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But there were no pictures of animals. Dot hurriedly turned the pages. In the back were engravings on green paper, stuck into the old book. The green slips of paper had pictures on them, but nothing that interested Dot.
Pooh! she thought to herself, did the smallest Corner House girl, old money thats all it is. Just like the money Mr. Howbridge gives Ruth every month to pay bills with. I spose its money thats no good any more.
She shut the book, disappointed, and clattered down stairs after her sisters. Nobody else had time to look at the family album just then. Agnes tossed her find into a corner until some more convenient occasion for looking at it. She and Ruth got the metal cleaning paste and rags and a chamois, and began to polish the candlesticks. The smaller girls returned to the stringing of popcorn.
Suddenly they all stopped work. With upraised hands and astonished looks, the four listened for a repetition of the sound that had startled them.
It came again, immediately. It was in the chimney. There was a muffled shout, then a scratching and a scraping, coming rapidly down the brick-and-mortar tunnel.
Oh! Oh! OH! squealed Dot, in crescendo. Santa Claus has come ahead of time!
If thats Santa Claus, declared Agnes, jumping up to run to the open fireplace, hes missed his footing and is falling down the chimney!
CHAPTER II A PERFECTLY SAVAGE SANTA CLAUS
Did you girls see that little imp, Sam Pinkney? Linda says he came through the kitchen a while ago, and when he heard you had gone to the garret he went up the back stairs to find you.
Sammy Pinkney! chorused the two smallest Corner House girls.
Well! it isnt Santa then, added Dot, with immense relief.
Its that imp, sure enough! cried Agnes.
And just then a sooty bundle bounced down upon the hearth, to the unbounded amusement, if not amazement, of the Kenway sisters and Mrs. MacCall.
Ever since the Kenway girls had come to Milton and the old Corner House, Sammy Pinkney had been an abundant source of exasperation, amusement, and wonder to them all especially to Tess and Dot.
Their coming to the Corner House, and all its attendant adventure and mystery, is chronicled in the first book of the series, entitled The Corner House Girls. The Kenways and Aunt Sarah Maltby had been very poor in the city where they had lived in a cheap tenement. All they had for support was a small pension. Aunt Sarah proclaimed always that when Peter Stower, of Milton, who was her half brother, died, they would all be rich enough. But that was only talk, so Ruth thought.
One day, however, Mr. Howbridge, a lawyer, came to see the orphans. He had been Uncle Peters man of business and was now administrator of the estate, Uncle Peter having died suddenly.
The lawyer told Ruth that he knew Uncle Peter had left a will making the Kenway girls his heirs-at-law and leaving a very small legacy indeed to Aunt
Sarah. But Uncle Peter was queer, and at the last had hidden the will. The lawyer said the Kenways must come and occupy the old Corner House in Milton until the will was found.
Aunt Sarah came with them of course. She considered herself very badly used, and acted as though she thought the best of everything in their new station in life should be hers. The Court made Mr. Howbridge the girls guardian, and the four sisters lived a rather precarious existence at the old Corner House for the first few months, for they were not at all sure that they were in their rightful place.
Indeed, when the lady from Ypsilanti with her little girl came along, and the lady claimed that she and Lillie were Uncle Peters rightful heirs, Ruth took them in and treated them kindly in the absence of Mr. Howbridge, fearing that the strangers might have a better claim upon the estate than themselves.
Finally this Mrs. Treble (whom Agnes called Mrs. Trouble, and her little girl, Double Trouble) aroused Aunt Sarahs antagonism. To get them out of the house the queer old woman showed Ruth where Uncle Peter Stower had been wont to hide his private papers.
In this secret hiding place was the lost will. It established the rights of the Corner House girls to the estate and settled them firmly in the Stower homestead.
In the second volume of the series, The Corner House Girls at School, the girls extended the field of their acquaintance, entered the local schools, and became the friends, and finally the confidants, of Neale ONeil, the boy who had run away away from Twomley & Sorbers Herculean Circus and Menagerie, to get an education and be like other boys.
Neale was not the only person the Corner House girls befriended in this and the third book: The Corner House Girls Under Canvas. The latter story relates their adventures at Pleasant Cove, where they went for their vacation the second summer of their sojourn in the old Corner House, and during which time they were the means of reuniting Rosa Wildwood, one of Ruths schoolmates, to her sister, June, who had been living with a tribe of Gypsies.
Back again in the fall, and at school, Tess and Dot chance to meet Mrs. Eland, matron of the Womens and Childrens Hospital, an institution doing excellent work in Milton, but not much appreciated by the townspeople at large. Tess quite falls in love with Mrs. Eland and is horrified to learn that the lonely woman is likely to lose her position, and the hospital to be closed, because of lack of funds.