The Corner House Girls Among the Gypsies

“What is it, Mrs. Pinkney?” asked Agnes sympathetically, seeing that the woman’s eyes were overflowing again. “What is it you miss?”

“Oh! he is determined I am sure to run away for good this time,” sobbed Mrs. Pinkney. “The poor, foolish boy! I wish I had said nothing to him about the beets – I do. I wonder if both his father and I have not been too harsh with him. And I’m sure he loves us. Just think of his taking that.”

“But what is it?” cried Agnes again.

“It stood right here on his bureau propped up against the glass. Sammy must have thought a great deal of it,” flowed on the verbal torrent. “Who would have thought of that boy being so sentimental about it?”

“Mrs. Pinkney!” begged the curious Agnes, almost distracted herself now, “do tell me what it is that is missing?”

“That picture. We had it taken – his father and Sammy and me in a group together – the last time we went to Pleasure Cove. Sammy begged to keep it up here. And – now – the dear child – has – has carried – it – away with him!”

Mrs. Pinkney broke down utterly at this point. She was finally convinced that at last Sammy had fulfilled his oft-repeated threat to “run away for good and all” – whether to be a pirate or not, being a mooted question.

Agnes comforted her as well as she could. But the poor woman felt that she had not taken her son seriously enough, and that she could have averted this present disaster in some way.

“She is quite distracted,” Agnes said, on arriving home, repeating Aunt Sarah’s phrase. “Quite distracted.”

“But if she is extracted,” Dot proposed, “why doesn’t she have Dr. Forsyth come to see her?”

“Mercy, Dot!” admonished Tess. “Distracted, not extracted. You do so mispronounce the commonest words.”

“I don’t, either,” the smaller girl denied vigorously. “I don’t mispernounce any more than you do, Tess Kenway! You just make believe you know so much.”

“Dot! Mispernounce! There you go again!”

This was a sore subject, and Ruth attempted to change the trend of the little girls’ thoughts by suggesting that Mrs. McCall needed some groceries from a certain store situated away across town.

“If you can get Uncle Rufus to harness Scalawag you girls can drive over to Penny & Marchant’s for those things. And you can stop at Mr. Howbridge’s house with this note. He must be told about poor Luke’s injury.”

“Why, Ruthie?” asked little Miss Inquisitive, otherwise Dot Kenway. “Mr. Howbridge isn’t Luke Shepard’s guardian, too, is he?”

“Now, don’t be a chatterbox!” exclaimed the elder sister, who was somewhat harassed on this morning and did not care to explain to the little folk just what she had in her mind.

Ruth was not satisfied to know that Cecile had gone to attend her brother. The oldest Kenway girl longed to go herself to the resort in the mountains where Luke Shepard lay ill. But she did not wish to do this without first seeking their guardian’s permission.

Tess and Dot ran off in delight, forgetting their small bickerings, to find Uncle Rufus. The old colored man, as long as he could get about, would do anything for “his chillun,” as he called the four Kenway sisters. It needed no coaxing on the part of Tess and Dot to get their will of the old man on this occasion.

Scalawag was fat and lazy enough in any case. In the spring Neale had plowed and harrowed the garden with him and on occasion he was harnessed to a light cart for work about the place. His main duty, however, was to draw the smaller girls about the quieter streets of Milton in a basket phaeton. To this vehicle he was now harnessed by Uncle Rufus.

“You want to be mought’ car’ful ‘bout them automobiles, chillun,” the old man admonished them. “Dat Sammy Pinkney boy was suah some good once in a while. He was a purt’ car’ful driber.”

“But he’s a good driver now– wherever he is,” said Dot. “You talk as though Sammy would never get back home from being a pirate. Of course he will. He always does!”

Secretly Tess felt herself to be quite as able to drive the pony as ever Sammy Pinkney was. She was glad to show her prowess.

Scalawag shook his head, danced playfully on the old stable floor, and then proceeded to wheel the basket phaeton out of the barn and into Willow Street. By a quieter thoroughfare than Main Street, Tess Kenway headed him for the other side of town.

“Maybe we’ll run across Sammy,” suggested Dot, sitting sedately with her ever-present Alice-doll. “Then we can tell his mother where he is being a pirate. She won’t be so extracted then.”

Tess overlooked this mispronunciation, knowing it was useless to object, and turned the subject by saying:

“Or maybe we’ll see those Gypsies.”

“Oh, I hope not!” cried the smaller girl. “I hope we’ll never see those Gypsy women again.”

For just at this time the Alice-doll was wearing the fretted silver bracelet for a girdle.

CHAPTER VI – THE GYPSY’S WORDS

That very forenoon after the two smallest girls had set out on their drive with Scalawag a telegram came to the old Corner House for Ruth.

As Agnes said, a telegram was “an event in their young sweet lives.” And this one did seem of great importance to Ruth. It was from Cecile Shepard and read:

“Arrived Oakhurst. They will not let me see Luke.”

Aside from the natural shock that the telegram itself furnished, Cecile’s declaration that she was not allowed to see her brother was bound to make Ruth Kenway fear the worst.

“Oh!” she cried, “he must be very badly hurt indeed. It is much worse than Cecile thought when she wrote. Oh, Agnes! what shall I do?”

“Telegraph her for particulars,” suggested Agnes, quite practically. “A broken wrist can’t be such an awful thing, Ruthie.”

“But his back! Suppose he has seriously hurt his back?”

“Goodness me! That would be awful, of course. He might grow a hump like poor Fred Littleburg. But I don’t believe that anything like that has happened to Luke, Ruthie.”

Her sister was not to be easily comforted. “Think! There must be something very serious the matter or they would not keep his own sister from seeing him.” Ruth herself had had no word from Luke since the accident.

Neither of the sisters knew that Cecile Shepard had never had occasion to send a telegram before and had never received one in all her life.

But she learned that a message of ten words could be sent for thirty-two cents to Milton, so she had divided what she wished to say in two equal parts! The second half of her message, however, because of the mistake of the filing clerk at the telegraph office in Oakhurst, did not arrive at the Corner House for several hours after the first half of the message.

Ruth Kenway meanwhile grew almost frantic as she considered the possible misfortune that might have overtaken Luke Shepard. She grew quite as “extracted” – to quote Dot – as Mrs. Pinkney was about the absence of Sammy.

“Well,” Agnes finally declared, “if I felt as you do about it I would not wait to hear from Mr. Howbridge. I’d start right now. Here’s the time table. I’ve looked up the trains. There is one at ten minutes to one – twelve-fifty. I’ll call Neale and he’ll drive you down to the station. You might have gone with the children if that telegram had come earlier.”

Agnes was not only practical, she was helpful on this occasion. She packed Ruth’s bag – and managed to get into it a more sensible variety of articles than Sammy Pinkey had carried in his!

“Now, don’t be worried about us,” said Agnes, when Ruth, dressed for departure, began to speak with anxiety about domestic affairs, including the continued absence of the little girls. “Haven’t we got Mrs. McCall – and Linda? You do take your duties so seriously, Ruth Kenway.”

“Do you think so?” rejoined Ruth, smiling rather wanly at the flyaway sister. “If anything should happen while I am gone – ”

“Nothing will happen that wouldn’t happen anyway, whether you are at home or not,” declared the positive Agnes.

Ruth made ready to go in such a hurry that nobody else in the Corner House save Agnes herself realized that the older sister was going until the moment that Neale O’Neil drove around to the front gate with the car. Then Ruth ran into Aunt Sarah’s room to kiss her good-bye. But Aunt Sarah had always lived a life apart from the general existence of the Corner House family and paid little attention to what her nieces did save to criticise. Mrs. McCall was busy this day preserving – “up tae ma eyen in wark, ma lassie” – and Ruth kissed her, called good-bye to Linda, and ran to the front door before any of the three actually realized what was afoot.

Agnes ran with her to the street. At the gate stood a dark-faced, brilliantly dressed young woman, with huge gold rings in her ears, several other pieces of jewelry worn in sight, and a flashing smile as she halted the Kenway sisters with outstretched hand.

“Will the young ladies let me read their palms?” she said suavely. “I can tell them the good fortune.”