queer old woman was always expecting that a large fortune would be left to her when Mr. Peter Stower, of Milton, should die. Mr. Stower had quarreled with all his relatives. Especially had he quarreled with his half-sister Sarah. Nevertheless, Aunt Sarah believed his money and the old homestead would come to her.
Instead, Mr. Stower willed it all to the four Kenway girls, making Mr. Howbridge the administrator of the estate and the guardian of the girls. Therefore, Miss Sarah Maltby was still a pensioner on the bounty of the Corner House girls, and the fact perhaps made her more crabbed of temper than she otherwise might have been.
Having settled down in the old Corner House to live, with Mrs. MacCall as housekeeper and Uncle Rufus as man of all work, the girls next took up the matter of education, as related in "The Corner House Girls at School." The four sisters got acquainted with their new environment and made new friends and a few enemies. Particularly they became chummy with Neale O'Neil, the boy who had run away from a circus to get an education. Neale became a fixture in the neighborhood, living with Mr. Con Murphy, the cobbler, on the street back of the Corner House. He became Agnes Kenway's particular and continual boy chum.
During the summer vacation Ruth and her sisters went to Pleasant Cove where they thoroughly enjoyed themselves and had adventures galore, as told in the third volume, entitled "The Corner House Girls Under Canvas."
As has been already mentioned, the sisters had parts in the school play The Carnation Countess, the following winter. Tess was Swiftwing, the Hummingbird, and Dot, a busy, busy bee, a part that the smallest Corner House girl acted to perfection. Agnes, who had a bent for theatricals, was immensely successful as Innocent Delight, and Ruth, of course, did her part well. In "The Corner House Girls in a Play," the fourth volume, these adventures and incidents are detailed.
"The Corner House Girls' Odd Find" made two of their very dearest friends wealthy, and incidentally brought to the sister what Agnes had longed for more than "anything else in the whole world" – a touring car. In that they took a long trip, as related in "The Corner House Girls on a Tour." On that journey, but recently completed, Neale O'Neil had accompanied the sisters to drive the car. Mrs. Heard, a good friend, had been their chaperon, and Sammy Pinkney, the boy who was determined to be a pirate, was what Neale termed "an excrescence on the touring party" during the exciting trip.
Ruth Kenway had been thinking of something that had occurred during their automobile trip just before spying the old gentleman with the green umbrella. She had that very day received a letter from Cecile Shepard, whom, with her brother Luke, the Corner House girls had met during their tour. And Ruth hoped that Cecile would spend a week at the old Corner House before going back in September to the preparatory school which she attended.
But now the old man's peril, her own alarm and her desire to save the stranger's life, drove all other thoughts out of the girl's mind.
CHAPTER III
THE AERIAL TRAMWAY
He might have gone right under the wheels of the backing freight train – that queer looking old gentleman – umbrella and all! Ruth Kenway dragged him back, and the train rumbled past them so near that the umbrella scraped along the sides of the box-cars.
"What under the sun's the matter with you, girl?" snapped the old man.
He turned on her so angrily, and furled the huge umbrella with such emphasis, that Ruth was quite startled, although she had thought that this time she would be prepared for any outbreak of irritation or displeasure on his part. She backed away from him, and as other people who had seen the incident came crowding about, the girl slipped away and crossed the tracks hurriedly when the freight train had gone by.
But the one-armed flagman and other railroad employees let the old gentleman understand beyond peradventure that he had barely escaped a dreadful accident. He had been about to step directly in the path of the backing freight train.
"My, my, my!" he exclaimed at last, "'tisn't possible!"
"It just is possible!" retorted the one-armed flagman. "One minute more and you'd've been ground to powder like as not if it hadn't been for that there girl. Some spunk, she's got."
"Some quick thinkin' she done!" exclaimed another of the employees. "Man alive, you wouldn't have no head on your shoulders right now if she hadn't knowed what to do at once and done it instanter. No siree!"
"My! my! my!" said the old gentleman again. "That girl then saved my life! Possibly saved me from a worse fate – to live on through the years maimed and mutilated."
Just then the train for which the old gentleman was waiting came in sight and soon drew up at the Milton station.
"Then I really owe that girl an apology," he went on. "Who is she? Does she live here!" he asked one of the bystanders.
"Sure she lives here."
"Well, I can't stop to-day. I've got to hurry. But I shall look her up the next time I come this way. Oh, yes indeed, I shall look her up! For a girl she certainly showed good sense."
"I don't know whether she did or not," scoffed the man to whom he spoke, but under his breath. "You don't look as though you were such a lot of use in the world, if you ask me. I bet you're a Tartar!"
Ruth Kenway, however, did not expect to be thanked. The old gentleman with the green umbrella passed out of her mind for the time being before she reached home. And there she found the assembled young folks in the throes of a discussion regarding Tess and Sammy's proposed aerial tramway.
"Do call it 'tramway,'" begged Agnes. "It sounds so awfully English, don't you know!"
"It sounds so awfully foolish, don't you know," said Neale O'Neil, who had come over the fence from Mr. Con Murphy's yard and sat on the stoop regaling himself upon a summer apple he had picked on his way. "Have a summer sweetnin', Ag?"
"I do wish you would call her by her right name, Neale," said Ruth, sharply, for she did not approve of Neale's slang.
"Dear me! 'What's in a name?' to quote the Immortal Bard," drawled the youth.
"A good deal sometimes," chuckled Agnes, who did not much mind having her name shortened. "Wait till I look up in my scrap book the name of that special cheese which is made by the Swiss for use in Passion Play week. It's got all the letters of the alphabet in it twice."
"Never mind looking it up," advised Ruth, quickly.
"No," said Neale. "We'll take your word for there being something in it. An odoriferous odor, I bet, if it's like most of those fancy cheeses."
"Why," said Tess, reprovingly, "I thought we were talking about my airship line."
"'Back to the mines, men! there'll be no strike to-day!'" quoted Agnes. "It's up to you, Neale. Sammy and Tess have originated the idea. All you have to do is to find the materials and do the work."
"If Ruth says we may," added Tess, without at all appreciating her sister's sarcasm.
"Why, there's no harm, I suppose. A basket to pull across the street? Does your mother say you may, Sammy?"
"Oh, yes, Ruth," declared the boy. "I just ran and asked her."
"What did she say?"
"We-ell," Sammy admitted slowly, "she was busy cutting out something on the dining-room table and her mouth was full of pins. I had to ask her two or three times before she seemed to hear me."
"And
