The Corner House Girls Part 30

"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.

CHAPTER XIX

"DOUBLE TROUBLE"

"What is the meaning of that horrid condition of your clothing, Lillie?" demanded Mrs. Treble from the open window.

"I fell in the mud, Mamma," said the unabashed Lillie, and glanced aside at Tess and Dot with a sweetly troubled look, as though she feared they were at fault for her disarray, but did not quite like to say so!

"Come up here at once!" commanded her mother, who turned to Ruth to add: "I am afraid your sisters are very rough and rude in their play.

Lillie has not been used to such playmates. Of course, left without a mother as they were, nothing better can be expected of them."

Meanwhile, Lillie had turned one of her frightful grimaces upon Tess and Dot before starting for the house, and the smaller Kenway girls were left frozen in their tracks by the ferocity of this parting glare.

Lillie appeared at luncheon dressed in some of Tess' garments and some of Dot's-none of them fitting her very well. She had a sweetly forgiving air, which bolstered up her mother's opinion that Tess and Dot were guilty of leading her angelic child astray.

Mrs. Treble had two trunks at the railway station and Uncle Rufus was sent to get an expressman to bring them up to the Corner House. Ruth paid the expressman.

"Talk about the _Old Man of the Sea_ that _Sinbad_ had to carry on his shoulders!" scoffed Agnes, in private, to Ruth. "This Mrs. Trouble is going to be a bigger burden for us than he was. And I believe that girl is going to be 'Double Trouble.' She looks like b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Uncle Rufus says she got in that messy condition before lunch, chasing the hens out of their seven senses."

"There are only five senses, Aggie," said Ruth, patiently.

"Humph! that's all right for folks, but hens have two more, I reckon,"

chuckled the younger girl.

"Well," said Ruth, "we must treat Mrs. Treble politely."

"You act as though you really thought they had some right to come here and live on us," cried Agnes.

"Perhaps they have a right to some of Uncle Peter's property. We don't know."

"I don't believe it! She's the sort of a person-that Mrs.

Trouble-who a.s.sumes rights wherever she goes."

Ruth had to confess that Mrs. Treble _was_ trying. She criticised Mrs.

McCall's cooking and the quant.i.ty of food on the table at luncheon.

Lillie did not like dried apple pies, and said so bluntly, with a hostile glare at the dessert in question.

"Well, little girl," said Mrs. McCall, "you'll have to learn to like them. I've just bought quite a lot of dried apples and they've got to be eaten up."

Lillie made another awful face-but her mother did not see it. Dot was so awe-stricken by these facial gymnastics of the strange girl that she could scarcely eat, and watched Lillie continually.

"That child ought to be cured of staring so," remarked Mrs. Treble, frowning at Dot. "Or is her eyesight bad?"

Mrs. Treble was busy, after her trunks came, in unpacking them and arranging her room to suit herself-as though she expected to make a long visit. She had suggested appropriating Uncle Peter's old bedroom in the front of the house, but that suite of rooms was locked, and Ruth refrained from telling her that _she_ had the keys.