOW
The four Corner House girls planned to start for town one morning
early, and they were going by road instead of by boat.
Agnes ran over to the boys’ tents to ask Neale O’Neil to see that
their fresh fish was put upon the ice in the icebox when the fishman
came; and she found Neale doing duty on the housekeeping staff that
morning, being busily engaged in shaking up the pillows and beating
mattresses in the sun. The latter exertion was particularly for the
dislodgment of the ubiquitous sandflea!
“Hello, Ag! What’s the good word?” cried Neale.
Agnes told him what they were going to do and asked the favor.
“I’ll see that you get the fish all right,” Neale agreed. “But what
about the iceman? He’ll never come near your tent with Tom Jonah
there.”
“Tom Jonah is going with us,” Agnes said, promptly. “Did you suppose
we’d leave him all day alone, poor fellow?”
When they started Tom Jonah showed his delight at being included in
the girls’ outing by the most extravagant gyrations. As they went up
the shaded lane toward the auto-stage road, he chased half a dozen
imaginary rabbits into the woods in as many minutes.
It was right at the head of the lane that they met the man. He was not
a bad looking man at all, and he was driving a nice horse to a
rubber-tired runabout.
He drew in the horse, that seemed to have already traveled some miles
that morning, and looked hard at Tom Jonah.
“Well,” he said, cheerfully, “there’s the old tramp himself. How long
have you girls had him?”
The four Corner House girls stood stock-still, and even Ruth was
smitten dumb for the moment.
“Tom Jonah, you rascal!” said the man, not unkindly. “Don’t you know
your old master?”
At first the dog had not seen him; but the moment he heard the man’s
voice, he halted and his whole body stiffened. The plume of his tail
began to wave; his jaws stretched wide in a doggish smile. Then, as
the man playfully snapped the whip at him, Tom Jonah barked loudly.
“Where did you get him!” the man repeated, looking at the Corner House
girls again.
Tess and Dot were clinging to each other’s hands. Agnes stared at the
man belligerently. Ruth said—and her voice was not quite steady:
“Do you think you know Tom Jonah, sir?”
“What do you think yourself, Miss?” responded the man, rather gruffly.
“I guess there’s no mistake about whether he knows me and I know him.”
“No, sir,” said Ruth, bravely. “But lots of people may know him.”
“Do you mean to put in a claim for the dog?” interrupted the man,
quickly.
“Tom Jonah came to our house in Milton,” began Ruth, when again the
man interrupted with:
“Of course. He was on his way home to me. I sold him to a man who
lives forty miles beyond Milton.”
“Then you do _not_ own him?” Ruth said, with a feeling of relief.
The man looked at her steadily for a minute. Ruth had recovered her
self-possession. Tess and Dot were now on either side of Tom Jonah,
with their arms about the dog’s neck. Agnes was very angry, but
remained silent.
“I raised that dog from a pup, Miss. I owned his mother. I raised him.
I put his name on his collar. He has it there yet, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, sir,” admitted Ruth.
“He’s always been a good dog. He’s a gentleman if ever a dog was! He
had the run of the house. My wife and the girls made a great pet of
him. But by and by they said he was too big and clumsy for the house.
They have a couple of little _fice_—lap-poodles, or the like. Tom
Jonah was put out, and he got jealous. Yes, sir!” and the man laughed.
“Just as jealous as a human.”
“Oh!” gasped Agnes. She _disliked_ that man!
“My name’s Reynolds,” said the man. “Everybody knows me about Shawmit.
I run a lumber-yard there.
“Well! Tom Jonah got to running away to the neighbors. Stayed a while
with one, then with another. Always liked kids, Tom Jonah did, and
he’d stay longest where there were kids in the family.
“But it got to be a nuisance. I didn’t know whether the dog belonged
to me or somebody else. So I sold him to a relative of my wife’s who
came on visiting us, and took a fancy to Tom Jonah, and who lives—as
I said—forty miles beyond Milton. So the old fellow was on his way
back home when you took him in, eh?”
“He came to us at Milton,” Ruth replied. “He wanted to stay. I brought
him down here to take care of my little sisters. We’re living in a
tent down on the shore yonder——”
“And we’re going to keep him!” interrupted Agnes, angrily.
“Hush! Be still, Aggie!” begged Ruth, in a low tone.
“You don’t claim you bought him, I suppose?” said the man who called
himself Reynolds.
“But we _will_!” cried Ruth, instantly. “We will gladly pay for him.”
“Oh, he’s not for sale again,” laughed the man. “I sold him once and
he wouldn’t stay sold, you see.”
“Then he doesn’t belong to you now, any more than he does to us,
really,” Ruth hastened to say.
“Well——that’s so, I suppose,” admitted the man.
“We won’t give Tom Jonah up to anybody,” said Agnes again.
Dot was crying and Tess could scarcely keep from following her lead.
Tom Jonah stood solemnly, his eyes very bright, his tail waving
slowly. He looked from the girls to the man in the runabout, and back
again. He knew they were discussing him; but he did not know just what
it was all about.
“If we have to,” said Ruth, with much more confidence in her voice
than she felt in her heart, “we will give Tom Jonah up to the person
who really owns him. We do not know you, sir. We do not know if what
you say is true. You must prove it.”
“Well! I like that!” said the man in a tone that showed he did not
like it at all. “You are a pretty pert young lady, you are. I guess
I’ll take my own dog home. I heard he was over here to the beach and I
drove over particularly to get him.”
“Take him, then!” exclaimed Ruth, desperately. “If Tom Jonah will go
with you, all right. You call him.”
“Come here, boy!” commanded the man.
Tom Jonah did not move. Ruth took a hand of each of the smaller girls
and led them away from the big dog.
“Come, children,” she said. “We’ll go on. If Tom Jonah really loves
us, he’ll come, too.”
The dog whined. He looked from the red-faced, angry man to the four
girls who loved him so well.
“Come here, Tom Jonah!” commanded the man again. He had turned his
horse and was evidently headed for home. “Come, sir!”
The Corner House girls were moving sadly away. Agnes glanced back and
actually made a face at the man in the runabout. Fortunately he did
not see it.
“Come on, Tom Jonah!” said the man for the third time.
The dog was perplexed. He showed it plainly. He started after the man;
he started back for the girls. He whined and he barked. He was torn by
the conflicting emotions in his doggish soul.
“What’s the matter with him?” exclaimed the man, and snapped his
whiplash at Tom Jonah.
At that, Dot uttered a shriek of anguish. Tess burst into tears. Agnes
started back as though to protect the dog. Even Ruth could not forbear
to utter a cry.
“Here, Tom Jonah! here, sir!” Agnes shouted. “Come on, you dear old
fellow.”
The dog barked, circled the moving carriage once, and then raced down
the road toward the Corner House girls. The man shouted and snapped
his whip. Tom Jonah did not even look back at him when he caught up
with the girls.
[Illustration: The dog was perplexed. He started after the man;
started back for the girls. He whined and he barked.]
“Hurry up! let’s run with him, Ruthie,” begged Agnes.
But there was no need of that. The man did not turn his horse and
follow. He was quickly out of sight and Tom Jonah gave no sign of
wishing to follow his old master.
The incident troubled the Corner House girls vastly. Even Ruth was
devoted to the good old dog by this time. If he were taken away by
this Mr. Reynolds, it would be like losing one of the Corner House
family.
Ruth feared that Mr. Reynolds would find some legal way of getting
possession of Tom Jonah. She wished Mr. Howbridge were here to advise
them what to do. She even wished now that she had not brought Tom
Jonah to Pleasant Cove to act as their “chaperon.”
The smaller girls dried their eyes after a time. Agnes, “breathing
threatenings,” as Ruth said, promised Tess and Dot that the man never
should take Tom Jonah away. But Ruth wondered what they would do about
it if Mr. Reynolds came to Willowbend Camp with a police constable and
a warrant for the dog?
And, too, who had sent Mr. Reynolds word that Tom Jonah was at the
beach? He particularly said that he had been informed of the fact. It
seemed to Ruth that the informer must be their enemy.
Then, out of a dust cloud that had been drawing near the Corner House
girls for some few moments, appeared the forefront of a big touring
car. In it were Trix Severn and some of her friends from the Overlook
House.
“Oh! there’s Trix!” murmured Agnes to her older sister.
The hotel-keeper’s daughter would not look at the Corner House girls.
She, certainly, had proved herself their enemy. Ruth wondered if Trix
had had anything to do with bringing Mr. Reynolds to Pleasant Cove,
searching for his dog.
Ruth knew that the hotel-keeper’s daughter often rode over to Shawmit;
she was probably on her way there now with her party. And after the
way Trix had acted at the time the Spoondrift bungalow was burned, one
might expect anything mean of Trix. For once Ruth allowed her
suspicions to color her thoughts.
“She has awfully good times, just the same,” murmured Agnes.
“Who does?” demanded Ruth, tartly.
“Trix.”
“I declare!” exclaimed Ruth, with more vexation than she usually
displayed. “I’d be ashamed that I ever knew her after the way she’s
acted. And I believe, Agnes, that we can thank her for setting that
man after Tom Jonah.”
“Oh, Ruth! Do you believe so?”
“I do,” said the older Corner House girl, and she explained why she
thought so.
Mr. Severn bought many of his supplies in Shawmit, and Trix was
forever running over there in the car. It did not strain one’s
imagination very much to picture Trix hearing about Mr. Reynolds’ dog
and recognizing Tom Jonah from the description. Besides, the Severns
had been coming to Pleasant Cove for several seasons, and Trix might
easily have seen the dog when he lived with his first master.
“Oh, dear me!” sighed Agnes. “It does seem too bad that one’s very
_best_ friends sometimes turn out to be one’s enemies. Who’d have
thought Trix Severn would do such a thing?”
“Of course, we don’t _know_,” admitted Ruth, trying to be fair. “But
who else could have told Mr. Reynolds about Tom Jonah?”
Ruth went into the first store in the village that sold such things
and bought a new leash. This she snapped into the ring of his collar
and made the old dog walk beside them more decorously.
Tess and Dot could scarcely keep from hugging him all the time; they
wanted Ruth to agree to take the very next train back to Milton, for
they thought with the dog once at the old Corner House, nobody could
take him away from them.
“I didn’t like that man at all, anyway,” Tess declared. “He had red
whiskers.”
“Is—is that a sign that a man’s real mean if he has red whiskers,
Tess?” asked Dot, wonderingly.
“It’s a sign Tess doesn’t like him,” laughed Agnes. “But I don’t like
that Reynolds man myself. Do you, Ruthie?”
“We’re all agreed on that point I should hope,” said Ruth. “But we
won’t run away with Tom Jonah. If that man comes for him again, I’ll
find some way to circumvent him. The good old dog belongs to us, if he
does to anybody. And as long as he wants to live with us, he shall. So
now!”
The other Corner House girls finally forgot their worriment about Tom
Jonah. Ruth warned them not to talk about it to the girls they met.
They did their errands in the village and then went on to Spoondrift
bungalow where they spent a very enjoyable day.
Neale O’Neil and Joe Eldred came after supper to escort the Corner
House girls back to Willowbend Camp. Tess and Dot had taken a nap
during the afternoon, so were not a drag on the procession, going
home.
They went around by the home of the little old woman who lived in the
shoe. Ruth and Agnes had been talking with the boys about the mystery
of the strange girl who had shared in the adventures of Tess and Dot
on Wild Goose Island. They all agreed she must be a Gypsy; but Ruth
had kept to herself the knowledge of the girl’s identity as the Gypsy
“queen.”
“I saw several of the Gypsies about the beach to-day,” Joe Eldred
said. “That snaky, scarred-faced fellow was one of them.”
“He’s the ring-leader, I believe,” Ruth hastened to say.
“Can’t just see what they are after, hanging about here,” Neale
observed. “There isn’t much to steal. Everybody’s brought just the
oldest things they own down here to the beach.”
“And there are no hens to steal,” chuckled Agnes.
“I bet none of them will come near the tents while Tom Jonah is on
guard,” Neale added, snapping his fingers for the dog who was running
ahead in the moonlit path.
Suddenly Tom Jonah stopped and growled. They had arrived in sight of
the queer little cottage where Rosa Wildwood lived with Mrs. Bobster.
The young folk could even see the drawn shade of the sitting-room
window.
“There’s that man again!” exclaimed Agnes.
“What man?” Joe Eldred asked.
“Mrs. Bobster’s mysterious friend,” giggled Agnes. “See his shadow on
the curtain?”
“And he’s sitting there with his hat on,” murmured Neale.
But it was Ruth who saw the other—and more important—shadow. This
was the figure of a tall man slipping along the outer side of Mrs.
Bobster’s picket fence. It was _this_ shadow at which Tom Jonah was
growling.
The man came to the gate, opened it softly, and stole in. His furtive
movements gave the big dog his cue. He leaped forward, barking
vociferously, leaped the fence, and followed the running figure around
the corner of the house.
Mrs. Bobster shrieked—the young folk outside could hear her. But her
“company” did not move. He still sat there with his derby hat on.
The boys started after the dog. The girls stood, clinging to one
another’s hands, at the corner of the fence.
From around the house appeared another running figure; but this was a
girl. She flung herself headlong over the fence, and her skirt caught
on a picket. Ruth ran forward to release her.
“Oh, my dear!” she gasped. “Where did you come from?”
It was the girl she had first noticed in the train with the Gypsy
woman—the very girl who had been on Wild Goose Island with Tess and
Dot. It was she who had masqueraded as Zaliska, the Gypsy queen.