"You don't know what you are letting yourselves in for. Ralph and Rowena are young savages."
"Can't be much worse than Sammy, yonder," chuckled Neale, who, with Agnes, was much interested in this part of the planning.
"Oh, Ruthie!" exclaimed the second Kenway sister suddenly, clasping her hands. "There's Cecile and Luke!"
"I mean we invited them to come to the Corner House for the holidays."
"Ah-ha!" exclaimed Mr. Howbridge promptly. "The Shepards? Of course! I had already included them--in my mind."
"Mr. Howbridge! It will be more than a party. It will be a convention," gasped Ruth.
"It's such a lonely place that we'll need a big crowd to make it worth while going at all," the lawyer laughed. "Yes. Cecile and Luke are invited. I will have them written to at once--in addition to your own invitation to them, Miss Ruth."
"Dear me! you are just the best guardian, Mr. Howbridge," sighed Agnes ecstatically.
"And I think," Ruth added, "that you ought to think seriously of taking the Birdsall twins with us."
That was not decided at that time, however. And when the party got back to the old Corner House, just across from the Parade Ground at the head of Main Street, Mr. Howbridge was met with a piece of news that shocked him much more than had the thought of the twins making their home with him in his quiet bachelor residence.
A clerk from the lawyer's office awaited Mr. Howbridge. There was a telegram from Rodgers, the Birdsalls' ex-butler. It read:
"Ralph and Rowena away since yesterday noon. Hospitals searched. Cannot have pond dragged. Two feet of ice. Wire instructions. --Rodgers."
Mr. Howbridge, before he hurried away to his office, asked Ruth:
"What do you think of that? And you suggest my keeping those twins--those two wild youngsters--in my home!"
"I will tell you what I think of that telegram," said the oldest Kenway girl, handing the yellow sheet of paper back to him. "I think that man Rodgers is not a fit person to have charge of the boy and girl."
"Imagine thinking of dragging a pond in mid-winter--or at any other time of the year--for two healthy children! First idea the man seems to have. I guess the twins had reason for running away."
"Hear! Hear!" cried Agnes, who deliberately listened.