The Corner House Girls' Odd Find Part 40

"Well, who are they?" demanded Agnes. "We don't know them. I suppose the courts would have to decide. But I guess a part of the money, anyway, would come to us. Enough to buy an automobile."

"No," repeated Ruth, shaking her head.

"Why not?" cried her sister. "Of course it's ours!"

"That's what I say. But your sister wants to give it all away," said Barnabetta.

"Give it all away!" cried Agnes.

"It isn't ours-or, it _wasn't_ ours-to give," Ruth declared.

"I should say not!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the puzzled Agnes.

"But I do know whom it belonged to," said Ruth, quietly.

"Not Aunt Sarah?" gasped Agnes.

"No. n.o.body at all here. It was hidden in our garret by Lemuel Aden when he was here the last time to see Uncle Peter."

"Goodness me!" cried Agnes. "Lemuel Aden? That wicked old miser?"

"Yes."

"But how do you know, Ruth Kenway? I thought he died in a poorhouse?"

"He did. That was like the miser he was."

"But, if he's dead-?" But Agnes did not follow the idea to its conclusion.

"Why, don't you see," Ruth hastened to say. "The money belongs to Mr.

Aden's nieces-Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill. And they need it so!"

"Oh, my goodness! so it does!"

"And we have lost it!" finished Ruth, in despair.

"Well! they can't blame us," Agnes said, swift to be upon the defensive.

"But I blame myself. I should have taken more care of the book, in the first place."

"Then you don't blame Neale?" demanded Agnes, quickly.

"He's to blame for carrying the book off without saying anything about it to us," said Ruth. "But I am mainly at fault."

"No," said Barnabetta suddenly. "I'm to blame. If I had left the book in the bag on the porch, you girls would have found it all right, and the money would not have been stolen."

"I don't see how you make that out," Agnes said. "If the robber found the book in that closet where you hid it, why couldn't he have found it anywhere else in the house?"

"Perhaps not if I had locked it in the silver safe in the pantry," Ruth said slowly.

"Oh, well! what does it matter who's at fault?" Agnes demanded, impatiently. "The money's gone."

"Yes, it's gone," repeated her sister. "And poor Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill, who need it so much, will never see it."

"You girls worry a lot over other folks' troubles," said Barnabetta.

"And those women you tell about don't even know that their grandfather left the money, do they?"

"Their uncle," corrected Ruth.

"Of course not," said Agnes, in reply to Barnabetta, and quite subdued now by Ruth's revelation regarding the probable owners of the fortune.

"But, you see, Barnabetta, they are our friends; and we wanted very much to help them, anyway."

"And it did seem as though Providence must have sent us to that corner of the garret that evening, just so Agnes should find the old alb.u.m,"

added Ruth.

"But I wish I hadn't found it!" wailed Agnes, suddenly. "Just see the trouble we're in."

"Then I guess 'twasn't providential your goin' there, was it?" demanded Barnabetta.

"We can't say that," responded Ruth, thoughtfully.

"You Corner House girls are the greatest!" burst out the trapeze performer. "I never saw anybody like you! Do you spend all your time tryin' to help other folks?"

"Why-we help when we can and where we can," Ruth said.

"It's lots of fun, too," put in Agnes. "It's nice to make friends."

"Why-I believe it must be," sighed Barnabetta. "But I never thought of it-just so. I never saw folks like you Corner House girls before. That's what made me feel so mean when I had robbed you."

"Oh, don't let's talk any more about _that_," Ruth said, with her old kindness of tone and manner. "We'll forget it."

But Barnabetta said, seriously: "I never can. Don't think it! I'm goin'

to remember it all the days of my life. And I _know_ it's my fault that you've lost all the money."

Ruth returned the poker to its place, and Agnes swept up the chips of wood and the bits of the broken lock. Ruth carefully put away the big old book Agnes had found in the garret.

"Locking the barn after the horse is stolen," commented Agnes.

Ruth felt that she could not finish that letter to Mr. Howbridge. There was no haste about it. She could wait to tell him all about the catastrophe when he returned to Milton. Advice now was of no value to her. The fortune was gone. Indeed, she shrank from talking about it any more. Talk would not bring the treasure back, that was sure.

She had not Agnes' overpowering curiosity. There was a sort of dumb ache at Ruth's heart, and she sighed whenever she remembered poor Mrs. Eland and her sister.

If Dr. Forsyth was to be believed, a long, long rest was Miss Pepperill's only cure. News from the State Hospital had a.s.sured the friends of the unfortunate school teacher that she would soon be at liberty.

But she might then lapse into a morose and unfortunate state of mind, unless she could rest, have a surcease of worry, and a change of scene.

How could poor Mrs. Eland leave her position to care for her sister? And how could either of them go away for a year or two to rest, with their small means?

It was, indeed, a very unfortunate condition of affairs. That the hospital matron knew nothing as yet about the fortune which should be her own and her sister's, made it no better in Ruth's opinion.