Chapter XII: Mrs. Kranz Comes to Call

The girls came down from the garret in a hurry, when they heard this news. Uncle Rufus hobbled on before to the kitchen. There was Sandy-face and Spotty in front of the range. They were both very wet and the old cat was licking the kitten dry.

“Where—where’s the others?” cried Tess. “Did you find Almira?”

“I want my Bungle,” declared Dot. “Didn’t you find my Bungle kitten, Uncle Rufus?”

“Sho, chile! I didn’t say I foun’ dem kittens. I on’y say I knowed where dey went.”

“Where?” was the chorused demand.

Uncle Rufus rolled his eyes and chuckled deeply. “Das ol’ cat play a joke on we-uns,” he declared. “She t’ink she an’ de kittens on’y come yere for a visit. And so she lug ’em all back to Mars’ Stetson’s store—ya-as’m!”

“Carried them back to the store?” cried Ruth. “Oh! she couldn’t.”

“Ya-as’m. One at a time. In her teef,” said Uncle Rufus, nodding confidently. “I jes’ kotch her out on the sidewalk wid dis leetle brack kitten, marchin’ straight fo’ de store. Dat how she come go ’way an’ stay so long. Nex’ time you go to Mars’ Stetson’s, you find dem dere—sho’.”

“But she couldn’t have taken them out of the woodshed,” cried Agnes.

“Ya-as’m, she did. She git out de winder. A cat kin squeeze through a moughty small space—so she kin.”

“Why, you foolish Sandy-face!” exclaimed Dot. “And we tried to make you feel at home—didn’t we, Ruthie?”

“Butter her feet,” said Aunt Sarah, who chanced to be in the kitchen at the moment. “I told you that before,” and she walked out.

“Goodness! we’ll butter all their feet,” cried Agnes, “if that will keep them here. Just as soon as it holds up a little, I’ll run over to Mr. Stetson’s and see if it is so. The poor old thing! to carry those kittens so far. But, me-oh-my! cats haven’t much sense, after all, have they?”

Uncle Rufus was proved right—and that before supper time. The rain held up, and Agnes scurried over to the store, bringing back, huddled in a small covered basket, Popocatepetl, Almira, and Bungle, who all seemed very glad to rejoin Spotty. Sandy-face looked absurdly pleased to see them—just as though she had not carried them back, one by one, to a hiding place behind the flour barrels in Mr. Stetson’s store-room!

Agnes insisted upon buttering the mother-cat’s paws. And to make sure of it, she buttered the paws of the four kittens as well.

“There,” she said, “when Sandy gets through lapping all that butter up, she ought to be _proud_ to stay here, for butter’s forty cents a pound right now!”

“You extravagant thing,” sighed Ruth, shaking her head.

“Yes!” cried Agnes. “And it’s so nice to be extravagant. I declare, Ruth, I feel that I was just born to be a rich girl. It _tickles_ me to be extravagant.”

Since returning from Mr. Howbridge’s office, Ruth had evolved a question that she wished to put to Uncle Rufus. The mystery of the lost will was ever present in the mind of the oldest of the Corner House girls, and this query had to do with that mystery.

“Uncle Rufus,” she asked the old man, after dinner that evening when he was carefully putting away the silver and they were alone together in the dining-room, “Uncle Rufus, do you know where Uncle Peter used to keep his private papers?”

“Sho’, Missie, he kept dem in de safe in his study—ya-as’m. Yo’ know dat safe; don’t yo’?”

“But Mr. Howbridge has the key to that safe, and to the desk, and all. And there are some things—quite important things—that he can’t find. Didn’t Uncle Peter have some other hiding place?”

“Glo-ree, Missie! I ’spect he did,” said Uncle Rufus, rolling his eyes. “But I nebber knowed whar dat is.”

“And you lived right here with him all those years?”

“Why, Missie, I tell yo’ how it was,” said Uncle Rufus, dropping his voice. “Yo’ see, latterly, Mars’ Peter got pecool’ar—ya-as’m. Yo’ might call it pecool’ar. I knowed he was superstitious of folks—ya-as’m. He used ter send me out on errands—plumb foolish errands, Missie; den I reckon he hid t’ings away. But I don’ know whar.”

“You haven’t the least suspicion?” asked Ruth, anxiously.

“Well now!” said Uncle Rufus, rubbing the bald spot on his head as though to stir his wits into action. “Dar was dat time he got mad at me.”

“What about?”

“I warn’t gone so long on an errand, lak’ he ’spected me ter be, I reckon. An’ w’en I come back he warn’t in his room, an’ dere he was a-comin’ down from de garret with a lighted candle.”

“From the garret?”

“Yes, Missie. An’ he sho’ was mad with ol’ Unc’ Rufus.”

“Perhaps he hid papers, then, in one of those chests, or bureaus up there?”

“Cyan’t say, Missie. Mebbe. But yo’ don’ ketch Unc’ Rufus goin’ up dem garret stairs much—no’m!”

“Why not, Uncle Rufus?” asked Ruth, quickly. “Are you afraid of the garret ghost?”

“Glo-ree! who done tell yo’ erbout _dat_?” demanded the colored man, rolling his eyes again. “Don’ talk erbout ghos’es; it’s sho’ baid luck.”

That was all Ruth could get out of the old negro. He had all the fear of his race for supernatural things.

It was the next day that Mrs. Kranz came to call. The Corner House girls had never seen Mrs. Kranz before, but they never could forget her after their first view of her!

She was a huge lady, in a purple dress, and with a sweeping gray plume on her big hat, and lavender gloves. She had the misfortune to possess a hair-mole on one of her cheeks, and Dot could not keep her eyes off of that blemish, although she knew it was impolite to stare.

Mrs. Kranz came to the front door of the old Corner House and gave a resounding summons on the big, brass knocker that decorated the middle panel. Nobody had ventured to approach that door, save Mr. Howbridge, since the Corner House girls had come to Milton.

“Goodness! who can that be?” demanded Agnes, when the reverberations of the knocker echoed through the big hall.

“Company! I know it’s company!” cried Tess, running to peer out of the dining-room window.

Ruth gave a glance about the big room, which they still made their sitting room in general, and approached the hall. Dot whispered:

“Oh-ee! I hope there are some little girls coming to call.”

There was nobody but this huge lady, though half a dozen little girls might have hidden behind her voluminous skirts. Ruth smiled upon the giantess and said, quickly, “Good-morning!”

“Vell!” was the deep-throated reply—almost a grunt. “Vell! iss de family home?”

“Certainly,” said Ruth, in her politest way. “Do come in. We are all at home,” and she ushered the visitor into the dining-room.

The lady stared hard at all the girls, and then around at the old-fashioned furniture; at the plate rail of Delft china which Ruth had taken out of a cupboard, where it had been hidden away for years; at the ancient cellarette; and at the few pieces of heavy plate with which the highboy and the lowboy were both decorated.

“Vell!” exclaimed the visitor, in that exceedingly heavy voice of hers, and for the third time. “I hear dere iss only madchens—girls—in dis house. Iss dot so—heh?”

“We are the four Kenway girls,” said Ruth, pleasantly. “We have no mother or father. But Aunt Sarah——”

“But you own dis house undt all de odder houses vot belonged to dot cr-r-ra-zy old mans—heh?”

Ruth flushed a little. She had begun to feel that such references to Uncle Peter were both unkind and insulting. “Uncle Peter left his property by will to us,” she said.

“Vell, I am Mrs. Kranz,” said the large lady, her little eyes sparkling in rather a strange way, Ruth thought.

“We are very glad to meet you—to have you call, Mrs. Kranz,” Ruth said. “Not many of our neighbors have been in to see us as yet.”

“I aind’t von of de neighbors, Miss Kenway,” said the visitor. “I am choose Mrs. Kranz. I keeps de grocery store on Meadow Street yet.”

“We are just as glad to see you, Mrs. Kranz,” returned Ruth, still smiling, “although you do not live very near us,” for she knew that Meadow Street was at the other side of the town.

“Vell! maype nodt,” said Mrs. Kranz. “Maype you iss nodt so glad to see me yet. I gome to tell you dot I vill nodt stand for dot Joe Maroni no longer. He has got to get dot cellar oudt. His r-r-rotten vegetables smells in mine nostrils. His young vuns iss in my vay—undt dey steal. An’ dey are all very, very dirty.

“I keep a nice shop—eferbody vill tell you so, Miss Kenway. Idt iss a clean shop, and them _Eye_-talians dey iss like pigs yet—de vay dey lif!” cried Mrs. Kranz, excitedly. “I pay mine rent, undt I haf mine rights. I gome to tell you—so-o!”

“Oh, dear me!” breathed Ruth, in surprise. “I—I don’t know what you are talking about, Mrs. Kranz. Have—have _we_ got anything to do with your trouble?”

“Vell!” exclaimed the large lady. “Hafn’t you say you own de house?”

“So Mr. Howbridge says. We own this house——”

“Undt _mine_ house,” declared Mrs. Kranz. “Undt more houses. Your uncle, Herr Stower, own idt. I pay mine rent to him for ten year yet.”

Ruth began to see—and so did Agnes. Of course, the little girls only stared and wondered at the woman’s coarse voice and strange appearance.

“You were one of uncle’s tenants?” said Ruth, quickly.

“For ten year,” repeated Mrs. Kranz.

“And you are having trouble with another tenant?”

“Mit dot Joe Maroni. He has kinder like steps—von, two, tri, fo’, five, six—like _dot_,” and the woman indicated by gestures the height of the children in rotation. “Dey swarm all ofer de blace. I cannot stand dem—undt de dirt—Ach! idt iss terrible.”

“I am sorry, Mrs. Kranz,” Ruth said, quietly. “I understand that this Italian family are likewise tenants of the house?”

“They lif de cellar in—undt sell vegetables, undt coal, undt wood, undt ice—undt dirt! heafens, vot dirt!” and the plume on Mrs. Kranz’s hat trembled throughout its length, while her red face grew redder, and her eyes more sparkling.

“But perhaps, Mrs. Kranz, the poor things know no better,” Ruth suggested. “It must be dreadful to have to live in a cellar. They have nobody to teach them. Don’t the children go to school—when there is school, I mean?”

“Undt I—am _I_ no example to dem yet?” demanded the lady. “Ach! dese foreigners! I nefer could get along yet mit foreigners.”

This tickled Agnes so that she laughed, and then coughed to hide it. Mrs. Kranz was attracted to the twelve year old.

“Dot iss a pretty madchen,” she said, smiling broadly upon Agnes. “She iss your sister, too? Undt de kinder?” her sharp eyes sighting Tess and Dot.

“This is Agnes,” Ruth said, gladly changing the subject for a moment. “And this is Tess, and _this_, Dot—Dorothy, you know. We have had no mother for more than two years.”

“Ach!” said Mrs. Kranz, in a tone denoting sympathy, and she made a funny clucking noise in her throat. “De poor kinder! Undt _you_ haf de hausmutter been—no?”

“Yes,” replied Ruth. “I have _loved_ to take care of the little ones. Agnes is a great help. And now, since we have come here to the old Corner House, we have Mrs. McCall and Uncle Rufus. Besides, there has always been Aunt Sarah.”

Mrs. Kranz’s big face looked rather blank, but in a moment her thought returned to the subject of her visit.

“Vell!” she said. “Undt vot about dot Joe Maroni?”

“Dear Mrs. Kranz,” Ruth said, “I do not know anything about the property Uncle Peter left, as yet. I shall speak to Mr. Howbridge about it. He is our guardian, you understand, and a lawyer. I am sure we can find some way of relieving you.”

Mrs. Kranz grunted: “Vell!”

“I shall come to see you,” promised Ruth. “And I shall see these Italians and try to get them to clean up their cellar. I am sorry you should be so troubled by them.”

Meanwhile she had whispered to Tess and sent her running to Mrs. McCall. Mrs. Kranz gradually lost her offended look. She even took Dot upon her broad lap—though that was a precarious position and Dot was in danger of sliding off all the time.

“Mine oldt man undt I nefer have no kinder,” said Mrs. Kranz, sighing windily. “Ve both vor-r-k—Oh! so hard!—ven young we are. Ven we marry we are alretty oldt yet. Undt now mine oldt man iss dead for sefen year, undt I am all alone.”

Tears came to the good lady’s eyes. Ruth, seeing a propitious moment, said a word for Joe Maroni’s children.

“I should think you would like those Italian children, Mrs. Kranz. Aren’t they pretty? ’Most always I think they are.”

Mrs. Kranz raised her two hands in a helpless gesture. “Ach! heafens! if dey vos clean yet I could lofe dem!” she declared.

Just then Uncle Rufus, in his official coat and spats and white vest, arrived with the tray. It was evident that Mrs. Kranz was immensely impressed by the presence of the old serving man. She accepted a cup of coffee and a piece of cake, and nibbled the one and sipped the other amidst a running fire of comment upon the late Mr. Stower, and his death, and the affairs of the tenements and stores Uncle Peter had owned in her neighborhood.

Ruth learned much about this property that she had never heard before. Uncle Peter had once collected his own rents—indeed, it was during only the last few years of his life that a clerk from Mr. Howbridge’s office had done the collecting.

Uncle Peter had been in touch with his tenants. He had been a hard man to get repairs out of, so Mrs. Kranz said, but he had always treated the good tenants justly. With a record of ten years of steady rent paying behind her, Mrs. Kranz considered that she should be recognized and her complaint attended to. As she could get no satisfaction from the lawyer’s clerk (for Joe Maroni was a prompt paying tenant, too), she had determined to see the owners.

These were the facts leading to the good lady’s visit. Before she went away again Mrs. Kranz was much pacified, and openly an admirer of the Corner House girls.

“Ach! if I had madchens like you of my own yet!” she said, as she descended the porch steps, on her departure.

Agnes gazed after her more seriously than was her wont. She did not even laugh at Mrs. Kranz, as Ruth expected.

“And I believe she’s an old dear at that,” Ruth said, reflectively. “Maybe we can get her to help those little Italian children—if we can once get their parents to clean them up.”

“Well!” breathed Agnes, finally. “I wasn’t thinking particularly about her—or of the Joe Maroni kids. I was just thinking that perhaps it is not always so nice to be rich, after all. Now! we didn’t have to worry about tenement house property, and the quarrels of the tenants, when we lived on Essex Street in Bloomingsburg.”