Carolyn of the Corners.
by Ruth Belmore Endicott.
CHAPTER I-THE RAY OF SUNLIGHT
Just as the rays of the afternoon sun hesitated to enter the open door of Joseph Stagg's hardware store in Sunrise Cove, and lingered on the sill, so the little girl in the black frock and hat, with twin braids of sunshiny hair on her shoulders, hovered at the entrance of the dim and dusty place.
She carried a satchel in one hand, while the fingers of the other were hooked into the rivet-studded collar of a mottled, homely mongrel dog, who likewise looked curiously into the dusky interior of Mr. Stagg's shop, and whose abbreviated tail quivered expectantly.
"Oh, dear me, Prince!" sighed the little girl, "this must be the place.
We'll just _have_ to go in. Of course, I know he must be a nice man; but he's _such_ a stranger!"
She sighed again; but Prince whined eagerly. He seemed much more sanguine of a welcome than did his mistress. Her feet faltered over the doorsill and paced slowly down the shop between the long counters, each step slower than its predecessor.
She saw no clerk; only the littered counters, the glass-enclosed showcases, the low bins of nails and bolts on either hand, and the high shelves filled with innumerable boxes, on the end of each of which was a sample piece of hardware.
At the back of the shop was a small office closed in with grimy windows.
There was not much light there. The uncertain visitor and her canine companion saw the shadowy figure of a man inside the office, sitting on a high stool and bent above a big ledger.
The dog, however, scented something else. The hair on his neck began to bristle, and he sniffed inquiringly.
In the half darkness of the shop he and his little mistress came unexpectedly upon what Prince considered his arch-enemy. There rose up on the end of the counter nearest the open office door a big, black tom-cat whose arched back, swollen tail, and yellow eyes blazing defiance, proclaimed his readiness to give battle to the quivering dog.
"Ps-s-st-ye-ow!"
The rising yowl broke the silence of the shop like a trumpet-call. The little girl dropped her bag and seized the dog's collar with both hands.
"Prince!" she cried, "don't you speak to that cat-don't you _dare_ speak to it!"
The dog quivered all over in an ague of desire. The instincts of the chase possessed his doggish soul, but his little mistress' word was law to him.
"Bless me!" croaked a voice from the office.
The tom-cat uttered a second "ps-s-st-ye-ow!" and shot up a ladder to the top shelf, from which vantage he looked down, showering insults on his enemy in a low and threatening tone.
"Bless me!" repeated Joseph Stagg, taking off his eyeglasses and leaving them in the ledger to mark his place. "What have you brought that dog in here for?"
He came to the office door. Without his glasses, and with the girl standing between him and the light, Mr. Stagg squinted a little to see her, stooping, with his hands on his knees.
"I-I didn't have any place to leave him," was the hesitating reply to the rather petulant query.
"Hum! Did your mother send you for something?"
"No-o, sir," sighed the little visitor.
"Your father wants something, then?" questioned the puzzled hardware dealer.
"No-o, sir."
At that moment a more daring ray of sunlight found its way through the transom over the store door and lit up the dusky place. It fell upon the slight, black-frocked figure and, for the instant, touched the pretty head as with an aureole.
"Bless me, child!" exclaimed Mr. Stagg. "Who are you?"
The flowerlike face of the little girl quivered, the blue eyes spilled big drops over her cheeks. She approached Mr. Stagg, stooping and squinting in the office doorway, and placed a timid hand upon the broad band of black crepe he wore on his coat sleeve.
"You're not Hannah's Car'lyn?" questioned the hardware dealer huskily.
"I'm Car'lyn May Cameron," she confessed. "You're my Uncle Joe. I'm very glad to see you, Uncle Joe, and-and I hope-you're glad to see me-and Prince," she finished rather falteringly.
"Bless me!" murmured the man again, leaning for support against the door frame.
Nothing so startling as this had entered Sunrise Cove's chief "hardware emporium," as Mr. Stagg's standing advertisement read in the _Weekly Bugle_, for many and many a year.
Hannah Stagg, the hardware merchant's only sister, had gone away from home quite fifteen years previously. Mr. Stagg had never seen Hannah again; but this slight, blue-eyed, sunny-haired girl was a replica of his sister, and in some dusty corner of Mr. Stagg's heart there dwelt a very faithful memory of Hannah.
Nothing had served to estrange the brother and sister save time and distance. Hannah had been a patient correspondent, and Joseph Stagg had always acknowledged the receipt of her letters in a business-like way, if with brevity.
"Dear Hannah:
"Yours of the 12th inst. to hand and contents noted. Glad to learn of your continued good health and that of your family, this leaving me in the same condition.
"Yours to command, "J. Stagg."
The hardware merchant was fully as sentimental as the above letter indicated. If there were drops now in his eyes as he stooped and squinted at his little niece, it was because the sunlight was shining in his face and interfered for the moment with his vision.
"Hannah's Car'lyn," muttered Mr. Stagg again. "Bless me, child! how did you get here from New York?"
"On the cars, uncle." Carolyn May was glad he asked that question instead of saying anything just then about her mother and father.
"You see, Mr. Price thought I'd better come. He says you are my guardian-it's in papa's will, and would have been so in mamma's will, if she'd made one. Mr. Price put me on the train and the conductor took care of me. Only, I rode 'most all the way with Prince in the baggage car. You see, he howled so."
Mr. Stagg looked askance at the dog, that yawned, smiled at him, and cocked his cropped ears.
"Who is Mr. Price?" the storekeeper asked.
"He's a lawyer. He and his family live in the flat right across the hall from us. He's written you a long letter about it. It's in my bag. Didn't you get the telegram he sent you last evening, Uncle Joe? A 'night letter,' he called it."
"Never got it," replied Mr. Stagg shortly.
"Well, you see, when papa and mamma had to go away so suddenly, they left me with the Prices. I go to school with Edna Price, and she slept with me at night in our flat-after the _Dunraven_ sailed."
"But-but what did this lawyer send you up here for?" asked Mr. Stagg, still with an eye on the dog.
The question was a poser, and Carolyn May stammered: "I-I-Don't guardians _always_ take their little girls home and look out for them?"
"Hum, I don't know." The hardware merchant mused grimly. "But if your father left a will-However, I suppose I shall learn all about it in that lawyer's letter."