The two older sisters reached the porch together, there to find Mrs. MacCall holding to Tess, whom she was brushing off and murmuring to in a low voice, filled with much Scotch burring.
Dot stood at the foot of the steps holding a rather crushed doll out at arm’s length, for all who would to view. And stalking off over the lawn was Almira, the cat, carrying in her mouth a wee kitten. Uncle Rufus was hobbling toward the scene of the excitement as fast as his rheumatism would allow. Scattered on the ground at the foot of the steps was a collection of odds and ends—“trash” Uncle Rufus called it. The trash had come from an overturned barrel, and it was this barrel rolling down the steps and off the porch that had caused the noise.
“What happened?” demanded Ruth, breathing more easily when she saw that the casualty list was confined to the doll.
“It was Tess,” declared Dot. “She tipped the barrel over and it rolled on my Alice-doll and now look at her.”
Dot referred to the doll, not to her sister, though Tess was rather a sight, for she was covered with feathers from an old pillow that had been thrown into the barrel and had burst open during the progress of the accident.
At first Tess had been rather inclined to cry, but finding, to her great relief, that she was unhurt, she changed her threatened tears into laughter and said:
“Ain’t I funny looking? Just like a duck!”
“What were you trying to do, children?” asked Ruth, trying to speak rather severely in her capacity as “mother.”
“I was trying to put Almira and one of her kittens into the barrel,” explained Tess, now that Mrs. MacCall had got off most of the feathers. “I leaned over to put Almira in the barrel, soft and easy like, down on the other pillow, and it upset—I mean the barrel did. It began to roll, and I couldn’t stop it and it rolled right off the porch and—”
“Right over my Alice-doll it rolled, and she’s all squashed!” voiced Dot.