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The Corner House Girls' Odd Find
The Corner House Girls' Odd Find / Where they made it, and What the Strange Discovery led to
CHAPTER I – A FIND IN THE GARRET
The fireboard before the great chimney-place in the spacious dining room of the old Corner House in Milton had been removed by Uncle Rufus, and in the dusk of the winter’s afternoon the black pit of it yawned, ogre-like, upon the festive room.
The shadows were black under the big tree, the tip of which touched the very high ceiling and which had just been set up in the far corner and not yet festooned. The girls were all busy bringing tinsel and glittering balls and cheery red bells and strings of pink and white popcorn, while yards and yards of evergreen “rope,” with which to trim the room itself, were heaped in a corner.
It was the day but one before Christmas, and without the gaslight – or even the usual gas-log fire on the hearth – the dining room was gloomy even at mid-afternoon. Whenever Dot Kenway passed the black opening under the high and ornate mantel, she shuddered.
It was a creepy, delicious shudder that the smallest Corner House girl experienced, for she said to Tess, her confidant and the next oldest of the four sisters:
“Of course, I know it’s the only way Santa Claus ever comes. But – but I should think he’d be afraid of – of rats or things. I don’t see why he can’t come in at the door; it’d be more respecterful.”
“I s’pose you mean respectable,” sighed Tess. “But where would he hitch his reindeer? You know he has to tie them to the chimney on the roof.”
“Why does he?” demanded the inquisitive Dot. “There’s a perfectly good hitching post by our side gate on Willow Street.”
“Who ever heard of such a thing!” exclaimed Tess, with exasperation. “Do you s’pose Santa Claus would come to the side door and knock like the old clo’s man? You are the most ridiculous child, Dot Kenway,” concluded Tess, with her most grown-up air.
“Say,” said the quite unabashed Dot, reflectively, “do you know what Sammy Pinkney says?”
“Nothing very good, I am sure,” rejoined her sister, tartly, for just at this time Sammy Pinkney, almost their next-door neighbor, was very much in Tess Kenway’s bad books. “What can you expect of a boy who wants to be a pirate?”