“It – it sounded worse than Tommy Rooney hollering at you on the dark stairs.”
The girls had slept very contentedly in the two great rooms which Ruth chose at the back of the house for their bedrooms, and which opened into each other and into one of the bathrooms. Aunt Sarah did not mind being alone at the front.
“I always intended havin’ this room when I got back into this house,” she said, in one of her infrequent confidences to Ruth. “I wanted it when I was a gal. It was a guest room. Peter said I shouldn’t have it. But I’m back in it now, in spite of him – ain’t I?”
Following Uncle Peter’s death, Mr. Howbridge had hired a woman to clean and fix up the rooms in the Corner House, which had been occupied in the old man’s lifetime. But there was plenty for Ruth and Agnes to do during the first few days.
Although they had no intention of using the parlors, there was quite enough for the Kenway girls to do in caring for the big kitchen (in which they ate, too), the dining-room, which they used as a general sitting-room, the halls and stairs, and the three bedrooms.
The doors of the other rooms on the two floors (and they seemed innumerable) Ruth kept closed with the blinds at the windows drawn.
“I don’t like so many shut doors,” Dot confided to Tess, as they were dusting the carved balustrade in the big hall, and the big, hair-cloth covered pieces of furniture which were set about the lower floor of it. “You don’t know what is behind them – ready to pop out!”
“Isn’t anything behind them,” said the practical Tess. “Don’t you be a little ‘’fraid-cat,’ Dot.”
Then a door rattled, and a latch clicked, and both girls drew suddenly together, while their hearts throbbed tumultuously.
“Of course, that was only the old wind,” whispered Tess, at last.
“Ye-es. But the wind wasn’t ever like that at home in Bloomingsburg,” stammered Dot. “I – I don’t believe I am going to like this big house, Tess. I – I wish we were home in Essex Street.”
She actually burst out crying and ran to Ruth, who chanced to open the dining-room door. Agnes was with her, and the twelve year old demanded of Tess:
“What’s the matter with that child? What have you been doing to her?”
“Why, Aggie! You know I wouldn’t do anything to her,” declared Tess, a little hurt by the implied accusation.
“Of course you haven’t, dear,” said Ruth, soothing the sobbing Dot. “Tell us about it.”
“Dot’s afraid – the house is so big – and the doors rattle,” said Tess.
“Ugh! it is kind of spooky,” muttered Aggie.
“O-o-o!” gasped Tess.
“Hush!” commanded Ruth, quickly.
“What’s ‘spooky’?” demanded Dot, hearing a new word, and feeling that its significance was important.
“Never you mind, Baby,” said Aggie, kissing her. “It isn’t anything that’s going to bite you.”
“I tell you,” said Ruth, with decision, “you take her out into the yard to play, Tess. Aggie and I will finish here. We mustn’t let her get a dislike for this lovely old house. We’re the Corner House girls, you know, and we mustn’t be afraid of our own home,” and she kissed Dot again.
“I – I guess I’ll like it by and by,” sobbed Dot, trying hard to recover her composure. “But – but it’s so b-b-big and scary.”
“Nothing at all to scare you here, dear,” said Ruth, briskly. “Now, run along.”
When the smaller girls had gone for their hats, Ruth said to Aggie: “You know, mother always said Dot had too much imagination. She just pictures things as so much worse, or so much better, than they really are. Now, if she should really ever be frightened here, maybe she’d never like the old house to live in at all.”
“Oh, my!” said Aggie. “I hope that won’t happen. For I think this is just the very finest house I ever saw. There is none as big in sight on this side of the parade ground. We must be awfully rich, Ruth.”
“Why – why I never thought of that,” said the elder sister, slowly. “I don’t know whether we are actually rich, or not. Mr. Howbridge said something about there being a lot of tenements and money, but, you see, as long as Uncle Peter’s will can’t be found, maybe we can’t use much of the money.”
“We’ll have to work hard to keep this place clean,” sighed Aggie.
“We haven’t anything else to do this summer, anyway,” said Ruth, quickly. “And maybe things will be different by fall.”
“Maybe we can find the will!” exclaimed Aggie, voicing a sudden thought.
“Oh!”
“Wouldn’t that be great?”
“I’ll ask Mr. Howbridge if we may look. I expect he has looked in all the likely places,” Ruth said, after a moment’s reflection.
“Then we’ll look in the unlikely ones,” chuckled Aggie. “You know, you read in story books about girls finding money in old stockings, and in cracked teapots, and behind pictures in the parlor, and inside the stuffing of old chairs, and – ”
“Goodness me!” exclaimed Ruth. “You are as imaginative as Dot herself.”
Meanwhile Tess and Dot had run out into the yard. They had already made a tour of discovery about the neglected garden and the front lawn, where the grass was crying-out for the mower.
Ruth said she was going to have some late vegetables, and there was a pretty good chicken house and wired run. If they could get a few hens, the eggs would help out on the meat-bill. That was the way Ruth Kenway still looked at things!
The picket fence about the front of the old Corner House property was higher than the heads of the two younger girls. As they went slowly along by the front fence, looking out upon Main Street, they saw many people look curiously in at them. It doubtless seemed strange in the eyes of Milton people to see children running about the yard of the old Corner House, which for a generation had been practically shut up.
There were other children, too, who looked in between the pickets, too shy to speak, but likewise curious. One boy, rather bigger than Tess, stuck a long pole between two of the pickets, and when Dot was not looking, he turned the pole suddenly and confined her between it and the fence.
Dot squealed – although it did not hurt much, only startled her. Tess flew to the rescue.
“Don’t you do that!” she cried. “She’s my sister! I’ll just give it to you – ”
But there came a much more vigorous rescuer from outside the fence. A long legged, hatless colored girl, maybe a year or two older than Tess, darted across Main Street from the other side.
“Let go o’ dat! Let go o’ dat, you Sam Pinkney! You’s jes’ de baddes’ boy in Milton! I done tell your mudder so on’y dis berry mawnin’ – Yes-sah!”
She fell upon the mischievous Sam and boxed both of his ears soundly, dragging the pole out from between the pickets as well, all in a flash. She was as quick as could be.
“Don’ you be ’fraid, you lil’ w’ite gals!” said this champion, putting her brown, grinning face to an aperture between the pickets, her white teeth and the whites of her eyes shining.
“Dat no-’count Sam Pinkney is sho’ a nuisance in dis town – ya-as’m! My mudder say so. ’F I see him a-tantalizin’ you-uns again, he’n’ me’ll have de gre’tes’ bustification we ever did hab – now, I tell yo’, honeys.”
She then burst into a wide-mouthed laugh that made Tess and Dot smile, too. The brown girl added:
“You-uns gwine to lib in dat ol’ Co’ner House?”
“Yes,”