in the neighboring waters. The events of this trip are related in “The Corner House Girls on a Houseboat.” During this outing there was more than one exciting incident. But the most exciting of all was the unexpected appearance of Neale O’Neil’s father, long believed lost in Alaska.
Mr. O’Neil’s return to the States could only be for a brief period, for his mining interests called him back to Nome. His son, however, no longer mourned him as lost, and naturally (though this desire he kept secret from Agnes) the boy hoped, when his school days were over, to join his father in that far Northland.
There was really no thought in the mind of the littlest Corner House girl to take that which did not belong to her. Most children believe implicitly in “findings-keepings,” and it seemed to Dot Kenway that as they had bought the green and yellow basket in good faith of the two Gypsy women, everything it contained should belong to them.
This, too, was Sammy Pinkney’s idea of the matter. Sammy considered himself very worldly wise.
“Say! what’s the matter with you, Tess Kenway? Of course that bracelet is yours – if you want it. Who’s going to stop you from keeping it, I want to know?”
“But – but it must belong to one of those Gypsy ladies,” gasped Tess. “The old lady asked us if we were honest. Of course we are!”
“Pshaw! If they miss it, they’ll be back after that silver thing fast enough.”
“But, Sammy, suppose they don’t know the bracelet fell into this basket?”
“Then you and Dot are that much in,” was the prompt rejoinder of their boy friend. “You bought the basket and all that was in it. They couldn’t claim the air in that basket, could they? Well, then! how could they lay claim to anything else in the basket?”
Such logic seemed unanswerable to Dot’s mind. But Tess shook a doubtful head. She had a feeling that they ought to run after the Gypsies to return to them at once the bracelet. Only, neither she nor Dot was dressed properly to run through Milton’s best residential streets after the Romany people. As for Sammy —
Happily, so Tess thought, she did not have to decide the matter. Musically an automobile horn sounded its warning and the children ran out to welcome the two older Corner House girls and Neale O’Neil, who acted as their chauffeur on this particular trip.
They had been far out into the country for eggs and fresh vegetables, to the farm, in fact, of Mr. Bob Buckham, the strawberry king and the Corner House girls’ very good friend. In these times of very high prices for food, Ruth Kenway considered it her duty to save money if she could by purchasing at first cost for the household’s needs.
“Otherwise,” this very capable young housewife asked, “how shall we excuse the keeping of an automobile when the up-keep and everything is so high?”
“Oh, do,” begged Agnes, the flyaway sister, “do let us have something impractical, Ruth. I just hate the man who wrote the first treatise on political economy.”
“I fancy it is ‘household economy’ you mean, Aggie,” returned her sister, smiling. “And I warrant the author of the first treatise on that theme was a woman.”
“Mrs. Eva Adam, I bet!” chuckled Neale O’Neil, hearing this controversy from the driver’s seat. “It has always been in my mind that the First Lady of the Garden of Eden was tempted to swipe those apples more because the price of other fruit was so high than for any other reason.”
“Then Adam was stingy with the household money,” declared Agnes.
“I really wish you would not use such words as ‘swipe’ before the children, Neale,” sighed Ruth who, although she was no purist, did not wish the little folk to pick up (as they so easily did) slang phrases.
She stepped out of the car when Neale had halted it within the garage and Agnes handed her the egg basket. Tess and Dot immediately began dancing about their elder sister, both shouting at once, the smallest girl with the green and yellow basket and Tess with the silver bracelet in her hand.
“Oh, Ruthie, what do you think?”
“See how pretty it is! And they never missed it.”
“Can’t we keep it, Ruthie?” This from Dot. “We paid those Gypsy ladies for the basket and all that was in it. Sammy says so.”
“Then it must be true of course,” scoffed Agnes. “What is it?”
“Well, I guess I know some things,” observed Sammy, bridling. “If you buy a walnut you buy the kernel as well as the shell, don’t you? And that bracelet was inside that covered basket, like the kernel in a nut.”
“Listen!” exclaimed Neale likewise getting out of the car. “Sammy’s a very Solomon for judgment.”
“Now don’t you call me that, Neale O’Neil!” ejaculated Sammy angrily. “I ain’t a pig.”
“Wha – what! Who called you a pig, Sammy?”
“Well, that’s what Mr. Con Murphy calls his pig – ‘Solomon.’ You needn’t call me by any pig-name, so there!”
“I stand reproved,” rejoined Neale with mock seriousness. “But, see here: What’s all this about the basket and the bracelet – a two-fold mystery?”
“It sounds like a thriller in six reels,” cried Agnes, jumping out of the car herself to get a closer view of the bracelet and the basket. “My! Where did you get that gorgeous bracelet, children?”
The beauty of the family, who loved “gew-gaws” of all kinds, seized the silver circlet and tried it upon her own plump arm. Ruth urged Tess to explain and had to place a gentle palm upon Dot’s lips to keep them quiet so that she might get the straight of the story from the more sedate Tess.
“And so, that’s how it was,” concluded Tess. “We bought the basket after borrowing Sammy’s twenty-five cent piece, and of course the basket belongs to us, doesn’t it, Ruthie?”
“Most certainly, my dear,” agreed the elder sister.
“And inside was that beautiful fretted silver bracelet. And that – ”
“Just as certainly belongs to the Gypsies,” finished Ruth. “At least, it does not belong to you and Dot.”
“Aw shu-u-cks!” drawled Sammy in dissent.
Even Agnes cast a wistful glance at the older girl. Ruth was always so uncompromising in her decisions. There was never any middle ground in her view. Either a thing was right, or it was wrong, and that was all there was to it!
“Well,” sighed Tess, “that Gypsy lady said she knew we were honest.”
“I think,” Ruth observed thoughtfully, “that Neale had better run the car out again and look about town for those Gypsy women. They can’t have got far away.”
“Say, Ruth! it’s most supper time,” objected Neale. “Have a heart!”
“Anyway, I wouldn’t trouble myself about a crowd of Gypsies,” said Agnes. “They may have stolen the bracelet.”
“Oh!” gasped Tess and Dot in unison.
“You
