The Corner House Girls on a Houseboat

He was about to leave the porch, to hasten away, when Ruth interposed.

“Mr. Howbridge is coming here this afternoon,” said the girl. “You might stay and see him, if you like, Neale.”

“What, with a whole Civic Betterment Club of girls coming to the Corner House! No, thank you,” he laughed. “I’ll see him afterward. But I have more hope now than I ever had before.”

“I’m very glad,” murmured Ruth. “Mr. Howbridge will give you any help possible, I’m sure. Shall I speak to him about it when he comes to advise us how to form our Civic Betterment Club?”

“Oh, I think not, thank you,” answered Neale. “He’ll have enough to do this afternoon without taking on my affair. I can tell him later. But I couldn’t wait to tell you.”

“Of course you couldn’t!” said Agnes. “That would have been a fine way to treat me!” Neale, who was Agnes’ special chum, in a way seemed like one of the family – at least as much so as Mrs. MacCall, the housekeeper, Uncle Rufus, or Sammy Pinkney, the little fellow who lived across Willow Street, on the opposite side from the Corner House.

“Well, I feel almost like another fellow now,” went on Neale, as he started down the walk. “Not knowing whether your father is alive or not isn’t much fun.”

“I should say not!” agreed Agnes. “I wish I could ask you to stay to lunch, Neale, but – ”

“Oh, gee, Aggie!” The boy laughed, and off down the street he hastened, his step light and his cheery whistle ringing out.

“Isn’t it wonderful!” exclaimed Agnes, as she followed her sister into the house.

“Yes, if only it proves true,” returned the older girl, more soberly.

From the kitchen came the clatter of pans and dishes as Linda disposed of the clutter incidental to making cakes and dainties for a bevy of girls. Mrs. MacCall could be heard humming a Scotch song, and as Tess and Dot returned from the store she raised her voice in the refrain:

“Thou art a gay an’ bonnie lass,

“Thou art a gay an’ bonnie lass,
But thou hast a waukrife minnie.”

“What in the world is a waukrife minnie?” demanded Agnes again, pausing in her task.

“It’s ‘wakeful mother,’” answered Ruth. “I remember now. It’s in Burns’ poem of that name. But do hurry, please, Aggie, or the girls will be here before we can change our dresses!”

“The fates forbid!” cried her sister, and she hastened to good advantage.

The lunch was over and the “Civic Betterment League” was in process of embryo formation, under the advice of Mr. Howbridge, and Ruth was earnestly presiding over the session of her girl friends in the library of the Corner House, when, from the ample yard in the rear of the old mansion, came a series of startled cries.

There was but one meaning to attach to them. The cries came from Dot and Tess, and mingled with them were the unmistakable yells of Sammy Pinkney.

At the same time Mrs. MacCall added her remonstrances to something that was going on, while Uncle Rufus, tottering his way along the hall, tapped at the door of the library and said:

“’Scuse me, Miss Ruth, but de chiluns done got cotched in de elevator!”

“The elevator!” Agnes screamed. “What in the world do you mean?”

“Yas’um, dat’s whut it is,” said the old colored man. “Tess an’ Dot done got cotched in de elevator!”

CHAPTER IV – AN AUTO RIDE

Mr. Howbridge had been making an address to Ruth’s assembled girl chums when the interruption came. He had been telling them just how to go about it to organize the kind of society Ruth had in mind. In spite of her half refusal to attend the session, Agnes had decided to be present, and she was sitting near the door when Uncle Rufus made his statement about the two smallest Kenways being “cotched.”

“But how can they be in an elevator?” demanded Agnes. “We haven’t an elevator on the place – there hardly is one in Milton.”

“I don’t know no mo’ ’bout it dan jest dat!” declared the old colored man. “Sammy he done say dey is cotched in de elevator an’ – ”

“Oh, Sammy!” cried Agnes. “If Sammy has anything to do with it you might know – ”

She was interrupted by a further series of cries, unmistakably coming from Tess and Dot, and, mingled with their shouts of alarm, was the voice of Mrs. MacCall saying:

“Come along, Ruth! Oh, Agnes! Oh, the poor bairns! Oh, the wee ones!” and then she lapsed into her broadest Scotch so that none who heard understood.

“Something must have happened!” declared Ruth.

“It is very evident,” added Agnes, and the two sisters hurried out, brushing past Uncle Rufus in the hall.

“Can’t we do something?” asked Lucy Poole, one of the guests.

“Yes, we must help,” added Grace Watson.

“I think perhaps it will be best if you remain here,” said Mr. Howbridge. “I don’t imagine anything very much out of the ordinary has happened, from what I know of the family,” he said with a smile. “I’ll go and see, and if any more help is needed I shall let you young ladies know. Unless it is, the fewer on the scene the better, perhaps.”

“Especially if any one is hurt,” murmured Clo Baker. “I never could stand the sight of a child hurt.”

“They don’t seem to have lost their voices, at any rate,” remarked Lucy. “Listen:”

As Mr. Howbridge followed Agnes and Ruth from the room, there was borne to the ears of the assembled guests a cry of:

“Let me down! Do you hear, Sammy Pinkney! Let me down!”

And a voice, undoubtedly that of the Sammy in question, answered:

“I’m not doing anything! I can’t get you down! It’s Billy Bumps. He did it!”

“Two boys in mischief,” murmured Lucy.

“No, Billy is a goat, so I understand,” said Clo. “I hope he hasn’t butted one of the children down the cistern.”

And while the guests were vainly wondering what had happened, Ruth, Agnes and Mr. Howbridge saw suspended in a large clothes basket, which was attached to a rope that ran over the high limb of a great oak tree in the back yard, Tess and Dot. They were in the clothes basket, Dot with her Alice-doll clasped in her hands; and both girls were looking over the side of the hamper.

Attached to the ground end of the rope, where it was run through a pulley block, was a large goat, now contentedly chewing grass, and near the animal, with a startled look on his face, was a small boy, who, when he felt like it, answered to the name Sammy Pinkney.

“Get us down! Get us down!” cried Dot and Tess in a chorus, while Mrs. MacCall stood beneath them holding out her apron as if the two little girls were ripe apples ready to fall.

“How did you get up there?” demanded Ruth, her face paling as she saw the danger of her little sisters, for Tess and Dot were too high up for safety.

“Sammy elevatored us up,” explained Dot.

“Well, you wanted to go!” replied the small boy in self justification.