Читать книгу The Corner House Girls Solve a Mystery - Grace Brooks Hill - Страница 4

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“Agnes, did you hear anything?”

“I’m not sure, Ruth, but I did think I heard something in the kitchen, still——”

“I shouldn’t have left Dot and Tess there alone to finish making their cakes, I’m afraid,” went on the oldest of the Corner House girls. “But they begged and teased so to be allowed to bake something by themselves, that I gave in against my better judgment. I’m always doing that!”

“Don’t reproach yourself,” murmured Agnes. “Oh, I’m afraid I’ve broken one of my nails,” she exclaimed, looking at her well-manicured hands. “Yes, it is broken!” she sighed. “And I was going to——”

“Something else besides a fingernail is broken, to judge by the racket down in the kitchen!” exclaimed Ruth, interrupting her “beauty sister,” as she sometimes called Agnes.

Ruth had opened the door of the room in which she and her sister, with the housekeeper, Mrs. MacCall, had been discussing the advisability of having it repapered in anticipation of the time when Miss Hastings should come to visit them, the Boston girl having accepted a very cordial invitation to stay a few weeks at the Corner House.

“Something has happened!” declared Ruth, with conviction.

“Oh, the puir bairns!” exclaimed motherly Mrs. MacCall. “Hech! Hech! Mayhap the dratted stove hae burned them! Oh, woe is me!”

“They know better than to get burned,” answered Ruth. “But I think we’d better go down and see what has happened.”

“You think!” gasped Agnes, looking at her fractured nail. “I just know we had!”

Followed by Mrs. MacCall, with her ominous “hech! hech!” the while mumbling incomprehensible Scotch words, the two sisters hastened down the stairs. When they caught sight of the kitchen with its mixture of eggs and alligator, Ruth felt like saying what Sammy had said—with added adjectives.

“Oh, what has happened?” cried Agnes.

“Sammy was doing a trick, Aggie, and—” began Dot. Then she caught sight of her Alice-doll on the floor with a slowly moving trail of egg yellow, like lava from a volcano, working toward her, and with a cry sprang to save her.

“Trick!” spluttered Robbie Foote, as he arose and wiped some white of egg from his face. “If you call that a trick——”

“What’s burning?” asked Ruth.

“Oh, my cake! My cake!” shouted Tess.

Mrs. MacCall simply raised her hands in the air. She was beyond speech.

“This,” said Sammy Pinkney again, “is fierce!”

But it was not always thus in the Corner House. Usually the house was as quiet and orderly as is the normal household inhabited by four healthy, happy girls and their friends and playmates. However, this confusion will serve one good purpose. It will enable me to acquaint my new readers more formally with the characters who are to play their parts in this story.

Bloomingsburg was the former home of the Kenway sisters when you first met them in the opening volume of this series, called “The Corner House Girls.” There was a reason for that name, since the quartette came to live in the Corner House at Milton. A distant relative of the Kenways, Uncle Peter Stower, had died and left the four orphan girls all his property. This included the Stower homestead, known far and wide in that section as the old Corner House.

Mr. Howbridge, who was named the guardian of the girls, managed matters for them and saw to it that Ruth, Agnes, Dot and Tess were safely domiciled in the Corner House. With them came Aunt Sarah Maltby, an old lady who was rather a trial at times, for she was always afraid something was going to happen. What this “something” was she never could be sure of, but it was an ever-present fear.

However, the looking after the girls devolved more upon stanch Mrs. MacCall and Uncle Rufus, the devoted colored servant of the late Peter Stower, so Aunt Sarah did not need to be relied upon.

Thus Ruth, the oldest, and her three sisters, came to live in the Corner House, the poverty days in Bloomingsburg being a thing of the past.

“She might have come along and visited us just as we are, and just as she was,” complained Ruth. “But I suppose she thought she had to run back to Boston for more dresses.”

“That reminds me,” said Agnes thoughtfully, carefully filing her broken nail. “I suppose we shall need new gowns for the party. Oh, can’t we afford it, Ruth?”

“I think so.” And Ruth smiled. “We haven’t been very extravagant, Mr. Howbridge says.” She referred to their man of affairs. “He says we have some of our summer allowance left.”

“Good! Then I’m going to have that voile I’ve wanted so long. And it’s going to be lavender, too.”

“I suppose that’s Neale’s favorite color,” remarked Ruth.

“What if it is? Doesn’t Luke like those pale, neutral tints, and——”

“I like them myself,” interrupted Ruth demurely, “and I saw the loveliest shade of—Who are those two men coming in?” she broke off to ask the housekeeper.

“Wha’ twa min, dearie?”

“Those queer-looking ones—like two tramps. I just saw them going around toward the side entrance. Dot and Tess are on the porch. I don’t want tramps to frighten them or Linda. I’d better go down and see who they are. I don’t like their looks.”

“But we haven’t settled about the paper for Nally’s room!” called Agnes.

“You settle it with Mrs. Mac,” returned Ruth. “I must see about those two queer men.”

Dot and Tess had not long lived in their new home before they made the acquaintance of Sammy Pinkney, who dwelt catercornered from the Corner House, and Sammy, Dot and Tess had royal good times together.

Ruth and Agnes, being older—in fact, Ruth now being quite a young lady—had more mature friends. Among them might especially be mentioned Luke Shepard. His name was being coupled with Ruth’s in “quite a matrimonial manner,” Agnes laughingly remarked, at which Ruth retorted:

“You needn’t talk! What about Neale O’Neil?”

Whereat Agnes had the grace to blush.

Luke Shepard was a young collegian who was more or less at the Corner House—less when at college and more often during vacation times. Luke lived with his sister Cecile at Grantham, not many miles away. Their Aunt Lorena kept house for the young folks. They had a very good neighbor, and this neighbor had aided Luke in going to college. But now the young man was helping himself, having become an assistant during his vacations to a certain Professor Keeps. Often Luke came to Milton, staying with Neale O’Neil when he did so.

As for Neale, there was a romantic history connected with him. After running away from the circus he had lived with the Milton cobbler, and there was a mystery about his father who had gone to Alaska in search of gold. There were dark days for Neale until his father came back, not fabulously rich, but in much better circumstances than when he went away.

However, the wanderlust called Mr. O’Neil, and he went away again, first, however, providing well for his son. Had he wished, Neale might have had a house of his own, but he continued to live with old but loving Con Murphy, and he continued, too, to look after many details for the Kenway girls around their place. That this gave him a chance to see Agnes more often, may have had something to do with it.

The Kenway girls made the most delightful friends, and what wonderful adventures they had is told in the volumes of this series succeeding the first. These happenings included going to school, camping out, giving a play, making an odd find, touring, and growing up. Once the four were snowbound and had a most amazing time, and again they spent a summer on a houseboat, following which they had a rather “hectic time,” as Agnes called it, among the Gypsies.

Their latest adventures had been on Palm Island, or, as Dot insisted on calling it, “Plam Island,” whither the quartette went because a change to a warmer climate was needed for their health, severe colds having been contracted when Ruth and Agnes attended a party on a stormy wintry day.

In spite of some very exciting and not altogether happy adventures related in “The Corner House Girls on Palm Island,” which is the title of the volume immediately preceding the one you are now reading, the girls enjoyed their summer vacation. They had been home now about two weeks, when there occurred the happening set down in the first chapter of this volume.

Wishing to bring Sammy Pinkney back some souvenir from Palm Island, an alligator, not too large, had been selected, though Dot said he had expressed a preference for a “turkle.” However, the turtles, of which there was an abundance on Palm Island, were far too large to bring north and the young alligator had been a compromise.

That Sammy was delighted with his new pet goes without saying. He even gave Snapper more attention than Buster, his bulldog, received. Then Sammy got the idea of dressing up the alligator and of hitching it to a toy cart.

“Oh, children! what happened?” cried Ruth, despair in her voice.

“I—didn’t—drop—those eggs!” declared Robbie, speaking in gasps, for some yellow was now running into his mouth. “The goat—he butted me.”

“The goat!” cried Agnes, looking around.

“He’s gone out now,” said Sammy mildly. “The alligator bit his tail!”

“The alligator—” Ruth stopped for want of words.

“Our cakes are burning! Oh, our cakes are burning!” wailed Dot.

There was a decided odor of too-much-baked cake permeating the kitchen.

“I’ll take ’em out for ye!” offered Mrs. MacCall. “Oh, ye puir bairns! Sorrow is the day!”

“Tess, tell me about it!” commanded Ruth, when the cakes had been rescued, and only just in time.

While the mess of eggs was being cleaned from the floor by Linda, the maid, who had been down in the laundry during the excitement, and when Sammy had ascertained by close examination that his alligator was unharmed (though one wheel of the cart was broken), peace and quiet once more reigned in the Corner House.

“But don’t ever do anything like that again, Sammy!” cautioned Ruth, shaking a warning finger at the boy. “If you want to show off your alligator, do it in the garage.”

“Yes’m,” mumbled Sammy.

The three younger children were sent out-of-doors, with some of the newly baked cakes, and the conference upstairs, as to what kind of paper should be put on the guest room, was resumed.

“Nally is so—so particular,” murmured Agnes, “though she is a dear girl. I’d like her to have a nice room.” They all called Nalbro, Nally now.