The Corner House Girls Among the Gypsies Part 22

Agnes was too busy when that letter arrived to answer it at all.

Things were happening at the old Corner House at that time of which Ruth had never dreamed.

Ruth was really glad to be with Cecile and Luke in the mountains. And she tried to throw off her anxiety.

Luke insisted that his sister and Ruth should go over to the hotel to dance in the evening when he had to go to bed, as the doctor ordered.

He had become acquainted with most of the hotel guests before his injury, and the young people liked Luke Shepard.

They welcomed his sister and Ruth as one of themselves, and the two girls had the finest kind of a time. At least, Cecile did, and she said that Ruth might have had, had she not been thinking of the home-folk so much.

Several days pa.s.sed, and although Ruth heard nothing from home save a brief and hurried note from Agnes, telling of their unsuccessful search for Sammy--and nothing much else--the older Kenway girl began to feel that her anxiety had been unnecessary.

Then came Mrs. McCall's labored letter. The old Scotchwoman was never an easy writer. And her thoughts did not run to the way of clothing facts in readable English. She was plain and blunt. At least a part of her letter immediately made Ruth feel that she was needed at home, and that even her interest in Luke Shepard should not detain her longer at Oakhurst.

"We have got to have another watchdog. Old Tom Jonah is too old; it is my opinion. I mind he is getting deaf, or something, or he wouldn't have let that man come every night and stare in at the window. Faith, he is a nuisance--the man, I mean, Ruth, not the old dog.

"I have spoke to the police officer on the beat; but Mr. Howbridge being out of town I don't know what else to do about that man. And such a foxy looking man as he is!

"Neale O'Neil, who is a good lad, I'm saying, and no worse than other boys of his age for sure, offers to watch by night. But I have not allowed it. He and Aggie talk of Gypsies, and they show me that silver bracelet--a bit barbarous thing that you remember the children had to play with--and say the dark man who comes to the window nights is a Gypsy. I think he is a plain tramp, that is all, my la.s.s.

"Don't let these few lines worry you. Linda goes to bed with the stove poker every night, and Uncle Rufus says he has oiled up your great uncle's old shotgun. But I know that gun has no hammer to it, so I am not afraid of the weapon at all. I just want to make that black-faced man go away from the house and mind his own business. It is a nuisance he is."

"I must go home--oh, I must!" Ruth said to Cecile as soon as she had read this effusion from the old housekeeper. "Just think! A man spying on them--and a Gypsy!"

"Pooh! it can't be anything of importance," scoffed Cecile.

"It must be. Think! I told you about the Gypsy bracelet. There must be more of importance connected with that than we thought."

She had already told Luke and Cecile about the mystery of the silver ornament.

"Why, I thought you had told Mr. Howbridge about it," Cecile said.

"I did not. I really forgot to when the news of Luke's illness came,"

and Ruth blushed.

"That quite drove everything else out of your head, did it?" laughed the other girl. "But now why let it bother you? Of course Mr.

Howbridge will attend to things--"

"But he seems to be away," murmured Ruth. "Evidently Mrs. McCall and Agnes have not been able to reach him. Oh, Cecile! I must really go home."

"Then you will have to come back," declared Cecile Shepard. "I could not possibly travel with Luke alone."

The physician had confided more to the girls than to Luke himself about the young man's physical condition. The medical man feared some spinal trouble if Luke did not remain quiet and lie flat on his back for some time to come.

But the day following Ruth's receipt of Mrs. McCall's anxiety-breeding letter, Dr. Moline agreed to the young man's removal.

"But only in a compartment. You must take the afternoon train on which you can engage a compartment. He must lie at ease all the way. I will take him to the station in my car. And have a car to meet him when you get to the Milton station."

The first of these instructions Ruth was able to follow faithfully.

The cost of such a trip was not to be considered. She would not even allow Luke and Cecile to speak about it.

Ruth had her own private bank account, arranged for and supervised, it was true, by Mr. Howbridge, and she prided herself upon doing business in a businesslike way.

Just before they boarded the train at Oakhurst station she telegraphed home that they were coming and for Neale to meet them with the car, late though their arrival would be. If on time, the train would stop at Milton just after midnight.

When that telegram arrived at the old Corner House it failed to make much of a disturbance in the pool of the household existence. And for a very good reason. So much had happened there during the previous few hours that the advent of the King and Queen of England (and this Mrs.

McCall herself said) would have created a very small "hooroo."

As for Neale O'Neil's getting out the car and going down to the station to meet Ruth and her friends when they arrived, that seemed to be quite impossible. The coming of the telegram was at an hour when already the Kenway automobile was far away from Milton, and Neale and Agnes in it were having high adventure.

CHAPTER XVIII--THE JUNKMAN AGAIN

When Ruth started home with Luke and Cecile Shepard several days had elapsed since Neale O'Neil and Agnes had discovered that Mr. Howbridge was out of town.

The chief clerk at the lawyer's office had little time to give to the youthful visitors, for just then he had his hands full with a caller whom Neale and Agnes had previously found was a person not easily to be pacified.

"There is a crazy man in here," grumbled the clerk. "I don't know what he means. He says he 'comes from Kenway,' and there is something about Queen Alma and her bracelet. What do you know about this, Miss Kenway?"

"Oh, my prophetic soul!" gasped Neale O'Neil. "Costello, the junkman!"

"Dear, me! We thought we could see Mr. Howbridge before that man came."

"Tell me what it means," urged the clerk. "Then I will know what to say to the lunatic."

"I guess he's a nut all right," admitted Neale. He told the lawyer's clerk swiftly all they knew about the junkman, and all they knew about the silver bracelet.

"All right. It is something for Mr. Howbridge to attend to himself,"

declared the clerk. "You hang on to that bracelet and don't let anybody have it. I'll try to shoo off this fellow. Anyway, it may not belong to his family at all. I'll hold him here till you two get away."

Neale and Agnes were glad to escape contact with the junkman again. He was too vehement.

"He'll walk right in and search the house for the thing," grumbled Neale. "We can't have him frightening the children."

"And I don't want to be frightened myself," added Agnes.

They hurried home, and all that day, every time the bell rang or she heard a voice at the side door, the girl felt a sudden qualm. "Wish we had never advertised that bracelet at all," she confessed in secret.

"Dear, me! I wonder what Ruth will say?"

Nevertheless she failed to take her older sister into her confidence regarding Queen Alma's bracelet when she wrote to her. She felt quite convinced that Ruth would not approve of what she and Neale had done, so why talk about it?

This was the att.i.tude Agnes maintained. Perhaps the whole affair would be straightened out before Ruth came back. And otherwise, she considered, everything was going well at the Corner House in Milton.