Chapter XXI: The Corner House Girls Win Public Approval

Was it Mr. Howbridge’s wish, or her own desire, that set Ruth the very next day at the task of searching the garret thoroughly? She allowed only Agnes to go up with her; Tess and Dot were out of the house, Mrs. McCall was busy, and the lady from Ypsilanti was engaged in nursing her little daughter.

These days they were much relieved of Mrs. Treble’s interference in their affairs. Lillie claimed all her mother’s attention, and although the child was not very ill, she managed to take up almost every moment of her mother’s time.

Agnes was frankly scary about the huge lumber-room at the top of the house. Despite Ruth’s declaration that they would use the garret to play in on stormy days, they had not often gone there for that—nor for any other—purpose.

The girls had removed all the ancient garments and aired them. Many were moth-eaten and past redemption; those went to the ragman. Others were given to Petunia Blossom to be fixed over for her growing family. Some of the remainder were hung up again, shrouding one dark corner of the garret in which Ruth knew there was neither box, nor chest, nor trunk.

It was the chests of drawers, and boxes, the two girls gave their attention to on the occasion of this search. Before, Ruth had opened several of the old-fashioned receptacles and rummaged in the contents. Now she and Agnes went at the task methodically.

Everything was taken out of the chests, and boxes, and drawers, and shaken out before being put back again. The girls came upon many unexpected treasures, and Agnes soon forgot her fear of the supposed ghostly occupant of the garret.

Ruth, however, would not allow her to stop and try on wonderful ancient garments, or read yellowed letters, bound with faded tape, or examine the old-fashioned gift-books, between the leaves of which were pressed flowers and herbs, all of which, Agnes was sure, were the souvenirs of sentiment.

Oh, yes! there were papers—reams and reams of them! But they were either letters of no moment to the quest in hand, or ancient documents of no possible use save for their historical value. They came upon some papers belonging to the original Peter Stower—the strong, hard-working man who had built this great house in his old age and had founded the family.

He had been an orphan and had been sheltered in the Milton poorhouse. Here was his “indenture paper,” which bound him to a blacksmith of the town when he was twelve years old. As Ruth and Agnes read the faded lines and old-fashioned printing, they realized that the difference between an apprentice in those days in the north, and a black slave in the south, was all in favor of the last named.

But this “bound boy” had worked, studied nights so as to get some education, had married his master’s daughter, and come in time to be heir to his business. He had taken contracts for furnishing the ironwork for government warships, and so, little by little, had risen to be a prosperous, then a very wealthy man.

The old Corner House was the fruit of his labor and his desire to establish in the town of his miserable beginnings, a monument to his own pluck and endeavor. Where he may have been scorned for the “bound boy” that he was, he took pride in leaving behind him when he died the memory only of a strong, rich, proud man.

The girls found nothing which the last Peter Stower could have considered—whether he were miser, or not—of sufficient value to hide away. Certainly no recently dated papers came to light, and no will at all, or anything that looked like such a document.

They ransacked every drawer, taking them out of the worm-eaten, shaky pieces of furniture, and rummaging behind them for secret panels and the like. Actually, the only thing the girls found that mystified them at all in their search, was half a doughnut lying on a window sill!

“Whoever left that doughnut there?” demanded Agnes. “I don’t believe the girls have been up here alone. Could that Lillie have been here?”

“Perhaps,” sighed Ruth. “She was going everywhere about the house, before she was taken down sick.”

“It’s a blessing she’s sick—that’s what _I_ say,” was Agnes’ rather heartless reply. “But—a doughnut! and all hard and dry.”

“Maybe it was Dot’s goat?” chuckled Ruth, nervously.

“Don’t!” gasped Agnes. “My nerves are all on the jump as it is. Is there any single place in this whole garret that we haven’t looked?”

Ruth chanced to be staring at the doughnut on the window sill, and did not at first answer. That was the window at the right of the chimney where she had seen the ghostly apparition fluttering in the storm. The space about the window remained cleared, as it was before.

“Wake up!” commanded Agnes. “Where shall we look now?”

Ruth turned with a sigh and went toward the high and ornate black-walnut “secretary” that stood almost in the middle of the huge room.

“Goodness to gracious!” ejaculated the younger girl. “We’ve tried that old thing again and again. I’ve almost knocked the backboards off, pounding to see if there were secret places in it. It’s as empty as it is ugly.”

“I suppose so,” sighed Ruth. “It’s strange, though, that Uncle Peter did not keep papers in it, for that is what it was intended for. Almost every drawer and cupboard in it locks with a different key.”

She had been given a huge bunch of keys by Mr. Howbridge when they first came to the Corner House; and she had used these keys freely in searching the garret furniture.

As they went hopelessly down to the third floor, at last, Ruth noticed that one of the small chambers on this floor, none of which the family had used since coming to Milton, had been opened. The door now stood ajar.

“I suppose that snoopy Mrs. Treble has been up here,” said Agnes, sharply. “I thought all these doors were locked, Ruth?”

“Not all of them had keys. But they were all shut tightly,” and she went to this particular room and peered in.

The bed was a walnut four-poster—one of the old-fashioned kind that was “roped”—and the feather-bed lay upon it, covered with an old-fashioned quilt.

“Why! it looks just as though somebody had been sleeping here,” gasped Ruth, after a moment.

“What?” cried Agnes. “Impossible!”

“Doesn’t that look like the imprint of a body on the bed? Not a big person. Somebody as big as Tess, perhaps?”

“It wasn’t Tess, I am quite sure,” declared Agnes.

“Could it have been Sandy-face?”

“Of course not! No cat would make such a big hollow, lying down in a bed. I know! it was that Lillie Treble—‘Double Trouble’! Of course,” concluded Agnes, with assurance.

So Ruth came out and closed the door carefully. Had it not been for her sister’s assurance at just this moment, Ruth might have made a surprising discovery, there and then!

She had to report to Mr. Howbridge, by note, that a thorough search of the garret had revealed nothing which Uncle Peter Stower could have hidden away.

While Lillie was under the doctor’s care, Mrs. Treble was out of the way. Affairs at the old Corner House went on in a more tranquil way. The Creamer girls who had first been ill, were allowed out of doors, and became very friendly with Tess and Dot—over the fence. The quarantine bars were not, as yet, altogether down.

Maria Maroni came to see them frequently, and Alfredia Blossom brought her shining black face to the old Corner House regularly, on Mondays and Thursdays. Usually she could not stop to play on Monday, when she and Jackson came for the soiled clothes, but if Petunia got the ironing done early enough on Thursday, Alfredia visited for a while.

“I don’t believe Alfredia could be any nicer, if she was bleached white,” Dot said, seriously, on one occasion. “But I know she’d like to be like us—and other folks, Tess.”

“I expect she would,” agreed Tess. “But we must treat her just as though her skin was like ours. Ruth says she is sure Alfredia’s heart is white.”

“Oh!” gasped Dot. “And they showed us in school before we left Bloomingsburg, pictures of folks’ hearts, and lungs, and livers—don’t you remember? And the heart was painted _red_.”

“I don’t expect they were photographs,” said Tess, decidedly. “And there aren’t any pictures exact but photographs—and movies.”

The Pease girls came frequently to play with Tess and Dot, and the younger Kenways went to _their_ house. None of the Corner House girls could go out on the street now without being spoken to by the Milton people. Many of these friendly advances were made by comparative strangers to the four sisters.

The tangle of Uncle Peter Stower’s affairs had gotten even into the local newspapers, and one newspaper reporter came to Ruth for what he called “an interview.” Ruth sent him to Mr. Howbridge and never heard anything more of it.

The friends Agnes had made among the girls of her own, and Ruth’s, age began to come to call more frequently. Eva Larry admitted she felt shivery, whenever she approached the old house, and she could not be hired to come on a stormy day. Just the same, she was so sorry for the girls, and liked Agnes so much, that she just _had_ to run in and cheer them up a bit.

Older people came, too. Ruth’s head might have been turned, had she been a less sensible girl. The manner in which she handled the situation which had risen out of Mrs. Treble’s coming east to demand a share of the property left by Peter Stower, seemed to have become public knowledge, and the public of Milton approved.

Nobody called on Mrs. Treble. Perhaps that was because she was quarantined upstairs, with Lillie convalescent from her attack of the measles. However, the Corner House girls, as they were now generally called, seemed to be making friends rapidly.

Public approval had set its seal upon their course.