“Butter her feet,” said Aunt Sarah, who chanced to be in the kitchen at the moment. “I told you that before,” and she walked out.
“Goodness! we’ll butter all their feet,” cried Agnes, “if that will keep them here. Just as soon as it holds up a little, I’ll run over to Mr. Stetson’s and see if it is so. The poor old thing! to carry those kittens so far. But, me-oh-my! cats haven’t much sense, after all, have they?”
Uncle Rufus was proved right—and that before supper time. The rain held up, and Agnes scurried over to the store, bringing back, huddled in a small covered basket, Popocatepetl, Almira, and Bungle, who all seemed very glad to rejoin Spotty. Sandy-face looked absurdly pleased to see them—just as though she had not carried them back, one by one, to a hiding place behind the flour barrels in Mr. Stetson’s store-room!
Agnes insisted upon buttering the mother-cat’s paws. And to make sure of it, she buttered the paws of the four kittens as well.
“There,” she said, “when Sandy gets through lapping all that butter up, she ought to be proud to stay here, for butter’s forty cents a pound right now!”
“You extravagant thing,” sighed Ruth, shaking her head.
“Yes!” cried Agnes. “And it’s so nice to be extravagant. I declare, Ruth, I feel that I was just born to be a rich girl. It tickles me to be extravagant.”
Since returning from Mr. Howbridge’s office, Ruth had evolved a question that she wished to put to Uncle Rufus. The mystery of the lost will was ever present in the mind of the oldest of the Corner House girls, and this query had to do with that mystery.
“Uncle Rufus,” she asked the old man, after dinner that evening when he was carefully putting away the silver and they were alone together in the dining-room, “Uncle Rufus, do you know where Uncle Peter used to keep his private papers?”
“Sho’, Missie, he kept dem in de safe in his study—ya-as’m. Yo’ know dat safe; don’t yo’?”