“I can’t! I can’t hold it! Look out!”
Once again the rumbling, rolling, bumping sound came, and with it was mingled the warning of the Scotch housekeeper and the wail of Dot who cried:
“Oh, she’s dead! She’s smashed!”
“Something really has happened this time!” exclaimed Ruth, and her face became a little pale.
“If only it isn’t serious,” burst out Agnes. “Oh, dear, what those youngsters don’t think of for trouble!”
“They don’t mean to get into trouble, Agnes. It’s only their thoughtlessness.”
“Well then, they ought to think more. Oh, listen to that, will you!” Agnes added, as another loud bumping reached the two sisters’ ears.
“It’s something that’s sure,” cried Ruth, and grew paler than ever.
The happening was not really as tragic as it seemed, yet it was sufficiently momentous to cause a fright to the two older girls. Especially to Ruth, who felt herself to be, as she literally was, a mother to the other three; though now that Agnes was putting up her hair and putting down her dresses a new element had come into the household.
While yet in tender years the responsibilities of life had fallen on the shoulders of Ruth Kenway. In their former home—a city more pretentious in many ways than picturesque Milton, their present home—the Kenways had lived in what, literally, was a tenement house. Their father and mother were dead, and the small pension granted Mr. Kenway, who had been a soldier in the Spanish war, was hardly sufficient for the needs of four growing girls.