Ransom by Grace Livingston Hill

one eye before she managed to turn the gas lower.
    The coffee was another problem, and while she made it, two good slices of toast began to burn and lift up a smell that nearly choked her.
    In the midst of it all, while she was trying to keep the next batch of toast from burning and at the same time hold a blistered finger under the cold water faucet, the door swung open from the pantry, and there stood the haughty butler, looking at her with a cold and disapproving eye. He had evidently let himself in silently with his own key at the servants’ entrance.
    Christobel felt herself begin to tremble. But then she remembered that her father was upstairs, and there was no cause for fear. Somehow the old habit had fallen back upon her.
    â€œWhere’s the cook?” asked Hawkins sharply, with not as much respect in his voice, she fancied, as there had been yesterday. His eyes were bleary, and he had a sullen look on his face.
    â€œJust a minute,” she managed to say calmly. “I’ll call my father. Watch that toast, please, till I get back.”
    She darted through the door and up the back stairs before he could say more, knocking excitedly on her father’s door.
    â€œHawkins is downstairs, Daddy,” she whispered through the keyhole, and then to her relief, she heard her father coming instantly to the door.
    He was putting on his coat as he came, and seeing her perturbation, he smiled at her.
    â€œWhere? In the kitchen?”
    â€œYes,” breathed Christobel. “He frightened me. He is very cross.”
    Her father went swiftly down the stairs and into the kitchen, but Hawkins was already on his way up the back stairs, walking stealthily. She saw him push open the swing door and look toward her for a second, as she stood in the upper hall, then glide stealthily toward the servants’ part of the house. Something in his manner alarmed her. Softly she crept to her brother’s door and called him.
    â€œRand! Come quick! Daddy may need you! Hurry! The butler is back, and he looks ugly. Daddy may want you to call the police.”
    Something in her tone must have reached down beneath the depths of sleep in which Randall was involved, for after the first sleepy “Wotchawant?” she heard him roll out of bed and plant his feet firmly on the floor. A moment more and he was at the door, enveloping himself in a bathrobe made of all the colors of the rainbow, and shuffling his feet into slippers.
    â€œWhere’s he at?” Randall was frowning, his hair sticking up in every direction. His hair was straight and sharp and black and thick.
    Christobel choked down the excitement that almost made her voiceless, and managed to tell what she knew in a throbbing whisper.
    â€œAw-wright! Just you stayyere! Don’t get excited, see? I’ll handle this!” Randall said loftily.
    Christobel saw him march with a heavy frown toward the swing door and was suddenly frightened lest something would happen to him. Perhaps she shouldn’t have called to him at all. He was such an excitable kid! And then a strangling smell of burning toast came to her nostrils, and she fled to the kitchen in a panic. Her toast was burning again. Hawkins had not tended to it! Her cereal, too, perhaps. Her nice breakfast that she had worked so hard to make!
    Hawkins was coming back from the door of his own room when Randall encountered him. He looked at the boy, with fight in his eye, and Randall gave him back a glance of battle.
    â€œHey! Who’s done what with my property?” demanded the irate butler, sticking out his jaw at the son of the house in a most un-butlerlike manner.
    â€œWhaddaya mean coming back ta the house and talking like that?” spoke up Rannie in a lordly manner. “Where were you las’ night I’d liketa know? You’re half stewed now, or ya wouldn’t dare talk like that. What ya got ta say about anything, running off all night? My father give ya