What are da da-gert-o-tops and and silly-hats, Aggie? demanded Dot, toiling along at the end of the procession with the big book, as the four girls started down stairs again. Are are they those awful animals Ruth was reading about that used to in infest the earth so long ago?
Oh, mercy me! gasped Agnes, laughing. Pterodactyls and the giant sloth! See what it means to tell these kids about the Paleozoic age and sich, Ruthie! Yes, child. Maybe youll find pictures in that old book of those critters, as Mrs. Mac calls them.
Dot sat right down on the upper flight and spread the book out upon her small lap. She had heard just enough about the creatures of the ancient world to be vitally curious.
But there were no pictures of animals. Dot hurriedly turned the pages. In the back were engravings on green paper, stuck into the old book. The green slips of paper had pictures on them, but nothing that interested Dot.
Pooh! she thought to herself, did the smallest Corner House girl, old money thats all it is. Just like the money Mr. Howbridge gives Ruth every month to pay bills with. I spose its money thats no good any more.
She shut the book, disappointed, and clattered down stairs after her sisters. Nobody else had time to look at the family album just then. Agnes tossed her find into a corner until some more convenient occasion for looking at it. She and Ruth got the metal cleaning paste and rags and a chamois, and began to polish the candlesticks. The smaller girls returned to the stringing of popcorn.
Suddenly they all stopped work. With upraised hands and astonished looks, the four listened for a repetition of the sound that had startled them.
It came again, immediately. It was in the chimney. There was a muffled shout, then a scratching and a scraping, coming rapidly down the brick-and-mortar tunnel.
Oh! Oh! OH! squealed Dot, in crescendo. Santa Claus has come ahead of time!
If thats Santa Claus, declared Agnes, jumping up to run to the open fireplace, hes missed his footing and is falling down the chimney!
CHAPTER II A PERFECTLY SAVAGE SANTA CLAUS
Mrs. MacCall put her head into the dining room just as the girls rushed to the chimney-place to see what the noise within it meant. The housekeeper asked:
Did you girls see that little imp, Sam Pinkney? Linda says he came through the kitchen a while ago, and when he heard you had gone to the garret he went up the back stairs to find you.
Sammy Pinkney! chorused the two smallest Corner House girls.
Well! it isnt Santa then, added Dot, with immense relief.
Its that imp, sure enough! cried Agnes.
And just then a sooty bundle bounced down upon the hearth, to the unbounded amusement, if not amazement, of the Kenway sisters and Mrs. MacCall.
Ever since the Kenway girls had come to Milton and the old Corner House, Sammy Pinkney had been an abundant source of exasperation, amusement, and wonder to them all especially to Tess and Dot.
Their coming to the Corner House, and all its attendant adventure and mystery, is chronicled in the first book of the series, entitled The Corner House Girls. The Kenways and Aunt Sarah Maltby had been very poor in the city where they had lived in a cheap tenement. All they had for support was a small pension. Aunt Sarah proclaimed always that when Peter Stower, of Milton, who was her half brother, died, they would all be rich enough. But that was only talk, so Ruth thought.
One day, however, Mr. Howbridge, a lawyer, came to see the orphans. He had been Uncle Peters man of business and was now administrator of the estate, Uncle Peter having died suddenly.
The lawyer told Ruth that he knew Uncle Peter had left a will making the Kenway girls his heirs-at-law and leaving a very small legacy indeed to Aunt Sarah. But Uncle Peter was queer, and at the last had hidden the will. The lawyer said the Kenways must come and occupy the old Corner House in Milton until the will was found.
Aunt Sarah came with them of course. She considered herself very badly used, and acted as though she thought the best of everything in their new station in life should be hers. The Court made Mr. Howbridge the girls guardian, and the four sisters lived a rather precarious existence at the old Corner House for the first few months, for they were not at all sure that they were in their rightful place.
Indeed, when the lady from Ypsilanti with her little girl came along, and the lady claimed that she and Lillie were Uncle Peters rightful heirs, Ruth took them in and treated them kindly in the absence of Mr. Howbridge, fearing that the strangers might have a better claim upon the estate than themselves.
Finally this Mrs. Treble (whom Agnes called Mrs. Trouble, and her little girl, Double Trouble) aroused Aunt Sarahs antagonism. To get them out of the house the queer old woman showed Ruth where Uncle Peter Stower had been wont to hide his private papers.
In this secret hiding place was the lost will. It established the rights of the Corner House girls to the estate and settled them firmly in the Stower homestead.
In the second volume of the series, The Corner House Girls at School, the girls extended the field of their acquaintance, entered the local schools, and became the friends, and finally the confidants, of Neale ONeil, the boy who had run away away from Twomley & Sorbers Herculean Circus and Menagerie, to get an education and be like other boys.
Neale was not the only person the Corner House girls befriended in this and the third book: The Corner House Girls Under Canvas. The latter story relates their adventures at Pleasant Cove, where they went for their vacation the second summer of their sojourn in the old Corner House, and during which time they were the means of reuniting Rosa Wildwood, one of Ruths schoolmates, to her sister, June, who had been living with a tribe of Gypsies.
Back again in the fall, and at school, Tess and Dot chance to meet Mrs. Eland, matron of the Womens and Childrens Hospital, an institution doing excellent work in Milton, but not much appreciated by the townspeople at large. Tess quite falls in love with Mrs. Eland and is horrified to learn that the lonely woman is likely to lose her position, and the hospital to be closed, because of lack of funds.
Without any real idea of what she is accomplishing, Tess Kenway goes about talking to anybody and everybody of the hospitals need. She completely stirs up the town regarding the institution.
The schools take the matter up and the Board of Education approves a plan for the pupils to give a play for the benefit of the Womens and Childrens Hospital. Each member of the Corner House quartette had a part in the play, and the performances of The Carnation Countess had but just been given during the fore part of this very Christmas week.
The narrative of these recent occurrences may be found in the fourth volume of the series, the story immediately preceding this one, called The Corner House Girls in a Play. Three thousand dollars was raised for the hospital, and Mrs. Eland Tess little gray lady is assured of the continuation of her situation as matron.
This fact is particularly happy at this time, for Mrs. Elands sister, Miss Pepperill, Tess school teacher, is ill, and Mrs. Eland is nursing her back to health. One reason for the decorating of the Corner House dining room is that the reunited sisters, Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill, have been invited to eat their Christmas dinner with the Corner House girls.
All this while the sooty bundle was lying on the brick hearth at the feet of the startled Corner House girls. As it squirmed, and the sooty dust arose from it, they saw that it was certainly alive.
It wore a long cloak and a hood, now of a sooty red, and trimmed with what was once white cotton-wool fur. Leggings of the same material and trimming covered a pair of stout nether limbs; and upon these legs the little figure finally scrambled, revealing at last to the Kenway sisters and to Mrs. MacCall a face as black as any negros.
For pitys sake! exclaimed the housekeeper. What d you call that, anyway?
It its Sammy, said Tess, boldly.
If it is Santa Claus, said Ruth, smiling, it is one that is not grown.
Its a perfectly savage one, chuckled Agnes. This must be a young Santa Claus in his wild and untamed state.
He is unfamiliar with the best methods of descending folks chimneys, that is sure, Ruth pursued. I dont think this Santa Claus has learned his trade yet.
And and how black he is! murmured Dot. Are are all Santa Clauses so black?
Aw, you girls make me sick! growled the much abashed Santa Claus.
I declare he talks our language! cried Agnes.
Why, of course, said Tess, the literal. Hes in my class at school, you know.
You think you are all so smart! sneered Sammy Pinkney, and that sneer was something awful to behold. Dot fairly shuddered.
You wait! snarled Sammy. When I run away and get to be a pirate, Ill Ill Ill
Sammys emotion choked him for the moment. Mrs. MacCall sniffed; Ruth began to speak soothingly; Agnes giggled; Tess looked her disapproval of the savage young Santa Claus; while Dot, who had caught up the Alice-doll and squeezed her protectingly to her breast, gasped:
Oh! Oh! Isnt he dreadful?
Sammys sharp ear evidently caught the smallest Corner House girls whisper, for he rolled an approving eye in Dots direction, and finally finished his fearsome peroration with true piratical savagery:
Ill come back and Ill 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? Whats 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: Wed better have that step fixed before to-morrow night, hadnt we, Ruthie? Before Santa Claus comes, you know. He might fall and hurt himself.
Very true, Dottums, declared Agnes, with a quickly serious face. Ill 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 hes 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 butlers pantry.
CHAPTER III DOROTHYS 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, Ill 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 folkss houses at night?
Huh! croaked the young man, hoarsely. Seems ter me were 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.