The Corner House Girls Among the Gypsies

“I fancy it is ‘household economy’ you mean, Aggie,” returned her sister, smiling. “And I warrant the author of the first treatise on that theme was a woman.”

“Mrs. Eva Adam, I bet!” chuckled Neale O’Neil, hearing this controversy from the driver’s seat. “It has always been in my mind that the First Lady of the Garden of Eden was tempted to swipe those apples more because the price of other fruit was so high than for any other reason.”

“Then Adam was stingy with the household money,” declared Agnes.

“I really wish you would not use such words as ‘swipe’ before the children, Neale,” sighed Ruth who, although she was no purist, did not wish the little folk to pick up (as they so easily did) slang phrases.

She stepped out of the car when Neale had halted it within the garage and Agnes handed her the egg basket. Tess and Dot immediately began dancing about their elder sister, both shouting at once, the smallest girl with the green and yellow basket and Tess with the silver bracelet in her hand.

“Oh, Ruthie, what do you think?”

“See how pretty it is! And they never missed it.”

“Can’t we keep it, Ruthie?” This from Dot. “We paid those Gypsy ladies for the basket and all that was in it. Sammy says so.”

“Then it must be true of course,” scoffed Agnes. “What is it?”

“Well, I guess I know some things,” observed Sammy, bridling. “If you buy a walnut you buy the kernel as well as the shell, don’t you? And that bracelet was inside that covered basket, like the kernel in a nut.”

“Listen!” exclaimed Neale likewise getting out of the car. “Sammy’s a very Solomon for judgment.”

“Now don’t you call me that, Neale O’Neil!” ejaculated Sammy angrily. “I ain’t a pig.”

“Wha – what! Who called you a pig, Sammy?”

“Well, that’s what Mr. Con Murphy calls his pig – ‘Solomon.’ You needn’t call me by any pig-name, so there!”

“I stand reproved,” rejoined Neale with mock seriousness. “But, see here: What’s all this about the basket and the bracelet – a two-fold mystery?”

“It sounds like a thriller in six reels,” cried Agnes, jumping out of the car herself to get a closer view of the bracelet and the basket. “My! Where did you get that gorgeous bracelet, children?”

The beauty of the family, who loved “gew-gaws” of all kinds, seized the silver circlet and tried it upon her own plump arm. Ruth urged Tess to explain and had to place a gentle palm upon Dot’s lips to keep them quiet so that she might get the straight of the story from the more sedate Tess.

“And so, that’s how it was,” concluded Tess. “We bought the basket after borrowing Sammy’s twenty-five cent piece, and of course the basket belongs to us, doesn’t it, Ruthie?”

“Most certainly, my dear,” agreed the elder sister.

“And inside was that beautiful fretted silver bracelet. And that – ”

“Just as certainly belongs to the Gypsies,” finished Ruth. “At least, it does not belong to you and Dot.”

“Aw shu-u-cks!” drawled Sammy in dissent.

Even Agnes cast a wistful glance at the older girl. Ruth was always so uncompromising in her decisions. There was never any middle ground in her view. Either a thing was right, or it was wrong, and that was all there was to it!

“Well,” sighed Tess, “that Gypsy lady said she knew we were honest.”

“I think,” Ruth observed thoughtfully, “that Neale had better run the car out again and look about town for those Gypsy women. They can’t have got far away.”

“Say, Ruth! it’s most supper time,” objected Neale. “Have a heart!”

“Anyway, I wouldn’t trouble myself about a crowd of Gypsies,” said Agnes. “They may have stolen the bracelet.”

“Oh!” gasped Tess and Dot in unison.

“You know what June Wildwood told us about them. And she lived with Gypsies for months.”

“Gypsies are not all alike,” the elder sister said confidently in answer to this last remark by Agnes. “Remember Mira and King David Stanley, and how nice they were to Tess and Dottie?” she asked, speaking of an incident related in “The Corner House Girls on a Tour.”

“I don’t care!” exclaimed Agnes, pouting, and still viewing the bracelet on her arm with admiration. “I wouldn’t run my legs off chasing a band of Gypsies.”

They were all, however, bound to be influenced by Ruth’s decision.

“Well, I’ll hunt around after supper,” Neale said. “I’ll take Sammy with me. You’ll know those women if you see them again, won’t you, kid?”

“Sure,” agreed Sammy, forgiving Neale for calling him “kid” with the prospect of an automobile ride in the offing.

“But – but,” breathed Tess in Ruth’s ear, “if those Gypsy ladies don’t take back the bracelet, it belongs to Dot and me, doesn’t it, Sister?”

“Of course. Agnes! do give it back, now. I expect it will cause trouble enough if those women are not found. A bone of contention! Both these children will want to wear the bracelet at the same time. Don’t you add to the difficulty, Agnes.”

“Why,” drawled Agnes, slowly removing the curiously engraved silver ornament from her arm, “of course they will return for it. Or Neale will find them.”

This statement, however, was not borne out by the facts. Neale and Sammy drove all about town that evening without seeing the Gypsy women. The next day the smaller Corner House girls were taken into the suburbs all around Milton; but nowhere did they find trace of the Gypsies or of any encampment of those strange, nomadic people in the vicinity.

The finding of the bracelet in the basket remained a mystery that the Corner House girls could not soon forget.

“It does seem,” said Tess, “as though those Gypsy ladies couldn’t have meant to give us the bracelet, Dot. The old one said so much about our being honest. She didn’t expect us to steal it.”

“Oh, no!” agreed Dot. “But Neale O’Neil says maybe the Gypsy ladies stole it, and were afraid to keep it. So they gave it to us.”

“M-mm,” considered Tess. “But that doesn’t explain it at all. Even if they wanted to get rid of the bracelet, they need not have given it to us in such a lovely basket. Ruth says the basket is worth a whole lot more than the forty-five cents we paid for it.”

“It is awful pretty,” sighed Dot in agreement.

“Some day they will surely come back for the bracelet.”

“Oh, I hope not!” murmured the littlest Corner House girl. “It makes such a be-you-tiful belt for my Alice-doll, when it’s my turn to wear it.”

CHAPTER III – SAMMY PINKNEY IN TROUBLE

Uncle Rufus, who was general factotum about the old Corner House and even acted as butler on “date and state occasions,” was a very brown man with a shiny bald crown around three-quarters of the circumference of which was a hedge of white wool. Aided by Neale O’Neil (who still insisted on earning a part of his own support in spite of the fact that Mr. Jim O’Neil, his father, expected in time to be an Alaskan millionaire gold-miner), Uncle Rufus did all of the chores about the place. And those chores were multitudinous.

Besides the lawns and the flower gardens to care for, there was a good-sized vegetable garden to weed and to hoe. Uncle Rufus suffered from what he called a “misery” in his back that made it difficult for him to stoop to weed the small plants in the garden.

“I don’t know, Missy Ruth,” complained the old darkey to the eldest Corner House girl, “how I’s goin’ to get that bed of winter beets weeded – I dunno, noways. My misery suah won’t let me stoop down to them rows, and there’s a big patch of ’em.”

“Do they need weeding right now, Uncle Rufus?”