“You know, mother always said Dot had too much imagination. She just pictures things as so much worse, or so much better, than they really are. Now, if she should really ever be frightened here, maybe she’d never like the old house to live in at all.”

“Oh, my!” said Aggie. “I hope that won’t happen. For I think this is just the very finest house I ever saw. There is none as big in sight on this side of the parade ground. We must be awfully rich, Ruth.”

“Why—why I never thought of that,” said the elder sister, slowly. “I don’t know whether we are actually rich, or not. Mr. Howbridge said something about there being a lot of tenements and money, but, you see, as long as Uncle Peter’s will can’t be found, maybe we can’t use much of the money.”

“We’ll have to work hard to keep this place clean,” sighed Aggie.

“We haven’t anything else to do this summer, anyway,” said Ruth, quickly. “And maybe things will be different by fall.”

“Maybe we can find the will!” exclaimed Aggie, voicing a sudden thought.

“Oh!”

“Wouldn’t that be great?”

“I’ll ask Mr. Howbridge if we may look. I expect he has looked in all the likely places,” Ruth said, after a moment’s reflection.

“Then we’ll look in the unlikely ones,” chuckled Aggie. “You know, you read in story books about girls finding money in old stockings, and in cracked teapots, and behind pictures in the parlor, and inside the stuffing of old chairs, and——”

“Goodness me!” exclaimed Ruth. “You are as imaginative as Dot herself.”

Meanwhile Tess and Dot had run out into the yard. They had already made a tour of discovery about the neglected garden and the front lawn, where the grass was crying-out for the mower.

Ruth said she was going to have some late vegetables, and there was a pretty good chicken house and wired run. If they could get a few hens, the eggs would help out on the meat-bill. That was the way Ruth Kenway still looked at things!

The picket fence about the front of the old Corner House property was higher than the heads of the two younger girls. As they went slowly along by the front fence, looking out upon Main Street, they saw many people look 

 Prev. P 23/142 next