The Corner House Girls' Odd Find

“We want to know what’s become of Neale, Mr. Murphy,” said Ruth, sitting down in the customer’s chair.

“Shure, miss, as I told ye, I’d like to l’arn that same meself.”

“You have no idea where he’s gone?”

“Not the laist. He give me no warnin’ that he was thinkin’ of goin’ till he walked downstairs, wid the travelin’ bag in his hand, and bade me good-bye.”

“And he said nothing about where he was going?”

“Not a wor-rd.”

“Nor how long he would stay?”

“Not a wor-rd.”

“Well!” cried Ruth, with some vigor, “it is the strangest thing! How could he act so? And you have been so kind to him!”

“He was troubled in his mind, Miss Ruth. I kin see you are troubled in yours. Kin old Con help ye?” asked the cobbler, shrewdly.

“I don’t know,” Ruth said, all of a flutter. “I am dreadfully anxious about Neale O’Neil’s going away so abruptly.”

“He’s a smart boy for his age. He’ll get into no trouble, I belave.”

“I’m not so much disturbed by that thought,” admitted Ruth. “I am really selfish. I want to see him. Agnes let Neale take something we found in our garret, on Christmas Eve, and – and – well, it’s something valuable, I believe, and I must show it to Mr. Howbridge as soon as possible.”

“Something vallible, is ut?” observed Mr. Murphy, with his head on one side.

“I – I have reason to believe so,” replied Ruth, with hesitation.

“What is it?” was the cobbler’s direct question.

“A – a sort of scrap-book. An old album. A big, heavy book, Mr. Murphy. Oh! it doesn’t seem possible that Neale would have taken it away. Have you seen it anywhere about, sir?”

“He brought it home Christmas Eve, ye say?” was the noncommittal reply.

“That is when Agnes let him have it – yes,” said the girl, earnestly.

“I did not see him when he came home that night. I was abed. I told ye he got a letter. I left it on his bureau when I went to me own bed. Shure, he might have brought in an elephant for all I’d knowed about it afther I got to sleep,” declared the cobbler, shaking his head. “Old Murphy-us himself, him as was the god of sleep, niver slept sounder nor me, Miss Ruth. He must have been the father of all us Murphies, for we were all sound sleepers, praise the pigs!”

“Perhaps the book is in his room,” Ruth said, with final desperation.

“A big book, is ut?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Have you seen it?”

“I have not. But I’ll go up and look for ut this instant,” Mr. Murphy said, rising briskly.

Ruth told him carefully what to look for – as far as the outside of the volume appeared. She devoutly hoped he would not be curious enough to open it.

For no matter who really owned the old album – and to whom its wonderful contents would be finally awarded – the oldest Corner House girl felt herself to be responsible for the safety of the book and its contents. How it came in the garret, why it was hidden there, and who now had the first right to it, she did not know; but Ruth was sure that the odd find was of great value and that it would be a temptation to almost anybody.

Neale might have gone away for an entirely different reason; yet he had the treasure trove in his possession last, and Ruth would not feel relieved until she had recovered it.

In five minutes Con came downstairs again, but without the book.

“I seen nawthin’ of the kind,” he said. “But here’s the envelope of the letter he resaved.”

He handed it to Ruth. The address was written by a hand that certainly was not used to holding a pen. The scarcely decipherable address was to “Mist. Nele O. Sorber.”

“Shure the postman skurce knew whether to bring it here, or no,” Mr. Murphy explained.

“I – I would like to take this,” Ruth said slowly.

“Shure ye may. I brought it down ter ye,” said Mr. Murphy, taking up his hammer once more.

“But where do you suppose he could have put that book of ours?” Ruth asked, faintly.

“Shure, ma’am, I dunno. Would he be takin’ it away wid him to read?”

“Oh, but could he?” gasped Ruth. “It was heavy.”

“So was his bag heavy. I knowed by the way he carried it. And I see it’s few of his clo’es he took, by the same token, for they are all hangin’ in his closet, save the ones he’s got on.”

Ruth’s thoughts fairly terrified her. She got up and was scarcely able to thank Mr. Murphy. She had to get out into the air and recover her self-control.

Neale! The boy whom they had befriended and helped and trusted! Under temptation, Neale had fallen!

For Ruth knew well how the ex-circus boy disliked taking money from his Uncle Bill Sorber, or being beholden to him in any way. Neale worked hard – very hard indeed for a boy of his age – in order to use as little as possible of Mr. Sorber’s money.

Sorber held Neale’s long-lost father in light repute, and could not understand the boy’s desiring an education and wishing to be something besides a circus performer. To the mind of the old circus man it was an honor to be connected with such an aggregation as Twomley & Sorber’s Herculean Circus and Menagerie. And Neale’s father had left the company years before in search of a better fortune.

Ruth’s mind was filled with suspicion regarding Neale now. Knowing his longing for independence, why should she not believe that seeing a chance to obtain a great sum of money with no effort at all he had fallen before the temptation and run away with the old album and its wonderful contents?

Ruth knew there was a fortune in that old and shabby volume which must have lain long in the garret of the old Corner House. If one of the notes was good, why not all the others – and the bonds, too?

She opened her purse and withdrew the folded ten-dollar bill. At the same moment another banknote fell to the ground – another of the same denomination.

“Oh!” she said aloud. “That’s the bill Mr. Howbridge gave me when he went away, saying I might need something extra.”

She picked it up. It was folded exactly like the other one; but it never entered Ruth’s mind that she might have handed Mr. Crouch the wrong bill to examine.

Ruth replaced the banknotes in her purse and walked home with a face still troubled. She could take nobody into her confidence – least of all Agnes – regarding the missing album. It might be, of course, that Neale O’Neil had only hidden away the old book until his return. Possibly it was perfectly safe, and Neale O’Neil might have no more idea that the money was good than had Agnes.

But oh! if Mr. Howbridge were only at home! That was the burden of Ruth’s troubled thought.

She went into the house, her return not being remarked by the younger children. Upstairs Agnes was at her dresser putting the finishing touches to her hair and her frock in readiness for dinner.

“What’s that?” she asked Ruth, as the latter put down her purse and likewise the torn envelope Mr. Con Murphy had given her.

“Oh!” ejaculated Ruth. “I must have brought it away with me.”

“Brought what away with you – and from where?” demanded Agnes, picking up the paper. Then in a moment she cried: “Why! it’s addressed to Neale – by his circus name, ‘Neale Sorber.’ Where’d you get it, Ruth?”

“I saw Mr. Murphy,” the older sister confessed. “He thinks that the letter that came in this envelope was the cause of Neale’s going away so suddenly.”

“Goodness! it’s some trouble about his uncle,” said Agnes. “How Neale hates to be called ‘Sorber,’ too!”

“That isn’t his uncle’s writing,” Ruth said.

“Of course it isn’t,” the second sister replied scornfully. “Mr. Bill Sorber doesn’t write at all. Don’t you remember? That’s why he thinks it so foolish for Neale to want an education. But it’s somebody Uncle Bill’s got to write for him.”

Agnes’ practical explanation could not be gainsaid. She did not connect for a moment the disappearance of the old album with Neale’s sudden flight from Milton. The bonds and banknotes pasted into the big volume she had found in the garret gave Agnes not the least anxiety. But she looked closely at the envelope.

“Wish Mr. Murphy had found the letter, too,” she said. “Then we could have learned what made that horrid boy run off so.”

“‘Tiverton,’ Humph! Where’s Tiverton? That’s where this letter was mailed. Seems to me somebody said ‘Tiverton’ to me only lately,” murmured Agnes.

Ruth did not hear her, and Agnes said no more about it. But after she had retired that night and was almost in dreamland – in that state ’twixt waking and sleeping when the happenings of the day pass through one’s mind in seemingly endless procession – suddenly Agnes sat up in bed.

“Oh! I know where I’ve heard of Tiverton before,” she whispered shrilly in the darkness. “That’s where Mr. Howbridge has gone – to see his sick brother. Say, Ruth!”

Ruth was asleep. And by morning Agnes had forgotten all about the matter. So the coincidence was not called to the older sister’s attention.

CHAPTER XI – SOME EXCITEMENT

As Uncle Rufus had stated, his daughter, the pleasant and unctious Petunia Blossom, was to take a week’s vacation from laundry work at New Year’s; but she brought the last wash home a few days after Christmas.

Petunia was very, very black, and monstrous fat! Her father often mournfully wondered “huccome she so brack,” when he was only mahogany brown himself and Petunia’s mother had been “light favahed,” too.

“Nevah did see the lak’ ob her color,” declared Uncle Rufus, shaking his grizzled head. “W’en she was a baby we couldn’t fin’ her in de dark, ‘ceptin’ her eyes was open, or she was a-bellerin’.”

The Corner House girls all liked Petunia Blossom, and her family of cunning piccaninnies. There was always a baby, and in naming her numerous progeny she had secured the help of her white customers, some of whom were wags, as witness a portion of the roll-call of the younger Blossoms:

“Ya’as’m, Miss Tessie. Alfredia’s home takin’ car’ ob de baby. Burne-Jones W’istler – he de artis’ lady named – an’ Jackson Montgomery Simms, done gone tuh pick up wood, where dey is buildin’ dat new row ob flats. Gladiola, she’s jes’ big nuff now tuh mess intuh things. I tol’ Alfredia to keep an eye on Glad.”

“That’s a pretty name,” said Agnes, who heard this; “Gladiola. I hope you’ll find as pretty a name for the baby.”

“I has, Miss Aggie,” Petunia assured her.

“Oh! but that would be hard. He’s a boy. You can’t name him after a flower, as you did little Glad and Hyacinth and Pansy.”

“Oh, ya-as’m,” Petunia said, with confidence. “I done hit. De baby, he named aftah a flower, too. I named him ‘Artuhficial,’ an’ we calls him ‘Arty’ fo’ short.”

“Oh, my dear! ‘Artificial’ flower – of course!” gasped Agnes, and ran away to have her laugh out. It certainly pleased the Corner House family. But Uncle Rufus was critical as usual:

“Sho’ don’t see why de good Lawd send all dem bressed babies t’ dat no-‘count brack woman. He must know dey ain’t a-gettin’ no fittin’ care. Why – see yere! She don’t know how even t’ name ’em propah. Flower names – indeedy, das jes’ mak’ me powerful squeegenny, das does – sho’ nuff! Ain’t dey no sensible names lef’ in dis worl’, Ah’d lak’t’ know?”

There was nobody able to answer Uncle Rufus’ question, and he went away, grumbling to himself. And, as he was not within call later, that was why Dot chanced to go to the drug store for Mrs. MacCall, who could not wait for the old colored man’s return.

Tess was upstairs helping Agnes make the beds. Mrs. MacCall wanted something to use at once and the smallest Corner House girl was eager to be helpful.

“I’ll go! I’ll go, Mrs. MacCall!” she cried, running for her hood and coat and overshoes, and, when she had donned them, seizing her Alice-doll, without which she seldom went anywhere, save to church and school. “I’ll be there and back in just no time– you see if I’m not.”

Mrs. MacCall told her carefully what she wanted, and gave her the dime.

“Oh, I’ll ‘member that!” Dot declared, with assurance, and she went out repeating it over and over to herself.

It was some distance to the druggist’s and there were a lot of things to see on the way, and from frequent repetition of the name of the article the housekeeper wanted, the smallest Corner House girl arrived at her destination with only the sound and not much of the sense of it on her tongue.

“Good morning, little Miss Kenway,” said the druggist, who knew Dot and her sisters very well. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh!” said Dot, breathlessly. “Mrs. MacCall wants a box of glory divine.”

The druggist gasped, looked all around at his shelves helplessly, and murmured:

“What did you say it was you wanted?”

“Ten cents’ worth of glory divine,” repeated the smallest Corner House girl, positively.

“What – what does she do with it?” asked the druggist in desperation.

“Why – why, she puts it down the sink drain, and sprinkles it down cellar, an’ – ”

“Oh, my aunt!” groaned the druggist. “You mean chloride of lime?”

“Ye – yes, sir,” admitted the somewhat abashed Dot. “I guess that’s mebbe it.”

Dot put the article purchased into the go-cart at Alice’s feet, tucked the rug all around her cherished child, for it was a cold if sunny day, and started for home. As she wheeled the doll-carriage toward the Creamer cottage she saw the laundry wagon stop at that gate, while the driver jumped out and ran up the walk to the Creamers’ side porch.

Dot knew that Mabel’s mother always had her basket of soiled clothes ready for the man when he came and this occasion seemed to be no exception. There was the basket and the man grabbed it, ran back to the wagon, and, putting it in at the back, sprang up to his seat and rattled away to his next customer.

It was after Dot had returned to the old Corner House and delivered the box of “glory divine” to the housekeeper that the neighborhood was treated to a sensation originating in the Creamer cottage.

Tess had joined Dot in the yard of the old Corner House. The weather was much too cold for them to have all their dolls in the garden-house as they did in summer; but Neale had shoveled all the paths neatly since the last snow-storm, and the little girls could parade up and down with their doll carriages to their hearts’ content.

They saw Mrs. Creamer run out upon her porch, look wildly around, and then she began to scream for Mabel.

“Mabel! Mabel! come here with the baby this moment! Didn’t I tell you to let him sleep in the basket?”

Mabel appeared slowly from the back yard.

“You naughty child!” cried the worried woman. “You don’t deserve to have a darling baby brother. And you broke his carriage, too – I verily believe – so you wouldn’t have to wheel him in it. Where is he?”

“Ain’t touched him,” declared Mabel, sullenly.

“You – what do you mean? Where is the basket with the baby in it?” demanded Mrs. Creamer, wildly.

“Oh!” gasped Dot and – as she usually did when she was startled – she grabbed up her Alice-doll and hugged her to her bosom.

“I – I don’t know,” declared Mabel, looking rather scared now. “Honest, Mamma – I haven’t seen him.”

“He’s been kidnapped! Thieves! Gypsies!”

The poor mother’s shrieks might have been heard a block. Neighbors came running. Milton had only a small police force, but one of the officers chanced to be within hearing. He came, heard the exciting tale, and galloped off to the nearest telephone to let them know at headquarters that there was a child mysteriously missing.

“Why, isn’t that funny?” said Dot to Tess. “If he was a kidnapper, he looked just like the laundryman.”

“Who did?” demanded the amazed Theresa.

“The man who took the basket and stole Bubby Creamer.”

“What ever are you saying, Dot Kenway?”

So Dot told her all that she had seen of the strange transaction.

“Why, that was the laundryman, of course!” declared Tess. “The baby is not stolen at all – at least he never meant to take it. I know the laundryman, and he’s got seven children of his own. I don’t believe he’d steal another.”

The whole neighborhood was aroused. Agnes ran out into the yard to learn what the trouble was, and Tess and Dot, with great verbosity, related their version of the occurrence.

“Oh, children! we must tell Mrs. Creamer,” Agnes said. “Of course the laundryman wouldn’t have stolen the baby! He thought the basket held the wash and had been put out there for him.”

She ran across the yard and swarmed over the fence into the Creamers’ premises like a boy. Flying up to the group of lamenting women on the porch, she exploded her information among them like a bomb.

“Telephone to the laundry and find out if the man has got there yet,” suggested one woman.

But Agnes knew that Mrs. Creamer’s was one of the first places at which the laundryman stopped. He did not get back to the laundry until near noon.

Suddenly an automobile coming up Main Street attracted the Corner House girl’s attention. She recognized the driver of the car, and ran out into the street, calling to him to stop.

“Oh, Joe Eldred! Wait! Wait!”

Joe was a boy somewhat older than Neale O’Neil, but one of the latter’s closest friends. He was driving his father’s car, having obtained a license only the month before.

“Joe! Wait!” Agnes repeated, waving her mittened hand to him.

“Hullo! Whose old cat is dead?” was his reply.

“Oh, Joe! such a dreadful thing has happened,” Agnes said breathlessly. “Bubby Creamer has gone off with Mr. Billy Quirk, the laundryman, and his mother’s worried to death.”

“Whew! that’s some kid!” exclaimed Joe. “Didn’t know he could walk yet.”

“He can’t, silly!” returned Agnes, exasperated. “Listen!” and she told the boy how the wonder had occurred. “You know, Mr. Billy Quirk drives away out High Street to collect laundry. Won’t you drive out that way and see if he’s got poor little Bubby in his wagon?”

“Sure!” cried Joe. “Hop in!”

“But – but I didn’t think of going.”

“Say! You don’t suppose I’d take a live baby aboard this car all alone?” gasped Joe. “I – guess – not!”

“Oh, I’ll go!” agreed Agnes, and immediately slipped into the seat beside him. “Do hurry – do! Mrs. Creamer is almost crazy.”

Joe’s engine had been running all the time, and in a minute they rounded the corner into High Street.

“Neale got back yet?” asked Joe, slipping the clutch into high speed.

“Oh – oh!” gasped Agnes, as the car shot forward with suddenly increased swiftness. “How – how did you know he had gone away?”

“Saw him off Christmas morning.”

“Oh, Joe Eldred! did you know Neale was going?”

“Why, not till he went,” admitted the boy. “I was running down to the railroad station to meet my married sister and her kids – they were coming over for Christmas dinner – and I saw Neale lugging his satchel and legging it for the station. That bag weighed a ton, so I took him in.”

“Where did he say he was going?” Agnes asked eagerly.

“He didn’t say. Don’t you know?”

“If I did I wouldn’t ask you,” snapped Agnes. “Mean old thing!”

“Hul-lo!” ejaculated Joe. “Who’s mean?”

“Not you, Joe,” the girl said sweetly. “But that Neale O’Neil. He went off without saying a word to any of us.”

“Close mouthed as an oyster, Neale is. But I asked him what was in the bag, and what d’ you s’pose he said?”

“I don’t know,” returned the girl, idly.

“He said: ‘Either a hundred thousand dollars or nothing.’ Now! what do you know about that?” demanded Joe, chuckling.

“What!” gasped Agnes, sitting straight up and staring at her companion.

“I guess if he’d been lugging such a fortune around it would have been heavy,” added Joe, with laughter.

Agnes was silenced. For once the impulsive Corner House girl was circumspect. Neale’s answer to Joe could mean but one thing. Neale must have carried away with him the old album she had found in the garret of the Corner House.

“Goodness gracious!” thought Agnes, feeling a queer faintness within. “It can’t be that Neale O’Neil really believes that money and the bonds are good! That is too ridiculous! But, if not, what has he carried the book away with him for?

“He was going to show the bonds to somebody, he said. He went off in too great a hurry to do that. And did he take the book because the contents might be valuable and he was afraid to leave it behind him?”

“I never did hear of such a funny mix-up,” concluded Agnes, still in her own mind. “And Ruth acts so strangely about it, too. She looked at the book first. Can it be possible that she thinks that old play money is real? Suppose some of it is good – just some of it?”

Agnes had begun to worry herself now about the old album and its contents. The mystery of it quite overshadowed in her mind the matter of the missing baby.

CHAPTER XII – MISS PEPPERILL’S DISASTER

The baby came first, after all, for Joe Eldred almost immediately exclaimed:

“Say, Aggie! isn’t that Billy Quirk’s wagon right ahead?”

“Oh, yes! Oh, yes, Joe!” Agnes agreed. “He hasn’t got so far, after all.”

“Do you believe he’s got the kid?” demanded Joe, in doubt. “Look here! The back of the wagon’s full of clothes baskets. Why! if the kid’s there, he’s buried!”

“Oh, don’t!” cried Agnes. “Don’t say such a thing, Joe!”

The boy had slowed down while speaking, and instantly Agnes was out of the car and had run ahead.

“Mr. Quirk! Oh, Mr. Quirk! Billy!” she shouted. “You’ve got a baby there!”

“Heh?” gasped the laundryman, who had been about to clamber into his seat again. “Got a baby!” he repeated, in a dazed sort of way, and actually turning pale. “Not another?”

“In your wagon, I mean. It’s Mrs. Creamer’s Bubby. Oh, dear, Mr. Quirk! do look quick and see if you’ve smothered him.”

“What do you mean, girl? That I’ve smothered a baby!” groaned Mr. Quirk, who was a little, nervous man who could not stand much excitement.

“I don’t know. Do look,” begged Agnes. “Bubby was in the basket – not the soiled clothes – ”

“Which basket?” cried the laundryman.

“The one you took away from the Creamers’ porch, Billy,” put in Joe Eldred, who had left the car, too. “Come on and look. Maybe the kid’s all right.”

“Oh, dear me! I hope so!” groaned Agnes. “What would Mrs. Creamer do – ”

Joe helped the shaking laundryman to lift down the baskets of wash that were already stacked three tiers deep in the wagon.

“That’s it! That’s the one!” cried Agnes eagerly, recognizing Mrs. Creamer’s basket.

And there was the baby, under a veil, sleeping as peacefully as could be. Fortunately the basket placed on top of the baby’s temporary cradle had been the larger of the two, and had completely and safely covered the lower basket.

They got the baby, basket and all, into the back of the Eldred car without awakening Bubby, and Agnes sat beside him.

“I’ll drive back as if I had a load of eggs,” Joe declared, grinning. “If that kid wakes up and bawls, Aggie, what’ll you do?”

“Humph!” said Agnes, with scorn, “isn’t that just like a boy? Don’t you suppose I know how to take care of a baby?”

Bubby did not awake, however, and their return to the Creamer cottage was like a triumphal entry. The neighborhood had turned out in a body. Mrs. Creamer ran a block up the street to meet the automobile, and she could not thank the Corner House girl and Joe Eldred enough.

But it was told of Mabel Creamer that she stood on the porch and scowled when they brought Bubby back in the basket. She actually did say to Tess and Dot, over the side fence:

“An’ they blame me for it. Said I ought to have been there to watch what Billy Quirk was goin’ to do. If it had been a really, truly Gypsy that had kidnapped Bubby, I s’pose they’d shut me up in jail!”

In a few days the little girls were back in school again, and Mabel was not obliged to stay in to mind the baby – hated task! – for she was in Dot’s grade.

Tess’ class gathered, too, to welcome Miss Pepperill’s return to her wonted place – all but Sammy Pinkney. Sammy was a very sick boy and they brought straw and put it knee deep in Willow Street, in front of the Pinkney house, so as to deaden the sound of wagon wheels. Tess actually went on tiptoe when she passed the house where her schoolmate lay so ill.

Billy Bumps, the goat, that had once been Sammy’s, looked longingly through the Corner House fence at the straw thus laid down, as though it was more tempting fodder than that with which Uncle Rufus supplied him.