The Corner House Girls Snowbound Part 19

"No other signs of anybody having been here?"

"Not that I could see," said Hedden.

"Strange--if anybody had been in here who had a key. Have you seen Ike M'Graw?"

"No, sir. The men who brought us up here said the man had gone away--had been away for a week, sir--but would return tonight."

"Then he was not the person who built the fire the embers of which you found. The coals would not have burned for a week. He is the person who has a key to the Lodge, and n.o.body else."

"Yes, sir."

"Whoever got in here, of course, either departed when you came, Hedden, or before. Did you notice any tracks about the house?"

"Plenty, sir. But only of beasts and birds."

"Ah-ha! Are the animals as tame as that up here?"

"There were footprints that the men from town a.s.sured me were those of a big cat of some kind, and there were dog footprints; only the men said they were those of wolves. They say the beasts are getting hungry early in the season, because of the deep and early snow, sir."

"Humph! Better say nothing to the children about that," said Mr.

Howbridge. "Of course, this party's being here will keep any marauding animals at a distance. We won't care for that sort of visitor."

"I think there is no danger, sir. I will tell the chef to throw out no table-sc.r.a.ps, and to feed that big dog we have brought in the back kitchen. Then there will be nothing to attract the wild creatures to the door."

"Good idea," Mr. Howbridge said. "And I will warn them all tomorrow not to leave the vicinity of the Lodge alone. When Ike M'Graw arrives we shall be all right. This vicinity is his natural habitat, and he will know all that's right to do, and what not to do."

Mr. Howbridge still looked about the room. The thing that interested him most was the mystery of the intruder who had built the fire in the grate. Mrs. Birdsall's sitting-room! And the lawyer knew from hearing the story repeated again and again by the sorrowing widower, that the woman had been brought in here after her fall from the horse and had died upon the couch in the corner of the room.

He wondered.

Meanwhile the crowd of young people below were comforted with tea and crackers before they went to their bedrooms to change their clothes for dinner. Mr. Howbridge had brought the customs of his own formal household to Red Deer Lodge, and, knowing how particular the lawyer was, Ruth Kenway had warned the others to come prepared to dress for dinner.

Mrs. MacCall, after drinking her third cup of tea, went off with the chief maid to view the house and learn something about it. The Scotch woman was very capable and had governed Mr. Howbridge's own home before she went to the old Corner House to keep straight the household lines there for the Kenways.

Her situation here at the Lodge was one between the serving people and the family; but the latter, especially the smaller girls, would have been woeful indeed had Mrs. MacCall not sat at the table with them and been one of the family as she was at home in Milton.

The girls were shown to their two big rooms on the second floor, and found them warm and cozy. They were heated by wood fires in drum-stoves. Ike M'Graw, general caretaker of the Lodge, had long since piled each wood box in the house full with billets of hard wood.

Neale and Luke and Sammy were given another room off the gallery above the main hall. There they washed, and freshened up their apparel, and otherwise made themselves more presentable. Even Sammy looked a little less grubby than usual when they came down to the big fire again.

It was black dark outside by this time. The wind was still moaning in the forest, and when they went to the door the fugitive snowflakes drifted against one's cheek.

"Going to be a bad night, I guess," Neale said, coming back from an observation, just as the girls came down the stairway. "Oh, look! see 'em all fussed up!"

The girls had shaken out their furbelows, and now came down smiling and preening not a little. Mr. Howbridge appeared in a Tuxedo coat.

"Wish I'd brought my 'soup to nuts,'" admitted Luke Shepard. "This is going to be a dress-up affair. I thought we were coming into the wilderness to rough it."

"All the roughing it will be done outside the house, young man," said Cecile to her brother. "You must be on your very best behavior inside."

Hedden's a.s.sistant announced dinner, and Mr. Howbridge offered his arm to Mrs. MacCall, who had just descended the stairway in old-fas.h.i.+oned rustling black silk.

Immediately Luke joined the procession with Ruth on his arm, and Neale followed with Agnes, giggling of course. Cecile made Sammy walk beside her, and he was really proud to do this, only he would not admit it.

At the end of the procession came the two little girls.

They had not seen the dining-room before. It was big enough for a banquet hall, and the table without being extended would have seated a dozen. There was an open fireplace on either side of this room. The acetylene lamps gave plenty of light. There were favors at each plate.

There were even flowers on the table. Aside from the unplastered walls and raftered ceiling, one might have thought this dinner served in Mr.

Howbridge's own home.

They all (the older ones at least) began to realize how great a cross it would have been for the lawyer to take into his home in Milton two harum-scarum children like the Birdsall twins. If all tales about them were true, they were what Neale O'Neil called "terrors."

Such children would surely break every rule of the lawyer's well-ordered existence. And bachelors of Mr. Howbridge's age do not take kindly to changes.

"Think of bringing the refinements of his own establishment away up here into the woods for a three weeks' vacation!" gasped Cecile afterwards to Ruth.

To-night at dinner every rule of a well-furnished and well-governed household was followed. Hedden and his a.s.sistant served. The food was deliciously cooked and the sauce of a good appet.i.te aided all to enjoy the meal.

And the fun and laughter! Mr. Howbridge and Mrs. MacCall enjoyed the jokes and chatter as much as the younger people themselves. Dot's discovery that this was not at all like the lodge room on Meadow Street delighted everybody.

"If you think that red deer ever held lodge meetings in this house, you are much mistaken, honey," Agnes told the smallest Corner House girl.

Tom Jonah was allowed to come in and "sit up" at table. The old dog was so well trained that his table manners (and this was Ruth's declaration) were far superior to those of Sammy Pinkney. But Sammy was on his best behavior this evening. The grandeur of the table service quite overpowered him.

When they all filed back into the hall, which was really the living-room and reception hall combined, Tom Jonah went with them and curled down on a warm spot on the hearth. One of the men staggered in with a great armful of chunks for the evening fire. Hedden found a popper and popcorn. There was a basket of s.h.i.+ny apples, and even a jug of sweet cider appeared, to be set down near the fire to take the chill off it.

"Now, this," said Mr. Howbridge, sitting in a great chair with his slippered feet outstretched toward the fire, "is what I call country comfort."

"Whist, man!" exclaimed Mrs. MacCall. "'Tis plain to be seen you ken little about country comforts, or discomforts either. You were born in the city, Mr. Howbridge, and you have lived in the city most of your days. 'Tis little you know what it means to live away from towns and from luxuries."

"Why," laughed the lawyer, "I always go away for a vacation in the summer, and I usually choose some rustic neighborhood."

"Aye. Where they have piped water in the house, and electricity, an'

hair mattresses. Aye. I know your kind of 'country,' too, Mr.

Howbridge. But when I was a child at home we lived in the real country--only two farms in the vale and the shepherds' cots. My feyther was a shepherd, you know."

"You must be some relation of ours, then, Mrs. MacCall," Luke said, smiling.

"Oh, aye. By Adam," said the housekeeper coolly. "I've nae doot we sprang from the same stock the Bible speaks of."

"Now will you be good?" cried Cecile, shaking a finger at her brother.

"Go on, Mrs. MacCall. Tell us about your Highland home."

"Hech! There's very little to tell," said the housekeeper, shaking her head, "save that 'twas a very lonely vale we lived in, and forbye in winter. Then we'd not see a strange body from end to end of the snows.

And the snow came early and went late.

"If we had not a grand oat bin and a cow in the stable we bairns would oft go hungry. Why, our mother would sometimes keep us abed in stormy weather to save turf. A fire like yon," she added, nodding toward the blazing pile in the chimney, "would have been counted a sin even in a laird's house."

"Ah, Mrs. MacCall," said the lawyer, "we're all lairds over here."