The Corner House Girls Part 39

"I wonder if her relatives will take her in again if she goes back?"

said Ruth slowly.

"Ahem!" said Mr. Howbridge, clearing his throat. "I have been in correspondence with a Mr. Noah Presley, her brother-in-law. He says he was opposed to her coming east without knowing more of the situation here and her own rights. Now he says she and Lillie may come back, if--wait! I will read you exactly what he says," and Mr. Howbridge drew forth the letter in question. He cleared his throat again and read:

"'Tell Emily she can come back here if she wants, providing she'll mind her own business and keep that dratted young one of hers from turning the house upside down. I can't pay her fare to Ypsilanti, but I won't refuse her a home.'"

"You can easily see what _he_ thinks of them," declared Agnes, grimly.

"Do hush, dear," begged Ruth. "Then you will pay their fare back for them, will you not, Mr. Howbridge?" pursued Ruth. "And we shall see that they are comfortably clothed. I do not think they have _many_ frocks."

"You are really a very remarkable girl, Miss Kenway," said Mr.

Howbridge again. That was the settlement of the Trebles' affairs. Two weeks later the Corner House girls saw the Ypsilanti lady and her troublesome little girl off on the train for the west.

At this particular Monday morning conference, the lawyer made it clear to the Kenway girls that, now the will had been found, the matters of the estate would all be straightened out. Unless they objected, he would be appointed guardian as well as administrator of the estate.

There was plenty of cash in the bank, and they were warranted in living upon a somewhat better scale than they had been living since coming to the old Corner House.

Besides, Ruth, as well as the other girls, was to go to school in the autumn, and she looked forward to this change with delight. What she and her sisters did at school, the new friends they made, and how they bound old friends to them with closer ties, will be set forth in another volume, to be called "The Corner House Girls at School."

A great many things happened to them before schooldays came around. As Tess declared:

"I never did see such a busy time in this family-did you, Dot? Seems to me we don't have time to turn around, before something new happens!"

"Well, I'm glad things happen," quoth Dot, gravely. "Suppose nothing ever _did_ happen to us? We just might as well be asleep all the time."

First of all, with the mystery of Uncle Peter's will cleared away, and the status of Mrs. Treble and Lillie decided, Ruth went at the mystery which had frightened them so in the garret. Even Agnes became brave enough on that particular Monday to go "ghost hunting."

They clambered to the garret and examined the window at which they thought they had seen the flapping, jumping figure in the storm. There was positively nothing hanging near the window to suggest such a spectral form as the girls had seen from the parade ground.

"And this is the window," said Ruth, thoughtfully. "To the right of the chimney--Oh! goodness me, what a foolish mistake!"

"What's the matter now?" asked the nervous Agnes, who did not dare approach very near the window.

"Why, it wasn't this window at all," Ruth said. "Don't you see? It was to the right of the chimney _from the outside_! So it is on the left of the chimney up here. It is the other window."

She marched around the big bulge of the chimney. Agnes held to her sleeve.

"I don't care," she said, faintly. "It was a ghost just the same--"

There was another window just like the one they had formerly looked at. Only, above the window frame was a narrow shelf on which lay a big, torn, home-made kite-the cloth it was covered with yellowed with age, and the string still fastened to it. In cleaning the garret, this kite had been so high up that none of them had lifted it down. Indeed, the string was fastened to a nail driven into a rafter, above.

Even now there was a draught of air sucking in around the loose window frame, and the kite rustled and wabbled on its perch. Ruth ran forward and knocked it off the shelf.

"Oh, oh!" shrieked Agnes.

The kite dangled and jumped right before the window in such a manner that it must have looked positively weird from the outside. It was more than half as tall as a man and its crazy motions might well be taken for a human figure, from a distance.

Suddenly the boisterous wind seized it again and jerked it back to its perch on the shelf. There it lay quivering, until the next gust of wind should make it perform its ghostly dance before the garret cas.e.m.e.nt.

"Oh, isn't that great!" gasped Agnes. "And it must have been there for years and years-ever since Uncle Peter was a boy, perhaps. Now! what do you suppose Eva Larry will say?"

"And other people who have been afraid to come to the old Corner House?" laughed Ruth. "Oh, I know! we'll give a ghost party up here in the garret."

"Ruth!" screamed Agnes in delight. "That will be just scrumptious!"

"We shall celebrate the laying of the ghost. No! don't touch it, Agnes. We'll show the girls when they come just what made all the trouble."

This the Corner House girls did. They invited every girl they had become acquainted with in Milton-little and big. Even Alfredia Blossom came and helped Uncle Rufus and Petunia Blossom wait upon the table.

For the first time in years, the old Corner House resounded to the laughter and conversation of a great company. There was music, too, and Ruth opened the parlors for the first time. They all danced in those big rooms.

Mr. Howbridge proved to be a very nice guardian indeed. He allowed Ruth to do pretty much everything she wanted. But, then, Ruth Kenway was not a girl to desire anything that was not good and sensible.

"It's dreadfully nice to feel _settled_," said Tess to Dot and Maria Maroni, and Margaret and Holly Pease, and the three Creamer girls, as they all crowded into the summer house the afternoon of the ghost laying party.

"Now we _know_ we're going to stay here, so we can make plans for the future," pursued Tess.

"Yes," observed Dot. "I'm going right to work to make my Alice-doll a new dress. She hasn't had anything fit to wear since that awful time she was buried alive."

"Buried alive!" shrieked Mabel Creamer. "How was _that_?"

"Yes. And they buried her with some dried apples," sighed Dot. "She's never been the same since. You see, her eyes are bad. I ought to take her to an eye and ear infernery, I s'pose; but maybe even the doctors there couldn't help her."

"I don't think it's _infernery_, Dot," said Tess, slowly. "That doesn't sound just right. It sounds more like a conservatory than a hospital."

"Well, _hospital_, then!" exclaimed Dot. "And poor Alice! I don't suppose she ever _will_ get the color back into her cheeks."

"Shouldn't think she would, if she's been buried alive," said Mabel, blankly.

The two youngest Kenways had been very glad to see Lillie Treble go away, but this was almost the only comment they ever made upon that angel-faced child, before company. Tess and Dot _were_ polite!

That was a lovely day, and the Corner House girls all enjoyed the party immensely. Good Mrs. McCall was delighted, too. She had come to love Ruth and Agnes and Tess and Dot, almost as though they were her own. Ruth had already engaged a strong girl to help about the kitchen work, and the widow had a much easier time at the old Corner House than she had at first had.

Aunt Sarah appeared at the party, when the dancing began, in a new cap and with her knitting. She had subsided into her old self again, immediately after her discovery of Uncle Peter's secret panel in the old secretary in the garret. She talked no more than had been her wont, and her knitting needles clicked quite as sharply. Perhaps, however, she took a more kindly interest in the affairs of the Corner House girls.

She was not alone in that. All the neighbors, and the church people-indeed everybody in Milton who knew Ruth Kenway and her sisters at all-had a deep interest in the fortunes of the Corner House girls.

"They are a town inst.i.tution," said Mr. Howbridge. "There is no character sweeter and finer than that of Ruth Kenway. Her sisters, too, in their several ways, are equally charming.

"Ruth-Agnes-Tess-Dot! For an old bachelor like me, who has known no family-to secure the confidence and liking of such a quartette of young folk, is a privilege I fully appreciate. I am proud of them!"

THE END