The Corner House Girls' Odd Find

“I’ll come back and I’ll make every one of you walk the plank!”

“What ever that may mean,” murmured Agnes, quite weak from laughter. But as Sammy Pinkney started for the door she cried: “Oh, Sammy!”

“Well? What’s the matter?” growled the savage young Santa Claus.

“Tell us – do! How did you get in the chimney?” asked Agnes.

“The skylight was open when I followed you girls upstairs, so I got up on the roof and crawled in at the top of the chimbley. It was all right coming down, too,” said the young rascal, “till I got to the second story. There was irons in the chimbley for steps; but one was loose and fell out when I stepped on it. Then I – I slipped.”

He stalked out. Dot said ruminatively: “We’d better have that step fixed before to-morrow night, hadn’t we, Ruthie? Before Santa Claus comes, you know. He might fall and hurt himself.”

“Very true, Dottums,” declared Agnes, with a quickly serious face. “I’ll speak to Uncle Rufus about it.”

But Agnes must have forgotten, or else Uncle Rufus did not attend to the missing step in the chimney. At least, so Dot supposed when she awoke in the dark the very next morning and heard something going “thump-thumpity-thump” down the chimney again.

The smallest Corner House girl was not in the habit of waking up when it seemed still “the middle of the night,” and her small head was quite confused. She really thought it must be Christmas morning and that good Kris Kringle has suffered a bad fall.

“Oh-ee! if he’s brought Alice-doll her new carriage, it will be all smashed!” gasped Dot, and she slipped out of bed without disturbing Tess.

She shrugged on her little bathrobe and put her tiny feet into slippers. Somebody ought to go to see how bad a fall Santa Claus had – and see if all his presents were smashed. Dot really had forgotten that there was still another day before Christmas.

The little girl padded out of her room and along the hall to the front of the house. Nobody heard her as she descended the front stairs.

Dot came to the foot of the stairs, where a single dim gaslight flickered. She pushed open the dining room door.

As she did so, there sounded the faint clink, clink, clink of metal against metal. A spotlight flashed and roved around the room – touching ceiling and walls and floor in its travels. But it did not reveal her figure just inside the door.

She saw no good Kris Kringle standing on the hearth, with his bag of toys. Nothing but a broken brick lay there – probably loosened by Sammy Pinkney in his course down the chimney-well the previous afternoon.

There was a shadowy figure – she could not see its face – stooping over a cloth laid upon the floor; and upon that cloth was stacked much of the choice old silver which Uncle Rufus always packed away so carefully after using in the locked safe in the butler’s pantry.

CHAPTER III – DOROTHY’S BURGLAR

Dot Kenway had heard about burglars. That is, she knew there were such people. Just why they went about “burgling,” as she herself phrased it, the smallest Corner House girl did not understand.

But she thought, with a queer jumping at her heart, that she had found a “really truly” burglar now.

He was just putting their very best sugar-bowl on the top of the pile of other silver, and she expected to see him tie up the cloth by its four corners preparatory to taking it away.

Dot really did not know what she ought to do. Of course, she might have screamed for Ruth; but then, she knew that Ruthie would be awfully scared if she did.

Why, Tess, even, would be scared if she came across a burglar! Dot was quite sure of that; and she felt happy to know that she was really not so scared as she supposed she would have been.

The burglar did not seem any more fearful in appearance than the iceman, or the man who took out the ashes, or the man who came to sharpen the knives and had a key-bugle —

Oh! and maybe burglars carried something to announce their calling, like other tradesmen. The junkman had a string of bells on his wagon; the peanutman had a whistle on his roaster; the man who mended tinware and umbrellas beat a shiny new tin pan as he walked through Willow Street —

“Oh!” ejaculated the curious Dot, right out loud, “do you use a whistle, or a bell, or anything, in your business, please?”

My goodness! how that man jumped! Dot thought he would fall right over backward, and the round ray of the spotlight in his hand shot up to the ceiling and all about the room before it fell on Dot, standing over by the hall door.

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” gasped the man, in utter amazement. “Wha – what did you say, miss?”

He was not really a man, after all. Dot saw by his lean face that he was nothing more than a half grown boy. So every little bit of fear she had felt for the burglar departed. He could not really be a journeyman burglar – only an apprentice, just learning his trade. Dot became confidential at once, and came closer to him.

“I – I never met anybody in your business before,” said the smallest Corner House girl. “If you please, do you only come into folks’s houses at night?”

“Huh!” croaked the young man, hoarsely. “Seems ter me we’re workin’ both night an’ day at this season. I never did see it so hard on a poor feller before.”

“Oh, my!” exclaimed Dot. “Do you have busy seasons, and slack seasons, like the peddlers?”

“I should say we did, miss,” agreed the other, still in a complaining tone.

“My! What makes this time of year a busy one?” demanded the inquisitive Dorothy.

“The frost, miss.”

“The frost?” repeated the little girl, quite puzzled.

“Yes, miss. The frost catches folks napping, as ye may say.”

Dot puzzled over that for a moment, too. Did folks sleep harder when it was frosty and dark out-of-doors, than in summer? The young man stood and watched her. It must be rather embarrassing to be interrupted in the midst of a burglary.

“Don’t – don’t mind me,” said Dot, politely. “Don’t let me stop your work.”

“No, miss. I’m a-waiting for my boss,” said the other.

There! Dot had known he must be only an apprentice burglar – he was so young.

“Then – then there’s more of you?” she asked.

“More of me? No, ma’am,” said the amazed young man. “You see all there is of me. I never was very husky – no, ma’am.”

He seemed to be a very diffident burglar. He quite puzzled Dot.

“Don’t – don’t you ever get afraid in your business?” she asked. “I should think you would.”

“Yep. I’m some afraid when I wipe a joint,” admitted the young man. “Ye see, I ain’t used to the hot lead, yet.”

Dot thought over that answer a good while. Of course, she could not be expected to understand the professional talk of burglars – never having associated with that gentry. What “wiping a joint” meant she could not imagine; and what burglars did with hot lead was quite as puzzling.

“I – I suppose your boss is a journeyman burglar?” queried the little girl, at last.

“Wha-at!” gasped the young man. Then he grinned hugely. “That’s what some of his customers calls him, miss,” he agreed.

“Don’t – don’t you think there is some danger in your staying here alone?” asked Dot. “Suppose Uncle Rufus should come down stairs and catch you?”

“Hullo! who’s Uncle Rufus?” asked the young man.

“Why – why, he’s Uncle Rufus. He works for us – ”

“Oh! he’s the colored man?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why, he is down,” said the young man, coolly. “He let us in. We had to come early, ’cause we’ve got so much work to do, and we didn’t get through at Pinkney’s till nine o’clock last night.”

“At Pinkney’s?” cried Dot, as the young man yawned. “Did – did you burgle Sammy’s house, too?”

“What d’ye mean – ‘burgle’?” asked the young man, biting off the yawn and staring again at Dot.

“I beg your pardon,” said Dot, gently. “But – but what do you call it?”

Just then the door of the butler’s pantry opened and Uncle Rufus looked in.

“Dat oddah plumber done come, young man,” he said. “Dis ain’t no time in de mawnin’ – ‘fo’ six o’clock – t’ come t’ folks’s houses nohow t’ mend a busted watah-pipe – nossir! Yuh got all ob dem silber pieces out ob de safe?”

“They’re all out, Uncle,” said the young man.

“Whuffo’ dey run dat pipe t’rough de silber closet, I dunno,” complained the old darkey. “I use t’ tell Mistah Peter Stowah dat it was one piece of plain foolishness. What if de bat’room is ober dis closet – ”

He disappeared, his voice trailing off into silence, and the young man followed him. Dot was left breathless and rather abashed. Then the young man was not a burglar after all; he was only a plumber!

She crept back to bed, and said nothing to anybody about her early morning visit to the lower floor. But the young man told Uncle Rufus, and Uncle Rufus, chuckling hugely, told Mrs. MacCall.

“I’d like to know, for goodness’ sake, what you would have done if it had been a really truly burglar, Dot Kenway?” Agnes demanded, when the story was repeated at the breakfast table.

“I’d have given him my silver knife and fork and mug, and asked him to go away without waking up Ruthie,” declared the smallest Corner House girl, having thought it all out by that time.

“I believe you would – you blessed child!” cried Ruth, jumping up to kiss her.

“But suppose it had been Santa Claus?” Tess murmured, “and you had disturbed him filling our stockings?”

“Pooh!” said Dot. “If he’d felled down the chimbley like that brick, he wouldn’t have been filling stockings.”

CHAPTER IV – THE FAMILY ALBUM – AND OTHER THINGS

The day before Christmas was the busiest day of all. The dressing of the tree must be finished and the trimming and festooning of the big dining room completed. Neale O’Neil came over early to help the Corner House girls. He was a slim, rosy-cheeked, flaxen-haired boy, as agile as a monkey, and almost always smiling.

Ruth and Agnes would not hear to his helping trim the tree; but it was Neale’s agility that made it possible for the rope of green to be festooned from the heavy ceiling cornices. Uncle Rufus was much too stiff with rheumatism for such work.

“Well! boys are some good, you must admit,” Agnes said to Ruth, for the oldest Corner House girl was inclined to be a carping critic of the “mere male.”

“All right. If he’s so awfully useful, just let him clear up all this mess on the carpet, and then dust the rugs. Mercy, Agnes!” exclaimed Ruth, “what a lot of this green stuff there is all over the floor.”

“Yes, I know,” admitted Agnes.

“And there is other rubbish, too. Look at this old book you brought down from the attic and flung in the corner.”

Ruth picked it up. It was heavy, and she carried it over to the broad window-seat on which she sat to open the “family album,” as Agnes had called it.

The latter and Neale, having brought in basket and broom, began to gather up the litter. Ruth became very still at the window with the old volume in her lap. The smaller girls were out of the room.

“What’s in the old thing – pictures?” asked Agnes of her elder sister.

“Ye – yes, pictures,” Ruth said hesitatingly.

“Must be funny ones,” chuckled Neale, “by the look of her face.”

Ruth did look serious as she sat there, turning the pages of the big, old volume. Had the others noticed particularly they would have seen that the countenance of the oldest Corner House girl had become very pale.

It was so when Mrs. MacCall looked in and said to her: “Oh, Ruth! I do wish you’d come out here and see what that Sammy Pinkney’s brought. I dunno whether to laugh, to scream, or to spank him!”

“I’ll be there in a moment, Mrs. Mac,” Ruth said nervously, jumping up and closing the book.

Then she glanced at Agnes and Neale, seized the volume in her arms, and instead of going out through the butler’s pantry after Mrs. MacCall, she crossed the front hall to the sitting room at the rear of the house.

“I like that!” cried Agnes. “Why! I found that old album myself; and I haven’t had a chance to look into it yet.”

Ruth was only a moment in the sitting room. Then she ran to the kitchen and out upon the cold porch, where Sammy Pinkney, done up in the folds of a huge red comforter like a boa-constrictor suffering from scarlet fever, stood, holding a cage-trap in one mittened hand.

“What do you know about this?” demanded Mrs. MacCall, spectacles on nose and eyeing the contents of the round trap in alarm and disgust.

Uncle Rufus was chuckling hugely in the background. Sandyface, the mother cat, was arching her back and purring pleadingly about Sammy’s sturdy legs.

“What are they?” demanded Ruth.

“Mice,” grunted Sammy, gruffly. “For Tess’ cats. They like ’em, don’t they? But my mother says I’ve got to bring the trap back.”

“What’s to be done with a boy like that?” demanded Mrs. MacCall. “Being kicked to death with grasshoppers would be mild punishment for him, wouldn’t it? What’s to be done with eight mice?”

“One kitten will have to go without,” said Dot, the literal, as she and Tess joined the party on the porch.

“Come on, now! You gotter let ’em out. I gotter have the trap,” was Sammy’s gruff statement. He saw that his present was not entirely appreciated by the human members of the Corner House family, whether the feline members approved or not.

“Oh, I’ll call the family!” cried Dot, and raised her voice in a shrill cry for “Spotty, Almira, Popocatepetl, Bungle, Starboard, Port, Hard-a-Lee and Mainsheet!” She was breathless when she had finished.

Cats came from all directions. Indeed, they seemed to appear most mysteriously from the ground. Big cats and little cats, black cats and gray cats, striped cats and spotted cats.

“If there were any more of them they’d eat us out of house and home,” declared Mrs. MacCall.

“But Almira isn’t here!” wailed Dot. “Oh, Ruthie! don’t let him open the cage till Almira comes. She wants a chance to catch a mouse.”

“I believe you children are little cannibals!” exclaimed the housekeeper. “How can you? Wanting those cats to catch the poor little mice!”

“D’you want ’em for pets?” demanded Sammy, grinning at the housekeeper.

“Ugh! I hate the pests!” cried Mrs. MacCall.

“Do find Almira, Ruthie,” begged Dot.

“I gotter take this cage back,” said Sammy. “Can’t fool here all day with a parcel of girls.”

“But Almira – ”

But Ruth had gone into the woodshed. She peered into the corners and all around the barrels. Suddenly she heard a cat purring – purring hard, just like a mill!

“Where are you, Almira?” she asked, softly.

“Purr! purr! purr!” went Almira – oh, so loud, and so proudly!

“What is it, Almira?” asked Ruth. “There! I see you – down in that corner. Why, you’re on Uncle Rufus’ old coat! Oh! What’s this?”

The eight mice had been caught by the other cats and killed. Tess came to the woodshed door.

“Oh, Ruth,” she asked, “has anything happened to Almira?”

“I should say there had!” laughed the oldest Corner House girl.

“Oh! what is it?” cried Dot, running, too, to see.

“Santa Claus came ahead of time – to Almira, anyway,” declared Ruth. “Did you ever see the like? You cunning ‘ittle s’ings! Look, children! Four tiny, little, black kittens.”

“Oh-oh-ee!” squealed Tess, falling right down on her knees to worship. But Dot looked gravely at the undisturbed Sandyface, rubbing around her feet.

“Goodness me, Sandyface, you’re a grandmother!” she said.

CHAPTER V – NO NEWS FOR CHRISTMAS

Almira’s addition to the Corner House family was not the only happening which came on this eventful day to fill the minds and the hearts of the Kenway sisters.

Ruth went around with a very serious face, considering the holiday season and all that she and Agnes and Tess and Dot had to make them joyful. Nor was her expression of countenance made any more cheerful by some news bluff Dr. Forsyth gave her when he stopped, while on his afternoon round of calls, to leave four packages marked “Ruth,” “Agnes,” “Tess” and “Dot.”

“Not to be opened till to-morrow, mind,” said the doctor. “That’s what the wife says. Now, I must hurry on. I’ve got to go back to the hospital again to-night. I’ve a bothersome patient there.”

“Oh! Not Miss Pepperill?” Ruth cried, for the red-haired school teacher and the matron of the hospital, her sister, were to be the guests of the Corner House girls on the morrow.

Dr. Forsyth took off his hat again and frowned into it. “No,” he said, “not her – not now.”

“Why, Doctor! what do you mean? Isn’t she getting on well?”

“Well? No!” blurted out the physician. “She doesn’t please me. She doesn’t get back her strength. Her nerves are jumpy. I hear that she was considered a Tartar in the schoolroom. Is that right?”

“Ask Tommy Pinkney,” smiled Ruth. “I believe she was considered strict.”

“Humph! yes. Short tempered, sharp tongued, children afraid of her, eh?”

“I believe so,” admitted Ruth.

“Good reason for that,” said the doctor, shaking his head. “Her nerves are worn to a frazzle. I’m not sure that it isn’t a teacher’s disease. It’s prevalent among ’em. The children just wear them out – if they don’t take things easily.”

“But, Miss Pepperill?”

“I can’t get her on her pins again,” growled the doctor.

“Oh, Doctor! Can’t she come over here with her sister to-morrow?”

“Yes, she’ll come in my machine,” said the good physician, putting on his hat once more. “What I am talking about is her lack of improvement. She stands still. She makes no perceptible gain. She talks about going back to teaching, and all that. Why, she is no more fit to be a teacher at present than I am fit to be an angel!”

Ruth smiled up at him and patted his burly shoulder. “I am not so sure that you are not an angel, Doctor,” she said.

“Yes. That’s what they tell me when I’ve pulled ’em out of trouble by the very scruff of their necks,” growled Dr. Forsyth. “Other times, when I am giving them bad tasting medicine, they call me anything but an angel,” and he laughed shortly.

“But now – in this case – she’s not a bad patient. She can’t help her nerves. They have gotten away from her. Out of control. She’s not fit to go back to her work – and won’t be for a couple of years.”

“Oh!” cried Ruth, with pain. She knew what such a thing meant to the two sisters at the hospital. It was really tragic. Mrs. Eland’s salary was small, and Miss Pepperill was not the person to wish to be a burden upon her sister. “The poor thing!” Ruth added.

“She ought to have a year – perhaps two – away from all bothersome things,” said Dr. Forsyth, preparing to go. “I’d like to have her go away, and her sister with her for a time, to some quiet place, and to a more invigorating climate. And that– well, we doctors can prescribe such medicine for our rich patients only,” and Dr. Forsyth went away, shaking his head.

Ruth said nothing to the other girls about this bad report upon Miss Pepperill’s condition. They all were interested in Mrs. Eland’s sister – more for Mrs. Eland’s sake, it must be confessed, than because of any sweetness of disposition that had ever been displayed by the red-haired school teacher.

The two women had lived very unhappy lives. Left orphans at an early age, they were separated, and Miss Pepperill was brought up by people who treated her none too kindly. She was trained as a teacher and had never married; whereas Mrs. Eland was widowed young, had become a nurse, and finally had come to be matron of the Milton Women’s and Children’s Hospital in the very town where her sister taught school.

The coming together of the sisters, after Miss Pepperill was knocked down by an automobile on the street, seemed quite a romance to the Corner House girls, and they had been vastly interested for some weeks in the affairs of the matron and the school teacher.

The little girls, Tess and Dot, were too much excited over what the eve of Christmas, and the day itself should bring forth, to be much disturbed by even Ruth’s grave face.

When they ate dinner that night, in the light of the candles, it seemed as though they ate in a fairy grotto. The big dining room was beautifully trimmed, the lights sparkled upon the newly polished silver and cut glass, a beautiful damask tablecloth was on the board, and the girls in their fresh frocks and ribbons were a delight to the eye.

Dot could not keep her eyes off the open fireplace. Branches of pine had now been set up in the yawning cavern of brick; but plenty of room had been left for the entrance of a Santa Claus of most excellent girth.

“Dot’s expecting another Santa – or a burglar – to tumble down the chimney at any moment,” laughed Agnes.

“Let us hope he won’t be a plumber,” said Ruth, smiling gravely. “Another plumber’s bill at Christmas would extract all the joy from our festivities.”

“Oh! What will Mr. Howbridge say when he sees the bill?” queried Agnes, round-eyed, for she stood somewhat in awe of their very dignified guardian.

“I don’t much care what he’ll say,” said Ruth, recklessly. “Only I wish he were going to be with us to-morrow as he was at Thanksgiving. But he will not be back until long past New Year’s.”

Before they rose from the table the doorbell began to ring and Uncle Rufus hobbled out to answer it and to receive mysterious packages addressed to the various members of the family. These gifts were heaped in the sitting room, and Tess and Dot were not even allowed a peep at them.

Neale came over and lit up the tree, to the delight of the little girls. The Creamer girls from next door came in to see it, and so did Margaret and Holly Pease from down Willow Street.

Sammy Pinkney had been told he could come; but the red comforter and the hoarse voice had not been for nothing. Mrs. Pinkney sent over word that Sammy had such a cold that she was forced to put him to bed. He was feverish, too; so his Christmas Eve was spent between blankets.

“Oh! I’m so sorry for Sammy,” Dot said, feasting her eyes upon the glittering tree. “I know he won’t ever see anything so pretty as this.”

“Not if he turns pirate, he won’t,” Tess agreed severely. “I think likely his being sick is a punishment for his saying that there isn’t any Santa Claus.”

The visiting little girls went home and Tess and Dot were sent off to bed. Not that they were sleepy – oh, no, indeed! They declared that they positively could not sleep – and then were in the Land of Nod almost before their heads touched the pillow.

Ruth kissed them both after she had heard their prayers, and then tiptoed out of the room. Downstairs was suppressed laughter and much running about. Agnes and Neale were beginning to tie the presents on the tree, and to fill the stockings hung on a line across the chimney-place.

Everybody – even Uncle Rufus – had hung up a stocking for Santa Claus to fill with goodies. It had cost infinite labor and urging to get Aunt Sarah to put her stocking in evidence for Kris Kringle; but there it was, a shapeless white affair with unbleached foot and top.

Mrs. MacCall’s hung next – rather a natty looking black stocking, if the truth were known – one of a pair, the mate to which had long since been eaten by Billy Bumps, the goat.

Then came the girls’ stockings in one-two-three-four order, like a graduated course of bamboo “bells.” Then followed one of Neale’s golf stockings, which he had brought because it held more than a sock, with Linda’s coarse red woollen hose and Uncle Rufus’ huge gray yarn sock at the end.

It was great fun to fill the hose and to tie the wonderfully curious packages on the tree and heap them underneath it. Neale was to get all his presents at the Corner House; so that added to the confusion. There was a special corner in the sitting room where Neale’s gifts had been hidden; and there he was supposed not to look.

Then Agnes had to go into the kitchen while her presents were being unearthed and properly hung. Last of all, Ruth retired, leaving Agnes and Neale to hang those gifts which the Good Saint had brought the eldest sister. Ruth was tired, for she had worked hard; so she went to sleep and had no idea how long her sister sat up, when Neale went home, or at what hour Mrs. MacCall locked the house and went up to bed.

Agnes and Neale had something besides the hanging of Ruth’s presents to interest them. The former found the big, old family album hidden behind the sewing machine in the sitting room. She sat down with Neale to look it over.