“Well, I’m glad to sit down,” admitted Mrs. Treble. “Don’t muss your dress, Lillie. We’ve been traveling some ways, as I tell you. Clean from Ypsilanti. We came on from Cleveland Junction this morning, and it’s a hot day. _Don’t_ rub your shoes together, Lillie.” “It _is_ very warm,” said Ruth, handing their visitor a fan and sending Agnes for a glass of cold water from the icebox. “Then we’ve been to that lawyer’s office,” pursued Mrs. Treble. “What do you call him—Howbridge? Don’t rub your hands on your skirt, Lillie.” “Yes; Mr. Howbridge,” replied Ruth. “_Don’t_ take off that hat, Lillie. So we’ve been walking in the sun some. That’s nice, cool water. Have some, Lillie? Don’t drip it on your dress.” “Wouldn’t your little girl like to go with Tess and Dot to the playhouse in the garden?” Ruth suggested. “Then we can talk.” “Why—yes,” said Mrs. Treble. “Go with the little girls, Lillie. Don’t you get a speck of dirt on you, Lillie.” Ruth did not see the awful face the much admonished Lillie made, as she left her mother’s side. It amazed Tess and Dot so that they could not speak. Her tongue went into her cheek, and she drew down the corners of her mouth and rolled her eyes, leering so terribly, that for an instant she looked like nothing human. Then she resumed the placidity of her angelic expression, and minced along after the younger Kenway girls, and out of sight around a corner of the house. Meanwhile, Agnes had drawn Ruth aside, and whispered: “What are you going to do? She’s raving crazy, isn’t she? Had I better run for a doctor—or the police?” “Sh!” admonished Ruth. “She is by no means crazy. I don’t know _what_ to do!” “But she says she has a right to live here, too,” gasped Agnes. “Perhaps she has.” “Mr. Howbridge said we were Uncle Peter’s only heirs,” said Agnes, doggedly. “May—maybe he didn’t know about this John Augustus Treble. We must find out about it,” said Ruth, much worried. “Of course, we wouldn’t want to keep anybody out of the property, if they had a better right to it.” “_What?_” shrilled Agnes. “Give it up? Not—on—your—life!” In the meantime, Tess and Dot scarcely knew how to talk to Lillie Treble. She was such a strange girl! They had never seen anybody at all like her before. Lillie walked around the house, out of her mother’s sight, just as mincingly as a peacock struts. Her look of angelic sweetness would have misled anybody. She just looked as though she had never done a single wrong thing in all her sweet young life! But Tess and Dot quickly found that Lillie Treble was not at all the perfect creature she appeared to the casual observer. Her angelic sweetness was all a sham. Away from her mother’s sharp eye, Lillie displayed very quickly her true colors. “Those all your dolls?” she demanded, when she was shown the collection of Tess and Dot in the garden house. “Yes,” said Tess.