and raised his head to look up the garret stairs. It was very dark up there, for the door that opened into the great, open room extending the full width of the main part of the old Corner House was closed. In winter the children seldom went up there to play; and Uncle Rufus never mounted to the garret at all if he could help it.
“What’s dat?” he suddenly whispered.
“Tap, tap, tap; tap, tap, tap!” went the sound that had caught the old man’s attention. It receded, then drew nearer, then receded. Uncle Rufus turned a face that had suddenly become gray toward the three little girls.
“Dat’s – dat’s de same noise used to be up in dat garret befo’ your Unc’ Stower die, chillen. Ma mercy me!”
“Oh!” squealed Alfredia, turning to run. “Dat’s de garret ghos’! I’s heard ma mammy tell ’bout dat ol’ ha’nt.”
But Tess seized her and would not let her go.
“That is perfect nonsense, Alfredia!” she said very sternly. “There is no such thing as a ghost.”
“Don’ you be too uppity, chile!” murmured Uncle Rufus.
“A ghost!” cried Dot, coming nearer to the attic stairs. “Oh, my! What I thought was a goat when I was a very little girl? I remember!”
“Dat’s jest de same noise,” murmured Uncle Rufus, as the tapping sound was repeated.
“But Ruthie laid that old ghost,” said Tess with scorn. “And it wasn’t anything – much. But this – ”
Dot, who had examined the wet marks and lumps of snow on the lower treads of the garret stairs, suddenly squealed:
“Oh, looky here! ’Tisn’t a ghost, but ’tis a goat! Those are Billy Bumps’ footsteps! Of course they are!”
“Sammy Pinkney!” was the chorus of voices, even Uncle Rufus joining in. Then he added:
“Dat boy is de beatenes’! How come he make dat goat climb all dese stairs?”
“Why,” said Dot, “Billy Bumps can climb right up on the roof of the hen houses. He can climb just like a – a – well, just like a goat! Coming upstairs isn’t anything hard for Billy Bumps.”
“Sammy Pinkney, you come down from there with that goat!” commanded Tess sternly. “What do you suppose Ruthie or Mrs. MacCall will say?”
The door swung open above, and the wan daylight which entered by the small garret windows revealed Sammy Pinkney, plump, sturdy and freckled, stooping to look down at the startled group at the top of the stairs.
“I spy Sammy!” cried Dot shrilly, just remembering that they were playing hide and seek – or had been.
But somebody else spied Sammy at that moment, too. The mischievous boy had led Billy Bumps, the goat, up three long flights of stairs and turned him loose to go tap, tap, tapping about the bare attic floor on his hard little hoofs.
Billy spied Sammy as the youth stooped to grin down the stairs at Uncle Rufus and the little girls. Billy had a hair-trigger temper. He did not recognize Sammy from the rear, and he instantly charged.
Just as Sammy was going to tell those below how happy he was because he had startled them, Billy Bumps dashed out of the garret and butted the unsuspicious boy. Sammy sailed right into the air, arms and legs spread like a jumping frog, and dived down the stairway, while Billy stood blatting and shaking his horns at the head of the flight.
CHAPTER II – THE STRAW RIDE
Uncle Rufus and Alfredia had fallen back from the foot of the stairs under the impression that it was the garret ghost, rather than the garret goat, that was charging the mischievous Sammy Pinkney. And the two smallest Corner House girls were much too small to catch Sammy in full flight.
So it certainly would have gone hard with that youngster had not other and more able hands intervened. There was a shout from behind Uncle Rufus, an echoing bark, and a lean boy with a big dog dashed into the forefront of this exciting adventure.
The boy, if tall and slender, was muscular enough. Indeed, Neale O’Neil was a trained athlete, having begun his training very young indeed with his uncle, Mr. William Sorber, of Twomley and Sorber’s Herculean Circus and Menagerie. As the big Newfoundland dog charged upstairs to hold back the goat, Neale, with outspread arms, met Sammy in mid-air.
Neale staggered back, clutching the small boy, and finally tripped and fell on the carpet of the hall. But he was not hurt, nor was Sammy.
“Fo’ de good lan’ sake!” gasped Uncle Rufus, “what is we a-comin’ to? A goat in de attic, an’ – Tessie! yo’ call off dat dog or he’ll eat Billy Bumps, complete an’ a-plenty!”
The big dog was barking vociferously, while the goat stamped his hoofs and shook his horns threateningly at the head of the flight of stairs. Tom Jonah and Billy Bumps never had been friends.
Tess called the old dog down while Sammy and Neale O’Neil scrambled up from the hall floor. Two older girls appeared, running from the front of the house – a blonde beauty with fluffy, braided hair, and a more sedate brunette who was older than her sister by two years or more.
“What is the matter?” demanded the blonde girl. “If this Corner House isn’t the noisiest place in Milton – Ruth, see that goat!”
“Well, Sammy!” exclaimed Ruth Kenway, severely, “why didn’t you bring Scalawag, the pony, into the house as well? That goat!”
“I was goin’ to,” confessed the rather abashed Sammy. “But I didn’t have time.”
“Don’t you ever do such a thing again, Sammy Pinkney!” ordered Ruth, severely.
She had to be severe. Otherwise the younger ones would have completely overrun the old Corner House and made it unlivable for more sedate and quiet folk.
The responsibility for the welfare of her three sisters and that of Aunt Sarah Maltby, who lived with them, had early fallen on Ruth Kenway’s shoulders. In a much larger city than Milton the Kenways had lived in a very poor tenement and had had a hard struggle to get along on a small pension, their mother and father both being dead, until Mr. Howbridge, administrator of Uncle Peter Stower’s estate, had looked the sisters up.
At that time there was some uncertainty as to whom the old Corner House, standing opposite the Parade Ground in Milton, and the rest of the Stower property belonged; for Uncle Peter Stower had died, and his will could not be found. That there was a will, Mr. Howbridge knew, for he had drawn it for the miserly old man who had lived alone with his colored servant, Uncle Rufus, in the old Corner House for so long.
The surrogate, however, finally allowed the guardian of the Kenway sisters to place them in the roomy old house, with their aunt and with Mrs. MacCall as housekeeper, while the court tangle was straightened out. This last was satisfactorily arranged, as related in the first book of this series, entitled “The Corner House Girls.”
In successive volumes are related in detail the adventures of the four sisters and their friends since their establishment in the old Corner House, telling of their adventures at school, in a summer camp at the seashore, of their taking part in a school play, of the odd find made in the old Corner House garret, and on an automobile tour through the State.
In
