Chapter XVI: More Mysteries

Some of Miss Ann Titus’ gossip was not unkindly, and some of it amused Ruth and Agnes very much.

Miss Titus had known Aunt Sarah when they were both young girls and what she told the Corner House girls about Miss Maltby, who had taken the name of “Stower” of her own accord, satisfied much of the curiosity the older Kenway girls felt regarding Aunt Sarah and her affairs.

“I remember when old Mr. Stower married Mrs. Maltby,” said the busy Miss Titus, nodding vigorously as she snipped and talked at the same time. “The goodness knows, Sally Maltby an’ her mother was as poor as Job’s turkey—an’ they say _he_ was sartain-sure a lean fowl. It was as great a change in their sarcumstances when they came to the ol’ Corner House to live, as though they’d been translated straight to the pearly gates—meanin’ no irreverence.

“They was sartain-sure dirt poor. I dunno how Mis’ Maltby had the heart to stand up an’ face the minister long enough for him to say the words over ’em, her black bombazeen was that shabby! They had me here with Ma Britton (I was ’prenticed to Ma Britton in them days) for three solid months, a-makin’ both Mrs. Maltby-that-was, an’ Sally, fit to be seen.

“An’ how Sally _did_ turn her nose up, to be sure—to-be-sure! I reckon she must ha’ soon got a crick in her neck, holdin’ it so stiff. An’ to see her an’ hear her, you’d ha’ thought she owned the ol’ Corner House.

“They had sarvints here in them days, an’ ol’ Mr. Stower—he was still in practice at the law—had lashin’s of company. I won’t say but that Mrs. Maltby-that-was, made him a good wife, and sat at the foot of his table, and poured tea out o’ that big solid silver urn like she’d been to the manner born. But Sally was as sassy and perky as a nuthatch in flytime.

“We other gals couldn’t git along with her no-how. Me bein’ here so much right at the first of it,” pursued Miss Titus, “sort o’ made me an’ Sally intimate, as ye might say, whether we’d ever been so before, or not. After Ma Britton got through her big job here Sally would sometimes have to come around to our house—Ma Britton left me that little cottage I live in—I ain’t ashamed to tell it—I hadn’t any folks, an’ never had, I reckon. Like _Topsy_, I ‘jes’ growed.’ Well! Sally would come around to see me, and she’d invite me to the old Corner House here.

“She never invited me here when there was any doin’s—no, Ma’am!” exclaimed Miss Titus. “I wonder if she remembers them times now? She sits so grim an’ lets me run on ha’f a day at a time, till I fairly foam at the mouth ’ith talkin’ so much, an’ then mebbe all she’ll say is: ‘Want your tea now, Ann?’ ’Nuff ter give one the fibbertygibbets!

“In them days I speak of, she could talk a blue streak—sartain-sure! And she’d tell me how many folks ‘we had to dinner’ last night; or how ‘Judge Perriton and Judge Mercer was both in for whist with us last evening.’ Well! she strutted, and tossed her head, an’ bridled, till one time there was an awful quarrel ’twixt her an’ Peter Stower.

“I was here. I heard part of it. Peter Stower was a good bit older than Sally Maltby as you gals may have heard. He objected to his father’s marriage—not because Mrs. Maltby was who she was, but he objected to anybody’s coming into the family. Peter was a born miser—yes he was. He didn’t want to divide his father’s property after the old man’s death, with anybody.

“I will say for Peter,” added Miss Titus, “going off on a tangent” as she would have said herself, had she been critically listening to any other narrator. “I will say for Peter, that after your mother was born, gals, he really seemed to warm up. I have seen him carrying your mother, when she was a little tot, all about these big halls and hummin’ to her like a bumblebee.

“But even at that, he influenced his father so that only a small legacy came to your mother when the old man died. Peter got most of the property into his hands before _that_ happened, anyway. And quite right, too, I s’pose, for by that time he had increased the estate a whole lot by his own industry and foresight.

“Well, now! I have got to runnin’ away with my story, ain’t I? It was about Sally and that day she and Peter had their big quarrel. Whenever Peter heard, or saw Sally giving herself airs, he’d put in an oar and take her down a peg, now I tell you!” said Miss Titus, mixing her metaphors most woefully.

“I’d been to Sally’s room—it was a small one tucked away back here in this ell, and _that_ hurt her like pizen! We was goin’ down stairs to the front hall. Sally stops on the landing and points to the ceiling overhead, what used to be painted all over with flowers and fat cupids, and sech—done by a famous artist they used to say when the house was built years before, but gettin’ faded and chipped then.

“So Sally points to the ceilin’ an’ says she:

“‘I hope some day,’ says she, ‘that we will have that painting restored. _I_ mean to, I am sure, when I am in a better position to have my views carried out here.’

“Of course, she didn’t mean nothin’—just showin’ off in front of me,” said Miss Titus, shaking her head and biting at a thread in her queer fashion. “But right behind us on the stairs was Peter. We didn’t know he was there.

“‘Wal,’ says he, drawlin’ in that nasty, sarcastic way he had, ‘if you wait till your views air carried out in _this_ house, Sal Maltby, it’ll be never—you hear me! I guarantee,’ sez Peter, ‘that they’ll carry _you_ out, feet fust, before they carry out your idees.’

“My! she turns on him like a tiger-cat. Yes, Ma’am! Sartain-sure I thought she was going to fly at him, tooth an’ toe-nail! But Peter had a temper like ice-water, an’ ice-water—nuff of it, anyway—will put out fire ev’ry time.

“He just listened to her rave, he standin’ there so cold an’ sarcastic. She told him how she was going to live longer than he did, anyway, and that in the end she’d have her way in the old Corner House in spite of him!

“When she had sort of run-down like, Peter says to her: ‘Brag’s a good dog, but Holdfast’s a better,’ sez he. ‘It ain’t people that talks gits what they want in this world. If I was you, Sal Maltby, I’d learn to hold my teeth on my tongue. It’ll git you farther.’

“And I b’lieve,” concluded Miss Titus, “that just then was the time when Sally Maltby begun to get tongue-tied. For you might’s well call her that. I know I never heard her ‘blow,’ myself, after that quarrel; and gradually she got to be just the funny, silent, grim sort o’ person she is. Fact is—an’ I admit it—Sally gives _me_ the shivers oncet in a while.”

Tess and Dorothy did not always play in the garden, not even when the weather was fair. There must be variety to make even play appealing, although the dolls were all “at home” in the out-of-door playhouse. Dot and Tess must go visiting with their children once in a while.

They had a big room for their sleeping chamber and sometimes they came, with a selection of the dolls, and “visited” in the house. Being allowed to play in the bedroom, as long as they “tidied up” after the play was over, Tess and Dot did so.

Ruth had strictly forbidden them going to the garret to play, unless she went along. The excuse Ruth gave for this order was, that in the garret the smaller girls were too far away from the rest of the family.

Tess and Dot, the morning after Mrs. Adams had made them the tea party, had a party for their dolls in the big bedroom. Tess set her folding table with the best of the dolls’ china. There were peanut butter sandwiches, and a sliced pickle, and a few creamed walnuts that Ruth had bought at the Unique Candy Store and divided between the younger girls.

They sat the dolls about the table and went down to the kitchen for milk and hot water for the “cambric tea,” as Mrs. Adams called the beverage. When they came back Tess, who entered first, almost dropped the pitcher of hot water.

“My goodness me!” she ejaculated.

“What’s the matter, Tessie?” asked Dot, toiling on behind with milk and sugar.

“Some—somebody’s taken our dolls’ luncheon. Oh, dear me!”

“It can’t be!” cried Dot, springing forward and spilling the milk. “Why! those walnut-creams! Oh, dear!”

“They haven’t left a crumb,” wailed Tess. “Isn’t that just mean?”

“Who’d ever do such a thing to us?” said Dot, her lip trembling. “It _is_ mean.”

“Why! it must be somebody in the house,” declared Tess, her wits beginning to work.

“Of course it wasn’t Mrs. McCall. She’s in the kitchen,” Dot declared.

“Or Uncle Rufus. He’s in the garden.”

“And Ruth wouldn’t do such a thing,” added Dot.

“It couldn’t be Aunt Sarah,” said Tess, eliminating another of the family group.

“And I don’t think Miss Titus would do such a thing,” hesitated Dot.

“Well!” said Tess.

“Well!” echoed Dot.

Both had come to the same and inevitable conclusion. There was but one person left in the house to accuse.

“Aggie’s been playing a joke on us,” both girls stated, with conviction.

But Agnes had played no joke. She had been out to the store for Mrs. McCall at the time the children were in the kitchen. Besides, Agnes “would not fib about it,” as Tess declared.

The disappearance of the dolls’ feast joined hands, it seemed to Dot, with that mysterious _something_ that she knew she had heard Ruth and Agnes talking about at night, and which the younger girl had thought referred to a goat in the garret.

“It’s just the mysteriousest thing,” she began, speaking to Tess, when the latter suddenly exclaimed:

“Sandy-face!”

The mother cat was just coming out of the bigger girls’ bedroom. She sat down at the head of the main flight of stairs and calmly washed her face. Sandy-face had the run of the house and her presence was driving out the mice, who had previously gnawed at their pleasure behind the wainscoting.

“You—you don’t suppose Sandy-face did that?” gasped Dot.

“Who else?” asked Tess.

“All of those walnuts?” said Dot, in horror. “And those sandwiches? And not leave a crumb on the plates?”

“She looks just as though she had,” determined Tess.

“You—you are an awful bad cat, Sandy-face,” said Dot, almost in tears. “And I just hope those walnuts will disagree with your stomach—so now!”

Tess was quite angry with the cat herself. She stamped her foot and cried “Shoo!” Sandy-face leaped away, surprised by such attentions, and scrambled up stairs in a hurry. Almost at once the two girls heard her utter a surprised yowl, and down she came from the garret, her tail as large as three tails, her eyes like saucers, and every indication of panic in her movements.

She shot away for the back stairs, and so down to the hall and out of doors.

“I don’t care,” exclaimed Dot. “I know those walnuts are disagreeing with her right now, and I’m glad. My! but she was punished soon for her greediness, wasn’t she, Tess?”

There was something going on at the Creamer cottage, next door to the old Corner House. Tess and Dot became aware of this fact at about this time, so did not bother their heads much about Sandy’s supposed gluttony. Some of the windows on the second floor of the cottage were darkened, and every morning a closed carriage stopped before the house and a man went in with a black bag in his hand.

Tess and Dot were soon wondering what could be happening to the little Creamer girls. The only one they saw was the curly haired one, who had spoken so unpleasantly to them on a particular occasion. They saw her wandering about the yard, and knew that she did not play, and was often crying by herself behind the clumps of bushes.

So Tess, whose heart was opened immediately to any suffering thing, ventured near the picket fence again, and at last spoke to the Creamer girl.

“What’s the matter, please?” Tess asked. “Did you lose anything? Can we help you find it?”

The curly headed girl looked at her in surprise. Her pretty face was all streaked with tears.

“You—you want to keep away from me!” she blurted out.

“Oh, dear, me!” said Tess, clinging to Dot’s hand. “I didn’t mean to offend you again.”

“Well, you’ll catch it, maybe,” sniffled the Creamer girl, whose name was Mabel.

“Catch what?” asked Tess.

“Something dreadful. All my sisters have it.”

“Goodness!” breathed Dot.

“What is it?” asked Tess, bravely standing her ground.

“It’s _quarantine_,” declared Mabel Creamer, solemnly. “And I have to sleep in the library, and I can’t go up stairs. Neither does pop. And mamma never comes down stairs at all. And I have to play alone here in the yard,” sighed Mabel. “It’s just awful!”

“I should think it was,” gasped Tess. “Then, that must be a doctor that comes to your house every day?”

“Yes. And he is real mean. He won’t let me see mamma—only she comes to the top of the stairs and I have to stay at the bottom. Quarantine’s a _nawful_ thing to have in the house.

“So you’d better stand farther off from that fence. I was real mean to you girls once, and I’m sorry enough now. But I hadn’t ought to play with you, for maybe _I’ll_ have the quarantine, too, and I’ll give it to you if you come too close.”

“But we can play games together without coming too near,” said Tess, her kind heart desiring to help their neighbor. “We’ll play keep house—and there’ll be a river between us—and we can talk over a telephone—and all that.” And soon the three little girls were playing a satisfying game together and Mabel’s tears were dried and her heart comforted for the time being.

That night at dinner, however, Dot waxed curious. “Is quarantine a very bad disease? Do folks die of it?” she asked.

So the story came out, and the older girls laughed at the young one’s mistake. It was learned that all the Creamer children save Mabel had the measles.

Ruth, however, was more puzzled about the novelty of a cat eating peanut butter and walnut creams than Dot had been about that wonderful disease, “quarantine.”