“You girls go through this pantry,” complained Mrs. McCall, “like the plague of locusts. There isn’t a doughnut left. Nor a sugar cookie. I managed to save some of the seed-cakes for tea, if you should have company, by hiding them away.

“I honestly thought I made four apple pies on Monday; I can’t account but for three of them. A hearty appetite is a good gift; but I should suggest more bread and butter between meals, and less sweets.”

Ruth took the matter up with the Corner House girls in convention assembled:

“Here it is only Thursday, and practically all the week’s baking is gone. We must restrain ourselves, children. Remember how it used to be a real event, when we could bake a raisin cake on Saturday? We have no right to indulge our tastes for sweets, as Mrs. McCall says. Who knows? We may have to go back to the hard fare of Bloomingsburg again, sometime.”

“Oh, never!” cried Agnes, in alarm.

“You don’t mean that, sister?” asked Tess, worried.

“Then we’d better eat all the good things we can, now,” Dot, the modern philosopher, declared.

“You don’t mean that, Ruth,” said Agnes, repeating Tess’ words. “There is no doubt but that Uncle Peter meant us to have this house and all his money, and we’ll have it for good.”

“Not for bad, I hope, at any rate,” sighed Ruth. “But we must mind what Mrs. McCall says about putting our hands in the cookie jars.”

“But, if we get hungry?” Agnes declared.

“Then bread and butter will taste good to us,” finished Ruth.

“I am sure I haven’t been at the cookie jar any more than usual this week,” the twelve-year-old said.

“Nor me,” Tess added.

“Maybe Sandy did it,” suggested Dot. “She ate up all the dolls’ dinner – greedy thing!”

Agnes was puzzled. She said to the oldest Corner House girl when the little ones were out of earshot:

“I wonder if it was that cat that ate the dolls’ feast yesterday?”

“How else could it have disappeared?” demanded Ruth.

“But a cat eating cream walnuts!”

“I don’t know,” said Ruth. “But of course, it wasn’t Sandy-face that has been dipping into the cookie jars. We must be good, Agnes. I tell you that we may be down to short commons again, as we used to be in Bloomingsburg. We must be careful.”

Just why Ruth seemed to wish to economize, Agnes could not understand. Her older sister puzzled Agnes. Instead of taking the good things that had come into their lives here at the old Corner House with joy, Ruth seemed to be more than ever worried. At least, Agnes was sure that Ruth smiled even less frequently than had been her wont.

When Ruth chanced to be alone with Miss Titus, instead of her mind being fixed upon dressmaking details, she was striving to gather from the seamstress more particulars of those strange claimants to Uncle Peter’s estate.

Not that Miss Titus had much to tell. She had only surmises to offer. Mrs. Bean, though claiming to know the people very well, had told the spinster lady very little about them.

“Their names is Treble, I understand,” said Miss Titus. “I never heard of no family of Trebles living in Milton here – no, Ma’am! But you can’t tell. Folks claiming relationship always turn up awful unexpected where there’s money to be divided.”

“Mother was only half sister to Uncle Peter,” said Ruth, reflectively. “But Uncle Peter was never married.”

“Not as anybody in Milton ever heard on,” admitted Miss Titus.

“Do you suppose Aunt Sarah would know who these people are?” queried Ruth.

“You can just take it from me,” said Miss Titus, briskly, “that Sally Maltby never knew much about Peter’s private affairs. Never half as much as she claimed to know, and not a quarter of what she’d liked to have known!

“That’s why she had to get out of the old Corner House – ”

“Did she have to?” interrupted Ruth, quickly.

“Yes, she did,” said the seamstress, nodding confidently. “Although old Mr. Stower promised her mother she should have shelter here as long as Sally lived, he died without making a will. Mrs. Maltby-that-was, died first. So there wasn’t any legal claim Sally Maltby could make. She stayed here only by Peter’s sufferance, and she couldn’t be content.

“Sally learned only one lesson – that of keeping her tongue between her teeth,” pursued Miss Titus. “Peter declared she was always snooping around, and watching and listening. Sally always was a stubborn thing, and she had got it into her head that she had rights here – which of course, she never had.

“So finally Peter forbade her coming into the front part of the house at all; then she went to live with your folks, and Peter washed his hands of her. I expect, like all misers, Peter wanted to hide things about the old house and didn’t want to be watched. Do you know if Howbridge found much of the old man’s hidings?”

“I do not know about that,” said Ruth, smiling. “But Uncle Rufus thinks Uncle Peter used to hide things away in the garret.”

“In the garret?” cried Miss Titus, shrilly. “Well, then! they’d stay there for all of me. I wouldn’t hunt up there for a pot of gold!”

Nor would Ruth – for she did not expect any such hoard as that had been hidden away in the garret by Uncle Peter. She often looked curiously at Aunt Sarah, however, when she sat with the old lady, tempted to ask her point-blank what she knew about Uncle Peter’s secrets.

When a person is as silent as Aunt Sarah habitually was, it is only natural to surmise that the silent one may have much to tell. Ruth had not the courage, however, to advance the subject. She, like her younger sisters, stood in no little awe of grim Aunt Sarah.

Mr. Howbridge remained away and Miss Titus completed such work as Ruth dared have done, and removed her machine and cutting table from the old Corner House. The days passed for the Kenway girls in cheerful occupations and such simple pleasures as they had been used to all their lives.

Agnes would, as she frankly said, have been glad to “make a splurge.” She begged to give a party to the few girls they had met but Ruth would not listen to any such thing.

“I think it’s mean!” Aggie complained. “We want to get folks to coming here. If they think the old house is haunted, we want to prove to them that it is haunted only by the Spirit of Hospitality.”

“Very fine! very fine!” laughed Ruth. “But we shall have to wait for that, until we are more secure in our footing here.”

“‘More secure!’” repeated Agnes. “When will that ever be? I don’t believe Mr. Howbridge will ever find Uncle Peter’s will. I’d like to hunt myself for it.”

“And perhaps that might not be a bad idea,” sighed Ruth, to herself. “Perhaps we ought to search the old house from cellar to garret for Uncle Peter’s hidden papers.”

Something happened, however, before she could carry out this half-formed intention. Tess and Dot had gone down Main Street on an errand for Ruth. Coming back toward the old Corner House, they saw before them a tall, dark lady, dressed in a long summer mantle, a lace bonnet, and other bits of finery that marked her as different from the ordinary Milton matron doing her morning’s marketing. She had a little girl with her.

“I never saw those folks before,” said Dot to Tess.

“No. They must be strangers. That little girl is wearing a pretty dress, isn’t she?”

Tess and Dot came abreast of the two. The little girl was very showily dressed. Her pink and white face was very angelic in its expression – while in repose. But she chanced to look around and see the Kenway girls looking at her, and instantly she stuck out her tongue and made a face.

“Oh, dear! She’s worse than that Mabel Creamer,” said Tess, and she took Dot’s hand and would have hurried by, had the lady not stopped them.

“Little girls! little girls!” she said, commandingly. “Tell me where the house is, in which Mr. Peter Stower lived. It is up this way somewhere they told me at the station.”

“Oh, yes, Ma’am,” said Tess, politely. “It is the old Corner House —our house.”

“Your house?” said the tall lady, sharply. “What do you mean by that?”

“We live there,” said Tess, bravely. “We are two of the Kenway girls. Then there are Ruth and Agnes. And Aunt Sarah. We all live there.”

“You reside in Mr. Peter Stower’s house?” said the lady, with emphasis, and looking not at all pleasant, Tess thought. “How long have you resided there?”

“Ever since we came to Milton. We were Uncle Peter’s only relations, so Mr. Howbridge came for us and put us in the house,” explained Tess, gravely.

“Mr. Stower’s only relatives?” repeated the lady, haughtily. “We will see about that. You may lead on to the house. At least, I am sure we have as much right there as a parcel of girls.”

Tess and Dot were troubled, but they led the way. Agnes and Ruth were on the big front porch sewing and they saw the procession enter the gate.

“Goodness me! who’s this coming?” asked Agnes, eyeing the dark lady with startled curiosity. “Looks as though she owned the place.”

“Oh, Agnes!” gasped Ruth, and sprang to her feet. She met the lady at the steps.

“Who are you?” asked the stranger, sourly.

“I am Ruth Kenway. Did you – you wish to see me, Ma’am?”

“I don’t care whom I see,” the lady answered decisively, marching right up the steps and leading the angel-faced little girl by the hand. “I want you to know that I am Mrs. Treble. Mrs. John Augustus Treble. My daughter Lillie (stand straight, child!) and I, have been living in Michigan. John Augustus has been dead five years. He was blown up in a powder-mill explosion, so I can prove his death very easily. So, when I heard that my husband’s uncle, Mr. Peter Stower, was dead here in Milton, I decided to come on and get Lillie’s share of the property.”

“Oh!” murmured Ruth and Agnes, in chorus.

“I am not sure that, as John Augustus Treble’s widow, my claims to the estate do not come clearly ahead of yours. I understand that you Kenway girls are merely here on sufferance, and that the ties of relationship between you and Mr. Peter Stower are very scant indeed. Of course, I suppose the courts will have to decide the matter, but meanwhile you may show me to my room. I don’t care to pay a hotel bill, and it looks to me as though there were plenty of rooms, and to spare, in this ugly old house.”

Ruth was left breathless. But Agnes was able to whisper in her sister’s ear:

“‘Mrs. Treble’ indeed! She looks to me, Ruth, a whole lot like ‘Mrs. Trouble.’ What shall we do?”

CHAPTER XVIII – RUTH DOES WHAT SHE THINKS IS RIGHT

Mrs. Treble, as the tall, dark lady called herself, had such an air of assurance and command, that Ruth was at a loss what course to take with her. Finally the oldest Kenway girl found voice to say:

“Won’t you take one of these comfortable rockers, Mrs. Treble? Perhaps we had better first talk the matter over a little.”

“Well, I’m glad to sit down,” admitted Mrs. Treble. “Don’t muss your dress, Lillie. We’ve been traveling some ways, as I tell you. Clean from Ypsilanti. We came on from Cleveland Junction this morning, and it’s a hot day. Don’t rub your shoes together, Lillie.”

“It is very warm,” said Ruth, handing their visitor a fan and sending Agnes for a glass of cold water from the icebox.

“Then we’ve been to that lawyer’s office,” pursued Mrs. Treble. “What do you call him – Howbridge? Don’t rub your hands on your skirt, Lillie.”

“Yes; Mr. Howbridge,” replied Ruth.

“Don’t take off that hat, Lillie. So we’ve been walking in the sun some. That’s nice, cool water. Have some, Lillie? Don’t drip it on your dress.”

“Wouldn’t your little girl like to go with Tess and Dot to the playhouse in the garden?” Ruth suggested. “Then we can talk.”

“Why – yes,” said Mrs. Treble. “Go with the little girls, Lillie. Don’t you get a speck of dirt on you, Lillie.”

Ruth did not see the awful face the much admonished Lillie made, as she left her mother’s side. It amazed Tess and Dot so that they could not speak. Her tongue went into her cheek, and she drew down the corners of her mouth and rolled her eyes, leering so terribly, that for an instant she looked like nothing human. Then she resumed the placidity of her angelic expression, and minced along after the younger Kenway girls, and out of sight around a corner of the house.

Meanwhile, Agnes had drawn Ruth aside, and whispered: “What are you going to do? She’s raving crazy, isn’t she? Had I better run for a doctor – or the police?”

“Sh!” admonished Ruth. “She is by no means crazy. I don’t know what to do!”

“But she says she has a right to live here, too,” gasped Agnes.

“Perhaps she has.”

“Mr. Howbridge said we were Uncle Peter’s only heirs,” said Agnes, doggedly.

“May – maybe he didn’t know about this John Augustus Treble. We must find out about it,” said Ruth, much worried. “Of course, we wouldn’t want to keep anybody out of the property, if they had a better right to it.”

“What?” shrilled Agnes. “Give it up? Not – on – your – life!”

In the meantime, Tess and Dot scarcely knew how to talk to Lillie Treble. She was such a strange girl! They had never seen anybody at all like her before.

Lillie walked around the house, out of her mother’s sight, just as mincingly as a peacock struts. Her look of angelic sweetness would have misled anybody. She just looked as though she had never done a single wrong thing in all her sweet young life!

But Tess and Dot quickly found that Lillie Treble was not at all the perfect creature she appeared to the casual observer. Her angelic sweetness was all a sham. Away from her mother’s sharp eye, Lillie displayed very quickly her true colors.

“Those all your dolls?” she demanded, when she was shown the collection of Tess and Dot in the garden house.

“Yes,” said Tess.

“Well, my mother says we’re going to stay here, and if you want me to play with you,” said this infantile socialist, “we might as well divide them up right now.”

“Oh!” gasped Tess.

“I’ll take a third of them. They can be easily divided. I choose this one to begin with,” said Lillie, diving for the Alice-doll.

With a shriek of alarm, Dot rescued this – her choicest possession – and stood on the defensive, the Alice-doll clasped close to her breast.

“No! you can’t have that,” said Tess, decidedly.

“Why not?” demanded Lillie.

“Why – it’s the doll Dot loves the best.”

“Well,” said Lillie, calmly, “I suppose if I chose one of yours, you’d holler, too. I never did see such selfish girls. Huh! if I can’t have the dolls I want, I won’t choose any. I don’t want to play with the old things, anyway!” and she made a most dreadful face at the Kenway sisters.

“Oh-oh!” whispered Dot. “I don’t like her at all.”

“Well, I suppose we must amuse her,” said Tess, strong for duty.

“But she says she is going to stay here all the time,” pursued the troubled Dot, as Lillie wandered off toward the foot of the garden.

“I don’t believe that can be so,” said Tess, faintly. “But it’s our duty to entertain her, while she is here.”

“I don’t see why we should. She’s not a nice girl at all,” Dot objected.

“Dot! you know very well Ruth wants us to look out for her,” Tess said, with emphasis. “We can’t get out of it.”

So the younger girl, over-ruled by Tess, followed on. At the foot of the garden, Lillie caught sight of Ruth’s flock of hens. Uncle Rufus had repaired the henhouse and run, and Ruth had bought in the market a dozen hens and a rooster of the white Plymouth Rock breed. Mr. Rooster strutted around the enclosure very proudly with his family. They were all very tame, for the children made pets of them.

“Don’t you ever let them out?” asked Lillie, peering through the wire-screen.

“No. Not now, Ruth says. They would get into the garden,” Tess replied.

“Huh! you could shoo them out again. I had a pet hen at Ypsilanti. I’d rather have hens than dolls, anyway. The hens are alive,” and she tried the gate entering upon the hen-run.

“Oh!” exclaimed Tess. “You mustn’t let them out.”

“Who’s letting them out?” demanded Lillie.

“Well, then, you mustn’t go into the yard.”

“Why not?” repeated the visitor.

“Ruth won’t like it.”

“Well, I guess my mother’s got more to say about this place than your sister has. She says she’s going to show a parcel of girls how to run this house, and run it right. That’s what she told Aunt Adeline and Uncle Noah, when we went to live with them in Ypsilanti.”

Thus speaking, Lillie opened the gate and walked into the poultry yard. At once there was great excitement in the flock. Lillie plunged at the nearest hen and missed her. The rooster uttered a startled and admonitory “Cut! cut! ca-dar-cut!” and led the procession of frightened hens about the yard.

“Aren’t hens foolish?” demanded Lillie, calmly. “I am not going to hurt her.”

She made another dive for the hen. The rooster uttered another shriek of warning and went through the watering-pan, flapping his wings like mad. The water was spilled, and the next attempt Lillie made to seize a hen, she was precipitated into the puddle!

Both hands, one knee, and the front of her frock were immediately streaked with mud. Lillie shrieked her anger, and plunged after the frightened hens again. She was a determined girl. Tess and Dot added their screams to the general hullabaloo.

Round and round went the hens, led by the gallant rooster. Finally the inevitable happened. Lillie got both hands upon one of the white hens.

“Now I got you – silly!” shrieked Lillie.

But she spoke too quickly and too confidently. It was only the tail-feathers Lillie grabbed. With a wild squawk, the hen flew straight away, leaving the bulk of her plumage in the naughty girl’s hands!

The girls outside the fence continued to scream, and so did the flock of hens. The rooster, who was a heavy bird, came around the yard again, on another lap, and wildly leaped upon Lillie’s back.

He scrambled over her, his great spurs and claws tearing her frock, and his wings beating her breathlessly to the ground. Just then Uncle Rufus came hobbling along.

“Glo-ree! who dat chile in dat hen-cage?” he demanded. “Dat ol’ rooster’ll put her eyes out for her – dat he will!”

He opened the gate, went in, and grabbed up Lillie Treble from the ground. When he set her on her feet outside the fence, she was a sight to behold!

“Glo-ree!” gasped Uncle Rufus. “What you doin’ in dar, chile?”

“Mind your own business!” exclaimed Lillie. “You’re only a black man. I don’t have to mind you, I hope.”

She was covered with mud and dust, and her frock was in great disarray, but she was self-contained – and as saucy as ever. Tess and Dot were horrified by her language.

“I dunno who yo’ is, gal!” exclaimed Uncle Rufus. “But yo’ let Missie Ruth’s chickens erlone, or I’ll see ter yuh, lak’ yer was one o’ my own gran’chillen.”

Lillie was sullen – and just a little frightened of Uncle Rufus. The disaster made but slight impression upon her mind.

“What – what will your mother say?” gasped Tess, when the three girls were alone again.

“She won’t say anything – till she sees me,” sniffed Lillie. And to put that evil hour off, she began to inquire as to further possibilities for action about the old Corner House.

“What do you girls do?” she asked.

“Why,” said Tess, “we play house; and play go visiting; and – and roll hoop; and sometimes skip rope – ”

“Huh! that’s dreadful tame. Don’t you ever do anything – Oh! there’s my mother!” A window had opened in one of the wings of the big house, on the second floor. It was a window of a room that the Kenway family had not before used. Tess and Dot saw Ruth as well as Mrs. Treble at the window.

Ruth was doing what she thought was right. Mrs. Treble had confessed to the oldest of the Corner House girls that she had arrived at Milton with scarcely any money. She could not pay her board even at the very cheapest hotel. Mr. Howbridge was away, Ruth knew, and nothing could be done to straighten out this tangle in affairs until the lawyer came back.

So she had offered Mrs. Treble shelter for the present. Moreover, the lady, with a confidence equaled only by Aunt Sarah’s, demanded in quite a high and mighty way to be housed and fed. Yet she had calmed down, and actually thanked Ruth for her hospitality, when she found that the girl was not to be intimidated, but was acting the part of a Good Samaritan from a sense of duty.

Agnes was too angry for words. She could not understand why Ruth should cater to this “Mrs. Trouble,” as she insisted, in secret, upon calling the woman from Ypsilanti.

Ruth was showing the visitor a nice room on the same floor with those chambers occupied by the girls themselves, and Mrs. Treble was approving, when she chanced to look out of the window and behold her angelic Lillie in the condition related above.