“Mr. Howbridge! It will be more than a party. It will be a convention,” gasped Ruth.
“It’s such a lonely place that we’ll need a big crowd to make it worth while going at all,” the lawyer laughed. “Yes. Cecile and Luke are invited. I will have them written to at once—in addition to your own invitation to them, Miss Ruth.”
“Dear me! you are just the best guardian, Mr. Howbridge,” sighed Agnes ecstatically.
“And I think,” Ruth added, “that you ought to think seriously of taking the Birdsall twins with us.”
That was not decided at that time, however. And when the party got back to the old Corner House, just across from the Parade Ground at the head of Main Street, Mr. Howbridge was met with a piece of news that shocked him much more than had the thought of the twins making their home with him in his quiet bachelor residence.
A clerk from the lawyer’s office awaited Mr. Howbridge. There was a telegram from Rodgers, the Birdsalls’ ex-butler. It read:
“Ralph and Rowena away since yesterday noon. Hospitals searched. Cannot have pond dragged. Two feet of ice. Wire instructions.
—Rodgers.”
[CHAPTER IV—ANTICIPATIONS]
Mr. Howbridge, before he hurried away to his office, asked Ruth: