Kitabı oku: «The Corner House Girls' Odd Find», sayfa 4

CHAPTER VIII – WHERE IS NEALE O’NEIL?

Christmas Day wore away toward evening. A number of the young friends of the Corner House girls ran in to bring gifts and to wish Ruth and Agnes and Tess and Dot a Merry Christmas. Many of them, too, stayed for a moment to speak to Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill. The interest aroused by the recently performed play at the Opera House for the benefit of the Women’s and Children’s Hospital had awakened interest likewise in “the little gray lady” and her sister.

“I never was so popular before with the school children of Milton,” the latter said, rather tartly. “I’d better be run down by an automobile about once a year.”

“Oh, that would be dreadful!” Tess exclaimed.

“It is a shame you don’t know who it was that ran you down. He could be made to pay something,” Ruth remarked.

“My goodness! Get money that I hadn’t earned!” cried the school teacher.

“I should say you’d earned it – and earned it mighty hard,” said Mrs. MacCall, who happened to hear this.

“It wouldn’t be my fortune,” said Miss Pepperill, lying back wearily in her chair. “And I don’t see how I can go back to those awful youngsters after New Year.”

“Sh!” begged Mrs. Eland.

“Oh, my! is our Tess an awful youngster?” asked Dot, bluntly.

“She is a dear!” declared Mrs. Eland, quickly.

“Theresa is an exception,” admitted Miss Pepperill. “But I certainly have some little tikes in my room.”

“Oh, I know,” said Dot. “Like Sammy Pinkney.”

“Sammy’s sick abed,” Tess said, coming into the room in time to hear his name mentioned. “I went over and asked his mother about him. The doctor won’t say what it is yet; but he’s out of his head.”

“Poor Sammy!” said Agnes. “Falling down our chimney yesterday was too much for him. He’s an unfortunate little chap after all.”

“Oh, my!” Dot observed, “if he is sick and dies, he’ll never get to be a pirate, will he?”

“Hear that child!” murmured Miss Pepperill, eyeing Dot as though she were a strange specimen indeed.

“Don’t speak so, Dottie,” admonished Tess. “That would be dreadful!”

“What? Dreadful if he didn’t get to be a pirate?” Agnes asked lightly.

But Tess was serious. “I don’t believe Sammy Pinkney is fit to die,” she declared.

“For pity’s sake!” exclaimed Miss Pepperill. “She talks like her grandmother. I never heard such a child as you are, Theresa. But perhaps you are right about Sammy. He’s one awful trial.”

“But his mother was crying,” said Tess, softly.

Nobody said anything more to the tender-hearted little girl; but Dot brought her the nicest piece of “Christmas” candy in the dish – a long, curly, striped piece, and Agnes hugged her.

Ruth was worried a little about the dinner arrangements. The meal was almost ready to serve, but Neale O’Neil had not come over from Mr. Con Murphy’s, where he lived.

“You were cross with him, Agnes, and he won’t come back,” she said accusingly to the beauty. “And Mrs. MacCall won’t wait.”

“Oh, he wouldn’t disappoint us!” declared Agnes. “He knows we depend on him. Why, half our fun will be spoiled – ”

“He evidently isn’t coming to dinner.”

At that moment Uncle Rufus came to announce that all was ready, and he tucked a twist of paper into Agnes’ hand.

“Oh, Ruthie! look here!” the second sister said. “Read this.”

The oldest Corner House girl saw it was the handwriting of their boy friend.

“‘Don’t worry. Santa Claus will appear according to schedule.’ Oh! that is all right, then,” Ruth said. “He’s not coming till after we get through.”

“Well! I think that’s too mean of him,” cried Agnes.

But Ruth was somewhat relieved. They went in to dinner, a quiet, but really happy party.

The old dining room looked lovely, and the lighted tree in the corner was a brilliant spectacle. Ruth’s idea of lighting the room completely by candles proved a good one. The soft glow of the wax-lights over the ancient silver and sparkling cut-glass was attractive.

Mrs. MacCall presided, as always. The girls would not hear to her only directing the dinner from the kitchen. Aunt Sarah Maltby, in her best black silk and ivory lace, seemed to have imbibed a share of the holiday spirit, for once at least. She was quite talkative and gracious at the other end of the table.

Without Neale O’Neil, Ruth found that the table could be much better balanced. Mrs. Eland sat between Tess and Dot on one side of the long board, while Miss Pepperill’s place was between the two older Corner House girls.

Uncle Rufus came in chuckling toward the close of the meal and whispered something to Ruth. Almost immediately she excused Tess and Dot to run up for their dolls. The presents were to be taken off the tree and there might be some for the Alice-doll and Tess’ most treasured doll, too.

When the little folks returned something had disturbed the green boughs in the chimney-place. Dot had only begun to eye that place of mystery with growing curiosity, when there was a shaking of the branches, two mighty thumps upon the brick hearth, and pushing through the greenery came Santa Claus himself.

“Merry Christmas! And the best of iv’rything to ye!” cried the good saint jovially.

“Oh, my!” gasped Dot. “Is – is it the really truly Santa Claus?”

“I don’t believe that Santa is Irish,” whispered Tess. “This is just in fun!” But she could not imagine, any more than did Dot, who it was behind the mask and great paunch that disguised the Santa Claus.

They all hailed him merrily, however. Even Miss Pepperill and Aunt Sarah entered into the play to a degree. Santa Claus went to the tree and they all sat along the opposite side of the cleared table, facing him. With many a quip and jest he brought the packages and presented them to those whose names were written on the wrappers. At one place quite a little pile of presents were gathered, all addressed to Neale O’Neil.

“Oh, dear me!” sighed Tess, almost overcome with joy, yet thinking of the absent one. “If Neale were only here! I do so want to see how he likes his presents.”

But Neale did not come. The two little girls finally tripped up to bed with their arms full. Then the party broke up and the masquerading Santa Claus took off his paunch and false face in the kitchen.

“Shure I promised the lad I’d do it for him,” said Mr. Con Murphy, accepting a piece of Agnes’ cake and sitting down to enjoy it. “No, he’s not mad wid yez. Shure not!”

“But why didn’t he come to dinner?” demanded Agnes, quickly.

“He ain’t here,” said the cobbler, quietly. “He’s gone away.”

“Do you mean he’s gone away from your house?” asked Ruth, curiously, for Agnes was too much surprised to speak.

“Shure, he’s gone away from Milton entirely,” said the little Irishman.

“What for?” demanded both girls together.

“Begorra! he didn’t say, now,” said Mr. Murphy, slowly. “Come to think of ut, he niver told me. But I knowed the letter puzzled him.”

“What letter?” asked Ruth.

“He never told me he got a letter,” cried Agnes, much put out.

“It was there last evening when he got home. The postman brought it jest before supper,” said Mr. Murphy, reflectively. “Ye, see, Neale was over here all the evening and shure, he didn’t see the letter till he come home.”

“Oh!” was the chorused exclamation.

“I see he was troubled in his mind this mornin’,” said the cobbler. “‘What’s atin’ on yer mind, lad?’ says I to him. But niver a wor’rd did he reply to me till afther he’d been over here and come back again. Then he came downstairs with his bist clo’es on and his bag in his hand.”

“For pity’s sake!” wailed Agnes, “where has he gone?”

“He didn’t say,” returned the old Irishman, shaking his head. “Neale can be as tight-mouthed as a clam – so he can.”

“But he did not go off without saying a word to you?” cried Ruth.

“No, not so. He says: ‘Con, I’ve gotter go. ’Tis me duty. I hate mesilf for going; but I’d hate meself worse if I didn’t go.’ Now! kin ye make head nor tail of that? For shure, I can’t,” finished the cobbler.

The two Corner House girls stared at each other. Neither of them could see into this mystery any deeper than did Mr. Con Murphy.

CHAPTER IX – RUTH IS SUSPICIOUS

The day following Christmas Ruth went out of her way while she was marketing to step into the bank in which Mr. Howbridge kept their account, and where she was known to both the cashier and teller.

“Good morning, Mr. Crouch,” she said to the latter gentleman. “Will you look at this bill?”

“Merry Christmas to you, Miss Ruth,” said the teller. “What is the matter with the bill?” and he took the one she tendered him.

“Perhaps you can tell me better than I can tell you,” Ruth returned, laughing; yet she looked a bit anxious, too, and her hand trembled.

“Has somebody been giving you a ‘phony’ ten dollar note?” asked the teller, taking up his glass and screwing it into his eye.

“I am not sure,” replied Ruth, hesitatingly.

“Or is it a Christmas present and you are looking a gift horse in the mouth?” and Mr. Crouch chuckled as he bent above the banknote. “This appears to be all right. Do you want it broken – or changed for another note?”

“No-o. I guess not. I only wanted to be sure,” Ruth said. “Of course you can’t be mistaken, Mr. Crouch?”

“Mistaken? Of course I can,” he cried. “Did you ever hear of a mere human who wasn’t sometimes mistaken?” and he laughed again.

“About that being a good bill, I mean,” she said, trying to laugh with him.

“I’m so sure that I’m willing to exchange good money for it,” he said, with confidence. “I can say no more than that.”

Ruth gravely folded the bill again and tucked it into one compartment of her purse, by itself. She looked very serious all the way home with her laden basket.

While the eldest Corner House girl was absent Tess and Dot had been very busy in their small way. Life was so “full of a number of things” for the two smallest Corner House girls that they were seldom at a loss for something to do.

First of all that morning Tess insisted upon calling at the Pinkneys’ side door to ask after Sammy. She felt it her duty, she said.

When they approached the porch Dot’s quick eyes caught sight of a brilliantly red card, about four inches square, tacked to the post.

“What do you suppose that is, Tess Kenway?” she demanded, stopping short.

“Goodness! what does it say?” responded Tess, puzzled for the moment.

“Why! it looks just like what was tacked on the front door of the Creamers’ house when Mabel’s sisters had quarantine. Don’t you ‘member?” demanded Dot.

“Oh, dear me!” cried Tess. “It’s scarlet fever. Then Sammy’s really got it!”

“Is – is it catching?” asked Dot, backing away and hugging tighter her Alice-doll, which she had snatched out of the carriage.

“I – guess – so,” said Tess. “Oh, poor Sammy!”

“Do you ‘spect he’ll die?” asked Dot, in awed tone.

“Oh, goodness me! I don’t know!” exclaimed Tess.

“And won’t he ever grow up to be a pirate?” queried Dot, for to the mind of the smallest Corner House girl romance gilded Sammy Pinkney’s proposed career.

“Scarlet fever’s dreadful bad. And we mustn’t go in,” Tess said.

“I’m sorry for Sammy,” observed Dot. “I think he’s a terrible int’resting boy.”

“You shouldn’t be interested in the boys,” declared prudish Tess.

“Huh! you wanted to come here to see how he was,” responded the smallest Corner House girl, shrewdly.

“But I don’t think of him as a boy. I’m just sorry for him ’cause he’s a human being,” declared Tess, loftily.

“Oh!”

“I’d be sorry for anybody who had scarlet fever.”

“Well,” Dot said, rather weary of the subject, “let’s go over to see Mabel Creamer. Now we’re out with our doll carriages, we ought to call somewhere.”

Tess agreed to this and the little girls wheeled their baby carriages around the corner to their next door neighbor’s, on the other side of the old Corner House.

The Creamer cottage seemed wonderfully quiet and deserted in appearance as they went in at the gate and pushed their doll carriages up to the side porch.

“Do you s’pose they’re all away?” worried Tess.

“Maybe they’ve got the scarlet fever, too,” murmured Dot, in awe.

But just then a figure appeared at the sitting room window which, on spying the Corner House girls, began to jump up and down and make urgent gestures for them to come in.

“It’s Mabel,” said Tess. “And she must be all alone.”

“Oh, goody! then her sisters can’t boss us,” cried Dot, hurrying to drag her Alice-doll’s new go-cart up the steps.

Mabel, the Creamer girl nearest the little Kenways’ own ages, ran to open the door.

“Oh, hurrah!” she cried. “Come in, do! Tess and Dot Kenway. I’m so lonesome I could kill flies! Dear me! how glad I am to see you,” and she hugged them both and then danced around them again.

“Are you all alone, Mabel?” asked Dot, struggling with her hood and coat in the warm hall.

“Well, Minnie” (that was the maid’s name) “has just run down to the store. She won’t be gone long. But I might as well be all alone. Mother’s gone to Aunt Em’s and Lydia’s taken Peg to have a tooth pulled.”

“But the baby?” asked Tess. “Didn’t I just hear him?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mabel, scowling. “I’ve got to mind the baby. I told Lydia I’d go have a tooth pulled and Peg could mind him. I’d rather.”

“Oh!” cried Dot, in awe, while Tess marched straight into the sitting room to see if the Creamers’ youngest was all right.

“You don’t deserve to have a baby brother, Mabel Creamer,” Tess said severely.

“Oh, I wish we could have one!” Dot said longingly.

“Say! you can have this one for all I care,” declared Mabel. “You don’t know what a nuisance babies are. Everybody else can go out but me. I’ve got to stay and mind the baby. Nasty thing!”

“Oh, Mabel!” said Tess, sorrowfully – for Tess had no objection to boys as small as Bubby Creamer. The baby laughed, and crowed, and stretched out his arms to her. “Isn’t he the cunning little thing, Dot?” cooed Tess.

“He’s the nicest baby I ever saw,” agreed the smallest Corner House girl.

“Oh, yes,” growled Mabel, who had been the baby in the family herself for a long time before Bubby came. “Oh, yes, he’s so cunning! Look at him now – trying to get his foot in his mouth. If I bite my fingernails mother raps me good; but that kid can swallow his whole foot and they think he’s cute!”

“Oh, Mabel! does he really swallow his foot?” gasped Dot. “I should think it would choke him.”

“Wish it would!” declared the savage sister of the cooing Bubby Creamer. “Then I could get out and play once in a while. Lydia and Peg put it on me, anyway. They get the best of everything.”

“Oh, let’s play right here,” suggested Tess, interrupting this ill-natured tirade. “You get your new doll, Mabel.”

“No. If I do he’ll want it. See! he’s trying to grab your Alice-doll right now, Dot Kenway.”

“Oh! he can’t have her,” Dot gasped, in alarm. “Haven’t you an old dolly you can let him play with, Mabel?”

“He’s got one of his own – a black boy. As black as your Uncle Rufus. I’ll hunt around for it,” said the ungracious Mabel.

Afterward, when the little Kenways were on their way home, after bidding Mabel and Bubby good-bye, Dot confessed to her sister:

“I don’t so much like to go to see Mabel Creamer, after all. She’s always so scoldy.”

“I know,” agreed Tess. “And she’s real inquisitive, too. Did you hear her asking ’bout Neale?”

“I didn’t notice,” Dot said.

“Why, she says they saw Neale O’Neil going through our yard with a heavy traveling bag yesterday morning, and he went out our front gate. She asked where he was going.”

“But you don’t know where Neale has gone,” said Dot, complacently, “so she didn’t find out anything. And I’d like to know where he’s gone, too. There’s all his presents off the Christmas tree; and we can’t see them till he comes back, Ruthie says.”

More than Dot expressed a desire to see Neale at the old Corner House. Agnes had gone about all the morning openly wondering where Neale could have gone, and what he had gone for.

“I think he’s just too mean for anything,” she said to Ruth, querulously, when the older girl came home from market.

“Who is mean?” Ruth returned absently.

“Neale. To go off and never say a word to us. I am offended.”

Had Agnes’ mind not been so strongly set upon the subject of Neale O’Neil’s defection she would surely have noticed how Ruth’s hands trembled and how her face flushed and paled by turns.

“Never mind about Neale O’Neil,” the older sister said, rather impatiently for her.

“Well, I just do mind!” Agnes declared. “He has no business to have secrets from us. Aren’t we his best friends?”

“Perhaps he doesn’t consider us such,” said Ruth, who would have been amused by her sister’s seriousness at another time. “There’s Joe Eldred. Perhaps he knows where Neale has gone.”

“Joe Eldred!” cried Agnes. “If I thought Neale had taken a mere boy into his confidence and hadn’t told me, I’d never speak to him again! At least,” she temporized, knowing her own failing, “I never would forgive him!”

“Never mind worrying about Neale,” Ruth said again. “Come into the sitting room. I want to show you something.”

Agnes followed her rather grumpily. To her mind there was nothing just then so important as Neale O’Neil’s absence and the mystery thereof.

Ruth turned to her when the door was closed and started to open her purse and her lips at the same time. Her eyes sparkled; her cheeks were deeply flushed. She looked just as eager and excited as ever quiet, composed Ruth Kenway could look.

“Oh, Aggie!” she quavered.

“Well!” said Agnes, querulously. “I don’t care. He – ”

“Never mind Neale O’Neil!” cried Ruth, for a third time, and quite exasperated with her sister.

She closed her purse again and ran across the room. She looked behind the machine. Then she pulled the machine away from the wall so that she could get down on her knees and creep behind it.

“What’s the matter with you, Ruthie?” asked Agnes, finally awakening to her sister’s strange behavior. “What are you looking for?”

“Where – where is it? Where has it gone?” gasped Ruth, still on hands and knees.

“What are you after, Ruth Kenway?” cried Agnes again. “Oh! are you looking for that old scrap-book I found upstairs in the garret?”

“Yes,” answered Ruth, quaveringly.

“Why? Did you see what was in it?” demanded her sister.

“Yes,” Ruth said again.

“Wasn’t it funny? All that counterfeit money and those old bonds. Neale and I looked at it Christmas Eve.”

“Neale?” gasped Ruth, getting upon her feet, but sitting down in a chair quickly as though her knees were too weak to bear her up.

“Oh, dear me!” rattled on Agnes. “Wouldn’t it have been great if the money and bonds were good? Why! it would have been a fortune. Neale added it all up.”

“But what became of the book?” Ruth finally got a chance to ask again.

“Oh! Neale took it.”

“Neale took it?”

“Yes.”

“What for?”

“Why, I don’t know. He was curious. He said maybe the bonds were worth something and he’d find out. Of course, that is silly,” said Agnes, lightly, “and I told him so.”

“And didn’t he bring all that money back?” gasped Ruth.

“‘All that money,’” repeated Agnes, with laughter. “How tragic you sound – just as though it were not stage money. And I wish it were not!”

“He – he didn’t return the book?” asked Ruth, controlling herself with difficulty.

“Not yet. He went away so suddenly. Mean thing! I’d just like to know where he’s gone.”

Agnes was quite unaware of her sister’s trouble. Her own mind reverted to Neale’s strange absence as of more importance. Ruth began to be troubled by that same query, too. Where was Neale O’Neil? And what had he done with the old album found in the Corner House garret?

The ten dollar bill Ruth had had examined at the bank that morning was one she had taken out of the old volume!

CHAPTER X – WHAT MR. CON MURPHY DID NOT KNOW

The children saw Dr. Forsyth coming out of Sammy Pinkney’s house that afternoon and they ran to ask him how their neighbor was getting on.

“For we’re awful int’rested in Sammy,” Dot explained. “I’m int’rested because he’s going to be a pirate, and Tess is int’rested because he gave her a goat.”

“You children stay across the street where you are,” commanded the busy doctor, getting briskly into his automobile. “You’re quite near enough to me. This is my last call and I’m going home now to fumigate my clothing.”

“Oh, dear me!” cried Dot, “has Sammy scarlet fever and quarantine, both?”

“Huh?” said the doctor, trying his starter. Then he laughed. “I should say he had. And you children must stay away from there. It’s bad enough to have one scarlet fever patient on Willow Street. I don’t want an epidemic.”

That last puzzled Dot a good deal. She went back into the house very soberly when the doctor drove away.

“Mrs. MacCall,” she asked, “what is a epidermis? Dr. Forsyth doesn’t want one.”

“Well, that’s ‘no skin off your nose,’ Dot,” said Agnes, giggling at her own fun.

“If the doctor had no epidermis he’d be a rare lookin’ object,” said the housekeeper, “for that’s his skin, just as your sister says.”

“He said ‘epidemic,’” Tess declared, with disgust. “Dot! you do make the greatest mistakes.”

“Well, has Sammy got that too?” cried Dot, horrified by the possibility of such a complication of diseases. “Has he got scarlet fever, and quarantine, and ep – epic – well, that other thing, too?”

Ruth came through the kitchen dressed to go out. Her face was very grave and her eyes suspiciously red; but she pulled her veil down over her face and so hid the traces of her emotion from the family.

“Where are you going, Ruthie?” asked Dot, eagerly.

“Sister’s going out on an errand,” replied Ruth.

“Oh! let me go?” cried the smallest Corner House girl.

“Not this time,” said Ruth, quietly. “I can’t take you to-day, Dot.”

Dot began to pout. “Oh, come along, Dot,” said Tess, who never could bear to see her little sister with a frown. “Let us go upstairs and dress all the dolls in their best clothes, and have a party.”

“No,” said Dot. “I can’t. Muriel has spoiled her party dress. She spilled tea on it, you know. Bonnie-Betty’s broken her arm and it’s in splints. And you know Ann Eliza and Eliza Ann, the twins, are all spotted up, and I don’t know yet whether it’s measles or smallpox.”

“For goodness’ sake!” gasped Mrs. MacCall. “If they need a quarantine anywhere I should think ’twould be in that nursery.”

Ruth went out, leaving them all laughing at Dorothy. She was in no mood for laughter herself. Since she and her sisters had come to live at the old Corner House, Ruth had never felt more troubled.

She said nothing further to Agnes either about the absence of Neale O’Neil, or the disappearance of the old album. The next to the oldest Corner House girl had noted nothing strange in Ruth’s manner or speech. Agnes Kenway was not very observant.

Ruth went out the side gate and along Willow Street. Beyond Mrs. Adam’s little cottage there was a narrow lane called Willow Wythe, which ran back, in a sort of L-shaped passage to the rear street on which Mr. Con Murphy had his tiny house and shop.

Neale always came to the Corner House by a ‘short cut’ – over the fence into the back premises from Mr. Murphy’s yard; and Agnes had been known to come and go by the same route. It was several minutes’ walk by way of Willow Street and Willow Wythe to the door of the cobbler’s little shop.

Neale O’Neil had lived here with Mr. Murphy, occupying an upstairs room, almost ever since he had come to Milton to go to school. Mr. Murphy’s pig had served as an introduction between Neale and the cobbler. Mr. Murphy always thought a good deal of his pig. Later he thought so much of Neale that he offered to buy the boy’s services from his Uncle Bill Sorber, when that gentleman had tried to take Neale back to the circus.

“Shure,” Mr. Murphy had said, “there’s more to a bye than to a pig, afther all – though there’s much to be said in favor of the pig, by the same token!”

However, either the cobbler’s generosity, or something else, had shamed Mr. Sorber into agreeing to let Neale have his chance for an education; and he was willing to pay the boy’s expenses while he went to school, too. But Neale worked hard to help support himself, for he disliked being a burden on his uncle.

The old cobbler was a queer character, but with a heart of gold. He tapped away all day at the broken footgear of all the neighbors, ever ready for a bit of gossip, yet exuding a kindly philosophy all his own in dealing with neighborhood topics, or human frailties in general.

“There’s so little good in the best of us, and so little bad in the worst of us, that it behooves the most of us to take care how we speak ill of the rest of us,” was the sum and substance of Mr. Con Murphy’s creed.

“Happy the day when yer shadder falls across the threshold, Miss Ruth,” was the Irishman’s greeting as she pushed inward the door of his shop which was in what had been the parlor of the tiny house. “Bless yer swate face! what’s needed?”

“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?