Chapter XXII: Callers—and the Ghost

“I do wonder!” said Tess, with a sigh.

“What do you wonder?” asked Ruth, mildly.

“Sounds like a game,” Agnes observed, briskly. The Corner House girls were sitting on the porch with their sewing, and it was a very warm August forenoon. “‘Cumjucum—what do you come by? I come by the letter T’—which stands for ‘Tess’ and ‘Trouble,’ which last is the expression on Tess’ face,” concluded Agnes, with a laugh.

Tess’ train of thought was not to be sidetracked so easily. “I wonder whatever became of Tommy Rooney?” she said.

“You don’t really believe that was Tommy you saw the day it rained so hard?” cried Agnes.

“Yes, I do. And we know that Tommy stole cherries from Mr. Pease, and milk from Mrs. Adams. Didn’t he, Dot? And then, we saw Mr. Pinkney and that bulldog chasing him.”

“He ran into our yard to escape the dog,” said Dot, seriously.

“Well,” said Ruth, “if it was Tommy, I wish he had come to the house, so we could have fed him. Mrs. Rooney must be awfully worried about him. It’s been a month since we heard he had run away.”

“And he’d been gone a week, then,” added Agnes.

“Well,” said Tess, “I guess he hasn’t killed any Indians here in Milton, or we would have heard about it.”

“I guess not,” chuckled Agnes.

“I always look for him, when I’m on the street,” said Dot.

“We’ll look for him to-day,” said Tess, “when we go to see Maria.”

Tess and Dot were going over to Meadow Street that afternoon to call on the Maronis and Mrs. Kranz. The condition of the Maronis had greatly improved during these weeks. Not only Joe and Maria, but the whole family had begun to be proud of living “like Americans.”

Mrs. Kranz, out of the kindness of her heart, had helped them a great deal. Maria helped the good German lady each forenoon, and was learning to be a careful little housekeeper.

“She iss a goot mädchen,” declared the large lady. “Aind’t idt vonderful how soon dese foreigners gets to be respectable, ven dey iss learndt yet?”

Tess and Dot went up stairs to make themselves ready for their visit, before luncheon. Upon their departure, Eva Larry and Myra Stetson appeared at the front gate.

“Oh, do come in, girls!” shouted Agnes, dropping her sewing.

“We will, if you’ll tie up your ghost,” said Eva, laughing.

“Hush!” commanded Ruth. “Don’t say such things—not out loud, please.”

“Well,” Eva said, as she and Myra joined them on the porch, “I understand you have ransacked that old garret. Did you chase out Mr. Ghost?”

“What is that?” demanded Mrs. Treble’s shrill voice in the doorway. “What does that girl mean by ‘ghost’?”

“Oh, Mrs. Treble!” cried the teasing Eva. “Haven’t you heard of the famous Garret Ghost of the old Corner House—and you here so long?”

“Oh, don’t!” begged Ruth, sotto voce.

Mrs. Treble was not to be denied. Something evidently had escaped her curiosity, and she felt cheated of a sensation. “Go on and tell me, girl,” she commanded Eva.

Eva, really nothing loath, related the story of the supposed supernatural occupant of the garret. “And it appears on stormy, windy days. At least, that’s when it’s been seen. It comes to the window up there and bows, and flutters its grave clothes—and—and all that.”

“How ridiculous!” murmured Ruth. But her face was troubled and Mrs. Treble studied her accusingly.

“That’s why you forbade my Lillie going up there,” she said. “A ghost, indeed! I guess you have something hidden up there, my girl, that you don’t want other folks to see. You can’t fool me about ghosts. I don’t believe in them,” concluded the lady from Ypsilanti.

“Now you’ve done it, Eva,” said Agnes, in a low voice, when Mrs. Treble had departed. “There isn’t a place in this house that she hasn’t tried to put her nose in _but_ the garret. Now she’ll go up there.”

“Hush,” begged Ruth, again. “Don’t get her angry, Agnes.”

“Oh! here comes Mr. Howbridge!” exclaimed the other Kenway girl, glad to change the subject.

Ruth jumped up to welcome him, and ushered him into the dining-room, while the other girls remained upon the porch. As she closed the door, she did not notice that Mrs. Treble stood in the shadow under the front stairs.

“I have been to see this Mrs. Bean,” said the lawyer, to Ruth, when they were seated. “She is an old lady whose memory of what happened when she was young seems very clear indeed. She does not know this Mrs. Treble and her child personally. Mrs. Treble has not been to see her, since she came to Milton.”

“No. Mrs. Treble has not been out at all,” admitted Ruth.

“Mrs. Bean,” pursued Mr. Howbridge, “declares that she knew Mr. Treble’s mother very well, as a girl. She says that the said mother of John Augustus Treble went west when she was a young woman—before she married. She left behind a brother—Peter Stower. Mrs. Bean has always lived just outside of Milton and has not, I believe, lived a very active life, or been much in touch with the town’s affairs. To her mind, Milton is still a village.

“She claims,” said Mr. Howbridge, “to have heard frequently of this Peter Stower, and when she heard he had died, she wrote to the daughter-in-law of her former friend. That is her entire connection with the matter. She said one very odd thing. That is, she clearly remembers of having hired Peter Stower once to clean up her yard and make her garden. She says he was in the habit of doing such work at one time, and she talked with him about this sister who had gone west.”

“Oh!” gasped Ruth.

“It does not seem reasonable,” said Mr. Howbridge. “There is a mixup of identities somewhere. I am pretty sure that, as much as Mr. Peter Stower loved money, he did not have to earn any of it in such a humble way. It’s a puzzle. But the solving of the problem would be very easy, if we could find that lost will.”

Ruth told him how she and Agnes had thoroughly examined the garret and the contents of the boxes and furniture stowed away there.

“Well,” sighed the lawyer. “We may have to go into chancery to have the matter settled. That would be a costly procedure, and I dislike to take that way.”

Directly after luncheon Tess and Dot started off for Meadow Street with the convalescent Alice-doll pushed before them in Dot’s doll-carriage. Mrs. Treble, who had begun to eat down stairs again, although Lillie was not allowed out of her room as yet, marched straight up stairs, and, after seeing that Lillie was in order, tiptoed along the hall, and proceeded up the other two flights to the garret door.

When she opened this door and peered into the dimly lit garret, she could not repress a shudder.

“It is a spooky place,” she muttered.

But her curiosity had been aroused, and if Mrs. Treble had one phrenological bump well developed, it was that of curiosity! In she stepped, closed the door behind her, and advanced toward the middle of the huge, littered room.

A lost will! Undoubtedly hidden somewhere in these old chests of drawers—or in that tall old desk yonder. Either the Kenway girls have been very stupid, or Ruth has not told that lawyer the truth! These were Mrs. Treble’s unspoken thoughts.

What was that noise? A rat? Mrs. Treble half turned to flee. She was afraid of rats.

There was another scramble. One of the rows of old coats and the like, hanging from nails in the rafters overhead, moved more than a little. A rat could not have done that.

The ghost? Mrs. Treble was not at all afraid of such silly things as ghosts!

“I see you there!” she cried, and strode straight for the corner.

There was another scramble, one of the Revolutionary uniform coats was pulled off the hook on which it had hung, and seemed, of its own volition, to pitch toward her.

Mrs. Treble screamed, but she advanced. The coat seemed to muffle a small figure which tried to dodge her.

“I have you!” cried Mrs. Treble, and clutched at the coat.

She secured the coat itself, but a small, ragged, red haired, and much frightened boy slid out of its smothering folds and plunged toward the door of the garret. In trying to seize this astonishing apparition, Mrs. Treble missed her footing and came down upon her knees.

The boy, with a stifled shout, reached the door. He wrenched it open and dove down the stairway. His bare feet made little sound upon the bare steps, or upon the carpeted halls below. He seemed to know his way about the house very well indeed.

When Mrs. Treble reached the stairs and came down, heavily, shrieking the alarm, nobody in the house saw the mysterious red haired boy. But Uncle Rufus, called from his work in the garden, was amazed to see a small figure squeezing through a cellar window into the side-yard. In a minute the said figure flew across to the street fence, scrambled over it, and disappeared up Willow Street, running almost as fast as a dog.

“Glo-ree!” declared the black man, breathlessly. “If dat boy keeps on runnin’ like he’s done started, he’ll go clean ’round de worl’ an’ be back fo’ supper!”