“The puir mon!” wailed the Scotch woman who before she came to the old Corner House to care for the Kenway household had been housekeeper for Mr. Howbridge himself for many years. “There is something sad happened to him, nae doot. I must go awa’ wi’ me at aince. See to the bairns, Miss Maltby, that’s the good soul. Even Agnes is not in the hoose.”
“Of course I will see to them—if it becomes necessary,” said Aunt Sarah.
Her idea of attending to the younger children, however, was to remain in her own room knitting, only occasionally going to the head of the back stairs to ask Linda if Tess and Dot were all right. The Finnish girl’s answer was always “Shure, Mum,” and in her opinion Tess and Dot were all right as long as she did not see that they were in trouble.
To tell the truth, Linda saw the smaller girls very little after Mrs. McCall hurried out of the house to take the street car for the lawyer’s residence. Once Linda observed Tess and Dot in the side yard talking to a boy through the pickets. She had no idea that the sharp-featured boy was the same who had brought the news of Maria Maroni’s illness to Agnes, and the message from Hedden to Mrs. McCall!
The boy in question had come slowly along the pavement on Willow Street, muttering to himself as he approached as though saying over several sentences that he had learned by rote. He was quite evidently a keen-minded boy, but he was not at all a trustworthy looking one.
Tess and Dot both saw him, and that he was a stranger made the little girls eye him curiously. When he hailed them they were not quite sure whether they ought to reply or not.
“They want that silver thing back. It wasn’t meant for you.”