.

"But if it had been out of doors," Sammy grumbled, "where there weren't
any lamps and things, it would have worked fine. I tell you, Tess, we
could string it from your house to mine, and the carrier could be loaded
up at one station and unloaded and loaded again at the other. Crickey,
it would be fun!"

"But maybe Ruthie wouldn't let us do it," suggested Tess, beginning to
be enamored of the boy's idea, yet having her doubts about the
feasibility of the plan. "It would knock people's hats off."

"What would!" gasped Sammy.

"The wire--or the airship traveling back and forth."

"Oh, Je-ru-sa-_lem_,'" again exploded Sammy. "You wanted an airship,
didn't you? 'Way up in the air--not so's you can reach it from the
ground. Why, we'll string the wire from my bedroom window to one of the
windows of the room you and Dot sleep in."

"Oh!" cried Dot, beginning to visualize the scheme now. "Just like the
cash-carriers in the Five and Ten Cent Store."

"But Ruthie wouldn't let us, I'm afraid," murmured Tess, still doubtful.

"Let's ask her," said Sammy.

"Oh, let's!" cried Dot.

But when they hunted for Ruth, the eldest of the four Corner House
girls, she was not to be found on the premises; and if the children had
but known it just at that time Ruth Kenway was having an adventure of
her own which was, later, to prove of immense interest to all the Corner
House family.

CHAPTER II

THE OLD GENTLEMAN WITH THE GREEN UMBRELLA

Nobody had ever called Ruth Kenway pretty. That was, perhaps, because
her next youngest sister, Agnes, was an acknowledged beauty. Everything
is comparative.

Mrs. MacCall said that "handsome is as handsome does." Then, of course,
in the minds of the other members of the Corner House family, Ruth was
very beautiful indeed.

She had a lovely smile, and a low sweet, "mother" voice. She was,
indeed, all the mother Dot had ever known; nor could Tess remember their
"really-truly" mother very clearly.

Ruth had been calling on the other side of town. She went once a week
without fail to have afternoon tea with Mr. Howbridge, their guardian
and the administrator of the Stower estate, and this was the afternoon
for that pleasant duty.

If there was anything of a serious nature to be talked over between the
lawyer and the oldest Corner House girl, it was done in his pleasant
library over the old silver tea service, where there were no "small
pitchers with big ears."

"And so our moneys