"Let's--let's take him to the porch and feed him, Dot," she cried.
"Of course. She's gone for her music lesson and won't know, anyway," declared Tess, recklessly.
"She's upstairs and won't know, either. Besides," Tess said, bolstering up her own desire, "she says she hasn't ever sent anybody away hungry from her door; and that poor dog looks just as hungry as any tramp that ever came to the old Corner House."
The girls ran out of the sitting-room into the huge front hall which, in itself, was almost big enough for a ballroom. It was finished in dark, dark oak; there was a huge front door--like the door of a castle; the furniture was walnut, upholstered in haircloth, worn shiny by more than three generations of use; and out of the middle of the hall a great stairway arose, dividing when half-way up into two sections, while a sort of gallery was built all around the hall at the second floor, out of which the doors of the principal chambers opened.
There was a third story above, and above that a huge garret--often the playroom of the Corner House girls on such days as this. In the rear were two wings built on to the house, each three stories in height. The house had its "long" side to Willow Street, and only a narrow grass plot and brick walk separated the sitting-room windows from the boundary fence.
It faced Main Street, at its head, where the Parade Ground began. The dripping trees on the Parade were now in full leaf and the lush grass beneath them was green. The lawns of the old Corner House needed the mower, too; and at the back Uncle Rufus--the general factotum of the establishment--had laid out a wonderful kitchen garden which already had yielded radishes and tender onions and salad, and promised green peas to accompany the spring lamb to the table on the approaching Fourth.
Tess and Dot Kenway crossed the big hall of the Corner House, and went on through the dining-room with its big table, huge, heavily carved sideboard and comfortably armed chairs, through the butler's pantry into the kitchen. As Tess had said, Mrs. MacCall, their good-natured and lovable housekeeper, was not in sight. Nobody delayed them, and they stepped out upon the half-screened porch at the back. The woodshed joined it at the far end. The steps faced Willow Street.