the boy.
“I don’t think Ruth would mind our borrowing twenty-five cents of you, Sammy,” said Tess, slowly.
“Of course not,” urged Dot. “Why, Sammy is just like one of the family.”
“Only when you girls go off cruising, I ain’t,” observed Sammy, his face clouding with remembrance. “Then I ain’t even a step-child.”
But he produced the quarter and offered it to Tess. She counted it with the money already in her hand.
“But – but that makes only forty-five cents,” she said.
The two Gypsy women spoke hissingly to each other in a tongue that the children did not, of course, understand. Then the older woman thrust the basket out again.
“Take!” she said. “Take for forty-fi’ cents, eh? The little ladies can have.”
“Go ahead,” Sammy said as Tess hesitated. “That’s all the old basket is worth. I can get one bigger than that at the chain store for seven cents.”
“Oh, Sammy, it isn’t as bee-you-tiful as this!” gasped Dot.
“Well, it’s a basket just the same.”
Tess put the silver and pennies in the old woman’s clawlike hand and the longed-for basket came into her possession.
“It is a good-fortune basket, pretty little ladies,” repeated the old Gypsy, grinning at them toothlessly. “You are honest little ladies, I can see. You would never cheat the old Gypsy, would you? This is all the money you have to pay for the beautiful basket? Forty-fi’ cents?”
“Aw, say!” grumbled Sammy, “a bargain is a bargain, ain’t it? And forty-five cents is a good deal of money.”
“If – if you think we ought to pay more – ”
Tess held the basket out hesitatingly. Dot fairly squealed:
“Don’t be a ninny, Tessie Kenway! It’s ours now.”
“The basket is yours, little ladies,” croaked the crone as the younger woman pulled sharply at her shawl. “But good fortune goes with it only if you are honest with the poor old Gypsy. Good-bye.”
The two strange women hurried away. Sammy lounged to the door, hands in pockets, to look after them. He caught a momentary glimpse of the tall Gypsy man disappearing around a corner. The two women quickly followed him.
“Oh, what a lovely basket!” Dot was saying.
“I – I hope Ruth won’t scold because we borrowed that quarter of Sammy,” murmured Tess.
“Shucks!” exclaimed their boy friend. “Don’t tell her. You can pay me when you get some more money.”
“Oh, no!” Tess said. “I would not hide anything from Ruth.”
“You couldn’t, anyway,” said the practical Dot. “She will want to know where we got the money to pay for the basket. Oh, do open it, Tess. Isn’t it lovely?”
The cover worked on a very ingeniously contrived hinge. Had the children known much about such things they must have seen that the basket was worth much more than the price they had paid for it – much more indeed than the price the Gypsies had first asked.
Tess lifted the cover. Dot crowded nearer to look in. The shadows of the little girls’ heads at first hid the bottom of the basket. Then both saw something gleaming dully there. Tess and Dot cried out in unison; but it was the latter’s brown hand that darted into the basket and brought forth the bracelet.
“A silver bracelet!” Tess gasped.
“Oh, look at it!” cried Dot. “Did you ever? Do you s’pose it’s real silver, Tess?”
“Of course it is,” replied her sister, taking the circlet in her own hand. “How pretty! It’s all engraved with fret-work – ”
“Hey!” ejaculated Sammy coming closer. “What’s that?”
“Oh, Sammy! A silver bracelet – all fretted, too,” exclaimed the highly excited Dot.
“Huh! What’s that? ‘Fretted’? When my mother’s fretted she’s – Say! how can a silver bracelet be cross, I want to know?”
“Oh, Sammy,” Tess suddenly ejaculated, “these Gypsy women will be cross enough when they miss this bracelet!”
“Oh! Oh!” wailed Dot. “Maybe they’ll come back and want to take it and the pretty basket, Tess. Let’s run and hide ’em!”
CHAPTER II – A PROFOUND MYSTERY
Tess Kenway was positively shocked by her sister Dot’s suggestion. To think of trying to keep the silver bracelet which they knew must belong to the Gypsy woman who had sold them the green and yellow basket, was quite a horrifying thought to Tess.
“How can you say such a thing, Dottie Kenway?” she demanded sternly. “Of course we cannot keep the bracelet. And that old Gypsy lady said we were honest, too. She could see we were. And, then, what would Ruthie say?”
Their older sister’s opinion was always the standard for the other Corner House girls. And that might well be, for Ruth Kenway had been mentor and guide to her sisters ever since Dot, at least, could remember. Their mother had died so long ago that Tess but faintly remembered her.
The Kenways had lived in a very moderately priced tenement in Bloomsburg when Mr. Howbridge (now their guardian) had searched for and found them, bringing them with Aunt Sarah Maltby to the old Corner House in Milton. In the first volume of this series, “The Corner House Girls,” these matters are fully explained.
The six succeeding volumes relate in detail the adventures of the four sisters and their friends – and some most remarkable adventures have they had at school, under canvas, at the seashore, as important characters in a school play, solving the mystery of a long-lost fortune, on an automobile tour through the country, and playing a winning part in the fortunes of Luke and Cecile Shepard in the volume called “The Corner House Girls Growing Up.”
In “The Corner House Girls Snowbound,” the eighth book of the series, the Kenways and a number of their young friends went into the North Woods with their guardian to spend the Christmas Holidays. Eventually they rescued the twin Birdsall children, who likewise had come under the care of the elderly lawyer who had so long been the Kenway sisters’ good friend.
During the early weeks of the summer, just previous to the opening of our present story, the Corner House girls had enjoyed a delightful trip on a houseboat in the neighboring waters. The events of this trip are related in “The Corner House Girls on a Houseboat.” During this outing there was more than one exciting incident. But the most exciting of all was the unexpected appearance of Neale O’Neil’s father, long believed lost in Alaska.
Mr. O’Neil’s return to the States could only be for a brief period, for his mining interests called him back to Nome. His son, however, no longer mourned him as lost, and naturally (though this desire he kept secret from Agnes) the boy hoped, when his school days were over, to join his father in that far Northland.
There was really no thought in the mind of the littlest Corner House girl to take that which did not belong to her. Most children believe implicitly in “findings-keepings,” and it seemed to Dot Kenway that as they had bought the green and yellow basket in good faith of the two Gypsy women, everything it contained should belong to them.
This, too, was Sammy Pinkney’s idea of the matter. Sammy considered himself very worldly wise.
“Say! what’s the matter with you, Tess Kenway? Of course that bracelet is yours – if you want it. Who’s going to stop you from keeping it, I want to know?”
“But – but it must belong to one of those Gypsy ladies,” gasped Tess. “The old lady asked us if we were honest. Of course we are!”
“Pshaw! If they miss it, they’ll be back after that silver thing fast enough.”
“But,