"That's it! That's the one!" cried Agnes eagerly, recognizing Mrs.

Creamer's basket.

And there was the baby, under a veil, sleeping as peacefully as could be. Fortunately the basket placed on top of the baby's temporary cradle had been the larger of the two, and had completely and safely covered the lower basket.

They got the baby, basket and all, into the back of the Eldred car without awakening Bubby, and Agnes sat beside him.

"I'll drive back as if I had a load of eggs," Joe declared, grinning.

"If that kid wakes up and bawls, Aggie, what'll you do?"

"Humph!" said Agnes, with scorn, "isn't that just like a boy? Don't you suppose I know how to take care of a baby?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: And there was the baby, under a veil, sleeping as peacefully as could be.]

Bubby did not awake, however, and their return to the Creamer cottage was like a triumphal entry. The neighborhood had turned out in a body.

Mrs. Creamer ran a block up the street to meet the automobile, and she could not thank the Corner House girl and Joe Eldred enough.

But it was told of Mabel Creamer that she stood on the porch and scowled when they brought Bubby back in the basket. She actually did say to Tess and Dot, over the side fence:

"An' they blame me for it. Said I ought to have been there to watch what Billy Quirk was goin' to do. If it had been a really, truly Gypsy that had kidnapped Bubby, I s'pose they'd shut me up in jail!"

In a few days the little girls were back in school again, and Mabel was not obliged to stay in to mind the baby-hated task!-for she was in Dot's grade.

Tess' cla.s.s gathered, too, to welcome Miss Pepperill's return to her wonted place-all but Sammy Pinkney. Sammy was a very sick boy and they brought straw and put it knee deep in Willow Street, in front of the Pinkney house, so as to deaden the sound of wagon wheels. Tess actually went on tiptoe when she pa.s.sed the house where her schoolmate lay so ill.

Billy b.u.mps, the goat, that had once been Sammy's, looked longingly through the Corner House fence at the straw thus laid down, as though it was more tempting fodder than that with which Uncle Rufus supplied him.

"I believe Billy b.u.mps must know Sammy is awful sick," Tess said, in a hushed voice to Dot. "See how solemn he looks."

"Seems to me, Tess," Dot replied, "I never saw Billy b.u.mps look any other way. Why, he looked solemn when he eat-ed up Mrs. MacCall's stocking. I believe he must have a melancholic disposition."

"'Melancholic'! Goodness me, Dot!" snapped Tess, "I wish you wouldn't try to use words that you can't use."

"Why can't I use 'em, if I want to!" demanded Dot, stubbornly.

"But you get them all wrong."

"I guess I can use 'em if I want to-so now, Tess Kenway!" exclaimed Dot, pouting. "Words don't belong to anybody in particular, and I've as good a right to 'em as you have."

This revolt against her criticism rather staggered Tess. But she had much more serious problems to wrestle with at school just then.

In the first place Miss Pepperill was very "trying." Tess would not admit that the red-haired teacher was cross.

After a vacation of nearly two weeks the pupils had, of course, gotten quite out of hand. They were not only uneasy and had forgotten the school rules, but they seemed to Miss Pepperill to be particularly dull.

Every little thing annoyed the teacher. She almost lost her voice trying to explain to the cla.s.s the differences in tense-for they took up some simple grammar lessons in that grade.

One day Miss Pepperill completely lost her temper with Jakey Gerlach, who, in truth, was not her brightest pupil.

"I declare, Jakey, you never will get anywhere in school. You're always at the bottom of the cla.s.s," she told him, sharply.

"Vell, does idt matter, teacher?" propounded Jakey, "whether I am at top or at bottom of de cla.s.s? You teach de same at bot' ends."

At the end of each day the teacher was despairing. Tess always waited, timidly, to walk to the car with her. There was a crosstown car that made the trip from school to boarding house fairly easy for Miss Pepperill.

Perhaps, had she remained at the hospital with her sister, where she would have been more or less under Dr. Forsyth's eye, the final disaster in Miss Pepperill's case would not have arrived.

She really lost control of her scholars after a few days. In her room, where had always been the greatest decorum because the children feared her, there was now at times much confusion.

"Oh, children!" she gasped, holding her head in both hands, "I can't hear myself think!"

She sat down, unable to bear the hubbub of cla.s.s recitation, and put her hands over her ears for a moment. Her eyes closed. The throbbing veins at her temples seemed about to burst.

It was Sadie Goronofsky who brought about the final catastrophe-and that quite innocently. Being unable at this juncture to attract attention by the usual means of waving her hand in the air and snapping her fingers, Sadie jumped up and went forward to Miss Pepperill's desk.

She had just sent away a cla.s.s, and their clumsy footsteps had but ceased thundering on her eardrums when Sadie came on tiptoe to the platform. Miss Pepperill did not see her, but Sadie, tired of weaving her arm back and forth without result, clutched the edge of the light shawl Miss Pepperill wore over her shoulders.

The jerk the child gave the shawl was sufficient to pull Miss Pepperill's elbow from the edge of the desk where it rested, her hand upholding her throbbing head.

In her weakness the teacher almost pitched out of her chair to the floor. She shrieked.

Sadie Goronofsky flew back to her seat in terror. Miss Pepperill opened her eyes and saw n.o.body near. It was just as though an invisible hand had pulled at the shawl and had dislodged her elbow.

She was not of a superst.i.tious nature, but her nerves were unstrung. She uttered another shriek-then a third.

The children under her care were instantly alarmed. They rose and ran from her, or cowered, whimpering, in their seats, while the poor hysterical woman uttered shriek after shriek.

Her cries brought other teachers into the room. They found her with her hair disarranged, her dress disheveled, beating her heels on the platform and shrieking at the top of her voice-quite out of her mind for the time being.

The children were dismissed at once and took to their homes excited and garbled reports of the occurrence.

Tess did not go home at once. She saw them finally take Miss Pepperill, now exhausted and moaning, out to a taxi-cab and drive away with her to the Women's and Children's Hospital, where Mrs. Eland was.

But the damage was done. Poor Miss Pepperill's mind was, for the time, quite out of her control. The next day she had to be removed to the state hospital for the insane because she disturbed the other patients under her sister's care.

That ended, of course, Miss Pepperill's career as a public school teacher. With a record of having been at the insane hospital, she could hope never again to preside over a cla.s.s of children in the public school. Her occupation and manner of livelihood were taken from her.

"It is a terrible, terrible thing," Ruth said at dinner, the day Miss Pepperill was taken to the state hospital.

Ruth had been with Tess to call on Mrs. Eland, and the little gray lady had told them all about it.

"I am awfully sorry for my Mrs. Eland, too," Tess said. "I am sure she could have cared for Miss Pepperill if they'd let her stay."

"Don't worry, honey," Agnes said quickly. "They'll soon let Miss Pepperill come back."

"But the harm is done," Ruth rejoined gravely. "Just as Dr. Forsyth said, she ought to take a long, long rest."

"If they were only rich," sighed Agnes.

"If _we_ were only rich!" Ruth rejoined.