CHAPTER IV
ANTICIPATIONS
Mr. Howbridge, before he hurried away to his office, asked Ruth:
"What do you think of that? And you suggest my keeping thosetwins--those two wild youngsters--in my home!"
"I will tell you what I think of that telegram," said the oldestKenway girl, handing the yellow sheet of paper back to him. "I thinkthat man Rodgers is not a fit person to have charge of the boy andgirl."
"Why not?" he asked in surprise.
"Imagine thinking of dragging a pond in mid-winter--or at any othertime of the year--for two healthy children! First idea the man seemsto have. I guess the twins had reason for running away."
"Hear! Hear!" cried Agnes, who deliberately listened.
"Why, they have known Rodgers all their lives!"
"Perhaps that is why they have run away," said Ruth, smiling. "Rodgerssounds to me--from his telegram--as though he had one awful lack."
"You frighten me. What lack?"
"Lack of a sense of humor. And that is fatal in the character ofanybody who has a pair of twins on his hands."
Mr. Howbridge threw up his own hands in amazement. "I must lack thatmyself," he said. "I see nothing funny, at least, in the idea ofhaving Ralph and Rowena Birdsall in my house."
"It helps," said Ruth. "A sense of humor is what has kept me going allthese years," she added demurely. "If you think a pair of twins can becompared to Tess and Dot and Sammy Pinkney--to say nothing of Aggieand Neale--"
"Oh! Oh!" shouted the two latter in chorus.
"You have a mean mind, Ruthie Kenway," declared the blonde beauty.
"I knew I wasn't much liked," admitted Neale O'Neil. "But that is theunkindest cut of all."
"You have had experience, I grant you," said Mr. Howbridge, about totake his departure. "But I foresee much trouble in the case of theseBirdsall twins."
And he was a true prophet there. The twins had utterly disappeared.The Arlington police--indeed, all the county officers together--couldfind no trace of the orphaned brother and sister.
Mr. Howbridge put private detectives on the case. The twins seemed tohave disappeared as utterly as though they really were under the twofeet of ice on Arlington Pond.
The lawyer searched personally, advertised in the newspapers, and evenoffered a reward for the apprehension of the children. A fortnightpassed without success.
The governess, Miss Mason, was discharged, for it seemed unnecessaryto pay her salary when there were no children for her to teach.Rodgers and his wife could give no aid in the search. They were ratherrelieved, if the truth were told, to be free of the twins.
"Master Ralph was hard enough to get along with," the ex-butleradmitted. "But Miss Rowena was worse. They wanted to go back intotheir own house to live. They could not understand why it was shut up,sir," and the old serving man shook his head.
"They seemed to have taken a dislike to you, sir," he added to Mr.Howbridge. "They said you 'hadn't any right to boss.' That is the waythey put it."
"But I never even saw them," returned the lawyer. "I didn't try 'toboss' them."
"Well, you know, sir," Rodgers explained, "I had to give 'em reasonsfor things. You have to with children like Master Ralph and MissRowena. So I had to tell 'em you said they were to do this and that."
"Oh! Ah! I see!" muttered the guardian.
He began to believe that perhaps Ruth Kenway was right. He should havetaken more of a personal interest in Ralph and Rowena. They hadevidently gained from the ex-butler an entirely wrong impression ofwhat a guardian was.
But the disappearance of the Birdsall twins did not make any change inthe plans for the mid-winter visit to Red Deer Lodge. Mr. Howbridgehad to go there in any case, and he would not disappoint the Kenwaysand their friends.
As it chanced, full three weeks were given the Milton schools at theChristmas Holiday time. There were repairs to make in the heatingarrangements of both high and grammar school buildings. The schoolswould close the week before Christmas and not open again until theweek following New Year's Day.
If Sammy Pinkney had had his way, the schools would never have openedagain!
"I don't see what they have to learn you things for, anyway,"complained the youngster. "You can find things out for yourself."
"That's rather an expensive way to learn, I've always heard," saidRuth, admonishingly.
"Huh!" grumbled Sammy, "teachers don't know much, anyway. Look!There's what Miss Grimsby told us in physics the other day--all aboutwhat you're made of, and how you're made, and the names you can callyourself--if you want to.
"You know: Your legs and arms are _limbs_--and all that. She told usthe middle part of our bodies is the _trunk_, and she asked us all ifwe understood that. Some said 'yes,' and some didn't say nothing,"went on the excited boy.
"'Don't you know the middle of the body is the trunk?' she asked PatsyRoach. And what do you suppose he told Miss Grimsby?"
"I can't imagine," said Agnes, for this was in the evening and theyoung people were gathered about the sitting-room table with theirlesson books.
"He told her: 'You ought to go to the circus, Miss Grimsby, and seethe elephant,'" giggled Sammy. "And I guess Patsy was right. Huh!_Trunk!_" he added with scorn.
"Association of ideas," chuckled Neale O'Neil, who was likewisepresent as usual during home study hour. "I heard that one of the kidsin Dot's grade gave Miss Andrews an extremely bright answer the otherday."
"What was that, Neale?" asked Agnes, who would rather talk than studyat any time.
"History. Miss Andrews asked one little girl who discovered America,and the answer was, 'Ohio'!"
"Oh! Oh!" murmured Agnes, while even Ruth smiled.
"Yes," chuckled Neale. "Miss Andrews said, 'No; Columbus discoveredAmerica,' and the kid said: 'Yes'm. That was his first name.'"
"She got her geography and history mixed," said Ruth, smiling.
"That was Sadie Goronofsky's half-sister, Becky," explained Dot. "Sheisn't very bright."
"You bet she isn't bright!" snorted Sammy Pinkney. "Her pop's got alittle tailor shop with another man down on Meadow Street, and theyare always fighting."
"Who are always fighting?" asked Neale quizzically. "Becky and herfather or Becky and her father's partner?"
"Smartie! Becky's pop and the other man," answered Sammy. "And theirlandlord was putting in a new store-front, and Becky's father put outa sign telling folks they were still working--_you_ know. Becky saidit read: 'Business going on during altercations,' instead of'alterations.' And 'altercations' means fights," concluded the wiseSammy.
"Just see," remarked Ruth quietly, "how satisfied you children shouldbe that you know so much more than your little mates. You sofrequently bring home tales about them."
"Aw, now, Ruth," mumbled Sammy, who was bright enough to note hercharacteristic criticism.
"I would try," the oldest Kenway said admonishingly, "to bring homeonly the pleasant stories about my little school friends."
"Oh! _I_ know a nice story about Allie Newman's little brother,"declared Dot eagerly.
"That little terror!" murmured Agnes.
"He is one tough little kid," admitted Neale O'Neil, in an undertone.
"What about the little Newman boy?" asked Ruth indulgently. "And thenwe must all study."
"Why," said Dot, big-eyed and very much in earnest, "you know RobbieNewman doesn't go to school yet; and he's an awful trial to hismother."
"That is gossip, Dot," Tess interposed severely.
But the smallest Corner House girl was not to be derailed from themain line of her story, and went right on:
"He was naughty the other day and his mamma told him she'd shut him upsomewhere all by himself. 'If you do, Mamma,' he said, 'I'll justsmash ev'rything in the room.'"
"Oh-oo!" gasped Tess, proving herself to be quite as much interestedin the "gossip" as the others around the evening lamp. "What a wickedboy!"
"But he didn't smash anything," Dot was quick to explain. "For hismot
her put him right out in the henhouse."
"The henhouse! Fancy!" said Agnes.
"There wasn't anything for him to smash there," said Dot. "But whenshe had locked him in, Robbie put his head out of the little doorwhere the hens go in and out, and he called after her:
"'Mamma, you can lock me in here all you want to; but I won't lay anyeggs!'"
"I am not sure that it isn't gossip," chuckled Agnes, when the generallaugh had subsided.
"That will be all now," Ruth said with severity. "Study time is here."
But there was another and more important subject in all their mindsthan either school happenings, the eccentricities of their friends, orthe lesson books themselves.
The holidays! The thought of going to Red Deer Lodge! A wintervacation in the deep woods, and to live in "picnic" fashion, as theysupposed, lent a charm to the plan that delighted every member of theCorner House party.
Ruth and Agnes wrote to the Shepards--to Cecile at home with her AuntLorena, and to Luke at college--and they were immediately enamored ofthe plan and returned enthusiastic acceptances of the invitation,thanking Mr. Howbridge, of course, as well.
The lawyer was having a great deal to do at this time, and he came tothe old Corner House more than once to talk about the Birdsall twinsto Ruth and the others. As he said, it gave him comfort to talk oversomething he did not know anything about with the oldest Corner Housesister.
He sat one stormy day in the cozy sitting-room, with Dot and theAlice-doll on one knee and Tess and Almira, who was now a quitegrown-up cat and had kittens of her own, on his other knee. All theCorner House cats were pets, no matter how grown-up they were.
"It is worrying me a great deal, Ruthie," he said to the sympatheticgirl. "Look at a day like this. We don't know where those poorchildren are. Rodgers says they could have had but little money. Infact, they scarcely knew what money was for, having always hadeverything needful supplied them."
"Twelve-year-old children nowadays, Mr. Howbridge," said Ruth, "areusually quite capable of looking after themselves."
"You think so?" queried the worried guardian.
"You remember what Agnes was at twelve. And look at our Tess."
The lawyer pinched Tess' cheek. "I see what she is. And she is goingto be twelve some day, I suppose," he agreed. "But what would sheand--say--Sammy Pinkney do, turned out alone into the world?"
"Oh!" cried Dot, the little pitcher with the big ears, "Sammy and Iwent off alone to be pirates. And I'm younger than Tess."
"I hope I shouldn't run away with Sammy!" said Tess, in some disdain.
"Why," Dot put in, "suppose Sammy was your brother? I felt quitesisterly to him that time we were hid in the canalboat."
"I guess that we all feel 'sisterly' to Sammy," laughed Ruth. "And Iam sure, Tess, you would know what to do if you were away from homewith him."
"I guess I would," agreed Tess severely. "I'd march him right backagain."
The lawyer joined in the laugh. But he was none the less anxious aboutRalph and Rowena Birdsall. There was an undercurrent of feeling in hismind, too, that he had been derelict in his duty toward his wards.
"Three months after their father died, and I had not seen them," hesaid more than once. "I blame myself. As you say, Ruth, I should havewon their confidence in that time."
"Oh, Mr. Howbridge, you are not to blame for that! You are unused tochildren, anyway."
"But it was selfishness on my part--arrant selfishness, Frank'schildren should have been my personal care. But, twins!" and hegroaned.
One might have been amused by his bachelor horror of the thought oftwo children in his quiet home; only the situation was really tooserious to breed laughter. Two twelve-year-old children striking outinto the world for themselves might get into all sorts of mischief andtrouble.
The lawyer had done all he could, however, toward recovering therunaways. The police of two States were on the watch for them, andprivate detectives were likewise hunting for them. The advertisementsMr. Howbridge put in the papers brought no helpful replies. Thereseemed to be many children wandering about the country, singly and inpairs, but none of them answered at all the description of theBirdsall twins.
Meanwhile the Christmas holidays were approaching. Cecile Shepardarrived at the old Corner House a week ahead of the date set for theclosing of school. Luke, however, would join the party at Culberton,at the foot of Long Lake, nearly at the far end of which, and deep inthe woods, was Red Deer Lodge.
Cecile was a very pretty girl, as dark as Agnes was light. She went toschool every day with Agnes and sat beside her as a "visitor" duringthe remainder of the term.
Of course, there was much to do to prepare for this mid-winter ventureinto the woods. And, too, there were certain plans for Christmas to becarried out by the Corner House girls, whether they were to be at homeon Christmas Day or not.
The Stower estate tenants on Meadow Street must not be forgotten.