CHAPTER I – THE FRETTED SILVER BRACELET
If Sammy Pinkney had not been determined to play a “joey” and hooked back one of the garage doors so as to enter astride a broomstick with a dash and the usual clown announcement, “Here we are again!” all would not have happened that did happen to the Corner House girls – at least, not in just the way the events really occurred.
Even Dot, who was inclined to be forgiving of most of Sammy’s sins both of omission and commission, admitted that to be true. Tess, the next oldest Corner House girl (nobody ever dignified her with the name of “Theresa,” unless it were Aunt Sarah Maltby) was inclined to reflect the opinion regarding most boys held by their oldest sister, Ruth. Tess’s frank statement to this day is that it was entirely Sammy’s fault that they were mixed up with the Gypsies at all.
But —
“Well, if I’m going to be in your old circus,” Sammy announced doggedly, “I’m going to be a joey – or nothin’.”
“You know very well, Sammy, that you can’t be that,” said Tess reprovingly.
“Huh? Why can’t I? I bet I’d make just as good a clown as Mr. Sully Sorber, who is Neale’s half-uncle, or Mr. Asa Scruggs, who is Barnabetta’s father.”
“I don’t mean you can’t be a clown,” interrupted Tess. “I mean you can’t be just nothing. You occupy space, so you must be something. Our teacher says so.”
“Shucks!” ejaculated Sammy Pinkney. “Don’t I know that? And I wish you wouldn’t talk about school. Why! we’re only in the middle of our vacation, I should hope.”
“It seems such a long time since we went to school,” murmured Dot, who was sitting by, nursing the Alice-doll in her arms and waiting her turn to be called into the circus ring, which was the cleared space in the middle of the cement floor.
“That’s because all you folks went off cruising on that houseboat and never took me with you,” grumbled Sammy, who still held a deep-seated grouch because of the matter mentioned. “But ’tain’t been long since school closed – and it isn’t going to be long before the old thing opens again.”
“Why, Sammy!” admonished Tess.
“I just hate school, so I do!” vigorously announced the boy. “I’d rather be a tramp – or a Gypsy. Yes, I would.”
“Or a pirate, Sammy?” suggested Dot reflectively. “You know, me and you didn’t have a very nice time when we went off to be pirates. ’Member?”
“Huh!” grumbled Sammy, “that was because you was along. Girls can’t be pirates worth shucks. And anyway,” he concluded, “I’m going to be the joey in this show, or I won’t play.”
“It will be supper time and the others will be back with the car, so none of us can play if we don’t start in pretty soon,” Tess observed. “Dot and I want to practice our gym work that Neale O’Neil has been teaching us. But you can clown it all you want to, Sammy.”
“Well, that lets me begin the show anyway,” Sammy stated with satisfaction.
He always did want to lead. And now he immediately ran to hook back the door and prepared to make his entrance into the ring in true clowning style, as he had seen Sully Sorber do in Twomley & Sorber’s Herculean Circus and Menagerie.
The Kenway garage opened upon Willow Street and along that pleasantly shaded and quiet thoroughfare just at this time came three rather odd looking people. Two were women carrying brightly stained baskets of divers shapes, and one of these women – usually the younger one – went into the yard of each house and knocked at the side or back door, offering the baskets for sale.
The younger one was black-eyed and rather pretty. She was neatly dressed in very bright colors and wore a deal of gaudy jewelry. The older woman was not so attractive – or so clean.
Loitering on the other side of the street, and keeping some distance behind the Gypsy women, slouched a tall, roughly clad fellow who was evidently their escort. The women came to the Kenway garage some time after Sammy Pinkney had made his famous “entrance” and Dot had abandoned the Alice-doll while she did several handsprings on the mattress that Tess had laid down. Dot did these very well indeed. Neale O’Neil, who had been trained in the circus, had given both the smaller Corner House girls the benefit of his advice and training. They loved athletic exercises. Mrs. McCall, the Corner House housekeeper, declared Tess and Dot were as active as grasshoppers.
The two dark-faced women, as they peered in at the open doorway of the garage, seemed to think Dot’s handsprings were marvelously well done, too; they whispered together excitedly and then the older one slyly beckoned the big Gypsy man across the street to approach.
When he arrived to look over the women’s heads it was Tess who was actively engaged on the garage floor. She was as supple as an eel. Of course, Tess Kenway would not like to be compared to an eel; but she was proud of her ability to “wriggle into a bow knot and out again” – as Sammy vociferously announced.
“Say, Tess! that’s a peach of a trick,” declared the boy with enthusiasm. “Say! Lemme – Huh! What do you want?” For suddenly he saw the two Gypsy women at the door of the garage. The man was now out of sight.
“Ah-h!” whined the old woman cunningly, “will not the young master and the pretty little ladies buy a nice basket of the poor Gypsy? Good fortune goes with it.”
“Gee! who wants to buy a basket?” scoffed Sammy. “You only have to carry things in it.” The bane of Sammy Pinkney’s existence was the running of errands.
“But they are pretty,” murmured Tess.
“Oh – oo! See that nice green and yellow one with the cover,” gasped Dot. “Do you suppose we’ve got money enough to buy that one, Tess? How nice it would be to carry the children’s clothes in when we go on picnics.”
By “children” Dot meant their dolls, of which, the two smaller Corner House girls possessed a very large number. Several of these children, besides the Alice-doll, were grouped upon a bench in the corner of the garage as a part of the circus audience. The remainder of the spectators were Sandyface and her family. Sandyface was now a great, great grandmother cat, and more of her progeny than one would care to catalog tranquilly viewed the little girls’ circus or rolled in kittenish frolic on the floor.
It sometimes did seem as though the old Corner House demesne was quite given up to feline inhabitants. And the recurrent appearance of new litters of kittens belonging to Sandyface herself, her daughters and granddaughters, had ceased to make even a ripple in the pool of Corner House existence.
This explanation regarding the dolls and cats is really aside from our narrative. Tess and Dot both viewed with eager eyes the particular covered basket held out enticingly by the old Gypsy woman.
Of course the little girls had no pockets in their gymnasium suits. But in a pocket of her raincoat which Tess had worn down to the garage over her blouse and bloomers, she found a dime and two pennies – “just enough for two ice-cream cones,” Sammy Pinkey observed.
“Oh! And my Alice-doll has eight cents in her cunning little beaded bag,” cried Dot, with sudden animation.
She produced the coins. But there was only twenty cents in all!
“I – I – What do you ask for that basket, please?” Tess questioned cautiously.
“Won’t the pretty little ladies give the poor old Gypsy woman half a dollar for the basket?”
The little girls lost hope. They were not allowed to break into their banks for any purpose without asking Ruth’s permission, and their monthly stipend of pocket money was very low.
“It is a very nice basket, little ladies,” said the younger Gypsy woman – she who was so gayly dressed and gaudily bejeweled.
“I know,” Tess admitted wistfully. “But if we haven’t so much money, how can we buy it?”
“Say!” interrupted the amateur joey, hands in pockets and viewing the controversy quite as an outsider. “Say, Tess! if you and Dot really want that old basket, I’ve got two-bits I’ll lend you.”
“Oh, Sammy!” gasped Dot. “A whole quarter?”
“Have you got it here with you?” Tess asked.
“Yep,” announced the boy.
“I don’t think Ruth would mind our borrowing twenty-five cents of you, Sammy,” said Tess, slowly.
“Of course not,” urged Dot. “Why, Sammy is just like one of the family.”
“Only when you girls go off cruising, I ain’t,” observed Sammy, his face clouding with remembrance. “Then I ain’t even a step-child.”
But he produced the quarter and offered it to Tess. She counted it with the money already in her hand.
“But – but that makes only forty-five cents,” she said.
The two Gypsy women spoke hissingly to each other in a tongue that the children did not, of course, understand. Then the older woman thrust the basket out again.
“Take!” she said. “Take for forty-fi’ cents, eh? The little ladies can have.”
“Go ahead,” Sammy said as Tess hesitated. “That’s all the old basket is worth. I can get one bigger than that at the chain store for seven cents.”
“Oh, Sammy, it isn’t as bee-you-tiful as this!” gasped Dot.
“Well, it’s a basket just the same.”
Tess put the silver and pennies in the old woman’s clawlike hand and the longed-for basket came into her possession.
“It is a good-fortune basket, pretty little ladies,” repeated the old Gypsy, grinning at them toothlessly. “You are honest little ladies, I can see. You would never cheat the old Gypsy, would you? This is all the money you have to pay for the beautiful basket? Forty-fi’ cents?”
“Aw, say!” grumbled Sammy, “a bargain is a bargain, ain’t it? And forty-five cents is a good deal of money.”
“If – if you think we ought to pay more – ”
Tess held the basket out hesitatingly. Dot fairly squealed:
“Don’t be a ninny, Tessie Kenway! It’s ours now.”
“The basket is yours, little ladies,” croaked the crone as the younger woman pulled sharply at her shawl. “But good fortune goes with it only if you are honest with the poor old Gypsy. Good-bye.”
The two strange women hurried away. Sammy lounged to the door, hands in pockets, to look after them. He caught a momentary glimpse of the tall Gypsy man disappearing around a corner. The two women quickly followed him.
“Oh, what a lovely basket!” Dot was saying.
“I – I hope Ruth won’t scold because we borrowed that quarter of Sammy,” murmured Tess.
“Shucks!” exclaimed their boy friend. “Don’t tell her. You can pay me when you get some more money.”
“Oh, no!” Tess said. “I would not hide anything from Ruth.”
“You couldn’t, anyway,” said the practical Dot. “She will want to know where we got the money to pay for the basket. Oh, do open it, Tess. Isn’t it lovely?”
The cover worked on a very ingeniously contrived hinge. Had the children known much about such things they must have seen that the basket was worth much more than the price they had paid for it – much more indeed than the price the Gypsies had first asked.
Tess lifted the cover. Dot crowded nearer to look in. The shadows of the little girls’ heads at first hid the bottom of the basket. Then both saw something gleaming dully there. Tess and Dot cried out in unison; but it was the latter’s brown hand that darted into the basket and brought forth the bracelet.
“A silver bracelet!” Tess gasped.
“Oh, look at it!” cried Dot. “Did you ever? Do you s’pose it’s real silver, Tess?”
“Of course it is,” replied her sister, taking the circlet in her own hand. “How pretty! It’s all engraved with fret-work – ”
“Hey!” ejaculated Sammy coming closer. “What’s that?”
“Oh, Sammy! A silver bracelet – all fretted, too,” exclaimed the highly excited Dot.
“Huh! What’s that? ‘Fretted’? When my mother’s fretted she’s – Say! how can a silver bracelet be cross, I want to know?”
“Oh, Sammy,” Tess suddenly ejaculated, “these Gypsy women will be cross enough when they miss this bracelet!”
“Oh! Oh!” wailed Dot. “Maybe they’ll come back and want to take it and the pretty basket, Tess. Let’s run and hide ’em!”
CHAPTER II – A PROFOUND MYSTERY
Tess Kenway was positively shocked by her sister Dot’s suggestion. To think of trying to keep the silver bracelet which they knew must belong to the Gypsy woman who had sold them the green and yellow basket, was quite a horrifying thought to Tess.
“How can you say such a thing, Dottie Kenway?” she demanded sternly. “Of course we cannot keep the bracelet. And that old Gypsy lady said we were honest, too. She could see we were. And, then, what would Ruthie say?”
Their older sister’s opinion was always the standard for the other Corner House girls. And that might well be, for Ruth Kenway had been mentor and guide to her sisters ever since Dot, at least, could remember. Their mother had died so long ago that Tess but faintly remembered her.
The Kenways had lived in a very moderately priced tenement in Bloomsburg when Mr. Howbridge (now their guardian) had searched for and found them, bringing them with Aunt Sarah Maltby to the old Corner House in Milton. In the first volume of this series, “The Corner House Girls,” these matters are fully explained.
The six succeeding volumes relate in detail the adventures of the four sisters and their friends – and some most remarkable adventures have they had at school, under canvas, at the seashore, as important characters in a school play, solving the mystery of a long-lost fortune, on an automobile tour through the country, and playing a winning part in the fortunes of Luke and Cecile Shepard in the volume called “The Corner House Girls Growing Up.”
In “The Corner House Girls Snowbound,” the eighth book of the series, the Kenways and a number of their young friends went into the North Woods with their guardian to spend the Christmas Holidays. Eventually they rescued the twin Birdsall children, who likewise had come under the care of the elderly lawyer who had so long been the Kenway sisters’ good friend.
During the early weeks of the summer, just previous to the opening of our present story, the Corner House girls had enjoyed a delightful trip on a houseboat in the neighboring waters. The events of this trip are related in “The Corner House Girls on a Houseboat.” During this outing there was more than one exciting incident. But the most exciting of all was the unexpected appearance of Neale O’Neil’s father, long believed lost in Alaska.
Mr. O’Neil’s return to the States could only be for a brief period, for his mining interests called him back to Nome. His son, however, no longer mourned him as lost, and naturally (though this desire he kept secret from Agnes) the boy hoped, when his school days were over, to join his father in that far Northland.
There was really no thought in the mind of the littlest Corner House girl to take that which did not belong to her. Most children believe implicitly in “findings-keepings,” and it seemed to Dot Kenway that as they had bought the green and yellow basket in good faith of the two Gypsy women, everything it contained should belong to them.
This, too, was Sammy Pinkney’s idea of the matter. Sammy considered himself very worldly wise.
“Say! what’s the matter with you, Tess Kenway? Of course that bracelet is yours – if you want it. Who’s going to stop you from keeping it, I want to know?”
“But – but it must belong to one of those Gypsy ladies,” gasped Tess. “The old lady asked us if we were honest. Of course we are!”
“Pshaw! If they miss it, they’ll be back after that silver thing fast enough.”
“But, Sammy, suppose they don’t know the bracelet fell into this basket?”
“Then you and Dot are that much in,” was the prompt rejoinder of their boy friend. “You bought the basket and all that was in it. They couldn’t claim the air in that basket, could they? Well, then! how could they lay claim to anything else in the basket?”
Such logic seemed unanswerable to Dot’s mind. But Tess shook a doubtful head. She had a feeling that they ought to run after the Gypsies to return to them at once the bracelet. Only, neither she nor Dot was dressed properly to run through Milton’s best residential streets after the Romany people. As for Sammy —
Happily, so Tess thought, she did not have to decide the matter. Musically an automobile horn sounded its warning and the children ran out to welcome the two older Corner House girls and Neale O’Neil, who acted as their chauffeur on this particular trip.
They had been far out into the country for eggs and fresh vegetables, to the farm, in fact, of Mr. Bob Buckham, the strawberry king and the Corner House girls’ very good friend. In these times of very high prices for food, Ruth Kenway considered it her duty to save money if she could by purchasing at first cost for the household’s needs.
“Otherwise,” this very capable young housewife asked, “how shall we excuse the keeping of an automobile when the up-keep and everything is so high?”
“Oh, do,” begged Agnes, the flyaway sister, “do let us have something impractical, Ruth. I just hate the man who wrote the first treatise on political economy.”
“I fancy it is ‘household economy’ you mean, Aggie,” returned her sister, smiling. “And I warrant the author of the first treatise on that theme was a woman.”
“Mrs. Eva Adam, I bet!” chuckled Neale O’Neil, hearing this controversy from the driver’s seat. “It has always been in my mind that the First Lady of the Garden of Eden was tempted to swipe those apples more because the price of other fruit was so high than for any other reason.”
“Then Adam was stingy with the household money,” declared Agnes.
“I really wish you would not use such words as ‘swipe’ before the children, Neale,” sighed Ruth who, although she was no purist, did not wish the little folk to pick up (as they so easily did) slang phrases.
She stepped out of the car when Neale had halted it within the garage and Agnes handed her the egg basket. Tess and Dot immediately began dancing about their elder sister, both shouting at once, the smallest girl with the green and yellow basket and Tess with the silver bracelet in her hand.
“Oh, Ruthie, what do you think?”
“See how pretty it is! And they never missed it.”
“Can’t we keep it, Ruthie?” This from Dot. “We paid those Gypsy ladies for the basket and all that was in it. Sammy says so.”
“Then it must be true of course,” scoffed Agnes. “What is it?”
“Well, I guess I know some things,” observed Sammy, bridling. “If you buy a walnut you buy the kernel as well as the shell, don’t you? And that bracelet was inside that covered basket, like the kernel in a nut.”
“Listen!” exclaimed Neale likewise getting out of the car. “Sammy’s a very Solomon for judgment.”
“Now don’t you call me that, Neale O’Neil!” ejaculated Sammy angrily. “I ain’t a pig.”
“Wha – what! Who called you a pig, Sammy?”
“Well, that’s what Mr. Con Murphy calls his pig – ‘Solomon.’ You needn’t call me by any pig-name, so there!”
“I stand reproved,” rejoined Neale with mock seriousness. “But, see here: What’s all this about the basket and the bracelet – a two-fold mystery?”
“It sounds like a thriller in six reels,” cried Agnes, jumping out of the car herself to get a closer view of the bracelet and the basket. “My! Where did you get that gorgeous bracelet, children?”
The beauty of the family, who loved “gew-gaws” of all kinds, seized the silver circlet and tried it upon her own plump arm. Ruth urged Tess to explain and had to place a gentle palm upon Dot’s lips to keep them quiet so that she might get the straight of the story from the more sedate Tess.
“And so, that’s how it was,” concluded Tess. “We bought the basket after borrowing Sammy’s twenty-five cent piece, and of course the basket belongs to us, doesn’t it, Ruthie?”
“Most certainly, my dear,” agreed the elder sister.
“And inside was that beautiful fretted silver bracelet. And that – ”
“Just as certainly belongs to the Gypsies,” finished Ruth. “At least, it does not belong to you and Dot.”
“Aw shu-u-cks!” drawled Sammy in dissent.
Even Agnes cast a wistful glance at the older girl. Ruth was always so uncompromising in her decisions. There was never any middle ground in her view. Either a thing was right, or it was wrong, and that was all there was to it!
“Well,” sighed Tess, “that Gypsy lady said she knew we were honest.”
“I think,” Ruth observed thoughtfully, “that Neale had better run the car out again and look about town for those Gypsy women. They can’t have got far away.”
“Say, Ruth! it’s most supper time,” objected Neale. “Have a heart!”
“Anyway, I wouldn’t trouble myself about a crowd of Gypsies,” said Agnes. “They may have stolen the bracelet.”
“Oh!” gasped Tess and Dot in unison.
“You know what June Wildwood told us about them. And she lived with Gypsies for months.”
“Gypsies are not all alike,” the elder sister said confidently in answer to this last remark by Agnes. “Remember Mira and King David Stanley, and how nice they were to Tess and Dottie?” she asked, speaking of an incident related in “The Corner House Girls on a Tour.”
“I don’t care!” exclaimed Agnes, pouting, and still viewing the bracelet on her arm with admiration. “I wouldn’t run my legs off chasing a band of Gypsies.”
They were all, however, bound to be influenced by Ruth’s decision.
“Well, I’ll hunt around after supper,” Neale said. “I’ll take Sammy with me. You’ll know those women if you see them again, won’t you, kid?”
“Sure,” agreed Sammy, forgiving Neale for calling him “kid” with the prospect of an automobile ride in the offing.
“But – but,” breathed Tess in Ruth’s ear, “if those Gypsy ladies don’t take back the bracelet, it belongs to Dot and me, doesn’t it, Sister?”
“Of course. Agnes! do give it back, now. I expect it will cause trouble enough if those women are not found. A bone of contention! Both these children will want to wear the bracelet at the same time. Don’t you add to the difficulty, Agnes.”
“Why,” drawled Agnes, slowly removing the curiously engraved silver ornament from her arm, “of course they will return for it. Or Neale will find them.”
This statement, however, was not borne out by the facts. Neale and Sammy drove all about town that evening without seeing the Gypsy women. The next day the smaller Corner House girls were taken into the suburbs all around Milton; but nowhere did they find trace of the Gypsies or of any encampment of those strange, nomadic people in the vicinity.
The finding of the bracelet in the basket remained a mystery that the Corner House girls could not soon forget.
“It does seem,” said Tess, “as though those Gypsy ladies couldn’t have meant to give us the bracelet, Dot. The old one said so much about our being honest. She didn’t expect us to steal it.”
“Oh, no!” agreed Dot. “But Neale O’Neil says maybe the Gypsy ladies stole it, and were afraid to keep it. So they gave it to us.”
“M-mm,” considered Tess. “But that doesn’t explain it at all. Even if they wanted to get rid of the bracelet, they need not have given it to us in such a lovely basket. Ruth says the basket is worth a whole lot more than the forty-five cents we paid for it.”
“It is awful pretty,” sighed Dot in agreement.
“Some day they will surely come back for the bracelet.”
“Oh, I hope not!” murmured the littlest Corner House girl. “It makes such a be-you-tiful belt for my Alice-doll, when it’s my turn to wear it.”