“She won’t say anything—till she sees me,” sniffed Lillie. And to put that evil hour off, she began to inquire as to further possibilities for action about the old Corner House.
“What do you girls do?” she asked.
“Why,” said Tess, “we play house; and play go visiting; and—and roll hoop; and sometimes skip rope——”
“Huh! that’s dreadful tame. Don’t you ever do anything——Oh! there’s my mother!” A window had opened in one of the wings of the big house, on the second floor. It was a window of a room that the Kenway family had not before used. Tess and Dot saw Ruth as well as Mrs. Treble at the window.
Ruth was doing what she thought was right. Mrs. Treble had confessed to the oldest of the Corner House girls that she had arrived at Milton with scarcely any money. She could not pay her board even at the very cheapest hotel. Mr. Howbridge was away, Ruth knew, and nothing could be done to straighten out this tangle in affairs until the lawyer came back.
So she had offered Mrs. Treble shelter for the present. Moreover, the lady, with a confidence equaled only by Aunt Sarah’s, demanded in quite a high and mighty way to be housed and fed. Yet she had calmed down, and actually thanked Ruth for her hospitality, when she found that the girl was not to be intimidated, but was acting the part of a Good Samaritan from a sense of duty.
Agnes was too angry for words. She could not understand why Ruth should cater to this “Mrs. Trouble,” as she insisted, in secret, upon calling the woman from Ypsilanti.
Ruth was showing the visitor a nice room on the same floor with those chambers occupied by the girls themselves, and Mrs. Treble was approving, when she chanced to look out of the window and behold her angelic Lillie in the condition related above.
[CHAPTER XIX—“DOUBLE TROUBLE”]
“What is the meaning of that horrid condition of your clothing, Lillie?” demanded Mrs. Treble from the open window.