Chapter XII: Miss Pepperill's Disaster

The baby came first, after all, for Joe Eldred almost immediately exclaimed:

"Say, Aggie! isn't that Billy Quirk's wagon right ahead?"

"Oh, yes! Oh, yes, Joe!" Agnes agreed. "He hasn't got so far, after all."

"Do you believe he's got the kid?" demanded Joe, in doubt. "Look here! The back of the wagon's full of clothes baskets. Why! if the kid's there, he's buried!"

"Oh, don't!" cried Agnes. "Don't say such a thing, Joe!"

The boy had slowed down while speaking, and instantly Agnes was out of the car and had run ahead.

"Mr. Quirk! Oh, Mr. Quirk! Billy!" she shouted. "You've got a baby there!"

"Heh?" gasped the laundryman, who had been about to clamber into his seat again. "Got a baby!" he repeated, in a dazed sort of way, and actually turning pale. "_Not another?_"

"In your wagon, I mean. It's Mrs. Creamer's Bubby. Oh, dear, Mr. Quirk! do look quick and see if you've smothered him."

"What do you mean, girl? That I've smothered a baby!" groaned Mr. Quirk, who was a little, nervous man who could not stand much excitement.

"I don't know. Do look," begged Agnes. "Bubby was in the basket--not the soiled clothes--"

"Which basket?" cried the laundryman.

"The one you took away from the Creamers' porch, Billy," put in Joe Eldred, who had left the car, too. "Come on and look. Maybe the kid's all right."

"Oh, dear me! I hope so!" groaned Agnes. "What would Mrs. Creamer do--"

Joe helped the shaking laundryman to lift down the baskets of wash that were already stacked three tiers deep in the wagon.

"That's it! That's the one!" cried Agnes eagerly, recognizing Mrs. Creamer's basket.

And there was the baby, under a veil, sleeping as peacefully as could be. Fortunately the basket placed on top of the baby's temporary cradle had been the larger of the two, and had completely and safely covered the lower basket.

They got the baby, basket and all, into the back of the Eldred car without awakening Bubby, and Agnes sat beside him.

"I'll drive back as if I had a load of eggs," Joe declared, grinning. "If that kid wakes up and bawls, Aggie, what'll you do?"

"Humph!" said Agnes, with scorn, "isn't that just like a boy? Don't you suppose I know how to take care of a baby?"

Bubby did not awake, however, and their return to the Creamer cottage was like a triumphal entry. The neighborhood had turned out in a body. Mrs. Creamer ran a block up the street to meet the automobile, and she could not thank the Corner House girl and Joe Eldred enough.

But it was told of Mabel Creamer that she stood on the porch and scowled when they brought Bubby back in the basket. She actually did say to Tess and Dot, over the side fence:

"An' they blame me for it. Said I ought to have been there to watch what Billy Quirk was goin' to do. If it had been a really, truly Gypsy that had kidnapped Bubby, I s'pose they'd shut me up in jail!"

In a few days the little girls were back in school again, and Mabel was not obliged to stay in to mind the baby--hated task!--for she was in Dot's grade.

Tess' class gathered, too, to welcome Miss Pepperill's return to her wonted place--all but Sammy Pinkney. Sammy was a very sick boy and they brought straw and put it knee deep in Willow Street, in front of the Pinkney house, so as to deaden the sound of wagon wheels. Tess actually went on tiptoe when she passed the house where her schoolmate lay so ill.

Billy Bumps, the goat, that had once been Sammy's, looked longingly through the Corner House fence at the straw thus laid down, as though it was more tempting fodder than that with which Uncle Rufus supplied him.

"I believe Billy Bumps must know Sammy is awful sick," Tess said, in a hushed voice to Dot. "See how solemn he looks."

"Seems to me, Tess," Dot replied, "I never saw Billy Bumps look any other way. Why, he looked solemn when he eat-ed up Mrs. MacCall's stocking. I believe he must have a melancholic disposition."

"'Melancholic'! Goodness me, Dot!" snapped Tess, "I wish you wouldn't try to use words that you can't use."

"Why can't I use 'em, if I want to!" demanded Dot, stubbornly.

"But you get them all wrong."

"I guess I can use 'em if I want to--so now, Tess Kenway!" exclaimed Dot, pouting. "Words don't belong to anybody in particular, and I've as good a right to 'em as you have."

This revolt against her criticism rather staggered Tess. But she had much more serious problems to wrestle with at school just then.

In the first place Miss Pepperill was very "trying." Tess would not admit that the red-haired teacher was cross.

After a vacation of nearly two weeks the pupils had, of course, gotten quite out of hand. They were not only uneasy and had forgotten the school rules, but they seemed to Miss Pepperill to be particularly dull. Every little thing annoyed the teacher. She almost lost her voice trying to explain to the class the differences in tense--for they took up some simple grammar lessons in that grade.

One day Miss Pepperill completely lost her temper with Jakey Gerlach, who, in truth, was not her brightest pupil.

"I declare, Jakey, you never will get anywhere in school. You're always at the bottom of the class," she told him, sharply.

"Vell, does idt matter, teacher?" propounded Jakey, "whether I am at top or at bottom of de class? You teach de same at bot' ends."

At the end of each day the teacher was despairing. Tess always waited, timidly, to walk to the car with her. There was a crosstown car that made the trip from school to boarding house fairly easy for Miss Pepperill.

Perhaps, had she remained at the hospital with her sister, where she would have been more or less under Dr. Forsyth's eye, the final disaster in Miss Pepperill's case would not have arrived.

She really lost control of her scholars after a few days. In her room, where had always been the greatest decorum because the children feared her, there was now at times much confusion.

"Oh, children!" she gasped, holding her head in both hands, "I can't hear myself think!"

She sat down, unable to bear the hubbub of class recitation, and put her hands over her ears for a moment. Her eyes closed. The throbbing veins at her temples seemed about to burst.

It was Sadie Goronofsky who brought about the final catastrophe--and that quite innocently. Being unable at this juncture to attract attention by the usual means of waving her hand in the air and snapping her fingers, Sadie jumped up and went forward to Miss Pepperill's desk.

She had just sent away a class, and their clumsy footsteps had but ceased thundering on her eardrums when Sadie came on tiptoe to the platform. Miss Pepperill did not see her, but Sadie, tired of weaving her arm back and forth without result, clutched the edge of the light shawl Miss Pepperill wore over her shoulders.

The jerk the child gave the shawl was sufficient to pull Miss Pepperill's elbow from the edge of the desk where it rested, her hand upholding her throbbing head.

In her weakness the teacher almost pitched out of her chair to the floor. She shrieked.

Sadie Goronofsky flew back to her seat in terror. Miss Pepperill opened her eyes and saw nobody near. It was just as though an invisible hand had pulled at the shawl and had dislodged her elbow.

She was not of a superstitious nature, but her nerves were unstrung. She uttered another shriek--then a third.

The children under her care were instantly alarmed. They rose and ran from her, or cowered, whimpering, in their seats, while the poor hysterical woman uttered shriek after shriek.

Her cries brought other teachers into the room. They found her with her hair disarranged, her dress disheveled, beating her heels on the platform and shrieking at the top of her voice--quite out of her mind for the time being.

The children were dismissed at once and took to their homes excited and garbled reports of the occurrence.

Tess did not go home at once. She saw them finally take Miss Pepperill, now exhausted and moaning, out to a taxi-cab and drive away with her to the Women's and Children's Hospital, where Mrs. Eland was.

But the damage was done. Poor Miss Pepperill's mind was, for the time, quite out of her control. The next day she had to be removed to the state hospital for the insane because she disturbed the other patients under her sister's care.

That ended, of course, Miss Pepperill's career as a public school teacher. With a record of having been at the insane hospital, she could hope never again to preside over a class of children in the public school. Her occupation and manner of livelihood were taken from her.

"It is a terrible, terrible thing," Ruth said at dinner, the day Miss Pepperill was taken to the state hospital.

Ruth had been with Tess to call on Mrs. Eland, and the little gray lady had told them all about it.

"I am awfully sorry for my Mrs. Eland, too," Tess said. "I am sure she could have cared for Miss Pepperill if they'd let her stay."

"Don't worry, honey," Agnes said quickly. "They'll soon let Miss Pepperill come back."

"But the harm is done," Ruth rejoined gravely. "Just as Dr. Forsyth said, she ought to take a long, long rest."

"If they were only rich," sighed Agnes.

"If _we_ were only rich!" Ruth rejoined.

"My goodness! and wouldn't we be rich--just!--if all that stage money I found was only real, Ruthie?" Agnes whispered to her elder sister.

Ruth grew very red and said, quite tartly for her: "I don't see that it would do us any good--if it _were_ so. You let it go out of your hands very easily."

"Oh, pshaw! Neale will bring it back," said Agnes, half laughing, yet wondering that Ruth should be so earnest. "You speak just as though you believed it was good money."

"_You_ don't know, one way or another, whether it is so or not."

"Why, Ruth!"

"Well, you don't, do you?" demanded the elder sister.

"How silly you talk. You're as bad as Neale about those old bonds. I believe he lugged that book off with him just to show somebody the bonds to see if they were any good."

Ruth turned away, and said nothing more regarding the album; but Agnes was more and more puzzled about the whole affair. The two girls were not confiding in each other. Nothing, of course, could have shaken Agnes' belief in Neale's honesty. While, on the other hand, Ruth feared that the ex-circus-boy had fallen before temptation.

Believing, as she did, that the banknotes found in the album were all good, the oldest Corner House girl considered that the bonds might be of great value, too. Altogether, as Neale had figured up, there was over a hundred thousand dollars in the album.

This fortune was somewhere--so Ruth believed--in the possession of a thoughtless, if not really dishonest, boy. A thousand things might happen to the treasure trove Neale O'Neil had borne away from the old Corner House.

No matter whether it were Neale himself or another who made wrong use of the money or the bonds, if they were lost it would be a catastrophe. Neither the Corner House girls, nor whoever properly owned the book, would ever be benefitted by the odd find in the garret of the Stower homestead.

Who the actual owner--or owners--of the treasure was, Ruth could not imagine. But that she was the proper custodian of the album until Mr. Howbridge returned, the girl was quite sure.

She dared take nobody into her confidence until their guardian came home. Least of all could she talk about it to Agnes. And on her part, Agnes was quite as loath to speak of the matter, in earnest, to Ruth.

What Joe Eldred had said about Neale and his heavy satchel really alarmed Agnes. A hundred thousand dollars! A fortune, indeed.

"Goodness me!" Agnes thought. "Neale is never silly enough to believe that the money is real, is he? Impossible! Yet--why did he carry the old thing off with him?

"It bothers Ruth--I can see that. I don't know what idea she's got in her head; but surely both of them can't be mad about that money and those bonds. Goodness! am I the only sensible one in the family?" the flyaway asked herself, quite seriously.

"For I know very well that stuff in the old album is nothing but 'green goods.' Maybe somebody, years ago, used it dishonestly--used it to fool other people. And suppose Neale is fooling himself with it?"

For it never entered the loyal Agnes' mind that her boy chum was other than the soul of honesty.