"Say! we'll have scrumptious times," cried Agnes, with sparkling eyes. Her anticipation of every joy in life added immensely to the joy itself.
"Yes--if we go," said Ruth, slowly. But it was something for the others to look forward to with much pleasure.
Tess and Dot Kenway had something of particular interest to hold their attention, too, the minute they awoke on this Sunday morning. Dot voiced the matter first when she asked:
"Do you suppose that dear Tom Jonah is here yet, Tess?"
"Let's run see," suggested Dot, and nothing loth Tess slipped into her bathrobe and slippers, too, and the two girls pattered downstairs. Their baths, always overseen by Ruth, were neglected. They must see, they thought, if the good old dog was on the porch.
Nobody was astir downstairs; Mrs. MacCall had not yet left her room, and on Sunday mornings even Uncle Rufus allowed himself an extra hour in bed. There was the delicious smell of warm baked beans left over night in the range oven; the big, steaming pot would be set upon the table at breakfast, flanked with golden-brown muffins on one side and the sliced "loaf," or brownbread, on the other.
Sandyface came yawning from her basket behind the stove when Tess and Dot entered the kitchen. She had four little black and white blind babies in that basket which she had found in a barrel in the woodshed only a few days before.
Mrs. MacCall said she did not know what was to be done with the four kittens. Sandyface's original family was quite grown up, and if these four were allowed to live, too, that would make nine cats around the old Corner House.
"And the goodness knows!" exclaimed the housekeeper, "that's a whole lot more than any family has a business to keep. We're overrun with cats."
Tess unlocked the door and she and Dot went out on the porch, Sandyface following. There was no sign of the big dog.
"Tom Jonah's gone!" sighed Dot, quaveringly.
"I wouldn't have thought it--when we treated him so nicely," said Tess.
Sandyface sniffed suspiciously at the old mat on which the dog had lain. Then she looked all about before venturing off the porch.
The sunshine and quiet of a perfect Sunday morning lay all about the old Corner House. Robins sought their very souls for music to tell how happy they were, in the tops of the cherry trees. Catbirds had not yet lost their love songs of the spring; though occasionally one scolded harshly when a roaming cat came too near the hidden nest.