The Corner House Girls

Tess pursed her lips. “That old cradle she used to sleep in when she was little, is dreadfully shabby. And one of the rockers is loose.”

“Oh, but Tess!” cried the younger girl. “It was hers. You know, when she gets really growed up, she’ll maybe want it for a keepsake. Maybe she’ll want dollies of her own to rock in it.”

Dot did not lack imagination. The Alice-doll was a very real personality to the smallest Kenway girl.

Dot lived in two worlds – the regular, work-a-day world in which she went to school and did her small tasks about the flat; and a much larger, more beautiful world, in which the Alice-doll and kindred toys had an actual existence.

“And all the clothes she’s outgrown – and shoes – and everything?” demanded Tess. Then, with a sigh: “Well, it will be an awful litter, and Ruth says the trunks are just squeezed full right now!”

The Kenways were packing up for removal to Milton. Mr. Howbridge had arranged everything with Ruth, as soon as he had explained the change of fortune that had come to the four sisters.

None of them really understood what the change meant – not even Ruth. They had always been used – ever since they could remember – to what Aggie called “tight squeezing.” Mr. Howbridge had placed fifty dollars in Ruth’s hand before he went away, and had taken a receipt for it. None of the Kenways had ever before even seen so much money at one time.

They were to abandon most of their poor possessions right here in the flat, for their great uncle’s old house was crowded with furniture which, although not modern, was much better than any of theirs. Aunt Sarah was going to take her special rocker. She insisted upon that.

“I won’t be beholden to Peter for even a chair to sit in!” she had said, grimly, and that was all the further comment she made upon the astounding statement of the lawyer, that the eccentric old bachelor had not seen fit to will all his property to her!

There was a bit of uncertainty and mystery about the will of Uncle Peter, and about their right to take over his possessions. Mr. Howbridge had explained that fully to Ruth.

There was no doubt in his mind but that the will he had drawn for Uncle Peter was still in existence, and that the old gentleman had made no subsequent disposal of his property to contradict the terms of the will the lawyer remembered.

There were no other known heirs but the four Kenway sisters. Therefore the Probate Court had agreed that the lawyer should enter into possession of the property on behalf of Ruth and her sisters.

As long as the will was not found, and admitted to probate, and its terms clearly established in law, there was doubt and uncertainty connected with the girls’ wonderful fortune. Some unexpected claimant might appear to demand a share of the property. It was, in fact, now allowed by the Court, that Mr. Howbridge and the heirs-at-law should occupy the deceased’s home and administer the estate, being answerable to the probate judge for all that was done.

To the minds of Tess and Dot, all this meant little. Indeed, even the two older girls did not much understand the complications. What Aunt Sarah understood she managed, as usual, to successfully hide within herself.

There was to be a wonderful change in their affairs – that was the main thing that impressed the minds of the four sisters. Dot had been the first to express it concretely, when she suggested they might treat themselves on Saturdays to something beside the usual five cents’ worth of peppermint drops.

“I expect,” said Tess, “that we won’t really know how to live, Dot, in so big a house. Just think! there’s three stories and an attic!”

“Just as if we were living in this very tenement all, all alone!” breathed Dot, with awe.

“Only much better – and bigger – and nicer,” said Tess, eagerly. “Ruth remembers going there once with mother. Uncle Peter was sick. She didn’t go up stairs, but stayed down with a big colored man – Uncle Rufus. She ’members all about it. The room she stayed in was as big as all these in our flat, put together.”

This was too wonderful for Dot to really understand. But if Ruth said it, it must be so. She finally sighed again, and said:

“I – I guess I’ll be ’fraid in such rooms. And we’ll get lost in the house, if it’s so big.”

“No. Of course, we won’t live all over the house. Maybe we’ll live days on the first floor, and sleep in bedrooms on the second floor, and never go up stairs on the other floors at all.”

“Oh, well!” said Dot, gaining sudden courage – and curiosity. “I guess I’d want to see what’s on them, just the same.”

There were people in the big tenement house quite as poor as the Kenways themselves. Among these poor families Ruth distributed the girls’ possessions that they did not wish to take to Milton. Tommy Rooney’s mother was thankful for a bed and some dishes, and the kitchen table. She gave Tommy a decisive thrashing, when she caught him jumping out of the dark at Dot on the very last day but one, before the Kenways left Essex Street for their new home.

Master Tommy was sore in spirit and in body when he met Tess and Dot on the sidewalk, later. There were tear-smears on his cheeks, but his eyes began to snap as usual, when he saw the girls.

“I don’t care,” he said. “I’m goin’ to run away from here, anyway, before long. Just as soon as I get enough food saved up, and can swap my alleys and chaneys with Billy Drake for his air-rifle.”

“Why, Tommy Rooney!” exclaimed Tess. “Where are you going to run to?”

“I – I – Well, that don’t matter! I’ll find some place. What sort of a place is this you girls are going to? Is it ’way out west? If it is, and there’s plenty of Injuns to fight with, and scalp, mebbe I’ll come there with you.”

Tess was against this instantly. “I don’t know about the Indians,” she said; “but I thought you wanted to be an Indian yourself? You have an Indian suit.”

“Aw, I know,” said Master Tommy. “That’s Mom’s fault. I told her I wanted to be a cowboy, but she saw them Injun outfits at a bargain and she got one instead. I never did want to be an Injun, for when you play with the other fellers, the cowboys always have to win the battles. Best we Injuns can do is to burn a cowboy at the stake, once in a while – like they do in the movin’ pitchers.”

“Well, I’m sure there are not any Indians at Milton,” said Tess. “You can’t come there, Tommy. And, anyway, your mother would only bring you back and whip you again.”

“She’d have to catch me first!” crowed the imp of mischief, who forgot very quickly the smarts of punishment. “Once I get armed and provisioned (I got more’n a loaf of bread and a whole tin of sardines hid away in a place I won’t tell you where!), I’ll start off and Mom won’t never find me – no, sir-ree, sir!”

“You see what a bad, bad boy he is, Dot,” sighed Tess. “I’m so glad we haven’t any brother.”

“Oh, but if we did have,” said Dot, with assurance, “he’d be a cowboy and not an Indian, from the very start!”

This answer was too much for Tess! She decided to say no more about boys, for it seemed as impossible to convince Dot on the subject as it was Aggie.

Aggie, meanwhile, was the busiest of the four sisters. There were so many girls she had to say good-by to, and weep with, and promise undying affection for, and agree to write letters to – at least three a week! – and invite to come to Milton to visit them at the old Corner House, when they once got settled there.

“If all these girls come at once, Aggie,” said Ruth, mildly admonitory, “I am afraid even Uncle Peter’s big house won’t hold them.”

“Then we’ll have an overflow meeting on the lawn,” retorted Aggie, grinning. Then she clouded up the very next minute and the tears flowed: “Oh, dear! I know I’ll never see any of them again, we’re going away so far.”

“Well! I wouldn’t boo-hoo over it,” Ruth said. “There will be girls in Milton, too. And by next September when you go to school again, you will have dozens of spoons.”

“But not girls like these,” said Aggie, sorrowfully. And, actually, she believed it!

This is not much yet about the old Corner House that had stood since the earliest remembrance of the oldest inhabitant of Milton, on the corner of Main and Willow Streets.

Milton was a county seat. Across the great, shaded parade ground from the Stower mansion, was the red brick courthouse itself. On this side of the parade there were nothing but residences, and none of them had been so big and fine in their prime as the Corner House.

In the first place there were three-quarters’ of an acre of ground about the big, colonial mansion. It fronted Main Street, but set so far back from that thoroughfare, that it seemed very retired. There was a large, shady lawn in front, and old-fashioned flower beds, and flowering shrubs. For some time past, the grounds had been neglected and some of the flowers just grew wild.

The house stood close to the side street, and its upper windows were very blank looking. Mr. Peter Stower had lived on the two lower floors only. “And that is all you will probably care to take charge of, Miss Kenway,” said Mr. Howbridge, with a smile, when he first introduced Ruth to the Corner House.

Ruth had only a dim memory of the place from that one visit to it when Uncle Peter chanced to be sick. She knew that he had lived here with his single negro servant, and that the place had – even to her infantile mind – seemed bare and lonely.

Now, however, Ruth knew that she and her sisters would soon liven the old house up. It was a delightful change from the city tenement. She could not imagine anybody being lonely, or homesick, in the big old house.

Six great pillars supported the porch roof, which jutted out above the second story windows. The big oak door, studded with strange little carvings, was as heavy as that of a jail, or fortress!

Some of the windows had wide sills, and others came right down to the floor and opened onto the porch like two-leaved doors.

There was a great main hall in the middle of the house. Out of this a wide stairway led upward, branching at the first landing, one flight going to the east and the other to the west chambers. There was a gallery all around this hall on the second floor.

The back of the Corner House was much less important in appearance than the main building. Two wings had been built on, and the floors were not on a level with the floors in the front of the house, so that one had to go up and down funny, little brief flights of stairs to get to the sleeping chambers. There were unexpected windows, with deep seats under them, in dark corners, and important looking doors which merely opened into narrow linen closets, while smaller doors gave entrance upon long and heavily furnished rooms, which one would not have really believed were in the house, to look at them from the outside.

“Oh-oo-ee!” cried Dot, when she first entered the big front door of the Corner House, clutching Tess tightly by the hand. “We could get lost in this house.”