“Sister’s going out on an errand,” replied Ruth.
“Oh! let me go?” cried the smallest Corner House girl.
“Not this time,” said Ruth, quietly. “I can’t take you to-day, Dot.”
Dot began to pout. “Oh, come along, Dot,” said Tess, who never could bear to see her little sister with a frown. “Let us go upstairs and dress all the dolls in their best clothes, and have a party.”
“No,” said Dot. “I can’t. Muriel has spoiled her party dress. She spilled tea on it, you know. Bonnie-Betty’s broken her arm and it’s in splints. And you know Ann Eliza and Eliza Ann, the twins, are all spotted up, and I don’t know yet whether it’s measles or smallpox.”
“For goodness’ sake!” gasped Mrs. MacCall. “If they need a quarantine anywhere I should think ’twould be in that nursery.”
Ruth went out, leaving them all laughing at Dorothy. She was in no mood for laughter herself. Since she and her sisters had come to live at the old Corner House, Ruth had never felt more troubled.
She said nothing further to Agnes either about the absence of Neale O’Neil, or the disappearance of the old album. The next to the oldest Corner House girl had noted nothing strange in Ruth’s manner or speech. Agnes Kenway was not very observant.
Ruth went out the side gate and along Willow Street. Beyond Mrs. Adam’s little cottage there was a narrow lane called Willow Wythe, which ran back, in a sort of L-shaped passage to the rear street on which Mr. Con Murphy had his tiny house and shop.
Neale always came to the Corner House by a ‘short cut’—over the fence into the back premises from Mr. Murphy’s yard; and Agnes had been known to come and go by the same route. It was several minutes’ walk by way of Willow Street and Willow Wythe to the door of the cobbler’s little shop.