Chapter XXIV: Neale O'neil Flings a Bomb

Agnes came to her decision to interview Neale O'Neil just before the family dinner hour. She had to wait until after the meal before putting it into execution.

Ordinarily Neale would have been over at the old Corner House soon after seven o'clock with his books, ready to join the girls at their studies in the sitting room. He was not to be expected now, however. Only the little girls mentioned Neale's absence.

"I guess something has happened since Neale came home from the circus," Dot observed. "He don't seem to like us any more."

"I'm sure we've done nothing to him," said Tess, quite troubled. "But, anyway, you can't ever tell anything about boys--what they'll do. Can you, Ruthie?"

"There spoke the oracle," giggled Agnes.

"Tess is a budding suffragette," commented Mrs. MacCall.

"Oh, my! You sure won't be one of those awful suffering-etts when you grow up, will you, Tessie?" cried the horror-stricken Dot.

"Goodness! _Suffragette_, Dot!" admonished her sister. "But--but I guess I don't want to be one. They say Miss Grimsby is one and I'm sure I don't want to be anything she is."

"Is she very--very awful?" asked Dot, pityingly, yet with curiosity.

"She is awfully hard to get along with," admitted Tess. "Sometimes Miss Pepperill was cross; but Miss Grimsby is mad all the time."

"I--I wish they'd take Mabel Creamer into your room and let you take her place in mine," Dot said, feeling that her enemy next door should be put under the eye of just such a stern teacher as Miss Grimsby.

"I s'pose she'll make faces at me to-morrow," pursued Dot, with a sigh. "And she _can_ make awful faces, you know she can, Tessie."

"Well, faces won't ever hurt you," the other sister said, philosophically.

"No-o," rejoined Dot. "Not really, of course. But," she confessed, "it makes you want to make faces, too. And I can't wriggle my face all up like Mabel Creamer can!"

Now, clothed in a proper frock again, Barnabetta Scruggs made one at the dinner table. She was subdued and rather silent; but as always she was kind to the children, beside whom she sat; and she was really grateful now to Ruth.

Despite her rough exterior, Barnabetta was kind at heart. She had only been hiding her good qualities from Ruth and Agnes because she knew in her heart that she meant to injure them. Now that she had confessed her wrong doing, her hardness of manner and foolish pride were all melted down. And nobody could long resist the sweetness of Ruth and the jollity of Agnes.

The latter slipped away right after dinner, leaving the little girls listening to one of Barnabetta's fairy stories--this time about The Horse That Made a House for the Birds.

"That circus girl is a good deal like a singed cat," remarked Mrs. MacCall in the kitchen. "I'm free to confess I didn't think much of her at first. You and Ruth do pick up some crooked sticks." She spoke to Agnes who was preparing to go out.

"But I watched her with the little ones and--bless her heart!--she's a real little woman! Working in a circus all her life hasn't spoiled her; but it isn't a business that I'd want a daughter of mine to follow.

"And there isn't a mite of harm in that Asa Scruggs," added the housekeeper. "Only I never did see such a melancholy looking man. And he a clown!"

Agnes was thinking how strange it was she should have met Barnabetta and her father in the woods and brought them home, when they had come from the Twomley & Sorber Circus, and knew Neale O'Neil. And what would Neale say when he learned that the clown and his daughter were at the old Corner House?

Agnes remembered quite clearly that Neale had caught Barnabetta looking at the book of money while he had it in his possession at the winter quarters of the circus. At once the boy would connect the robbery of the Corner House with the circus girl's presence there.

And that would never do. For Agnes was positive that Barnabetta was guiltless of the final disappearance of the treasure trove.

But suppose Neale was convinced otherwise? With sorrow the Corner House girl had to admit that her boy friend could be "awful stubborn" if he so chose.

"And he might come right over here and say something cross to Barnabetta and to poor Mr. Scruggs, and then everybody'd be unhappy," Agnes told herself. "Barnabetta is repentant for all she did. It would be mean to accuse her of something she hadn't done at all."

So Agnes went rather soberly down the back yard paths to the end of the chicken run. She never contemplated for an instant going round by Willow Street and Willow Wythe to reach the cobbler's front door.

Only a high board fence separated the Corner House premises from the little back yard of Mr. Con Murphy. There was the corner where Neale got over, and Agnes was enough of a tomboy to know the most approved fashion of mounting the barrier.

But she hesitated a moment before she did this. Maybe Neale was not there. Maybe he was still so angry that he would not see her if she went into Con's little shop. She must cajole him.

Therefore she sent a tentative call over the back fence:

"Oh-ee! Oh-ee! Oh-ee!"

She waited half a minute and repeated it. But there was no answer.

"Oh, dear me!" thought Agnes. "Is he still huffy? Or isn't he home?"

She ventured a third call, but to no avail. Agnes, however, had a determined spirit. She felt that Neale might help them in the emergency which had arisen, and she proposed to get his help in some fashion.

So she started to climb the fence. Just as she did so--spang! A snowball burst right beside her head. She was showered with snow and, screeching, let go her hold and fell back into the Corner House yard.

"Oh! oh! oh! Who was that?" sputtered Agnes.

She glanced around under the bare-limbed trees and tried to peer into the shadows cast by the hen house and Billy Bumps' abode. Not a soul there, she was sure.

"Some boy going by on the street must have thrown it," Agnes thought. "But how could he see me away in here?"

She essayed to climb the fence again, and a second snowball--not quite as hard as the first--struck her right between the shoulder blades.

"Oh! you horrid thing!" exclaimed Agnes, turning to run toward the street fence. "I'd like to get my hands on you! I bet if Neale were here you wouldn't fling snowballs at a girl!"

"Don't blow too much about what Neale O'Neil would do!" cried a voice; and a figure appeared at the corner of the hen house.

"Oh! you horrid thing! Neale O'Neil! You flung those snowballs yourself!" gasped Agnes.

She was plucky and she started for him instantly, grabbing a good-sized handful of snow as she did so. Neale uttered a shout and turned to run; but he caught his heel in something and went over backward into the drift he himself had piled up at the hen house door when he had shoveled the path.

"I've got you--you scamp!" declared the Corner House girl, and fell upon him with the snowball and rubbed his face well with it. Neale actually squealed for mercy.

"Lemme up!"

"Got enough?"

"Yep!"

"Say 'enough,' then," ordered Agnes, cramming some more snow down the victim's neck.

"Can't--it tickles my tongue. Ouch! Look out! Your turn will come yet, miss."

"Do anything I say if I let you up?" demanded Agnes, who had half buried Neale by her own weight in the soft snow.

"Yep! Ouch! Don't! Play fair!"

"Then you'll come right into the house and talk to me and Ruthie about that awful money?" demanded Agnes, getting up.

Neale started to rise, and then sat back in the snow.

"What money?" he demanded.

"The money and bonds that were stuck into the old album."

"What about them?"

"Oh, Neale! Oh, Neale!" cried Agnes, on the verge of tears. "The money is gone."

"Huh?"

"It isn't in the book! We--we never looked till to-night, and--what do you think? Somebody got into the house and robbed us--of all that money! And it belonged to Mrs. Eland and her sister. Mr. Lemuel Aden hid it in our garret. Now! isn't that awful?"

For a minute Neale made no reply. Agnes thought he must be struck actually dumb by the horror and surprise which the announcement caused him. Then he made a funny noise and got up out of the snow. His face was in the shadow.

"What's the matter with you?" demanded Agnes."Didn't you hear?"

"Yes--I heard," said Neale, in a peculiar tone. "What did you say about that stuff in the book?"

"Why, Neale! it is good. At least, the money is. Ruth went again to the bank and she is _sure_ she had the right banknote examined this time. And, of course, if one was good the rest were!"

"Ye-es," said Neale, still speaking oddly. "But what about Mrs. Eland?"

"It belonged to her--all that money--and her sister. You see, Lemuel Aden stayed here at the old Corner House just before he died and he left this book here because he believed it would be safe. He said Uncle Peter was a fool, but honest. Horrid old thing!"

"Who--Uncle Peter?" asked Neale.

"No--Lemuel Aden. And then he went and died and never said anything about the money only in his diary, and Mrs. Eland showed it to Ruth in the diary, and Ruth knew what it meant, but she didn't tell Mrs. Eland. And now, Neale O'Neil, somebody's followed you down from that Tiverton place, knowing you had that book, and got into our house and taken all that money--"

"Gee, Aggie!" cried the boy, interrupting the stream of this monologue. "You'll lose your breath talking so much. Let's go in and see about this."

"Oh, Neale! Will you?"

"Yes. I was coming to call you out anyway," said the boy, gruffly. "You're a good kid, Aggie. But Ruth can be too fresh--"

"You don't know how worried she's been--how worried we've both been," Agnes said.

"That's all right. But I'm honest. I wouldn't have stolen that money."

"Of course not, Neale," cried Agnes, but secretly condemned because there had been a time when, for a few hours, she herself had almost doubted the honesty of the white-haired boy.

"But somebody must have seen it in your possession, and come down with you and stolen it."

"Huh! You think so?"

"How else can you explain it?" demanded the voluble Agnes, the pent up waters of her imagination overflowing now. "Of course it was very dangerous indeed for you to be carrying all that wealth around with you. Why, Neale! you might have been killed for it.

"The--the book was put in that old closet in the dining room chimney. And Aunt Sarah locked the door, not knowing there was anything of importance in the closet but her peppermints. And then we couldn't unlock it because the lock was fouled.

"And so, we don't know when the money was taken. But we broke the lock of the closet this afternoon and there it was--the book, I mean--empty!"

Neale was leading her toward the house. "Great Peter's pipe!" he gasped. "You can talk nineteen to the dozen and no mistake, Aggie. Hush, will you, till we get inside?"

Agnes was rather offended at this. She went up the porch steps ahead and opened the door into the hall. Ruth was just going into the sitting room.

"Oh, Ruthie! are you alone?" whispered Agnes.

"Goodness! how you startled me," said the older sister. "There's nobody in the sitting room. What do you want? Oh!"

"It's Neale," said Agnes, dragging the boy in. "And you've got to tell him how sorry you are for what you said!"

"Well--I like that!" exclaimed Ruth.

"You know you're sorry," pleaded the peacemaker. "Say so!"

"Well, I am! Come in, Neale O'Neil. Between us, you and I have made an awful mess of this thing. Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill have lost all their fortune."

"How's that?" asked the boy, easily.

"Didn't Agnes tell you that the money and bonds have been stolen?"

"Why--she said so," admitted Neale.

"Well!" exclaimed Ruth.

"Well!" exclaimed Agnes.

"I guess you are worried about not much of anything," said Neale O'Neil, lightly.

"What do you mean, you silly boy?" demanded Ruth, with rising asperity. "I tell you that money must have all been good money, whether the bonds were valuable or not."

It was then Neale's turn to say, "Well?"

"Neale O'Neil!" shouted Agnes, shaking him. "What are you trying to do--torment us to death? What do you know about this?"

"Why, I told you the old book was in my bag on the porch when I left here Saturday night," drawled the boy. "But do you suppose I would have flung it down there so carelessly if the money and bonds had been in it?"