Oh, well! said Dot, gaining sudden courage and curiosity. I guess Id want to see whats on them, just the same.
There were people in the big tenement house quite as poor as the Kenways themselves. Among these poor families Ruth distributed the girls possessions that they did not wish to take to Milton. Tommy Rooneys mother was thankful for a bed and some dishes, and the kitchen table. She gave Tommy a decisive thrashing, when she caught him jumping out of the dark at Dot on the very last day but one, before the Kenways left Essex Street for their new home.
Master Tommy was sore in spirit and in body when he met Tess and Dot on the sidewalk, later. There were tear-smears on his cheeks, but his eyes began to snap as usual, when he saw the girls.
I dont care, he said. Im goin to run away from here, anyway, before long. Just as soon as I get enough food saved up, and can swap my alleys and chaneys with Billy Drake for his air-rifle.
Why, Tommy Rooney! exclaimed Tess. Where are you going to run to?
I I Well, that dont matter! Ill find some place. What sort of a place is this you girls are going to? Is it way out west? If it is, and theres plenty of Injuns to fight with, and scalp, mebbe Ill come there with you.
Tess was against this instantly. I dont know about the Indians, she said; but I thought you wanted to be an Indian yourself? You have an Indian suit.
Aw, I know, said Master Tommy. Thats Moms fault. I told her I wanted to be a cowboy, but she saw them Injun outfits at a bargain and she got one instead. I never did want to be an Injun, for when you play with the other fellers, the cowboys always have to win the battles. Best we Injuns can do is to burn a cowboy at the stake, once in a while like they do in the movin pitchers.
Well, Im sure there are not any Indians at Milton, said Tess. You cant come there, Tommy. And, anyway, your mother would only bring you back and whip you again.
Shed have to catch me first! crowed the imp of mischief, who forgot very quickly the smarts of punishment. Once I get armed and provisioned (I got moren a loaf of bread and a whole tin of sardines hid away in a place I wont tell you where!), Ill start off and Mom wont never find me no, sir-ree, sir!
You see what a bad, bad boy he is, Dot, sighed Tess. Im so glad we havent any brother.
Oh, but if we did have, said Dot, with assurance, hed be a cowboy and not an Indian, from the very start!
This answer was too much for Tess! She decided to say no more about boys, for it seemed as impossible to convince Dot on the subject as it was Aggie.
Aggie, meanwhile, was the busiest of the four sisters. There were so many girls she had to say good-by to, and weep with, and promise undying affection for, and agree to write letters to at least three a week! and invite to come to Milton to visit them at the old Corner House, when they once got settled there.
If all these girls come at once, Aggie, said Ruth, mildly admonitory, I am afraid even Uncle Peters big house wont hold them.
Then well have an overflow meeting on the lawn, retorted Aggie, grinning. Then she clouded up the very next minute and the tears flowed: Oh, dear! I know Ill never see any of them again, were going away so far.
Well! I wouldnt boo-hoo over it, Ruth said. There will be girls in Milton, too. And by next September when you go to school again, you will have dozens of spoons.
But not girls like these, said Aggie, sorrowfully. And, actually, she believed it!
This is not much yet about the old Corner House that had stood since the earliest remembrance of the oldest inhabitant of Milton, on the corner of Main and Willow Streets.
Milton was a county seat. Across the great, shaded parade ground from the Stower mansion, was the red brick courthouse itself. On this side of the parade there were nothing but residences, and none of them had been so big and fine in their prime as the Corner House.
In the first place there were three-quarters of an acre of ground about the big, colonial mansion. It fronted Main Street, but set so far back from that thoroughfare, that it seemed very retired. There was a large, shady lawn in front, and old-fashioned flower beds, and flowering shrubs. For some time past, the grounds had been neglected and some of the flowers just grew wild.
The house stood close to the side street, and its upper windows were very blank looking. Mr. Peter Stower had lived on the two lower floors only. And that is all you will probably care to take charge of, Miss Kenway, said Mr. Howbridge, with a smile, when he first introduced Ruth to the Corner House.
Ruth had only a dim memory of the place from that one visit to it when Uncle Peter chanced to be sick. She knew that he had lived here with his single negro servant, and that the place had even to her infantile mind seemed bare and lonely.
Now, however, Ruth knew that she and her sisters would soon liven the old house up. It was a delightful change from the city tenement. She could not imagine anybody being lonely, or homesick, in the big old house.
Six great pillars supported the porch roof, which jutted out above the second story windows. The big oak door, studded with strange little carvings, was as heavy as that of a jail, or fortress!
Some of the windows had wide sills, and others came right down to the floor and opened onto the porch like two-leaved doors.
There was a great main hall in the middle of the house. Out of this a wide stairway led upward, branching at the first landing, one flight going to the east and the other to the west chambers. There was a gallery all around this hall on the second floor.
The back of the Corner House was much less important in appearance than the main building. Two wings had been built on, and the floors were not on a level with the floors in the front of the house, so that one had to go up and down funny, little brief flights of stairs to get to the sleeping chambers. There were unexpected windows, with deep seats under them, in dark corners, and important looking doors which merely opened into narrow linen closets, while smaller doors gave entrance upon long and heavily furnished rooms, which one would not have really believed were in the house, to look at them from the outside.
Oh-oo-ee! cried Dot, when she first entered the big front door of the Corner House, clutching Tess tightly by the hand. We could get lost in this house.
Mr. Howbridge laughed. If you stick close to this wise, big sister of yours, little one, said the lawyer, looking at Ruth, you will not get lost. And I guarantee no other harm will come to you.
The lawyer had learned to have great respect for the youthful head of the Kenway household. Ruth was as excited as she could be about the old house, and their new fortune, and all. She had a little color in her cheeks, and her beautiful great brown eyes shone, and her lips were parted. She was actually pretty!
What a great, great fortune it is for us, she said. I I hope well all know how to enjoy it to the best advantage. I hope no harm will come of it. I hope Aunt Sarah wont be really offended, because Uncle Peter did not leave it to her.
Aunt Sarah stalked up the main stairway without a word. She knew her way about the Corner House.
She took possession of one of the biggest and finest rooms in the front part, on the second floor. When she had lived here as a young woman, she had been obliged to sleep in one of the rear rooms which was really meant for the occupancy of servants.
Now she established herself in the room of her choice, had the expressman bring her rocking-chair up to it, and settled with her crocheting in the pleasantest window overlooking Main Street. There might be, as Aggie said rather tartly, bushels of work to do to straighten out the old house and make it homey; Aunt Sarah did not propose to lift her hand to such domestic tasks.
Occasionally she was in the habit of interfering in the very things the girls did not need, or desire, help in, but in no other way did Aunt Sarah show her interest in the family life of the Kenways.
And were all going to have our hands full, Ruth, said Aggie, in some disturbance of mind, to keep this big place in trim. It isnt like a flat.
I know, admitted Ruth. Theres a lot to do.
Even the older sister did not realize as yet what their change of fortune meant to them. It seemed to them as though the fifty dollars Mr. Howbridge had advanced should be made to last for a long, long time.
A hundred thousand dollars worth of property was only a series of figures as yet in the understanding of Ruth, and Agnes, and Tess, and Dot. Besides, there was the uncertainty about Uncle Peters will.
The fortune, after all, might disappear from their grasp as suddenly as it had been thrust into it.
CHAPTER IV GETTING SETTLED
It was the time of the June fruit fall when the Kenway girls came to the Old Corner House in Milton. A roistering wind shook the peach trees in the side yard and at the back that first night, and at once the trees pelted the grass and the flowers beneath their overladen branches with the little, hard green pellets that would never now be luscious fruit.
Dont you spose theyre sorry as we are, because they wont ever be good for nothing? queried Dot, standing on the back porch to view the scattered measure of green fruit upon the ground.
Dont worry about it, Dot. Those that are left on the trees will be all the bigger and sweeter, Ruth says, advised Tess. You see, those little green things would only have been in the way of the fruit up above, growing. The trees had too many children to take care of, anyway, and had to shake some off. Like the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.
But I never did feel that she was a real mother, said Dot, not altogether satisfied. And it seems too bad that all those pretty, little, velvety things couldnt turn into peaches.
Well, for my part, said Tess, more briskly, I dont see how so many of them managed to cling on, that old wind blew so! Didnt you hear it tearing at the shutters and squealing because it couldnt get in, and hooting down the chimney?
I didnt want to hear it, confessed Dot. 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 shouldnt have it. But Im back in it now, in spite of him aint I?
Following Uncle Peters 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 mans 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 dont 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 dont know what is behind them ready to pop out!
Isnt anything behind them, said the practical Tess. Dont 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 wasnt ever like that at home in Bloomingsburg, stammered Dot. I I dont 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:
Whats the matter with that child? What have you been doing to her?
Why, Aggie! You know I wouldnt do anything to her, declared Tess, a little hurt by the implied accusation.
Of course you havent, dear, said Ruth, soothing the sobbing Dot. Tell us about it.
Dots 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.
Whats spooky? demanded Dot, hearing a new word, and feeling that its significance was important.
Never you mind, Baby, said Aggie, kissing her. It isnt anything thats 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 mustnt let her get a dislike for this lovely old house. Were the Corner House girls, you know, and we mustnt be afraid of our own home, and she kissed Dot again.
I I guess Ill like it by and by, sobbed Dot, trying hard to recover her composure. But but its 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 shed never like the old house to live in at all.
Oh, my! said Aggie. I hope that wont 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 dont 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 Peters will cant be found, maybe we cant use much of the money.
Well have to work hard to keep this place clean, sighed Aggie.
We havent 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!
Wouldnt that be great?
Ill ask Mr. Howbridge if we may look. I expect he has looked in all the likely places, Ruth said, after a moments reflection.
Then well 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