The oldest child answered Luke’s question first. “He fell out of a tree. He was shaking down chestnuts to us. And we can’t wake him up.”
The older members of the Kenway party looked at each other seriously. It might be, as this little girl intimated, that her father had been killed in falling from the tree.
CHAPTER II—A DIFFICULT CASE
The four orphaned Kenway sisters lived in Bloomsburg when they were first introduced in the initial volume of this series, called “The Corner House Girls.” Ruth, the eldest, had been doing her best for months to mother her sisters and to take care in addition of Aunt Sarah Maltby, who really was a trial.
At a time when Ruth scarcely knew which way to turn for money to support the family, Mr. Howbridge, a lawyer of Milton, appeared with really wonderful tidings. A distant relative of the Kenways, Uncle Peter Stower, had died and left the four Kenway girls all his property. This included the Stower homestead in Milton, known far and wide as the old Corner House.
Mr. Howbridge was appointed guardian of the girls, as well as executor of the Stower Estate, and Ruth, Agnes, Tess and Dot went to Milton, taking Aunt Sarah with them, and began what proved to be a most interesting and exciting existence in the old Corner House—and elsewhere.
How they made the most delightful friends and had the most wonderful adventures is told in the succeeding volumes of the series, and include experiences at school, tenting on the seashore, taking part in a school play, finding a very odd treasure, the discovery of which aided very needy people, adventures on a delightful motor tour. It was in the seventh volume, “The Corner House Girls Growing Up,” that it seemed as though Ruth, who had then left school, had actually met the young man fated to be her partner in life when they both should grow older. Luke Shepard and his sister, Cecile, became as close friends of the Kenways as Neale O’Neil had previously become.
The eighth book of the series, “The Corner House Girls Snowbound,” told of exciting adventures in a winter camp in the Great Woods, and related the recovery of the Birdsall twins who had run away from Mr. Howbridge’s guardianship because they had got an entirely wrong impression of what a guardian was. At the time of this present nutting expedition, the Birdsalls were both at boarding-school and had learned to love Mr. Howbridge very much indeed, finding him, as the Kenways had, a delightful mentor and friend.
The ninth volume of the series related the story of the girls’ experiences on a houseboat, as well as introducing Neale O’Neil’s father who was long supposed to have lost his life in Alaska. The excitement of these incidents was scarcely over when Tess and Dot and Sammy Pinkney managed to get mixed up with a certain gypsy tribe; so the volume immediately preceding this present story, entitled “The Corner House Girls Among the Gypsies,” had in it quite as much fun and as many thrills as any of the previous volumes.
Fall had come since then, and school had opened for all but Ruth. This was on a certain Saturday after the frosts had opened the chestnut burrs, and Luke Shepard had come from college to spend the week-end at the Corner House. A nutting expedition was suggested over night, and early on this morning Neale O’Neil, who still acted as the Kenways’ chauffeur, had got out the touring car and had driven the party of young folks to the only chestnut wood left standing, because of the blight, in the vicinity of Milton. Sammy Pinkney had, as usual, attached himself to the party, for he had the nature of a barnacle.