“I’m not sure, Ruth, but I did think I heard something in the kitchen, still——”
“I shouldn’t have left Dot and Tess there alone to finish making their cakes, I’m afraid,” went on the oldest of the Corner House girls. “But they begged and teased so to be allowed to bake something by themselves, that I gave in against my better judgment. I’m always doing that!”
“Don’t reproach yourself,” murmured Agnes. “Oh, I’m afraid I’ve broken one of my nails,” she exclaimed, looking at her well-manicured hands. “Yes, it is broken!” she sighed. “And I was going to——”
“Something else besides a fingernail is broken, to judge by the racket down in the kitchen!” exclaimed Ruth, interrupting her “beauty sister,” as she sometimes called Agnes.
Ruth had opened the door of the room in which she and her sister, with the housekeeper, Mrs. MacCall, had been discussing the advisability of having it repapered in anticipation of the time when Miss Hastings should come to visit them, the Boston girl having accepted a very cordial invitation to stay a few weeks at the Corner House.
“Something has happened!” declared Ruth, with conviction.
“Oh, the puir bairns!” exclaimed motherly Mrs. MacCall. “Hech! Hech! Mayhap the dratted stove hae burned them! Oh, woe is me!”
“They know better than to get burned,” answered Ruth. “But I think we’d better go down and see what has happened.”
“You think!” gasped Agnes, looking at her fractured nail. “I just know we had!”
Followed by Mrs. MacCall, with her ominous “hech! hech!” the while mumbling incomprehensible Scotch words, the two sisters hastened down the stairs. When they caught sight of the kitchen with its mixture of eggs and alligator, Ruth felt like saying what Sammy had said—with added adjectives.