“I think,” said Ruth, quietly, “that if I were you, Lillie, and went to visit, I’d try to make my new friends like me.”
“Huh!” said Lillie. “I’m not visiting—don’t you fool yourselves. My mother and I have come here to stay. We’re not going to be put out like we were at Aunt Adeline’s and Uncle Noah’s. Mother says we’ve got more right to this old house than you Kenways have, and she’s going to get her rights.”
That made Dot cry, and Tess looked dreadfully serious. Agnes was too angry to play with the girl any more, and Ruth, even, gave her up as impossible. Lillie wandered off by herself, for her mother would not be bothered with her just then.
When Mrs. McCall went out into the kitchen that afternoon to start dinner, she missed the bag of dried apples that had been left on the table. There had been nearly four pounds of them.
“What under the canopy’s become of that bag?” demanded the good lady. “This is getting too much, I declare. I know I missed the end of the corned beef yesterday, and half a loaf of bread. I couldn’t be sure about the cookies and doughnuts, and the pie.
“But there that bag of dried apples stood, and there it isn’t now! What do you know about such crazy actions?” she demanded of Ruth, who had come at her call.
“Why! it’s a mystery,” gasped the eldest of the Corner House girls. “I can’t understand it, dear Mrs. McCall. Of course none of us girls have taken the dried apples. And if you have missed other things from your pantry of late, I am just as sure we are not at fault. I have warned the girls about raiding the cookie jars between meals.”
“Well,” said Mrs. McCall, with awe, “what can have taken them? And a bag of dried apples! Goodness! It’s enough to give one the shivers and shakes.”
Ruth was deeply mystified, too. She knew very well that Sandy-face, the cat, could not be accused with justice of this loss. Cats certainly do not eat dried apples—and such a quantity!
It began to rain before evening, and Tess and Dot rushed out to rescue their dolls and other playthings, for there was wind with the rain and they were afraid it would blow in upon their treasures.