Chapter XV: The Hallowe'en Party

It had become an established custom now for Tess and Dot to call on Mrs. Eland each Monday afternoon.

"She is such a nice lady. I wish you could meet my Mrs. Eland," Tess said to Mrs. Adams, who lived not far from the old Corner House, on Willow Street, and who was one of the first friends the Kenway sisters had made in Milton.

Tess had been sent to Mrs. Adams on an errand for Mrs. MacCall, and now lingered at the invitation of the lady who loved to have any of the Corner House girls come in. "I wish you could meet my Mrs. Eland," repeated Tess. "I believe it would do her good to have more callers. They'd liven her up--and she's so sad nowadays. I know _you'd_ liven her up, Mrs. Adams."

"Well, child, I hope I wouldn't make her unhappy, I'm sure. I believe in folks being lively if they can. I haven't a particle of use for _grumps_--no, indeed! 'Laugh and grow fat' is a pretty good motto."

"But you're not fat," suggested Tess; "and you are 'most always laughing."

"That's a fact; but it's not worrying that keeps me lean. 'Care killed the cat' my mother used to say; but care never killed her, I'm certain! Some folks is born for leanness, and I'm one of 'em."

"Well, it's real becoming to you," said Tess, kindly, eyeing the rather bony woman with reflective gaze. "And you're not as thin as Briggs, the baker. Mrs. MacCall says he doesn't cast a shadow."

"My soul! No!" exclaimed Mrs. Adams. "And his loaves of bread have got so't they don't cast much of a shadow. I've been complaining to him about his bread. The rise in the price of flour can't excuse altogether the stinginess of his loaves.

"He came here the other day about dark, and I had my porch door locked. I heard him knock and I asks, 'Who's there?'

"'It's the baker, ma'am,' says he. 'Here's your bread.'

"'Well, bring it in,' says I, forgetting the door was locked.

"'I don't see how I can, ma'am,' he says, ''nless I put it through the keyhole, ma'am,' and he begun to giggle. But I put the come-up-ance on him," declared Mrs. Adams, with satisfaction. I says:

"'I don't see what's to stop you, Myron Briggs. The goodness knows your loaves are small enough to go through the keyhole.' And he didn't have nothin' more to say to me."

"Why, I think that's very funny," said Tess, in her sober way. "I'll tell that to Mrs. Eland. Maybe it will amuse her."

But on the next occasion when the two younger Corner House girls went to the hospital, Tess did not try to cheer the matron's spirits by repeating Mrs. Adams's joke on the baker.

Mrs. Eland had been crying. Even usually unobservant Dot noticed it. Her eyes were red and her face pale and drawn. The pretty pink of her cheeks and the ready twinkle in her gray eyes, were missing.

On the table by the matron's side were some faded old letters--quite a bundle of them, in fact--tied with a faded tape. They were docketed carefully on their ends with ink that had yellowed with age.

"These are letters from my uncle--'Lemon' Aden, as our little Dot called him," Mrs. Eland said, with a sad smile. "To my--my poor father. Those letters he put into my hand to take care of when we knew that awful fire that destroyed most of our city, was going to sweep away our home.

"I took the letters and Teeny by the hand----"

"Was Teeny your sister's name, Mrs. Eland?" asked Tess, deeply interested.

"So we called her," the matron said. "She was such a little fairy! As small and delicate as Dot, here. Only she was light--a regular milk-and-rose complexion and with red-gold hair."

"Like Tess' teacher's hair?" asked Dot, curiously. "She's got red hair."

"Oh, goodness!" cried Tess, "she's not pretty. That's sure, if her hair is red!"

"Teeny's hair was lovely," said Mrs. Eland, ruminatively. "I can remember just how she looked. I was but four years older than she; but I was a big girl."

"You mean when that awful fire came?" asked Tess.

"Yes, my dear. Father told me to take care of these letters; they were important. And to keep tight hold of Teeny's hand."

"And didn't you?" asked Dot, to whose thoroughly Sunday-school-trained mind, all punishment directly followed disobedience.

"Oh, yes. I did as he told me. He went back into the house to get mother. She was an invalid, you know."

"Like Mrs. Buckham," suggested Tess.

A spasm of pain crossed the hospital matron's face, and she turned away for a moment. After a little she continued her story.

"And then the fire came so suddenly that it swallowed the house right up!"

"Oh!" gasped Dot.

"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Eland," whispered Tess, patting her arm.

"It was very dreadful," said the gray lady, softly. "Teeny and I were grabbed up by some men in a wagon, and the horses galloped us away to safety. But our poor mother and father were buried in the ruins of the house."

"And you saved the letters?" said Tess.

"But lost Teeny," said Mrs. Eland, sadly. "There was such confusion in the camp of the refugees that many families were separated. By and by I came East--and I brought these letters. But--but they do me no good now. I can prove nothing by them. 'Corroborative evidence,' so the lawyers say, is lacking----

"Well, well, well!" she said, breaking off suddenly. "All that does not interest you little ones."

"So you couldn't give the letters to your Uncle Lem-u-el?" questioned Dot, careful to get the name right this time.

"I never could even see my Uncle Lemuel," said Mrs. Eland, with a sigh. "I believe he knew I was searching for him during the last few years of his life; but he always kept out of my way."

"Oh! wasn't that bad of him!" cried Tess.

"I don't know. His end was most miserable. People said he must have at one time accumulated a great deal of money. He was supposed to be as rich a man as lived in Milton--richer than your Uncle Peter Stower. But he must have squandered it all in some way. He died finally in the Quoharis poorhouse. He did not belong in that town; but he wandered there in a storm and they took him in."

"And didn't they find lots of money in his clothes when he was dead?" queried Dot, who had heard something about misers.

"Mercy, no! He had no money, I am quite sure," said the lady, confidently. "The old townfarm keeper over there tells me that Mr. Lemuel Aden left nothing but some worthless papers and letters and a little memorandum book, or diary. I suppose they are hardly worth my claiming them. At least, I never have done so, and Uncle Lemuel died quite fifteen years ago."

After that Mrs. Eland had no more to say about Lemuel Aden for the time being, but tried to amuse her little visitors, as usual. And Tess never told that joke about Briggs, the baker.

This brings us, naturally, to the eve of All Saints, an occasion much given over to feasting and foolery. "When churchyards yawn--if they ever do yawn," suggested Neale, as he and the two oldest Corner House girls set forth on the crisp evening in question, to walk out to Carrie Poole's place.

"I guess folks yarn about them, more than the graves yawn," said Agnes, roguishly. "Remember the garret ghost, Ruth?"

"You mean what Dot thought was a goat?" laughed the older girl. "I believe you!" she went on, caught in the contagion of slang.

"That was before my time in Milton," said Neale, cheerfully. "But I have heard how you Corner House girls laid the ghost that had haunted the old place so long."

"I believe Uncle Peter must have known what it really was," said Ruth, thoughtfully. "But it delighted him, I suppose, to have people talk about the old house, and be afraid to visit him. He was a recluse."

"And a miser, they say," Neale observed bluntly.

"I don't think we should say that," Ruth replied quickly. "Everybody tried to get money from Uncle Peter. Everybody but our mother and father, I guess. That is why he left most everything to us."

"Well," Agnes said, "they all declared he haunted the place himself after he died."

"That's a wicked story!" Ruth sharply exclaimed. "I don't believe there is such a thing as a ghost, anyway!"

"And you, going to a ghost party right now?" cried Neale, laughing.

"These will be play ghosts," returned Ruth.

"Oh, _will_ they? You just wait and see," chuckled the boy, for he and his close chum, Joe Eldred, were masters of ceremonies, and they had promised to startle Carrie and her guests with "real Hallowe'en ghosts."

Before the Corner House girls and their escort reached the top of the hill on which the Poole house stood they saw the two huge pumpkin lanterns grinning a welcome from the gateposts. There was a string of smaller Hallowe'en lanterns across the porch before the entrance to the house. And every time anybody pushed open the gate, a ghostly apparition with a glowing head rose up most astonishingly behind the porch railing to startle the visitor.

Neale and Joe had been at the house all the afternoon, putting up these and other bits of foolery. Joe's father, who was superintendent of the Milton Electric Light Company, allowed his son considerable freedom in the shops. Joe and Neale had brought out a good-sized battery outfit and the necessary wires and attachments; and when the girls stopped on the mat at the door to remove their overshoes, each got a distinct shock, to the great delight of the earlier guests who stood in the hall to observe the fun.

"A ghost pushed you, Ruth Kenway!" cried Carrie, from the stairs.

"Do you dare look down the well with a candle and see if you will see your future husband's face floating in the water, Aggie?" demanded Lucy Poole, Carrie's cousin.

"Don't want to see my future husband," declared Agnes. "It will be bad enough to see him in reality when the awful time arrives."