That explained the presence on the side porch of the barrel of odds and ends collected for the ash man to remove. He had not called, and seeing the receptacle there, with an old feather pillow among the other refuse, Tess thought she had her opportunity.

"Run along now, my bonny bairns! Run along!" counseled the old Scotch woman. "'Tis late it's getting, and the la.s.sies will be here to lunch before we know it."

"Yes, do run along," begged Ruth. "And then come back to be washed and have your hair combed. I want you to look nice if, accidentally, you appear on the scene."

Thus bidden, and fortified with another cookie each, Tess and Dot hurried on to the store, Dot tenderly trying to pinch into shape the flattened nose of her Alice-doll.

Rufus got a broom and began to clean the scattered trash to put back into the barrel, and Mrs. MacCall hurried into her kitchen, where Linda was humming a Finnish song as she clattered amid the pots and pans.

"Oh, we must finish the parlor and library," declared Ruth. "Do come and help, Agnes."

"Coming, Ruth. Oh, here's Neale!" she added, pausing to look toward the gate through which at that moment appeared a st.u.r.dy lad of pleasant countenance.

"He acts as though he had something on his mind," went on Agnes, as the youth broke into a run on seeing her and her sister on the steps. "Wait a moment, Ruth. He may have something to tell us."

"The fates forbid that it is anything more about Tess and Dot!" murmured Ruth, for the children had some minutes before disappeared down the street.

"News!" cried Neale O'Neil, as he swung up the steps. "I've got such news for you! Oh, it's great!" and his face fairly shone.

CHAPTER III

THE ELEVATOR

"Just a minute now, Neale," said Ruth, in the quiet voice she sometimes had to use when Tess and Dot, either or both, were engaged in one of their many startling feats. "Quiet down a bit, please, before you tell us."

The boy had reached the porch, panting from his run, and he had been about to burst out with the news, which he could hardly contain, when Ruth addressed him.

"What's the matter? Don't you want to hear it?" he asked, fanning himself vigorously with his hat.

"Oh, yes, it isn't that," said Agnes, with a smile, which caused Neale's lips to part in an answering one, showing his white teeth that made a contrast to his tanned face. "But we have just pa.s.sed through rather a strenuous time, Neale, and if you have anything more startling to tell us about Tess and Dot--"

"Oh, it isn't about them!" laughed Neale O'Neil. "They're all right. I just saw them going down the street."

"Thank goodness!" murmured Ruth. "I thought they had got into more mischief. Well, go on, Neale, and tell us the news. Is it good?"

"The best ever," he answered, sobering down a little. "The only trouble is that there isn't very much of it. Only a sort of rumor, so to speak."

"Sit down," said Agnes, and she herself suited her action to the words.

"Uncle Rufus has the spilled trash cleaned up now."

"Yes'm, it's done all cleaned up now," murmured the old colored servant as he departed, having made the side porch presentable again. "But I suah does wish dat trash man'd come 'roun' yeah befo' dem two chilluns come back. Dey's gwine to upsot dat barrel ag'in, if dey gets a chanst; dey suah is!" and he departed, shaking his head woefully enough.

"What happened?" asked Neale. "An accident?"

"You might call it that," a.s.sented Ruth, sitting down beside her sister.

"It was a combination of Tess, Dot, Alice-doll and Almira all rolled into one."

"That's enough!" laughed the boy, to whom readers of the previous volumes of the series need no introduction.

Neale O'Neil had once been in a circus. He was known as "Master Jakeway"

and was the son of James O'Neil. Neale's uncle, William Sorber, was the ringmaster and lion tamer in the show billed as "Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie." Some time before the opening of the present story, Neale had left the circus and had come to Milton to live, making his home with Con Murphy, the town cobbler.

"Well, go on with your news, Neale," said Ruth gently, as she gazed solicitously at the boy. She was beginning to have more and more something of a feeling of responsibility toward him. This was due to the fact that Ruth was growing older, as has been evidenced, and also to the fact that Neale was also, and at times, she thought, he showed the lack of the care of a loving mother.

"Yes, I want to hear it," interposed Agnes. "And then we simply must get the house in shape, if the girls aren't to find us with smudges of dust on our noses."

"Is there anything I can do?" asked Neale eagerly. "Are you going to have a party?"

"Some of Ruth's young ladies are coming to lunch," explained Agnes. "I don't suppose I may be cla.s.sed with them," and she looked shyly at her sister.

"I don't see why not," came the retort from the oldest Kenway girl. "I'd like to have you come to the meeting, Agnes."

"No, thank you, civics are not much in my line. I hated 'em in school.

Though maybe I'll come to the eats. But let's hear Neale's news. It may spoil from being kept."

"Not much danger of that," said the boy, with another bright smile. "But are you sure there isn't anything I can do to help?"

"Perfectly sure, Neale," answered Ruth. "The two irrepressibles brought me the flowers I wanted to decorate with, and it only remains to put them in vases. But now I'm sure we have chattered enough about ourselves. Let us hear about you."

"It isn't so much about me; it's about--father," and Neale's voice sank when he said that. He spoke in almost a reverent tone. And then his face lighted up again as he exclaimed:

"I have some news about him! That's why I ran to tell you. I knew you'd be glad."

"Oh, Neale, that's fine!" cried Agnes, clasping him by the arm. "After all these years, really to have news of him! I'm so glad!"

"Is he really found?" asked Ruth, who was of a less excitable type than her sister, though she could get sufficiently worked up when there was need for it.

"No, he isn't exactly found," went on Neale. "I only wish he were. But I just heard, in a roundabout way, that he may not be so very far from here."

"That is good news," declared Ruth. "How did you hear it?"

"Well, you know my father was what is called a rover," went on the boy.

"I presume I don't need to tell you that. He wouldn't have been in the circus business with Uncle Bill, and he wouldn't have had me in the circus--along with the trick mules--unless he had loved to travel about and see the country."

"That's a safe conclusion," remarked Agnes. To her sister and herself Neale's circus experiences were an old story. He had often told them how, when a small boy, he had performed in the sawdust ring.

"Yes, father was a rover," went on Neale. "At least that's the conclusion I've come to of late. I really didn't know him very well. He left the circus when I was still small and told Uncle Bill to look after me. Well, Uncle Bill did, I'll say that for him. He was as kind as any boy's uncle could be."

"Anyhow, as you know, father left the circus, gave me in charge of Uncle Bill, and went off to seek his fortune. I suppose he realized that I would be better off out of a circus, but he knew he had to live, and money is needed for that. So that's why he quit the ring, I imagine.

He's been seeking his fortune for quite a while now, and--"

"Neale, do you mean to say he has come back?" cried Agnes.

"Not exactly," was the answer. "At least if he has come back I haven't seen him. But I just met a man--a sort of tramp he is, to tell you the truth--and he says he knew a man who saw my father in the Alaskan Klondike, where father had a mine. And this man--this tramp--says my father started back to the States some time ago."