“Oh, what has happened?” cried Agnes.
“Sammy was doing a trick, Aggie, and—” began Dot. Then she caught sight of her Alice-doll on the floor with a slowly moving trail of egg yellow, like lava from a volcano, working toward her, and with a cry sprang to save her.
“Trick!” spluttered Robbie Foote, as he arose and wiped some white of egg from his face. “If you call that a trick——”
“What’s burning?” asked Ruth.
“Oh, my cake! My cake!” shouted Tess.
Mrs. MacCall simply raised her hands in the air. She was beyond speech.
“This,” said Sammy Pinkney again, “is fierce!”
But it was not always thus in the Corner House. Usually the house was as quiet and orderly as is the normal household inhabited by four healthy, happy girls and their friends and playmates. However, this confusion will serve one good purpose. It will enable me to acquaint my new readers more formally with the characters who are to play their parts in this story.
Bloomingsburg was the former home of the Kenway sisters when you first met them in the opening volume of this series, called “The Corner House Girls.” There was a reason for that name, since the quartette came to live in the Corner House at Milton. A distant relative of the Kenways, Uncle Peter Stower, had died and left the four orphan girls all his property. This included the Stower homestead, known far and wide in that section as the old Corner House.
Mr. Howbridge, who was named the guardian of the girls, managed matters for them and saw to it that Ruth, Agnes, Dot and Tess were safely domiciled in the Corner House. With them came Aunt Sarah Maltby, an old lady who was rather a trial at times, for she was always afraid something was going to happen. What this “something” was she never could be sure of, but it was an ever-present fear.