“What is the matter?” demanded the blonde girl. “If this Corner House isn’t the noisiest place in Milton—Ruth, see that goat!”
“Well, Sammy!” exclaimed Ruth Kenway, severely, “why didn’t you bring Scalawag, the pony, into the house as well? That goat!”
“I was goin’ to,” confessed the rather abashed Sammy. “But I didn’t have time.”
“Don’t you ever do such a thing again, Sammy Pinkney!” ordered Ruth, severely.
She had to be severe. Otherwise the younger ones would have completely overrun the old Corner House and made it unlivable for more sedate and quiet folk.
The responsibility for the welfare of her three sisters and that of Aunt Sarah Maltby, who lived with them, had early fallen on Ruth Kenway’s shoulders. In a much larger city than Milton the Kenways had lived in a very poor tenement and had had a hard struggle to get along on a small pension, their mother and father both being dead, until Mr. Howbridge, administrator of Uncle Peter Stower’s estate, had looked the sisters up.
At that time there was some uncertainty as to whom the old Corner House, standing opposite the Parade Ground in Milton, and the rest of the Stower property belonged; for Uncle Peter Stower had died, and his will could not be found. That there was a will, Mr. Howbridge knew, for he had drawn it for the miserly old man who had lived alone with his colored servant, Uncle Rufus, in the old Corner House for so long.
The surrogate, however, finally allowed the guardian of the Kenway sisters to place them in the roomy old house, with their aunt and with Mrs. MacCall as housekeeper, while the court tangle was straightened out. This last was satisfactorily arranged, as related in the first book of this series, entitled “The Corner House Girls.”
“Even Ruth could scarcely keep a sober face.”