I know,” admitted Agnes.
“And there is other rubbish, too. Look at this old book you brought down from the attic and flung in the corner.”
Ruth picked it up. It was heavy, and she carried it over to the broad window-seat on which she sat to open the “family album,” as Agnes had called it.
The latter and Neale, having brought in basket and broom, began to gather up the litter. Ruth became very still at the window with the old volume in her lap. The smaller girls were out of the room.
“What’s in the old thing – pictures?” asked Agnes of her elder sister.
“Ye – yes, pictures,” Ruth said hesitatingly.
“Must be funny ones,” chuckled Neale, “by the look of her face.”
Ruth did look serious as she sat there, turning the pages of the big, old volume. Had the others noticed particularly they would have seen that the countenance of the oldest Corner House girl had become very pale.
It was so when Mrs. MacCall looked in and said to her: “Oh, Ruth! I do wish you’d come out here and see what that Sammy Pinkney’s brought. I dunno whether to laugh, to scream, or to spank him!”
“I’ll be there in a moment, Mrs. Mac,” Ruth said nervously, jumping up and closing the book.
Then she glanced at Agnes and Neale, seized the volume in her arms, and instead of going out through the butler’s pantry after Mrs. MacCall, she crossed the front hall to the sitting room at the rear of the house.
“I like that!” cried Agnes. “Why! I found that old album myself; and I haven’t had a chance to look into it yet.”
Ruth was only a moment in the sitting room. Then she ran to the kitchen and out upon the cold porch, where Sammy Pinkney, done up in the folds of a huge red comforter like a boa-constrictor suffering from scarlet fever, stood, holding a cage-trap in one mittened hand.
“What do you know about this?” demanded Mrs. MacCall, spectacles on nose and eyeing the contents of the round trap in alarm and disgust.
Uncle Rufus was chuckling hugely in the background. Sandyface, the mother cat, was arching her back and purring pleadingly about Sammy’s sturdy legs.
“What are they?” demanded Ruth.
“Mice,” grunted Sammy, gruffly. “For Tess’ cats. They like ’em, don’t they? But my mother says I’ve got to bring the trap back.”
“What’s to be done with a boy like that?” demanded Mrs. MacCall. “Being kicked to death with grasshoppers would be mild punishment for him, wouldn’t it? What’s to be done with eight mice?”
“One kitten will have to go without,” said Dot, the literal, as she and Tess joined the party on the porch.
“Come on, now! You gotter let ’em out. I gotter have the trap,” was Sammy’s gruff statement. He saw that his present was not entirely appreciated by the human members of the Corner House family, whether the feline members approved or not.
“Oh, I’ll call the family!” cried Dot, and raised her voice in a shrill cry for “Spotty, Almira, Popocatepetl, Bungle, Starboard, Port, Hard-a-Lee and Mainsheet!” She was breathless when she had finished.
Cats came from all directions. Indeed, they seemed to appear most mysteriously from the ground. Big cats and little cats, black cats and gray cats, striped cats and spotted cats.
“If there were any more of them they’d eat us out of house and home,” declared Mrs. MacCall.
“But Almira isn’t here!” wailed Dot. “Oh, Ruthie! don’t let him open the cage till Almira comes. She wants a chance to catch a mouse.”
“I believe you children are little cannibals!” exclaimed the housekeeper. “How can you? Wanting those cats to catch the poor little mice!”
“D’you want ’em for pets?” demanded Sammy, grinning at the housekeeper.
“Ugh! I hate the pests!” cried Mrs. MacCall.
“Do find Almira, Ruthie,” begged Dot.
“I gotter take this cage back,” said Sammy. “Can’t fool here all day with a parcel of girls.”
“But Almira – ”
But Ruth had gone into the woodshed. She peered into the corners and all around the barrels. Suddenly she heard a cat purring – purring hard, just like a mill!
“Where are you, Almira?” she asked, softly.
“Purr! purr! purr!” went Almira – oh, so loud, and so proudly!
“What is it, Almira?” asked Ruth. “There! I see you – down in that corner. Why, you’re on Uncle Rufus’ old coat! Oh! What’s this?”
The eight mice had been caught by the other cats and killed. Tess came to the woodshed door.
“Oh, Ruth,” she asked, “has anything happened to Almira?”
“I should say there had!” laughed the oldest Corner House girl.
“Oh! what is it?” cried Dot, running, too, to see.
“Santa Claus came ahead of time – to Almira, anyway,” declared Ruth. “Did you ever see the like? You cunning ‘ittle s’ings! Look, children! Four tiny, little, black kittens.”
“Oh-oh-ee!” squealed Tess, falling right down on her knees to worship. But Dot looked gravely at the undisturbed Sandyface, rubbing around her feet.
“Goodness me, Sandyface, you’re a grandmother!” she said.
CHAPTER V – NO NEWS FOR CHRISTMAS
Almira’s addition to the Corner House family was not the only happening which came on this eventful day to fill the minds and the hearts of the Kenway sisters.
Ruth went around with a very serious face, considering the holiday season and all that she and Agnes and Tess and Dot had to make them joyful. Nor was her expression of countenance made any more cheerful by some news bluff Dr. Forsyth gave her when he stopped, while on his afternoon round of calls, to leave four packages marked “Ruth,” “Agnes,” “Tess” and “Dot.”
“Not to be opened till to-morrow, mind,” said the doctor. “That’s what the wife says. Now, I must hurry on. I’ve got to go back to the hospital again to-night. I’ve a bothersome patient there.”
“Oh! Not Miss Pepperill?” Ruth cried, for the red-haired school teacher and the matron of the hospital, her sister, were to be the guests of the Corner House girls on the morrow.
Dr. Forsyth took off his hat again and frowned into it. “No,” he said, “not her – not now.”
“Why, Doctor! what do you mean? Isn’t she getting on well?”
“Well? No!” blurted out the physician. “She doesn’t please me. She doesn’t get back her strength. Her nerves are jumpy. I hear that she
