"My goodness! and wouldn't we be rich-just!-if all that stage money I found was only real, Ruthie?" Agnes whispered to her elder sister.

Ruth grew very red and said, quite tartly for her: "I don't see that it would do us any good-if it _were_ so. You let it go out of your hands very easily."

"Oh, pshaw! Neale will bring it back," said Agnes, half laughing, yet wondering that Ruth should be so earnest. "You speak just as though you believed it was good money."

"_You_ don't know, one way or another, whether it is so or not."

"Why, Ruth!"

"Well, you don't, do you?" demanded the elder sister.

"How silly you talk. You're as bad as Neale about those old bonds. I believe he lugged that book off with him just to show somebody the bonds to see if they were any good."

Ruth turned away, and said nothing more regarding the alb.u.m; but Agnes was more and more puzzled about the whole affair. The two girls were not confiding in each other. Nothing, of course, could have shaken Agnes'

belief in Neale's honesty. While, on the other hand, Ruth feared that the ex-circus-boy had fallen before temptation.

Believing, as she did, that the banknotes found in the alb.u.m were all good, the oldest Corner House girl considered that the bonds might be of great value, too. Altogether, as Neale had figured up, there was over a hundred thousand dollars in the alb.u.m.

This fortune was somewhere-so Ruth believed-in the possession of a thoughtless, if not really dishonest, boy. A thousand things might happen to the treasure trove Neale O'Neil had borne away from the old Corner House.

No matter whether it were Neale himself or another who made wrong use of the money or the bonds, if they were lost it would be a catastrophe.

Neither the Corner House girls, nor whoever properly owned the book, would ever be benefitted by the odd find in the garret of the Stower homestead.

Who the actual owner-or owners-of the treasure was, Ruth could not imagine. But that she was the proper custodian of the alb.u.m until Mr.

Howbridge returned, the girl was quite sure.

She dared take n.o.body into her confidence until their guardian came home. Least of all could she talk about it to Agnes. And on her part, Agnes was quite as loath to speak of the matter, in earnest, to Ruth.

What Joe Eldred had said about Neale and his heavy satchel really alarmed Agnes. A hundred thousand dollars! A fortune, indeed.

"Goodness me!" Agnes thought. "Neale is never silly enough to believe that the money is real, is he? Impossible! Yet-why did he carry the old thing off with him?

"It bothers Ruth-I can see that. I don't know what idea she's got in her head; but surely both of them can't be mad about that money and those bonds. Goodness! am I the only sensible one in the family?" the flyaway asked herself, quite seriously.

"For I know very well that stuff in the old alb.u.m is nothing but 'green goods.' Maybe somebody, years ago, used it dishonestly-used it to fool other people. And suppose Neale is fooling himself with it?"

For it never entered the loyal Agnes' mind that her boy chum was other than the soul of honesty.

CHAPTER XIII

AGNES IN THE WOODS

Perfectly dreadful things were always happening to Dot Kenway's Alice-doll. That child certainly was born under an unlucky star, as Mrs.

MacCall often declared.

Yet she was the most cherished of all the smallest Corner House girl's large and growing family of doll-babies. Dot lived with the Alice-doll in a world of make-believe, and where romance lapped over the border of reality it was hard for Dot to tell.

The children-Dot and Tess-fed the birds from the bedroom windows whenever the snow was on the ground. And Neale, when he was at hand, hung pieces of fat and suet in the trees for the jays and shrikes, and other of the "meat-eaters."

The smaller birds were so tame that they hopped right upon the window-sills to eat. On one sill Neale had built a rather ingeniously contrived "sleeping porch" for the Alice-doll, in which Dot put her-bundled in Uncle Rufus' napkin-bag-every night. The screened side served as a ventilator for the children's bedroom.

The top of this boxlike arrangement was of oiled paper, pasted over a wooden frame, and one eager sparrow, pecking at crumbs on the taut paper, burst a hole right through; so he, or another, hopped saucily down through the hole and tried to peck out the Alice-doll's bead-like eyes!

"Why-why-you cannibal!" gasped Dot, and ran to her child's rescue.

With a frightened chirp the sparrow shot up through the torn paper and winged his flight over the housetop.

"You'll have to paste up that hole, Dot," Tess said, "or something more than a sparrow will get in at your Alice-doll."

"Oh, me! what _shall_ I do?" moaned Dot. "Alice must sleep in her porch.

The doctors all say so."

"I've a piece of silk you may have to paste over the top of your porch, honey," Ruth said. "That will let the light through, and the birds won't peck it to shreds."

"Oh, thank you, sister!" said Dot, much relieved.

"I'll run for the glue bottle," Tess added, wishing to be helpful.

But having brought the bottle Tess was obliged to help Agnes with the beds. There were certain duties the Corner House girls had to do every day, and on Sat.u.r.days three of the early morning hours at least were spent by all of them save Dot in housework of one kind or another, and even she had some light household duties. The house was very large and Mrs. MacCall and Linda could not do all the work. As for Aunt Sarah Maltby, she only "ridded up" her own room, and never lifted her fingers to work outside it.

So just now Dot was left alone with the silk and the glue bottle. It was not a difficult task, and even Dot might be expected to do it with neatness and despatch.

But when Ruth chanced to come into the room some time later, Dot was still struggling with the glue bottle. She had not yet been successful in removing the cork.

"Goodness me! what a mean, mean thing," Dot cried, quite unaware that she was being observed. "Now I tell you what," she added, addressing the cork with which she was struggling, "I'm going to get you _out_, if I have to push you _in_-so there!"

This cheered up the family considerably when it was repeated; but Dot was used to furnishing amus.e.m.e.nt for the Corner House family. Usually the hour spent at the dinner table was the most enjoyable of all the day for the girls, for all that had happened during the day was there and then discussed.

It had been just the evening before that Dot was taken to task quite seriously by Ruth for a piece of impoliteness of which the little girl stood confessed.

"Sister was sorry to see this afternoon, when you were talking at the gate with Mr. Seneca Sprague, Dot, that you ate cookies out of a paper bag and did not offer Mr. Sprague any."

"Didn't," said Dot. "'Twas crackers."

"Well, crackers, then. You should always offer any person whom you are with, a share of your goodies."

"Why, Ruthie!" exclaimed Dot. "You know very well Seneca Sprague wouldn't have eaten any of those crackers."

"Why not?" asked Ruth, still serious.

"Isn't he a-a vegetablearian?" propounded Dot, quite warmly.

"A vegetarian-yes," admitted the older sister.