Part 22 (2/2)
The first of these instructions Ruth was able to follow faithfully.
The cost of such a trip was not to be considered. She would not even allow Luke and Cecile to speak about it.
Ruth had her own private bank account, arranged for and supervised, it was true, by Mr. Howbridge, and she prided herself upon doing business in a businesslike way.
Just before they boarded the train at Oakhurst station she telegraphed home that they were coming and for Neale to meet them with the car, late though their arrival would be. If on time, the train would stop at Milton just after midnight.
When that telegram arrived at the old Corner House it failed to make much of a disturbance in the pool of the household existence. And for a very good reason. So much had happened there during the previous few hours that the advent of the King and Queen of England (and this Mrs.
McCall herself said) would have created a very small ”hooroo.”
As for Neale O'Neil's getting out the car and going down to the station to meet Ruth and her friends when they arrived, that seemed to be quite impossible. The coming of the telegram was at an hour when already the Kenway automobile was far away from Milton, and Neale and Agnes in it were having high adventure.
CHAPTER XVIII--THE JUNKMAN AGAIN
When Ruth started home with Luke and Cecile Shepard several days had elapsed since Neale O'Neil and Agnes had discovered that Mr. Howbridge was out of town.
The chief clerk at the lawyer's office had little time to give to the youthful visitors, for just then he had his hands full with a caller whom Neale and Agnes had previously found was a person not easily to be pacified.
”There is a crazy man in here,” grumbled the clerk. ”I don't know what he means. He says he 'comes from Kenway,' and there is something about Queen Alma and her bracelet. What do you know about this, Miss Kenway?”
”Oh, my prophetic soul!” gasped Neale O'Neil. ”Costello, the junkman!”
”Dear, me! We thought we could see Mr. Howbridge before that man came.”
”Tell me what it means,” urged the clerk. ”Then I will know what to say to the lunatic.”
”I guess he's a nut all right,” admitted Neale. He told the lawyer's clerk swiftly all they knew about the junkman, and all they knew about the silver bracelet.
”All right. It is something for Mr. Howbridge to attend to himself,”
declared the clerk. ”You hang on to that bracelet and don't let anybody have it. I'll try to shoo off this fellow. Anyway, it may not belong to his family at all. I'll hold him here till you two get away.”
Neale and Agnes were glad to escape contact with the junkman again. He was too vehement.
”He'll walk right in and search the house for the thing,” grumbled Neale. ”We can't have him frightening the children.”
”And I don't want to be frightened myself,” added Agnes.
They hurried home, and all that day, every time the bell rang or she heard a voice at the side door, the girl felt a sudden qualm. ”Wish we had never advertised that bracelet at all,” she confessed in secret.
”Dear, me! I wonder what Ruth will say?”
Nevertheless she failed to take her older sister into her confidence regarding Queen Alma's bracelet when she wrote to her. She felt quite convinced that Ruth would not approve of what she and Neale had done, so why talk about it?
This was the att.i.tude Agnes maintained. Perhaps the whole affair would be straightened out before Ruth came back. And otherwise, she considered, everything was going well at the Corner House in Milton.
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