Chapter XVIII: Ruth Does What She Thinks Is Right

Mrs. Treble, as the tall, dark lady called herself, had such an air of assurance and command, that Ruth was at a loss what course to take with her. Finally the oldest Kenway girl found voice to say:

“Won’t you take one of these comfortable rockers, Mrs. Treble? Perhaps we had better first talk the matter over a little.”

“Well, I’m glad to sit down,” admitted Mrs. Treble. “Don’t muss your dress, Lillie. We’ve been traveling some ways, as I tell you. Clean from Ypsilanti. We came on from Cleveland Junction this morning, and it’s a hot day. _Don’t_ rub your shoes together, Lillie.”

“It _is_ very warm,” said Ruth, handing their visitor a fan and sending Agnes for a glass of cold water from the icebox.

“Then we’ve been to that lawyer’s office,” pursued Mrs. Treble. “What do you call him—Howbridge? Don’t rub your hands on your skirt, Lillie.”

“Yes; Mr. Howbridge,” replied Ruth.

“_Don’t_ take off that hat, Lillie. So we’ve been walking in the sun some. That’s nice, cool water. Have some, Lillie? Don’t drip it on your dress.”

“Wouldn’t your little girl like to go with Tess and Dot to the playhouse in the garden?” Ruth suggested. “Then we can talk.”

“Why—yes,” said Mrs. Treble. “Go with the little girls, Lillie. Don’t you get a speck of dirt on you, Lillie.”

Ruth did not see the awful face the much admonished Lillie made, as she left her mother’s side. It amazed Tess and Dot so that they could not speak. Her tongue went into her cheek, and she drew down the corners of her mouth and rolled her eyes, leering so terribly, that for an instant she looked like nothing human. Then she resumed the placidity of her angelic expression, and minced along after the younger Kenway girls, and out of sight around a corner of the house.

Meanwhile, Agnes had drawn Ruth aside, and whispered: “What are you going to do? She’s raving crazy, isn’t she? Had I better run for a doctor—or the police?”

“Sh!” admonished Ruth. “She is by no means crazy. I don’t know _what_ to do!”

“But she says she has a right to live here, too,” gasped Agnes.

“Perhaps she has.”

“Mr. Howbridge said we were Uncle Peter’s only heirs,” said Agnes, doggedly.

“May—maybe he didn’t know about this John Augustus Treble. We must find out about it,” said Ruth, much worried. “Of course, we wouldn’t want to keep anybody out of the property, if they had a better right to it.”

“_What?_” shrilled Agnes. “Give it up? Not—on—your—life!”

In the meantime, Tess and Dot scarcely knew how to talk to Lillie Treble. She was such a strange girl! They had never seen anybody at all like her before.

Lillie walked around the house, out of her mother’s sight, just as mincingly as a peacock struts. Her look of angelic sweetness would have misled anybody. She just looked as though she had never done a single wrong thing in all her sweet young life!

But Tess and Dot quickly found that Lillie Treble was not at all the perfect creature she appeared to the casual observer. Her angelic sweetness was all a sham. Away from her mother’s sharp eye, Lillie displayed very quickly her true colors.

“Those all your dolls?” she demanded, when she was shown the collection of Tess and Dot in the garden house.

“Yes,” said Tess.

“Well, my mother says we’re going to stay here, and if you want me to play with you,” said this infantile socialist, “we might as well divide them up right now.”

“Oh!” gasped Tess.

“I’ll take a third of them. They can be easily divided. I choose _this_ one to begin with,” said Lillie, diving for the Alice-doll.

With a shriek of alarm, Dot rescued this—her choicest possession—and stood on the defensive, the Alice-doll clasped close to her breast.

“No! you can’t have that,” said Tess, decidedly.

“Why not?” demanded Lillie.

“Why—it’s the doll Dot loves the best.”

“Well,” said Lillie, calmly, “I suppose if I chose one of _yours_, you’d holler, too. I never did see such selfish girls. Huh! if I can’t have the dolls I want, I won’t choose any. I don’t want to play with the old things, anyway!” and she made a most dreadful face at the Kenway sisters.

“Oh-oh!” whispered Dot. “I don’t like her at all.”

“Well, I suppose we must amuse her,” said Tess, strong for duty.

“But she says she is going to stay here all the time,” pursued the troubled Dot, as Lillie wandered off toward the foot of the garden.

“I don’t believe that can be so,” said Tess, faintly. “But it’s our duty to entertain her, while she _is_ here.”

“I don’t see why we should. She’s not a nice girl at all,” Dot objected.

“Dot! you know very well Ruth wants us to look out for her,” Tess said, with emphasis. “We can’t get out of it.”

So the younger girl, over-ruled by Tess, followed on. At the foot of the garden, Lillie caught sight of Ruth’s flock of hens. Uncle Rufus had repaired the henhouse and run, and Ruth had bought in the market a dozen hens and a rooster of the white Plymouth Rock breed. Mr. Rooster strutted around the enclosure very proudly with his family. They were all very tame, for the children made pets of them.

“Don’t you ever let them out?” asked Lillie, peering through the wire-screen.

“No. Not now, Ruth says. They would get into the garden,” Tess replied.

“Huh! you could shoo them out again. I had a pet hen at Ypsilanti. I’d rather have hens than dolls, anyway. The hens are alive,” and she tried the gate entering upon the hen-run.

“Oh!” exclaimed Tess. “You mustn’t let them out.”

“Who’s letting them out?” demanded Lillie.

“Well, then, you mustn’t go into the yard.”

“Why not?” repeated the visitor.

“Ruth won’t like it.”

“Well, I guess my mother’s got more to say about this place than your sister has. She says she’s going to show a parcel of girls how to run this house, and run it right. That’s what she told Aunt Adeline and Uncle Noah, when we went to live with them in Ypsilanti.”

Thus speaking, Lillie opened the gate and walked into the poultry yard. At once there was great excitement in the flock. Lillie plunged at the nearest hen and missed her. The rooster uttered a startled and admonitory “Cut! cut! ca-dar-cut!” and led the procession of frightened hens about the yard.

“Aren’t hens foolish?” demanded Lillie, calmly. “I am not going to hurt her.”

She made another dive for the hen. The rooster uttered another shriek of warning and went through the watering-pan, flapping his wings like mad. The water was spilled, and the next attempt Lillie made to seize a hen, she was precipitated into the puddle!

Both hands, one knee, and the front of her frock were immediately streaked with mud. Lillie shrieked her anger, and plunged after the frightened hens again. She was a determined girl. Tess and Dot added their screams to the general hullabaloo.

Round and round went the hens, led by the gallant rooster. Finally the inevitable happened. Lillie got both hands upon one of the white hens.

“Now I got you—silly!” shrieked Lillie.

But she spoke too quickly and too confidently. It was only the tail-feathers Lillie grabbed. With a wild squawk, the hen flew straight away, leaving the bulk of her plumage in the naughty girl’s hands!

The girls outside the fence continued to scream, and so did the flock of hens. The rooster, who was a heavy bird, came around the yard again, on another lap, and wildly leaped upon Lillie’s back.

He scrambled over her, his great spurs and claws tearing her frock, and his wings beating her breathlessly to the ground. Just then Uncle Rufus came hobbling along.

“Glo-ree! who dat chile in dat hen-cage?” he demanded. “Dat ol’ rooster’ll put her eyes out for her—dat he will!”

He opened the gate, went in, and grabbed up Lillie Treble from the ground. When he set her on her feet outside the fence, she was a sight to behold!

“Glo-ree!” gasped Uncle Rufus. “What you doin’ in dar, chile?”

“Mind your own business!” exclaimed Lillie. “You’re only a black man. I don’t have to mind _you_, I hope.”

She was covered with mud and dust, and her frock was in great disarray, but she was self-contained—and as saucy as ever. Tess and Dot were horrified by her language.

“I dunno who yo’ is, gal!” exclaimed Uncle Rufus. “But yo’ let Missie Ruth’s chickens erlone, or I’ll see ter yuh, lak’ yer was one o’ my own gran’chillen.”

Lillie was sullen—and just a little frightened of Uncle Rufus. The disaster made but slight impression upon her mind.

“What—what will your mother say?” gasped Tess, when the three girls were alone again.

“She won’t say anything—till she sees me,” sniffed Lillie. And to put that evil hour off, she began to inquire as to further possibilities for action about the old Corner House.

“What do you girls do?” she asked.

“Why,” said Tess, “we play house; and play go visiting; and—and roll hoop; and sometimes skip rope——”

“Huh! that’s dreadful tame. Don’t you ever _do_ anything——Oh! there’s my mother!” A window had opened in one of the wings of the big house, on the second floor. It was a window of a room that the Kenway family had not before used. Tess and Dot saw Ruth as well as Mrs. Treble at the window.

Ruth was doing what she thought was right. Mrs. Treble had confessed to the oldest of the Corner House girls that she had arrived at Milton with scarcely any money. She could not pay her board even at the very cheapest hotel. Mr. Howbridge was away, Ruth knew, and nothing could be done to straighten out this tangle in affairs until the lawyer came back.

So she had offered Mrs. Treble shelter for the present. Moreover, the lady, with a confidence equaled only by Aunt Sarah’s, demanded in quite a high and mighty way to be housed and fed. Yet she had calmed down, and actually thanked Ruth for her hospitality, when she found that the girl was not to be intimidated, but was acting the part of a Good Samaritan from a sense of duty.

Agnes was too angry for words. She could not understand why Ruth should cater to this “Mrs. Trouble,” as she insisted, in secret, upon calling the woman from Ypsilanti.

Ruth was showing the visitor a nice room on the same floor with those chambers occupied by the girls themselves, and Mrs. Treble was approving, when she chanced to look out of the window and behold her angelic Lillie in the condition related above.