Chapter XIX: “double Trouble”

“What is the meaning of that horrid condition of your clothing, Lillie?” demanded Mrs. Treble from the open window.

“I fell in the mud, Mamma,” said the unabashed Lillie, and glanced aside at Tess and Dot with a sweetly troubled look, as though she feared they were at fault for her disarray, but did not quite like to say so!

“Come up here at once!” commanded her mother, who turned to Ruth to add: “I am afraid your sisters are very rough and rude in their play. Lillie has not been used to such playmates. Of course, left without a mother as they were, nothing better can be expected of them.”

Meanwhile, Lillie had turned one of her frightful grimaces upon Tess and Dot before starting for the house, and the smaller Kenway girls were left frozen in their tracks by the ferocity of this parting glare.

Lillie appeared at luncheon dressed in some of Tess’ garments and some of Dot’s—none of them fitting her very well. She had a sweetly forgiving air, which bolstered up her mother’s opinion that Tess and Dot were guilty of leading her angelic child astray.

Mrs. Treble had two trunks at the railway station and Uncle Rufus was sent to get an expressman to bring them up to the Corner House. Ruth paid the expressman.

“Talk about the _Old Man of the Sea_ that _Sinbad_ had to carry on his shoulders!” scoffed Agnes, in private, to Ruth. “This Mrs. Trouble is going to be a bigger burden for us than he was. And I believe that girl is going to be ‘Double Trouble.’ She looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Uncle Rufus says she got in that messy condition before lunch, chasing the hens out of their seven senses.”

“There are only five senses, Aggie,” said Ruth, patiently.

“Humph! that’s all right for folks, but hens have two more, I reckon,” chuckled the younger girl.

“Well,” said Ruth, “we must treat Mrs. Treble politely.”

“You act as though you really thought they had some right to come here and live on us,” cried Agnes.

“Perhaps they have a right to some of Uncle Peter’s property. We don’t know.”

“I don’t believe it! She’s the sort of a person—that Mrs. Trouble—who assumes rights wherever she goes.”

Ruth had to confess that Mrs. Treble _was_ trying. She criticised Mrs. McCall’s cooking and the quantity of food on the table at luncheon. Lillie did not like dried apple pies, and said so bluntly, with a hostile glare at the dessert in question.

“Well, little girl,” said Mrs. McCall, “you’ll have to learn to like them. I’ve just bought quite a lot of dried apples and they’ve got to be eaten up.”

Lillie made another awful face—but her mother did not see it. Dot was so awe-stricken by these facial gymnastics of the strange girl that she could scarcely eat, and watched Lillie continually.

“That child ought to be cured of staring so,” remarked Mrs. Treble, frowning at Dot. “Or is her eyesight bad?”

Mrs. Treble was busy, after her trunks came, in unpacking them and arranging her room to suit herself—as though she expected to make a long visit. She had suggested appropriating Uncle Peter’s old bedroom in the front of the house, but that suite of rooms was locked, and Ruth refrained from telling her that _she_ had the keys.

Meantime the bigger Corner House girls tried to help the smaller ones entertain Lillie. Lillie was not like any normal girl whom they had ever known. She wanted to do only things in which she could lead, and if she was denied her way in any particular, she “wouldn’t play” and threatened to go up stairs and tell her mother.

“Why,” said Agnes, first to become exasperated. “You want to be the whole show—including the drum-major at the head of the procession, and the little boys following the clown’s donkey-cart at the end!”

Lillie made a face.

“I think,” said Ruth, quietly, “that if I were you, Lillie, and went to visit, I’d try to make my new friends like me.”

“Huh!” said Lillie. “I’m not visiting—don’t you fool yourselves. My mother and I have come here to stay. We’re not going to be put out like we were at Aunt Adeline’s and Uncle Noah’s. Mother says we’ve got more right to this old house than you Kenways have, and she’s going to get her rights.”

That made Dot cry, and Tess looked dreadfully serious. Agnes was too angry to play with the girl any more, and Ruth, even, gave her up as impossible. Lillie wandered off by herself, for her mother would not be bothered with her just then.

When Mrs. McCall went out into the kitchen that afternoon to start dinner, she missed the bag of dried apples that had been left on the table. There had been nearly four pounds of them.

“What under the canopy’s become of that bag?” demanded the good lady. “This is getting too much, I declare. I _know_ I missed the end of the corned beef yesterday, and half a loaf of bread. I couldn’t be sure about the cookies and doughnuts, and the pie.

“But there that bag of dried apples stood, and there it _isn’t_ now! What do you know about such crazy actions?” she demanded of Ruth, who had come at her call.

“Why! it’s a mystery,” gasped the eldest of the Corner House girls. “I can’t understand it, dear Mrs. McCall. Of course none of us girls have taken the dried apples. And if you have missed other things from your pantry of late, I am just as sure we are not at fault. I have warned the girls about raiding the cookie jars between meals.”

“Well,” said Mrs. McCall, with awe, “what can have taken them? And a bag of dried apples! Goodness! It’s enough to give one the shivers and shakes.”

Ruth was deeply mystified, too. She knew very well that Sandy-face, the cat, could not be accused with justice of this loss. Cats certainly do not eat dried apples—and such a quantity!

It began to rain before evening, and Tess and Dot rushed out to rescue their dolls and other playthings, for there was wind with the rain and they were afraid it would blow in upon their treasures.

Here poor Dot received an awful shock. The Alice-doll was gone!

Dot went in crying to Ruth and would not be comforted. She loved the missing doll as though it was a real, live baby—there could be no doubt of that. And why should a thief take that lovely doll only, and leave all the others?

Mysteries were piling upon mysteries! It was a gloomy night out of doors and a gloomy night inside the old Corner House as well. Mrs. Treble’s air and conversation were sufficient alone to make the Kenway girls down-hearted. Dot cried herself to sleep that night, and not even Agnes could comfort her.

The wind howled around the house, and tried every latch and shutter fastening. Ruth lay abed and wondered if the thing she had seen at the window in the garret on that other windy day was now appearing and vanishing in its spectral way?

And what should she do about Mrs. Treble and her little girl? What would Mr. Howbridge say when he came home again?

Had she any right to spend more of the estate’s money in caring for these two strangers who were (according to the lady herself) without any means at all? Ruth Kenway put in two very bad hours that night, before she finally fell asleep.

The sun shone brightly in the morning, however. How much better the world and all that is in it seems on a clean, sunshiny morning! Even Dot was able to control her tears, as she went out upon the back porch with Tess, before breakfast.

The rain had saturated everything. The brown dirt path had been scoured and then gullied by the hard downpour. Right at the corner of the woodshed, where the water ran off in a cataract, when it _did_ rain, was a funny looking mound.

“Why—why! what’s that?” gasped Dot.

“It looks just as though a poor little baby had been buried there,” whispered Tess. “But of course, it isn’t! Maybe there’s some animal trying to crawl out of the ground.”

“O-o-o!” squealed Dot. “_What_ animal?”

“I don’t know. Not a mole. Moles don’t make such a big hump in the ground.”

As the girls wondered, Uncle Rufus came up from the henhouse. He saw the strange looking mound, too.

“Glo-ree!” he gasped. “How come dat?”

“We don’t know, Uncle Rufus,” said Tess eagerly. “We just found it.”

“Somebody been buryin’ a dawg in we-uns back yard? My soul!”

“Oh, it can’t be!” cried Tess.

“And it isn’t Sandy-face,” Dot declared. “For she’s in the kitchen with all her children.”

“Wait er bit—wait er bit,” said the old man, solemnly. “Unc’ Rufus gwine ter look inter dis yere matter. It sho’ is a misery”—meaning “mystery.”

He brought a shovel and dug down beside the mound. Lifting out a huge shovelful of dirt, there were scattered all about the path a great number of swollen and messy brown things that, for a moment, the girls did not identify. Then Uncle Rufus lifted up his voice in a roar:

“Looker yere! Looker yere! Missie Ruth! see wot you-all mak’ out o’ disher monkey-shines. Here’s dem dried apples, buried in de groun’ and swelled fit ter bust demselves.”

Mrs. McCall as well as the other girls came running to see. It was Agnes that saw something else under the mound. She darted down the steps, put her hand into the hole and drew out the Alice-doll!

The poor thing’s dress was ruined. Its hair was a mass of plastered apple, and its face as well. Such a disreputable looking thing!

While the others cried out in wonder and disclaimed all knowledge of how the marvel could have happened, Agnes spoke two accusing words.

“Double Trouble!” she cried, pointing her finger at Lillie Treble, who had just appeared, angelic face and all, at the back door.

“Did that young’un do that?” demanded Mrs. McCall, vigorously.

“She most certainly did,” declared Agnes. “She tried to get rid of the dried apples, and the doll Dot wouldn’t let her play with, at one and the same time. Isn’t she the mean thing?”

Instantly Lillie’s face was convulsed into a mask of rage and dislike. “I hate all you girls!” she snarled. “I’ll do worse than that to you!”

Mrs. McCall seized her like an eagle pouncing upon a rabbit. Mrs. McCall was very vigorous. She carried Lillie into the kitchen with one hand, and laid her abruptly, face down, over her knee.

What happened during the next few moments was evidently the surprise of Lillie Treble’s young life. Her mother had never corrected her in that good, old-fashioned way.